Chapter Text
Ghost is not thrilled with the idea of a new team member.
He can work perfectly fine on his own. And has done so, collectively, for longer than Toast will even be away. (Probably. Hopefully. He’s trying to be optimistic, because he thinks he’ll go insane if he doesn’t.) But his boss insisted on it, no matter how colorfully he protested. Apparently, she’d already been planning to let the new guy shadow them for a bit, and jumped on the opportunity to make it happen a little faster, put him in a more involved role. Based on that, he should be competent enough, but that doesn’t make it any more appealing.
He’d rather scoop his eyes out with a rusty spoon than work with someone new. Especially now, of all times. He and this guy could’ve known eachother for years, and Ghost would still be bitter about it, because this was the first time he’d be forced to not work with Toast. Sure, there were times when he’d gotten sick, or hurt, or couldn’t attend for any number of reasons, but this is different. If they’re lucky, it’ll blow over in just a few weeks, less than a month. If they aren’t….
The unconfirmed timeframe is a big reason why it’s happening at all, he’s sure. If working with someone else at all set him on edge, the idea that he is, potentially, meant to replace the person he trusts more than anyone else is just about the worst possible setup for a good first impression.
-
Ghost takes a deep breath. Counts up to five, and down again. He’s not happy about it, sure, but he’s an adult. He can be mature. It isn’t Spooker’s fault, anyway. (He’d had to try very hard to not laugh when his boss told him the guys name- or atleast what he’d like to be called. He’s a hypocrite, he knows, and the nickname culture across their department is definitely his and Toast’s fault, in the first place, but just. God, he has no idea how he’s meant to take that seriously. Atleast he’s still annoyed enough that it’ll be easy to fight down a smile.)
His new… coworker is standing just outside the appropriately creepy abandoned school they were sent to investigate, bouncing on his toes, and eyeing the road. He probably expects Ghost to drive over- as he’d apparently done himself, going by the clunky looking car parked obediently inside the weathered paint lines. Ghost swallows against the flare of bitterness he feels at just the sight of him- another good omen for how well this is going to go- and heads over, footsteps intentionally loud enough to be heard.
‘Spooker’ spins towards him, fast as a rubber band snapping. “Hey! Over here!” He says, waving his arms, even though Ghost saw him first, and was very obviously headed in his direction already.
Limping a bit from the long walk, he gives a halfhearted wave, saving his voice for when he’s close enough. “Hey.”
Spooker’s grin looks painfully wide. “Hi! I’m Spooker- or, that’s my nickname, atleast, my actual name is Fred, but they told me it’s a tradition to get one, so- but I guess you already know that, huh? Hi!” He sticks out a hand. Ghost pointedly ignores it, his own shoved firmly in his pockets.
He really hates that ‘tradition’. Once he and Toast become the oldest team- not by age, they’d just been working there the longest- they picked up a bit of a reputation. The newer hires- even those significantly older- looked up to them a bit, and a few decided to mimic them without really understanding. Firstly, as silly as Ghost freely admits they are, their ‘nicknames’ are atleast actually part of their names. Secondly, they hold a lot more meaning than most people seem to think.
Toast uses his first name in most situations, and generally prefers only those he’s close with to call him by his nickname. Which, now that they don’t live near their families anymore, (not that Toast was ever very close with his family in the first place) is almost exclusively Ghost. Except, apparently, when his coworkers, of all people, hear Ghost calling him that, and assume it’s free game. Toast is too polite to correct them unless they get really obnoxious about it, and Ghost tries to pick up the slack, but all he really manages to do is strengthen the rumors about the nature of their relationship. They’d thought it was a romantic nickname the one time he tried explaining- it didn’t even make them stop using it.
Ghost...doesn’t even think of his as a nickname, at this point. The name infront of it on his birth certificate is more ceremonial than anything else. It’s tied closely to his gender, his identity as a whole- it being reduced to a nickname he puts on for his job is disrespectful at best.
All that being said, hearing someone he’s already averse to imply it, even indirectly, pisses him off a little. Honestly, he wouldn’t mind quite so much if it wasn’t obvious how unseriously he’d treated it.
Ghost doesn’t say any of this. Instead, he does his absolute best to twist his lips into a polite smile, and gestures at the bag Spooker’s holding. “What’s in there?”
”Extra supplies! I know you said you’d bring anything we needed, but I didn’t think it would hurt to be prepared.”
…Spooker definitely doesn’t mean to imply that he isn’t properly prepared. Ghost can’t quite stop himself from bristling, anyway. “Right. Uh. Good idea.”
Spooker grins impossibly wider, not picking up on the tension in his voice. That has got to hurt, at this point- maybe he’s brought some first aid supplies they can use when his cheeks inevitably split open. “Thank you!”
Ghost doesn’t respond, turns toward the door. The sooner this is over the better. With any luck, he’ll be home to ignore the empty house scream his frustration into his pillow within the hour.
-
“This is so creepy.” Spooker says, flashlight waving around wildly. His voice is distinctly unpleasant to listen to as it echoes through the empty halls.
Ghost bites down a ‘No shit.’ His derisive scoff echoes around the room, ten times the volume it would’ve been anywhere else. Whoops. He feels a prickle of guilt, glances at Spooker. He doesn’t obviously react, but he stops talking for a long while, something that might be a frown on his face, and Ghost grapples with a mix of guilt and relief. Their footsteps alone are ridiculously loud- too much longer with an already loud voice drilling into his skull would’ve driven him insane.
Had it sounded like this when there were actually students here? He shudders at the thought of the hallway packed with hundreds of kids- footsteps, and voices, and slamming lockers. Why does it have to be dark, anyway? Most places, even abandoned, still have enough power for a few flickering lights, if nothing else. Not even emergency lights?
The temperature plummets the closer they get to the back. There’s a cluster of rooms where the most activity is recorded, and Ghost follows along with an old map of the building on his phone.
He stops. ”It’s down this hall.”
Spooker stumbles over his feet, moving too quickly to stop gracefully. He’s seemed bored, the last ten or so minutes. Ghost is just glad he didn’t try talking to him again because of it. “Um- okay. Are we going to it?”
“Soon. We should look around the nearest halls first. And I don’t want to bring you to the highest activity area for too long your first time.”
”Oh.” He scuffs his feet on the dirty floor. The sound of the dirt scraping under his shoes twists into something like a growl, low and rumbling. That’s..not how sound works.
“Something isn’t right with this echo.” Ghost keeps his voice low, barely above a whisper. It ends up a fairly normal volume, though oddly breathy.
Spooker nods, tries to match his tone, ends up only a little louder. “Yeah, I noticed that. Should we… do something about it?”
Ghost eyes the far hallway, unsure. Something flutters in his peripheral vision, and he turns his head towards it- a classroom, three doors down. A wisp of red flickers through the crack under the door.
There it is. But- shit, how is he supposed to get there? Spooker can’t know. God, this is so much easier when he doesn’t have to hide. With Toast, he could just go right up to it, no questions asked.
”Uh. Ghost..?”
He needs to get rid of him without raising suspicion. “We’re close. We should look through some of these rooms. Here, I’ll send you the map I’m using. Don’t go too far.” He gets an odd look for that- which is fair. It’s generally not a great idea to send a newbie, especially a first timer, off on their own. Luckily, Spooker doesn’t protest, trusting his judgement as the more experienced party. Ghost feels a little bad about that, but he doesn’t dwell on it. For good measure, he checks a few empty classrooms, a single closet, just in case Spooker would notice if the first room he checked was the right one.
And then, once he’s sure he’s out of sight, he stops infront of the door. Hesitates. Tendrils of red light snake underneath, reaching towards him. The doorknob bites into his skin, cold as ice.
A writhing mass of red and putrid orange hovers in the corner, like the afterimage of staring too long at the sun. Persistent buzzing invades his senses, more vibration than sound. A mix between a droning swarm of insects, and an old TV with no signal. It’s almost heavy, sinking into the space where his thoughts should be, pushing them aside.
He blinks hard, and shakes his head, regains a bit of focus, although he’s not any less dizzy.
This one can’t be anything but anger.
Ghost furrows his brow against the headache, and fumbles for the camera around his neck. The mass flickers and shrinks, coalescing into the vague silhouette of a person- head hung low, arms raised, hands pressed desperately over their ears. The static changes with it, shifts a little closer to a scream. He snaps a photo. Takes a few more once it melts back into a smear of light, a few intentionally at bad angles, or full of motion blur.
A dark red tendril reaches for him, wraps around his ankle. He can’t feel anything, not even a change in temperature, but he shivers anyway, and stumbles back into the hall. The door slamming is unbearable even with the lingering muffle in his ears.
He can almost fool himself into thinking this gets easier, over time. Atleast when he’s not in the throes of it. Really, he’s just used to being afraid.
Spooker appears around the corner, rushes over, forgets to whisper in his alarm. “What happened? Is everything okay?”
Ghost winces at the sound, and nods. “Yeah. It’s fine. Just got startled. Did you find anything?” He wouldn’t have been able to observe it directly, obviously, even if he had been in the same room, but Spooker doesn’t know he knows that, and he still might’ve picked up on an extra clue or two.
Spooker makes an effort to match his volume as closely as he can. It still manages to feel a little too loud, but maybe Ghost’s ears are just over sensitive after the static. “Not really. The echo goes down a little in the next hallway, but not any lower than the rest of the building.”
“Right, okay. We have enough evidence now to leave, anyway. C’mon.” Ghost says, and starts walking back the way they came.
Spooker follows haltingly. “Are you sure? We really don’t have much to go off of. And we’ve only been here for an hour.”
Ghost shrugs. “We’ll be coming back tomorrow. You’re right that we don’t have much, but we have enough to make a few guesses. I’ll bring the equipment, and anything extra we might need, and we can see how it responds to them. Usually something on this scale takes atleast three or four trips to dismiss.”
“Alright. If you say so.” Ghost tries very hard to not feel insulted by Spooker’s uneasy trust. He fails.
-
The fresh air and dimming sunlight is relieving after the oppressive darkness inside. Ghost still has a headache. Being near Spooker on the way out certainly hadn’t helped, as obvious as it was that he’d atleast been trying to be quiet. Especially after Ghost snapped at him over it.
He needs to go home. To rest, to cry, to stop himself from really fucking up, and saying something awful. He’ll have to walk there, which sucks, but it might give him some time to prepare for the knife to the chest he’s gotten every time he’s seen the empty driveway.
“Wait!” Spooker calls out to him before he can take more than a single step. Ghost takes a deep breath, curses the universe for pairing him with the one person hand crafted to accidentally get on his nerves as much as possible, and turns back just enough to look vaguely in the direction of his eyes.
”Uh- I have. I have a few questions first.” He looks nervous, apologetic. That only makes it worse. Atleast if he was actually a dick, Ghost would have every right to shout at him.
He dredges up what’s left of his best customer service mask, because he’s come this far, might as well indulge him. ”..what?” Maybe not as polite as he’d hoped- he had gotten fired from his only customer service job- but that’s probably for the best. The change in attitude would’ve been painfully obvious.
Spooker starts digging around in his bag- the one that made a shuffling sound against his shirt the entire time they were in the school. “I tried to use some of these in a couple of the classrooms, and nothing really happened. I only had it out for a minute, but I think I might’ve been using it wrong, and I don’t want to make the same mistake twice.” He pulls out a Spirit Box. Because of course he does. Ghost takes it from him, a little more forcefully than intended.
He pushes a few buttons, feels the cheap plastic casing, eyes the branding on the side. “You weren’t using it wrong.” Well, he might’ve been, actually, Ghost wasn’t there to watch him, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. “It just doesn’t work.” He hands it back, wipes his hand on his sleeve, because he thinks if he doesn’t, he’s going to shatter it on the asphalt between them, and that would make him look crazy as well as bad tempered.
Spooker eyes it warily, turns it over in his hands like he’s looking for flaws. “Why? Is it broken?”
Good fucking god. He’d had his doubts about Spooker’s competence before now, but he’d chalked it up to bias and the fact that he was still new. How had he even been hired if he didn’t know something so basic? How had someone not explained this to him yet?
Ghost bites back the ’Are you fucking kidding me?’ on his lips. “No- it’s not broken, it was made wrong. With the wrong materials. It needs silver in it to actually be able to capture anything. I can tell it doesn’t have any because it’s cheaply made, and the brand.” He does not add on that Spirit Boxes in general are really fucking stupid, and even the ones with the potential to work are better off as glorified paperweights. They were made when only very little was known about ghosts, under the assumption they were fully sentient. Beings made of pure emotion might be capable of very limited speech- their creators last words, or occasionally something relevant to their emotion- but nothing more. Their words are garbled and distorted even when they exist, and overall they aren’t even particularly helpful in dismissing them.
“Oh.” Spooker stares at it, almost betrayed. “I just bought the cheapest one.”
No fucking wonder, Ghost does not say. “Is that all you wanted to ask?” He says instead, feeling an obligation while also desperately hoping the answer is yes.
”One more thing.” Damn it. “What even happened with Toast, anyway? I heard he was arrested, is that true?” Some amount of enthusiasm enters his tone again, like all it is is silly gossip.
Ghost is going to murder everyone in that hellsite he works at, and then himself. He bites his tongue hard enough to draw blood, and does not correct Spooker on the name, because if he tried to speak at all it’d turn into screaming.
Spooker is not deterred by his lack of reply. Leans in, curious, a fear in his eyes that carries the same spark as his excitement hours before. The look of a horror fan jumping at an old slasher. “I heard he murdered someone.”
Ghost is not going to kill a man in a highschool parking lot, no matter how much he wants too. He turns around, snarling at the air, and jogs until he reaches the street, walks the rest of the way.
The house is cold and empty, and he spends another night glaring at the ceiling, waiting in vain to hear footsteps in the hall, a door closing, anything he could take as a sign of life, of presence. He calls in sick the morning after.