#This is honestly the spookiest part about this whole fic

[nerdythangs]

Day 8: Ouija

The only thing I managed to squeeze out for Racket’s 13 Days of Halloween prompt list. Y’all have been wonderful with this. Thank you, @racketghost, for keeping it spooky!!

--

“I think you’re overreacting,” said Crowley with a big yawn.

Aziraphale scoffed on the other line of the telephone. “I don’t believe I am! You might have been asleep, but I’ve been awake and have had plenty of time to think about it--”

“Fret about it, you mean.”

“--and not only is there a global pandemic, there are locusts by the thousands seen in Africa, both Australia and the West coast of the United States have been on fire, and don’t even get me started on the political climate--”

“You’re making the idea of going back to sleep really appealing right now, angel.”

“--there’s just no other conclusion: we’re at the end of times again. Our head offices have not contacted us since we have retired, but surely, surely they must answer my call if I were to reach out.”

Crowley poorly stifled another yawn. “And we all know how well the last call upstairs went.”

“Yes, which is why I’m requesting your presence.”

“My wot?”

“Your presence! You said we’re on our own side now, and I, to be frank, I, I don’t want to do this without you.” Aziraphale’s voice, which started off strong, trailed off to an uncharacteristic mumble.

Well, fuck. Crowley guessed he was finally getting out of bed. “Yeahyeahyeah, no, of course, yr’right,” he said while throwing the blanked off of himself and finally taking his eye mask off. “Just uhh,” he sniffed and cleared his throat, and blinked blearily into the dimly lit room, “gimme a minute and I’ll be over shortly.”

“Oh, thank you,” Aziraphale said breathlessly over the other end, full of angelic sincerity, “I’ll make sure there’s a nice strong cup of tea waiting for you.”

“Nnn,” Crowley said.

A short while later, Crowley knocked on the book shop’s door and was greeted by a beaming angel. “Crowley! It’s so good to see you,” he said, as if he wasn’t expecting him. Crowley mumbled and walked into the shop.

“So how are you doing this?” Crowley asked, flopping onto his usual spot on the sofa.

“Ah, well, it is rather simple,” Aziraphale said excitedly. He picked up the edge of the ornate rug in the center of the shop and dragged it out of the way to reveal--

“An Ouija board?” Crowley took off his sunglasses to get a better look.

Aziraphale looked at the Ouija board, perfectly drawn into the floorboards of his shop, complete with an illustrated sun and moon. His face was passively blank and he was perfectly still until he began to blink and shake his head repeatedly, turned around on his heel, and walked straight to his ancient telephone.

With the angel’s back turned, Crowley could finally crack a smile, and his shoulders shook in silent laughter. He got up from the sofa and sauntered over to the Ouija board. He scuffed it with the toe of his boot to check that it was a permanent fixture.

“Yes, hello, Adam. This is Aziraphale, the, um, angel from the air base. Yes, that’s the one.”

In a fit of demonic childishness, Crowley hopped over to the A, leapt to the R, and then jumped over to the E.

“I’m doing fine,” Aziraphale said briskly, “Listen, there’s a reason for my call. I know you did your best when setting the world right after the Apocalypse, and I truly couldn’t be more grateful, but there seems to have been a mix up in my heavenly communication sigil that I usually kept on the floor of my bookshop. It ah,” he turned to watch Crowley skip to the Y, the O, and then the U, “it has turned into an Ouija board.”

“There… God…” Crowley mumbled to himself with a slight smirk as he stepped on each letter.

“Of course you’re not a celestial being, but I rather thought--”

“It’s… Me…”

“I don’t believe that Hasboro has the ability to call the Metatron.” Aziraphale began to sound a little tetchy.

“... M-A-R-G-A-R-E-T…” Crowley stomped both feet onto the T and beamed up at Aziraphale with a shiteating grin.

“Of course, dear boy. No, I understand. Thank you. Goodbye.” Aziraphale hung up the phone with a sigh.

Suddenly Crowley began to glow an unearthly glow and his body straightened to be perfectly rigid.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale asked, sounding alarmed.

Slowly, Crowley walked to the Y with a forced stiffness and blank look on his face, while darting wild eyes to Aziraphale. He then walked to the O, then to U, and the R.”

Aziraphale scrambled to get a paper and pen, writing down every letter Crowley stepped on.  “N-A-M-E-I-S-N-O-T-M-A-R-G-A-R-E-T-A-N-D-T-H-I-S-I-S-N-O-T-T-H-E-E-N-D-O-F-T-I-M-E-S”

Crowley’s possessed corporation then walked to the “Goodbye” where he collapsed into a pile on the floor, gasping.

He turned to Aziraphale. “What the FUCK was that?” He shouted semi-hysterically, with his gasps sounding more like panting with each breath.

“Your name is not Margaret and this is not the end of times.” Aziraphale read aloud from the notepad and looked over to Crowley. “Well, I suppose I got my answer.”

Crowley pushed himself up to a seated position and stared a thousand yard stare at the Ouija board on the floor.

They both stayed silent for a moment.

“D’you got any Scotch? I feel like I deserve Scotch after that.”

Aziraphale’s face brightened. “Oh yes! I’ve got a bottle of Macallan that I picked up a few years back that hasn’t been opened yet.”

‘A few years back’ probably meant at least 20 years to Aziraphale, so Crowley picked himself up off the ground and dusted his pants. “Excellent, I want four fingers’ worth to start.”

“Of course, my dear.” Aziraphale responded, puttering towards the back end of the shop. “And while you’re here,” he called from the back, “I’ll have to update you with everything that’s been going on. Did you know that they finally rediscovered that some books were bound in human leather? If they were to just ask me I would have told them about the volumes in my possession! Not that I’d show anyone of course, but I was there when they initially experimented with the technique, you know.”

Crowley shook his head as Aziraphale nattered on, letting a soft smile grace his face. This year might have gone to shit, but some things were worth waking up for.

---

Books bound in human leather: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/books/review/dark-archives-megan-rosenbloom.html

[queenofbaws]

UD: Who ya gonna call? - 10

Chapter: 10/? Chapter title: Who ya gonna call? (Again) Fic rating: T - Language, blood, general spookiness Summary: Sam witnesses something strange. (Reminder: This can be found on AO3, if you prefer!) Previous | Next

None of the snow from last night’s surprise flurry had stuck, thank Christ. She hadn’t asked any questions (she knew better by that point), but Josh had been beside himself with worry about the shoot looking like some kind of Christmas wonderland. What was it he had said? ‘Not the right venue! Not the right aesthetic!’ Something like that, suggesting that sure, some places could be totally creepy with a dusting of the white stuff, but not this place, by God. Not Mummy Mansion.

Honestly? She was starting to get what he meant by that. By the time they were done filming all the B-roll, opening narration crap, and of course the agreed upon three thousand takes of interviews (most of which quickly devolved into Josh and Conrad shooting snappy one-liners at each other and Chris joining in from behind the camera), the sun had begun to set in earnest, the sepia light casting eerily long shadows wherever they walked. The whole feel was definitely creepy to the max. Yeah Thanksgiving had come and gone, and yeah most people were already well on their way to making Christmas preparations, but just then, standing in the middle of that well-to-do (if not strangely silent) gated neighborhood, it felt like October, if that made any kind of sense. Prime time for chills and thrills, baby, prime-fuckin’-time.

Oh God, her inner voice was starting to sound like Chris. That wasn’t good.

“So this is it, huh? Crossing the threshold into Mummy Mansion.” Sam set her arms akimbo, head slowly tilting to the side to get a better glance into the house as she stood between not the Scream Team, but what she was coming to think of as the Scheme Team. “Definitely looks big enough to be hiding some ghoulies, I’ll give it that.”

Conrad groaned. “Really wish you wouldn’t call it that. Seriously ruins the ambiance of the situation.”

“What ambiance would that be, exactly? Because, uh…” Josh held his arms out and spun around in a beautiful homage to Julie Andrews. These hills weren’t alive with the sound of music, however; they were just sort of dead with the crunchy detritus of late autumn. The mansion’s considerable property appeared well maintained, but with all the leaves having fallen, the trees looked eerily skeletal in the evening light. “The spookiest part of this shit is the three-car garage, my dude.”

Conrad opened his mouth to fire back what was sure to be a witty retort of some kind, and Sam took that as her cue to finally give in and enter the dreaded house. The entryway and foyer were done up with white walls, white crown molding, white oak floorboards…and just like that, a good portion of her humor flew out the window. Which was also probably white. “Eugh,” she said aloud, “This place feels like a hospital or something.”

From above her—closely above her—came, “Yeah, tell me about it. Only gets worse upstairs.” Chris hung halfway down the staircase, beckoning her to join them up in what she had to assume was the living room. “Worse? There’s a fucking echo. This place is so big that it echoes. No wonder people get skeeved out, I’d be freaked too if my shower-singing turned into a full ensemble performance…”

There was something inherently unsettling about empty houses. The sheer space of Mummy Mansion made it that much worse, too—Sam walked up the half-staircase to the main living area and literally couldn’t hold back her shiver. It really did feel like…what? A hospital, or a museum, or maybe even Edgar’s section of the library: It was empty and quiet and the absence of furniture brought that all into horrible focus. “Oh, ew,” she muttered, looking around, “We’re gonna have to sleep here, huh?”

“That’s the deal!” Chris knelt back down at their impromptu base of operations, a couple foldout tables surrounded by their equipment. “To be fair, though, this shit’s pretty swanky compared to some of the places Josh has dragged us.”

Ashley sat up straighter, having been rummaging through one of her bags. “Ugh, remember that farmhouse back in May?” Her tongue lolled out in a gag, “There were horseflies the size of my friggin’ foot!” Almost too quickly to be noticed, her eyes darted to the space behind Sam, seemingly searching the air for something. “Did we…lose the other two?” she asked cautiously.

Sam joined them though she didn’t sit, instead absently walking around the living room, craning her head this way and that to get an idea of the floor’s layout. “No, they’re arguing over three-car garages or something like that…” Kitchen, dining room, something that might’ve been a den…part of her considered poking her nose upstairs to see what it was hiding, but the last thing she wanted to do was actually get lost. Could she live down being a ghost hunter on the internet? Absolutely. Could she live down sending an SOS to be rescued from a guest bathroom after getting turned around? Absolutely not.

She had some dignity left.

“Rich! Kids! Fighting!” Chris cupped his hands to his mouth and hissed triumphantly, sounding vaguely like a cheering crowd. Vaguely.

The tension dropped from Ash’s shoulders and she went back to furiously digging through her bag. Waving them both over, she tucked something into the cuff of her sweatshirt with a mischievous smirk. “You guys are totally clear on the plan, right? We’re gonna be good to go when the time comes?”

“Oh please, I was born ready.”

“Says the guy whose only job is to hold the camera.”

“Wow. Nice. I’ll remember that next time you need a close-up. I’m gonna zoom in on all your worst angles. It’s just gonna look like you’re about to sneeze in every shot of you. Is that what you want? It’s what you’re gonna get.”

She rolled her eyes, quickly adjusting something else under the cuff of her other sleeve; Sam recognized that one right off the bat as the same sort of mini blood pump Josh had used to fake his nosebleed at the townhouse. Oh, tonight was gonna be something special, all right. “Chris.”

“Ash.”

“I’ll be ready. I mean…I think.” Laughing, Sam threw a quick look over her shoulder. Still no sign of Josh or Conrad. Good. Perfect. If there was one supernatural thing that had been well-established and well-documented in her time with the CREEPs, it was Josh’s uncanny ability to distract people. “I was never much of a drama kid, so fingers crossed.”

The sound of the front door slamming shut made the three of them jump.

“Act natural!” Ashley hissed, giving her sleeves one last tweak before standing to lean over one of the tables, pretending to be unpacking her spirit board, painstakingly removing it from its special padded compartment. Chris followed suit, pulling a camera onto his lap and assuming a frankly ridiculous frown, as though the dang thing wasn’t doing what he needed it to.

Sam watched them for a second, muttered a tired, “You guys are freaks,” and then resumed her wandering, weaving into and out of the kitchen area.

“Hey, we’re starting in the basement, right?” Josh called up from the entryway.

“That is where Conrad said we’d find our mummy…”

“I didn’t say we’d find a mummy, I said someone already found a mummy! I’m disappointed Ash, I thought you had a photographic memory or some shit like that.”

Sam stopped to lean in the kitchen doorway just in time to watch Ashley’s expression fall into a flat, frustrated grimace. Part of her wondered if Conrad realized he’d just signed his own death warrant. “Whatever,” Ashley grumbled, abruptly turning and grabbing a bag Sam hadn’t noticed before. “Might as well get this part over with.”

If the first floor had been eerie, the basement was something else entirely. It was unfinished (surprise), support columns jutting down from the dark ceiling to the concrete floor, the walls giving way every so often to open chasms that probably led to other rooms. One of those rooms was probably the quote-unquote crawlspace where the alleged mummy was found. Or a wine cellar. Or—

“Yo, Conman. Your mom ever mention any of the previous owners using this place as a sex dungeon? Because let me tell you, I am…feeling that vibe.”

“Josh, oh my God,” Ashley sounded like she’d just spotted a horrendously juicy spider, “Could you not?”

Why had she expected sleepover night with the Ghostbusters to go any differently? “Could we get some lights down here maybe?” she asked, only to sigh when Josh—very pointedly—reached up and tugged the pull-cord to the bare bulb above them. One tiny little click and that was that. Perfect. Fucking. Darkness. “Helpful. Mature. Professional.”

In their first show of actual solidarity, Ashley and Conrad yelled out at the same time, neither seeming too pleased with the setup; Josh ignored them. He was good at that, ignoring complaints.

“Hey Cochise, we rolling?”

His voice was much closer than she’d anticipated. Sam jumped, promptly bumping into Chris. There was no light to speak of, save for the itty, bitty red dot of Chris’s camera. How the fuck had Josh managed to maneuver himself so comfortably in the dark like that?!

“I—whoa hey there Sam—yeah, I’m rolling.” There was a childlike undercurrent of glee in his voice as he added, “The benefits of being the camera jockey…I can see all of you assholes…you can’t see shit.”

“Haha, except we totally can, doofus.” As her eyes began to adjust to the dark, the sickly green glow of his monitor took shape, and she circled around him to get a better view of it. “I will never get used to the whole night vision thing.”

“Um, excuse me, you’re supposed to be on the other side of the camera, thank you.” He nudged her with his elbow until she stumbled into frame, hands out to keep from openly bumping into anyone else.

Which was fine. Really. It was. Her eyes adjusted better with each passing second, the ‘total darkness’ not quite as dark as she’d first thought; some of the light from the entryway had managed to leak in through the crack under the basement door, meaning they could at least make out each others’ blobby silhouettes if they focused. Better than nothing, she figured. Far be it from the ghost squad to do anything the easy way.

“The spirit box is a fun little gadget that gives us a chance to communicate with anyone on the other side,” Josh was saying to the camera. Beside him, an Ashley-shaped blob bent down and unzipped something. “What it does is filter through a different radio frequency every fraction of a second, giving us a sort of white noise that spirits can manipulate. The thought here is that the frequencies are being changed way too fast for you to hear anything unless there’s otherworldly influence at play.

“Now, to really up the ante on this, we’re going to have Ash, the most sensitive of the team—and I mean that in more ways than one—be the conduit between our planes of existence. She’ll be the one listening for any messages.” There was a vague rustling, as though Josh was doing something, but the dark wouldn’t let her see what that something was. “So here’s what she’s gonna be hearing…” Without further warning, he must’ve hit the thing’s switch.

Really, Sam couldn’t figure out what else he could’ve done, because all at once, the noise that shrieked to life sent everyone else reeling, cringing away and shouting in surprise while he simply stood there.

Ashley had warned her about the spirit box, but augh! She regretted not taking her more seriously! The sound coming out of the hellish little contraption was loud, first and foremost, to the point of making it hard to think. She covered her ears with her hands and could still hear the horrible radio static screaming out at them, its wavelength choppy and ever-changing, making it sound as though it was being filtered through one of those giant whirring box fans.

Josh let it run for another few seconds before switching it off, continuing his monologue cool as could be. “Just to make sure none of what we’re saying affects what she’s hearing in the radio signals, she’s going to have these noise canceling headphones on…” Oh, Sam could only imagine the face she was making in that moment. “Whenever she hears something from the box, she’ll call it out to us. Right, Ash?”

Sam watched the Chris-blob pan the camera-blob back to the Ashley-blob, but unsurprisingly, there was no response. When she realized what was happening, Sam had to clear her throat to keep from laughing. “Well. At least we know the headphones work.”

“Oh. Right. Uh. We’ll…fix that in post.”

The Conrad-blob snickered loudly. In response, the Josh-blob extended an arm towards him, and it was easy enough to guess what he was doing.

Chris groaned. “Good, keep doing that, it’s no problem, really, I’ll just cut all of this. Just all of it. Y’know, by the time I’m done editing out all the shit you asshats keep doing, this episode’s gonna be all of ten minutes long—”

“Uh huh, look—”

“Hey!” Ash’s voice was more than just a little too loud in the cavernous basement. “Are you guys gonna leave me hanging the whole night?! I’m already getting a headache! Can we get on with this? Puh-lease?”

“Fine!” Impatiently, Josh waved her off, rolling his eyes. “You good to go, Cochise?”

“Dude. Yes. I’ve literally been rolling the whole time. When am I ever not ready?”

“Sammy?”

“Mhm. Ready to grill some ghosts. Or mummies. Or whatever. Ghost mummies?”

“Gummies!”

“Chris. No. Absolutely not.”

“How ‘bout you, Ash?” Josh paused then, waiting, and again there was no response. “Perfect. Okay. Everyone shut up so we can have a clean cut for the edit later.” They all stood there in the silence…and then he resumed his filming voice. “Is there anyone here with us?”

Nothing.

“If there’s anyone—”

Before he could finish his question, Ashley spoke up, startling them with her overly loud voice. “Sunday.”

Josh’s eyebrows shot up. “Saturday, actually. You’re a little early, whoever you are! Do you have a name?”

Her eyes adjusted a bit more, just enough for her to make out basic details. With her back to them, it was hard to parse Ashley’s feelings on the whole situation, but Sam thought she had a pretty decent guess when she shifted to fold her arms across her chest and jut one of her hips out. She didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and then, in rapid succession, “Time. Go in. Apple.”

“Wow,” Chris muttered, voice flat. “Informative. Think that means we should be investing in Apple watches, o spirit of the basement? Buy low, sell high?”

Josh chopped one of his hands across his own throat in a gesture that needed no explanation.

One of Ash’s boots tapped against the concrete floor. “Stop,” she called out in that same, unaffected drone. “Open yard.”

Attention moving from off of Chris, Josh spread his hands out. “Are you buried in the yard? The yard that…” he sighed almost too softly to be heard. “…used to be a gallows?”

They waited…and there was no answer.

“Were you executed in those gallows?”

“Carpet,” came Ashley’s reply.

“Oh yeah, obviously. Carpet.”

“Maybe that means you should pull up all the carpeting,” Sam offered, smirking widely. “Maybe the mummy left a manifesto on the hardwood.”

“Ice,” Ashley said, repeating herself a moment later, sounding perplexed. “Ice.”

As though she’d just uttered the phrase that awoke him as a government sleeper agent, Chris immediately began humming the first few bars of Vanilla Ice’s ‘Ice Ice Baby.’

Conrad stepped forward with a confident swagger to his step, nudging Josh out of the camera’s focus. “Let me try.”

“I’m sorry, is this your show?”

“Hey, uh, mummy man! Or…woman, I guess—the stories weren’t really clear on that front. Why won’t you let anyone live in this place, huh? Is it a territory thing? Or like…?”

“So I know I’m still new to this ghost hunting thing, but I’m pretty sure you can’t ask them open-ended questions like that.” Shaking her head, Sam watched the two of them struggle for the spotlight.

“Cold,” Ashley said.

Sam turned away from the guys. “Ice and cold?” She felt Chris move the camera to her and tried to present her best angle to him, remembering his earlier comment about looking like she was about to sneeze. Not today. Not in Mummy Mansion. “Did you die in the wintertime?” she asked, hardly expecting a cogent response. She had a strong suspicion this particular shtick wasn’t going to work out too well.

Ashley didn’t say anything.

Mhm. Just as she thought. Shrugging, Sam rolled the sleeves of her hoodie down; the basement was chillier than the rest of the place, and all the sudden talk of ice was making her shiver. “Maybe we—”

“Answer me.” As she said it, Ashley’s hands braced themselves against the headphones, pressing the cups harder against her ears. It sort of looked like she was having trouble hearing whatever was coming through them, but…that couldn’t be, could it? That shit had been so loud! Then she started speaking rapidly, words tumbling out of her mouth into the still air of the basement. “Where? Cold call. Name. Help. Where? Answer me. Gone.” A second later, she’d pulled the headphones off, holding them away from herself like some disgusting thing she’d rather not be touching. “That’s it, I’m done. I am absolutely going to have a full-blown migraine in the morning.” She pawned the headset off on the first person to reach for it (Conrad, as it turned out), felt around for the pull-cord, tugged it, and promptly circled around behind Chris to sit cross-legged on the concrete. As she took to sulkily massaging her ears, she asked, “Did I even come close to answering anything?”

“No.” Josh grabbed for the headphones but he was squinting against the sudden light, so Conrad was able to swiftly duck out of his way, waggling his eyebrows as he slid them on.

“So I just did all that for nothing?! Super cool! I could be at home working on my final projects, but nooo…”

“OH SHIT!” Conrad pointed at his head. “THIS IS SO FUCKING LOUD! HOW DO YOU GUYS DO THIS?!”

For a long, long moment, Josh simply stood there, staring. “This, in case you guys were wondering, is why I was fucking hesitant to bring him along.”

“Mmm…yeah, that makes sense.”

There was (relative) silence as the four of them watched Conrad wince against the awful sound in the headphones. Chris, Sam noticed, absolutely still had the camera pointed his way. She couldn’t blame him. “I THINK IT JUST SAID ‘GRAPEFRUIT?’ IT MIGHT’VE BEEN MORE SYLLABLES THOUGH.”

It was a strange thing to say, really it was, but something in Sam’s chest went warm and fuzzy when all four of them nodded at the same time. Friend-telepathy was something that had been missing from her life for a long while…and she’d almost forgotten how good it felt to be on the same wavelength as someone else. Even if the ‘someone else’s in question were a bunch of internet frauds.

“We still set for later?” Josh asked, keeping his eyes on Conrad all the while.

“Oh yeah. Definitely. I’m all ready to go. Are you ready?”

She looked between Josh and Ashley briefly, doing her best to keep her face neutral. “We’re super sure he can’t hear us right now?”

Ashley snorted, “Truuust me, we could be screaming and he wouldn’t hear any of it.”

To prove her point, Josh cocked his head to the side and folded his arms over his chest, lips curling into a decidedly dastardly grin. “Hey Connie!” he called at the top of his lungs. “Your sister’s been blowing up my phone lately! Could you tell her I’m running out of space for nudes?”

Sam had to literally turn away so he wouldn’t be able to tell she was laughing.

“Yeah!” Ashley added, her voice more giggle than anything else, “Tell her to quit Snapchatting me while you’re at it! It’s getting sad!”

Across from them, Conrad frowned; he didn’t seem angry, though, just…confused. “IT SAID ‘LAMP?’ MAYBE?”

Chris nodded as if agreeing with him, but also joined in on the game, loudly adding, “No one’s ever sent me a nude in my life and honestly I’d just feel bad lying to you about it, man, but I don’t like being left out of a quality goof!”

“Wow, never, huh?” Sam asked.

“I know, right? Weird.”

“Eh, not that weird.”

The basement filled with the tinny sound a moment later when Conrad pulled the headphones off. Much as Ash had, he rubbed at his ears, holding the headset out for whoever wanted to take it. No one seemed particularly psyched to grab for them. “Man, I get what you meant earlier, my head’s fucking ringing, and—” his voice trailed off and his eyes narrowed as he looked from one of them to the next. “Okay, ha ha, what did I miss?”

“No idea what you could mean, my good man.” Josh’s grin and Conrad’s glower seemed inextricably connected, growing together. “Are you accusing us of making fun of you while you couldn’t hear us? Wow. Do you really think so little of me? Seriously, that says a lot about our friendship. Here I am, working for all these years to forge some kind of trust, some kind of bond, and you just assume—”

He flapped a hand to get him to shut up. Turning to Sam, Conrad assumed a long-suffering expression, “Not for nothing, but you do realize that by choosing to regularly associate with this dickbag, you’re slowly but surely allowing yourself to get infected with…” He gestured in Josh’s direction. “…whatever’s going on over there, right? Did you have to sign some kind of waiver? ‘I hereby acknowledge my sense of humor, social standing, and sanity may be irreparably harmed in the process of joining Washington Pictures, Incorporated, etcetera etcetera ad infinitum?’ Something like that?”

“Aw shoot.” Sam snapped her fingers and shook her head in disappointment. “You know, it never even crossed my mind. I should probably look into that.”

“You probably should. But here, new girl, you wanna try and commune with the spirit world? I won’t lie to you, turns out it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” The headphones dangled none-too-temptingly from one of his fingers. If it was meant to look cool, he was missing his mark by a long shot—it was extremely obvious he just wanted the things as far away from him as possible. 

Laughing, Sam took the headphones. She was going to regret it, she knew that much already, but hell, she was already there, scoping the house for mummies. Why not? “Okay, okay…but only so I can say I know what it’s like.” She put them over her head, froze, and then lifted one side from her ear. If the others wanted to crack jokes at her expense while she was wearing them that was one thing, but that wasn’t what concerned her. “I swear to God, if any of you three decide it’s gonna be funny to sneak up on me while I’m doing this…” Her threat trailed off, but her eyes must’ve made the threat obvious; in unison, Josh, Chris, and Conrad grinned the guiltiest grins she’d ever seen in her life.

“Hey, no fair! Why didn’t you include Ash in that?”

Sam met Ashley’s gaze for a fraction of a second. That was really all it took. “Ashley,” she said matter-of-factly, “Isn’t an asshole.”

“Yeah, I—”

The rest was lost. Sam winced against the noise coming from the spirit box and waited to see whether her brain would acclimate to it. It didn’t. Ash hadn’t been kidding—that shit was brutal. She closed her eyes, let her fingertips ghost (harharhar) against the plastic headset, and tried to make sense of the static.

But it, uh…it was static.

Had Ashley and Conrad actually heard anything through that or had they just been pulling her leg? It didn’t seem like too much of a stretch to imagine they’d been hamming it up for the camera, but it had seemed so—

“S A M !”

She flung the headphones off, only realizing she’d screamed after they clattered to the floor and the echoes of her own voice bounced off the walls.

“Holy shit,” one of the guys (she couldn’t actually tell which) swore, sounding almost as startled as she was.

“What? What?!” Before she could fully process everything, Ash was kneeling next to her, hands on Sam’s shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s loud but it’s not that loud, Jesus…”

Sam whirled around, her heart in her throat. “Which one of you did that?!” It was hard for her to tell, but she thought Ashley turned a similarly accusatory glare towards the lot of them.

“Uh…did…what? None of us—oh fuck you dude, you’re not helping!” Josh shoved Conrad—hard—when he noticed him sneakily pointing his way. “Asshole. You okay, Sammy? You get spooked?”

“Which one of you did that?” Her voice was calmer, though only just. “Seriously, that wasn’t funny.”

Josh held his hands out to her in a show of supplication that felt almost childish in its earnestness. “Really gonna need you to elaborate on the who-what-where. We stayed right here like good little boys, and—”

She jabbed a finger towards the headphones. “That stupid thing said my name.” A pit of something unpleasant, maybe doubt, nibbled its way through the lining of her guts when Chris and Josh turned to each other. They weren’t laughing.

“Um…that’s not how…are you sure?” Ashley leaned in a bit closer, as though to examine her face. “It’s literally a radio Sam, we can’t like…make it say stuff.” Her eyes narrowed in thought. “Your name? Really? Huh. Weird.”

Lumbering over to retrieve the headphones, Chris threw an arm into the air. “Shit, guess mummy man’s picked his first victim.”

“Chris.”

“This is what you get for doubting the mummy’s curse. Motherfucker’s gonna stand outside your dorm every night now, just saying your name.” He bent down and grabbed the headphones. “SaAaAaM…sAaAaAm…Return the slaAaAab! Return the slAaAaAb!” I wasn’t a horrible imitation of the mummy from Courage the Cowardly Dog…in fact, it was close enough that Ashley immediately sprang to her feet to smack his arm until he stopped.

“Oh my God, quit it! We have to spend the night here! I’m not going to be able to sleep if you do that crap!” “Owowow! Child abuse! Child abuse!”

“You’re two years older than me!” “Elder abuse! Elder abuse!”

She shook herself out and ran her hands through her hair to smooth it back out of her face. Maybe it was stupid…probably it was stupid…but she couldn’t make herself move from her spot until the spirit box and the offending headset had been zipped away and slung across Ashley’s shoulder again. Oh, she didn’t like that thing. She didn’t like it at all. Realistically, yeah, it smacked of another one of the gang’s little pranks, but eugh, it just…something about the interaction was really rubbing her the wrong way. Sam rubbed her arms through the sleeves of her hoodie, much, much colder than she had been a minute ago.

The problem, when she got right down to it, was that there had been something familiar about…well, something. It was on the very tip of her tongue, an exam answer she’d only just seen on the study guide, maddeningly out of reach. One of her hands found the shape of her phone in her back pocket, pulling it out to check it out of some anxious habit. No missed calls, no missed texts, no missed anything…and no answers to the question gnawing at the back of her brain.

What had that been?

Why was her skin crawling like that?

Why—

Sam startled at a sudden weight on her arm, slipping her phone into her hoodie’s pouch as she looked up towards Josh. “What?” she asked, having heard enough to understand he’d been talking to her.

“You doing okay there, sport?” he joked, though there was a decidedly unfamiliar downturn in the shape of his smirk. “We were about to start poking around looking for bricked-over mummy tombs, you still good to go, or…?”

One more shake, mental more than physical, and she nodded. “Yup. Lead the way.”

“You sure? Cuz—”

“Super sure,” she said, doubling down. Was she trying to convince him or herself? Ech, that wasn’t a line of thought she wanted to stay on. “Just know I’m never, and I mean never, using that thing again.” Sam patted his arm in return before striding forward with a confidence entirely put on for show, quickly catching up with the rest of the group.

The plan was to wander through the gargantuan basement, tapping on walls, checking for cold spots, recording everything with thermal cameras and measuring electromagnetic fields to try and spot anything questionable. Given the size of the place, it would probably take them the better part of the evening, and that was assuming nothing strange happened.

But strange was sort of what they were best at.

They were about an hour in when it happened. Sam had managed to shake the uncomfortable nails-on-a-chalkboard echoes of the spirit box from her mind, having been sucked into the ridiculous showmanship of the investigation, making serious faces and matter-of-fact comments to the camera as their impressive array of tools beeped and booped in the background; she was so absorbed in it, in fact, that she almost didn’t feel the telltale tug at her sleeve before she felt Ashley stumble beside her.

“I don’t…um…guys, I…” The guys had been a few yards ahead of them, Josh walking backwards and talking menacingly about how quartz had a tendency to retain psychic activity (though what that had to do with the fucking wine cellar they were heading to, she had no godly idea)—they turned in time to see Ashley swoon, but it was only Sam who was close enough to catch her. “I don’t feel so good, actually…” she muttered, clutching Sam’s arms like a drowning woman might clutch a life preserver. She swayed again, Sam having to adjust her position to keep from collapsing with her.

“Hey, quit it—quit it!” She shot Chris a furious look when he approached with the camera. “Put that stupid thing down, oh my God!”

“Sorry, sorry!” He dropped it from his shoulder but notably didn’t actually put it down. No, no, the camera remained at his side, hanging down by his knees, the little red recording light still going strong.

Man, it was getting hard to keep a straight face.

“Hey what’s the hold up ladi—oh shit, you okay, Ash?” The concern in Josh’s voice was heartwarming, really. Almost to the point of sounding real, in fact.

In her arms, Ashley seemed to shrink into herself, shoulders hunching inward, and dingdingding! That was the cue. Sam shifted enough to block her, giving the guys a perfect view of her back instead.

“Fuck, are yo—” Turned around as she was, she couldn’t see Conrad’s face, but she had a halfway decent guess of what it might look like as he said, “…does your hoodie say ‘CREPES?’”

“Are you shitting me, man? Ash is probably fucking dying and you’re—”

“Chris ordered the wrong shit.”

“Whoa, whoa! Why bring me into this? I apologized! It’s not my fault they couldn’t get us replacements in time for the shoot.”

Ashley, to her credit, worked real fast. There were few things more dangerous than a talented multi-tasker, but a talented multi-tasker in a time crunch was downright terrifying. The little container appeared in her hand so quickly that Sam almost missed it—she’d gotten it untucked from her sleeve with practiced ease. “I, uh…I just…really, really, really feel…” The waver in Ash’s voice managed to be even more convincing than Josh’s worry, and shit, that was saying something! Sam watched her pop the contacts in, one, two, then blink hard a few times. The effect was immediate…and creepy as hell. She subtly hunched herself closer to Ash to ensure none of the others could see her yet. “I think…I…”

“You gonna puke?” Chris asked, also sounding impressively concerned.

“Shut up!” Sam snapped, shooting the three of them a curt look over her shoulder before turning back to Ash. “You gonna be okay?”

From behind her there was a rustle, and then, “Should we be like, calling someone?” Much like Josh, Conrad had never really learned to use his inside-voice; it had probably been meant as a quiet aside, but quiet asides didn’t typically echo like that.

“Will you guys just back off?” Sam said just as Josh groaned, “She’s fine, Jesus Christ!”

Ashley went perfectly, wholly, eerily silent, dropping Sam a wink that came across way spookier than it should’ve. “I…I, um…I think we should go,” she said in that same small, wavering voice, “I feel like there’s…there’s something here…something bad…”

As though all of his earlier worry had drained out of him, Chris rolled his head back and made an exasperated sound. “Are you—come on. Don’t tell me you think this is a ghost thing? There’s probably black mold or some shit down here making you sick! We’re all probably chock full of spores right now, it’s not—”

“No, I…I think…”

That’s when her nerves threatened to bubble up and ruin the whole thing. This was the first time she was really in on one of their jokes, and while it felt amazing to finally belong to the team, to be a full-fledged member of their spectral endeavor…boy, she hoped she’d be able to pull the next part off believably. Like she’d told them over and over again, she’d never been much of a drama kid.

“I just really feel like…ugh…” How Ash was holding it together, Sam could only guess; she watched her press at the blood pump secured on her wrist, dribbling a few strategic spurts of blood where they needed to go. “Something’s wrong,” her voice took on an even weaker, more choked quality. “Really wro—” Her voice gave way to deep, wracking coughs. And something worse, something that startled even Sam. There was a soft, but very noticeable wet sound accompanying the coughing fit, as though something was spattering onto the concrete beneath them.

“Aw fuck!” “Shit, dude!” “Fucking hell…Cochise, give us some light, huh? Fuck’s sake, man.”

Chris flipped the camera’s light on, the brightness of it absolutely agonizing as it shone right into Sam’s face. “Hey!” she started, just as she’d practiced, opening her mouth to deliver the next line…before noticing all the blood pooling below them on the floor. Yelping, she scuttled backwards, crab crawling away from Ashley and the puddle of blood, not stopping until her back was flush against a wall.

She couldn’t see everything from her angle on the floor, but she could see enough: Josh made to move towards Ash once they all reacted to the blood, Chris panning the light up from the floor to Ash herself, and that was when she sprang up, straightening herself out with jerky, unnatural movements. She watched the guys take in the sight of her, tiny little Ash, blood dripping from her mouth like some scrawny vampire, twin tear tracks of blood running down her cheeks, eyes blank, pupil-less expanses of white.

Josh was supposed to say something (do something? She couldn’t remember), but Chris moved the camera up a bit too quickly, and with their legs cast back into the dark, they were forced to speed the act up; Ashley balled her hands up in the front of Josh’s hoodie, he rocked upwards onto the tips of his toes, and then she pushed with all her strength and Josh flung himself backwards with a shout, disappearing out of Chris’s light.

Was it cheesy? Ridiculous? Unnecessary? Yeah, probably.

Did it look real good down there in the dark, lit only the shaky light of Chris’s camera?

It really fucking did.

If Sam had to guess, Conrad had probably almost made it back to the open area where they’d done the spirit box trick when they all started laughing. Probably. He moved quicker than she’d given him credit for! She was actually sort of impressed!

Ash reached down and helped her up from the floor, wiping away her bloody tears on her sleeves once Sam had gotten to her feet. The whiteout lenses in her eyes were still creepy as all hell, but her giggling made it difficult to find her too scary.

“Please, please tell me you got that.” Josh appeared back in the circle of the camera’s light, also laughing his ass off, two dark smears of fake blood shining dully on the front of his hoodie. “I’m gonna need that shit for my own personal collection.”

Surprisingly, Conrad didn’t find it quite as funny as the rest of them had. That much was made abundantly clear.

The rest of the evening passed uneventfully, which was fine by her: There’d been more than enough action for one investigation, she thought. They finished up searching the basement, spent an hour or so poking around the upstairs (finding nothing but dust and an upsettingly sticky old pinup calendar wedged underneath a squeaky floorboard), ordered some takeout, and settled in for the night.

“Can’t wait to see that footage,” Josh kept saying, mostly to himself, though always juuust loud enough for Conrad to hear. “Cannot fucking wait.”

Eventually the adrenaline and laughter sent them crashing into exhaustion. One by one they all grew quieter, calmer, unrolling their sleeping bags and retreating into their own heads as they got ready to sleep.

It was a welcome change from the chaotic energy of the night, to be sure, but the silence of the house was inescapable. Sam flipped through the book she’d brought, casting the occasional, tired glance towards the greasy takeout boxes littering the kitchen floor like a sodium-laden version of Stonehenge. She’d tucked herself just out of eyeshot of the others once it seemed like the ‘sleep’ portion of the sleepover had started, knowing her brain wouldn’t let her rest just yet.

She was thinking about the spirit box again. Had she actually heard it say her name? Probably not, right? It had to have been a trick of her mind…like how sometimes people saw the virgin Mary in their toast. It had been a noise that her brain had translated into something more familiar, something—

Oh, she needed to stop hanging out with Josh. Needed to. That was psych major bullshit right there, and if there was one thing she didn’t need in her life, it was to start thinking like a psych major.

Talk about scary.

But still, she didn’t think that was the problem. The box saying her name (or her imagining it said her name) was creepy, no doubt, but for some reason, when she sat back and really concentrated on it…it was Ash’s voice that kept coming back to her. Had it been something she’d said during her turn with the headphones? And if it was, then…what had she said?

“Psst! Hey.”

It wasn’t until she heard him that she realized she’d been beginning to doze after all. Sam blinked hard a few times, trying to shake herself back to reality, but that turned out to be easier said than done. “Hmm?” she groggily mumbled, rubbing at her eyes. A faint, horrendously familiar tingle warned that at least one of her legs had beaten her to the punch and had quite literally fallen asleep.

Great.

In the dim light of the room, it was just possible to make out Josh’s grin. He lifted a finger to his lips in an oddly endearing ‘Shh’ gesture, glancing quickly off to the side before leaning in a little closer. “Do you want to see my favorite part of overnights?”

Uh oh. She wasn’t sure what, but something in his expression suggested trouble was a’brewing. Sam narrowed her eyes in obvious suspicion. “Do I?” she asked, voice hushed.

He seemed to chew it over for a second; Sam thought she could actually see him mentally weighing the pros and cons. “I think you do. C’mon, it’ll be a, uh, ‘learning experience.’”

“Well that’s not menacing at all.” Still, she stood when he did, wobbling a bit until the pins and needles died down. The two of them had made it halfway across the room before it occurred to her…“Hey, so…why are we whispering?”

Josh didn’t answer. Typical. Instead, he motioned for her to keep following, pressing his finger to his lips again.

She held both of her hands up in a way that she hoped read ‘Sure. Fine. Whatever.’ But…when had it gotten so quiet in there?

Well, ask and ye shall receive—almost as soon as the thought struck her, Josh provided the answer. Like a half-rate game show host, he threw his arms out wide, striking a jaunty pose as he nodded down towards the nest of sleeping bags on the floor.

For a second, she had no idea what he was trying to get her to see…there was nothing particularly entertaining about Conrad snoozing away, one arm tucked under his pillow, nothing interesting about the camera feeds recording the hallways and basement, nothing…and then she did see it. There, in the (somewhat eerie) glow of the computer screens, it seemed Chris and Ashley had conked the fuck out, both snoring softly. It was hard to tell, given the thickness of the sleeping bags and the bright glare from the screens hurting her eyes, but Sam was pretty sure they had snuggled up close enough to be considered spooning.

“That happen a lot?” she whispered.

“Every. Single. Time.” Josh let his arms drop silently to his sides. “The best is when they wake up and they’re all ‘Oh nooo! Whoops! How did that happen?’ Doesn’t get old at all.”

Laughing would’ve given them away, so she just let a breath out of her nose as she shook her head. “So, uh, this is your favorite part?” Was it possible to make a whisper sound judgmental? God, she hoped so. Shooting him an unimpressed look, she set her hands on her hips. “Watching them sleep? Like some kind of pervert?”

Even in the shit lighting, she could see the whites of his eyes well enough to know he was rolling them. He didn’t risk speaking to her from across the distance; he leaned in until his chin was very nearly on her shoulder, only then murmuring, “You have no imagination. Here…” Sam started slightly when she felt his hand on the small of her back. He nudged her gently a few steps forward…then a few steps to the left…then another step forward, all the while, his face contorted in thought. When he finally seemed content, he leaned in again. “Ready for my favorite part?”

Sam raised her eyebrows and said nothing.

He was so close that she felt his grin more than she could see it. “Next part’s real important,” he said, hand still on her back, breath warm against her ear. “You’re gonna stand right here, and you’re gonna scream as loud as you fucking can.”

There was no way she’d heard that correctly. She stared at him, opening her mouth in some uncertain mishmash of a grimace and a grin. “You can’t be serious.” Her voice was so quiet that it was a struggle to hear herself in her own head.

Beaming that same mischievous smile, Josh simply shrugged.

Now she was feeling conflicted. On the one hand, boy it would be a dick move. But on the other hand…

She held Josh’s gaze for another long moment, the house preternaturally silent around them, except for the gentle sounds of Chris and Ash’s breathing. Sam took a deep breath in through her nose, let it out, drew one in again.

There was no use in pretending she hadn’t already made up her mind. Her hand rose up between them, one finger raised. Then a second. Then a third.

Sam screamed.

[crimsxnflxwerz]

Don’t Want it Troubling Your Mind [bfu fic] -chapter 4

Don’t Want it Troubling Your Mind Fandom: buzzfeed unsolved Pairing: Shane Madej/Ryan Bergara; Shane Madej & Ryan Bergara Summary: Shane Madej really liked Ryan Bergara. He was funny, a joy to mess with, and took his brand of teasing pretty well. He would consider him a friend, kind of. But when the team goes to investigate the Franklin Castle for ghosts, Shane gets more than he bargained for, and the results could cost him his friendship with Ryan. Rating: teen Warnings: Demonic Possession, Existential Crisis, Complicated Relationships Authors note: This is a repost from Archive for people who don’t like Archive/prefer tumblr/etc. sup guys.

A week goes by. A whole week. And not just any week, the kind of week where you can feel every second of every day, grinding your teeth, unable to feel anything except your blood pumping through your body and gravity pressing down on your bones. The kind of week that lasts more than seven simple days.

No, it wasn’t the work that was getting deep under Shane’s skin, it wasn’t the stress, or the sleep, or the lack of appetite. It wasn’t his used up sick days, or the laundry sitting in a pile at the end of his bed. It wasn’t the rising electricity bills, or the polluted city air, or the hole forming in his favorite pair of socks.

It was Ryan Bergara.

You see, this whole week, Shane and Ryan didn’t really talk. No, what they did was an elaborate dance. They would discuss, not talk. They would plan, not hang. They wouldn’t make eye contact. They wouldn’t smile or laugh. They barely acknowledged each other’s presence unless it was unavoidable.

To be clear, this was not Shane’s choice. If he was in charge of whatever this was, it would be cancelled immediately. Shane missed Ryan’s quirky smile, and his cheerful laugh, and his playful banter. It wasn’t that he didn’t have other friends, it wasn’t anything like that. It was just, Ryan was special. All his friends were special, everyone was special to him. Everyone was different in their own ways, bringing new ideas to the table, sharing weird thoughts, laughing together. He missed that with Ryan. He missed Ryan.

He may have heard that the clip of the demon was under scrutiny right now in the office. The camera guys remembered seeing some weird stuff happening on the cameras, but they couldn’t conclude if it was fake or not. A deeply rooted part of him knew, for a fact, that the film hadn’t been tampered with. Beyond trusting Ryan, he’d seen this creature that manipulated the footage, the bustling swarm of bees, the storm cloud of evil, or something.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear. As Shane grew more distant from his own life, Anael started appearing in small patches throughout the day. Shane could see it in other people’s face, hear its voice in the wind, feel the heat under his skin, like something alive lived there. He felt haunted. He never thought he’d feel this way. He always viewed a haunting like those typical horror movie theatrics. Complete with dish tossing and flickering lights. This was none of that. Anael crept into his mind and laid all the traps. Every sense, manipulated, made vulnerable. The ghost he’d seen in his apartment building before, that must have been Anael. He had done extensive research about the building, and it was relatively new construction, on land that wasn’t cursed in any way. There were no records of deaths, unusual occurrences, or hauntings to be found. With what Anael could do to his vision, hearing, and perception, he figured that must be it.

He wasn’t at the point yet of looking into ways to get rid of demons. There was still a part of him that wanted so desperately for this all to be a bad burrito, or lack of sleep, or too much caffeine. He thought of seeing a therapist, because for a hot second, he believed his google diagnosis of psychosis.

Ever since Franklin Castle, he’d felt beyond fucked up. He wasn’t really sure how to go about patching things up, especially while the reason they were broken was still active in his life. Anael wasn’t doing much but just spooking him now. In fact, he felt as if the fun that Anael was having was becoming repetitive. He knew that the demon hated repetitive things, he’s sure it would spice it up a little soon enough. He feared the worse for when that happened.

The Franklin Castle episode ended up being delayed, due to the questionable footage. People were still looking at it, wondering what was wrong there. No one found anything to suggest tampering, but they still didn’t believe it was real. Instead, the boys were charged with looking for a new place to shoot.

Shane honestly thought this would be a good thing. It would take their minds off of what happened, distract himself from whatever was happening to him, and let them move along in the series. After a little bit of searching, they decided to go to the Villisca axe murder house in Iowa. It was a strange little house in a strange little town. Along with being strange, it was also old. Many people had owned it since the murder, and many people have toured it as well. Shane did a little digging and found that there were many reports of whispers, experiencing strange urges, and other classic haunting things, like noises and unexplained temperature drops.

Shane was pretty sure that he could manage on shoot without doing anything too stupid.

Probably.

The shoot was in three days. They planned on driving, so maybe he could convince the group that they could take two cars (something about the luggage being too big) so that he could spend some quality time with Ryan. He was sure he could fix this, if only Ryan would let him. Not that he blamed Ryan for any of this, it wasn’t his fault- it couldn’t be. Shane was the one who called Ryan’s show a joke. He was the one who couldn’t accept facts or admit that he was wrong. Ryan probably felt more offended by Shane’s apparently disbelieve and lack of faith in him than by any offhanded comment about the show. Friends were supposed to trust each other, through thick and thin, through better or worse.

Shane mapped out the course they would take. Around sixteen hours, give or take, that they would be driving. It was already a full day of driving, and with time for stops, as well as driver switches, they would have to plan on travel being around 18 hours. They wouldn’t be able to shoot, even if they got on the road at the crack of dawn. He would have to stock up on five-hour energy, or a monster cup of coffee, or something. He just hoped that Ryan would be into the idea, the separate cars thing, that is.

When Shane arrived at the office, it was already bustling. It was 7am, and lots of people had come early to get work done earlier. It was rapidly approaching Halloween, and that meant parties. The earlier they could get out of work, the better, in that case. Arriving before 7am was just the compromise.

Shane wasn’t so big on parties, so he didn’t really care if he got home later. He was just going to go home and swap his work clothes for pajamas, pop some popcorn, and settle in for a scary movie anyways. He smiled at the thought, but did deflate a little when he remembered that Ryan probably wouldn’t be joining him.

As he walked to his desk, he wondered if he should just come right out and say it. Tell Ryan what was happening, that a demon was haunting him, making him say and do things. He wanted to tell Ryan, but there was a fear deep in his chest, one of insecurity. What if Ryan thought he was pulling his leg? What if he thought that Shane just wanted that get out of jail free card, and just made it all up? Shane was a lot of things, even an asshole sometimes, but pretending to be possessed was not something he would ever do to prank Ryan. Call out to spirits? Yeah. Challenge demons and lay on pentagrams on the ground? Yeah, he would do that. All that stuff was humorous. Ryan always laughed at his antics. Being possessed, or pretending to be? No. That was somehow crossing a line. Shane wasn’t really a man to cross lines often.

Ryan was at his desk next to Shane’s when he got there.

“Morning, Ryan.” Shane said. He smiled. Ryan glanced up at him quickly in acknowledgement, before looking right back down at his screen.

“Morning,” he said. “So, got everything planned out for the trip?”

“Yeah, about that,” Shane began, pausing just enough to get Ryan to look at him again. “I was wondering if we could take two cars. Me and you in one, the crew in a second.”

“Um, why would we do that?” Ryan asked. He looked back towards his computer. Shane sighed.

“I thought that it would give everyone more room.” Shane shrugged. “It is going to be a long car right after all.”

Ryan was quiet for a moment, staring intently at his screen. He seemed to be considering what Shane was saying. Shane sheepishly crossed his fingers.

“Okay, sure,” he agreed. Shane silently cheered. “We can do that.”

“You wanna take my car or yours?” Shane asked. Ryan looked back at the taller man and quirked a small smile.

“Mine, of course.” He said. Then, almost like he’d caught himself having fun, his face fell, and he looked back at his monitor. “Just, make sure you’re ready, we’ll be leaving really early.”

Shane sat down at his desk, mentally preparing all the things he needed to accomplish on this car ride. He was going to patch things up with Ryan. They were gonna be close again, and Shane wanted nothing more than that. Well, he also wanted this damn demon to leave him alone, but in his book, Ryan came first, always.

That night he called Sara to hang out at his place. She was glad to chill, since she wasn’t too big on parties either. She came over and they changed into the spookiest pajamas they had, popped some fresh popcorn on the stove, and settled down to watch some bad horror movies on Netflix. They put on Friday the Thirteenth, but Stranger Things was in their queue for series to watch together, so they figured that would be next.

“So,” Sara said, plopping down on the couch with their bowl of popcorn. She crossed her legs under it, tucking her feet in. Shane sat next to her. It was oddly reminiscent of cuddling with Ryan on his couch during the documentaries night. To think that wasn’t so long ago, but it felt like it’d been years at this point. “How’s the Ryan situation?”

“Ahh, do you really gotta bring that up?” Shane sighed, but there was also teasing in his voice. He knew she was just concerned, and it wasn’t like he’d done anything too horrible, so it shouldn’t be hard to talk about it. For whatever reason, he just kept making it harder, which he’d quickly realized was a horrible thing to be doing.

“Hey! I’m concerned about you!” She said, smiling. “I believe in you, Madej. You and Ryan will patch things right up, then you’ll go back to being dorks or whatever.”

“Hey, I’m not a dork.” Shane said, though it had no heat. He knew she was right.

“Yeah, because lots of cool grown men get excited about kid’s cartoon series.” She teased.

“Gravity Falls is a masterpiece,” Shane argued. “Dipper is the most relatable character to ever exist.”

Sara shrugged. “Wendy was my favorite.”

After that, Friday the Thirteenth started playing, and they began their little movie watching spree. After the third episode of Stranger Things, Sara forced herself to stop watching. She didn’t really plan on sleeping over, so she got all her things and left, wishing him a goodnight. When she was gone, Shane glanced at the time. 12:20am. He managed to carry himself to his bed somehow, and as soon as his head hit the pillow, he was out.

In his dream, he’s in a dark room, but he recognizes it. It’s a blue bedroom, moonlight peeks in from the cracks in the curtains. He’s not alone. Beside him sits a figure. He can tell that it’s Ryan. He wonders if this is some continuation of that last dream he had, but the thought leaves his head like it was blown away. He can’t see Ryan’s face, but he knows the expression there already. He’s frowning, but not an upset frown, a contemplative one. He raises a hand in the dark, touches his lips, and sighs. Shane can feel the tension in the air thinning out, as Ryan moves back in, closing the distance between them. He feels the side of Ryan’s head press into his chest, an arm wrapped around his waist. His other hand bracing himself against the bed, Shane can feel the dip. He’s not sure where to put his own hands, but one finds its way to Ryan’s hair and tangles itself there.

“It’s okay, I know this isn’t you,” Ryan says, and it sounds weird, like they’re underwater. “I forgive you, I forgive you, I forgive you.”

Shane opens his mouth to speak, but the words catch in his throat. Suddenly he feels an anger well up inside him. He tries to push it back, push it away, because it’s not his own, but he fails. The anger rises up and takes control of his body. He fists his hand in Ryan’s hair and yanks him off of him. Shane watches from outside of himself, as his body pins Ryan to the bed and growls like an animal. He moves forward to try and push his body off of Ryan, but then he turns his head and looks at himself. His eyes are yellow. So, so yellow, and so hot. Angry. Just this look sends Shane backwards, out of the room, and he hears the door slam and lock. Tears stream down his face.

“No!” he screams, but no one can hear him. “Fuck! No, no, no! I don’t want this! I fucking hate this!”

Shane jolted awake. He felt something on his face, and when he reached up, he wiped away tears. He sat up and saw that his pillow was wet, as well. Had he been crying?

The dream he had was foggy, but he remembered the hot anger, the desperate begging, the slamming door. He shivered. Just when he thought Anael was leaving him alone, he comes straight back with a dream to torture him.

He checked his clock. 5:57am. He might as well get ready for work. The shoot was in two days, and they would be leaving tomorrow. He still hadn’t packed yet, but he figured he could just do that after work today.

He walked into his bathroom and turned the light on, revealing a figure standing behind him to his left. He jumped, biting back a scream. The figure was a man with piercing yellow cat eyes, skin black as soot, with horns spiraling up out of its choppy black hair. It looked more like a shadow than a man, the edges of it blurring and misting. Shane spun around to face it, but it wasn’t there. He turned back around to look in the mirror and it was still there.

“What is it Madej?” the figure said, but there was no mouth, just a voice clear as day echoing in his head. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“No, no, no,” Shane said through clenched teeth. “Stop fucking with me.”

“Maybe I would, if you would just let me in—”  the figure raised an arm to touch Shane’s shoulder. Before it could touch him, he jumped away from the mirror, staring back into the bathroom. Mist seemed to pour from all the little shadows in his bathroom to form a man. Shane moved backwards again, but tripped over his own feet and fell. He landed on his ass, looking up at the shadow demon.

“I saw what you want to do to Ryan,” Shane growled. Scared, but angry. The combination knocked the breath from his chest, made his head spin. “If you so much as breath in Ryan’s direction, I’ll kill you.”

The yellow eyes narrowed with mirth, and a horrible, echoing laugh sounded through his head.

“You? Kill me?” it laughed. “Not even in your dreams, Madej.”

The demon’s laughter got deeper and deeper as it’s body twisted and snapped, shrinking in on itself and reforming into something else. Shane scrambled to his feet, and when he looked back, a black dog had taken the demon’s place. It also had poison-yellow eyes, but this monster had large, white teeth and red, red gums. Shane bolted for his door, the dog growling and taking off after him, its jaws snapping mere inches from his ankles. He swung his door open and slammed it shut, sighing in relief when he felt a large thud hit the wood followed by a pained whimper.

At the sound of a cleared throat, Shane looked to the side. His neighbor was standing outside their apartment, giving him a concerned look. Shane slid down the door and sat on the floor. He smiled as normally as possible and waved.

“Such a great morning, isn’t it?” he laughed.

When Shane went back into the apartment after a quick walk outside to clear his head, it was exactly as he had left it. Nothing was out of place; besides the things he’d knocked over in his mad dash outside. He hoped that Anael didn’t decide to make yet another demon dog appearance. That one was by far the most terrifying.

It wasn’t as if Shane didn’t like dogs. He never had a dog in his life, or a cat, or anything larger than your average rodent. Dogs tended to make him nervous, generally, although he rationally knew that most of them were harmless. Stray dogs, however? They were unpredictable. They say not to pet stray dogs for a good reason.

Everything seemed to be okay, though, so he proceeded with getting ready. Though, he thought he would be early when he woke up this morning. He guessed he would have been if it weren’t for the demon haunting him. At this point, he could still solidly say that the demon scared him. Yeah, he wasn’t scared by much, but a demon who can transform into a rabid dog, speak through his mind, and wanted to ruin his life was pretty terrifying. Although, that fear was starting to move aside a little for a second feeling: anger. He was angry. Anael was getting in the way of his life, his friendships, his alone time. He was angry, because Ryan wasn’t talking to him, and he wasn’t doing anything about it.

This road trip would fix it. He would tie up all the loose ends. He would fix all the damage. He would trust Ryan and Ryan would trust him. He wouldn’t let the demon take Ryan, but he sure as hell was getting Ryan back.

He guessed that started with telling Ryan the truth.

When he walked into work, he immediately noticed that Ryan wasn’t at his desk. He saw that there were papers all over, his laptop open and dimmed in inactivity. There were two empty cups of coffee, a handful of printed photographs, a notebook, and three pens: one black, one red, and one blue. Shane looked around the room, but couldn’t see Ryan anywhere in the space. He pulled out his phone and opened his messaging app. He clicked on Ryan’s name.

His fingers hovered over the digital keyboard. Should he really shoot Ryan a text?

Fuck it.

Shane: Hey, you’re not at your desk, everything okay?

He sat down and booted up his computer. A few moments went by, where he mindlessly shuffled some documents around, before his phone chirped at him.

Ryan: yeah something’s come up Ryan: meet me in conference room b Ryan: we gotta talk

Shane immediately felt a little nauseous. He stood up so quickly that he didn’t see someone standing behind him, and knocked into them. Papers spilled out all over the ground.

“Oh god,” he said, bending down to help pick up the mess he made. “I’m so sorry, I wasn’t looking—”

“Shane, it’s okay.” A familiar voice said. When he looked over at the person collecting papers with him, he saw that it was Keith. He grinned at Shane, collecting the last of the papers, before standing up. Shane handed him the ones he picked up. “In a rush?”

Shane scratched the back of his neck. “Uh, kinda, idk?” he wasn’t sure why he had the urge to run, but he did. “Sorry I bumped into you. You know how I get.”

Keith laughed. “Yeah, I know. I won’t keep you, here, thanks for helping me pick up.”

Shane blushed as he moved around Keith and made his way down the hall. He passed a few private offices and empty rooms, before he came to the conference rooms at the end of the hall. To the left were more rooms. He went up to the second one, took a breath in, and opened the door.

The conference room was spacious. In the middle of the floor was a table that easily sad ten people. All the chairs had wheels, and where all pushed out from the table in different directions like a group of people had just left. In one of the chairs sat Ryan. He seemed to be studying some papers. Shane cleared his throat, closing the door with a soft click.

Ryan turned around with a pensive look on his face. When he saw Shane, he seemed to almost smile, before his face fell.

“So, I’m just going to get right to the point,” he started, moving to stand. He didn’t look very happy. “We can’t publish the Franklin Castle episode.”

Shane felt like a rug was yanked out from under his feet. “What, now?”

“We can’t use the footage,” he repeated. “Remember the thing I showed you? I found more corruption and mysterious audio in the rest of the footage in the basement. When management saw the footage, they were convinced I had altered the footage, and demanded the original. I couldn’t give them anything, because I hadn’t done anything to the footage.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing. “They said that if I didn’t remove the altered footage, they would cancel my show. I didn’t know what to do, so I decided to just scrap the whole episode.”

Shane stepped closer to Ryan, holding out his hands as if to comfort his friend, but stopped halfway. “Ryan, I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t do anything to the audio or the video! That was real evidence!” Ryan shouted, and it sounded desperate. “I swear I didn’t do anything! I swear!”

“Hey, hey,” Shane said in a calming voice. He reached out and grabbed Ryan by the shoulders as gently as possible. Ryan looked up at him. “Hey, I believe you. I believe you.”

Ryan looked hopeful for a moment, before he shrugged off Shane’s hands, looking hurt. “You said the show was a joke. You’re probably just saying this now, because I was mad at you.”

“Ryan, please, listen to me,” Shane started, trying to appear as honest as possible. “I believe you. You want to know why?”

Ryan was silent for a while, still sporting the lidded, untrusting look. Then, he sighed, nodding. “Yeah.”

“When we were in that house, I felt some things.” He said. “The first time I went into the basement, I was snooping around when I felt cold hands grab my shoulders from behind me. I turned around and no one was there. That’s why I was running.”

Ryan’s eyes widened. “So, when you were freaking me out in the basement—”

“I was experiencing something again like that. It was so weird and freaky,” Shane said. “I didn’t want to freak you out just then, and then later I just didn’t want to admit it.”

Ryan grinned, moving forward into Shane’s space and placing a hand on his arm. “So, you believe me? And stuff happened to you there?”

“Yes, of course, I believe you,” Shane said. “I know you wouldn’t alter tapes to fake evidence. You’re not that kinda guy.”

The smaller man let go of his arm and turned back around to collect his things.

“Well, even if we don’t get to post the Franklin Castle video,” he said, “at least we’re gonna be filming again soon. At the Villisca ax murder house, right?”

“Yeah,” Shane confirmed. They walked together back to their desks. “The drive’ll be fun, and I have a good feeling about this place.”

“Me, too,” Ryan agree. For a moment, they just looked at each other. Stood in each other’s space. Ryan looked as excited as he felt. Maybe everything was going to be okay after all.