Chapter Text
“My Tennant will be on a short holiday from the 3rd to the 10th of this month,” the man's reply was grainy as it emitted from the phone's receiver.
Roger that. It isn’t like I heard you the other three times.
With a domineering finality, he continued. “She has expressly stated she only wants her house open to you for one day. She wants this ‘nuisance’ taken care of immediately. I will be at the property on the 3rd to open the house for you.”
That's this Saturday. Talk about an emergency house call.
Mark swallows audibly before dampening his lips. The deadline was way sooner than expected. “Saturday it is then,” he says. “We will see you then Mr. Kang.”
The landlord grumbles his sendoff before the line goes dead. Mark let’s out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding as a familiar elation settles in the pit of his stomach. He taps on his most frequently dialed contact after cracking his knuckles.
You see, those kinds of calls have become a regular feat in Mark's short 19 years of life. After trying a hand in retail, motor mechanics and serving tables at various restaurants around his small neighborhood he had finally found something exciting to do with his time that pays well and works around his busy college schedule. While at first it was slow to start and experimental – barely enough to sustain his ever-present ramen addiction (don't judge him), it steadily grew more and more successful. From sleepless nights waiting for it to gain traction to a barrage of phone calls from various residents or landlords around the city.
When asked by friends, acquaintances or his grandma what he does for a living the answer is always the same.
He is Mark Lee: student and part-time ghost hunter.
“What did you break now?” His call is answered on the fourth ring by a sleepy voice.
Mark is too buzzed on excitement to roll his eyes. “Nothin'.” Comes his nonchalant reply. He decides to hold off the news for now and checks the neon numbers on his alarm clock. Afternoon light still seeping through his curtains. “Why are you sleeping right now dude? It's 3:30.”
The boy on the other end of the line lets out a giant yawn, there's a shuffling noise in the background that Mark can only assume is him stretching. “Just spent ten hours editing an extra credit assignment,” the boy mumbles and Mark makes a noise of ascent. While not mandatory and generally a pain in the ass, extra credit assignments are a gold mine if done properly – and Johnny Seo is not one to back down from an all-nighter.
Johnny, four years his senior, is Mark's best friend and partner in crime. The older majors in filmmaking while Mark majors in sound production. The two of them met when their courses joined together to produce a film for the end of semester showcase: a vapid and lifeless project but experience nonetheless. The pair instantly clicked and stayed in touch after the project was done. It should have been Johnny's final year of college but delays in the earlier years of his course have him bound there for at least one more. Hence why he is adamant about extra credit – he feels lucky to even still be in the filmmaking course.
A few months after their group assignment had finished – right when Mark had had his full of being shouted at by customers for putting too much sauce on their pizza base – he had approached Johnny with an idea.
The pair of them had gone to see the latest Poltergeist movie in cinema (throughout which Johnny couldn’t stop laughing and Mark had almost pissed himself a dozen times), the younger boy was inspired to ask the question. Eventually, the offhanded proposition of “Yo, what if we recorded ourselves going to haunted places and post them on the internet?” had escalated into a whirlwind of recording, editing and travelling around to various creepy locations in their city.
Johnny’s deep voice broke Mark out of his reprieve, seeming to have gauged the younger's jittery energy through the phone. “Wanna tell me something, Mark?”
The younger's face split with a smile. “I got us another job.”
A groan. “When and where?”
“An old lady's apartment in the Baudee district,” Mark replied. “The building’s been there for centuries and apparently she’s reported some pretty strange shit. Our deadline visit is.. um… it's this Saturday.”
Mark rushes the final fragment of his last sentence. And in the pregnant pause that follows he can almost hear the eye roll from Johnny.
“That’s not a lot of time to research.”
Mark's stomach drops. Johnny has always been adamant on being thorough with a project - especially now that their content has gained traction. He has a keen natural talent for film composition but the more time spent laying the footwork of an investigation in the beginning means less editing work they have to do in post.
“I… I know but – I will get it done in time,” Johnny doesn’t doubt that Mark will get it done. While Johnny is no stranger to all-nighters, he knows that Mark has gone weeks without rest. Spending days at a time in his apartment working on a composition or sound mixing for a monster hunter episode and winding up not being able to tell you the last time he saw the sun. It’s this self-destruction that Johnny hates more than remaining to a tight routine or schedule on a project – though, Mark fails to understand this.
The older let’s out a resigned sigh. “Just don't work yourself too hard.”
Mark hadn't listened.
In the few days that followed Mark had made so many rudimentary visits to the campus library that he was basically a resident there. He scoured the worn and dated pages of the city's history books looking for telltale signs that would typically explain a subsequent haunting in that area. Things such as public hangings, natural disasters, burials, séances, exorcisms, witchcraft, voodoo or generally any other reports of paranormal happenings in that district. The deeper Mark dug the more frustrated he became. Coming up empty searching through all the notable years when such things usually occur. Finding nothing but a trivial family dispute over the custody of a pig.
He figured he could use the lack of a notable cause to their advantage. At the beginning of each episode he and Johnny usually break down the history of the area or even events specific to a house they are visiting. They find this entices the viewers who believe in spirits and also caters to those who don't believe at all. This time around though, they could use the lack of history in the area to create suspense and use it to debunk the tenant’s reports if they can’t catch anything on camera.
Saturday afternoon rolls around before Mark has time to breathe. Dressed in acid wash skinny jeans, matching denim jacket layered over a plain white shirt and his ‘ghost hunting boots’, the blonde haired boy locks the door to his apartment and takes the stairs. Afternoon light disappearing quickly over the horizon.
Despite having never found definitive proof of a ghost (as Johnny loves to constantly point out), Mark always feels inexplicably jittery before each episode shoot. Often a distraction from the exhaustion settling in his bones. This time is no exception. His stomach always feels like it’s about to fall out of his ass without a moment's hesitation and a tingling sensation dances along his fingertips. These symptoms seem to be amplified tonight. Every slight noise on the street has him jumping slightly, his lips are chapped from biting them so much and he almost bolts out of the carriage when someone sneezes on the subway.
Duffle bag slung over his shoulder, Mark rings the buzzer of Johnny's apartment complex. He applies a helping of chapstick into his lips as he ignores his brain subconsciously counting down the seconds. After a short while the door opens revealing a relatively fresh faced Johnny. His outfit today exudes a comfortable and homely vibe with white, wide legged trousers and a black sweater with a long dark grey t-shirt hem visibly peeking out under it.
“Ready to be proven wrong again?” Johnny baits sardonically.
“Got the camera this time?” Mark counters and bursts into laughter when the older pouts.
“That was one timeee,” he whines and Mark laughs louder. The banter clearing his head and calming his nerves. “C'mon let's get this over with.”
“Let's geddit!” Mark chirped, before leading the way. Something about the presence of the raven haired gentle giant allowing him to center himself as they make their way to the subway.
The thing that sets them apart from all the other debunking series on the internet is their dynamic on camera. Johnny is skeptical at best and downright patronizing at worst when it comes to the existence of supernatural beings. Both their budding friendship along with their opposing viewpoints add to their chemistry on-screen.
The suburb they are investigating within is a 15 minute ride on the subway from Johnny's apartment. Nobody batted an eye at the two bags full of recording equipment they each carried and they ran into no trouble on the way. They ended up getting to their required apartment building one and a half hours before the landlord was due to arrive. The sun having disappeared over the horizon.
The neighborhood was one of the more hilly places within the city, the streets slowly rising and falling like ocean waves. Despite the peaks and troughs, the inclined streets were lined with apartment buildings – some stretching three stories high. From the rooftops of those that are perched at the highest point of the hills you can see the city's harbor. Mellow ambient lighting is emitted from the yellowing bulbs of the dated streetlamps. All the buildings are decorated with bricks of varying color, creating a mottled array of patchwork down the street. Apartment block 2000 – the one Johnny and Mark were currently stood in front of – was a rich deep red brick with gunmetal grey embellishments. Mark didn’t want to be cliché, but it was arguably one of the more imposing buildings.
They managed to kill time by getting some establishing shots of the building and the streets surrounding. After a bit of trial and error they managed to set up the camera on the tripod and filmed their introduction portion of the episode – glad that they wouldn’t have to alternatively edit in a voice over for that part. It was slightly difficult only having themselves rather than a supporting film crew, but they made it work like they always do. Mark managed to recite his findings (or lack thereof) on the history of the suburb and apartment buildings – in his record least amount of takes so far (four). Finally they got to film where they recited the strange happenings within the tenant’s home.
For these segments, they each have a handheld camera that they film with. Johnny’s is on the end of a selfie stick and Mark's is bare so they can alternate between wide and close-up shots. They’re holding their respective devices as they walk down the darkened street towards the apartment building. The red façade creeping up from the shadows like a foreboding warning.
“So um,” Mark begins eloquently, looking down at the worn pavement and back up again. “Mr. Landlord told me that apparently the old lady who lives here has complained about some pretty crazy stuff.”
“How crazy are we talking, Mark?” Johnny interjects, eyes focused on framing the street and apartment perfectly.
“Well, apparently she first started noticing the lights in her sitting room being turned on and off about three months ago. Like, she would leave the room having turned the light off and it would be back on when she came back in. She contacted the electrical company with a complaint and they checked all the wiring. No faults.
“She then just ignored it for a while until the next strange thing started happening. In her sitting room she has an old record player. She kept finding that records that weren’t even close to being damaged or old were skipping or stuttering without interference or stopping altogether. And sometimes when she left a particular record on the turntable, she would hear it playing music from her bedroom during the night without her turning it on. It wouldn’t skip or stutter then.”
Even just saying those words made a cold shiver run down Mark's spine. He looked over at Johnny who had a stupid smirk on his face. “What?” he questioned the older with a breathless laugh.
“I dunno Mark…” the raven haired boy drawled purposefully. He then held back a laugh and lowered his voice. “…all of these things kinda sound like an old lady's forgetfulness.” The elder covered his mouth as he said it as if he felt bad to be blaming it on the woman. Mark felt bad for laughing but the look on his hyung's face was hilarious.
Mark composed himself and stopped walking for dramatic effect. None of these bits were scripted – the pair of them usually opting to just go with the flow. Which usually means that Johnny hears the accounts for the first time like the viewer, so Mark likes to play up the theatrics.
“That's not even the craziest part,” he begins, tapping Johnny once on the shoulder as the taller stops and looks at him. “The night before she finally called the landlord with her official complaint, she was asleep in her bedroom when the record player turned on by itself again. She distinctly remember having not left a record on the turntable that night. The record that was playing was one that never stuttered and had played during the night when she left it on the turntable. None of the others had done that. Anyway um.. . she was, like, super fed up at this point and she went into the sitting room She ripped the needle off the vinyl and swapped out the record for another in the hopes it wouldn’t play again.
“As she was walking away from the record player, the record jumped off, flew across the room and smashed into the wall. It landed amongst a pile of other newly smashed records. They were all enact when she had gone to bed.”
There was a pause. Mark's dark eyes were wide as he retold the story. The pair let the words hang in the air amidst the silence of the darkened street.
“So… this is a hipster ghost then?” Johnny had that stupid grin on his face again and Mark brought a hand to his face and sighed. They continued walking when Johnny spoke again. He raised a brow. “Just curious, which record was the one that played without a problem? The one that didn’t smash?”
Mark’s eyes widened once more and we felt his face go red. He looked down at the ground and mumbled. “Um.. Michael Jackson's uh.. Th-Thriller.”
Johnny’s snort and subsequent laughter echoed off the buildings onto the empty street. He doubled over and almost tripped due to his elation. He had just enough breath to gasp out “That's so cliché!!”
And as much as Mark was loathe to admit it – as much as he wanted to be the first person the capture a ghoul on a recording – it was super cliché. He felt almost stupid admitting it out loud and couldn’t help but question just how reliable this old woman must be. He really hoped this place was at least the slightest bit interesting – they both needed the money and wanted to remain diligent for their fan base.
“Laugh it up,” was all he could reply with the shake of his head as they mounted the front steps. A sleek black car rolled it’s way down the street and parked out front. The landlord, two minutes late. He shut his car door with a resounding slam throughout the street. Mark winced, there goes that audio.
They cut both their cameras and pocket them for now while they get the formalities out of the way. The landlord is as gruff and impersonal in real life as he is on the phone. While Mark and Johnny just about tower over him in height, the man is stout and wide with broad shoulders and imposing posture. He exudes a general ‘I hate my job' vibe. After the brief greetings are over with the smaller man pushes past the pair to jostle with the front door of the apartment. They take the (creaky) stairs to the uppermost level where the carpet is worn down the center of the corridor like the landlord's hairline. A chair lift was installed on each stairwell in the place of an elevator, Mark knew better than to ask the stout man if they could try it out.
They reach apartment number 66. Mark hears Johnny’s snicker behind him as the landlord produces a set of copper keys and opens the door. The balding man was panting from the ascent – Mark wonders idly if he should have suggested the chairlift.
“Don't break anything,” the man whips around after letting them through the threshold of the old lady's apartment, they’re stood in the kitchen. “Don't set fire to anything, don't go snooping around anywhere – especially the closet. My client has expressly stated she does not want any kids snooping around in her private belongings. Lock the door on your way out and I will be back tomorrow morning to check that everything is in it's place.”
“Except for the ghost, right?” Johnny muses. The landlord levels him with an unamused glare. The light-hearted smirk slowly dissolves from the gentle giant's face. But neither Mark nor the landlord notice the remaining mischievous glint in his honey brown eyes.
Without another word – but not without another glare at the both of them – the landlord takes his leave from the apartment, leaving the pair of them in a bout of momentary silence. It’s in this silence that Mark's brain remembers where they are. Where he is. These shoots are always so seemingly effortless for Johnny, who seems to never scare at anything less than the fashion disaster that is Mark's wardrobe occasionally. While the older is a self-proclaimed skeptic Mark has a more difficult time trying to comprehend the reports of paranormal activity. Usually he is a relatively rational guy – aside from the occasional lapse in logic. Yet something about these creepy locations makes him jittery and feel as though his stomach is made of lead. This location especially is making him feel all kinds of Scooby-Doo jeebies.
“Do you feel that, hyung?” he breaks the silence, voice wavering slightly. Johnny looks up slightly from where he was fixing the grip stick back onto the camera, knelt down on one knee on the dated linoleum. Mark pulls the sleeve of his jacket up, revealing the goosebumps and raised hairs that have infested the ridge of his forearm. He brings it forward. “I've got chills.”
“They're multiplyin’,” Johnny sings softly. The carry of his voice echoing off the kitchen cabinets. He resumes fixing the camera. His singing gets progressively louder. “And I’m loooosing control!” It slices through the building and Mark knows they’ve pissed neighbors off already.
“Dude! Shut up!” Mark whisper-shouts. “You'll scare the ghost away!!”
Johnny takes a breath from laughing. “Like you haven’t done that already with your face – ohhhh!!”
“Don't you remember this ghost only likes one song? It probably hates us already!!”
“Then the ghost is a dick.”
“Shh!! You’re being so fucking loud - and we aren't even filming!”
Johnny clicks his tongue. “Oh what? You think I’m gonna wake the ghost up with my beautiful singing?”
A sigh. “Set the camera up, dickhead.”
“Just call me Johnny Travolta.”
While filming, they always have the lights of a location dimmed or turned off completely. The apartment building being as old as it is, it only has an on or off setting. They counter the darkness using flashlights and Johnny turns on an old lamp in the corner of the living room. The warm yellow light is enough to light their faces up on camera. Johnny is adamant to point out that the low lighting helps to create ambience within the shots, refusing to entertain Mark’s ‘bullshit’ reasoning that it helps the ghosts feel more comfortable.
They fire up the cameras once again, Johnny begins getting shots of the dimly lit living room while Mark describes the chills he got when he first entered the place (not without interjection from his raven-haired elder). They lay all the groundwork for their investigation: telling the audience what they will be doing in the house and where. They first decide they will take a look at all the other rooms in the house, starting with the living room and ending with the sitting room.
Much to Mark's discomfort, they both agree that they have to spend the majority of their time in the fabled sitting room.
The apartment’s front door opens like a beast's mouth into a narrow hallway. There’s a three foot wide storage closet running along the left side of the threshold. A second shorter hallway branches off from the landing down into the old woman's bedroom toward the front portion of the apartment. Tarnished carpet abruptly turns into dated linoleum when the hallway reaches the kitchen to the right– where the boys where scolded by the landlord. To the left, off from the kitchen resides a bathroom and toileting area. The whole kitchen past a low standing counter opens up into a dining room and lounge (consisting of a cheap round table with three chairs, a creased black leather couch and a television from the 90s). Finally, nestled in line with the couch is the closed entrance into the sitting room. In stark comparison to the grime and general datedness of the rest of the apartment, the door is a pristine white with a rounded shiny silver handle. And uneasy feeling settles over Mark when he looks at it.
The first room on their agenda is the bedroom. The décor is as unassuming as the rest of the house. A twin bed is pushed against the outermost wall, to the right of it resides a dark redwood chest of drawers with a bronze vanity nestled on top. A closet is shoved to the right of the door. They leave the beside lamp on its dimmed setting in the corner of the room. Johnny wonders aloud how the old lady can sleep with her room backing directly onto the hallway outside.
After getting themselves set up and gaining a general feel for the room, Johnny made the call to start their cameras recording for the first of the EVP sessions. The term was among the other fancy ghost hunting jargon Mark had found when he first researched into the profession. Standing for ‘electronic voice phenomena’, EVPs are basically any provoked or unprovoked recordings of unexplainable voices or sounds during an investigation. The pair usually spend about ten to fifteen minutes in a room asking various questions (with banter interspersed throughout), inviting the ghouls to communicate with them in the hopes of capturing evidence on film. In post Mark scours for hours through audio files analyzing every breadth of possible proof. None of the recordings have been conclusive thus far.
“Okay guys,” Mark begins, drawing the first word out to a drawl. “So right now we are in the main bedroom of the apartment. As you can see things seem to be pretty average, pretty um… usual I guess.” He cuts himself short before he starts rambling. “We're gonna try and see if the ghost wants to talk to us.”
He looks away from the camera and addresses the eerily empty room. “So um.. good evening…”
Johnny snickers.
“..I’m Mark and this is Johnny-”
“Hi.”
“And we're here because we were told about some pretty strange things that went down in this apartment a few days ago. And.. we were wondering, i-if there's anyone else here with us, if you’d like to communicate or talk with us you can feel free to do so now. You could say something to us. You could… um.. move something in this room? My tall friend here has a flashlight so I guess you could turn that on. Something to let us know that you're here, and willing to talk.”
Johnny places the black flashlight atop the chest of drawers. The silence that follows permeates throughout the room chills Mark to the bone. He keeps thinking he sees things out the corner of his eye but the second he moves his head it stills. His eyes were playing tricks on him.
“I think it's overwhelmed by choice,” comes the timbre of Johnny's voice.
“Okay then,” Mark stalls as he tries to think of something he could request of the ghost. “I-if you’re here with us, then turn that flashlight on.”
The pair stare at the light for a few moments and Mark nearly jumps out of his own skin when a rustle is heard from the closet to their right.
Mark's gaze snaps over to the mirrored doors of the closet, Johnny looks up passively from the flashlight and follows the younger's stare. The blonde backs away when another rustle sounds, almost bumping into Johnny's broad chest. The sound is like metal scraping wood, carving patterns on the inside of the closet in three of four strokes. Mark turns to Johnny when the sound suddenly starts happening more rapidly.
“H-hyung?” His dark eyes are the size of dinner plates. The elder raises a brow.
“I think there's something in the closet,” Johnny offers. The corner of his mouth tilting into a slight smirk. Asshole.
An audible gulp joins the scratching sounds as Mark begins to approach the closet. His knuckles are white as he grips the camera. A floorboard creaks under his weight and the scratching halts. The blonde steels his nerves and raises a shaky hand to the cool handle of one of the doors. Johnny shifts behind him – probably to get a better angle. The hinges let out a pained groan as Mark slowly pried it open. He can vaguely make out various clothes hanging and a few boxes but nothing moves for what feels like a few minutes.
Something small and white darts out from under one of the boxes and onto the floorboards.
“FUCK!” Mark stumbles over his own feet in his scramble to get away. The camera goes skirting across the floor to the other side of the room. Pain erupts across Mark's skin from where his ass kisses the floor. Johnny has doubled over with laughter by the time Mark realizes that it wasn’t a ghost but simply a very real mouse.
“We're editing that out,” the younger grumbles. Johnny’s black hair falls over his face as he rapidly shakes his head.
“Nope,” he says, popping the ‘p'. “Video editor decides what makes the final cut. That's staying in.”
Mark groans and picks himself up off the floor. Johnny pauses his laughter long enough to help him brush the dust off his pants. Mark relocates the camera and picks it up when Johnny speaks again.
“Now that we've discovered your fear of mice,” Mark flips him off. “I think we're done in here.”
“That’s the only thing I agree with you on.”
The rest of the EVPs in the other rooms before the sitting room go by pretty uneventfully. No interjections from neither ghouls nor mice. Mark is back in the kitchen messing with the settings on his camera (stalling) and Johnny is checking the other rooms – making sure everything is left in place and undisturbed before they face the final boss. The house is still eerily quiet, having had no sound interference from the neighboring apartments or outside. Mark is surprised to learn that it has been almost two hours since they first got here. The whole space seeming to operate on an entirely different plane of existence. The hair on the back of Mark's neck stands on end.
A gasp from down the hall justifies that.
His head snaps to the direction of the kitchen's entrance. “Hyung?”
No reply. He walks tentatively towards the entrance. “Johnny?”
Only silence. Tightness builds up in the back of Mark's throat as we assumes the worst. Assumes that when he rounds the corner he will see Johnny stung up by his neck with a tormented spirit beside him. Prepares to scream and fight whatever anguished soul has captured his friend.
He let’s out an indignant yelp when Johnny appears from around the corner.
The older blinks at Mark's flailing arms as the boy recovers. Held in his large hands is a box-shaped object, Mark eyes it as Johnny enters the kitchen. A smirk graces his features.
“Look what I found,” he goads, placing it on the counter. Mark recognizes the dark brown wood and black cursive lettering. A Ouija board.
“Oh hell no,” Mark says immediately. Backing away from the offending board.
“C'mon, it could be fun to try and use it.” The raven cocks his hip against the bench.
“I don’t even know how to ‘use it’, hyung,” Mark replies. “I don’t even want to know.”
“Looks like it's been used before,” Johnny notes. Running a finger along the various scrapes in the varnish.
Mark approaches carefully and studies it from afar. There is a significant amount of scuffs along the top the board where the planchette has glided along it. Some letters are more tarnished than others but still discernable. The planchette itself, a white heart-shaped piece of plastic with a glass orb in the center, sports several dints and blemishes.
“Where did you even find this?” Mark looks up from the board.
Johnny shrugs. “The storage closet by the front door.”
Mark blanches, eyes widening a fraction. “Dude!? We were told not to snoop! We’re probably already in trouble for opening the bedroom closet!”
“Psh, it’s not like either of them are gonna watch the episode,” Johnny says.
“Why would the old lady have one of these?” Mark wonders out aloud.
His hyung levels him with a blank stare. “It's a just a board game.”
“Okay, well,” Mark huffs. “If it's ‘just a board game’ then we can leave it out of the episode.”
A pause. Johnny's broad shoulders slump a fraction as he gathers the board and the planchette off the counter. A childish pout adorns his features.
Mark weighs their options. He could leave the board and all its secrets be; never to be uncovered again. Which would essentially eat him alive worse than any ghoul that pops out of that thing could. Alternatively, they could try it out with the whole theatrics. Dim the lights, light some candles and sit on the floor of the sitting room. They could call out for spirits to try and communicate with them. And nothing might happen – they could sit there like idiots for a few minutes and laugh about it later. Or… or they could finally gain some legitimate proof…
“Ugh fucking fine.”
Johnny pauses at the entrance to the kitchen, turning around to regard his friend.
“I'll search up how to use it,” Mark continues, his voice a low grumble. “We can try it out and see what happens.”
Johnny smiles at this, placated. “I knew you'd come around.” He darts off into the sitting room.
“If we die, I’ll kill you,” Mark called out to his retreating back.
Conveniently, the cellular reception on Mark's phone was operating at turtle speed, only allowing him to load up a single (albeit, sketchy) page with information on how to conduct a séance with a Ouija board. He tries to swallow down the nerves while he looks through the kitchen cupboards for candles and some matches.
By the time they’re seated face to face on the floor of the sitting room Mark had barely had a moment spare to rethink his decision. They’ve filmed establishing shots of the record player, the poofy sitting chair in the corner and the nondescript trinkets atop the mantelpiece. Johnny's camera is set up on a tripod between them to their left, facing the table with the record player and they’ve managed to clip Mark's camera to his shirt. Though the blond managed to find a zip lighter in one of the kitchen drawers, there is a distinct lack of usable candles in the house. He managed to improvise a line of four blue and white striped birthday candles shoved into some foam.
“Perfect,” Johnny chuckles when he spies them.
“Shut up,” Mark mutters his reply, exacerbated. He places the tips of his fingers of both hands on top of the planchette and motions for Johnny to do the same. Despite being bathed in the warm glow of candlelight, the room couldn’t be more stagnant or cold. They breathe together for a moment.
If someone had told Mark two years ago that we would be a college attendee in the course of his dreams, who plays with Ouija boards and various other ghostly shit on the side, he would probably laugh in their face. He finds that now, when facing the possibility of contacting spirits successfully for the first time, he reflects more on how far his life has come than he has ever cared to do in the past.
“If there's anyone here in this room with us tonight,” he begins, after spelling out ‘H-E-L-L-O' with the plastic planchette. “We are calling out to the one responsible for terrorizing the lady who lives here. The one who is acquainted with that record player. Can you, um, tell us your name please?”
They look down to their hands over the scuffed board. Anticipating it to move at any moment to a letter.
If this thing moves I’m gonna lose it.
Johnny snickers. Oh shit I said that out loud.
“Heard you’re a Michael Jackson fan,” Johnny says, his features morphed into a wicked grin. Mark wants to tell him to cut it out but he's too focused on starting intently at the board.
Mark's stomach feels like it’s going to fall out of his butt. Seconds pass by at the pace of hours.
Nothing happens.
“Well that’s a surprise,” Johnny says, his voice slicing through the tense atmosphere. Mark didn’t know what he expected – he should feel relief that it didn’t work. But he can't manage to shake off the disappointment that settles in the pit of his stomach. Johnny lets go of the planchette and hauls himself off the floor, cracking his knuckles and stretching his arms high above his head. He cuts the camera on the tripod rolling and walks towards the table housing the record player. Mark tries with one hand to scroll through the rest of the information page on his phone but it goes no further. The words on the page fade to white. The blonde boy removes his other hand from the planchette and refreshes the page to no avail. The only thing that loads this time is the tacky title art and an advertisement for watermelon candy.
“Oh…” comes Johnny’s exclamation to his right. “Holy shit.” Mark is too exhausted and drained to get his hopes up about anything else, but still stands to check out what Johnny has found.
He wishes he hadn’t.
There, below the record player, branded into the dark wood grain of the unassuming coffee table, is an inverted pentagram.
Now, while Mark has been willing to sacrifice a slice of his sanity for the sake of proving if ghosts, spirits or other ambivalent entities are real, he had elected to stand by one rule and one rule only. The single rule that he had read a thousand times when researching the topic. The one rule he had never broken regardless of circumstance which was: do not fuck with demons.
The pentagram is around a foot in diameter, branded in stark contrast to the unmarred surface of the coffee table. Black scuff marks tarnish the bottom of the record player where it had slid over the seal. The indent is a good inch into the thickness of the table and the edges are scorched black and raised slightly.
“Woah, you okay dude?” Johnny questions. Mark's face had morphed sheet white as he glared at the pentagram.
“Fuck this house,” Mark says simply. Recalling the scuffs on the Ouija board. How used it was. “We're leaving.”
Johnny hummed thoughtfully, looking pointedly around the room. “I’m not much for interior design, but a little paint could fix it right up.”
“I’m serious, dude,” Mark urges, shaking his head. Johnny turns back to him.
“Why are you so freaked out about this?”
“Why aren't you!?”
“This is all bullshit anyway.”
While they argued, neither of them noticed the planchette moving over the glossy surface of the board.
“How could you still stand by that after all we've heard and now this??”
The heart shaped plastic started to count down from zero… nine…
“This could easily have been a set up.”
…eight… seven… six…
“Wh- how?”
…five…
“Think about it Mark. The old lady reports some ‘shady business’ in her apartment. She plants all this stuff in here. She complains to Mr Landord and gets a free lavish holiday as compensation.”
…four… three… two…
“Oh..”
…one.
Mark sighs. His nerves dissipating considerably. He had to admit that his hyung had a point. Hearing that rationale left Mark feeling more calm, if not slightly miffed. Granted, Mark always first assumed that people have the best intentions. Clarity for Johnny came with being older; having experienced more and lived in much rougher places than the uneventful city Mark had lived all his life.
“I-… I still wanna leave though…” Mark eyed the blackened scorched edges of the engraving. His voice was small, vulnerable.
“That's okay too,” Johnny gently replies. Because, while he is unperturbed by this stuff because he doesn’t buy into it, he's not a monster. Forcing Mark to stay in an environment he is clearly uncomfortable in is not what friends are for. Besides, they have more than enough footage to make an interesting episode.
Mark turns around and blows out the candles. Small trails of smoke linger in the air. He grabs the Ouija board off the floor and chokes on his saliva.
“You good?” Johnny slaps him on the back and the coughing dissipates.
“Fine,” Mark's reply is hoarse. He didn’t think there was that much smoke in the air. “Let’s just put this back in the closet and leave this fucking place.”
There were no protests from his elder as they returned the candles and matches to their rightful place, dropping the board off in the storage closet by the front door. Mark parries out of the exit without his usual ‘farewell’ speech to the location. Johnny reasons that he must really have been spooked by what they found.
The way home for Mark is like a lucid dream, each event and happenstance occurring around him too fast and too slow simultaneously. He bids Johnny farewell at his stop on the subway and puts his headphones on to try and gather his thoughts. It must've worked because before he knows it the doors are opening and his feet are carrying his body onto the platform.
In stark contrast to the way over, the darkness between the streetlamps don't bother the blonde boy. An eerie sense of calm having settled into his bones.
It isn’t until he has braved the four flights of stairs up to his apartment and entered his home that it dissipates. The resounding click of his front door closing behind him breaks him out of his reprieve.
He unlaces his ghost hunting boots and places them neatly next to his collection by the front door. His feet breathing a sigh of relief as they melt into the floor of his entrance hallway. He pads his way down into his small kitchen and living room area – the largest space he could afford within his budget on the off-campus student housing listings. He draws the blinds that rest over the scruffy old couch when a cold sensation stops him dead in his tracks.
He isn’t alone in his apartment.
A gripping feeling rises in his throat as he turns around slowly. Each muscle in his body goes rigid. When he finally sees what could only be described as a boy leaning against his kitchen counter. The boy, looking not much younger than Mark, is barefoot and dressed plainly in a black, loose fitting long sleeve shirt and black pants. His glare at Mark is almost as intense as his bright red hair. The roots are a deeper red, like dried blood. Upon closer inspection, the boy's eyes are a similar color.
Mark doesn’t know how he finds his voice. “Who are you?”
The boy blinks slowly. Then rolls his crimson orbs. “Your fairy godmother.”
For a moment, Mark can only stare dumbly at the boy. His voice is low and nasally, and his eyes narrow when he speaks. Perhaps Mark stared for too long trying to think of a response, because eventually the boy tilts his head back and to the left so he is looking at Mark through lazily half closed lids.
“I’m a demon you moron,” he smirks. Mark spies the glint of his pointed canines. “You've been cursed.”
Deep down in his subconscious, Mark already knew this. But hearing the words out aloud made the tightness in his chest move back up to his throat, as if someone were gripping and squeezing. And maybe there was. Because the demon's smirk is the last thing Mark sees before his vision blackens and his body hits the floor.