Chapter Text
Crawford Hollow wasn’t anything flashy – but honestly, it wasn’t much of anything at all. It was a mid-sized suburban desert town on the smaller end of “mid-sized”, pushed up against the mountains and nestled on the outside of a much bigger city. At some point in its history, it had been a crucial stopping point on the highway into Domino proper, on top of being the center for the ironic enough agricultural industry, but now all that remained were relics of both of its claims to fame. Main Street was littered with ghosts of its heyday - old motels shuttered and closed, billboards sun-bleached and rusting away, boarded-up buildings and a depressing amount of FOR SALE signs on everything from businesses to houses – but on the outside edges was a graveyard itself. The old remains of the thriving citrus industry were left behind to be eaten by the desert, the skeletons of orange trees overtaken by vine weeds and gutted machinery all that was left to show that Crawford Hollow had been something.
But despite all its flaws, Yugi Muto couldn’t help but find the charm in it.
Yugi carefully adjusts the lens of his camera, before he snaps a shot of the old Millennium Hotel sign, the ballasts that once held the neon bulbs practically worn away with time and wind. Around him, Main Street is surprisingly quiet for a late Tuesday morning, before the heat really set in and it became unbearable to be outside. Yugi was already sweating, pools of it forming at his temples and under his shirt, but he snaps a few more pictures before he pulls his camera away to check the frame counter, huffing quietly at the low number that greeted him. That was to be expected, but it’s annoying, nonetheless.
He turns away from the sign and heads down the street, throwing the camera strap around his head. The closer he gets to the open businesses, however few of them there were, the livelier the town starts to feel. In the milder months, the doors to everything would be open, letting in and enjoying the nice weather, but right now it was far too deep in the summer, and far too hot to even think about. Yugi tugs open the door to the general good store, all but sighing in relief at the cool air that hits him in the face. A cashier at the counter calls a greeting, and Yugi grabs a handbasket while he waves, then digs in his pocket for a short list he scrawled out before he left home. He begins his trek around the store, throwing packages of batteries, flashlights and extra film for his camera into the basket, before eventually heading up to the register.
The cashier rings his things up, humming to herself quietly along to the music playing over the speakers. “What are you and Wheeler up to now?” she asks, gently shaking one of the flashlights with a grin.
Yugi smiles. “Our normal kind of trouble,” he says, chuckling softly to himself as she stuffs everything in a bag. “Nothing new.”
“I really hope you guys are careful. Don’t need to give Sheriff Taylor extra work,” she jokes, then presses a button on her register. “That’ll be $28.51, by the way.”
Yugi uncurls a few bills from his pocket and hands them over, then gets his change back. “Don’t worry. We’re always careful.”
They say their goodbyes, and Yugi steps back outside, taking a moment on one of the benches to the left of the door to put his purchases in his backpack, carefully placing his camera on top. He slides it back onto his shoulders carefully, then continues his walk down the street, checking his watch as he does. He was a little early, but the thrum of excitement under his skin was hard to ignore, and even harder not to let himself get swept up in – he was always kind of like this the days before their outings, anyway, even without a totally different kind of excitement awaiting him at his destination.
Kame Game was a colorful, but humble, arcade situated right on the corner of Main and Desert Ridge. While the building itself had been in Yugi’s family for a few generations, the business venture had been a newer idea of his grandfather’s, enraptured by the new game cabinets and bright neon lights. It was the only one in Crawford Hollow, which meant that despite the fairly high upfront costs, they were doing pretty well for themselves, and the game floor was always packed on the weekends and in the summer.
Yugi loved it, too – when he had graduated a couple of years earlier, he had very few ambitions that weren’t tied to Kame Game. It had been something his grandfather and father both put a lot of love and money into, and he wore the opportunity to help out with absolute pride. And he wouldn’t pretend like he didn’t like walking the floor at night to sneak in a few games when no one else was around.
Well. Not always no one.
Yugi steps in, and already the arcade is buzzing with sound. From every direction, there was the telltale chiming of games, accented with music playing over the store’s radio that had been turned to whatever station sounded best this morning. Neon lights, running the entire course of the junction where wall met ceiling, flashed and shone brightly, and huddled around various popular games were several groups of teens, their mouths moving wordlessly in the cacophony of sound, quarters in their hands. Yugi smiles and walks a little slower next to one of the Space Invaders cabinets, grinning when he sees his top score still standing, and then steps up to the counter.
Someone was already behind it, facing away while he put together a stack of paperwork, and Yugi stops, taking a long moment to compose himself, before he steps around it. “Hey, good morning.”
The person looks over, his eyes wide in brief surprise, before he sees Yugi and he smiles. “Good morning, Yugi,” he says, and sets the papers down. Yugi steps closer, brushing past him to get to the shelves in the corner, setting his backpack down carefully. “You’re early.”
“The errands I said I’d run for tonight didn’t take as long as I thought they would,” he tells him, then glances around the arcade floor, trying not to let his eyes linger too long on the young man in front of him. “Um…. How’s it been this morning, Atem?”
Atem Sennen, his messy hair tied back in a neat ponytail, dressed in a pair of jean shorts and a red tank top, leans back against the counter and watches Yugi shuffle things around, then shrugs. “Eh. Pretty average, considering its summer,” he says. “How did shopping go?”
Yugi snorts quietly and gives him a curious look, but Atem just shrugs again with a smile. “I mean, it was fine,” he tells him. “It was shopping, you know. Batteries, film, flashlights…”
“I really love when you start listing things,” Atem jokes, an inflection of suggestion to his voice that makes Yugi’s ears feel like fire. “But you got everything?”
Other than Joey, Atem was definitely his best friend – their friendship was far newer, since Atem had only moved into town three years prior, but he had been a fast friend to all of them as their high school years trickled out and they all entered adulthood together. To Yugi, specifically, their friendship had blossomed the quickest, with their similar interests in games and puzzles, their identical senses of humor, a level of familiarity between them that Yugi didn’t quite feel with anyone else.
A level of intimacy that he didn’t get with any of his other friends.
“Y-Yeah,” Yugi trips over his own words, then clears his throat gently and grabs a bottle of water from the drink cooler, taking a long drink instead of speaking for a moment. “Got everything that Joey told me to get. We’ll see if he remembered his half.”
Atem laughs, and Yugi glances over at him. He had crossed his arms lazily over his chest, watching Yugi with a small smile. “You know he won’t.”
Yugi sighs. “Yeah, it’s probably good I grabbed his half, too, then.”
“Probably.”
The two of them go quiet for a moment, content to let the sounds of the arcade around them fill in the blanks. Yugi sets his bottle of water down and fiddles with his name tag, hearing the change machine in the corner rattle out quarters. He’s content with just getting ready for his shift in mutual silence, before Atem clears his throat, loud enough to be heard. Yugi looks over, and Atem’s face is unmistakably red tinted while he avoids his gaze. “Um. So this weekend,” he suggests.
Yugi feels his heart jump into his throat, but he does his best to play it cool. “Yeah?”
“Ryou’s letting me borrow his copy of The Exorcist,” he starts. “I-I know it’s kind of an old one, but he said it’s pretty scary, and I know you like horror… You could come over and we could watch it?”
“Yeah,” Yugi says, then feels his face go warm. “I mean, y-yeah, yeah, I do, that’d be fun, we could do that.”
Atem’s still looking off to the side. “My… um. My parents, also, are going out of town this weekend…” he says, cautiously, and then finally meets Yugi’s eyes. Yugi steps a little closer. “You could… come over for the movie and stay the night… If you wanted to, of course.”
It’s such an innocent question on the outside, but Yugi feels like this is a far too public space to be having a conversation so private. He takes another step closer to Atem, unable to look away from him. “I’d definitely be okay with that, too,” he tells him.
They stand there for a moment, before a loud buzz from the change machine breaks whatever tension was building between them. Atem spins on his heel and looks over, and Yugi steps around. “Is it out of quarters?” Atem asks the group of kids waiting by it and Yugi anxiously smooths his hands down the front of his shirt.
“I think so!” one of them calls back.
“I’ve got it,” Yugi says, stepping over to the safe by the register. “You’ve got your shift at the library, anyway.”
“You sure?” Atem asks. “I don’t mind.”
Yugi snorts and smiles up at him. “It’s just some quarters, Atem,” he says, pulling out a large bag and a set of keys to open the machine up. “I’ll see you later, anyway.”
Atem looks like he wants to say something, but he closes his mouth and hums. “Alright,” he says, sounding a little awkward. “Uh. Yeah. We’re still meeting at the diner?”
“No one’s going to pass up a hamburger,” Yugi tells him.
Atem chuckles and gathers his things. “I’ll see you later, Yugi,” he tells him, subtly letting his hand linger on Yugi’s back for a moment before he steps around the front counter and heads outside with a wave.
Yugi stands there for a moment, heart racing, then gathers his things up and quickly heads over to the machine to fill it back up, the clock in his head already beginning to tick down.
10:46am
☆☆☆☆☆
4:39pm
Yugi taps his pen on the counter in the same rhythm as his foot on the floor, chewing anxiously and impatiently on the inside of his lip. The small digital clock sitting next to him was taunting him, every minute passing slower than the last – and that didn’t even cover the last few hours, and how agonizing they had been. He had already been excited for tonight, but like usual just knowing he’d get to see Atem (even if it was in the presence of other people) got a fire to light in him, making waiting almost impossible.
4:45pm
He tries to distract himself with a few extra tasks. He takes to sweeping up the black-light lit carpet and tile, and wiping down a few of the unoccupied arcade cabinets, before then cleaning up the front counter. He organizes some paperwork that Atem didn’t get to that morning in the back office, makes an early count of the bills from the change machine and fills it up with quarters again, and then finally leans against the counter again to check his watch with a loud groan.
4:52pm
Yugi just needed the clock to roll over to 5pm, when his shift would end and Duke would come to relieve him to close up the arcade for the night. Normally he loves being here, but right now he was ready to crawl out of his skin with anticipation and impatience. The clocks were personally victimizing him, he was sure of it.
“Earth to Yugi.”
At some point, he must have zoned out staring at the bright red block letters of the clock on the counter. He startles at the voice and checks the time – 4:58pm – before he looks over. Duke Devlin stands before him, a red backpack slung over his shoulders, nametag neatly placed on his black and white striped shirt. Duke puts his hands on his hips and smirks - even in the darkness of the arcade, Yugi could see the sweat pooled on his temples. “Hey space cadet, welcome back to planet Earth. That eager to get out of here?”
Despite the sass, Yugi is beyond relieved to see him, nonetheless. He pushes himself away from the counter right as his watch beeps. “You don’t know the half of it,” he says as he grabs his things from the shelf in the corner.
“Hot date?” Duke asks sarcastically.
“No,” he says simply, feeling his ears burn when he remembers his weekend. He double checks the contents of his backpack, then carefully puts it on, adjusting the straps to rest comfortably on his shoulders. “Just have some plans with Atem-“
“So a hot date,” Duke interrupts.
“Shove it, Devlin,” Yugi snaps. “Joey and Tristan are coming with.” He hesitates for a moment, and with a nervous swoop to his stomach, concludes, “But uh. Atem and I do have plans this weekend, on our own.”
Duke grins, leaning on his elbows and watching Yugi. “Oh, do tell.”
“I’m going to his place to watch a movie,” he tells him, because anything that comes after is just implications, and Yugi wasn’t going to assume.
“Mhm…”
Yugi rolls his eyes. “That’s all, Duke.”
Duke waves his hand dismissively. “Right, right. Absolutely nothing else is going on between the two of you, I’m sure.”
Yugi awkwardly shifts his backpack again and tries not to get wrapped up in thinking about all the almosts and maybes that had been happening more lately when it came to him and Atem. He huffs softly. “He’s my best friend, Duke. Maybe you need to get your head out of the clouds, not me.”
The other young man holds his hands up in mock surrender and looks at the clock. “Alright, I give,” he says, then motions toward the door. “You better get going. I’ll be here, though, doing my homework, keeping all these crazy kids in check while you go out and have an awesome bitchin’ time with the boys. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Yugi snorts and goes to leave finally, that impatient buzz returning to his fingertips. “Bye Duke,” he says, then turns on his heel and walks backward toward the door, pointing toward one of the aisles of arcade games. “By the way, the Galaga cabinet on aisle four has a new top score. Someone beat you.”
Duke’s face goes from uninterested to annoyed shock. “What!” he yells, and Yugi laughs as he pushes his way out of the door before the tirade begins.
When he steps out of the arcade, the bright sunlight is almost blinding. The breeze kicks up, and the stifling desert air surrounds him, still hot with a hint of humidity, summer rain in the forecast for later on. It was far warmer than it had been earlier in the day, the streets hazy with shimmering heat waves, and the late afternoon sun sits low on the horizon, ready to paint the sky red and orange. Yugi pulls his shirt away from his chest to get some airflow between his skin and the fabric, blinking to adjust his eyes as he turns and heads toward Raphael’s Diner.
Sweat builds at the back of his neck, and he messily ties his hair back, doing his best to avoid the more uneven parts of the sidewalk so he didn’t trip. Low in the sky, large clouds thick and grey surround the mountains, and Yugi could tell wherever they were sitting over right now was getting a lot of rain – for the first time all summer, Yugi doesn’t wish for rain, though. He pulls open the door to the diner and steps inside, greeted by the familiar smell of food and the sound of big band records kept on the jukebox.
“Yugi! Over here!”
A call of his name gets his attention, and he looks over. Stuffed away in the back booth is Joey and Tristan, eager smiles as they wave. “Hey,” Yugi says happily, walking over and taking his place on the empty side, leaving a spot next to him. “Hot out today, huh?”
“Supposed to cool off after sundown,” Joey says easily, his messy blonde hair stuffed under a baseball cap for a local team, a plate of fries already in front of him. Yugi takes a few, dipping them in ketchup on the way. “Forecast called for rain, too.”
Yugi nods. “Yeah, I saw the clouds over the mountains,” he says, humming quietly. “I kinda hope it doesn’t rain, though. Might make things a little more difficult.”
Tristan laughs. “The rain will just add extra fun.”
Joey does air quotes and then eats a few more fries. “Anyway. How was your day, Yug?”
“Felt like it would never end,” Yugi says honestly.
“Amen,” Tristan mutters.
“Thankfully, Duke could tell I was eager to split, so he didn’t keep me too long talking…” Yugi hums quietly. “Oh, someone did beat his high score on Galaga, though.”
“About damn time. He’s held that record since sophomore year,” Joey says, bitterly.
“You’re just pissed he beat you,” Tristan points out.
“Damn right I am! I spent nearly every day in middle school setting that high score!” Joey motions wildly with his hands. “And then he just decides one day in high school to walk in and take my crown? Of course I’m pissed!”
Yugi laughs and eats a bit more, smiling and shaking his head. “How was your days?” he asks them both to change the subject.
Tristan sighs. “Hot and uneventful,” he tells them.
Joey seems to calm down a little, and a grin spreads on his face. “I got to see Justin eat shit on the rink. Like, flat on his ass and everything.”
“Ouch,” Yugi says, wincing a little.
“I dunno, maybe I’m still pissed from when he dented my truck’s door with his stupid dirt bike.”
“In his defense,” Tristan says. “You did park like an absolute asshole in the Basha’s parking lot, so it was bound to happen.”
“Don’t start this shit again-“
Yugi sighs as they divulge into a heated but short-lived argument. It only appears to be over when Joey’s eyes brighten at the sight of someone behind Yugi at the front door, and he begins to wave frantically, effectively ending his and Tristan’s tiff. “Hey! Over here!”
His loud voice and distracting movement earns them all a few rude looks from fellow patrons, and Yugi pulls every shred of cool together before he turns in place to look back. Stepping into Raphael’s is Atem, dressed the same way Yugi had seen him this morning, but looking far warmer as he fixed his ponytail. When he sees them – or Joey, more accurately, Yugi assumed – he smiles and walks over, unceremoniously taking his place next to Yugi in the booth. “Sorry I’m late. Ryou had some questions before I left, and I had to change out of my work clothes.”
“Don’t sweat it man,” Joey says with a grin, offering him some of the quickly disappearing fries. “We got some daylight to kill anyway.”
Atem takes a few fries with a soft thank you, and Yugi leans into the table a little. “How far outside of town is this place? And how much time are we wasting exactly?”
Tristan grins and leans over to his backpack on the floor, digging for a moment before he pulls out a small map of the town, pushing some things aside to open it up on the table. It was recent, probably purchased from the Stop In Mart on the corner across from where he worked, and he taps a circled cluster of streets right on the very edge of town. “It’s here. So, probably like twenty-five, thirty minutes in Joey’s truck.”
Joey looks over the map, then scoffs. “Twenty-five? I can make it in fifteen.”
“Doing the speed limit, Joey,” Tristan says warningly.
“Oh God, what are you guys up to now?”
The four of them look over and standing at the end of their table is a girl around their age, her arms crossed over her chest. She was decked out in Raphael’s work uniform, a stylized but old-fashioned diner waitress outfit, her apron striped pink and blue with a notebook in the front pocket. Her hair was tied back in a small, but neat, ponytail, and her eyes were looking disapprovingly at the map on the table, before looking back at them again. “What illegal mess are you getting them all mixed up in this time, Wheeler?”
Joey snorts. “Only illegal if we get caught, Tea,” he says, munching on a few more fries. “And besides, Sheriff Taylor won’t give us anything but a slap on the wrist.”
Tea, her eyes filled with doubt and the beginnings of fury, casts a sharp look at Tristan, who in turns holds up his hands. “You know better than anyone that my dad would rather us be out doing dumb shit like this, than doing any of the alternative kinds of dumb shit.”
She doesn’t back down, then glances over at Yugi and Atem, quietly watching for a moment. “And you two?”
“Someone has to be the voice of reason,” Atem says, good naturedly enough.
Yugi doesn’t want to answer, but Tea’s intense stare finally coaxes it out of him. “Someone has to take the pictures?”
Tea frowns, then sighs, defeated and tired, and takes out her notepad. “You guys will be the death of me,” she mutters. “Alright… what are you having today?”
“The usual,” they all chime in tandem, making Tea roll her eyes as she jots down their memorized orders.
“I’ll have that out to you soon,” she says, then shakes her head. “I can’t believe you guys…”
She disappears back toward the kitchen again, and Yugi takes a moment to glance over at the windows, where the street is starting to be painted red and orange, and then looks at his watch. Almost 6pm. Tristan and Joey start a quiet discussion amongst themselves as they plan out a route to take, and Yugi turns to Atem. “We have a couple of hours to waste,” Atem says, then smiles. “To answer your earlier question.”
“Guess we can take our time with dinner,” Yugi says, unable to not smile back. “I’m excited for this weekend…” he says quietly enough so Joey and Tristan didn’t hear.
Atem’s foot nudges his under the table, and Yugi’s stomach flutters. “Me too,” he says softly, like the little moment was all theirs, before Tristan and Joey rope them into a conversation. Tea brings them their food and they eat while they chat, the sun outside lowering further and further down in the sky, until Main Street is practically dark, if not for the slowly flickering streetlights. Joey and Tristan foot the bill, with Atem and Yugi tossing down extra for Tea’s tip, and the four of them say goodbye to her as they head out, stepping out of the diner to make their way to Joey’s truck.
They pile inside, with Atem and Yugi in the backseat while Tristan rode shotgun, his map pulled out and path marked with a pen. He flips on the overhead cabin light while Joey starts driving to Tristan’s quiet direction. Outside, the sun is far below the mountains, and the more they drive, the more the desert takes over, saguaro cactus rising from the sand and dotting the horizon with black. “So… where are we going exactly?” Yugi asks, looking to the front seat. “Am I the only one who doesn’t know?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Tristan says. “Just generally.”
Joey’s eyes meet Yugi’s in the rear view, and he grins. “We, dear Yugi, are going to the old Crawford Hotel on the edge of town.”
Yugi can’t help the chill that runs down his spine at that. Anyone who had lived in Crawford Hollow knew about the Crawford Hotel – it was once a lavish resort just on the edge of town that saw a lot of business in the late 1800’s when the areas around Crawford Hollow were still seeing a lot of traffic from gold mining. The eccentric and wealthy Crawford family had made their fortune during those gold rushes, and when the mines started to become barren and yielded less and less, their coffers began to dry up. The official story in all the biographies and in Crawford Hollow’s history was that Maximillion Crawford closed the hotel in the very early 1930’s and moved into town, before he began to rebuild his family’s money in citrus after far too many failed attempts at striking it rich in gold again.
But the legend goes that the land the hotel was built on was cursed, whether by the miners that died in Crawford’s mines, or something else entirely, it’s never clear. The hotel itself was reported to be haunted up until it’s final check out, and it goes that whatever had its claws so deep in the building drove poor Cecelia Crawford crazy and she threw herself off the balcony of her hotel’s suite only months before Maximillion closed the building up.
Whatever the truth was, Crawford Hotel now was an abandoned monolith out in the barren desert, rotting away slowly in the elements, a hollow shell of the beauty it had once been. Rumors of the supernatural happenings still persisted from ballsy teens that went to explore, and Yugi could handle caved in roofs and broken floors – but ghosts?
He had a hard line somewhere.
“Isn’t that place haunted?” Atem asks, before Yugi can, like he could sense his downward spiral.
Tristan scoffs and Joey looks uncomfortable. “We are not going to use the H word tonight,” Joey says.
“Ghosts aren’t real,” Tristan says, before quietly telling Joey a street to turn on. “The only scary thing we’re going to find is ways to test the tetanus vaccine.”
“Okay Doctor Taylor,” Joey sasses.
Yugi does what he can to calm himself down. He settles back in his seat and turns his attention to the rolling expanse of sand and foothills stretching out for miles, the town’s streetlights becoming fewer and farther between. It was almost completely black, except for the light from the moon and whatever reflected from the truck’s headlights. In the distance, a flash of lightning stretches across the sky, and a rumble of thunder follows it. So much for wishing the rain away.
He sinks his seat – had he known Crawford Hotel was where they were going, he might have been a bit slower to offer his photography skills. Yugi was far braver than he was years prior, but there were still many things he was hesitant about, the supernatural and paranormal being chief among them. He hated seeming like a total wimp, but to be in an old, decaying building that was reportedly haunted in the dark hardly seemed like the way he wanted to spend his Tuesday night. Especially not when he thought they were just doing their normal type of exploration.
Before he can get too far along regretting his decisions, he feels Atem’s hand brush against his on the seat between them. He looks over, and Atem is leveling a long look at him, concern evident in his face even in the low light, before he leans close. “Are you alright?” he asks, just quiet enough that it’s muffled by the road sounds and Tristan and Joey’s bickering. But he was so close to Yugi that he could hear him perfectly.
Yugi’s fingers twitch, and he links his pinkie with Atem’s, a heat rising in his cheeks. “I’m okay,” he tells him, voice just as quiet, and offers him a smile. “Promise.”
Atem keeps his eyes on Yugi for a moment longer, before he smiles back to Yugi. “Okay. I just had to check.” He squeezes their pinkies together, then moves his hand away, and even without the contact, Yugi’s heart skips a beat.
“O-Of course,” Yugi says, almost breathlessly, and turns his attention away from Atem for his own peace of mind. Old orange groves pass in a blur, the harvesting equipment rising high over the tops of their wooden skeletons, and he focuses on the scenery just long enough catch sight of the Crawford Hotel showing itself in the headlights.
“There it is, guys,” Tristan says, starting to fold his map up.
Joey pulls up onto the driveway, circling what once had been landscaping, Yugi was sure, but now was just rocks and cactus bones. The truck is put into park and then shut off, and the four of them throw open the doors and climb out. Even with the sun completely set, the heat is still stagnant, but the breeze that blows across them is cooling and pleasant. Around them, the desert is still and quiet, with only the deafening sound of crickets and their feet crunching on old brick and gravel to break up the silence. Without any further delay, the four of them start toward the entrance, and Yugi takes a moment to stop and look up at the building.
It was grand, he wasn’t going to deny it – it only had four floors, but what remained of the detail in the architecture was beautiful, even in the low light. Every last window was busted out, and glass laid broken and caked in dirt in the shrubbery along the façade, alongside a few instances of vandalism and graffiti. Yugi shrugs off his backpack and grabs his camera, checking the film before he snapped a picture looking up at the building from the bottom of the entrance’s steps. Its dizzying at that angle, deformed by the viewfinder and lens, so he lowers his camera, and out of the corner of his eye catches sight of something in one of the windows.
But when he looks over, there’s nothing but the dark interior of the hotel. Something cold creeps up his spine, but he does his best to ignore it as he shuffles quickly ahead to catch up to his friends. They’re standing in front of the large double doors leading inside while Tristan gently wiggles one open, careful so he didn’t break it off its rusting hinges. “I don’t think anyone’s come in here in a while,” he muses to them.
“I think there’s a back way in,” Joey says, taking one of the flashlights from Yugi when offered. “That’s how Matt said he got in.”
Tristan makes a face. “Matt probably made that way in. Let’s not add any more damage to this place.”
He finally manages to pry it open with a loud and grating groan of old metal and wood. Thunder rumbles again on the horizon as they step into the foyer, the large and grand chandelier that had once hung above nothing more than a pile of glass and broken iron on the floor in front of them. There were thick vines of ivy creeping in from the broken windows, bramble and dry grasses growing on the floor in patches of rotting flooring and sand, and on every surface was a thick layer of dirt and grime. It definitely looked like it hadn’t been properly inhabited in over fifty years, and even with the moderate shelter from outside, the heat hung in the air. They all turn on their flashlights and pass the beams of light over left behind furniture, luggage carts, and strewn about papers, and Yugi takes a moment to take a few pictures.
“How do we want to explore this?” Yugi asks. His voice echoes around the room. “Stay together as a group?”
“I was thinking we could break off into pairs,” Joey says, feet crunching on peeled paint chips and broken tile, before he stops at the front desk, sorting through whatever was left with mild interest. “Cover more ground that way. And if Tristan and I see anything super cool, I brought a disposable camera.”
Yugi hums quietly and nods. “Sure,” he agrees, then looks over at Atem. “What do you think, Atem?”
Atem has his eyes trained up at the mezzanines on the floors above, but he looks over at Yugi when he speaks. “Oh. Yeah. That’s good to me,” he says.
Yugi glances up to see what he was staring up. Above them was a skylight letting in a mild amount of moonlight, a large hole in the center. Yugi hums. “Bad night for rain,” he jokes.
“Yeah,” Atem chuckles softly. “Are we splitting off now?”
Joey waves his hand dismissively, but grins as him and Tristan start toward the stairs. “Knock yourselves out. We’ll meet back here in about an hour?”
Yugi fiddles with his watch to set an alarm, then nods. “See you in an hour!”
They both watch Tristan and Joey disappear up the grand staircase, their voices eventually becoming nothing more than muffled echoes. Yugi glances down at his camera, then over at Atem. “So. Do you want to look around down here first?”
Atem hums and nods, smiling at Yugi. “Yeah, let’s do that,” he agrees, and they pick a direction to start wandering. Even with the decay and mild vandalism, every hallway begins to look the same as it all loops back toward the lobby. Yugi stops to take pictures of the old elevator shaft, the cab itself missing, the flash from his camera just enough to illuminate for the picture. “I hope these turn out good,” he muses quietly to himself.
“I’m sure they will,” Atem says as they circle around the old industrial kitchen. He picks up and investigates old pans and bottles left behind while Yugi snaps a few more pictures. When he turns back to face Atem, he finds his companion staring off down a hallway, eyebrows knitted in concentration.
“You okay?” Yugi asks.
The question startles Atem, and he turns, looking at Yugi before laughing. “Y-Yeah, sorry,” he says, then motions toward the doorway and hallway. “I was trying to uh, remember the layout of the building. If I’m right the ballroom was this way.”
“Oh, the ballroom,” Yugi says, smiling. “Want to head there?”
“Sure,” Atem agrees. Something about his smile doesn’t reach his eyes as he steps out of the kitchen.
Yugi follows wordlessly. They walk in silence, only the crunching of debris under their shoes to fill the void of noise. Yugi expected this place to be… noisier. It seemed like the crickets were so loud outside, he found it odd that there weren’t any inside, too. Atem sweeps his flashlight over the hallway, revealing peeling wallpaper and rotting wainscotting, doors to old suites and utility closets that were practically falling off their hinges – when they poke their heads into a few of them, all they find is dust and old cleaning supplies. Part of the floor squishes under Yugi’s feet, and he stumbles a little to catch himself. “Do you think it’s safe that Tristan and Joey went upstairs?” Yugi asks. “This place doesn’t seem… too sound.”
“Do you think we would have been able to stop Joey if he wanted to?” Atem asks, looking over at Yugi with a smirk.
Yugi makes a face and shrugs. “Yeah… Fair point.”
They pass by a stairwell and Yugi slows, shining his flashlight on it. It led downward toward a door, the stairs dusted with dark mold, and when Yugi steps a little closer, the smell of waterlogged wood greats him. He wrinkles his nose but pulls his camera up to snap a photo anyway. A chill runs down his spine as he does, but when he lowers his camera, the stairwell is empty and dark. He glances down the hallway in either direction, but the only living thing he sees is Atem, slowing down to look back and wait. Yugi rubs the back of his neck, unable to shake that feeling of being watched by something he wasn’t seeing, before he moves to catch up with Atem. “You okay?” Atem asks.
Yugi can’t help but look back over his shoulder to the still empty space behind him, then smiles. “Yeah. Sorry. It’s kinda creepy, you know? I think my brain is playing tricks on me.”
Atem bumps into him gently with a smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll run off anything scary.”
Yugi laughs, playfully returning the bump. “Why thank you. My own personal guardian angel.”
The ballroom opens up before the both of them at the end of the winding hallways. The same skylights were present here as they were in the lobby, letting in the moonlight and distant flashes of lightning. Off to one side was an old bar, the shelves empty and broken bottles thrown around. Some left behind furniture was pushed into one corner, covered in sheets that were all but falling apart at the seams. Atem steps toward the middle of the room and turns on his heel, whistling softly to himself. “Wow.”
Yugi snaps a few pictures – one of the skylights above, one of Atem in the center of the vast room, and then another of a perfectly placed shot glass on the bar. “This is so cool… It really seems like Mr. Crawford was in a rush to close this place up, though.”
Atem hums as he walks along the perimeter of the room, scanning over framed portraits and paintings that hung on the walls, many of which were discolored and broken down by time. “Yeah… It’s weird that so much furniture was left behind huh?” he asks, turning to look over at Yugi. “I mean… I feel like he could have gotten a good sum from selling things off.”
“Maybe he had trouble selling anything because they were at the height of the depression when he closed it?” Yugi suggests blindly, and Atem shrugs a little. He steps over to the furniture in the corner, pulling back the sheets to reveal armoires and armchairs in fairly decent condition, if not a bit dusty. He takes a quick picture of them uncovered, before Atem says in name in the opposite corner. “What?”
“Come look at this,” Atem says, crouched over something, his back to Yugi.
Yugi gently replaces the sheet and then goes to cross the middle of the room, the flooring groaning and squeaking under his weight. “What did you fi-“
The boards break under his feet.
Before Yugi can say anything, he’s falling through rotting hardwood and old support beams, crashing into a pile of musty and damp boxes and mattresses. It knocks the wind out of him, feeling disoriented and dizzy for a moment, before he groans and looks up toward the hole he created in the floor above. Atem was leaning over the edge, looking down at him. “Yugi! Holy shit, are you okay?”
Yugi rubs the back of his head, feeling no blood or bumps, and a quick look over himself shows no immediate injuries. “Y-Yeah I’m okay,” he calls back up, and then fumbles for a moment with his flashlight, managing to turn it on. He does a quick sweep of the room around him, finding pipes and boilers. “I-I think I’m in the basement.”
“Do you want me to come down there to find you?” Atem asks.
“No, I can find my way back up. Can you go get Tristan and Joey, though?” he asks, looking back up toward his companion. “If I fell through the first floor, I don’t want them to get hurt on the upper floors.”
Atem seems to hesitate, but with the distance between them, Yugi can’t really get a good look at his face. “Yeah. I’ll go find them. Once you get back up, wait in the lobby, okay?”
“Roger that,” Yugi says, and then Atem disappears. Yugi manages to push himself up and off the pile he landed on, taking a better check of his surroundings. Definitely the basement, and the musty smell only confirmed that assumption. He knew roughly where the stairs up were, at least, he just had to find them. He checks his camera for any damage, and then shakes his flashlight to get the batteries to go a little longer, before he starts walking.
The hotel had been quiet and still warm, but the basement felt downright eerie and cold. With the thick concrete walls, Yugi couldn’t hear a damn thing above him, especially not with the low ceiling and hastily stored junk dampening any noise he made. It seemed that anything that wasn’t kept in its place was drug down here, haphazardly stuffed into chaotic piles and old metal shelves, and there was a thin layer of water on the floor. Yugi pushes his way between a stack of chairs and an old dresser, cursing quietly to himself when his backpack gets caught on a leg of one of the chaise lounges. “Fuck-“
Something falls nearby, clattering to the floor. It makes Yugi jump, which pulls the lounge out just enough that the stack of chairs go falling to the ground, their weak and aged wood splintering upon impact. Yugi pulls himself off in the middle of the cacophony and he moves away, holding his breath to strain his hearing. Nothing. Nothing but the sound of his heart hammering in his chest. He takes another moment, before he turns to keep walking, a bit quicker in his pace.
It feels like an honest to God labyrinth, and even walking only a few yards feels like he’s been turned around. He shakes his flashlight again as the light begins to dim, and curses quietly as it flickers out, plunging him into darkness. In a corner somewhere, water drips from a broken pipe, but the darkness around him is still and unnervingly silent. He takes a loud and shaky breath, before shrugging his backpack off his back and digging around for batteries blindly.
Behind him, he hears footsteps, loud ones that echo around them. Yugi grabs the batteries he had been looking for freezes up, his eyes wide as he waits, straining his ears. But there’s no sound other than that - even the leaky pipe seems to have quieted. All he hears is his heart pounding in his chest and the blood rushing to his ears. He quickly grabs his flashlight, hands trembling as he unscrews the top off to take the old batteries out, the footsteps rushing up closer behind him.
Yugi manages to shove the batteries in and screw the cap back on, flipping the switch and turning in place hastily to see what was behind him. His light finds those same piles he had been running into and reflects off the shallow water on the floor. But he’s alone – only the dripping somewhere in the distant and his own shuddering breathing as companions. Yugi lets out a long breath that borders on a relieved sigh. Just his imagination, then.
But something in the corner catches his eye – something that’s also reflecting the light from his flashlight, and he pulls his focus over to it. When the light hits it, it seems to grow darker, off in the far corner away from Yugi. He moves his beam back and forth, but it doesn’t move like a shadow would, bouncing around from the light source. The back of his neck itches with that very familiar feeling of being watched, and he swallows the thick lump in his throat. “H-Hello?” He says, and it feels like his voice is swallowed before it’s even left his mouth.
A heavy weight falls on his shoulders, oppressive and smelling like mildew, and Yugi wants to turn but something is keeping him in place, shining the flashlight in the dark corner. The basement feels like it’s closing in, becoming tighter and more compact, claustrophobic in a way that it wasn’t before. Yugi feels like he can’t barely breathe, and his stomach twists into knots so painfully he might be sick. Something was wrong, desperately wrong, in a way that it hadn’t been before. Yugi felt too big for his body, or too small for the room, too wired to think properly, maybe, because his thoughts weren’t making sense, and – and –
When did he turn off the flashlight?
Yugi blinks and that feeling is gone, replaced by the stifling warmth of a typical summer night and wetness in his shoes. On his wrist, his watch beeps insistently with the alarm he set earlier, and he quickly silences it, before he turns in place for a moment, flipping his flashlight on and shining it in the area around him. He was standing at the bottom of the steps leading up to the door out, but he struggles to make the connection of how, feeling out of place and lost. He hesitates, before he starts to make his way up them, stopping halfway up and casting a long look back into the basement.
It was dark. A pipe drips, wood groans, unseen furniture shifts and creaks. It had been so terrifying before, but now he wonders if it really had been his imagination. Yugi pulls his camera up and snaps a quick photo, before heading up to the door and pushing a small amount of his weight into it to pry it open. The hallway opens up in front of him, and it feels far cooler than it did below, if only because of the breeze that blows across him. There’s flashes of lightning and the loud booms of thunder shake the foundations, but he wastes no time in heading toward the front of the hotel like he promised Atem.
When he gets to the lobby, his friends are standing around, but Atem noticeably brightens up when he sees him. “Yugi! Are you okay?” He asks, all but rushing over to him.
In the slightly better lighting, he checks himself over. Aside from a few tears in his clothing, and a gross layer of rotten wood and dirt, he seemed to be no worse for wear. “I think I’m okay,” he tells Atem with a smile. “Those boxes and mattresses broke my falls.”
“Damn man, you really fell through the floor?” Joey asks. When Yugi nods, his face screws up in concern. “Jeez. Matt didn’t say the place was that bad off.”
“I think I honestly just found a soft spot in the floor,” Yugi says with a chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck. “But seriously, I’m alright. I got some good pictures, I think. Did you guys find anything cool?”
Tristan shrugs. “Just empty hotel rooms and old furniture. Nothing else really.”
Yugi nods, and thunder rattles the skylight above them. “We should probably get home before it starts storming,” Atem says, casting nervous glances upwards. “Don’t want to lose the roads if it floods.”
“Shit,” Joey curses. “Yeah, we better go. If the roads wash away, we’ll be stuck here.”
They file out of the building, Joey and Tristan leading the way while Atem and Yugi follow behind at a distance. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Atem asks him, and his fingers briefly find Yugi’s wrist. “Cushion or not, that was still a bit of a fall.”
“Promise. I’m okay. It knocked the wind out of me, but I’m in one piece, and nothing else is broken.”
Atem watches him for a moment, squeezing his wrist gently. “The basement wasn’t too hard to navigate?”
The back of Yugi’s neck tingles, and they step outside and head down the steps toward the driveway. “Nah. It was dark and… kinda creepy. But you know my imagination,” he says with a laugh. “I think all those stories about it being haunted are just being dramatic.”
Atem stares at him for a long moment, then looks over to Joey and Tristan, before slowing them both down so they fell back farther. “I only ask because… I mean, we were waiting like twenty minutes…”
Yugi’s stomach drops at that. It hadn’t been that long… right? There was no way he was down there for almost thirty minutes. He goes silent, then offers Atem a smile. “Oh, my flashlight just… It died, y’know? Majorly not cool,” he laughs, hoping he sounds a lot lighter than how he was feeling. “It took me forever to get batteries out of my backpack and get them into the flashlight. And you know, there was a lot of junk down there. Really, I promise I’m okay.”
That doesn’t seem to get Atem to back down, his gaze heavy and concerned, but he looks away, his hand still around Yugi’s wrist. “Okay,” he says softly, giving him one tight squeeze before he lets go. “I’m just glad you’re alright.”
Atem picks up his pace to catch up to their friends waiting at the truck just as the rain starts, gentle and cooling, and Yugi goes to do the same, but pauses, looking back at the hotel one last time, up at its tall façade and glass-less windows. A breeze passes, picking up desert sand and ruffling bramble and ivy gathered along the brick walls. Joey calling his from the truck has him turning away, though, doing a light jog to catch up, and his heart twists with an unknown emotion, crossed somewhere between anticipation and dread.
He can’t help but feel like he’s forgetting something.