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“Oh fuck no, not this guy again,” Rey mutters to herself, her blood already boiling. She hasn’t even been here for ten minutes and already the most insufferable man known to…man is pulling up beside her van, phonk music blasting so loud that she can hear it through the rolled up windows of his hilariously impractical little hatchback. She shuts the back door of the van with a deafening slam, already pissed off.
When he unfolds himself from the front seat, he accentuates the comically small car he pulled up in because he’s way too tall to be comfortable in any seat in that thing. The keychain hanging from her belt jangles as she stomps over to him.
“How the fuck did you find out this time?” She hisses, rounding the car until she’s up in his face, pointing a gel manicured finger into his broad chest. “I didn’t even tell my producers I was here. I specifically kept this a fucking secret from everyone I know.”
“A little birdie told me,” he whistles. Jaunty-like. Half from the corner of his mouth because he already has a cigarette between his lips, cupping his hand around the tip so he can light it even in the slight breeze. He takes a drag and exhales, smoke billowing out. Rey is, frankly, steamed.
“There is no little birdie!” she shrieks, coming up on her tiptoes and right up into his face, and to his credit he only tucks his chin, looking down at her with those indecipherable eyes. “Listen to me, you giant fucking bird: I did not. Tell anyone. Because you keep showing up. At every fucking haunt I visit. And I’m sick and goddamn tired of you, you overgrown lizard.”
He gives a little snort, sounding somewhat like a horse. “That’s not very nice.”
Rey wants to beat her fists against his chest and knock him down and maybe break an arm or two, but she doesn’t try because a) she’s…not blind to the obvious difference in size between the two of them. Hell, she’s standing right in front of him and she hardly comes up to his pecs, never mind big enough to get any leverage to push him over. And b) she’s got bigger fish to fry. Solo hasn’t brought any of his crew with him either, and he certainly isn’t packing enough equipment in that stupid little Mazda of his to warrant being worried about him stealing her spotlight.
She’d gotten several reliable tips of paranormal activity in the old Elkmont house at the top of Laurel hill; anonymous reports through her website, corroborating stories from some of the locals who’ve lived within a couple miles of Elkmont for the past few generations, and during her own passage through the enormous, dilapidated manor during the day. Even in the daylight hours, there was something electric in the house, something that caused the skin on her arms and legs to erupt in gooseflesh. Pockets of air that would abruptly turn cold or make something inside her squirm and tell her to get out. It felt menacing.
So she isn’t going to let one oversized dragoon with a chip on his shoulder and no appreciation for a proper paranormal investigation spoil her chances of getting an authentic ghostly apparition on camera.
“Fine. Stick around. I don’t give a shit.” She heads back over to her van and re-opens the back door, going back to unloading her camera and mount. “Do not bug me. Do not talk to me. In fact, make yourself useful and stay out here in case anyone else shows up. You can lumber around and scare the shit out of them instead.”
Solo stands there, leaning against his shitbox car all casual-like, still sucking back smoke and staring at her with his weird, intense eyes. It always embarrasses Rey to have that gaze trained on her, and, unfortunately enough for her, she often is its recipient. This isn’t the first time, and probably won’t be the last time that Solo randomly shows up at a location she’s been scouting out and she cannot for the life of her figure out how he does it.
At first she thought that maybe it was just a coincidence. She’d met Solo early on in her ghosthunting days, back when all she brought with her on hunts was her iPhone, a shitty knockoff EMF reader, and a can-do attitude; he wasn’t exactly a well-known figure in the ghosthunting community, but she knew he was affiliated with a few more established groups. Rey actually couldn’t get a very good read on him early on. He didn’t seem to be overly interested in anything to do with the paranormal, but he seemed to be everywhere and knew everyone, so he couldn’t have been a total non-believer.
Over time though, he’d really started to get on her nerves. A little comment here about her worn out sneakers not being appropriate for exploring an asylum they’d both visited (“You’ll get tetanus”), looming around corners when she split off from the main group to explore other areas in the abandoned subway tunnels (“You’re going to get stabbed by someone living down here if you keep going off alone”), holding her back with a firm hand on her shoulder when Rey swore she saw a dark shadow run across a catwalk and tried to climb up to follow it (“You’re out of your mind if you think that’s happening”).
Now she has a DSLR, a proper thermal imaging camera, and a bad attitude, but still somehow she can’t quite seem to shake off this lumbering oaf from her early days. What he is is a menace. A despoiler of moods. An absolute travesty on the ghosthunting community. He could’ve been someone she respected and looked up to as a mentor, given his years of experience, but instead he seems to be only concerned with getting in her way and making her miss prime opportunities for paranormal experiences.
It isn’t like she hadn’t had them on her own. She does this for a reason.
Rey had seen a ghost. Just once. Once when she’d been sixteen and she’d awoken to the sound of her mother’s voice—dead, fifteen years dead in fact—pleading with her to crawl under the bed and she had, only to hear the sound of smashed glass minutes later and then loud footsteps stomping through the house. A loud voice cut off mid-yell. The sound of flesh hitting the floor with a wet thunk. Drawers loudly opening and closing, her own door wrenched open as she watched several feet walk around her room, scouring it for valuables.
Unkar Plutt, her foster dad, hadn’t made it through the night. A burglary gone wrong. Or maybe not so wrong, but she didn’t like to think about that.
What she sometimes liked to think about was the shape of someone standing in the doorframe whispering to her that night. A shape that seemed, at first, ethereal, sort of like something out of a dream, but more substantial. Rey knew something had been there. Whether it was her mother or someone else altogether, something had woken her up that night and told her to hide and she had nothing but her own life to prove that something beyond the human existed in this world.
And this annoying, oversized jalopy of a man had zero appreciation for that. Rey couldn’t name a single time she’d seen Solo get excited about anything other than getting in her way. She didn’t know if it was a personal vendetta against her that made him show up at every goddamn location she visited, but she’s just about had it. Once she found out who on her team was leaking information to him or whose email he’d hacked, she was going to break it or them into a thousand little pieces and scatter the remains in the wind.
“And don’t even fucking think of coming in after me,” she snarls, finally slamming the van door for the last time. With her fanny pack strapped across her chest, her rig set up, and flashlight in hand, she readies herself to make her way over to the front entrance.
Solo drops the cigarette, crushing the rest of it underneath his boot. “You know I’m coming in with you.”
“Solo, I am not joking—I’m going to slice and dice you if you follow me in there.”
She goes to walk past him and, unsurprisingly, he does a little twirl around the back of his car and follows after her, dead leaves crunching under his boots. She doesn’t even have to look back at him to know he’s leering at her ass. “Looking forward to it. Your place or mine?”
That’s another thing. Despite all his hampering and tampering, he also very openly lusts after her. She thinks she’d hate it more if he weren’t…unfortunately very attractive. Very big, very tall, tousled brown hair, and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose that Rey thinks about licking more often than not. Rey’s been tempted once or twice to take him up on his offer and follow him back home, but something about it feels like giving in. Rewarding him for all the shit he’s put her through over the past two or three years.
So instead, she takes her frustrations out on her vibrator at home because the thought of going home with someone else these days makes her feel weirdly ill. Like she’d be doing something wrong. She’s lived a whole life before meeting Solo, but it’s like since meeting him she’s just different.
The steps all the way up to the entrance are falling apart, fragments of stone chipping away and weeds bursting through cracks. Busts of griffins bracket both ends of the sweeping staircase, their beady stone eyes seeming to follow Rey as she ascends with Solo at her back.
At the magnificent manor doors, standing beneath the intricately carved lintel, she whirls around to face him. As expected, he’s hardly two steps from her, close enough that she can smell his cologne and the smoke on his leather jacket; this close, she can see each individual hair follicle in that monstrosity he calls a beard (it’s a glorified goatee). She resists the urge to run her hands through it; she wants to touch his face but not badly enough to compromise her one shot at this mission.
“Okay, fine. Whatever. Follow me. Can you do me a favour though and, just this once, shut the fuck up while we’re in there?”
His lips twitch. Why was he blessed with the fullest, poutiest lips that she wants to suck on and bite? It’s really disgraceful, is what it is. “No promises.”
She points a threatening finger at him. “We’re alone right now, you know, and no one else knows that either of us are here. So, if I were you, I’d be real fucking careful upsetting the girl that might just not tell anyone that you slipped and broke your neck falling down a flight of stairs. You know the wood starts to rot after a couple of years.”
Solo stares down at her; an obsidian, penetrating stare. “You’re making me hard. Get on with it.”
Rey doesn’t even bother looking down. He probably is hard. It makes her hot under her skin, but this isn’t the time nor place; she can think of it tomorrow when she’s tucked away in her bedroom with her vibrator half-shoved up her pussy with the little nub pressed against her clit.
Instead, she turns to the old, leaded doors and twists the handle, giving it a hefty push with her right shoulder. It almost doesn’t move until Solo reaches over her and places a big hand on the center of it, a single push making it creak open. On the other side of the front door, an incredible foyer opens up to them, the floor extending to the very back of the house where dust-lined windows still let in a glimmer of the moonlight and a grand staircase curves up to the second floor. It’s exactly as breathtaking as the last time Rey visited, but the added quality of the night enhances every detail, even those it obscures.
The hallways branching off from the main entryway are strewn with debris, like the last family that lived here left abruptly, in a hurry, leaving most of their belongings behind to rot in obscurity. It’s one of the other things that Rey appreciates the most out of visiting these abandoned places; there’s a sense of history here that is absent in everyday life, where things are replaced before ruin ever sets in.
Rey goes to turn down on the hallways and is instantly pulled back by Solo’s grip under her arm. “Don’t go anywhere without me,” he warns, holding her up to his chest.
She tamps down a shudder. “Let. Go. Of. Me.”
He does, but the underside of her arm where he’d grabbed her still burns from his touch. She nods in the direction of the hallway she was planning on going down and lifts her eyebrows up, sarcastically asking for his permission to continue exploring, but she winds up more annoyed when Solo gestures for her to proceed, like he actually is in charge of the whole operation. The possibility that one of them will end up dead before the end of the night is low, but it isn’t zero.
It’s easily been fifty to a hundred years since anyone last put any effort into keeping this place up. Where the paint isn’t peeling off the walls, moss is already growing from the ceiling down. The curtains, once resplendent, are now littered with moth holes, tears and gashes through the fabric like someone had fun putting them there.
Each step they take down the hall creaks violently, the floorboards groaning under their weight. Rey isn’t too concerned with the floorboards not being able to support them, as she’d walked through these same halls earlier that day, but the sound does linger ominously in her brain. For all that she’s a seasoned ghost hunter and has done this plenty of times before, she usually has an entire crew with her on investigations like this, not just one guy who sometimes scares her a bit more than ghosts.
She’s not scared. She just has…a healthy appreciation of the unknown.
Solo doesn’t make a sound behind her too, which is equally fucking scary. If the guy could just breathe like a normal person or make an effort at a conversation that isn’t him scolding her for one reason or another, Rey might actually enjoy his company right now. She had been planning on coming here alone after all, and yeah, maybe she had been shaking in her van the entire drive up, so it’s not like she’s adverse to company.
Not his though. To be clear: this is bottom of the barrel stuff.
Anyway, the guy is an absolute freak to be around. The only thing that makes him seem somewhat normal is the way he openly stares at her ass and looms way too close behind her like he’s looking for any excuse to put his hands on her waist. He’s done it before. Always manhandling her under the guise of her zipping around too quickly. Not this time. She’s giving him zero reason to touch her, moving cautiously down the hallway that opens up into what was once a spectacular library.
Mahogany shelves lined high with hardback books, the covers rotting away now, mildew growing on the spines where pieces of the cover have fallen away to expose the binding beneath. In the center of the room is an outdated table with books still strewn over it, some flipped to random pages, some pages torn clean out. Rey walks into the room, trying to get a sense of anything in there.
The whole manor is infused with what she can only describe as a dark energy. It feels wicked, like the spirits that still reside here aren’t looking to make friends.
The first thing she does is check her camera to ensure that night vision is on. While it’s constantly recording as she walks through any site, the absolute last thing she wants is to have an experience happen directly in front of her only to realize after the fact that all she caught on camera was a slightly weird shadow. That kind of stuff sends people into spirals.
Looking at the room through the camera with night vision on is a trip. The room is cast in an eerie green glow, illuminating spots that she can hardly even see in real life, like the cobwebs that hang from shelf to shelf along the wall. On camera, she can see tiny black spiders scurry by, their little bodies quick as a whip. Rey draws the camera around the room, letting it linger over the velvet-covered armchair and the fireplace set on the other side of the room.
Above the fireplace, there’s an old mirror covered in spider web-like cracks splintering out from the sides inwards. Rey approaches quietly, keeping her eyes off the camera for a moment so she can really experience the room, trying to feel for any spots that feel suffused with energy. Within just a couple of feet of the mirror, she brings the camera back up to eye level, peering out from it.
Despite the way the mirror is covered in grime and cracks, she can still see her own reflection surprisingly well, as well as the dark, looming shape of Solo directly behind her. Through the camera, she looks up from her reflection to Solo’s chest, her gaze traveling slowly up his body until she reaches the bottom half of his face. Tilting the camera just a little more, she frowns to herself when his gaze flicks to hers in the mirror and his eyes glow brightly for a second, a slash across the mirror. She draws the camera up more.
A hand comes down on top of her camera, pushing it down. “I only consent to being filmed if we’re fucking.”
“Do you have brain damage?” Rey whirls around on Solo, shoving hard against his chest with the hand not holding the camera. Obviously, he doesn’t budge. “Are you high? Do not touch the camera! I’ll sue you for every dollar you have if you so much as crack the lens.”
She wanders back over to the desk where all the books are strewn out on, this time keeping the camera at chest level. They can both still see well enough to walk around, the moonlight pouring in through one of the broken windows. Solo takes his sweet time following after her, still standing over by the mirror and gazing into it.
“I’ve told you before, I’ll buy you whatever you want,” he says, voice low before it augments as he gets closer to her. “Just stop doing this.”
Rey tries not to let it show on her face how much that hurts her, but surely some of it gets out because when Solo glances over at her and sees whatever he sees on her face, he pauses.
“What exactly do you have against me?” She asks with total vulnerability. “Do you think I’m not good enough or something?”
Solo’s over by her side in an instant, curling a hand around her waist and pulling her into him. He’s really quite big up close and it’s not altogether unpleasant to find her face pressed into his chest by his hand on the back of her head.
“No, sweet girl, you’re amazing at everything you do,” he murmurs, his praise sending an electric shock down her spine. “That’s not it at all. I think I’ve been very upfront about the fact that I just want you to be safe.”
“Well, you sure have an awful shit way of showing it,” she snaps, wiping ferociously at a tear that has the gall to leak from her eye. “And I am safe! We’re hunting ghosts, not serial killers.”
He doesn’t say anything over her, just brings a hand up to cup her face and drag his thumb on the underside of her eye, collecting her tears. He brings his thumb to his mouth and sucks it off. Rey looks up at him with no small degree of bafflement and, unfortunately, a bit of arousal. The swipe of his tongue against his skin absolutely did not make her pussy clench (it absolutely did).
He eyes her cryptically again. “Either one has its dangers.”
As much as she likes being tucked by his side, Solo’s enigmatic attitude is once again irritating her to bits. She wrenches free of his hold, moving back over to the doorway. “Let’s just keep this thing moving, okay? If you’re so concerned about safety, then I’m heading over to the kitchen and you can just follow along and make sure I don’t fall onto a knife or something.”
“Will you at least consider it? I’ve got a Wii U at home with your name on it.”
The back of her neck buzzes. He doesn’t know her that well.
They move onto the next part of the manor without further ado. Creeping down another hallway takes longer as she steps deliberately over the shards of glass that litter the floor. The windows running the length of the hall are mainly intact, but missing corners here and there like someone had taken a rock to them at some point. The windows are in far better shape than the walls parallel to them, where whole chunks are missing.
She feels like there’s a layer of dust covering her face from all the rooms they’ve walked through so far. Dust particles hang in the dust, thrown up whenever she takes a step or touches anything, like the books in the other room.
“We aren’t staying long,” Solo announces, apropos of nothing. “The mould in this place is out of control.”
“You can leave whenever you want. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” Rey says blithely.
Even in the ruin, the kitchen that they step into is incredible. A stone wall at the northmost side where a half-crescent window still lets light stream into the room greets them first, the exposed piping running along the upper parts of the wall rusted almost beyond recognition. Leaded stoves and cabinets line all three sides of the room, notwithstanding the side with the door from where they’ve just entered, and there are still copper pots and pans sitting there, waiting for someone to come along.
In the center of the room, there’s a massive wooden table, the legs sturdy even as the edges have begun to decay. Rey approaches it with tentative steps, feeling something shift in the room; there’s a cold gust that doesn’t appear natural—the window at the back of the room is still intact, a whole pane of glass.
There’s a shift behind her as well. Rey feels it more than anything, and when she turns around to face Solo, she finds him standing under the archway of the door, body stiff and menacing. She isn’t sure what about his posture freaks her out. He looks around the room with a slow, mechanical twist of his head, hard eyes tracing every inch of the kitchen.
“Do you feel it too?” Rey asks eagerly before she can catch herself. She doesn’t need his approval. She doesn’t. She does want it though—does want him to confirm something that she’s holding onto because something in her tells her that if Solo and her are on the same page, then she’s on the right track.
He doesn’t answer her for a moment, still as a statue until his stare locks onto the oven by the far left wall. He doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything–just stares at the oven with enough aggression that Rey feels her own blood run cold. She wants to grab him by the shirt and ask him what his stupid problem is. She’s on a ghost hunt and he’s freaking her out way more than any ghost sighting.
“Solo?” She says hesitantly. “...Ben?” Rey takes a step towards him.
Solo’s dark gaze flits back to her in an instant and she freezes midway into her step, foot hovering over the floor. A smile suddenly spreads across his face.
“Sorry,” he apologizes, following after her now. “Got lost in my head.”
Rey frowns, deeper still when Solo saddles up beside her, clamping a hand on her shoulder. “That aside—” she tries to shake off his hand to no avail “—did you feel something weird as well? The atmosphere in this room feels heavy.”
“It shouldn’t be, if it knows what’s good for it.” He’s back to looking over at the oven. Rey feels anger churn in her belly.
“You’re really starting to piss me off, you know.”
“That actually is a surprise. I thought we passed that a long time ago.”
“I want to skin you and make a pelt out of your hide.”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
She pauses to really look at him. Though Solo returns her insults with teases of his own, he’s working his way around the room now, walking off to the leftmost side and opening the cabinets one by one, peering inside. Rey’s not entirely sure what he’s looking for—she certainly isn’t interested in exploring every nook and cranny of the building, that’s something more up the alley of an urban explorer or someone just generally interested in the history of the building. Her interests here are much more paraphysical.
The way she enters a room is always by feeling first, letting her body intuit what’s in the room and what’s not. Nine times out of ten, if she gets that sense of foreboding or skin crawling on the back of her neck, there’s a good chance she’ll have some kind of encounter. That’s when she can think about things like setting up the REM pod or trying to communicate with the presence in the room. But Solo moves around the room like there’s an actual thing or person that he’s actively searching for.
She rolls her eyes. In either case, the presence she felt before seems to have disappeared. While the kitchen is still cold due to the poor insulation in the house, it’s less of a weighted breeze than before.
“So, who lived here anyway?” Solo asks, dragging a finger down one of the cabinet panels, grimacing at the dust that collects on his forefinger. He squishes it out against the side of his jeans.
Rey scoffs. “Okay, so now I know for sure that you’re just stalking me—you haven’t done any research of your own on the Elkmont family?”
“Wasn’t the most important detail.” He shrugs.
“Christ. Fine.” Rey gestures around them with a wide sweep of her arm. “This house used to be owned by the Elkmont family in the eighteen hundreds. Their ancestor, Hermann Elkmont, was an American colonist and made the bulk of the family wealth in the shipping industry.”
“Interesting.” He looks anything but interested.
“Anyway,” Rey starts again, giving Solo a meaningful look that he conveniently misses. “They made a lot of money, yahda yahda yahda, and then a couple hundred years go by and some of the later generations live just a bit too lavishly and the family goes bankrupt. Super simple story. Except that the last of the Elkmonts that lived here didn’t just fall on hard times.” Rey can’t resist a bit of dramatic flair, so she pauses for a second to build the suspense. “The eldest son, who by now had developed a pretty bad gambling problem, actually takes out life insurance policies on his parents and younger brother.”
“Oh, I know where this is going,” Solo cuts her off. He opens another cabinet as he says that and Rey squeaks as a mouse rolls out, darting off out of the room.
She puts a hand to her chest. “Can you stop fucking touching everything, you weirdo freak? I’m trying to tell a story.”
His hands go up in apology. “I’m listening. I’m listening.”
“Okay, so–ugh, whatever, why am I bothering to explain this. You already know he had his family murdered in their house, staged it to make it look like a burglary gone wrong, and then he skipped off with the money, never to be seen again. Tragic.”
“Very tragic. I don’t know all about that last part though.”
Rey tilts her head, confused. “Huh?”
He gestures with his finger like he’s rewinding the story. “The skipping off with the money part. He didn’t. Jack’s also here.”
“I thought you said you didn’t do any research! Also—get fucking bent, not a single source I looked up says anything about Jack Elkmont ever being found.”
She wants to ask more, but a group of clouds pass in front of the moon outside and the kitchen is briefly shrouded in darkness. Rey clutches her camera to her chest, keeping it pointed out into the middle of the room. The longer it takes for the moon to reappear, the more her hackles start to come up and she can feel a slight tremor passing through her.
“Solo?” She whispers, anxiety creeping into her voice. He’s at her back in a second, curling his fingers around her upper arms and tugging her back to him.
She hates to admit it but his presence behind her instantly settles her nerves. It’s highly embarrassing but she…Rey really doesn’t like the dark. With her vision rendered obsolete, she’s forced to rely on all of her other senses and all that does is bring her back to that moment beneath the bed, her heart pounding and pounding at the step of footsteps gradually drawing closer to her, no way to tell if they’ve seen her shaking body beneath the bed—
“Shh, Rey, I’m here,” Solo hushes her. “Here, let’s turn this on.”
He switches on the flashlight she has clipped to a carabiner on her hip and it immediately lights up the room. The glow of a flashlight is always a bit spooky, but it’s leagues better than being mired in darkness.
“Well, maybe we should move on…I’m not getting a good enough feeling from this room. And by that I mean I’m not getting a bad feeling.”
She peeks over her shoulder. In the dim light, she sees Solo shrug; not exactly confirming nor denying her feelings. Rey has the distinct impression that he couldn’t give one little shit about the ghost hunt they’re on, which is, frankly, so bizarre considering he’s been in the game longer than she has. It would be one thing if his weird vendetta against her had started after she’d joined the scene, but he’s actively been in it for years. And no enthusiasm! No vivacity!
You really have to pity some people.
“I’m pretty sure the next room is the dining room,” she muses on their way out of the kitchen and down the next hallway. Solo is, again, a shadow at her rear, taking up so much space without making a sound.
“You don’t want to check out the master bedroom?” It’s said with a smirk in his voice. She rolls her eyes.
“Thin fucking ice,” Rey hisses under her breath, seeing the archway into the dining room at the end of the hall and walking through it.
Almost immediately, something whizzes by her face and embeds itself into the wall beside the door. Solo yanks her back by the arm, slamming her against the wall on the other side of the door. It happens so fast that Rey’s left wide-eyed and gaping, completely at a loss as to what just happened.
“Oh my god,” she says, blinking up at Solo’s enraged face. “Oh my god! That was—”
“Not going to happen again,” he says; his voice is fully pissed, and if she weren’t over the moon, absolutely bonkers with elation, it might have scared her a little. She is cognizant enough to realize that she’s never seen Solo quite so angry, but it’s difficult to concentrate on that when she fiddles with the camera and thermal imaging device. She tries to go back into the room, but Solo’s hand on her arm pins her to the wall.
“Hey, bird boy—let me go,” Rey snaps, pushing against his hand again. “Did you fucking see that? That was honest to god paranormal activity! I think I even got it on video!”
He rounds back on her, no longer glaring into the dining room but now leveling her with that same gaze. “You let me go in first. Got it?”
“What? Absolutely not—let me go!”
“This isn’t up for debate—you let me go in there first or I carry you back out to your dumb Scooby Doo van myself.”
She harrumphs and, with no small amount of displeasure, nods. Fine. He can go jerk off in there for all she cares (she cares; she’s going to think about him jerking off later on tonight at home). Solo notes her acquiescence and lets her go, practically stomping into the dining room. She follows not a second later.
Embedded in the wall right beside where her head is a kitchen knife, the rusted tip half-buried in the wall that has the consistency of papier mâché. The hilt is strangely polished. She observes it with careful detachment, not letting the thought worm its way into her brain yet that it could’ve been her head, which also basically has the consistency of papier mâché.
When she looks over at Solo, he’s at the other end of the room, standing in the corner menacingly. Only his back faces her. Tension ripples down his shoulders and, while she can’t be sure, she thinks she can hear the faint sounds of whispering coming from his end of the room.
“Are you Blair Witching me?” She says grumpily. When he doesn’t immediately respond, she actually does get a little scared.
He turns around before she can gather up the courage to walk over there herself. “Sorry. It’s dealt with.”
“What are you even on about?” He talks in riddles. Surely she could be working with someone more competent than this man. It’s genuinely too bad that he’s so ridiculously good looking; she’s never going to find someone whose thighs she wants to bite more.
“Don’t worry about it. Do you want to set up your gadget here?”
Rey glances down. “My gadget?”
“That thing you’ve been carrying around. That little box thing with the antenna.”
“You mean the REM pod?” She shrieks, but actually that’s not a bad idea, so she does get to work at setting it up on the dining room table. “Oh my god. Oh my god, how do you not know what this is?”
“Just set it up,” he says impatiently. She whispers a bunch of epithets to herself as she turns the REM pod on, waving her hand over the antenna to ensure that it’s working right. When the little cones flash green with an alert, she backs away from it, giving the REM pod space to do what it does.
“You know,” she says to Solo once they’re standing beside each other on the other end of the room, watching on as the little device sits on the table silently. “I didn’t think the Elkmonts would be so hostile.”
“I told you—it’s not them.”
“Oh, so it’s Jack then, huh?”
He shrugs; doesn’t answer.
She looks at him oddly. He announces that like it’s a no-brainer, like it would be obvious to anyone that there’s another spirit in the house acting aggressively towards them, but in every interview she’s done, every old news article she’s read, every record that she’s poured over at the library, they’ve all said that Jack Elkmont—the son responsible for murdering his family and running off with the remainder of their fortune—disappeared without a trace after collecting the insurance money.
No matter. She turns back to the task at hand and clears her throat.
“If there are any spirits here in this room with us now, we ask that you make yourself known by approaching the table,” Rey says, clearly and loudly. “Please touch the box. It’ll light up and make a sound.”
There’s always an awkward period of silence after making that invitation to the spirits in the room. No one ever wants to make an immediate, grand entrance; it’s always a slow crawl, an inching forward, inching back. In the silence, Rey also powers up the echo box app on her phone, holding it in her hand; Solo graciously takes her rig while she’s fiddling with her phone so that he’s holding the camera instead, filming at probably a better angle anyway.
She starts to get a bit frustrated after the fifth consecutive minute without either the echo box or the REM pod going off, but she suppresses the frustration because ghosts don’t operate on the same timeframe as people. These things take time. When she peers up at Solo from the corner of her eye, like a little schoolgirl peeking up at her crush, she notices that he’s staring hard again across the room. Rey looks to the other end. Nothing. She looks back up at him.
There’s something…odd in his face. She can’t quite say what it is. Solo looks almost angry, like he’s pinning someone with a stare inviting them to do something because he’s just looking for a reason to blow up. She clicks her tongue and elbows him in the side.
“Can you chill out?” She hisses through clenched teeth, nodding with emphasis towards the REM pod.
“I’m very chill.” No he’s not.
“No you’re not.”
She wants to say more, but there’s a sudden crackle from the echo box. Her head whips down, heart already flush against the walls of her chest. It’s nothing at first, just static on the radio, white noise; and then, clear as day, a voice croaks out, “Ja—”
Then, softer, but no less clearly: “Get him out—”
That’s it. It goes quiet again. Rey is up on her tippy toes, disbelief and joy warring for dominance in her emotional core; she feels like she could let out a whoop of excitement. There’s no mistaking it—there’s something in the room with them. Whether it’ll stick around or move to somewhere else in the house is another story, but she feels like it’s happening, it’s real, it’s here in front of her face confirming everything she’s ever felt.
“Hmph.” Oh, big fucking surprise. She looks back up at Solo and he looks none too impressed, wrinkling his nose at the echo box.
“You are seriously harshing my vibe, mate, and I have half a mind—”
She’s cut off when the dining table shoots across the room, barrelling towards them. Again, faster than she can react, Solo’s leg shoots out, his boot hitting the edge of the table and flipping it over so that it crashes to the ground.
“JESUS!” Rey shrieks, almost dropping her phone in her flinch back.
“We are leaving. Right now.” His voice is a hiss, barely louder than that.
She almost wants to agree with him, but this is the most activity she’s ever seen in a single night and Rey can’t let this go to waste. It’s usually easy to get lost in an argument with Solo (her vice, sorry, it fuels her fantasies when he’s gone so it’s kind of a necessity) but a blurry shape out of the corner of her eye catches her off guard.
It’s standing somewhat near the second door leading out of the dining room and into the hall where another staircase leads up to the second floor. Solo doesn’t seem to have registered it yet, as he’s grinding his teeth, absolutely incensed with what just happened. The shape is a nearly indistinct orb against the background of dark, half-hidden in the shadows, but there’s something solid about it in a way. After a second of hovering there by the archway of the door, it starts to slip back out, blending back into the hallway.
Without a second thought, she wrenches the rig from Solo’s hand and races out of the dining room, the camera centered in front of her to hopefully catch part of the apparition. Rey watches as it seems to bend quickly down the hallway, the rippling essence of it being sucked back somewhere.
“REY!” Oh, Solo’s pissed. She’s never heard his voice like that.
The orb disappears at the step leading up to the staircase, a flash of light and then gone. Rey stands at the foot of the staircase with her heart in her throat. She hears Solo first before she sees him round the corner out of the dining room, expression furious. In complete contrast, she beams widely at him.
“Hey, I think I saw a gh—”
“I’m going to handcuff you to me,” he cuts her off, coming right up to her like an angry bull.
“Now who’s being kinky,” she deadpans. Immediately regrets saying that because it makes her face light up in a blush so fearsome that Solo would have surely commented on it if he weren’t so mad at her.
“Not even withstanding the fact that we’re here under paranormal pretenses—”
“Pretenses?”
“Well, I am.”
“I fucking knew it—”
“That aside,” he interrupts her. “Not only that, but this is also a decrepit shithole that should’ve been condemned decades ago. You don’t go running off without me when the floor could collapse under you and seriously injure you.”
She squirms under his stare. That’s not untrue. Nevertheless: “I’m like ninety percent sure I saw a spirit and got it on camera.”
“Wonderful.” Solo places a hand on the bannister at the bottom of the staircase and stares up with that same intense look as before.
“Can you act just a little excited? We might’ve caught a ghost on camera. We at least got some super compelling footage.” She makes to go around him, but Solo blocks her with an arm across her chest. She oofs bumping into his leather jacket-clad battering ram of an arm.
“I am excited.”
“No, you are fucking not, you troll doll.” She asks the question that’s been plaguing her all night, if not for months. “Do you even believe in ghosts? You act like all of this is beneath you.”
“Absolutely. I know ghosts are real.” The way he says it is so self-assured, not a hint of doubt or derision in his tone. It actually makes Rey pause for a moment, scrutinizing him in a new way. There’s no real way to suss out if he’s lying, but Rey gets the feeling that he’s never been more genuine with her.
She snorts to break the sudden tension. “Sure you do.”
“It’s true. We live in the same ecosphere, you know.” He lowers his arm from where it’s blocking her entry up the staircase and places a hand on the small of her back. “Alright, that’s about enough of this. Let’s go have it out with Jack.”
He gives her a gentle push up the stairs and follows suit after her, the floorboards creaking under his weight. While Rey is eager to get this show on the road, something he says strikes a cord in her. She doesn’t look back at him though, for fear of tripping or not noticing a broken step.
“In the same ‘ecosphere’? What—you mean people and ghosts? Yeah, I guess we do.”
He gives a light laugh behind her. “No. Me and ghosts. Ghosts and I.”
“Huh?”
Solo doesn’t respond to her startled sputter. They’ve reached the top of the staircase, meaning that Rey’s heart can finally stop beating so loud because they aren’t in the same potential danger of harm, but then it starts palpating for a whole new reason when Solo immediately steers her in the direction of a room at the end of the west hallway.
The heavy feeling that occasionally precedes an apparition suddenly comes on again. She doesn’t know how Solo knows how to track that sensation back to its source, but it grows as they approach the furthermost room. The door at the end of the hall hangs ajar, the board at the end ripped clean off like someone’s tried to get out forcefully before.
A part of her gets nervous. She’s been on plenty of paranormal investigations before. She works with a crew of other believers who’ve nurtured her beliefs and corroborated her stories for a couple years now. She’s been on ghost hunts with skeleton crews, sometimes just her and two other camera people to ensure the relative silence necessary for a particularly active location.
She’s never felt quite this troubled by a presence though. The closer they get to the door, the more she feels like something’s scratching at the inside of her chest and hissing No no no no, which only grows louder they stand outside the door and Solo knocks it open with his boot. Rey has half a mind to turn around now.
“Shh, it’s okay, sweet girl,” Solo murmurs, his lips brushing against the tip of her ear. “I’ve got it under control.”
Rey relaxes for some reason.
The room Solo leads them into is obviously one of the main bedrooms, a grand four-poster bed in the center of the room with red velvet drapes still hanging and decaying from the frame. It’s a luxurious thing, handcrafted from some lustrous wood, the columns an intricate upward swirl pattern that must’ve taken a craftsperson ages to carve. An ottoman by the foot of the bed. A large wardrobe also still resides in the room as well, though the drawers have long been torn out, the contents of which are scattered across the floor. It would’ve been, at one time, an entirely decadent living space.
Now, it’s mainly in ruins.
“I wouldn’t normally do this with someone around,” Solo says in her ear, a bit louder now as if he were talking to more than just her. They’re standing together in the entrance to the room now and though at first glance, Rey hadn’t seen anything particularly unusual in the bedroom, she now notices the flicker of something near the right side of the bed. Two pinprick eyes growing at a height with her.
“Oh my god, Ben,” she whispers, tapping on his chest frantically. The entity materializes more, a white shape against a dark background.
“Yeah, I know, I see him,” Solo says with a chuckle. “Like I said, I wouldn’t normally do this in front of an audience, but I’ll give you a little show, okay?”
Whatever he’s saying is gibberish to her. Beyond the single most important encounter in her life, Rey hasn’t had much luck with clear ghost sightings—it’s always a shadow or a blur of movement, never a figure appearing in front of her.
The ghost materializing near the end table by the bed is almost completely recognizable, if entirely inhuman. But something’s strange about it. It’s holding its arms up in front of its face, looking frightened of them.
“What did you say?” The words drop out of her mouth like stones against water, plunk plunk plunk. She’s not sure she would hear his response even if he screamed it in her ear.
“You’ll see, sweetie. Let me deal with this and then we’ll go home.”
Solo steps forward, leaving her standing by the door.
“I…didn’t…mean to…hurt,” the ghost of Jack Elkmont wheezes. The sound is something unlike anything she’s ever heard before; even when her mother’s spirit visited her all those years ago, the voice had been mellowed by existing in both the dream world and the real world. This is all real—all guttural, thin as gossamer, and omnipresent.
“I don’t give a shit,” Solo says pleasantly and then something truly horrifying happens.
First it’s just a flex in his jaw, like he’s moving his mouth around. Then a crack and the bottom half of his jaw drops far beyond what’s possible for a human. The entity at the other end of the room cowers in the corner, trying to make itself smaller by crouching down. Rey watches in absolute horror as Solo’s eyes roll back into his head, the gaping hole where his mouth should be growing larger and larger, his cheeks sunken in horribly.
A shriek that nearly pops her eardrums erupts from the ghost at the other end of the room, spreading out over the room. Rey clamps her hands over her ears, watching as Jack Elkmont’s ghost trembles and shrinks into itself; the way Solo advances on it with that hideously disfigured face, like something out of her worst nightmares.
The mass of ghostly energy suddenly seems to seep away, more and more of it pulling off into a spiral that whips towards Solo’s open mouth. Rey hears a horrible wrenching sound as Jack’s spirit is torn apart violently, the pieces of it funneling into Solo’s mouth; her vision begins to blacken at the periphery like she might pass out.
Rey takes a step back and slides down the wall behind her, watching Solo consume this spirit, his own guttural, monstrous breath mixing with the violently wailing of the ghost being consumed. It seems to last hours. Then the last wisps of Jack’s spirit slip away into his cavernous maw and the room is silent.
She would think that her mind had broken, that she’d made it all up, but Solo’s still standing there with that terribly elongated jaw, eyes white and unseeing. Then, another crack, and the lower half of his jaw rises and slips back into place. She stares up at him from the floor. There’s a horrible second when he turns his gaze on her and Rey thinks Oh shit, I’ve been antagonizing a monster all night, but then Solo just sort of smiles.
“All done?” He says, same tone as earlier when they were bantering about him believing in ghosts or not.
Rey doesn’t respond. She stares wordlessly at this man who just changed everything about her life in a second and has the gall to act like this is a normal day. From this angle, everything about him seems eerier now; the jawline that she’d thought pleasantly crooked now seems like he just put it back a bit out of place; his body too big, like he’s something larger than life.
“What the fuck was that?” She breathes. The house is way too quiet. It also feels lighter somehow, and that’s how she knows that what she just saw really happened.
“Hmm? I ate him. Consumed his spirit. Devoured his material remains. It’s not a big deal, he was tormenting the spirits of his family even after death, so this is a net good for everyone.” Solo saunters up to her and holds out his hand, shaking it when she doesn’t immediately let him tug her to standing.
He doesn’t let go of her hand even when she gets up. “...I don’t even know what to say.”
“That's fine.”
“What the fuck was that?”
“Are you still on about that? Move on, babe.”
He pulls her out of the room, descending back down the staircase from which they came up, rounding the hallways with her in tow. Rey still can’t formulate a question more articulate than the one she’s repeated maybe ten times. By the time they reach the front door, she gathers enough of her courage to dig her heels into the floor (it doesn’t really do much; Solo could’ve dragged her the rest of the way but he notices that she’s getting riled up like an angry kitten and decides to stop for her benefit).
“I have so many…” she runs a hand down her sweaty face. “I have so many questions. Why are we leaving in such a hurry?”
He smiles. “Jack was the problem. I told you he was still here—he came back a few years after the murder of his family to collect a few valuables and was killed himself by some people who’d been squatting on the property. He haunted the property for centuries after that. The rest of the family will be able to rest now that he’s gone.”
“And…and…you—how did you…” There’s no easy way to ask this that doesn’t send full-body chills through her. “What are you?”
No smile this time. “Similar to them, in a way. Some people call us ghouls, demons, undead.” Solo thinks on it for a second. “I didn’t die and become this way though; this is just what we are.”
“And h-how long have you…been this way?” She asks.
“As long as you’ve been human. We reproduce just like you, we’re just a bit different. My dad was like you, you know, just a normal human. We can even mate with humans when we’ve found the one that’s right for us.” He points back into the house. “You eat food. I eat them. Cycle of nature.”
Whatever the fuck that meant. She let him drag her out of the house now, too spent to argue any longer with him. With a demon or a ghoul or whatever the hell he was.
“It’s so weird that I’m still attracted to you,” Rey sighs to herself, too drained to feel embarrassed by what she’s just admitted. They’ve been toeing this line for years now anyway; at some point they were probably going to sleep together and it was probably going to be Rey’s doing.
She takes one long look back at the manor as the leaded doors clang behind them. It’s still stately, grand, the kind of home that might have been magnificent once upon a time had it not fallen into ruin. It feels tragic looking at it and knowing what happened to that poor family, but in the absence of Jack’s malevolent presence, there’s a tangible lightness to the place. Rey wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t any ghost sightings going forward.
“That’s normal—you’re my mate. You’re supposed to be attracted to me.”
Her head whips around to stare at him. “A ghoul says what now?”
She hadn’t realized he’s been leading her to his shitty Mazda until he bends her over the hood of it. She jolts back into the real world. Rey immediately struggles in his hold, but he already has both her arms behind her, holding them both by the wrists in one big paw of his. The cool metal presses against her face, smushing her cheek.
He leans over her, full weight pinning in place and Rey is suddenly acutely aware of what’s happening here. “Mate?” She shrieks.
“I realize you’re a bit behind, so I’ll try to catch you up to speed.” With the hand not holding her wrists, Solo reaches around to pop the button on her jeans, pulling them down around her hips. “I told you just a second ago—we get one that’s right for us. That’s you for me. I’ve been willing to give you your space because I—quit squirming, this is happening so just get used to it—I’m really a good guy and you needed some time. But you clearly need—that’s good, let’s get those panties down—you clearly need someone to make sure you stop running headlong into danger.”
He works her jeans and underwear down to her mid-thighs, exposing her bare ass to the outside world. Luckily no one is around to see. Part of Rey is beyond mortified, and that’s the part of her coming to the forefront now, kicking and screeching at him.
“We’re not having sex on the hood of your car, you fucking bimbo! Let go of me or I’m going to screa—”
She chokes on her words when his hand comes down hard on her ass. A crack and then his hand swings back again, popping her again. Rey’s brain goes white. She’s thought about this before, but she hadn’t quite expected how much it would sting. He drops over her again, big hand soothing where he just spanked her.
“Go ahead and scream, Rey, sweetie,” he breathes out rough against her ear. She can hear him now working on the buttons on his own jeans, his hand brushing against her ass when he yanks the zipper down. “We’re miles away from civilization and even if someone were nearby, this place is haunted after all. Plus, it makes me really fucking horny when you scream.”
Rey hears the zipper on his leather jacket jangle as he wrenches his pants open and then Solo’s abruptly not in the mood to talk anymore. Her hair is already pulled up into a high bun, which is good when you’re walking through decrepit buildings and don’t want spiderwebs tangling in your hair, but bad when your annoying frenemy wants to lick up the side of your neck. She tries to say something else, but his teeth against her skin makes her brain go foggy again.
Despite his rush to get her pants off, Solo doesn’t immediately put his dick in her. His big hand reaches around to cup her pussy, two fingers parting her lips and rubbing over her hole. Rey whines and tries to push her hips back, away from him.
“Sweetie, just let me do this. You’ll like it, I promise.” That’s exactly the problem—she knows she will.
He tucks two fingers into her opening before she can respond. Two thick fingers that are almost immediately too much for her. The heel of his palm drags against her clit, gyrating against it.
“I’ll be real—your backtalk over the last few years has been very entertaining.” Solo speaks like he doesn’t have his fingers knuckle-deep in her cunt, digging in deeper and deeper with every curl upwards. “You can keep the attitude up as much as you want. As long as I get to put my cock in you a couple times a day, you can call me whatever names you feel like.”
“A-a couple?” She wheezes out past stiff lips. Sweat beads on her forehead. The back of her shirt must be glued to her back with sweat where Solo’s plastered against her.
“It’s fine—you’ll get used to it.”
Her face flushes beet red when she hears the wet, squishy sounds coming from her pussy. Solo seems to relish in those sounds as well, huffing a laugh against her shoulder and dragging his teeth against her skin. Fitting them there, like a feral thing. She’s being made into a filthy thing.
He fingers her like he’s luxuriating in it, like half the pleasure he’s getting out of this is listening to her moan and whine while she’s stuck there. The thrust of his fingers into her slows down temporarily, pulling out to rub his fingers together; Rey looks down and almost comes right then when she sees the clear fluid stringing between his fingers.
“Can you please make me come?” Rey whispers. “Please, please, please.”
He tuts like she disappoints him. “No, sweet girl. You’ll come when I fuck you or not at all.”
That reminds him to get on with the show. His hand reaches back around to pull his cock out of his underwear; Rey squeaks when it flops between her cheeks. Solo chuckles but doesn’t tease her too much, angling himself between her thighs instead.
A thought occurs to her. “You’re not going to…to e-eat me, are you?” She whimpers out as he notches the head of his cock into her pussy. This is probably the only time she’ll get to ask because she can already feel her lizard brain taking over. Solo laughs.
“I am going to eat your cunt later when we get home, but otherwise no.” He pushes into her nice and slow, his wide shaft splitting her in half. “By the way, you’re moving in with me, okay, sweetie?”
There’s no way she’s responding to that right now.
The squelch of his cock filling up her pussy is mind numbing. She feels like a ragdoll as Solo holds her there by the grip on her wrists and a hand that creeps up her shirt to grab a breast. He uses her with only the barest thought to her own pleasure, but apparently no one told her that because Rey is already two seconds away from coming so hard she sees stars.
Her teeth rattle with every thrust, cheek still squished against the hood of his car. “B-Ben—”
“Yeah, sweetie?” He says it mockingly.
“Please—my clit—”
“Maybe in a second, okay? I’m a bit busy here.” He squeezes her breast meaningfully, pinches the nipple between his thumb and forefinger. It aches almost too much.
With no way to stimulate her clit herself, Rey lays there and lets herself be fucked. When he wants to get deeper in her, Solo kicks one of her legs out with his boot and steps closer in, pushing her whole torso onto the car. Her toes curl in her shoes.
“I’m glad we waited,” he says almost sweetly, still fucking her with enough force to leave her speechless. “Your cunt’s really wet—you’ve been really frustrated, huh?”
“Jesus fuck, Ben—”
“We’re going to have so much fun together,” he pants into her ear. His jeans chafe against her butt and the backs of her thighs; Rey already knows she’s going to be covered in red burn-like marks tomorrow. “You didn’t ask, but—oh fuck—my kind, ah…my kind ages a bit slower than humans. The longer I keep you filled up with me, the more you’ll…okay, wait, wait wait—” His hips slow to a pause for a second. “Sorry, about to come. Give me a sec.”
In a moment of lucidity, Rey suddenly rewinds to what Solo just said. “Don’t come in me, you irresponsible son of a—”
She can practically hear him roll his eyes. “That ship’s sailed. You think I’m carrying a condom around with me? You’re my mate.”
“Who says I have to be your stupid mate?” Rey snaps, a burst of fight whirling up out of her like she’s gone supernova.
“Are you listening to anything I’ve said? It’s not a choice—I already know you haven’t fucked anyone since we met. You’re just going to get hornier—” He thrusts experimentally once, twice, and she’s already panting for it, pushing back on his dick and angling her hips up “—and hornier until I walk into the room and you shake and shake until I put my dick in you.”
Her mind might as well be melting.
She can feel it coming to a head. Behind her, Ben gets rougher in his thrusts, no longer able to keep up conversation. He buries his face in her neck and snarls; a spike of fear sets her blood cold when she thinks for a second of the maw he’d opened earlier and how close his mouth is now to the tenderest part of her. It’s sick, but she gets wetter at the thought.
It climbs down her spine, churning in her core and she drools a bit onto the hood of the car. She doesn’t notice that Ben lets go of hand—they slump to the side—until his fingers press against her little button, making her squeal into her orgasm. Her cunt squeezes around Ben, making him stutter-snap his hips into her and bite down on the tender piece of her neck.
He comes in her, hot and so filthy that Rey sobs out a breath, overwhelmed. She feels like she whites out—it must go on for hours. She slumps completely against the car, only the hood and Ben holding her up at this point.
He must pull out of her at some point, but Rey is lost to the world for a little while. She comes to with Ben pulling up her underwear and rebuttoning her pants, his spend already trickling out of her. The thought makes her fizzle out again briefly.
“You’re going to follow me back to my place, okay?” He says after straightening his own pants, shrugging off his jacket. “Don’t think about going off—I’ll just follow you home. Also, put this on; your sweater isn’t nearly warm enough for this weather.”
Rey blindly puts his jacket on, doing her best not to pull the collar to her nose and take a deep inhale like a little perv. Her legs tremble as she nods and makes as it to walk towards her van, still parked beside Ben’s stupid stupid Mazda that now has the sweaty imprint of her body and probably some of her come on the hood. She glances down. Yep, definitely some of her come.
He catches her by the arm before she can leave. “We’ll cuddle at home, okay, sweet girl? Give me a kiss.”
Again, doesn’t wait. Doesn’t need to. Him asking is all she needs to melt into him, sucking at his lower lip because she feels off-kilter, like someone shook her by the roots of her hair. He kisses sweetly for someone who just banged her for the first time on the hood of his car, a nice amount of tongue and his hands gentle on her waist just holding her to him. It’s like they just had a date. It’s a good indicator of what’s to come, but she won’t say that just yet. Let him work for it a bit.
Rey breaks away from the kiss, licking her lips. He pats her on the butt as she walks off, making her jump and squeak. Embarrassing because she’s already limping to her car anyway so like, why point out just how come-drunk she is? Whatever.
One last glance back as she pulls away: a house on a hill, settling down again as its family goes to rest for a final time. Then, two pinpricks of light in her rear view mirror as Ben’s car pulls in behind her. Then the night.