Chapter Text
T.K. had decided that he wouldn’t tell anyone in Austin that he could see ghosts. It wasn’t that he was ashamed. It wasn’t even that he minded all the questions people would inevitably ask, but if he was going to make a fresh start, he figured leaving the ghosts back in New York would be the best choice. Of course, it was never that easy. Ghosts didn’t stop hanging around just because he decided he didn’t want them to anymore.
In New York, talking to the dead had always been a party trick that T.K. used when he needed to cut through the tension in the room. No one had ever taken it seriously. They didn’t believe he was really psychic—just the life of the party who could masquerade as a psychic reasonably well. To them, it was nothing more than a performance. T.K. had always laughed it off and played up the showmanship of it. He was careful to control how much he said because if it became more than a magic trick, people threw around the word “crazy,” and when people thought you were crazy, they started thinking that the partying, the drugs, and the psychic thing were pitiful instead of fun.
When he’d been five, he’d told his parents that he could see ghosts. They’d thought he’d had an overactive imagination, but when he’d come to them each night with terror on his face when a rowdy spirit in their apartment wouldn’t stop yelling, they started to think something was wrong with him Something had to be wrong with a child who genuinely believed he saw ghosts and would talk to the friendly ones as he ate breakfast and break into fits of tears when the creepy ones came into the room.
It wasn’t until he detailed there being a mean drunkard in his room that his parents took him to get professional help from Dr. Lisa Koenig, who insisted that T.K. had deep-seated issues. That was before T.K. had real problems. 9/11 hadn’t happened yet, but Lisa had thought that something had traumatized him. She tried to dig into his past as if a five-year-old had a long and storied life. T.K. would go home and cry after his sessions because the ghosts wouldn’t go away, and no one understood that he wasn’t making them up.
When the ghost sightings got worse after 9/11, Lisa doubled down on her assertion that T.K. was making up tales of ghosts because of trauma, and T.K. couldn’t get her to believe that tragedy made ghosts noisier. It wasn’t his trauma, though; he had plenty of that now. T.K. remembered how she looked at him—pity in her eyes no matter how hard she tried to have a neutral face. He saw her until he was ten and convinced his mom that he really could see ghosts by talking to his dead grandfather, and she let him stop the therapy. (He probably still needed it, but not because he saw ghosts.) Owen’s role in T.K.’s life was too fleeting for his opinion to matter. Gwyn always thought she knew best, anyway.
School had been hard. He’d made the mistake of telling a friend that he could see ghosts once, and from then on, his classmates had mockingly called him Ghost Boy. His teacher had tried to patch it over when it first happened, but the poor woman was out of her element. What did you do with a kid who wouldn’t deny that he saw ghosts? The kids teased T.K. when they knew the teacher couldn’t hear, and he kept that nickname well into high school.
When he became a firefighter, things calmed down a little. No one thought T.K. seriously believed he saw ghosts because what sane adult would think that? The jokes remained, but they were more lighthearted than mocking. They made T.K. feel like part of the group, but they could also be draining when the truth was right there, and no one would take it seriously. His gift was nothing more than a joke. It always had been.
So, yeah, it was nice to be going to Austin, where he wasn’t the weird ghost boy, and he wasn’t planning on being Ghost Boy anytime soon. If anyone asked, he would deny even believing that ghosts existed. It wouldn’t be that much of a lie. After all, all the ghost shows and shows about mediums got it all wrong. Much of what people believed in ghosts was untrue. Maybe some ghosts and psychic shows were true, but most of those things were basically just cold reads and magic tricks. It was no wonder that people couldn’t take real psychics seriously!
As soon as T.K. saw the fire station in the same state as the night the crew had left for the call, he knew he was in trouble. “It’s like a tomb,” T.K. said. He knew that he didn’t belong in Texas. They hadn’t even removed the dead flowers on the sidewalk. The place was haunted, and it was haunting even to someone who couldn’t see ghosts. “I can’t do this, Dad,” T.K. said. “This place has too many memories,” but Owen had promised that it wouldn’t be that bad once T.K. had gotten used to it. During his first visit, the ghosts had been quiet, but he knew they wouldn’t be so reserved for long. They never were.
When he walked into the firehouse for his first shift, it was like walking into a new place. The construction crews had worked their magic, but they couldn’t demolish the past. A tall man with a mustache and dark hair greeted him. T.K. was startled when the man started to talk to him. After so many years, T.K. should have been used to voices coming out of nowhere, but ghosts still put him on edge when he first met them. He could feel their presence, even when he couldn’t initially see them.
“Chuck Parkland,” the guy said, giving T.K. a wave. He didn’t look angry, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t get mad, and if he did get angry, there wasn’t much T.K. would be able to do to get him to leave him alone. There was no “passing over” like they talked about in movies. Ghosts came and went as they pleased, and most of them respected boundaries, but some didn’t.
Before T.K. could say anything, a voice came from behind him. “Are you okay? You just jumped eight feet in the air.” It was one non-stop jumpscare.
“First day jitters,” T.K. tried, keeping the ghost in his peripheral vision. “T.K. Strand.” They’d met before, briefly, but it’d been long enough that reintroduction was in order.
“Paul Strickland,” Paul said, offering a hand that T.K. shook. Paul looked over the place. “This is quite the firehouse, isn’t it?” It had come a long way since T.K. first saw it. If there was such thing as a designer firehouse, he was standing in it, right up Owen’s alley.
“It was a dump before,” Chuck said, and T.K. tried not to look over because looking around at things that weren’t there wouldn’t give the first impression he wanted.
“Even my firehouse in New York wasn’t like this.” It had been nice, but it hadn’t been brand new.
“Oh, a New Yorker. We’re not used to outsiders here.” Chuck was talkative. Great.
“It’s not like this in Chicago either.” Paul gestured to the rest of the fire station. “I’m going to look around. You coming?”
“Nah, that’s okay. I got a sneak peek earlier. I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Okay, man. Nice to meet you. More officially, at least.”
“Yeah, you too,” T.K. said, turning his attention to the ghost beside him when he was sure that no one was there. He had to be careful; more of the crew would be coming in soon.
“I guess we’re alone now,” Chuck said with a chuckle. He seemed like the kind of guy who was always in good spirits. T.K. would have enjoyed talking to him if he were alive. “You can talk to me. I know you can see me.”
“It’s not as easy as that. You can’t talk to me when people are around,” T.K. warned. “It’s distracting.”
“No one else can hear me.”
“Exactly. I don’t want to be that guy who’s always talking to himself.”
“And I don’t want to be dead, but we don’t always get what we want.”
“Listen, I’m sorry that you died, but this is my chance at a fresh start, and I don’t want to be a freak here.”
“I’m not here to ruin your life.” Yet, here he was, making T.K. look like he was talking to air in the middle of the firehouse.
“You do know that you don’t have to be here, right? Ghosts aren’t tethered or whatever to certain spots. You can go anywhere. Most people prefer the other side of the veil.”
“It’s too nice there,” ghosts could never explain what there entailed, though. “Nah, I don’t want to go anywhere. This is home.”
“It’s too nice here now. It’s like a different place,” T.K. pointed out.
“But it’s still home.” Chuck’s grin fell, and T.K. knew he was going to be in trouble. He hated to see people, even dead ones, in pain. “And it doesn’t feel right to go anywhere else.”
“You have a family, Chuck?”
“A wife and a little girl.” T.K. felt a pang in his chest as he thought of that poor fatherless child.
“Why aren’t you going to them?”
“I do sometimes, but they can’t see me. At least the rest of the crew comes here too.” Great, just great.
“Do you need me to tell them something?” Usually, that’s what ghosts wanted the most—to let their families know that they were okay. “I can try to get a message to them.”
“Is this your way of getting me to go away?”
T.K. shook his head. Maybe a little, but mostly, he didn’t want to see Chuck in pain. “Sudden deaths are hard.”
“They seem like they’re doing okay.” Chuck smiled faintly. “I don’t want to set them back.”
“I get it, man, but if you ever need me to tell them something, let me know.” For as much as T.K. didn’t want to get involved, he couldn’t deny his abilities. They were part of him, and whenever he didn’t use them, it felt like a part of him was missing because life was lonelier without the ghosts.
“I better let you go,” Chuck said. “Your shift is starting.”
“Talk later?” He wasn’t sure why he left that option open. It was easier if Chuck left him alone.
Chuck smiled. “You know I have nothing better to do,” and then Chuck was gone, and T.K. was left alone. He laughed to himself. His first friend in Austin was a ghost. Nothing weird about that.