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Of all the places for her parents to drag her to, it had to be Amity Park, Illinois. The place isn’t small, but it still seems like there’s nothing to do. Nothing she wants to do, anyway. Any event she’d want to go to is months out and if there’s a goth music scene in Amity, she’s yet to find it. Her parents are getting on her for being home so much. There’s been pamphlets and sign up sheets for beauty pageants, make-up demonstrations, ballroom dancing classes, and more dull, unimportant dreck. It’s all pomp, full of hot air, no substance. She hates it, hates how they tried to get rid of her wardrobe during the move.
She hates how much they want to control her.
It’s everything. She can’t take three steps without some correction or suggestion that she dress differently, act differently, walk differently. Everything she’s passionate about is hushed with a titter, a joke about how it’s not polite conversation, Sam, try asking about their bag instead. She doesn’t give a damn about the fancy bag that costs two grand for reasons she can’t comprehend. (Corporate greed, labels, sweatshops, the illusion of demand.)
She wants something real.
Or at the very freaking least not boring. She’s losing her mind. She hasn’t found anyone at school she can talk to, let alone call a friend. There’s a couple kids that aren’t bad, but she hasn’t talked to them enough to feel comfortable inviting them over. (Or, better, going to their house.)
School is an escape from her house, but hardly riveting. There’s…something odd about the school. Like something’s missing. It’s getting close to pep rally time and no one seems to have their hearts in it. Sure, there’s signs and a committee to organize the dance. There’s been some of the usual bake sales and other fundraising things for other events in the school year. But there’s none of the usual school spirit insanity. Sam’s been in schools before where not participating in things like Spirit Week or getting hyped for Homecoming was treated like an actual crime. If not from the students, then the teachers.
It’s usually everywhere and while they’re still a solid month out from Homecoming, it feels…lackluster.
She can’t help but feel like she’s missing something, something big.
Casper High starts its school year the last week of August and Sam joined roughly midway through September. She can’t imagine what she missed in those short few weeks, but obviously it was important.
No one talks about it.
She’s a goth ultra-recyclo vegetarian in a mid-sized town in the middle of freaking nowhere Illinois. The bullies should be coming out of the woodwork. Instead, it’s like she doesn’t exist. Or, no, like they know she’s there but are going out of their way not to say anything. She hasn’t gotten anything more than a “Watch it, new girl” and some looks about her outfits. She’d expected it to be a lot worse.
The sense of wrongness permeates the town, too. Like everything is two inches to the left and everyone is still bumping their hips into the walls. She can’t find her step here. It’s frustrating, to be the outsider looking in.
It’s not until she hears about the Fenton House that things start to make sense. That the pieces start to form together.
It’s a passing comment, a conversation never meant for her. She’s late leaving school one afternoon, caught up in the library working on a personal research project.
(The purple-back gorilla is a rarity she can’t pass up, nor is the chance to spread awareness about conservation.)
She’s not really concerned about being late to get home, but she has no desire to get locked in if no one realizes she’s still here. Plus, spending too much time at school is liable to give her hives. She’s not paying attention when she walks around the corner, heading for the front doors and sweet freedom. She’s nearing the main office when she hears Mr. Lancer. His voice is rough, like he’s trying not to cry. She stops dead, easing closer to the wall.
“...have you heard anything about what they’re doing to the Fenton House?” he’s saying and below the roughness of unshed tears, he sounds tired.
“No,” Principal Ishiyama responds, sighing. “There’s been nothing since…well. Since. Dr and Dr Fenton are still the same and Ms. Fenton is with her aunt, now. No one seems to know what happened.”
“You know what happened,” Mr. Lancer says, softly furious.
“We don’t have proof.” Principal Ishiyama says, sounding tired herself. “Ms. Fenton wasn’t home and the Drs. Fenton…are not in any state to be questioned.”
“So they’re just leaving it there?” she can hear him pacing now, a frustrated sigh echoing.
“They’ll figure it out,” Principal Ishiyama says, but she doesn’t sound convinced. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“Not now,” Mr. Lancer practically snarls. “Not after that. We had chances and we ignored them.”
“We didn’t know,” she sounds placating now, but Sam can’t help but wonder if she’s trying to soothe--herself or Lancer.
“We knew enough.” Mr. Lancer says and Sam takes that as her cue to leave. She’s just barely managed to backtrack and get out of the hall when she hears footsteps and the familiar jangle of keys. She waits for a couple heart pounding minutes and then takes the chance to ease out of a side door.
She’s never heard of the Fentons before. It’s not a name that should be familiar and yet it feels like what she's missing.
Like every bully that turned away, like every stumbling pause over an attendance sheet, like the empty desk no one can bring themself to look at is all wrapped up in this one name.
It’s two days after overhearing Mr. Lancer and Principal Ishiyama that she decides to ask.
She doesn’t expect the rapid paling of the already pale Mikey or for him to worry-clean his glasses so hard she can almost hear the creaking.
“It’s haunted,” Mikey says, quietly. “The Fenton House, I mean. It’s haunted. Mr and Mrs--er, the Drs, they went crazy. The house is haunted.”
Haunted? All this over a haunted house? That doesn’t seem right.
“What happened?”
Mikey shrugs, looking everywhere but her. “We don’t really know. But…” He eases closer, eyes darting around like he expects people to materialize from the lockers. “The Drs were working on something. Apparently it’s huge. I heard my parents complaining about how it messed with the power grid.”
“That doesn’t really explain why,” Sam complains. Obviously something happened, but no one is explaining in a way that makes sense.
“...it’s hard to explain,” Mikey says, suddenly cagey. “Look, I gotta go.” And just like that, her only minor lead is gone.
Guess it’s time for the big guns.
See, the problem is now she’s bored and curious. It’s a combination she’s never been able to hold out against.
So she’s not surprised when she looks up the Fenton’s address. There’s precious little about them online. Just some small articles about Jasmine Fenton’s scholarly accomplishments, some odd blurbs about the Drs. Fenton and a singular family photo.
There’s a boy in the picture, looking embarrassed and put upon. There’s a huge grin on the man’s face--Jack Fenton, the caption says. Maddie Fenton, who’s a small woman compared to her giant of a husband, but it doesn’t stop her from holding her kids close. Jasmine looks to be only a couple years older than Sam is.
The boy looks around her age and the caption simply states Daniel Fenton, middle left. There's something odd about him in the photos. Like he was caught mid motion. He looks pale, paler than he should--and a little gaunt. At first glance, there’s nothing wrong with this family photo. Just two embarrassed kids and their parents.
The more she looks, the more it doesn’t seem that’s the case. Jasmine is stiff, her gaze set far past the camera. Maddie’s grip on her children looks almost too tight, the fabric of Jasmine and Daniel’s clothes taut. Jack’s smile looks strained at the corners.
And Daniel?
Daniel looks…scared. And tired.
That does it. She’s going to that house. Something happened. Something no one wants to talk about. From what little she’s managed to put together, it wasn’t good.
It’s date night for her parents. They’re two cities away, in some big extravagant restaurant that serves food she won’t eat, in portions small enough they should be illegal. Her grandma’s gone to bed--and wouldn’t stop her regardless. It’s Friday night and she has nothing to do. No concerts, no protests, nothing.
She grabs her bag, shoves a flashlight, an extra battery, a bottle of water and a notebook in it. Her phone is already in her pants pocket and she wastes no time leaving, the Fenton’s address written on her palm. She has a general idea of where it is and while she could look it up, it’s more of an adventure to search.
She makes a game of staying out of sight, of finding shortcuts and slipping into alleys. It takes her longer to reach the house because of it, but that just means it’s full dark. In her dark clothes, she’s a shadow among shadows. She expects to have to look for the house, to have to slip up and down the street, looking for the right house number.
Instead, the house is obvious even from a block and half away. It’s taller than its neighbors by a large margin and to say the shope of it was odd is an understatement.
There’s a large dome on top of the house and she doesn’t claim to know anything about construction or building codes, but that cannot be legal. It overhangs the main structure of the house, looking like a UFO.
When she gets a little closer, she can see the large sign that’s attached to the front of the building. It’s made of neon lights and metal, but the neon seems to be busted. There’s only the faintest flicker in some of the letters, but she can still make out FentonWorks.
At least she knows she’s at the right place.
The police tape over the door and the overgrown grass help too. It’s obviously abandoned, what little garden there is overgrown and starting to sneak up the brick. But the windows are (mostly) clean, the door is still straight in its frame and the steps still look to be in decent repair. It’s obviously a recent abandonment and it lines up with what she knows.
The street is silent and the air is sharp with the scent of autumn. The leaves are changing and are starting to litter yards. The only light is from the scatter of streetlamps.
The Fenton house may be the only one that’s actually abandoned, but it feels like the entire street is vacant. There’s no TV, no echoing voices, no rumble of a car. The F in FentonWorks flickers to full brightness for a brief second, searing her eyes and creating stark, reaching shadows. There’s a weight to the air and the scent of something else under the decaying leaves.
Something bright and acidic, almost burning.
Sam makes her way across the street, even more cautious than she was before. She swears the temperature dips as she gets closer to the house, but she ignores it. She’s come this far, she’s not backing down now. What’s there to go back to? A boring house where the only room she even feels remotely comfortable in is her own? Another endless night with her only entertainment her homework? She’s working on building a computer, but some of the parts are a week out and it doesn’t help her now.
She creeps up to the front door, checking the status of the police tape. There’s a couple layers of it, like it’s been ripped and reapplied. There’s several unbroken pieces over the door and a hefty lock over the handle. Of course, the front door would be far too easy. If there’s a back door, it probably is in a similar state. She frowns at the overgrown lawn. It’s not insanely tall, the cooler temperature and lessening sunlight not allowing the grass to get too out of control. But it’s still shin height and would easily show her path through it.
She judges the distance between the window and the thick concrete railing next to the door. Chances are it’s locked, but she’s got to try. She steps up on the rail, easing a foot over to brace on the brick ledge under the window. Carefully, she eases her body over and gets a grip on the window. It doesn’t budge at first and she grits her teeth, trying to get a better grip. She’s not going back home right now, not unless she has to.
The air goes colder and the wind shudders down the street. There’s sound in the air, like whispering secrets.
The window opens abruptly, slamming upwards in a smooth motion. Sam nearly topples over, but manages to catch herself, heart pounding. It takes a little maneuvering--and some minor swearing--but she manages to get herself into the window. She shuts it behind her and turns to face what looks like a kitchen.
The house is deathly silent and cold.
She gets the distinct feeling she doesn’t belong here.
She lets out a slow breath and the air comes out in a cloud of vapor. Swinging her pack off, she digs out her flashlight and clicks it on.
There’s bowls on the table.
She steps closer, confused. Surely such a thing would be cleaned up by now? How is it saving the integrity of--what she assumes is a crime scene--by letting food rot in the middle of it? It’s been weeks.
The bowls are mostly empty, whatever was in them dried and crusted on the bottom. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been inside. There’s dishes in the sink, there’s a half full trash can that reeks and a scatter of clean dishes in the drying rack. She doesn’t dare open the fridge.
She doesn’t understand. Wouldn’t someone have come and at least gotten the food out of the house? Even if it couldn’t be donated or anything, shouldn’t they have cleaned it up? There’s police tape practically plastering the door shut, with several bits of it cut. Someone’s been in here, it seems like. She turns her flashlight towards the next room, trying to understand.
She steps through the archway and into the living room. The couch has a couple blankets scattered over it, like someone had been curled up on it. The remote’s on the floor, halfway between the couch and the kitchen. There’s a half empty bowl of popcorn on the coffee table and a knocked over glass.
Unease settles in her stomach.
Obviously, something happened. Something unexpected. She doesn’t know what , but she’s starting to wonder if she should have stayed home.
Her flashlight passes over the walls, skimming over photos and little shelves of knick-knacks. Dust and cobwebs hang from them, creating odd little shadows. She eases forward, curious despite it all. She’s halfway across the room when there’s something like a sigh in the air. She swings around, flashlight frantically looking for another person.
There’s no one but the dust.
She stands stock still, torn between continuing to explore and getting the hell out of here. The cold is really starting to sink into her, biting despite the lack of wind. Her clothes are warm and she’s got a couple layers on, but it doesn’t seem to matter. It feels like winter in here instead of fall. Like whatever happened here has sucked away the heat.
She hasn’t gotten her answers, but would the house really have had any? Unless there’s some seriously obvious blood or something, she’s not going to know anymore than she did an hour ago.
It feels cowardly to leave, but it feels stupid to stay.
The idea of going home doesn’t have any more appeal than it did before she came in and she’s not a quitter. She turns away from the living room and starts upstairs. The stairs creak and groan, the sounds straight out of a horror movie. She tries to ignore it but she can’t help but feel glad when she steps up on the landing. There’s several doors in this hallway and she goes for the closest one.
The instant she opens the door, she knows something is wrong. The handle is warm and the door swings open without a sound. She blinks against the light, clicking her flashlight off automatically.
The light’s on in the room, despite her not even knowing where the switch is. The room is done in blues but the most prominent thing is the stars. There’s NASA posters, rockets, a mini telescope, and a space helmet. There’s glow in the dark sticky stars on every flat surface--the walls, the ceiling, on the sides of a bookshelf. She’s never paid much attention to constellations, but even she can pick out the mini versions of the Big Dippers, Orion’s Belt, and a scatter of others. She steps further into the room, drawn by curiosity. It’s warmer in here and while it doesn’t make any sense , she’s grateful for the reprieve from the bitter cold.
She steps over to the bed and lightly draws a finger over the bedspread. It’s midnight blue, with a scatter of stars and a bright full moon in the center.
It feels a little invasive to be standing here. She came to satisfy her own curiosity, but it suddenly feels real. The Fentons were a real family that something awful happened to. She only knows them from one photo. One awkward, alarming photo.
She doesn’t know their voices or what they were like.
But she does know Daniel liked the stars.
“It must have been cool,” Sam says, the silence grating at her. “To see the stars before you went to bed. Wonder what it looked like in the dark.”
She’s turning to look for the light switch to find out for herself when the light cuts. The dark is instant and heavy, the temperature dipping. Her breath freezes in her lungs, fear fluttering up her ribs and dancing around her lungs.
Slowly, she looks up.
The stars are bright, glowing vaguely green. It’s pretty and she finds herself tracing the lines of the stars across the ceiling and down the walls. She doesn’t know what’s happening, but there’s no way the power just decided to cut out the second she spoke.
It might be time to cut her losses.
She turns towards the door and clicks her flashlight back on.
And screams.
The flashlight drops to the floor, still lit, as Sam stumbles backwards, fear a living beast in her ribcage.
Standing between her and the door is a boy and the light of her flashlight cuts right through him. He’s nothing more than a shadow, with vague colors and bright green eyes. His hair is a gravity defying mess and ice white.
Climbing up his left hand like ivy are fractal lines. They vanish under his black shirt and reappear on his neck, curling around his ear and reaching for his eye. His left eye is fully green, in sharp contrast to the right, which just has a glowing green iris.
He flickers like a bad light bulb, his shirt changing from the long sleeved black to a white shirt with a red logo. Ice curls around him, coating the floor underneath his barely visible feet. She’s shaking, she realizes, hand locked around the footboard of the bed.
The boy reaches and the room is suddenly full of sound. It’s voices, layered over each other. Whispering and begging. For a brief moment, he flickers into something more solid. More real. And she recognizes him.
“Daniel?” She says in shock, her mouth suddenly dry as the desert.
What the hell is going on?
help
The word lingers in the air, barely heard.
The light turns on.
There’s no one else in the room.
Sam stands in the light for a long, long time.
She’s always wondered about ghosts. She’s wondered about all sorts of mythical creatures, folklore, and old wives’ tales. Wondered where the kernel of truth to the stories might lie.
She doesn’t know if Daniel is a ghost or if she’s hallucinating or what.
But she can’t ignore it. She’s come this far. She’d never forgive herself if she didn’t see this through. It’s the most interesting thing to happen to her in years.
...She also can’t get his voice out of her head. The desperation . The look on his face--shattered and lonely.
She takes out her water bottle and takes a good drink, trying to get rid of the dryness. She closes her eyes and lets out a long, slow breath.
“Okay,” She says, forcing herself to walk over and pick up her flashlight. “Okay. Help, right? Where?”
She has no reason to think he can answer her, but she has to try. The house is large and she has no idea what she’s looking for. She’s trying not to let her mind wander to what she might find. She doesn’t know what kind of help she can give a probably dead boy.
The door opens, just enough to be free of the latch. She doesn’t give herself time to second guess, just opens the door the rest of the way and steps back out into the hallway. It’s no warmer out here--and standing in the doorway, she can feel the press of warmth on her back and the creeping cold in front of her.
Something falls downstairs, jarring in the silence. She can’t help the jolt, nor the kick in her heartbeat.
“Okay,” She says aloud, her voice echoing and strange. “Downstairs.” The stairs are not any quieter on the way down and she hates every step. It’s a relief to reach the bottom. She sweeps her flashlight over the living room, pausing over the cup that now lies in the middle of the room. As she watches, the cup begins to move, rolling towards the kitchen. It’s hard to get her feet to move, but she manages.
The kitchen looks the same as before, if anything’s moved she can’t tell. When nothing happens with her in the doorway, she steps further into the room.
“In here?” She asks, getting closer to the counter than before. She’s not sure what could be here that would help him.
Something rattles and she spins, her grip on the flashlight painful. Her light lands on a door, one she didn’t notice before. It’s metal, with several warnings plastered on it. The handle of it rattles again.
She lets out a laugh and to her credit it’s only mildly hysterical. “The basement, of course. I should have guessed that.” She walks closer and she doesn’t know if she’s hoping it’s locked or not. “Please don’t murder me in the basement, Daniel.”
The door rattles and there’s a rise in sound again, the same whispers curling in the air.
Danny
“Don’t like your full name either?” Sam says, her heart pounding. “Can’t blame you, not a big fan of Samantha myself.”
It takes her several moments to put her hand on the door’s handle. Once she does, she’s unsurprised that it’s ice cold. There’s frost growing on the door, the patterns like fern leaves.
The handle, much to her shock, turns with ease.
She’s left standing at the top of a set of stairs, the darkness a void. She’s not embarrassed to admit that it takes her a couple of long minutes to convince herself to take the first step down. When she finally does, she doesn’t stop until she’s hit the bottom.
She notices about halfway down that there’s something humming in the air, like static, like electricity. It buzzes against her skin and only gets stronger the further she goes. Light, faint and eerily green, breaks through the dark. It gives her just enough ambient light to see the horror around her.
It’s a lab--complete with stark metal tables covered in various beakers and microscopes. There’s tools and bits of metal scattered everywhere, with several things seemingly half assembled. There isn’t enough light to make out much in the way of details. No, it’s just enough to give everything creepy shadows and hide just as much as it reveals. Some of the beakers are filled with an odd substance--it’s an unnatural neon green and it flows , even in the beakers. Bubbles rise and fall, the thick substance never at rest.
What the hell were they researching? She’s never seen anything like this, even beyond the odd glowing substance. There’s several things that seem very out of place--they almost look like… weapons.
“What the hell were they going to fight?” She wonders allowed, flashlight hovering several gadgets that she can’t name. The closest description she’s got is some kind of gun , but that doesn’t even feel quite right. They’re overlarge and look hefty.
The whispers rise and the buzzing energy rises with it. She stumbles back from the force of it, the energy a weight. It goes right through her, beating against her flesh and vibrating her bones. Her heartbeat is a frantic thing, like a rabbit on the run. The green substance in the beakers rises , overflowing their confines and reaching for something.
Danny forms, looking much more solid here than he did in his bedroom. It only increases the sense of wrongness. The black shirt is much more formed and she realizes abruptly that it’s not a shirt , it’s a hazmat suit, with a thick weave of protective fabric. Gloves, impossibly white, form over his hands, blocking the scars on his left hand from view.
The ones that climb out of his suit, the wind up his neck, glow brightly, impossibly green. His hair floats, like gravity is a suggestion rather than a law. His skin is pale, with green undertones. His face is much more defined now, but his eyes are still mismatched. The left engulfed in green and the other an unnaturally green pupil set in an otherwise normal looking eye.
“Hunt,” He says, his mouth moving long before she hears the sound, like he’s desynced with reality. He moves his arms, the movements stuttering and strange. His mouth moves again, but she doesn’t hear anything.
He frowns, head cocking to the side. There’s static at his edges, blurring his form.
“Hunt,” Sam repeats, somehow forcing herself to take a step closer. “Hunting what?” She’s close now and the buzzing is a frantic energy inside of her, dancing down her bones.
He makes a gesture and it’s hard to follow with how much he flickers. He does it again, slower. She follows it closer this time, as he forms a finger gun and mimes shooting and then starts to point--
“You?!” Sam exclaims, shock slammed through her. “They were hunting you?”
He makes a see-saw gesture with one hand, his body heaving with a sigh. He speaks again and she actually catches some of it this time.
“...Ghosts…built to catch…” She tries to hear more, but it’s impossible. She doesn’t know if he doesn’t have the energy to make himself heard or if she’s simply not on the right plan of reality to hear him.
“Ghosts?” She says, looking around again. There’s nothing really here that says ghost hunting but then nothing here looks like anything she thought a lab would look like. The glowing substance is freaky, but it’s not anything she’d associate with ghosts.
But she’s also talking to a dead boy, so what does she know?
With Danny gone for the moment, she pushes deeper into the basement. Much like the weird UFO on the roof, the basement seems much larger than should be allowed. The entire thing is lined with metal, with several tall cabinets--many of which are locked--and more odd weapons hang on the wall. There’s pieces of old microwaves, toasts, toaster ovens and other household appliances lying gutted on a table.
She turns around a partition and freezes when the whole room turns green. There, on the back wall of the basement, is a swirling green…thing. It’s lined with heavy metal and seems to contain the same substance as the beakers. The air is thick here and full of whispers. She can feel something pressing on her. There’s a ringing under the whispers that quickly turns to an awful scream.
There’s a flicker in the green swirl, movement like hands reaching, the arched back of someone in pain.
For one instant, she sees Danny, one pressed against an unseen wall, head thrown back, mouth open in a scream. He’s in shades of green, but she thinks of the scars that climb up his arm, the one eye that’s nothing but empty green.
Oh.
Oh.
“This is how you died,” she whispers, something like grief aching in her. Grief for a boy she’d never known, who died so young.
His parents made this, made all of this, and it killed him. They hunt ghosts, and their son became one.
Is it any wonder it seems they couldn’t take it? That their daughter is with someone else?
HELP!
It’s a shout, desperate and begging.
“How?” She calls back, aching. “You’re dead, I can’t-- I can’t fix that.”
trap
…did he mean he was trapped or that there was a trap? She’s not eager to get any closer to the swirling pit that’s already taken a life.
But she can’t leave him either. She’s come this far, seen this much. People have been in and out of this house. He’s watched his parents leave, his sister get sent to live elsewhere. Watched as people walked past him and did nothing. If he is a ghost, if he is trapped here, and there’s a way for her to help him, to let him…go wherever he needs to, how can she do any less?
K'vod HaMet, she thinks.
The Dead's Dignity.
Steeling herself she walks closer to the wall, shoving her flashlight into a pocket as she does. The closer she gets, the louder it all is. The whispers, the echoing scream, the pleading. The tingling edge of the energy becomes a burning weight and she can’t help but shake.
She’s mere feet from the spinning mass of it when she pauses.
Being this close feels dangerous. She’s sure it is, in some form or fashion.
But there’s nothing to be done for it now.
“Danny?” She calls, looking into the mass of energy. “How--how do I help?”
reach
Of course, reach into the glowing green previously unknown energy. That’s the obvious choice. She’s starting to wonder if it is a trap, if she’s going to end up like Danny if she touches this when--
A hand, pressed flat against the energy, a fist, pounding, desperate, tired eyes.
She reaches.