Chapter Text
The ghost is throwing things again.
Crash , and Elliot buries himself under the covers. Bang, and he pulls the duvet over his head.
His breath turns the small dark space too hot and too damp within moments, but he doesn’t dare come out, not yet.
Soon enough, Dad's footsteps pad across the landing, and the attic hatch collides with the wall as it flaps open. The ladder creaks and scrapes, steel on stainless steel, buckling under Dad's weight.
The ghost stops throwing things, and then Dad laughs softly. The scrape of the chair kept up there against floorboards. The soft murmur of conversation.
Elliot falls asleep curled up like a bean, swimming alone in a pool of cooling tomato juice.
Dad hasn't come downstairs since he gave Elliot his breakfast when Elliot decides to figure out if the whiskey or the sadness comes first.
The bottles are lined up on the kitchen shelf, golden where the sun shines through, and too high to reach on his own. Elliot, however, is nothing if not resourceful, so he drags the green chair from the table over to the shelf and climbs up. It still isn't enough to reach, so he grabs a couple of books from the bookshelf in the other room, the dusty ones with pictures of bodies and what's inside bodies on. They're too heavy to carry all the way, so each one he puts on the floor and pushes until he reaches the chair, then hauls it up to stack on top of the others.
He climbs up, stands on his tiptoes as his socks slide on the glossy cover. Cool glass brushes his fingertips, and he slides the bottle closer, closer, closer –
It rocks towards him and–
He catches it, and –
Topples backwards, the bottle's weight sending feet flying from beneath him. Books slip, the chair skitters, and tile meets tail in a way that makes Elliot's vision fuzz gray and his stomach twist over on itself.
He lies there for a long time, waiting for the impact to stop singing in his bones. The kitchen floor is cold, and there's an onion skin turning green and fuzzy underneath the oven door, just out of reach.
After a while the stars clear and he can sit up. Dad hasn't shouted or come running, which is good, because this seems like the kind of thing Elliot might get shouted at for.
Slowly, he unscrews the cap on the bottle. Dad always drinks from a glass, but Elliot isn't sure where those are, so he picks up the whole bottle, grimaces, and swigs.
It burns, but he takes another sip because he has to find out.
He doesn’t feel sad, he just falls asleep.
It's cold enough on the playground that the other kids are in puff coats and bobble hats, jumping up and down to keep warm for the fifteen minutes before they're allowed back inside school. Never before has a group of seven year olds been more excited to read about Biff, Chip, and their magic key.
“Where's your coat, Elliot?” Mrs. Finch, the year two teacher asks him when she finds him jumping up and down on the spot to keep warm.
Through chattering teeth, he says with a grin, “Why would I need a coat when I've got my cig to keep me warm?” It's something he's heard Stacey Brown's mum say when they're waiting to go in in the mornings and she's probably the coolest person Elliot has ever met. Young and pretty, not like the other mums, and very appreciative when Elliot told her as much.
He mimes smoking, holding his fingers to his lips and puffing, the air cold enough that his breath is a smoky cloud.
“Smoking isn't funny or clever, young man,” Mrs. Finch scolds him, kind smile turning unimpressed seconds before she sends him to spend the rest of break sitting in detention in the headmaster's office.
It's one of those times the house gets as cold as the playground outside of school, and Elliot's on the floor of the sitting room with his maths homework. He's stuck on number three, and it doesn't help that his fingers are stiff enough that it's hard to move them. Mrs. Finch said to get an adult to help if they got stuck, but just the thought of Elliot's dad sitting on the floor and helping with maths feels ridiculous.
Condensation clings to the glass in Dad's hand, little smudges cleared around his warm fingers. Elliot breathes out, and smokey vapor escapes his lips.
He grins, lifts his fingers to his lips like he's smoking. He leaves them there. Waiting. He's not sure what for.
Dad says nothing.
“Nothing better than the first cig of the day,” Elliot says, something else he'd heard from Mrs. Brown.
Dad sips his whiskey.
There's a bruise on Dad's head when he comes down out of the attic.
“What happened?” Elliot asks, voice high, heart pounding. Did the ghost hurt Dad? Will she do it again? Aren't ghosts safe?
Dad isn't supposed to be hurt. It's Elliot that gets bumps and bruises and scrapes. Elliot that sits on the edge of the bathtub, first aid kit sprawled out, blood rolling down his shin from a grazed knee, trying to stick a plaster over the cut.
Dad brushes past him on his way to the kitchen.
The problem between Optimus Prime and Octo-Jon goes deeper than can be fixed with just an apology. Octo-Jon killed Optimus Prime's wife, and then Optimus Prime chopped off one of Octo-Jon's tentacles in revenge. Neither has fully forgiven the other, and now Elliot's stuck in the middle of the whole sordid mess.
“We can't be good guards if you two keep fighting!” Elliot whispers.
“And I can't be a good guard with only seven tentacles!” Octo-Jon replies, or, Elliot supposes, Septo-Jon.
“Mrs. Finch said it's important to forgive people, even if they hide your uniform after PE,” Elliot says, “And besides, what chance do we stand against the Clipboard Man if you can't even be friends?”
In the attic, Dad laughs, and Elliot pauses to listen. Dad has the best laugh Elliot's ever heard. Bright and warm and only ever heard from one room over.
“When I'm big, I'm going to invent a machine that destroys ghosts,” says Josh Winston, shortly before Elliot's first ever physical fight with another student.
“You can't destroy ghosts, that's stupid,” Elliot says, “Although I guess you are pretty stupid.”
That day, Elliot discovers that it hurts more to lose teeth when Josh's fist slams into them than when they fall out on their own.
Clipboard Man is at the front door, so Elliot sets up Optimus Prime and Septo-Jon in the door to the kitchen and peaks around the corner.
Clipboard Man has a large wheeled suitcase to go with his clipboard this time, high-vis jacket reflecting the hall light. He tries to get past Dad, but Dad tells him he can't come in.
Clipboard Man spots Elliot, and asks, “Mr. Schafer, do you have a child living here?”
Dad closes the door to the hall, but Elliot listens through the crack as he says, “Only for a few nights.”
“Mr. Schafer, if you do have a child living here, I can easily find out. This is much more serious–”
“Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Mr. Schafer, I must insist–”
“I appreciate the concern, but really, we're fine.”
The door closes, and Elliot whispers to Optimus Prime and Septo-Jon, “Stand down men, threat neutralised.”
He goes up to his bedroom early that night, Dad's drinking earlier than usual, which means he'll probably be drinking more.
Dad doesn't like to watch the news, but the homework Mr. Morris set needs them to watch a story and write about it, so he waits until Dad goes up into the attic to switch on the TV and go to the BBC.
The main story has a picture of a girl about Elliot's age on the screen. She's in a school summer uniform, green chequered dress that matches the colour of the clips in her curly black hair.
The newsreader speaks into the camera in a grave voice, saying, “Eight-year-old Anite Benoit has been named as the latest casualty of the tragic events that occurred in Trafford last night. She is the fifth victim of the haunting to be named. More on this after the weather.”
Elliot looks down at the worksheet Mr. Morris gave them. On the top, the words ‘Understanding The News,’ in bubble writing. There are four sections, labeled ‘who, what, when, and where’.
The first is easy, under ‘Who?’ Elliot writes ‘Anite Benoit’.
He hesitates over the second heading, the ‘What?’, before skipping past and filling in the ‘When?’ and ‘Where?’.
Three out of four isn't bad, he decides.
“You have cool shoes,” Elliot tells Aisha, because there's nothing like a compliment to put someone off-guard. It's not even a lie, they're purple with sparkly buckles that match the shiny embroidery on her hijab.
“Thank you, Elliot,” she says brightly as she shuffles her papers, “My niece picked them out, purple is her favourite colour. She's eight years old too, you know.”
“I'm eight and three quarters, actually,” Elliot says, squinting a little at her.
“Elliot, be nice,” Mrs. Williams, designated chaperone, hisses.
“Oh my,” Aisha says, “I'm sorry, I was just going off what it says on your profile. I'll put a note on here so I don't make the same mistake again.”
Elliot knows she's pandering to him, and he doesn't like it. “I'm a child, not an idiot,” he says, “I know grownups don't care about that stuff.”
Mrs. Williams is beet red and looks like she wants the child height chair she's squished into to swallow her whole.
Aisha is, unfortunately, a consummate professional, because she moves right past that and asks, “Has Mrs. Williams told you why I'm here, Elliot?”
Elliot knows why she's here. Clipboard Man sent her. He couldn't get to Dad, so now he's trying to go through Elliot. Well. Elliot's not going to be gotten to that easy. He seals his lips and says nothing.
She powers on. “I just want to have a chat about what things are like for you at home, is that okay?”
“Who do you live with?”
“My dad.”
“And has it always been just you and Dad?”
“Mum lived with us until I was in reception.”
“Why doesn't she live with you now?”
Mrs. Williams interjects, “I don't know if–”
“She didn't like me very much so she drove off a cliff.”
“Has Dad ever done anything that you don't like?”
“What, do you want a list?”
“Do you ever feel scared at home?”
“No.”
“Really? Do you not even get scared of spiders? I scream when I see those.”
“I don't get scared , that's stupid.”
“Has anything strange ever happened in your house? Like some houses get really cold for no reason, or people hear things banging about when there's no one there.”
“That sounds uncomfortable,” Elliot says, “I'm glad it's never happened where I live.”
When Aisha leaves, she gives Elliot a lollipop and Dad comes to pick him up early. Dad almost looks disappointed when Aisha tells him, “It sounds like Elliot is quite happy at home, so don't worry, I won't be recommending anything drastic.”
The ghost doesn’t like it when Elliot practises piano, but if he doesn’t practise then Eleanour will tell him off, and she has such a pretty smile that it makes him sad if she gets sad.
He runs through a E major scale, and something crashes into the wall.
A few of the exercises in his sight reading practice book, and the house temperature drops a corresponding few degrees.
The first of his examination pieces, and the whole room trembles.
He stops his piano from falling off the stand, then gets back to practising.
It's a sunny day in June when all of year six files out into the bright, polleny sunlight after Simon The Firefighter. Elliot's feet are tingling from the long talk that morning and watching the video about how easy it is to die in a fire, so he's glad to stand up, jump about and stamp his feet.
“Careful Schafer,” Josh yells from the other side of the huddle of ten year olds (they're not allowed to sit, stand, or swing a rounders bat near each other anymore), “Don't want to accidentally stand on any ghosts, all that stamping!”
There's a smattering of laughter, and Elliot snaps back, “I hadn't thought of that, I was too enticed by the idea of maybe accidentally getting your feet.”
No one laughs at Elliot's joke because they're all neanderthals that have probably never even heard the word neanderthals before.
“Boys!” Miss Kaur snaps, “We have a guest, you're setting a poor example for the school. Apologise to Simon right now.”
Everyone rolls their eyes, but Elliot and Josh both mutter a sullen apology, which is swiftly forgotten because Simon the Firefighter instantly redeems himself from the two hour video about how they're all going to suffocate to death in a fire by leading the class into a huge tent in the playground.
Simon the Firefighter gets them all to stand at the edges of the tent before zipping it shut. Nobody speaks as he explains that, should they find themselves caught in a fire, they need to remember that smoke rises. A smoke machine hisses, filling the tent with a thick white fog.
Elliot can barely see his hand in front of his face, but then he blinks, and out the corner of his eye, something… shimmers.
“As you can see,” Simon the Firefighter explains, “The smoke is much thicker up here, standing up. But let's all get on our hands and knees.”
Elliot squints, trying to catch another glimpse of the shimmer. And there it is again, too faint to see, really. More like the memory of something sparkling and bright.
“Miss Kaur, Elliot's being weird!” Someone complains.
“Get on the floor, Elliot,” Miss Kaur prompts, which seems to Elliot like such an offensive capitulation to herd mentality, and from a teacher of all people, that there isn't even a chance he's going to listen to it.
Instead, he asks Simon The Firefighter, “Why is your smoke machine glittery?”
And then, his vision fuzzes and he collapses to the floor.
Notes:
Chapter Specific Warnings:
- Abuse
- (Extremely) Underage drinking
- Mention of past suicide (including method)
Chapter Text
“Does your home experience sudden unexpected chills?” The woman on the car radio says. Elliot glances at Dad in the driver's seat, but as usual his face gives nothing away.
“ Do you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night, not sure what it is that's woken you up?” Elliot doesn't remember a time where he didn't experience that. Had only realised it wasn't normal to experience it on a nightly basis until he slept over at Will Whitmore’s house in year one.
“ Do you have a constant sense of forbidding at home?” Well that one certainly didn't have anything to do with ghosts.
“ It’s probably nothing, but if it is something, the sooner we catch it the less likely it is to turn into a serious problem, so speak to your local PPO today.”
“They don’t know what they're talking about,” Elliot says, glancing again at Dad, whose eyes are fixed hard on the road.
“Let them worry about themselves, and we'll worry about us. You always fret too much. It's… unpleasant.”
Elliot shrinks, turning to stare out of the window. Some would say Elliot doesn't fret enough. Doesn't care about anything he doesn't want to. But Dad hadn't actually read those school reports, he'd just signed the slip to say he had.
Dad's been in the attic for days this time. Elliot isn't even sure when he's been down to eat or drink. At eleven years old though, Elliot's old enough to put baked beans in the microwave and toast in the toaster, so he can look after himself for a few days.
He sits in front of the TV, watching the grownup channels because he's too old for CBBC and CITV now. It's all boring kids stuff. When he finishes his beans, he washes the plate, then goes upstairs to check on Dad. Optimus Prime and Hexo-Jon are where he left them at the foot of the ladder. He knows, of course, that they won't protect Dad from Clipboard Man. Knows that ‘Clipboard Man’ isn't ‘Clipboard Man’, he's Terry Griffiths, officer of the Paranormal Protection Service, and Aisha was a social worker and also the reason Elliot got referred to children's mental health services, the traitor.
Normally, it would be fine if Dad didn't come down from the attic for days, but Elliot has a permission slip that he needs to get signed, and after the last few times, his teachers are on high alert for forgeries.
Dad has to come down eventually though, so Elliot gets his English homework out and starts working on the questions.
Day fades and gray dark drowns the upstairs landing, but Elliot is cozy in the little corner at the base of the ladder, so he doesn't get up and switch the light on. As he dozes, he dreams of parents talking quietly next door, of Dad coming into his room and smoothing his hair back and pressing a kiss to his forehead. Mum jokes about this being the only peace they'll get all day, and Elliot pretends they haven't woken him up so he can listen a little longer.
“Elliot?” Dad's stood over him.
Elliot blinks away the dream, silly as it is, and shuffles to his feet. “I have a permission slip I need signing.”
Elliot produces it, along with a pen and holds it out. Dad takes it. He's far gone enough that he looks more through the slip than at it, then mutters, “D'you need money?”
“Just a signature.”
“What's it for?”
“Gifted and talented,” Elliot lies.
Dad signs.
“I will be back in an hour,” Mrs. Williams says, “And Elliot?”
“Yes?”
“I know it's probably pointless to ask, but please try not to embarrass the school.”
Elliot grins, then hops out of Mrs. Williams’ little red Cleo with a grin, “I wouldn't dream of it!”
Miss Woodsinger has them all sit in a circle and introduce themselves. This is for Elliot's benefit, because most of the other kids already know each other and have been coming to this class for nearly a year now.
They do fun facts.
Dale's fun fact is that his family have their own paranormal freelance agency, and Myra's is that she has achondroplasia. Peter has twenty-two pets, Luke plays cricket for England, and Serene's should be that she's the most beautiful person Elliot's ever seen, but instead she just says that she's been doing karate since she was five.
“What about you, Elliot?”
I'm Elliot Schaefer, and my dad hasn't spoken to me in three, nearly four days now.
I'm Elliot Schaefer, and my mum preferred the bottom of the Plymouth Sound to raising me.
I'm Elliot Schaefer, and I live in a haunted house.
“I'm Elliot Schaefer,” he says, “And I don't like scrambled eggs.”
On their first field trip with Miss Woodsinger, they go to the cemetery on the edge of the city.
All seven (eight if you count Miss Woodsinger) of the kids in the ‘Paranormal Protection Service Training Class’ pile off the minibus, crinkly macs on, hoods pulled up and tightened.
“I don't see why we had to come today,” Adara complains, “It was sunny yesterday.”
“The rain will help us see the ties more easily,” Serene says, “Or at least, it will help those of us with the sight see them more easily.”
Adara scoffs, “Sure, it will help the sighted , but why are the rest of us here?”
“Because,” Miss Woodsinger says, on her way back from the security office and trailed by a young guard, “I can't just abandon half of my students. They'll have to come along on trips that are mostly for the benefits of softeners too, don't worry. Now, this is Phil. One at a time, you're going to let him check you for ties.”
Phil is not one of the sighted, so being checked for ties involves him having them stand at one end of the car park where he takes their temperature, waves an emf reader at them, and then does the same with a Geiger counter. He then gets them to stand at the other end of the car park whilst he repeats the process. Afterwards, he gives Woodsinger a thumbs up, “All present and correct Miss Woodsinger, you may proceed.”
They file through the cemetery gates. The graves are obscured by mist beyond the electrified fencing, barbed wire more visible than the tops of trees. The rain soaks quickly through the shoulders of Elliot's mac, right through to his blazer, the mist soaks his trousers, and the grass turns his socks sodden as they traipse past the neat lines of gravestones.
Dad never took Elliot to the cemetery to visit Mum. There's more flowers than Elliot had been expecting, and he'd already been expecting a lot. Most headstones have at least two or three sets. There's fake flowers that will never wilt, fresh ones that look like they were put into the green plastic holders stuck into the ground earlier that day, rotten ones with petals that look like shrivelled up prunes. He wonders when someone will come back and change the dead ones. Probably not tomorrow, maybe only on holidays and birthdays. Maybe not even then.
Miss Woodsinger stops and they all gather round. “I want you all to split into pairs and practice using the sight. Those that have done this before, even those of you who can only soften, try and find someone new.”
Elliot ends up getting shuffled off with Luke, who Elliot is fairly sure does not have the sight. He doesn't really want to be here though, it's something to do that's not at home, something a bit weird, that makes it make sense when people give him a wider birth.
He's happy to wander in silence with Luke, away from where their classmates are huddled, towards a wooden shelter in the middle of a small rock garden, bushes neatly pruned and orderly. There's space to grieve here. Outdoors, not hidden away in an attic, or locked out with an electric fence.
Elliot sits under the shelter, there's bird crap and a thin layer of moss on the seats, but that's okay. Luke sits next to him, and Elliot thinks they're about to share a lovely companionable silence until Luke ruins it by asking a question related to their schoolwork. “So,” he says, “Have you ever tried using the sight deliberately before, or have you only ever managed it accidentally?”
“Why do you care?” Elliot says, quite frankly flabbergasted.
“Well, it's what we're supposed to be doing, isn't it?” Luke says, equally confused by Elliot's confusion.
“But you don't even have the sight, what do you know?”
“Probably more than you,” Luke snaps churlishly, “My uncle Gregory has the sight, and my family works alongside lots of other people with the sight. I know how it works.”
Elliot raises an eyebrow, “Alright,” he says, “How does it work?”
He hadn't counted on having to actually do anything today, but he supposes he can trick Luke into thinking he has done.
“Well,” Luke says, “Apparently you have to squint a little bit, and try and catch it out of the corner of your eye. At least when you're first starting out.”
Elliot squints. He isn't super sure what he's supposed to be catching out of the corner of his eye, he just remembers waking up last time spreadeagled on the playground with a wet paper towel on his forehead.
He should probably make a play at that again if he's going to convince Luke he's actually trying. He throws a hand up to his head, attempts to look swoon-y, then, out of the corner of his eye…
Hundreds of glowing strings criss-cross the graveyard, shimmering with pale iridescence in every colour imaginable. More than just the vague shimmer he saw in the smoke tent, there's a wide sprawling web of threads, trailing from graves towards houses, towards roads, towards empty air as though they've been snapped, hanging loose, their ends limp.
Elliot's nose starts to run, so he snorts. But then it keeps running, and it feels hotter than normal, so he reaches up and his hand comes away bloody.
“Oh no,” he groans, and then grey fizzes at the edges of his vision and his legs can't hold him anymore. Luke catches him, and they sink to the soggy ground together.
“Put your head between your knees,” Luke urges, and Elliot does, breathing shallowly through his mouth.
“Do you hab a tissue?” Elliot asks, squeezing his nose. Luke does, and Elliot tries to stem the blood flow, or at least stop it going all over his school uniform.
The world spins, and Elliot squeezes his eyes shut, waiting for it to pass, while Luke just sits quietly beside him.
“Is this the first time you've used the sight?” Luke asks softly after a few minutes.
Elliot shakes his head, which sends fresh fuzzy waves tingling across his scalp. “Second,” he says, “firsd dime I fainded.” He squeezes the tissue to his nose a little harder. His ears are burning, Luke is definitely not the ‘sit and share our feelings’ type, more the ‘let's go kick/hit/throw a ball around a field type, and maybe we can go and put that weird redhead in the bin after.’
Instead of laughing at him like the laws of the schoolyard dictated, however, Luke simply nodded sagely. “It does get easier the more you practice. My uncle can use the sight all day now before he starts feeling woozy.”
Elliot groans, resting his forehead on his knees. “I'm neber doing bis again.”
Dad doesn’t give Elliot pocket money, but he also doesn’t say anything when Elliot takes money out of the big jar of pennies on the bookshelf, or when Elliot borrows his card from his wallet, or doesn’t give him change after being sent on an errand.
So Elliot gets on the bus alone to hobbycraft, or more accurately, the two buses, and when he walks in, he almost immediately gets questioned by one of the shop assistants about where his mum is.
“Dead,” he says, which makes her leave him alone.
He feels silly in the kids section, even though they have the best colours of card, so he goes to the wedding section because it seems more mature. He manages about five minutes of staring at custom stamp kits and gold, delicate stickers before he ends up sulkily back in the kids section.
Serene won’t want a normal, boring girly card, even though she did say her favourite colour was pink and it’s quite difficult to make a pink card not look girly.
In the end, he picks out a multipack of cards with all of the colours in, then a multipack of glitter tubes, then a pack of foam stickers in the shape of swords.
Dad doesn’t like it when Elliot does arts and crafts. Last time, he spilled glitter in the living room trying to make a card for father’s day, and Dad had just looked sadly down at it and said, “What a mess, not really worth it, was it?”
So Elliot waits until Dad goes up into the attic, then gets his supplies out on the floor of his bedroom and starts cutting and sticking and glueing.
After a few hours, the soft conversation turns to long stretches of silence. Then things start banging and clattering. The first bang makes Elliot jump, he’d been concentrating so hard on cutting out the little blue card, but then his hand jerks and it ruins the shape so he has to start again.
Just as Elliot is about to finish, Dad cries out in pain. That usually means he’s about to come down the ladder, so Elliot makes quick work of hastily tidying away his things.
Just in time too, because he hears footsteps on the ladder just as he scrambles into bed.
Dad pokes his head in, and Elliot can see he has a smear of blood on his forehead. Elliot’s stomach briefly twists, but he quiets the feeling. Dad’s fine. And even if he isn’t, there’s nothing Elliot can do anyway.
“Why is your light still on?” Dad asks.
Elliot shrugs, and Dad turns it off.
“I made you a card,” Elliot tells Serene on Valentine’s day, before handing it over.
The base card is pink, but it’s covered in love hearts cut out of all different colours of card, surrounding a larger cutout of someone doing a badass karate kick. He finished the whole thing off by covering it in the sword stickers and a liberal application of glitter.
“Oh Elliot! This is wonderful, thank you!” Serene says, smiling brightly, “Is that supposed to be me?” She points at the kicking figure.
“Yeah,” he says, “I made it myself.”
She opens it and reads the inside, “Would you like to go bowling with me tonight?” She meets his eyes again, and her smile may as well be the only thing in the world that's real. “Of course!”
His heart skips a beat - she said yes!
“Let me just ask Luke if he's free too.”
Halloween, and the entryway to the small classroom in the community centre where Miss Woodsinger takes the class is tracked with dead, mulchy leaves and muddy water. The lesson today is about possession, the most deadly and severe stage of a haunting, which is a suitably terrifying topic for a class on Hallowee, but Miss Woodsinger let's them go early because Adara spent the whole class complaining bitterly about how she needed time to properly get ready for trick or treating.
Elliot, however, stays behind, watching as the others trickle out, laughing and joking.
“Elliot,” Miss Woodsinger says, “Is there something I can help you with?”
“Yes, actually, I have a question about ghosts.” He sets his overstuffed backpack down on the table.
“Well, I suppose this is the right place for those…” Miss Woodsinger sets down the cloth she'd been using to clean the whiteboard.
He hadn't anticipated the anxiety that coils in his gut when he speaks, but there it is, pulling tight enough he feels like something will burst. “Are ghosts dangerous?”
Miss Woodsinger sighs, then gestures towards the sofa in the corner of the room. “This feels like a sitting down conversation.”
When they're both settled, she levels Elliot with a pointed stare, “You are aware that I have spent the past year and a half teaching you the different methods we use to neutralise ghosts, yes?”
Elliot nods, “That doesn't necessarily mean they're dangerous though, just that most people don't really like them. Saying that just because lots of people want to get rid of something it means that it's bad demonstrates a dangerous lack of critical thought.”
She pinches the bridge of her nose, “Would you believe me if I told you they're extremely dangerous?”
“Why would I ask if I wasn't going to believe you?”
She nods, lips thinning, “Well. I know you Schafer, so I'm also going to tell you this. Last year, there were six hundred and seventy two deaths directly attributable to hauntings in England and Wales, and a further eight thousand, two hundred and and ninety one serious injuries. So yes, ghosts are very, very dangerous.”
He nods, “Okay.”
He moves to stand, but she stops him, asking, “Elliot, do I need to be worried about something?”
He thinks about the bruise on Dad's head. How he rarely sleeps through the night without being woken up by banging and crashing. How he gets chilblains in Summer.
“No, of course not, don't be silly.”
She nods, clearly unconvinced. “We'll talk more about this when you take this class in year seven, but it's against the law to have a child in a house with an active haunting and not seek assistance. It's considered a form of child endangerment, and it's a crime in this country.”
“Okay?” Elliot says, getting up and slinging his backpack over his shoulder.
He feels her eyes on him as he goes, but he ignores it. He found out what he wanted to know, and it's about what he was expecting. Dad never really even lied to him about ghosts. He never said Mum wasn't dangerous.
Lying would have meant talking to Elliot about it in the first place.
Notes:
Chapter Specific Warnings:
- Abuse (neglect)
- Discussion of suicide (including methods)
Chapter Text
Elliot cannot figure out how to tie his tie. Is it over or under? Around? That one just looks like a knot, and it takes him about ten minutes to pick it apart.
Screw it, cool kids don’t wear ties anyway, and secondary school is his chance to turn over a new leaf. He’ll be the kid that turned up without a tie on the first day. He might even get detention. He never got detention in primary school because most of the teachers knew about what happened to his mum and felt nauseatingly sorry for him, and the ones who didn’t saw him go into that meeting with Aisha and assumed he had ‘problems at home’.
Detention on the first day sends the right kind of message though.
There are more kids hanging around the school grounds than Elliot has ever seen in his life, and most of them are at least twice as tall as Elliot.
A group of giant girls go past and immediately make ‘aww!’ noises at him, which is not the vibe that Elliot was going for. One of them even says, “Look at how cute the new year sevens are this year!”
“I am not cute!” Elliot shouts back at her, “I’m not even wearing my tie!”
It’s then that he runs into Luke and Serene, who seem to be presiding over an army of their fellow year sevens, gathered around outside the gym where their letter told them to wait.
Luke sounds oddly distressed when he says, “Elliot, where is your tie?”
“I’m not wearing it, I’m a badass. A rebel, you might say.”
“Hand it over,” Luke says, and he sounds so commanding t hat Elliot kind of… just does it.
“Isn’t it great that we’ll all be in the same school this year?” Serene says as Luke competently wraps Elliot’s tie round his neck and starts doing what Elliot assumes is the correct tie-tying procedure.
“So first you’re going over, then you’re going over again, then up through the back…”
“It is pretty great,” Elliot says, “I can’t wait to spend more time with you, Serene. After school ghost hunting classes were never enough.”
“And then you can just tuck that back bit into your shirt,” Luke finishes, standing back and admiring his handiwork.
At that moment, a teacher with a severe blonde bun walks past. Apparently she’s inspecting uniform, because she takes one look at Serene and huffs, “I want to see at least eight stripes on that tie, young lady, and that skirt is at least three inches above your knee - I know they don’t sell them like that in the shops. Roll it down please.”
Begrudgingly, Serene undoes her tie, a short stubby thing with a knot that was at least three times as big as Elliot and Luke’s, and she reties it so it looks more like theirs. She then untucks the several rolls in the waist of her skirt so it falls to no more than an inch above her knee.
“And your top button?”
Serene does the top button of her shirt up.
The teacher nods and moves on, ignoring the daggers Serene is giving to her back.
“Am I the only one who’s getting the sense that random teacher just made a powerful enemy?” Elliot whispers to Luke.
Luke only looks perturbed as he whispers back, “I thought girls just had a different uniform…”
Elliot wakes up choking on his own heartbeat. The sheets are sticky and the house is cold. His limbs are trembling, and it feels like there is something inside the cavity of his torso scratching at his ribs and heart and guts.
This isn't the first night in a row that he's woken up like this. It isn't even the first time tonight .
She gets bored after a little while, because she always does, and the dread slips away, sweeping out of the house like a tide.
“What's PPST(B)?” One of the kids in Elliot's form asks. Elliot's the only one in form 7H that has the class on his timetable, but Miss Woodsinger is written down as the teacher, so he knows what it is.
“It's the class for especially gifted students,” Elliot says, because apparently he's given up on trying to appear like a cool rebel.
“You have less science on your timetable, and I don't think you have any DT or Food Tech,” A different girl says.
“Hey, I know what PPST is, it's the ghost class!” Another kid shouts.
Elliot grimaces as everyone immediately backs away.
It’s too cold to properly focus on studying at home. His hands are stiff around the pen, and he's shivering too much to write straight. His teachers already have questions about his home life, fed by notes from the primary school and an inability to get hold of Dad on the phone - what will they think if he turns in his homework looking like he wrote it on horseback?
He goes to turn the radiator on, but it's scalding hot to the touch in spite of the chilly air.
Too hot, too cold - it feels like some kind of metaphor, but Elliot doesn't like thinking that deeply about anything that happens between these four walls, so he just heads off to the library.
“I don't know if I want to do my report on the Winstanley case or the Plympton Swimming Pool case,” Serene says.
They're the only ones in the library. Serene stayed behind because her family is too loud to get any work done, Elliot because his being at home is generally an unfavorable state of affairs for all involved.
“Winstanley gives you the chance to talk about a more complex haunting, even though more people got hurt in Plympton,” Elliot reasons.
“That is true,” Serene says, chewing on the end of her pen.
For most people in the class this isn't a debate. Officers with the sight played a bigger role in the The Winstanley Case, whereas Softeners were key in saving lives in Plympton, or rather, the lack of softeners contributed to the loss of life. For Serene, however, who has both the sight and the ability to soften, it's more complicated.
“Which are you doing, Elliot?” She asks.
“Plympton Pool,” he says, because he finds the argument that softeners need to be the first port of call for all hauntings with a risk of mass casualty to be, quite frankly, a little bit silly. “I'm going for the mediation angle.”
She stares at the worksheet on the desk in front of her thoughtfully, then nods. “Very well, I shall attempt to tackle the Winstanley case from the radical softening angle.”
Elliot grins, “You're amazing, did you know that?”
He always thinks it’s real blood at first; the handprint smeared on the door to Dad’s room, the puddle in the crack in the kitchen tile, the red footprint rusting brown on the third step from the top.
He runs to Dad’s chair in a panic, only to find him completely fine.
“You need to stop getting so wound up,” Dad mutters over the tea that Elliot makes with shaky hands, “You’re not a child, Elliot.”
It’s the truth. He’s neurotic. Ridiculous. Dramatic.
He’s the blood that isn’t blood, inciting panic and pain where there is none. Just for attention.
Luke Sunborn has got quite possibly the worst handwriting that Elliot has ever seen, so he puts himself in charge of writing on the huge sheet of pink sugar paper that Miss Woodsinger supplied them with. Serene is on book duty, flicking at frenetic speed through the small stack of textbooks they've been given.
“I'd like to help at least a little,” Luke complains after about five minutes of this, “I feel bad watching you guys do all the work.”
“Don't worry, you'd only slow us down,” Elliot says, “Serene, does that book have anything else about level three hauntings? I feel like there was less detail than the other types.”
She frowns, “Not this one, but I'll check the CGP one again.”
“Maybe I could look too?” Luke suggests, “Two sets of eyes is always better than one.”
“Don't worry, you're going to be our secret weapon when we present.” Elliot says, just as Serene finds a relevant passage in the book and passes it over for him to summarize.
“I am?”
“You are a very charismatic speaker,” Serene says diplomatically.
“Yeah, everyone has a crush on you, so the peer assessments will score us higher if you talk.”
The blood is real this time.
Dad doesn’t say what happened, but the glass, half frozen and shattered on the floor gives it away.
Elliot cleans up Dad’s hand, makes him sit whilst he runs the cuts under the tap, using a torch to check for slivers of glass, then spraying the cuts with silver spray and smoothing waterproof plasters over them.
Dad goes upstairs, and Elliot cleans the glass out of the carpet, gets up as much of the whiskey as he can with a tea towel, then goes next door to ask to borrow their carpet cleaner again.
“We always go back to my house,” Luke complains as they trail out of the school gates, bundled up in raincoats, a parade of umbrellas lining the streets as they go. “I don’t think I’ve ever even seen inside of yours, Elliot.”
“Your dad bakes cookies literally every time we visit, if you want us to stop, you have to get him to stop literally doing operant conditioning on us when we turn up.”
Serene pipes up then, “I thought that was classical conditioning?”
Elliot shakes his head, “Classical conditioning is when we start drooling when we approach Luke’s house because we know his dad has cookies.”
Eleanor, his piano teacher, has told Elliot that he needs to practice every day if he wants to pass his grade five exams before the end of the year - which is when the old exam pieces are no longer valid.
Elliot likes piano and he likes Eleanor, so it’s no real challenge to run through his scales and practice his sight reading.
At least not until the banging starts.
He can’t keep time with the irregular thumping going on in the background, can’t even hear himself think. Homework isn’t any more likely to happen than piano at this point, so he crawls into bed.
She still doesn’t stop. Not when it hits one O’clock. Not when it hits two, three, four in the morning. His eyes burn and his head pounds, and then it’s time to go to school.
Elliot floats through school, eyes sliding shut then startling awake when someone nudges him or calls his name. At some point, he steps back from the rest of the world, too exhausted to grip onto reality as if it’s important.
In maths, he spends the whole hour staring at the blank page in front of him, and when the teacher asks why he hasn't done any work, he just shrugs so she gives him detention.
He can't quite remember the way to the art classroom, except no, that isn't it– it's more like he can't quite get the idea of ‘going to art’ to properly stay inside his head, so he just… doesn't.
White cloudy blankets flutter overhead as he wanders towards the edges of the school. There's a gap between the science block and the humanities block that's popular, like all spaces that can't be seen from the staff room, with the school's population of underage smokers, but all Elliot has for company now are a crushed can of Monster and an empty packet of ready salted crisps.
The hour blurs from one long blink to the next, then, as if shaken out and shuffled by the hand of some curious giant, students spill out into the grounds to head to their next class.
Time jitters and Elliot watches, until lunch hits and the smokers want their spot back.
Elliot says no, so two year tens grab him by the neck of his shirt and dump him in one of the huge, stinking, open top bins.
Luke finds him in the boys’ toilets, taking a wet paper towel to the milk they threw at the back of his blazer
“Where were you in art?” He demands.
It takes Elliot a moment or two to remember how words work, and even then, the only thing he can think to say is, “Leave me alone, loser.”
“You can't just skip classes because you're in a mood,” Luke presses. “I know art might not seem that important, but it all counts.”
Heat flares, and it isn't fair because obviously none of this is Luke’s fault, but Elliot is spitting venom before Luke even has time to catch his breath. “Maybe they should start teaching lessons on how to mind your own business because clearly that's what you're having the most trouble with!”
The expression on Luke’s face is probably most succinctly described as ‘kicked puppy’. “You can be very mean sometimes, Elliot.”
“Only sometimes? Clearly I need to try harder,” he snaps, then pushes past Luke with a milky shoulder.
Serene, as both a softener and someone with the sight, has extra tuition with Miss Woodsinger after school on Tuesdays. Even though it's December and they never properly made up after their fight, Luke and Elliot loyally wait for her on the picnic benches outside the English building where the PPST classroom is.
“My mum wanted me to ask if you want to come to our New Years party this year,” Luke says, and Elliot looks up from the book he's reading.
It's not a familiar situation. He hasn't been invited to any kind of party since everyone at school realised he wouldn't be inviting them to anything back.
“Are you sure?” Elliot responds, because he's certainly not.
Luke blinks a few times, “Yes?”
Elliot looks back down at his book with a frown.
Hesitantly, Luke adds, “I think… I think Serene will want you to go.”
Elliot pretends to still be considering, but of course his mind is already well made up, “Of course I'll go.”
On New Year's eve, Elliot texts Dad explaining he's going to Luke's and won't be back until the next day. He isn't sure Dad will see it before he gets back. He hasn't seen him in a few days, he's been in the attic or out of the house or everywhere that Elliot isn't.
He lets his mind wander to the possibility that something might have happen to Dad, either already, or before he gets back from Luke’s. What it might be like to walk through the front door to be greeted by a cold corpse with a caved in skull. It's upsetting, but in the way thinking of a dying old person is upsetting.
An inevitability he has to accept when he leaves.
One day, something will happen to Dad because of Mum, and Elliot will either be here, or he’ll be out.
He doesn’t know which one’s worst.
“Your mum won't mind, will she Elliot?” Luke's mum asks, pouring him a glass of prosecco as Elliot, Serene, and several dozen Sunborns crowd in front of the TV playing footage of Big Ben.
“I don't have a mum,” Elliot says.
“Dad?”
“He lets me do what I want.”
“Excellent,” she replies, as she pours him a bit more. “Also sorry for your loss.”
“We can't go in here, it's my sister's room!” Luke hisses.
Louise isn't going to discover them, she currently has her tongue down the throat of one of the year tens that put Elliot in the bin, so Elliot decides to soundly ignore him in favour of being a properly nosy guest.
“I agree that it would be terrible manners,” Serene says as she follows Elliot in.
Luke groans and apparently decides to come too in order to supervise.
Louise’s room is wholly uninteresting if measured by any variable other than it being not just a girl's room, but an older girl's room. Fairy lights drip from the bookshelf and ceiling, far more than is entirely reasonable, but Louise makes up for it with the prominently displayed replica swords on the walls.
“She got into cosplay last year, I've been told that if anyone at school finds out, those swords will end up, well, you know.”
Elliot snorts and Serene nods gravely. “Do not worry Luke, we will take this secret to our graves,” she says.
Elliot has already forgotten the swords because he's found the cowboy hats .
“Serene!” He exclaims, “Come here!”
She obeys, and Elliot rewards her with a hat that looks like the one Jessie from Toy Story wears - red with white thread around the edge. There’s more of course, a whole box of the things; sequined hats, rainbow hats, hats with fluffy trim, and hats that are supposed to look realistic but are actually made out of plastic.
“You too, loser!” For himself, Elliot picks out a black ‘kiss me quick’ hat, and for Luke, he picks out a fluffy pink thing clearly intended for a bachelorette party.
“Say cheese!” Elliot says as he whips out his phone and snaps a picture of all three of them –
–-right as Louise barges open the door and yells “Luke Bartholemew Sunborn! What are your loser friends doing in my bedroom!”
They race through the house, Serene cackling wildly as she vaults over the side of the stairs in some kind of badass parkour jujitsu thing, Luke desperately catching the various bits of furniture and houseplants she barges into, Elliot just pleased that he's managing to keep up.
“Stay away from the begonias!” Luke’s Mum yells after them as they charge out into the back garden. The security light flickers on, washing the patio and neatly trimmed lawn in pale white light as they race down to where a tiny, disused wendy house stands sentinel under the willow tree.
Serene slides in first, followed shortly after by Luke, then Elliot tumbles in, scraping his head on the child-height door and crashing into the wooden wall.
For several moments, the only sound is Elliot and Luke panting; Luke because he's on the edge of some kind of breakdown, Elliot because he's just that out of shape.
Serene, of course, is just looking wonderfully dishevelled with her hat askew, her long black hair in a state of stylish disarray, and the beginnings of a ladder in her tights.
“That was quite exhilarating,” she says.
“Go out with me Serene,” Elliot asks, because really, what better moment is there?
She raises an eyebrow, “I think that may just be the adrenaline talking, Elliot. Now is not the best moment.”
Fair.
Elliot collapses back onto a tiny, dusty beanbag, letting his lungs reinflate, and suddenly a thought hits him. “Are you sure it was a good idea to hide somewhere that no one will hear us scream?”
Luke groans, “I hate you both.”
Luke’s Dad finds them eventually, along with a tupperware container of his cookies and three flasks of instant hot chocolate.
“Are you three staying out here all night?” He asks.
“That's probably safest,” says Elliot.
Luke’s Dad chuckles, then comes back with a huge container of crocheted blankets, a camping lantern, and a series of pillows tucked under his arm just as they're halfway through their hot chocolate.
Elliot pulls out one of the blankets, it's huge and made with thick, fluffy wool, with a complicated pattern of alternating shades of red, green, blue, and orange. “Are these all handmade?”
“By yours truly!”
Luke pulls a few more of the blankets out and starts laying them on the wooden floor of the wendy house, squishing pillows into the far corner, “Dad took up knitting and crochet when he started getting cases that involved more waiting.”
“Had to do something to keep myself occupied, and this way I could give people a nice pair of socks as well as getting rid of their ghosts.”
“Do you all work for the Paranormal Protection Service?” Elliot asks.
“Pretty much,” Luke’s Dad says.
Luke’s Dad helps string the lantern up from the ceiling, and passes out blankets as they get themselves settled, Luke on one side of Serene, Elliot on the other. The blankets are warm, especially with the six that Elliot’s procured for himself, and the hot chocolate has him feeling sleepy, eyelids drooping.
“You three need anything else?” Luke’s Dad mutters.
“No, thanks Dad.”
He turns the lamp off, then closes the door behind him softly.
Elliot hears Luke shuffling around and propping himself up, then whispering, “Sorry about my family, I know they're… overwhelming.”
Elliot didn’t get ‘overwhelming’ from any of them. He got hot chocolate and cookies and homemade blankets and champagne sneaked into his hand with a knowing wink, but he’s too tired to say any of that, so he just grumbles a little.
It’s Serene who answers properly, “I think they are incredible Luke. My own mother and father have likely spent the new year sniping at each other from across the living room. How wonderful to be overwhelmed by love.”
He feels a bit sad for Serene, that she’d know what it feels like to not be ‘overwhelmed by love’, but then he’s too exhausted to think and falls into the most pleasant, undisturbed sleep he’s had in a long time.
Notes:
Chapter Specific Warnings:
- Abuse
- Bullying
- Grief/Mourning
- References to past suicide
- Blood
Chapter Text
“Anyone who misbehaves will be in isolation for a month,” Miss Woodsinger warns as they step off the mini bus and onto the car park of Saltram Cottage Hospital. Under the cool April sun, the white painted pebbledash glows cheerily. With fresh budding leaves sprouting from the branches of the neat rows of trees lining the grounds, it could almost be somewhere ordinary.
“Before we go in, can anyone tell me what the purpose of a Level Three Paranormal Risk Management Unit is?” Miss Woodsinger asks.
When she is greeted with blank stares, Elliot sighs and sticks his hand in the air.
“Anyone other than Mr. Schaefer?”
Crickets.
Elliot raises an eyebrow at Miss Woodsinger, and she deflates a little. “Very well, Elliot. Tell the class.”
He clears his throat, “Paranormal Risk Management Units were established as part of the 1999 Paranormal Protection Act, Section Seventeen, which states that the local authority has a responsibility to provide minimally invasive paranormal risk management strategies to protect the public. Level Three units are inpatient facilities for those whose level of risk is deemed to be extremely likely to cause harm to either themselves or others.”
Elliot wonders sometimes if Dad belongs in a place like this, but then the thought makes him feel a bit sick. He can’t let himself think too much about places like this. It feels too much like locking people up for grieving. He has to look at it in terms of levels of risk and community protection, nothing too close or too real.
“That is concerning levels of correct Schaefer,” Miss Woodsinger says, “Very well. Let’s head on inside. We have an appointment at eleven-thirty sharp.”
Inside, the unit looks like any other hospital. There’s cheap mdf furniture, informative, non-threatening posters about extremely threatening topics, and a receptionist who looks like she’d much rather spit on them than actually help them.
“We have an appointment with Dr. Sharpe,” Miss Woodsinger says, and, begrudgingly, the receptionist presses a buzzer under her desk.
Moments later, a young woman appears from behind a door with a keypad, “Ah, my year seven students. Welcome to Saltram Cottage Hospital. The procedure is about to begin shortly, if you’d like to follow me.”
As they head through the locked doors, the muttering that had died down upon entering the unit picks back up. Peter and Myra resume their conversation about some kind of romantic dragon game that Elliot doesn’t understand, and Adara and Natalie start doing that thing where they ignore everyone else and start sniggering quietly in a way that pretty much strips away any ego anyone nearby has. Elliot has just about determined that everyone has sidled off into pairs that don’t include him, when Luke Sunborn appears next to him.
“Have you ever seen a softening before?” Luke asks quietly.
Elliot scoffs, “Of course I haven’t, my family aren’t insane ghost hunters that think it’s normal to bring a child to what amounts to an exorcism.”
Luke just shrugs, “They can be scary, but it’s what’s best sometimes.”
Elliot’s eyes almost go all the way back into his head. “Ooh, I’m so glad I have a big strong Sunborn to protect me.”
“Hey, I was trying-”
A scream rips out through the corridor. The kind of scream people make as their insides are torn out, or when their spouse or child dies. The kind that sears goosebumps into flesh and yanks hair up on end.
Everyone falls silent. Natalie grabs Adara and clings. Elliot’s heart hammers.
Dr. Sharpe pauses and turns to them, “Oh don’t you worry about that. Some of our patients get very distressed, but they’re perfectly safe here, and so are you.”
Well that’s a load of crap if Elliot’s ever heard it, but he’s not about to try and find his way back to the minibus alone, so he follows along like a good little student.
They’re met by Officer Whiteleaf outside of a nondescript looking door. He’s an older man, with graying hair and a slight paunch bulging out of his office shirt. “You’re Woodsinger’s level one cadets?” And ugh, if Elliot doesn’t hate that word.
“They are,” Miss Woodsinger says.
Officer Whiteleaf nods briskly. “Through here is the viewing room, you will be able to see what’s happening through CCTV. I don’t know if Dr. Sharpe wants to give some background on the case..?”
“Of course,” She smiles cheerily, “Today we’re going to be viewing a softening procedure performed upon one Annabel Winters. Annabel has signed a consent form saying she doesn’t mind students witnessing this, of course. She was referred to us from our level two service when the ties to her deceased husband were not weakening with typical talk therapy and iron box treatments. Her condition has deteriorated to the point where she is no longer able to leave the iron box safely.”
“Iron box?” Dale whispers, brow furrowed so deeply Elliot is worried he's going to sprain something.
Elliot takes pity, “Ties can't pass through iron, the ghost has to reform inside the box alongside the human source, which takes considerable energy as they are losing their connection to their geographical source.”
Dale, to his credit, does not call Elliot a nerd and then punch him in the face, which is what most boys who look like Dale do when Elliot says things like that. He does, however, say, “Wow, you're so smart Elliot,” which is arguably worse.
“We did about it in class literally yesterday.”
They file into the viewing room, which looks like a classroom - desks laid out and facing a screen at the front. Before they start, Dr. Sharpe addresses the classroom, “Who here can tell me the stages of a haunting?”
Elliot’s hand goes straight up and whilst Dr. Sharpe looks happy to call on him, Miss Woodsinger quickly intercedes. “Can anyone other than Schafer tell us about the stages of a haunting?”
When no one else puts their hand, Serene raises hers.
“Go ahead,” Miss Woodsinger says.
Serene clears her throat and stands a little straighter, “The first stage is connection, in this stage the haunting is only just beginning to establish itself and is visible to the host only, and usually only at the source, unable to exert its influence on the world. Stage two is exertion, when the haunting is able to alter its physical environment beyond its host. Stage three is aggression, in this stage the haunting begins to retain less and less of the personality of the source, it is likely to physically harm those who venture too near its source location, including and especially the host.”
She hesitates, and Dr. Sharpe prompts, “And the last stage?”
“Possession,” Serene says, “The stage at which the source consumes the host, entering their body and becoming exponentially more powerful and violent than they were previously.”
“Correct,” Dr. Sharpe says. “Once a haunting has reached the possession stage, the likelihood of a fatality occuring increases to eighty percent. Outside of an institutional setting, that increases to ninety-nine percent. Untreated hauntings will always progress eventually to posession. What we see might be difficult to watch, but I want you all to bear those numbers in mind. Now, gather round.”
They cluster near the front of the room, and Dr. Sharpe turns on the screen.
On the fuzzy, granular feed, an older woman sits on a padded floor. There's no furniture in the room, and the woman wears only hospital scrubs, her grey hair lank with grease. She's talking to someone off-screen, a fond smile on her face. Except, of course, her conversation partner can't be off-screen, because the whole room is visible.
Dr. Sharpe fiddles with some of the settings on the display, and suddenly sound swells inside the tiny classroom, embracing them as the woman, Annabel, says, “I worry about those girls too, but they're Siobhan’s not ours, so all we can do is see what she wants to do.”
A pause.
“I know Dave, but what else is there?”
She lets out an unexpected laugh, cheeks rounding like apples, visible even over the fuzzy screen, “Oh you’re such a pest!”
In this moment, she isn't in her sixties anymore, instead she's in her twenties meeting this man for the first time, staying up all night laughing, going on long drives and long walks, anything long, because it's about each other more than the scenery.
And Elliot doesn't feel comfortable with this. It's intimate, between this woman and her husband. He moves to stand, surely they'll let him go to the toilet? But then Dr. Sharpe triggers an intercom and says, “Annabel? Is this a good time?”
Annabel looks up, presumably towards wherever the speaker is, and smiles, “Dr. Sharpe! How are you? How's your Eleanor?”
“She's very well, thank you, I told her about your scrambled eggs trick and the words she used were ‘life-changing’. But enough about me, how're you today, Annabel?”
“I'll be better when I'm out of here,” she says, “Never thought I'd be the type to get cabin fever, but I'm practically crawling up the walls.”
“Well, we're going to see what we can do about that. How's David?”
Annabel glances at the space next to her, “Oh, you know. He's worried about me and the kids. Same way he's always been.”
“You're going to be okay, Annabel. So are the kids. He doesn't need to worry about you anymore. He's done his part.”
Well. There go any comparisons Elliot might've been tempted to make between this sad ghost-man and his mother.
Annabel doesn't respond to that, she just stares at the space beside her. Longing.
“Annabel,” Dr. Sharpe prompts, “Do you remember the procedure we talked about the other day?”
Her hand squeezes at thin air, “You're going to take him away.”
“We're going to make it so you can get out of that room, the only reason it isn't safe is because he's been hurting people.”
Annabel's voice drops, “Not me, never me. I'd stay in this box forever if it meant I could stay with him.”
Dr. Sharpe switches off the intercom and addresses officer Whiteleaf, “Do you have a court order?”
He nods, “In the event that she’s physically harmed by the apparition, we have permission to soften the tie against her will. She hasn’t done that yet though.”
Dr. Sharpe bites her lip, then switches the intercom back on, “Annabel,” she says, “Your children have been asking when you’re going to be released. They already lost their dad, they’re missing their mum now too.”
Annabel’s shoulders shake, Dr. Sharpe presses on, “We can help them see their mum, but you have to agree to let us, Annabel.”
"No," she begs, "Just... just a little longer, please!"
"You're hurting them, Annabel, you're making them think that you care more about a ghost than you do about them. Do you know what that's like? Dave, if you can hear me, is that what you want?"
Annabel’s face crumples, and she squeezes her hand into a fist. A breeze picks up inside the cell as she bends over forwards, curling in on herself. Her hair whips round her head as she trembles.
And then she begins to float, limbs jerking and twitching, eyes rolled back into her head.
She hangs, as if suspended from wires, limbs limp, tears streaming down her face.
Elliot blinks, and then Annabel is flung into the wall.
The thud rings hollowly through the classroom for several seconds, everyone staring at the fuzzy image of Annabel lying on the floor, but then Officer Whiteleaf charges out, and moments later appears inside the room.
He flings out his hands as the same force the flung Annabel lifts him up, pulling at his tie. It pulls the garment tight, but Whiteleaf is unphased, eyes narrowed in concentration.
On the floor Annabel begins to wail, “No, Dave, no! Don't take him! Don't take him away!” She gets to her feet, swaying, and launches herself towards Officer Whiteleaf. She snatches at his sleeve and screams, “Leave my Davey alone! Leave him-”
She slumps to the floor. Whiteleafe's tie falls back to his chest. There is a sense that there is something less in the room.
And then, Dr. Sharpe switches off the monitor.
“Well,” she says, no less chipper than before, “We have a worksheet to go through before you guys head off.”
Elliot stands up and walks out, muttering something about needing the bathroom. It's unintelligible even to his own ears.
He needs to get out of that room - away from everyone gawking at that poor woman, eyes hungry. Like she was just some specimen presented for their education.
Miss Woodsinger finds him, of course. He didn't go very far, just curled up in the first secluded corner he came to.
“Schafer, get up,” She says. “We're not doing the worksheet, we're going home.”
“Are you alright, Elliot?” Serene asks on the minibus. She's opposite him, her hair coming out of its braid.
“Fine.”
“Are you certain?” She presses, “When I first witnessed my mother soften someone, I was deeply disturbed by the whole process. You are not even from a family with a history in the service, so I'm sure-”
“Really, Serene,” he forces a smile, “I'm okay.”
He imagines Dad on those screens. Dad with a classroom full of teenagers watching one of the worst moments of his life. Dad being forced away from Mum. Would he be able to take the grief? Or would his heart stop in his chest, no one around for it to keep beating forr?
“A word, Mr. Schafer?” Miss Woodsinger calls at the end of the day, because of course, teachers can never have a ‘word’ during class time.
He waits, bag slung over his shoulder, watching as the last stragglers file out of the classroom. Miss Woodsinger gets up from her desk and pulls out two of the student chairs, gesturing for him to take one whilst she sits opposite.
“You have questions about the trip,” she says.
Elliot shrugs.
She pinches the bridge of her nose, “Please don't make me become the only person in history to have to coax you into talking.”
That would be cruel. And if she's offering… “I don't understand why they taunted her ghost into attacking her. They just wanted a few more days together. And they could've let them have that!”
“We've talked about this before. You know what happens to ghosts the longer they’re tied to the living,” Miss Woodsinger’s voice is uncompromising, but not unkind.
And Elliot does know. The spirit degrades. Slowly and surely. More irritable, more violent, less in control.
“All we know is that, in order to end up in that unit, he would have to have been violent. Injuring people. Would you want to become that, after you die? I know I wouldn’t. Ghosts don’t want to be here. It’s us that forces them to stay.”
Elliot rests his chin on his schoolbag, staring out of the window.
“You know…” Woodsinger crosses her legs, lips pursed, “If you ever need to… talk about anything Schafer…”
Elliot raises an eyebrow, “Can I go?”
She instantly relaxes, “Yes, of course. Sorry to keep you.”
“My great-grandma was a ghost.”
Elliot almost doesn’t hear Luke at first. The heat is so oppressive it feels like a physical weight, and the paint on the bench where they usually sit and wait for Serene has melted, leaving brown smears over everything it touches.
They found refuge instead under the great big elm tree on the far end of the field. Usually, there are smokers hanging out behind it, or year-elevens who can’t keep their hands off each other, squeezing themselves out of view of the teachers. But it’s too hot for either of those groups so he and Luke have claimed the spot, leaning against the tree’s trunk, shoulders brushing slightly, bags flung to the side.
“Say what now?” Elliot cranes his head. Luke’s skin is dappled in bright light, speckled and scattered by the canopy overhead.
“My great-grandma - she haunted my grandma. She was really sick at the end, and my grandma was pretty much a full time carer. It was really hard for her to let go of all that responsibility, so she just… didn’t.”
Elliot isn’t really sure what to say to that. He settles on, “I’m… sorry for your loss.”
It doesn’t feel quite appropriate. From the sound of it, it wasn’t Luke that was close to his great grandma, and it seems like there’s some greater point to this story.
A furrow forms in Luke’s brow. He’s going to get wrinkles before he’s thirty at this rate, but Elliot supposes he could do with something to keep him humble.
“It got really bad, in the end. At first, it felt good, because she was less sad than she would’ve been, but after a couple of years, she was crying all the time.”
Elliot pulls his knees into his chest. It’s easier, even though he cares about Luke, to apply the stages of a haunting to this woman he never knew. Never saw. But he knows what’s coming next because he’s read it in his textbook; once a haunting reaches stage three, there’s no way to resolve it without…
“I was there when they softened her. I was… seven, I think? My Dad did it, because he couldn’t bear to let a stranger near my grandma when she was like that.”
Elliot plucks at the grass, eyes fixed down. He doesn’t want to imagine Luke, so small that his hair probably still had ringlets like it does in pictures, sitting in the corner as his Dad takes away the one thing that had been bringing his grandma comfort.
“I’m not telling this to get you to feel sorry for me,” Luke says, “Just… I don’t know. It’s a horrible thing to watch that happen to someone.” He exhales heavily and leans his head back against the tree trunk. “I understand why it upset you.”
The only thing Elliot can think to say is, “You’re a softener.”
“I know.”
Notes:
Content Warnings:
Institutionalisation
Dubious medical ethics
Chapter Text
It's a Friday night, and Dad has already started to make his way through his first glass. Elliot takes himself upstairs, but instead of heading into his bedroom to do homework and read, he goes into the bathroom, turns the shower on as hot as it'll go, and waits for steam to turn the air pearly white.
This is the first time he’s done this on his own.
He undoes the top button of his shirt, wipes the sweat from his face with a towel from the railing. A deep breath that’s more hot vapour than air. He fixes his gaze forward, then allows his attention to slide just a little to the left.
Threads burst to life, vibrant and vivid, more than anything he’s ever seen on trips to the graveyard or the hospital. They wrap and twist through the steamy air, knotted thick around each other, tangled up in bright glowing trails.
He opens the bathroom door and steam floods out into the corridor, cool air slams into Elliot’s face as he wanders out onto the landing, following the brilliant threads. Here they’re at their strongest, a river that runs from the attic down the stairs.
Elliot remembers what Miss Woodsinger said, ‘Ghosts don’t want to be here. It’s us that forces them to stay,’ and follows the ties downstairs.
Dad's chair faces away from the stairs, and the TV is on, a film that's been on a hundred times before with actors that have been on a hundred more. The glowing screen casts long, deep shadows that stretch like teeth across the room.
The ties thicken and congeal, flowing towards Dad's chair, but something is wrong . No longer are they the bright, iridescent rainbow of before. Colour has drained from them, leaving them dull and limp looking, greens and purples and oranges faded to black and white and gray.
Something inside of Dad is draining them. Sucking away their power faster than they can supply it, causing a rot at the very seed of the bond.
Elliot stares, unable to rip his eyes away. Is this what he would have seen had he used the sight on Annabel? Something beautiful and vibrant, withered to gray?
A wave of dizziness sends Elliot stumbling down the last few steps. He hits the ground, jarring his shoulder so painfully that he can't help but cry out. Blood splatters his outstretched hand from his nose, and a nauseating look behind him confirms that there's a trail of it leading down the stairs.
This is the longest he's used the sight for. He blinks, trying to clear the threads from his eyes, but they won't go . He feels sick, wretches, but nothing comes up. His stomach churns, his head pounds, and then, mercifully, he slips into unconsciousness.
“Mr. Schafer, your nose is bleeding,” Miss Woodsinger says about halfway through PPST.
She’s right. There’s a tiny puddle of blood gathering in the middle of his worksheet - completely obscuring his extremely eloquent description of the requirement for different types of Paranormal Protection Officers to have different levels and types of warrant.
“Mr. Schafer, it is too early in the morning for any form of serious medical emergency, so I would appreciate some form of verbal confirmation of your wellbeing.”
It’s like he’s hearing her through a thick fog and a reply would necessitate travelling all the way back through it. As Miss Woodsinger so rightly pointed out, it’s too early in the morning for that level of effort.
“He’s been like this all day, Miss,” Luke pipes up, “He didn’t even try to steal any of my toast before class.”
Miss Woodsinger crouches down in front of their desk, brow deeply lined, “This looks like… Schafer, were you practising with the sight outside of school hours?”
Elliot shrugs, because that’s about as close as he can manage to a proper yes.
Her lips narrow. “Burnout. Wait here. And somebody get him a tissue.”
Serene has a packet of kleenex in her pocket that she generously donates to the cause, and before long, Miss Woodsinger is back with a banana, toast, and a steaming hot cup of coffee.
“I think this will be a good learning experience for us all,” she says. “I'm sure you've all experienced moments of strain whilst attempting to use your paranormal abilities on the supervised trips we've arranged, but if you overtax yourself, this is what can happen. If you ever do feel unwell after utilising your powers, make sure to get plenty of carbs and potassium.”
Elliot isn't sure he can stomach any of those things, but he does as she says and, begrudgingly, starts to feel much better.
“I was worried about you the other day,” Serene says in between bites of her cookie, hair grazing Luke’s carpet, long legs propped up against Luke’s patterned wallpaper, socked feet pointing up like additional, extra lumpy fleur de lis.
“And I’m worried about you right now - did no one ever tell you that you’ll choke if you eat upside down?” Elliot says over Luke’s incorrectly labelled small intestine diagram.
“Peristalsis,” Serene says, “Did you not do handstand-biscuits in your class?”
“No,” he says, and is glad of it. At least until he looks down at Luke’s diagram and realises, “Hey, loser.” Luke looks up. “Where, exactly, is the viola in the small intestine supposed to be kept?”
Luke, who has been playing that stupid shooty jet pack game on his phone scrambles over, “Huh?”
Elliot points to the offending word.
“Oh, that's the wind section,” Luke says, managing to maintain a straight face for all of about two seconds.
“Hilarious,” Elliot deadpans, “Just like the quality of your handwriting.” Diligently, he corrects it to ‘villi’.
“I’m serious Elliot,” Serene interjects, swishing herself around so that she’s cross legged on the couch, peering down at Elliot and Luke on the floor, “Why were you using the sight on your own?”
“I just wanted to practise, all we do in class is learn laws and case files and occasionally go and visit a cemetery in the rain. I thought we were supposed to be learning to help people?”
“Laws and case files are important.”
“I know,” he tipexes something out then blows on it to dry it. “That’s why I haven’t stopped doing those. I’m already ahead in the reading - I just want to get ahead in everything else too.”
“You should be careful,” Serene says, “I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“I won’t.”
It's a different group of year tens that have taken over the smoking spot that doubles as Elliot's favourite hiding place this year, but he is no more likely to capitulate to this group of ruffians than the last one. Especially not seeing as one of them is Luke’s most annoying cousin- Adam Sunborn.
“Just because you're more physically and psychologically driven to resort to violence doesn't make you right,” Elliot tells them as Adam slams him into a wall and pulls his tie tight enough that he'll never get the knot undone.
“Stay out of our spot,” He snarls, before dumping milk over Elliot's head.
“Do you have the sight, Officer Griffiths?”
“No,” says Clipboard Man, “Not every Paranormal Protection Officer does, you know.”
“Hm,” Elliot says, “And I'm assuming you don't soften, because if you did they'd have you doing something much more important.” Clipboard Man looks offended, but then Elliot asks, “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Oh, yes please,” Clipboard Man says. Elliot adds a little more water to the kettle.
“Do you take sugar?”
“No, thank you.”
“Semi-skimmed okay?”
Clipboard Man nods, and when the kettle clicks, Elliot sloshes hot water over two PG tips pyramids and splashes in a dash of milk. He lets convection stir, puts some rich tea biscuits still in their wrappers on a plate, and leads the way through to the living room.
“Where's your Dad, Elliot?”
Dad's in the attic. “Why did you choose to pursue a career path in which you'd be at an obvious disadvantage? Surely it must be more difficult to investigate hauntings if you can't see them, so there will always be a glass ceiling.”
Officer Griffiths slurps when he drinks, and it takes everything Elliot has to suppress the shudder it elicits, “I believe my work to be worthwhile, there will always be a need for people like me in the service.”
“You find it worthwhile to try and separate children from their parents?”
Officer Griffiths sighs, and goes to set his cup down, but Elliot stops him. “You're not really going to put that down without a coaster, are you?”
He gives a thin lipped smile. “May I have a coaster please, Elliot?”
“We don't have any.”
Officer Griffiths sets the mug on his leg instead, probably getting counter gubbins all over his nice Marks & Spencers work trousers. Good. “I don't want to be your enemy, Elliot. I just want you and your dad to be safe.”
If anyone actually cared, they'd be sending someone with the sight. But they don't, so they aren't. “I used to get nightmares about you, when I was little. I dreamed that you'd take Dad away and put me in a children's home like on Tracy Beaker.” All the girls at school were obsessed with that show. Elliot had watched it and all he could see was what would happen to him if anyone ever found out about the attic. What can still happen, if he isn’t careful. He wouldn't last a second in The Dumping Ground, he'd immediately acquire a minimum of five new bullies.
“I'm sorry you thought that,” Griffiths says and he's so sincere it's sickening. “Taking you away from your Dad isn't something anyone wants, and it'd only ever happen if we thought you were in danger.” He sips his drink, “Do you know why your Dad was referred to us, Elliot? Has anyone explained to you why you've been getting these visits?”
Of course they haven't. Explain something? To Elliot? He doesn't want to give Officer Griffiths the satisfaction though, so he just picks at a loose thread on his cuff.
“When your mum died-” Elliot makes a face, but Officer Griffiths is unperturbed, “-her death was marked as being high risk. I heard you're taking classes with Officer Woodsinger now, so you should be able to tell me what that means.”
Elliot can. He recites dryly, “She was under the age of forty, had living direct relatives, and it was both sudden and violent.”
In other words, the kind of death that nobody wants to talk about, except, apparently, Officer Griffiths, who nods at Elliot's definition. “Exactly. We offered your father counseling - we employ a number of specialists in helping people safely navigate trauma and high risk grief - but he declined. He declined to engage with our prevention team at all, so we opted for home visits. I'm here to monitor the situation, and make sure that there's nothing happening that could cause a risk to public health, or to you, Elliot. I don't have any powers until I have evidence that someone might be in danger, or until a resident asks for help.” He pauses in a way that Elliot thinks is meant to be meaningful, and says, “Any resident.”
“Oh my god,” Elliot says, “You want me to McArthyism my Dad.” He barks a laugh, then promptly kicks Clipboard Man out.
What Elliot didn't tell Clipboard Man is that he still has the nightmares, they're just different now. They're about his Dad still, but Elliot watches him through a CCTV feed, curled up in the corner of an iron room, in grey hospital scrubs, his hair unwashed.
Elliot screams, bangs on the screen, tries to break through, but Dad doesn't look at him. He doesn't seem to even know Elliot's there. Doesn't seem like he'd care even if he did.
He only has eyes for Mum, who Elliot can't see, but who Elliot knows is there.
“What's this?” Elliot says when Miss Woodsinger hands him a small green book after class one day.
“We don't ordinarily begin working on properly exercising the sight and building strength until year nine, but if you insist on doing so before then, I want you to follow the exercises in this guide.”
He reads the title, ‘ I See Dead People: Exercises For Teens With The Sight ‘
“Technically I don't see dead people though.”
“Just take the book, Mr. Schafer.”
“We're literally in year eight . You're both thirteen years old!” The Winterchild twins, both June birthdays, are still twelve.
“We have permission from our parents,” Luke says, again waving the extremely flimsy permission slip in front of him.
“That piece of paper means literally nothing,” Elliot says, “My Dad hasn't seen a single one of my permission slips, school reports, or homework planner pages since I learned how to reliably forge his signature last year.”
“We will be fine, Elliot,” Serene says, “My mother has been bringing me along to her hauntings since I was seven, they sound much more dangerous on the news than they ever are in reality.”
“We won't even be going into the house,” Luke adds, “We're providing support from outside.”
Elliot doesn't really have time to argue against that, because Miss Woodsinger appears and swipes up their permission slips.
The rain sounds like grains of rice hitting the perspex shelter over the bench outside Sunset View nursing home, and even though Elliot's a little chilly with just his blazer first thing in the morning, the overall effect is soothing.
The pages of Miss Woodsinger’s book are already looking tattered, thumb-length curls lining the edges of the newspaper-thin pages, a cracked spine, a tear in the back from when it got stuck under all the other books in Elliot's bag, his name and phone number pencilled on the inside cover.
He flicks through the book, finding the interval exercise that he's up to, then sets a timer on his phone for ten seconds.
He glances out of the corner of his eye towards the nursing home.
The ties burst to life, beautiful and bright, a free flowing, writhing mass of colour, a wriggling carpet of light. Very few of the strands are knotted up into chords, and none of them are rotten and grey.
As he watches, one of them bursts, and a rainbow scatters across the lawn, the Shards of the thread settling for a few moments, before dispersing.
The alarm goes off.
Elliot shuts his eyes, trying to pull away from the sight, but when he opens them again, the threads are still there. Dammit.
His head starts to ache, so he tries again, pictures himself ripping free of the web, but he's well and truly stuck.
By the time he manages to wrench the sight away, his nose is bleeding, the world is spinning, and he knows it's going to be a terrible day.
“You’re a Sunborn,” Elliot says when he is greeted by a Sunborn at his front door. “Clipboard Man, why have you brought a Sunborn to my doorstep?” He squints, “Does Luke know you’re here? Which one are you?”
“Gregory,” Says Gregory Sunborn, “I remember you, you’re friends with my nephew.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Officer Sunborn has the sight, Elliot,” Clipboard Man says. Like it means nothing. Like that sentence doesn’t mean it’s the end of everything.
A strange numbness settles over Elliot, comforting in how it frees up space for him to think.
He remembers the class they had on entering homes without consent, and how that consent had to be informed if given at all.
Clipboard Man exchanges a look with Gregory Sunborn, then smiles his ‘government official confronting an uncooperative minor’ smile. “Can we come in, Elliot?”
“Do you have a warrant to bring someone with the sight onto the premises?”
“Well, no–”
“Then we don’t have anything further to talk about.”
“My uncle wanted me to give you this,” Luke says at break over a greasy slice of toast.
Elliot takes the small slip of cardboard and frowns at it, “Your grown adult uncle wanted you to give me, a thirteen year old child, his number?”
It’s not quite his number - it’s a business card with ‘Gregory Sunborn - Paranormal Detection Officer & Head of Sight Development Services’ on one side and his contact details on the other.
Luke’s cheeks are turning scarlett, “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snips, “He said he could help you develop your sight if you get in touch.”
Elliot scowls, theatrically rips it up to much eyerolling from Luke, and scatters the pieces in the nearest bin.
On the day that the softeners are away on their trip, Elliot decides to sit with Peter and Myra. The Winterchild twins stayed behind as well, because apparently their parents also thought the concept of sending actual twelve year olds to deal with murderous spectres is as ridiculous as Elliot does.
They have a supply teacher, and with a note of disappointment, Elliot realises it's Mrs. Taylor, the blonde teacher that pulled Serene up on her uniform on their first day.
“Miss Woodsinger left some worksheets for everyone to complete,” she says when the five of them file in, handing them out. “Just because Miss Woodsinger isn't here, that is not permission to act up, talk, or do nothing. I expect them all to be completed and on my desk by the end of the hour.”
After about five minutes, Elliot sticks his hand in the air, “Miss?”
Mrs. Taylor puts down her pen, “Yes, Elliot?”
“I'm stuck on question three - it's talking about the tangibility of the ties, but I don't know if it's referring to colour or opacity.”
She blinks at him several times, “Maybe just skip that one for now.”
It takes about ten minutes before she gives up and puts Ghostbusters on.
Notes:
Content Warnings:
Abuse
Bullying
Blood
Chapter 6: Elliot, Age 12, Part Two
Chapter Text
“We're going camping over the Easter break,” Luke says.
“That's nice.” Elliot has taken to learning an extra two case reports for every one they do a week in PPST, and the one he's currently pouring over resulted in a particularly brutal possession.
“All of my family will be there, they're hiring out the whole campsite for the week.”
“Hmm,” says Elliot.
“Do you want to come?”
Elliot puts down the book. “Umm…”
“Serene too,” Luke says quickly, “If her mum'll let her.”
Elliot really doesn't have anything better to do, and he likes Luke’s family. “Okay,” he says.
Elliot has never been camping before - he got bullied out of the scouts before they were old enough for any of that, so he doesn't really know quite what to pack. He has a good guess, and ends up with a backpack filled with things , for better or worse.
He finds Dad at his computer, doing work things from the looks of it, and says, “Dad I'm going camping with Luke, I don't know when I'll be back.”
“Okay,” Dad says, not looking up.
He walks to Luke’s house, and when Luke’s Dad finds out, he scolds him, “Kid, that's an hour's walk. We would've picked you up if we knew you didn't have a lift.”
Elliot tosses his backpack into the minivan they've already loaded up with vaguely outdoorsy looking objects. “It’s okay, exercise is good for the brain.”
It's over an hour to the campsite, all through winding country roads where they have to stop every so often to let a herd of sheep cross the road and spend half their time reversing because they met another car head on, hidden by thorny hedgerow.
When they get there, it’s to find most of the Sunborn brood are thoroughly entrenched, with big tents set up in neat rows, chairs and disposable barbecues fully set up.
“Alright kids,” Rachel says as Elliot, Luke, Serene, and Louise pile out of the minivan, “We’ve got two tents, I suggest we do boys and girls.”
And so, Serene and Louise go to help Rachel, and Elliot and Luke spend nearly a full hour wrestling with their own polyester contraption with very little help from Micheal, who takes far too long to realise the instructions he’s trying to read are in french.
Eventually, they manage to get set up, and then they’re encouraged to quickly depart the circle of camp chairs the grown ups have set up with wine and gossip.
The campsite allows fires, but of course they can't just go to a garage and buy firewood like normal people. Oh no. They have to find it themselves.
Luke has, in total, about twenty cousins that come under the category of ‘fellow kids’. Each cousin has brought, on average, 0.5 friends with them. That means they have thirty bodies with which to scour the surrounding forest, which is quite a lot considering that, due to the increasingly agrarian lifestyle of English people in the middle ages leading to widespread deforestation, ‘forest’ in this context means ‘a few trees covering an area no bigger than the school grounds.’
“How's this one?” Elliot says, holding up a hefty looking log.
“Too wet,” Serene says with barely a second glance.
“Did you even look?”
‘Elliot, it is covered in moss.”
That, he concedes, is a fair point. He takes that crushing blow in stride and pushes on.
“How about this?”
“Too small,” Luke pipes in.
“It could make good kindling?” Serene suggests, “You may as well keep hold of it.”
“You two are impossible,” Elliot huffs, just before he gets relegated exclusively to carrying duty.
Even the tiniest, youngest Sunborn cousin brings back enough firewood to build a fire that'll last a good hour. Louise and her most recent boyfriend, Mal, got creative and asked the farmer who owns the site if they could have one of the old picnic benches from the graveyard of old furniture behind the shower block. The farmer said yes, and instead of combing the forest, they spent the past two hours hacking at it with an axe.
As the sun sinks below the horizon and paints the sky with streaks of pink and gold, they start building the fire. Elliot comes to the conclusion that it's more art than science, but the kind of art that people are insisting is a science anyway because they want to be right.
Little Cecily Sunborn insists that they should lay out the logs in the shape of a star, but Adam Sunborn calls her a stupid little brat and she leaves to go and cry to her mother. Louise then drags Adam away, leaving Luke sort of in charge as the eldest cousin present, and Serene co-in charge by default.
“My mother taught me that this is the best method by which to build a fire, she says it served her well on the long nights spent chasing the Pickering Poltergeist across the moors.”
Serene’s method involves very carefully stacking the fire building materials up in height order, the smallest on top, the largest on the bottom.
“You need more space between the logs,” someone says, “Or it won't be able to breathe.”
Someone else argues, “No, that's too much space! It won't catch!”
Elliot retreats into the small utilities room attached to the shower block. Someone's lacy knickers are very visibly swishing around in the clunky washing machine, and the whole place smells like an unpleasant mix of mould, ammonia, and warm electronics.
He sits in the corner, knees up to his chin, book detailing the place of death in Welsh folklore angled to better catch the buzzing yellow light.
The door clatters open, and Elliot looks up. Gregory Sunborn is there. Elliot scowls. “You again.”
“Me again,” he admits, folding into the metal chair in the corner of the room. It creaks under his weight. “How's the book?”
“Lacking in reliable sources.”
Gregory picks it up and reads the back, then nods to himself. “What if I told you that I have a better book?”
Elliot snatches it back. “I wouldn’t believe you.”
“Kid,” Gregory says, “I’m not here to snitch on you or whatever you think’s going on here. You’re a friend of my nephew and, to tell you the truth, I’m a little worried about you.”
Elliot snorts, “So worried you think a book recommendation will help?”
He shrugs, then lowers himself onto the steel folding chair opposite. Rust spreads out from the screws where the joints are, and it’s an odd picture, combined with Gregory’s slicked back hair and spotless burberry. “Books have helped me a lot, at various points. And Luke tells me you like books. Take a look?”
Elliot scowls at him, which he takes as an invitation to pull out a book with a pale lilac cover seemingly from thin air. A veiny heart takes centre prominence, wrapped up in so many ties it looks like it’s suffocating.
“I’m not traumatised,” Elliot says, referring to the book’s title; ‘ Heartties: A Guide To Healing Your Trauma and Unblocking The Sight’
“Grifiths showed me your Dad’s file. Mum killed herself, Dad refused any and all psychological help, and to top it off, you have to be friends with Luke of all people. And–” He holds up a finger to stop Elliot from saying anything more. “Woodsinger told me you’re having problems with the sight.”
“I am not.”
“It’s part of why I was there that day - a lot of the work I do now is about helping officers having problems with the sight get it under control. And let me tell you, ninety percent of the time it’s because of this.” He taps the word ‘trauma’.
“I still fail to see how any of this is your business. Leave me alone. You've got your own problems to worry about - did you know that your nephew made a small child cry?”
“Adam?” Gregory smirks, “That boy's a real character.”
The chair creaks as he stands. “You have my number, if you need me, call.”
The river winds right the way through the campsite, deep into the forest and the mountains. Some of Luke’s cousins claim to have found a waterfall not too far upstream, which of course means that Luke and Serene want to find it.
Elliot did not bring wellies, water shoes, or anything that can be misconstrued as appropriate footwear, much to Luke’s chagrin, so he ends up hobbling barefoot across the river bed over rocks and sharp, pointy stones, water soaking into the bottoms of his rolled up jeans, because he didn’t bring swimwear or really anything other than jeans.
“I’m sorry, but what on earth kinds of activities did you think would be available at a campsite?” Luke exclaims when he finds out.
“I brought quite a few books, I anticipated time to sit and read.”
Luke groans, then attempts to loan Elliot a pair of khaki trousers before realising that they’re massively different sizes and Elliot would likely trip over the hem. Elliot resigns himself to wet jeans for the rest of the week.
It’s hard going, especially when the bank of the river is taken up almost entirely by trees, or when the river hits a spot where it’s deep enough that it’s up to their hips, flowing so fast that it’s only Serene’s quick thinking that saves Elliot from being swept under when he stumbles.
“Look!” Luke shouts over the river's gentle burble.
“I see it too!” Serene grins, and the two of them take off, water sloshing around their calves, splashing up and soaking through the few parts of Elliot that weren’t already soaked through.
He follows them at a more sedate pace, and lo and behold, a measly waterfall barely a few feet tall interrupts the river’s course.
“This was not worth ruining my jeans for.”
“Come on mum, you can’t stay here all day.” Elliot knows almost instantly that he is walking in on something that he shouldn’t when he hears Micahel Sunborn using that soft, gentle voice. It’s too late now, because he’s already opened the door to the utility room and Michael is looking up from the elderly woman curled up in Elliot’s favourite spot with a questioning look.
“Sorry!” He says quickly, “I was just seeking refuge from the ravages of a particularly furious game of rounders. I can leave.”
He’s milliseconds away from escaping the already awkward situation when Michael stops him and says, “Oh no, that’s okay. Have you met Luke’s grandma?”
Elliot cringes. So close, yet so far. “Not yet.”
The woman on the floor is in her seventies, her hands are curled up into trembling claws, long and unkempt, and her wiry white hair is cut short and spiky.
“Mum,” Michael says, “This is Luke’s friend Elliot.”
Luke’s grandma looks up. Her pale blue eyes are red rimmed and puffy. Her voice is papery and dry when she says, “I don’t care, Michael, why don’t you understand that I don’t care?”
“Come on Mum, Elliot’s a guest, let’s not be like–”
“Oh, bugger off! What kind of man treats his own mother like this!” Spit flecks at the corners of her withered lips, “Parading me about in front of harlots and nancy boys, just let me be!”
Elliot wonders which of those is supposed to refer to him , but comes to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter as he swiftly makes his retreat.
“Dad said you met Grandma,” Luke says that same evening.
Elliot doesn’t feel like being on his own, but at the same time the company of others has the same quality as sandpaper. He’s compromised and found a spot in the old furniture graveyard that’s far enough away that not many people will bother him, but is close enough that he can still hear the others.
At Luke’s question, he winces, “Yes, it was… enlightening.”
“Sorry,” Luke says, “Ever since she was softened, she just gets… really down sometimes. And then she gets mean. I don’t think she likes it anymore than we do. I’m sorry if she was rude to you.”
Elliot shrugs, “There’s nothing a seventy year old woman can say to me that your cousin hasn’t already gone above and beyond in surpassing.”
“Still, it’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair, like how it isn’t fair that I’m trying to read and still this weird outdoorsy person keeps coming and bothering me.”
Luke winces, “Right, sorry, I’ll go then.”
Elliot watches as he actually does that and leaves, and feels irrationally angry at the emptiness that opens up in his heart at the sight.
Even if Gregory Sunborn’s book describes the exact problem that Elliot’s been having with the sight, that doesn’t mean he’s right or has anything useful to offer.
In my counselling practice, a great many of the officers who come to me because of an inability to stop using the sight at will report a history of significant childhood abuse or other traumas–
“Stupid book,” Elliot mutters to himself and the birds who are also hiding up in the tree with him.
“Oy! Schafer! What are you doing up there?”
Elliot groans. As if on cue, here comes Adam bloody Sunborn to mess with him.
“I'm really not in the mood to deal with your overcompensation today,” He calls down.
“You think you're smart don't you?” Adam calls back, “Always reading, always using big words - not so smart to climb up something you can fall out of.”
Elliot grips the trunk as Adam begins to viciously shake it.
This camping trip was not worth the effort.
It starts to rain early on the last full day of the trip, and as plans to go hiking or cycling are cancelled, everyone congratulates themselves on making it so far without seeing a drop.
Rashida Sunborn, one of Luke's aunts, is apparently an avid collector of board games and anticipated just this scenario, so the various clusters of Sunborns retreat into their tents with a selection of borrowed games.
Elliot ends up in a tent with Luke and Serene, along with Louise, Luke’s dad, and a few others.
“Have you two played Villainous before?” Louise asks Serene and Elliot, and to Elliot's relief, Serene shakes her head so Elliot feels less weird for doing the same.
“Great,” Louise says, “I'm the only one in this family who ever remembers the rules, so beating the rest of you should be no problem.”
Elliot starts to understand the mechanics of his character at roughly the same time as he gets to the point where it's more or less impossible for him to win, but it's fun to sit back and watch as Louise thoroughly trounces everyone else.
She wins of course, and Michael diplomatically suggests, “How about we play a game next that everyone understands well? Give the rest of us a fighting chance? How about…” he sifts through the games, “Monopoly? How well do you guys understand monoply?”
Serene shrugs, “My mother never allowed me to play monopoly - she says its absurdly satirical nature makes it no better than communist propaganda.”
“How about…” Michael picks up another game, “The Game of Life?”
Serene nods, “Yes, this one I'm familiar with.”
“Elliot?”
He stares down at the ground - there's a smear of mud on the groundsheet. Someone must have forgotten to take their wellies off before coming inside.
“Elliot?”
He shrugs. “Not really,” he mutters.
“That's okay!” Michael says, “Cluedo?”
Elliot shakes his head.
“Operation?”
Elliot stands up abruptly, “I don’t actually like board games. I'm going to go and read my book.”
He steps out of the tent and into his trainers waiting outside. They're soaked through, but that's a small discomfort compared to the heat burning his cheeks and curdling his stomach. It was stupid of him to expect to make it through this trip without anyone realising he isn’t someone who knows how to make campfires, or that you should bring wellies on a camping trip, or how to play bloody Monopoly .
He's shivering and muddy and glad of the rain because it's doing a half decent job of hiding the fact that he's been crying from any curious onlookers by the time he makes it back to his own tent.
He doesn't have the book Gregory gave to him anymore because he threw it at Adam's head and it missed and landed in the river, but he does have the one Miss Woodsinger gave him. The one with the exercises that will help build in the sight.
He buries himself under the blankets he brought, and gets about a page in before he hears the tent unzipping, and then Luke sticks his head in. “I don't know what that was about, but you've made my Dad really upset– have you been crying?”
Stupid, treacherous rain. “No.”
He rolls over because he'll be damned if Luke sees him like this.
“I guess… I guess it's okay if you really don't like board games,” Luke sounds like he's moments from sheer panic, “Um. I don't think anyone will really be upset, the way you left was just a bit abrupt.”
“I'm fine, loser,” Elliot says into his pillow. “Go back to the others.”
Luke does not go back to the others. Instead, there's shuffling, a sleeping bag unzipping and zipping back up again, and Luke says, “I don't really like board games either.”
Elliot shifts round to face him. He's got his Ipod out, earphones in, and Elliot doesn't know when he managed to charge the thing because competition for the socket in the utility room has been fierce ever since that first night, but charged it is, because tinny music starts playing.
Luke offers him an earbud, and Elliot takes it, shuffling closer so that he's close enough to not accidentally pull it out. “Is this Black Parade?” He asks at the sound.
Luke is chagrined, “I only have one album.”
Elliot supposes he could have made a worse choice.
There's something strangely devastating about the sight of little Cecily Sunborn rolling up her tiny, butterfly shaped sleeping bag at the end of the trip and stuffing it into the bag. One by one, the tents disappear, packed into boots or strapped onto roofs. Tearful goodbyes are shared, hugs doled out plentifully and frequently.
Once Luke’s family's things are all packed up, Elliot perches in the mini van’s open doorway with his book, watching them make their final goodbyes.
And then it’s back on the road, a straight shot home.
“Thank you for inviting me,” Elliot says, sounding like he's just being polite, but meaning every word.
Elliot does have board games. He owns Monopoly. The Game of Life. Even Cluedo. It's a stupid idea, but at dinner, he says, “Do you want to play a game of Monopoly?”
Dad stares at him blankly. Then, as if finding it hard to believe Elliot had even asked, says simply, “No.”
Elliot does the dishes because Dad goes straight up the stairs, up to the attic. Elliot hovers for far too long at the base of the ladder on his way to bed, listening to the sound of Dad's laughter.
It used to bring him comfort, hearing that sound. Not anymore, now it makes him angry.
Some of what Gregory’s book said is helpful - it says distractions can help a person snap out of the sight, physical sensations, grounding techniques.
So Elliot fills the freezer with ice cubes, then cracks them out into a bowl. He sits with steam spilling out onto the landing, triggers the sight. Waits ten seconds.
Shock, screaming nerves, pain.
The ice works, he is immediately jolted out of the sight.
This time, the colours sing .
He waves his hands through the ties running through the hallway, letting each hue embrace him. He feels Dad's joy at being around Mum when he hits yellow. Feels the way she makes him long for more when he hits blue, for him, knowing her is like staring into the ocean, or gazing up at a wide open sky.
The timer goes off, but Elliot wants to sit in that feeling a little longer, so he gives himself another half a moment before plunging his hands into the ice.
It's easier than ever to slip into the sight now, so easy that he does it unintentionally.
He's started wearing an elastic band on his wrist, for when he doesn't have ice and needs to snap himself out of the sight. It doesn't work as well, but it works and that's all he needs.
He slips into the sight walking past the nursing home, and then it doesn't go away.
He snaps the elastic band, stamps his feet, pulls at his hair. When he gets into school, even Luke and Serene notice something’s wrong, but he can’t think straight, never mind speak.
Serene’s hair is made of ties, and they twist and bat around Luke like streamers. His shoelaces are ties, and the words coming out of Serene’s mouth are hummed at the same frequency to which the ties are vibrating.
The blood that drips onto his hands from his nose matches the colour of the most loudly passionate ties, the ones that feel like the kinds of things Ellio imagines when he thinks of Serene, the ones that feel like skin on skin and heat.
The yellow of Serene’s wristband picks out the brightest ties, the ones that feel like sunshine on even the darkest of days, the ones that feel like listening to Dad’s laugh, imagining what it would be like to be in the same room as that laugh.
The blue of Luke's eyes as he stares hard at Elliot, gripping his shoulders as the ground tilts beneath him, echoes the boldest ties, the ones that feel like staring out at an ocean and longing to see what's on the other side, that feel like meeting a person and wanting to know what excites them, what makes them cry, what makes them laugh out loud.
The grey of the ground rushing up to meet him mostly just looks like the ground.
Notes:
Click/Tap For Chapter Specific Warnings:
Abuse/neglect
Mentions of suicide
Old-timey homophobia and slut shaming that gets excused because it's from a mentally ill elderly person
Very mild self injury (hair pulling, snapping elastic band around wrist)
Blood/nosebleeds
Bullying
Chapter 7: Elliot, Age 12, Part Three
Chapter Text
The paramedics are very nice, but unfortunately, yes, they do still need to take him to hospital. Even if he’s awake and talking to them. And yes, even if he thinks the head injury wasn’t all that bad, actually.
“I do feel bad that they made you come with me,” Elliot says to Miss Woodsinger, crammed into the ambulance between the door and the trolley, “I agree that it is deeply unfair that the school has decided that anything even remotely related to the paranormal is your responsibility.”
“Elliot sweetie,” The paramedic, who is the only person allowed to call Elliot ‘sweetie’, interjects, “I’m going to need you to stop moving your hands so much, just because you keep dislodging the sats monitor and it can’t get a proper reading.”
‘Dislodge’ is, in Elliot’s opinion, an extremely polite way to describe gesticulating so hard that the weird finger clip thing flew off his finger.
“Yes, it would be wonderful if my students didn’t injure themselves by flaunting any and all advice I give them,” Miss Woodsinger says. She’s brought her marking with her and is currently going through some of the year nine tests.
“I didn’t mean to,” Elliot says, keeping a close eye on the paramedic as she re-attaches the sats monitor.
“And yet here we are.”
One of the A&E volunteers manages to find Elliot a banana and makes him a cup of coffee, and Miss Woodsinger disappears off to the vending machine and comes back with a packet of crisps, but Elliot feels too nauseous to touch any of it.
“You’ll feel terrible until you eat something, and if I’m going to be stuck waiting with you, then I’d rather you be at least moderately less unpleasant.” She hasn’t looked up from her marking.
“Have they…”
“No,” she says, “They still haven’t managed to get in touch with your father.”
“Right…” Elliot says, staring down at where his legs are stretched out in front of him on the trolley. He hadn’t been expecting them to. “What happens if you can’t reach him at all?”
“Well, the hospital can’t release you without a parent, and the school also has a duty of care, so I can't leave until a responsible adult is in charge of you. So I expect they’d speak to social services. And if you have a concussion, you need to be monitored for twenty four hours.”
“My Dad has work tomorrow,” Elliot says, because it's easier than saying his Dad won't be convinced to spend that long in Elliot's presence.
“And you have no other family?”
He shakes his head, which immediately sends stars scattering at the edges of his vision and a fresh wave of pain cascading across his brain. “Ow,” he groans, leaning back.
Miss Woodsinger sighs, “We’ll figure something out, don't worry.
There's a bit of humming and haaing over whether they need to send Elliot for a CT scan or not, but when he throws up the crisps Miss Woodsinger tries to force on him again, it cinches the decision.
They don't seem to be huge fans of walking in this place, particularly for people that say things like ‘if I move, my head spins so much I can't tell which way the ground is.’, so Elliot gets another wheelchair ride and then promptly dumped outside the radiography department.
They get made to sit in a different corridor to the corridor they were already sitting in, and Miss Woodsinger finally reaches the bottom of the pile of year nine books.
“How did they do?” Elliot asks.
“Well, none used the sight so recklessly that I had to sit in A&E with them for,” she checks her watch, “Nearly three hours now and counting.”
“I was doing the exercises you gave me!” Elliot protests.
“Did you miss the part where you’re only supposed to hold the sight for seconds at a time?”
Elliot scowls, “That's easier said than done.”
Miss Woodsinger sets her pile of books aside, “What on Earth are you talking about?”
“I don’t know if you noticed, but that super helpful book doesn’t say anything about turning the sight off .”
She doesn’t respond immediately, brow creased, “That is not how the sight works. You don’t have to ‘turn it off’, it's more effort to sustain it than it is to just… let it go.”
Elliot gestures towards himself - nose still plugged with tissues, a patch of white gauze stuck to his forehead where it smashed into the edge of the wall on his descent to the ground, “Not for me.”
Miss Woodsinger leans back in her chair, “This is… unusual, I must say.”
Elliot shrugs, “I like being different.”
The sky outside the A&E doors darkens steadily from pale grey to murky black and Elliot's Dad still hasn't shown up. Elliot hears the word ‘social worker’ being muttered outside the flimsy cubicle curtains a few times, but Miss Woodsinger makes no move to leave.
The doctor visits and says Elliot most likely just has a concussion, but he'll need an adult to keep an eye on him for the next twenty four hours.
He's not allowed to leave until his Dad arrives.
The hospital social worker visits and asks if he has any idea where his Dad might be.
“He's probably at home now, but he doesn’t always check his phone.” It's the easiest way to say it, the least likely to ring alarm bells.
“Do you have a key to get in?” The social worker, Dan, asks.
Elliot nods, “I'm fine to get home on my own.”
Dan, who has bags under his eyes big enough they could probably carry all of even Elliot’s books and who doesn’t look like he’s been graduated for even a year gives the most world weary smile Elliot thinks he's ever seen on a twenty two year old. “I know that mate, but on the off chance something does happen to you, me and Miss Woodsinger will get bollocked if we send you home without checking it were safe first. Especially with that report on your file from the school.”
“Report?” Elliot asks, alarmed, “From who?” He glares at Miss Woodsinger, “Have you been snitching on me?”
“I wouldn't be about to tell you if I had now, would I?” She says blandly.
And well, if that isn’t another person to add to the ‘no longer trusted adults’ list.
“If I ever suffer from a typical teenage social issue that would fit succinctly into a half hour television episode or pshe lesson, I will not be coming to you about it,” he informs her.
“I am absolutely devastated,” she says, not sounding even a little bit devastated.
“That is confidential,” Dan interjects, “That means I can't tell you who it was, mate.”
“I know what confidential means, I'm thirteen, not a moron.”
Dan holds his hands up, “Sorry mate, didn’t mean to offend. Are we ready to be off?”
Dad's been drinking.
It's the smell more than anything else that lets Elliot know. The blank, confused look is the same no matter what his blood alcohol is, as if no amount of drinking could ever explain why Elliot was in front of him, asking questions, needing care.
"Dad,” Elliot says, arm draped over Dan's shoulder for support because he wobbled so much getting out of the car, “This is Dan. He's a social worker . From the hospital .”
“Alright Mr. Schafer? D'you mind if I come in for a chat?”
Dad hasn’t made anyone a cup of tea in a long time. That's always been Elliot's job, on the rare occasions they've had visitors. He grew up to a greek chorus of authority figures warmly commenting about how he was ‘such a good little lad.’
But Elliot can barely stand up straight, nevermind be trusted around hot water, so he slumps in a rickety chair at the kitchen table, dawn light filtering in through the blinds highlighting tea stained letters and the full glass bin in the corner.
“I have to be at work soon,” Dad tells Dan as the kettle boils, steam washing the faded paint about the tiles lining the walls around the counters.
“Will they not let you take the day off? The hospital said Elliot needs to be watched for twenty-four hours to make sure he doesn't have a more serious head injury.”
The kettle clicks, and the little blue light on the switch goes out.
“Can you not keep hold of him?” Dad asks, and Elliot groans internally.
Dan has clearly been on shift for too long and it's starting to show, because he replies coolly, “Not without a child protection order.”
“Is that–”
“He's talking about putting me in care, Dad,” Elliot says, the pulsing in his head growing. “And it's not necessary. Everyone's just very tired. Do you take sugar, Dan?”
“I- yes. One and a half please, and just a splash of milk.”
“Is semi okay?”
“Of course.”
Elliot makes to stand, and quickly changes his mind, “Dad, the sugar’s in the second top cabinet– no not that one, the other– yeah, there.”
Dad adds one and a half tablespoons of sugar, but if Dan minds being a good few steps closer towards a diagnosis of type two diabetes than he'd planned, he doesn't show it. Elliot supposes ‘drinking awful tea’ makes up a significant part of the social worker curriculum.
“Cheers,” he says, then sets the cup down. “So, Mr. Schafer, what's the plan for today?”
Elliot doesn't give Dad a chance to answer, “He still has some carer's leave left that he can take.”
He still has all of his carer's leave, and he still will after today because there's no way he's staying home to look after Elliot, but that probably sounds bad.
Dan seems to accept that, accepts too that Elliot is carrying the conversation, and that it's Elliot who sees him to the door.
“He's normally more with it,” Elliot explains, and, from the sludgy depths of his rattled brain, pulls forth the kind of excuse that makes people too uncomfortable to ask more, “It was his wedding anniversary today. It's always difficult seeing as my mum, y'know…” he clicks his tongue and mimes slitting his own neck.
Dan seems unnamused by the flippancy, “Elliot,” he says, “If you tell us what's really going on, we can help. Social services aren't here just to take you away from your Dad. We can make things better.”
And that's a bald faced lie if Elliot's ever heard one. “You don't have any evidence that anything is wrong. 'Gut feeling’ won't hold up in any committees.”
“You were in hospital and he didn't even pick up the phone.”
“Since when was not checking texts a crime?”
“You deserve people who care about you mate,” Dan says, then leaves.
The doorbell wakes Elliot up at what, from the way the shadows tilt, is just after school finishing time. He drags himself up off the couch, head still spinning, and answers it, finding Luke and Serene standing there.
“How did you even know where I live?”
Luke glances back towards where Louise Sunborn is waiting in her silver Audi. “My mum remembered from when we dropped you off.”
“Ugh, of course,” Elliot says, “What do you want?”
“We want to check on you, Elliot,” Serene says, “You haven't been answering your texts.”
“The doctor said I can't look at screens until I can walk in a straight line,” Elliot says.
There is an awkward bloom of silence.
“Um, Mum also wanted me to check if you've got someone with you, you know, because your Dad’s car isn't in the driveway.”
“He's at work. It's a Thursday.”
“Right… Well…”
“I brought you classwork,” Serene interjects, “The teachers said you didn't have to do any of it if you aren't well, but I told them you'd want to see it.”
Elliot remembers when he was ill in primary school, nobody had ever brought homework round for him. He takes the small pile of worksheets from her, suddenly feeling dangerously close to shedding tears, “I think I'm in love with you,” he says, “Will you go out with me?”
“Elliot, you are concussed,” Serene says very sensibly. Damn her and her unshakeable morals, not letting her take advantage of Elliot in his vulnerable state.
“Right… yes… Of course… I… I think I'm going to go back to sleep now. Yep. Goodnight.”
He shuts the door.
A few moments later, someone knocks again, and Elliot goes through the laborious process of peeling himself off the couch, unlocking the door, and opening it.
Luke and Serene are still there, but now so is Luke’s mum.
“Hello Luke’s mum,” he says.
“Hey kid, Luke tells me you're on your own today?” She's dressed in her work uniform, and it feels so close to having Clipboard Man at his door that Elliot has to physically fight the urge to clam up and tell her that Dad's just popped out for snacks.
“It’s fine, I'm used to it,” he says instead.
“Hm, not with a head injury you're not. When's your Dad going to be back?”
“I don’t know, around eight probably? He has a project he's working on.”
“Right,” she puts her hands on her hips, “You're staying the night with us.”
“I am?” Elliot doesn't like the sound of that at all.
“He is?” Neither, it sounds like, does Luke.
Luke's mum, Rachel, has that superpower that means that everyone immediately just does what she says, no matter what it is, so within minutes she has Serene making sure that all the doors and windows are properly locked up, and she's sent Luke and Elliot up to Elliot's room to pack a bag.
At the door to his room, Elliot hesitates, “You can wait out here if you want?”
Luke shakes his head, “I think my mum wants me to make sure you don't collapse and die.”
Elliot scoffs, “It was only a little bump.”
Luke goes very quiet then, staring at the ground.
“Luke?”
“I was actually really scared, you know? You were unconscious for a long time, and there was blood everywhere… ” He looks up, big blue eyes shining and earnest.
And oh no. Elliot cannot handle this level of concern. “God, you're such a loser.”
“For what? Caring about my friend?”
Abort abort abort abo– “Don’t flatter yourself, we're barely friends. You just keep showing up at places I happen to be.”
“Why don’t you tell me how you really feel,” Luke mutters.
For a sensible, emotionally well-adjusted person, this would have been an excellent place for an apology. Possibly even a confession. A breakthrough. A meeting of hearts.
Unfortunately, Elliot is definitely not that, so he just goes and packs his bag and says nothing more.
They don’t speak when they get to Luke’s house. Luke’s Mum (“Please, just call me Rachel.”) bundles Elliot into the guest bedroom, now blessedly free of Sunborns, to sleep until dinner’s ready.
After, she comes into the guest room as Elliot is getting settled in again, and gives him the talk he’s starting to get used to. The ‘you just have to tell me if something’s going on at home’ talk, and the ‘our door’s open anytime you need it’ one.
Elliot takes pity on her and says, “If you were worried, don't be. Social services are already involved.”
She pats his head with a sad smile, “Surprisingly kid, that doesn't help.” She takes a seat, the bed dipping under her weight. Elliot hadn’t noticed before how muscular she is, but Luke’s mum is built like a machine . “So. Why’d you do it?”
“Do what?”
She raises an eyebrow, “Practise on your own.”
Elliot shrugs, “No one will teach me, and if they do, they’re tied to the service, and the service is…” He stares down at the sheets covering his lap. They have petunias on them, all pink and purple. They’re mum sheets; there’s no way anyone other than the woman in front of him picked them out. He wonders what kind of sheets his mum would have picked out, had she ever properly been a mum. “The service doesn’t always do what’s best for people.”
“Is this to do with the woman you saw on the unit?” She asks, and Elliot wonders how shaken up he must have looked for Luke to have apparently mentioned the incident to his mother .
“I guess,” is easier to say than anything about Dad. “If I can see what's happening, maybe I can find a way to help that doesn't involve just… destroying things.”
Rachel smooths out the sheets over his legs, “I don't think you're completely wrong, funnyface. A lot of what we do is really painful for people, and we only do it because it's better than the alternative. Once you've seen a possession, you'll never complain about softeners again, I can tell you that much. But do me a favour, yeah?” She pauses, her hand resting on his shin, and he looks up to meet her eye, “Don’t kill yourself over it.”
Notes:
Tap or click for content warnings
Hospitals
Abuse/neglect
Alcoholism
Mention of suicide
Chapter 8: Elliot, Age 13, Part One
Chapter Text
Elliot dreams of the sea.
The ocean laps at the rocky coastline, heads of kelp bob up and down with the waves, slimy black fronds tangling up in other.
A black shape darkens the water, a shadow that lasts only a second before there is a humongous splash and the car is swallowed by the briny depths.
Water rushes in through the windows, a woman screams, all he can hear is sloshing. The cold black sea bursts in through every available crack, filling up the inside of the car.
Elliot screams, soaked through, the water is rising, has risen, he can't breathe, he can't breathe, he can't–
He wakes up underwater.
Limbs flailing, crashing into PVC and tile. Water runs. Darkness crushes.
He manages to push himself up to a seating position, and then air- sweet, beautiful air.
He takes huge, choking gasps of it blinking in the thin light.
He's in the bath, the tap is running- cold.
The bath has overflowed, is still overflowing, water sloshing over the floor tiles. Elliot turns off the tap, hands shaking so badly the metal slips away from his fingers several times before he gets it off.
He weighs up the facts.
He doesn't know how he got here. He might have died. Dad is nowhere to be seen.
It’s a mystery how he stayed underwater when his whole body is filled with nothing but air.
The picture paints itself. Elliot starts to clean up.
They haven't spoken since that day at Elliot's house, after his head injury. Elliot, however, didn't realise it was going to be a thing until they're back in school and Luke fully angles his back to block Elliot out when he comes to talk to Serene.
“Oy, loser!” Elliot snaps, “What is your problem ?”
Luke's face twists into an expression that doesn't match his features. The sheer disdain doesn't fit there, with that blonde hair and those blue eyes. Other faces, yes. In fact, Elliot would argue most people's faces are like that when looking at him, but not Luke’s. “I thought we weren't friends?” Luke spits.
It seems impossibly small. Impossibly petty and pathetic.
“What, and you're such a delicate little flower that you care all of a sudden?” Elliot sneers.
Luke doesn't deign him with an answer.
There is someone sitting on Elliot’s bench outside the nursing home.
“Luke’s uncle?” Elliot says as he approaches and silvering hair and fitted suit become clearer, “Why are you here?”
Gregory pushes down his sunglasses and peers over the top of them. The fact that he needs to remove them to see doesn’t surprise Elliot because it’s six in the morning and the sky is still looking beaten and bruised. “I think the more pertinent question is why are you here, Little Red. I thought you were told not to practise the sight on your own after you nearly smashed that pretty little head of yours all over the playground?”
Elliot cuts to the chase, “Why are you here?”
“Did you read the book?”
“I threw it at Adam's head.”
Gregory grins, “Good thing I have a spare.” He pulls out another copy of the book and hands it over. “It’s a good book you know, and if I'm going to be your mentor for your level twos, you need to read it.”
“If you're going to what?”
He gets up, the crisp cut of his suit makes him look like he's some kind of banker who managed to get very lost. “Woodsinger not tell you yet? You need a mentor in the service to complete the practical part of your level two exams. I'm yours.”
Elliot leans back, “And if I say no?”
“Ha! I wish you had a say - the world would be a better place if people got to say no more often, kid, I'll tell you that much.”
The seating chart in Miss Woodsinger’s PPST class means that Elliot is between Myra and Peter, on the other side of the room from Serene, and even farther from Luke, who’s sharing a table with an Adara who seems extremely unhappy to not be next to Natalie.
“How was your summer, Elliot?” Myra asks politely when Elliot’s bag hits the desk with a thunk.
“Crap,” he says, “What about yours?”
Myra looks mildly unsettled by that, but she bravely soldiers on, “Oh, you know. The usual. We went camping in Scotland in the forest around our family’s castle and–”
“Wait, your family’s what!?” How has Elliot missed that Myra has castle owning relatives?
“Well, it’s not a very big castle–”
“Okay that’s enough chatter!” Miss Woodsinger claps her hands together, “This year, we’re doing our Level Two Paranormal Services Training so that we’re ready to take on level three next year. This is equivalent to a GCSE grade B, but you either pass or fail.”
She starts handing out syllabuses, either track A or track B.
“Softeners, you're track A, those of you with the sight, you're track B. Serene, as our only mixed ability student, you're track C, but if you would rather focus on one or the other exclusively, speak to me after class.”
They're to be tested on both theoretical skills and practical skills, and it's the latter that has Elliot worried.
Miss Woodsinger intercepts before he even raises his hand. “Mr Schafer, I'll speak to you after class.”
“You’ve spoken to Geoffrey?” She says, when the others file out, leaving the two of them alone.
“Yes, he asked if I read his book.”
“Did you?”
Elliot rolls his eyes, “I have now. It's stupid.”
She nods, then takes out another sheet of paper, “I didn’t want to give you this in front of the entire class, but I think it’s worth considering given your circumstances.”
It says ‘track D’, and like the track B syllabus he was given, it has learning outcomes that are both practical and theoretical, the notable difference being, of course, “I wouldn’t need to use the sight to achieve this?”
Whereas the track B practical competencies largely involve using the sight to detect the presence of bonds and ties and monitoring their strength and quality, this focuses on talking to people and conducting interviews in order to understand their situation.
“No,” Miss Woodsinger says. “Rarely, we get students interested in this class who don’t have any abilities whatsoever. And of course, there are students who have difficulty doing so safely. We want those students to have a qualification at the end of all this too.”
“These all seem like really useful techniques, shouldn’t we be learning them anyway?”
“That, Mr. Schafer, is a question for the Department for Education, not me.”
“So you want me to do this instead?” Elliot says, perching on the edge of the table. It will be good, whatever aspect of the service he goes into, or doesn’t go into, to understand these less abrasive skills.
“As well,” Miss Woodsinger corrects, “Gregory assures me that he can get you to the point where you’re able to safely use the sight to the standard expected of someone your age within the year if you work hard. But regardless of what happens, I want you to have a backup plan, and I think you're more than capable of taking on both tracks at once.”
Elliot isn’t sure why his guts twist at that, “So this is just… a backup plan?”
“For now. We’ll see how things go.”
“What's all this about?” Gregory grabs at Elliot's wrist mid-scratch. One of the scabs has started bleeding, and the pain is sharp enough to pull his mind out of the muddy tangle of ties. It's all too easy to slip when he's outside like they are now, in the park with noise and people everywhere .
“Oy, get off! You can't just grab at me, I'm a minor,” Elliot snips, yanking his arm out of Gregory’s grasp.
“I can if that minor is actively self harming in front of me,” Gregory says, and Elliot suddenly notes the way his face is all scrunched up and concerned. Gross.
“Don't be such a drama queen,” Elliot scoffs, tugging at the sleeves of his school blazer. “I slipped into the sight for a moment, it's the only thing that pulls me out.”
Gregory groans, and slumps onto a nearby park bench, “Kid, I hope you understand how f- err, messed up what you just said is.”
“Ugh, there's no pleasing you people!”
“This is ‘I have to raise a safeguarding concern’ levels of serious.”
“Good luck getting my dad to pick up the phone, he didn't even answer for my concussion.”
Gregory pinches the bridge of his nose, but then it takes him all of a second to bounce back. “Right.” He slaps his knees. “Emergency grounding technique lesson. Let's go.”
“The school called,” Dad says, and Elliot nearly jumps, because this is the first time Dad's initiated a conversion in months.
As if to punctuate the solemnity of the moment, Elliot sinks into the sofa opposite Dad's chair instead of hovering on foot. “Okay?” He doesn't mean for it to come out as a question.
“They said you're self harming now.”
“Oh,” Elliot's shoulders sag. That call would've been made days ago, did it really take him that long to work up to addressing it?
“They said I need to take you to the doctor. Do you need me to take you to the doctor?” Dad asks, and Elliot almost says yes just to see what he'll do.
“No,” he says in the end, because whatever happened would likely just depress him first.
“Alright then,” Dad says, then goes back to his drink.
“My mentor just wants me to write essays for him,” Myra, Elliot's new best friend now that Luke is no longer talking to him, says.
Peter, his other new best friend, sounds even more dejected, “Mine keeps taking me to graveyards in the middle of the night. It's horrible, we keep getting kicked out by the guard and then she starts arguing with them and I don't get home until two in the morning.” As if to illustrate the point, his jaw cracks and he lets out a huge yawn.
Elliot isn't sure why they're complaining. “I wish mine made me hang around graveyards or write essays, Gregory has me doing yoga every night over Skype. What does yoga have to do with the sight?”
“It might be good for you, you know,” Myra says, “One of my essays was about how mindfulness can help people who struggle with sight incessation.”
“Please don't call it that,” Elliot groans, “You're making it sound like some kind of bladder problem.”
“Where is your attention right now?” Gregory asks after taking a bite of his McDonald's veggie deli wrap.
“This is stupid, why would I know that? Elliot replies.
It's the middle of the lunch rush, and raining, and a bank holiday. It's safe to say that they barely even found a table. Every five seconds a new child starts screaming, or a group of kids Elliot’s age walks in and make him feel extremely self conscious about hanging out with a man dressed like he’s walked fresh off the set of the Great Gatsby - hair slicked back in a suit so white it practically glows.
“Ehhhh!” The noise Gregory makes is quite literally extremely alarming and draws a lot more stares than Elliot is happy with, “Wrong answer! You are the master of your attention, kid. You don’t want to think about anything other than your McFlurry? Then don't! In fact, that's your challenge for the next five minutes. No paying attention to anything other than your McFlurry.”
For the next five minutes, Elliot thinks about nothing other than his McFlurry, or at least he tries to.
“How did it taste?” Gregory asks when the timer is up.
That seems like a deceptively stupid question. It’s ice cream. “Sweet?”
“More detail. It did not take you five minutes to come to the conclusion of ‘sweet’.”
“We’re in a McDonald’s, not the Ritz. It does not get much more complicated than sweet.”
Gregory makes him start again, and when he runs out of McFlurry, he buys Elliot another one, until he comes out with, “Ugh, I feel sick, I’m not even tasting ‘sweet’ now, just chemicals and the fact that it’s nowhere near creamy enough to rightfully call itself ‘ice cream’ .”
“Good work kid. That’s probably enough for now. See you tonight for yoga.” Gregory says, and takes off.
“I still don't understand why you don't just apologise to him,” Serene says as she moves her tray over from the table on the left of the canteen where Luke is sitting, to the one on the right where Elliot is sitting.
“It's the principle of the thing,” Elliot says. Elliot is glad that she agreed to this current agreement to share custody. Even he can admit that Luke would win any sort of competition there - for one, the whole argument is sort of Elliot's fault. For two, no reasonable person would ever pick Elliot over Luke. Serene may be okay with Elliot as a friend, but certainly not as her best friend.
‘What principle? From what I heard, you were cruel to him, and now you refuse to apologise.” She's finished her jacket potato, and has since moved onto her school cake - sponge, with white frosting and hundreds and thousands.
Elliot gestures vaguely, “You know, the principle.”
“I don't think you even know yourself why you said that to him, do you?”
Elliot looks down at his own lunch. Sandwiches that he threw together last night before collapsing into bed to listen to the ghost pounding on the walls. Not sleeping. When he sleeps he just wakes up choking on dread.
The yoga studio Gregory takes them to is pretty much what Elliot was expecting. Reception has a jug filled with soggy cucumbers and one of those steamy smelly things. Music composed almost entirely of someone playing very slow marimba pipes through the air. Elliot wants to leave within moments of walking in.
“I hate this,” he says.
“Don’t be rude,” Gregory says, before turning to the receptionist, “Sorry about him Lou, you know how it is with teenagers. We’ve a booking in the meditation studio?”
The woman behind the desk flicks through a notebook, long , willowy finger running down the page, “I’ve got you just here, Mr. Sunborn.”
“I believe I still had a balance to pay..?”
She smiles warmly, “Oh, Jen said not to worry about it and just to head through.”
The meditation ‘studio’ is small and strangely lit, with a speaker in the corner, a few candles, and some sticks of incense. A small collection of cushions and yoga mats is arranged artlessly in the corner, and on one side, several beanbags are stacked up on top of each other.
Gregory pulls out two beanbags, plops them in the middle of the room, and gestures for Elliot to sit. He does.
“How many times since we last saw each other did you accidentally slip into the sight?” Gregory asks.
Elliot gets out the diary where Gregory has been having him record what he impolitely refers to as Elliot’s ‘episodes’. “Three times.”
“Were you able to get out? Without using external sensations?”
“Sir yes sir,” Elliot says.
Gregory hands him a pair of ski gloves.
“I think it’s still a bit too September for these,” Elliot says without putting them on.
“I want to be safe when we do this,” Gregory explains, “You need to be able to practice this without resorting to… unhealthy behaviours.”
Elliot sits up straighter, “Are you actually going to let me practise the sight?”
“ Slowly.”
Elliot feels like his birthday’s come early.
Elliot tries to run a bath, a vein attempt at getting over the slight aversion he's had to them since waking up nearly drowned. The taps are stiff and cold, but with a guttural glugging sound accompanied by a metallic squeek, they eventually turn on, but it’s not water that comes out.
Blood splatters PVC, heavy and thick. Elliot turns the tap off, then yells, “Really? I can't even have a bath in peace?”
The steady drip of red from the tap is the only reply.
“It’s not working!” Elliot shouts, “I don’t know what you want me to bloody say it just isn’t working .”
The ties are beautiful, enchanting even. But Elliot’s nose is bleeding so it doesn’t really matter what they look like.
He snatches at the gloves. Cold air hits his fingers, it’s not enough.
“Stop that now, I said-” Gregory’s eyes widen. He’s spotted the gloves. “I’m going to touch you, scream if you don’t want me to.”
He grabs Elliot’s arms. Elliot tears away, but Gregory is too strong and holds firm.
“I’ll tell Woodsinger you assaulted me,” he spits. Blood drips onto the floor of the studio. His head fizzes. He can’t remember any of what Gregory taught him.
“Backwards in sevens from a hundred, go.”
Elliot obliges, starts going in his head–
“Out loud, so I know you’re doing it.”
Elliot groans, but starts diligently counting back, “One hundred, ninety-three, sixty six, sixty- no, fifty- nine…”
He reaches the end, and Gregory lets go of his arms, “How’re you feeling?”
The ties are gone. He hadn’t even noticed them flickering out. “They’re gone.” Elliot says.
Gregory nods. “ Good lad…” he hesitates.
“What?” Elliot snaps.
Gregory leans back into the beanbag, face pensive, “I worry… It’s two steps forward, one to fifty steps back with you sometimes, you know? You were doing this fine on your own just last week. What happened?”
Last night, Elliot woke up to the feeling of ghostly hands around his neck. Squeezing.
“None of your business.”
Peter stops talking to him when Elliot screams at him about their history homework. Myra stops when he calls the school play a stupid waste of time. He stops talking to Serene all by himself because he's scared to make her hate him too.
Sycamore Avenue is in one of the nicer parts of town, the houses built with bricks that look like they're from this decade, the gardens all either neat and tidy or deliberately filled with quirky gnomes, even the carpet of dying, mulchy leaves on the floor appear curated.
“Did you know Luke hates me now?” Elliot tells Gregory.
“Hasn't he hated you all year?” Gregory has started wearing posh jumpers and his sophisticated looking businessman coat, which provides a potentially worrisome comparison to Elliot's own school uniform for anyone walking past. Then again, they'll probably just think Gregory’s his dad or something.
“Yes, but now the friends I was using to replace him also hate me. It's more noticeable.”
“You can't just replace people, kid,” Gregory says with a raised eyebrow.
“I know , but people will think I'm even more weird if I don't have someone to stand next to me at break time.”
“Did you ever consider that it might be you that's the problem?”
And wow, there was Elliot thinking Gregory was smart. “ Obviously it's me that's the problem, I am well aware of how terrible I am to be in the general vicinity of. This is me trying to fix the problem.”
“It… is?”
“Yes, I'm asking you for advice, keep up.”
“What? Why me?” Gregory says that in the tone of someone pleading to a higher power.
“Miss Woodsinger got demoted from being my trusted adult when she reported me to social services.”
“Why is there always so much to unpack with you?”
Elliot shrugs as they round the corner and number thirty two looms up out of the row of neat, tidy semis surrounding it. It’s a pebbledash monstrosity, painted in a cream that's long since faded to grey, stained by rain and moss. They stop at the edge of the overgrown front garden, and Gregory puts a hand on Elliot’s shoulder, “I don’t do pep talks or inspirational moments with the youths, but this is actually painful, so I'll give you this in full knowledge you won't listen to a word I say. You need to stop thinking of yourself as the problem before there even is a problem. Do you have your field logbook?”
The change in subject is so abrupt that Elliot feels himself knocked almost physically off balance. He rummages through his backpack, and eventually pulls out his field logbook - a spiral bound printoff that’s been minorly chewed up by being sandwiched between all the books in his bag.
“So today you're watching and listening unless I tell you otherwise, got it?”
“Got it.”
“Objectives?”
“First, establish the presence of a haunting. Second, attempt classification. Third, locate the presence of an anchor. Fourth, locate the host. Finally, escalate to the proper authorities as necessary.”
“Word perfect,” Gregory says, then begins leading the way up the garden path. “Come on.”
Nobody lives at Thirty Two Sycamore Avenue anymore, but over two dozen different renters have passed through in the past fifty years, not all of whom could be tracked.
Elliot did a lot of the research himself as part of his competencies for Track D. Research is a big field for officers without the sight or the ability to soften, tracing histories through deeds and newspaper articles. The database at the local PPS headquarters has every single obituary from the past two hundred years saved and stored by location and name of surviving relatives. Elliot wishes he could've just spent the whole day there, but no, they have to actually do the case as well as just researching it.
Gregory has a key, which he uses to let them in. The floorboards, hidden under a musty stained carpet, creak violently when they step on them.
“Right,” Gregory says softly, “What's the first step?”
“Establish visible safety before progressing further,” Elliot rattles off.
“And?”
“There’s no signs of anything smashed or broken, no immediately intimidating behaviour being displayed by the alleged haunting. The ghost must be on its lunch break.”
“Second step?”
“Use the sight to establish whether there’s a haunting or not?”
Gregory nods, “Correct.” He hesitates, “Scale of one to ten, ten being very, how likely is it to be a complete disaster if you use the sight today?”
If Elliot could predict that, there wouldn’t be any disasters. Stress, irritatingly enough, is turning out to be a good predictor though. How much sleep he managed to get (never much, but some nights more than others). How many days it's been since he saw Dad.
“Two?”
“Good enough for me,” Gregory says, whipping out the ski gloves to even more eye rolling from Elliot.
Elliot puts them on, and shifts his perspective.
The first thing he notices, however, is, “There’s not many ties even running through here.”
“Hmm,” Gregory says, “Alright, that’s enough.”
Just thinking the sight away doesn’t work, so Elliot starts composing haikus. “The ghost is not here, perhaps we should now venture up the creepy stairs.”
“Telling you now kid, this is going to be some insurance scam.”
They go upstairs, and there is consistently an un-creepy vibe. “What’s your number now?” Gregory asks.
Elliot has only just managed to clear the ties from the last round, and Gregory will be decidedly unimpressed if he has to cart an unconscious Elliot out of a haunted house, “Through Haiku’s power, my current number is small, only a seven.”
“That’s not small.”
“Better than a ten. Um. Haiku haiku haiku. This is a haiku.”
“If the ties are gone, that means you don’t need to speak in haikus anymore,” Gregory points out.
“Ugh, fine,” Elliot says. He’d been getting into it.
Gregory uses the sight, and decides that the first floor is clear too, but there’s an attic with an entrance in one of the bedrooms. Elliot swallows as he stares up at the hatch, “We’d see the ties if the ghost was up there, wouldn’t we?”
“Scared?” Gregory teases.
“No. Give me a leg up.”
“Only messing with you,” Gregory snorts, “Yes, we’d see if there was anything to see. Which there isn’t.”
“This is extremely anticlimactic,” Elliot says.
“ This is ninety percent of what we do.”
Elliot doesn't know why Luke is approaching him, but it's happening, and rapidly.
“If you forgot your maths homework, you'll have to copy Serene’s,” Elliot preempts, because he's not going to let Luke be the bigger person and break the stalemate first.
Luke doesn't take him on. “We're having fireworks at my uncle Gregory’s on bonfire night. Mum wants me to invite you.”
Elliot folds his arms and leans against the wall. He's early, but the other students in the class are starting to arrive and line up. Elliot and Luke’s feud is well known by now, so they're attracting stares. “Does she know you’re not talking to me?”
Luke colours a little. Ah.
“I don't go to people's fireworks if they're not actually talking to me, you know.” Elliot says.
“All I asked for is an apology.”
“For what, telling the truth?”
“Gah!” Luke throws his hands up dramatically, “Be there, don't be there, I honestly don't even care anymore. You're insufferable!”
Something clatters against the ceiling directly above Elliot's bedroom. He shoves a pillow over his head, but it's hot and dark and smells like sweat, so he comes out from underneath sharpish.
There are no crashes for a few minutes, but as soon as Elliot's eyes drag shut, it starts up again.
There's no sleeping on a night like this.
He gets out of bed and flicks on his desk light. Dull orange light swells and swallows up the dark. Elliot gets out his maths homework, at least the banging and general chaos will mirror what it sounds like in his imagination when he does maths.
Too long after the banging starts, the ladder creaks under Dad's footsteps, descending. A heavy thud. Elliot puts down his pencil. Listens.
Dad doesn't pick himself up or cart himself to his room. Elliot gives him five minutes, then gets up to check.
There is a mass at the bottom of the ladder. Moving only to breathe. Rattling with each motion. Elliot flicks on the light.
There's a lot of blood, it's staining the floorboards. It takes Elliot a moment to realise where it's coming from, beyond the mottled bruises, the split lip, the sagging shape of Dad's body. His arm is broken, the kind of break where the bone punches out.
There is a twinge of shock, but no more. Even though it hasn't been this bad before, it was always going to be.
“You need to go to A&E,” Elliot observes. “I'm calling an ambulance.”
He goes to call nine-nine-nine, but then Dad murmurs something, and Dad barely ever says anything , so Elliot crouches down to listen.
Dad takes a gurgling, wheezy breath, and gasps, “Don't… let them in… the house.”
So Elliot calls a taxi instead.
Notes:
Click/tap for content warnings
Abuse
Blood
Description of serious injury
Dream-sequence recreation of suicide
Self injury (scratching to draw blood)
Physical restraint in response to self injury
Elliot's increasingly poor mental health and self destructive behaviourThanks for reading! I'm starting to run out of pre-written chapters, so comments and kudos are really helpful for letting me know I'm not shouting into the void with this! (Which I might be, idk unless you comment haha)
Chapter 9: Elliot, Age 13, Part Two
Chapter Text
“Hello Dan the Social Worker,” Elliot says.
“Just Dan please, mate,” says Dan. “Have the doctors spoken to you yet?”
Elliot shakes his head. He's been sitting in the waiting room for nearly an hour, nurturing a curious numbness like a slow growing mental cataract as he stares at the posters stuck to the wall advertising anti smoking services and help to minimise the risk of a haunting after a death. The dull, yellow toned light washes Dan’s skin sallow and sickly looking, and Elliot can only sort of hear him over the child screaming on the other side of the waiting room.
It turned out the first hospital Elliot took Dad to was the wrong hospital, so they'd loaded him up in the ambulance to take him to the right hospital, and the paramedics seemed like they were genuinely worried Dad was going to die.
“Alright, do you want to follow me? They’ve a room where we can have a chat.”
He follows Dan into an empty room with a table and chairs. It seems like the kind of room where they tell you your relative is dead, and the thought that Dad might be dead isn’t as upsetting as Elliot thought it might be.
“Is Dad dead?” Elliot asks.
“What? No, don’t worry, it’s not me they’d be sending to tell you if he was. He’s in surgery now, but he’s probably going to be in hospital for a little while, and unfortunately, you’re still underage.”
It hits Elliot then, that this is why they’ve sent Dan. “I’m fourteen,” he says, “I can look after myself for a few days.”
“No can do, sorry. It's the law.”
Elliot groans and thunks his head on the table. Just the thought of living with strangers, or worse, other teenagers is horrifying.
“We won’t put you with strangers if we don’t have to,” Dan says, and Elliot supposes it’s a common enough worry. “Do you have any extended family you could stay with? Grandparents? Aunts and uncles? Family friends?”
“No. It’s always just been me and Dad.”
His throat prickles at that. Did Dad not know that if something happened to him Elliot would have no one else? He’s a child, just because Dad thinks he can live on his own doesn’t mean the government thinks he can. Did Dad not even watch Oliver bloody Twist? Bad things happen to orphans. How dare he leave Elliot alone.
“It’ll be alright mate,” Dan says, because he must have mistaken Elliot’s fury for being upset. “What about friends from school? It’ll take a little longer to get them approved and they need to have space, but any mates got a spare room? Might be a laugh.”
His mind immediately goes to Luke’s parents. He remembers the easy way they’ve always folded Serene and Elliot into their home. The way that there’s always been cookies ready, and cups of tea before anyone’s even said they’re thirsty, photographs of Luke and Louise up on the mantelpiece, alcohol and bleach still kept behind child locks, corners still covered in protectors, windows still alarmed from when Luke and Louise were little.
But Luke and Elliot are still fighting. He can’t go there.
“They all hate me now.”
“I’m grasping at straws here a bit, mate. You’ll have to help me out. Any teachers you get on with? Any neighbours that always take your bins in for you? Preferably already CRB checked.”
Teachers. Elliot frowns. Miss Woodsinger would never do it, but…
“What about my mentor from PPST?”
“Got his number?”
Elliot writes it down, and Dan calls Gregory sunborn.
“I don’t want a pep talk,” Elliot says when Gregory arrives in the hospital waiting room at two O’clock in the morning, unshaven, wearing what Elliot is fairly sure are pyjama bottoms under his peacoat.
Gregory barely stifles a yawn, “Not sure I could muster one of those if I tried.”
Dan gets Gregory to sign some paperwork, and then rushes away, presumably to deal with some other stranded troubled teen, leaving the two of them alone.
True to his word, Gregory doesn’t say anything as they walk out into the pitched cold of the hospital car park. Silence presses in the further they get from the entrance, only the crunch of wheels on tarmac and the soft roar of an aeroplane passing miles overhead.
Their breath puffs up in front of them under bright yellow light, and Elliot isn’t sure what makes him do it, but he raises two fingers to his lips and pretends to smoke, “Ah, nothing beats a good cig after a night like that.”
Gregory doesn’t skip a beat, “You even think about it under my roof and you’ll be back out on the street faster than you can say lung cancer.”
Hearing that makes Elliot happier than he’s been in a long time,
Gregory has a spare room, something about being single and childless that Elliot doesn’t have the energy to mock him for.
They didn’t grab any of Elliot’s things from his house, but Gregory has a pair of pyjamas that he’s never worn before that he was given as a Christmas present one year that are too small for him.
The pyjamas dwarf Elliot still, trouser legs and sleeves both so long that Elliot has to roll them up several times, and the shirt feels a bit like what he imagines wearing a dress would be like, but they’re soft in the way only never-before-worn Marks and Spencers pyjamas can be, and Elliot’s head isn’t even on the pillow for five minutes before he’s drifting off to a sleep deeper and easier than any he remembers.
The next morning, Elliot pads barefoot into the kitchen to discover Gregory cooking something that smells ridiculously tomatoe-y.
“You ever had shakshuka before?” He asks.
It’s too early to talk, so Elliot just shakes his head.
“Want to try some?”
Elliot nods.
He likes shakshuka it turns out, but he likes less the barrage of well-meaning questions that come with it.
“Do you want to go into school today? I’d understand if you didn’t, it was a rough night,” Gregory asks, words catapulting towards Elliot like javelins.
“Yes,” Elliot says, because he hath now partaken in the magic bean juice that grants the power of speech before nine am.
“Do you have homework? I can call and tell the school not to bother you about it?”
“I did my homework in the waiting room,” Elliot says, “I also grabbed my uniform whilst we were waiting for the taxi because I knew I might not be back last night.”
Gregory winces for some reason, “You sure you don’t want to talk about any of this?”
“Quite sure,” Elliot says, “I’m going to get dressed, may I use your shower?”
Elliot manages to avoid Luke until morning break time, when he corners him just as Elliot is about to take himself to sit in a toilet cubicle until the bell rings.
“Why did my uncle call my mum at one in the morning to get her to ask me if I’m okay with you going to live with him?” Luke demands, arms folded, a deeply unhappy expression creased into his brow.
Elliot tries unsuccessfully to get around him, “Presumably, because he’s a very considerate man. I wouldn’t have checked first.”
“That is not what I was asking and you know it! Why are you going to live with my uncle?” Luke snaps, placing his arm out against the wall to bar Elliot from trying to slip past.
“Because I don’t have any extended family and Serene’s parents hate me.”
“Elliot!”
Elliot shrugs, “I’m not giving deeply personal information to someone who apparently hates me.”
“Elliot,” Serene says, “May we talk?”
Elliot sighs because he knows that this is because Luke has spoken to her, but he follows her anyway to one of the quieter parts of the school grounds, a spot behind one of the mobile classrooms currently being used by the history department. The grass is longer here than in any other part of the school, presumably because the ride-on lawnmower can’t easily manoeuvre into the tiny gap, and when Serene sits down it seems like it might swallow her up.
Elliot perches on the gap between the classroom wall and its base. The teacher on duty spots them, and even though they’re not supposed to be back here, she doesn’t stop them. All day, teachers have been asking Elliot if he’s okay and how is he feeling - this is only further confirmation that there’s been some kind of announcement.
“What did you want to talk about?” He asks Serene, plucking blithely at some of the grass sprouting up from under the classroom.
“You are living with Luke’s uncle now.” She says.
“Only for a couple of weeks.”
She almost looks like she’s in pain when she asks, “Do you… want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
She nods, and then they’re done.
After school, Gregory takes Elliot to pick up clothes and other necessities for living not at home.
“Wait out here,” Elliot says, and Gregory does.
He barely even looks at what he's tossing into the blue holdall, clothes mostly, books.
There's still blood underneath the hatch. The presence of that mental cataract he grew in the hospital makes itself clear as he stares at it, unfeeling, then heads back into his bedroom and unplugs the casio keyboard, peddle and all, and hauls it down the stairs with him.
“I didn't know you played,” is all Gregory says when he sees.
Elliot tosses the keyboard into the backseat along with his holdall. “Yes yes, the things you don't know could fill an ocean. I'm hungry, and I'm a minor in your care, which makes that your problem.”
Elliot doesn’t know why he agrees to visit his Dad.
He takes grapes, because he thinks that’s what you’re meant to take, and writes on the card that Gregory buys for him.
“Do you want me to go in with you?” Gregory asks quietly when Elliot lingers outside of Dad’s room for a beat too long.
Elliot shakes his head, then thinks of Dad, silent and empty, and changes his mind. He doesn’t meet Gregory’s eyes when he says, “Actually… could you?”
Dad is wired up to half a dozen different machines and medicines and devices. His neck is in a brace, and there’s external pins holding his arm in place. Gregory picks up the chart on the bottom of his bed and reads through, nodding to himself as he does so, as Elliot grabs a chair and sits next to Dad’s head.
“Hello Dad,” He says, “It’s me.”
Dad’s eyes are open, but he’s staring at the wall. Elliot looks to Gregory. “Did they say anything about a head injury?”
Gregory puts the chart back, then drags a seat to sit next to Elliot. “No, they sent him for a CT scan but it didn’t come back with anything like that. They think he’s just being quiet.”
Elliot nods. He shouldn’t be surprised. Of course not even major trauma is enough to get him to care.
“Sometimes,” Gregory says slowly, “When someone’s been through something very traumatic–”
Elliot is already shaking his head, “No, he’s just like this.” He stands up, “Let’s go.”
Gregory cooks, which Elliot isn’t surprised by, more just generally pleased about. He’s a good cook as well. He asks Elliot what he wants, and when Elliot noncommittally says a jacket potato because it seems easy and unobtrusive, he makes the best jacket potato Elliot’s ever had in his life, skin perfectly crisped, insides fluffy and soft, salad on the side crisp and refreshing.
Over dinner, conversation flows as easily as it always does between them, with Gregory asking Elliot about his day, about his apparently strong feelings for Ella Fitzgerald, about if there’s anything he needs or wants or is worried about. And when Elliot asks him questions, he actually answers, and elaborates, and uses what he’s said as basis for further conversation.
Is this what Elliot’s been missing out on this whole time? Is this why people like spending time with their family? Why people choose to eat around a table?
Things take a slight dip when Gregory insists on still doing their evening yoga, except it isn’t over Skype this time. They have to move the coffee table and one of the chairs out of the way in the living room to make space, but they manage to squeeze two mats in and they set about practising.
It's easier to do yoga when there isn't a murderous ghost banging in the ceiling overhead, Elliot finds. That probably shouldn't be surprising.
They find a spot for the keyboard on the chest of drawers in Gregory’s guest bedroom, and Gregory lets Elliot borrow one of the chairs from the dining room. He can't quite comfortably reach the keys like that, so Gregory finds him a few thick textbooks to stack on top of each other and sit on.
“Were you planning to become a doctor or something?” Elliot asks when he notices the topic of the textbooks.
“Or something,” Gregory admits.
When he first sits on the stacked books, reaching out for the keys, Elliot wobbles just a little, but then he manages to steady himself and begin playing.
The notes float off the page and into the air, filling the room, as loud and bright as Elliot could ever want them to be.
Uncle Gregory is not just Luke’s uncle, which Elliot should probably have realised before Adam turned up to get some quality time in.
Elliot is surprised when he doesn't get his head shoved anywhere unpleasant when he lets him in, and that Adam sits quietly whilst Elliot makes tea for them both, “Gregory will be back soon,” he tells the eerily quiet Adam.
“So, what, do you like…live here now?”
“Not for much longer,” Elliot insists quickly, with a pang strong enough it almost dents the mental cataract.
He retreats to his keyboard and starts practising his exam pieces.
Not long after, he hears footsteps outside of his bedroom door. Adam is watching him. Elliot doesn’t look up.
So,” Gregory says in the car after school. “Fireworks night is soon.”
It's the first of November, and cold enough that Elliot’s starting to forget ever being warm “Yes?” Elliot says.
“Normally I have family around, but I can cancel if you're not feeling up to it.”
Elliot is not going to tell Gregory to cancel a Sunborn family gathering, even if the thought of dealing with several dozen Sunborns right now fills him with dread.
“It’s okay,” he says, not meaning it. Hoping that Gregory will hear what he actually means.
“Great, I'm sure you'll love it,” Gregory says, and Elliot realises he wasn't really asking.
They get fireworks from Asda, and Gregory doesn't even let Elliot carry them, never mind set them off. Elliot is put in charge of making the toffee apples, which is deceptively simple until he burns himself and gets a painful blister on his arm for the trouble.
Darkness creeps in, and Sunborns start to arrive, floating between the back garden and the kitchen, wrapped up in puffy coats, shedding and gaining layers as they filter between inside and out. Gregory is dealing with setting up the fireworks, so Elliot assigns himself to general hosting duties. He fetches, carries, and refills drinks for the best part of an hour before being cornered by Luke’s Mum. “Hey funnyface,” she says, ruffling his hair, “I heard about your Dad. How's he doing? Wait, no, refill me whilst you tell me.”
She's drinking chardonnay out of a box, and Elliot obligingly refills the plastic glass for her. “He's doing a lot better. He just has physio and occupational therapy to get through now.”
“Back home soon then?”
Elliot has to paste on the smile. “Hopefully. They said maybe another week.”
She takes her drink and takes a sip, “Ah, it really does taste less like box the more you have.”
She drifts away after that, and Elliot finds his own gaze wandering over to Luke and Serene. They're cloistered together in the corner and Elliot feels a pang of longing. He misses that closeness. He remembers last year, on the camping trip, traipsing down the river to find the world's most disappointing waterfall.
He wants to hit backspace on what happened between them, but he knows the only way to navigate out of the current situation is forward. Probably with lots of emotional confessions and apologies, neither of which Elliot is skilled enough to pull off.
Gregory announces the fireworks are starting soon, but Elliot has never had any real desire to see them up close and retreats to the guest bedroom.
It's quiet in the house in a scooped out kind of way. He passes empty glasses, bags and various items of outdoors wear scattered across sofas and chairs, the stereo playing cheesy pop to itself.
In the guest bedroom, he sits at his keyboard and stares for a long time at the keys. Those first few moments where he figures out what to play are always a bit like this.
He doesn't always hear footsteps behind him.
“Aren't you gonna play something?” Adam says.
Elliot whips round. “Not with you staring at me like a creep.”
That wasn't a joke, but Adam laughs, “I won’t make fun of you, I promise. I… saw you playing before. You were good.”
“They’re just exam pieces, I don't know how to play any real songs.”
Adam shrugs, “Still good.”
He steps closer, fully inside the guest bedroom now. Irritation pricks at Elliot's skin. “Go away,” he says, as if that's ever worked.
Adam looks…upset? Conflicted? Not like he's about to kindly bugger off.
“Look, Elliot, I know I've not always been really kind to you, but I've been thinking about… some things. And…” he steps closer, scratching the back of his head, looking at the floor, and, jesus christ, is he trying to be demure?
“Hang on, before you go any further,” Elliot jumps to his feet, “It’s okay. You're forgiven, please go away.”
“Wait, Elliot, I don’t think you’re understanding me–!”
“I understand perfectly well–” Adam’s hand wraps around Elliot’s wrist.
Something cold and sick settles in Elliot’s guts. “Let go.”
“Ever since I heard you playing that time, I… there’s something different about you. Something different about us - I know you feel it too.”
All Elliot can do is stare.
Gregory is outside. So are the rest of the Sunborns. So are Luke and Serene. No one can hear you scream indeed.
Adam seems to completely misinterpret this, because he leans in and presses his lips to Elliot’s.
This is Elliot’s first kiss.
Adam's mouth is cold and slippery, his tongue working against Elliot’s numb, tingling lips. It feels like having a mouth full of rubber. Like he doesn't matter. Like his body is no longer his.
He tries to jerk away. He can’t, and then Adam’s hands are involved, and they’re falling back onto the bed, and– and– and–
“Elliot can we talk?”
Luke’s voice.
It all happens at once.
Elliot manages to scream, Luke and Serene burst into the room, and Adam realises he’s been caught out just in time for Luke’s fist to make square contact with his cheek bone.
Elliot can’t go back into the guest room, so he ends up camped out on the floor of Gregory’s office, Serene pressed into one side, Luke the other. They're both squeezing his hands, tight enough that he can't scratch anymore at the bleeding scab on his wrist.
They haven’t said anything since it happened, they’ve just been listening to Luke’s mum and Adam’s mum screaming at each other whilst Gregory tries to make peace between the pair of them.
Elliot wishes he wasn't.
Blood is dripping from his nose, not because he's injured, but because he's seeing the ties and he can't get them to go away. He needs Gregory to crouch opposite, to grab his shoulder and look him in the eye and tell him what he's supposed to do.
But Gregory didn't even stop to ask if Elliot was okay.
In a lull in the parental screaming match, Serene asks, “Elliot, what happened?”
He laughs, the feeling moves strangely through his diaghram, his ribs, “I suppose Adam and me had different ideas about how close we are.”
“Why are you laughing?” Luke asks, sounding genuinely confused, “I don’t think what we walked in on was very funny.”
Elliot can’t say anything else, his throat is locked up, that familiar cataract feeling pushing him away from thinking too much about anything. A grey, background buzz.
“It will be alright,” Serene says, squeezing his shoulder. “Anything that has happened between us in the past, that's in the past. We are here for you.”
He feels her give Luke a Meaningful Look over his head, then Luke nods quickly, “I forgive you for being an idiot, and I'm sorry that I was an idiot too. Let’s just be friends again, okay?”
Luke is staring at him. And Elliot's words are still stuck. He squeezes their hands and nods.
“It’ll all be okay,” Luke says.
It isn't okay.
The police show up and statements get taken from everyone except Elliot, whose nose is bleeding so heavily he can't talk. It gets reported to social services, and within the hour, a social worker is calling to arrange a meeting in the morning.
Eventually, Elliot's vision goes blissfully grey, and as terrified as everyone else seems to be by his dropping like a rock mid-crisis, it jolts him out of the sight long enough to stop the nosebleed.
He can hardly see straight after, and where the police officer had so far failed to drag Luke and Adam’s mums apart, Elliot swaying attracts Rachel's attention long enough for Adam’s mum to slip quietly out of the back door.
“Really been in the wars today, huh kid?” She says softly as they sit in the bathroom, her dabbing at the blood on Elliot’s face, a mountain of tissues forming beside her. “Let’s see your arms, Luke said you had some scratches there..”
He obliges, because there’s something about the matter of fact way that she says it that makes Elliot think that, just this once, he can trust her to help and nothing else. She rolls up his sleeves, and just barely manages to suppress the look of pity that was about to cross her face. Elliot repays the kindness by not wincing as she cleans the scratches and sticks plasters over them.
She pauses before putting the first aid kit away, and says softly, “Tomorrow, you’re allowed to have a support person in the room with you. I’d be more than happy to do that for you, kid.”
He shakes his head.
“Is there anything you’re confused about? Anything about what’s happening that you don’t understand?”
Everything. But he can’t say that. He can barely manage the two words that he does get out. “Where’s Gregory?”
Elliot had needed him , and he wasn’t there.
Rachel squeezes his hand, “He’s just giving Pam and… and Adam a lift home. He’ll be back soon.”
Elliot nods, pretending to understand, even as the seed of dread finally begins to sprout.
Elliot has nightmares all night, which used to be par for the course before coming to stay with Gregory, but now feels like some kind of horrendous prelude. He dreams about being trapped in a car with Adam, sinking under the waves. He dreams about walking with Gregory and laughing like everything’s normal. He dreams that he’s watching Adam as a ghost, throwing Dad against the wall, his ribs cracking under the impact.
He wakes up at one point, seized by terror and completely frozen, barely able to draw breath because Adam’s hands are around his neck, squeezing, until suddenly he can move again and he files the experience away in a fun new box marked ‘sleep paralysis’.
Morning comes, spilling grey light across Elliot’s itchy eyes as he shuffles from the guest room to the kitchen, shakes cereal out into a bowl, stares silently at the door until Gregory appears, haggard and tired too.
No one says anything as they eat, take turns in the shower, and wordlessly file into the car.
They drive, and then Gregory turns the radio off and talks.
He tells only the truth.
The truth is that Adam’s father died when he was young, killed in action during a possession.
The truth is that Adam’s mother couldn’t cope in those first few years afterwards, and Gregory spent a lot of time helping out, because he loved them both. Because he’d do anything for family.
The truth is that Gregory is sort of like a father to Adam and Adam doesn’t really have anyone else. (Except his mother. Except his huge, brilliant, loving family. Except an army of friends that he doesn’t have to get nearly raped to get to pity him enough to talk to him.)
The truth is that Gregory needs to stand by his family’s side.
The truth is that Adam is blood, and Elliot is not.
The meeting is just a formality at this point.
The police officer says that she was called to a domestic disturbance where witnesses reported that a serious sexual assault had been committed against a minor. Elliot’s head of house, Mrs. Rathbone, reads a statement from Elliot’s form tutor saying he’s apparently seemed much happier since living at Gregory’s. Dan the social worker speaks on behalf of the hospital and reports that it’s likely that Dad will be in hospital for another week and that Elliot will need supervision during that time. Finally, a different social worker asks Gregory if he’d be willing to cut contact with Adam in order to be allowed to maintain contact with Elliot.
He says no.
The case is closed.
Notes:
Click or tap to see content warnings
Sexual assault - specifically, attempted rape similar to what happens in canon, but played a bit more seriously here because how easily that whole thing got brushed off is the one thing I dislike about the original
Hospitalization and serious injury of a parent
Discussions of social services/foster care
Blood
References to self harm
AbuseI'm so sorry
Chapter 10: Elliot, Age 13, Part Three
Chapter Text
Joe is nice.
That's saying a lot, because when he first meets Elliot, Elliot's been sitting in the empty office of some Cyprus-bound civil servant for nearly six hours, being plied with as much coffee and bananas as he can stomach, distracted by whatever books and magazines the social workers manage to scrounge up to placate him.
He reads about every species of local wading bird, how to connect more deeply with his throat chakra, and the origin of the Chinese vampire.
Elliot is practically vibrating when Charlotte The Social Worker sticks her fluorescent green head around the door and says, “Elliot? We've got you a placement. Come and meet Joe.”
He thinks that he’s probably lucky that he's ending up with Joe as opposed to stuffed in some house with thirty other kids. They must have decided that he's ‘vulnerable' because of what happened or something.
It's late evening by the time they're driving back, the car window cool against Elliot’s forehead. Joe’s put on the radio, a station playing exclusively dad rock, but Elliot likes it.
“Wanna talk about it?” Joe asks.
“No,” Elliot says.
“Fair enough,” Joe says, then turns up the radio.
Joe offers to help Elliot set up his keyboard in the small, clean bedroom that he has set up for foster placements. Elliot says yes, and they find a spot on the other twin bed, cable draping down the back and plugged into a socket that Elliot has to crawl on his belly to reach.
When he sits down to practice for the first time however, his breathing goes all funny and grey spots prick the edges of his vision. Joe has to sit with him and talk him through some familiar box breathing exercises to get him to calm down.
“Want to come with me to the shop?” Joe asks after, flippant, like Elliot hasn't just had an epic meltdown for no reason.
“You're going to have to be more specific than ‘the shop’,” Elliot says, like his eyes aren't still rimmed red and his chest doesn't still hurt.
“My shop. I've got a music shop. We do vinyl. And also guitars. I thought you might like to learn.”
“Okay,” Elliot says.
Afterwards, Elliot hides the keyboard under the bed where he doesn't have to look at it and borrows one of Joe’s guitars instead.
It turns into a regular thing. Even after Dad gets out of hospital, Elliot keeps showing up at Joe’s shop.
Joe teaches him. Not just guitar, but music too. He learns the words to every single song Led Zeplin ever released, which of Nirvana's albums is irrefutably the best, and which local venues AC/DC played at and for how long Joe couldn't hear afterwards.
He hangs onto every word out of Joe’s mouth like gospel, he takes to practising guitar religiously. Nothing classical, nothing that he'd find in one of the abrsm booklets of sheet music kept in folders at the back of the shop. Real music, for Elliot and no one else.
At night he doesn't hear Mum banging on the ceiling or Dad crying out in pain. He only hears John Darnielle singing about drowning his own life out in much the same way.
Joe’s nephew, Jase, likes Elliot, and that's probably Elliot's favourite thing about him.
“How old are you?” He asks Elliot one day.
“Thirteen,” Elliot says.
“Year eight or nine?”
“Nine.”
“Sweet, wanna hang out sometime?”
Luke and Serene don't know how to talk to Elliot anymore.
Part of it is the shared horror that sits like a lead weight between them.
Most of it is because Elliot owes them an apology, but they pity him too much to ask for one and he feels too raw to offer one unprompted.
It's lunch, but as usual, they barely talk. Dad's wallet was empty so Elliot doesn't have money, and he didn't have time to make anything so he sits reading whilst they eat.
“Do you want half of my sandwich?” Luke offers.
Elliot scowls down at the page. “If I wanted half of your sandwich I would've asked. I'm not hungry.”
He is viciously, ravenously hungry.
Across the canteen, he spots Jase talking to some friends. His wrists are lined with frayed festival wristbands that are definitely not uniform policy.
“Where are you going?” Luke demands as Elliot gets up.
“Away, loser.”
The first time they kiss, Elliot freaks out.
He doesn't even remember it, just ends up on the floor under the maths stairwell hyperventilating, Jase flapping about like some kind of big, flightless bird.
“What do I do? I thought you wanted to! Aww christ, I didn’t mean to hurt you!”
“Shut up,” Elliot snaps, grinding the heels of his fists into watery eyes. Stupid. He'd been so stupid if he thought that everything was going to be just fine. Apparently he has some kind of trauma now. Excellent. Just excellent.
He clenches his shaky hands into fists. “It's not your fault. I did want to. I like you.”
With each sentence, Jase calms down a little bit more until he slumps down next to Elliot.
“So you mean… I didn't hurt you? You're not going to tell anyone I did?”
Elliot shakes his head slowly, still getting his breathing under control, still chasing the shakes from his nervous system. ‘No, l like you, you idiot.”
“Did something… happen to you? Is that why you..?”
No. No. No no no–
He reaches up and grabs the collar of Jase’s crisp white school shirt, pulling him behind a stack of chairs and crushing their lips together.
“So are you like, gay? Or…?” Jase asks one day, actual real cigarette in his hand, doubtlessly making his mouth taste of all kinds of things that mean Elliot won't be kissing him until he's chewed several tik taks.
Elliot raises an eyebrow, “What kind of question is that?”
Jase shrugs and leans back against the fibreglass wall of the sports hall. He stubs his cigarette out on the tarmac and tosses it, still smoking, into the gutter. “I'm just trying to figure out if you actually like me. It's unclear.”
Elliot wraps their fingers together and kisses their entwined knuckles. “I like you.”
Jase pulls his hand free, “No, but like, I'm gay, and you are..?”
“Far too young to be labelling myself,” Elliot says pointedly.
Jasd stands up, muttering, “More like bloody impossible.”
Luke comes out in PPST one day, which is annoying because the ‘thirteen is too young for labels’ argument with Jase really hadn't been that long ago.
Elliot stews so much that he barely even notices Luke asking him what he thinks until Luke is impatiently, anxiously, brokenly asking, “Well?”
“Oh,” Elliot says, “Um. You want a reaction from me. Okay. Well done on being gay, I suppose?”
This is not the right thing to say.
“Seriously?” Luke says, and there's a fragile, breakable edge to his voice, like all Elliot would have to do to shatter him completely would be tap in the wrong place.
“I don't know what you want me to say,” Elliot admits.
“That you support me no matter what? That we're still friends? That you care about me?”
Elliot can feel the moment his defenses get back online because he has to withstand a powerful urge to roll his eyes. “What a load of sentimental rubbish, loser.”
“It’s not rubbish to me,” Luke says. “That was really hard. It's not easy, having a secret for so long. It's brave to share it.”
“Oh come off it,” says Elliot, who is of the opinion that his own secrets are much worse. “That's barely even a secret, it's just… a fact about yourself you decided to share one day.”
“People have been murdered for being openly gay.”
“Oh boo hoo, the white, rich, extremely attractive Sunborn might actually have a tiny bit of hardship,” Elliot knows he's going too far, but he can’t help it, the words are already out.
Luckily, Elliot doesn't have to feel like the scum of the Earth for too long, because as it turns out, Luke is more than capable of giving just as much as he gets and hits Elliot in what is easily identifiable as his most currently sore spot, “At least I'm not so pathetic that Gregory would pick my creepy rapey cousin over me!”
No no no, he can't think about that. Can't think about any of that. His skin is hot and tight and he has no idea what he's saying, just that it's awful and his face is tingling.
He ends up in Miss Woodsinger’s classroom. He doesn't know how. He has his head between his knees and she's rubbing his back, wearing an alarmed expression.
“Easy there,” she says, “Feeling better?”
He groans, shaking his head, “Not really. But don't worry, I don't need to tell you about it.”
“Very good. Do you want to stay in here next lesson? I can write you a note.”
“Yes please.”
“So what, did you have to sneak out to meet me?” Jase grins when Elliot finds him outside of the takeaway at the end of the street, eating a greasy, dripping kebab.
“What part of ‘I met your uncle when I was in foster care’ gave you the impression I live somewhere that I need to sneak out of?”
Jase’s expression falls a little at that and Elliot realises too late that he's ruined the mood. Again. Apparently foster care is one of those topics that's on the ‘it's rude to tell people that much about yourself’ list that nobody bothered to share with Elliot ahead of time.
“I thought that was just because your Dad was in hospital?”
Elliot shrugs, not really wanting to get any deeper into it than that.
They wander through empty, shadowy streets, black tarmac still shiny from the earlier rain.
“You know, if I had a better sense of self preservation,” Elliot says, “I wouldn’t be following a mysterious older boy to a mysterious second location at a mysterious time of night.”
“You think I'm mysterious?” Jase asks unselfconsciously.
Elliot shrugs, “Your friends moreso. You haven't told me anything about them or what we're even doing here.”
“All in good time,” Jase says.
The undisclosed second location is an abandoned warehouse, but the thrill tingling across Elliot’s skin is enough that he doesn't even care that his chances of being murdered just rose dramatically.
“Spooky,” He says, “What're we doing here, hunting ghosts?”
Jase doesn't answer that, he just gestures for Elliot to follow him towards the back of the barbed wire fence. Two figures loom out of the darkness, a girl and a boy about Jase’s age.
“Elliot,” Jase says, “Meet Alice and Marty. Guys, Elliot has the sight.”
Elliot frowns, “When did I tell you that? Also why is it relevant?”
“My uncle mentioned it, he was talking about you getting blood everywhere from all the nosebleeds. I hope you can control it better now.”
There is so much wrong with that sentence that Elliot almost walks away then and there, but then Marty tops it with, “We're ghost hunters!”
Jase's friends are all in year eleven like him. Marty is a softener, and Alice is their researcher. Jase, from what Elliot can work out, is just kind of… there. But that's okay, because he likes Elliot, and when Alice gets the bolt cutters out of her backpack and starts snipping a hole in the fence, he stands close enough that Elliot can feel the heat of his arm through his hoodie.
It's raining again. Elliot doesn't have a raincoat because he outgrew his old one and Dad got a new card without telling Elliot the pin. Elliot’s hands are cold and wet, but when Jase reaches out towards him and twins their pinkies together, his skin is warm.
Their eyes meet, and Jase whispers, “Is this okay? I mean, with other people here?”
To Elliot's surprise, it is. He actually… quite likes it. He nods, heat flooding his cheeks, but then snatches his hand away as Alice snips through the last of the wire strands, creating a perfectly person sized hole in the fence.
“Voila!” She says, then slips through.
“I still don't understand what we're doing here,” Elliot says as he follows, clutching a hand to his head as he ducks through the hole so his hair doesn't snag.
“In 2001,” Alice begins, “One of the warehouse staff here, a woman called Cathy Denton, got run over by a forklift truck. She still haunts the place, her widow, Lillian, asked us to move her along. It's too painful for her to know that Cathy's here, but she can't get to her.”
“Oh.” Elliot says.
This is for a good cause then, nowhere near as dubious as Elliot first thought. Not that any of what she just said has anything to do with how hauntings work outside of TV.
“We have to work from the host first, not the source if we're going to attempt something like a softening, which is what I'm assuming your talking about.”
“ Actually,” Marty says, in a tone that suggests he doesn't get to ‘um actually’ people very often, “Softening works best wherever the ties are most dense. That's what we need you for, chief.”
“Right.” Elliot says, not convinced and deeply put off.
There's a thick chain roping the doors to the warehouse shut, but Alice makes quick work of that too and the doors swing open.
Darkness beckons.
Dust grates under their shoes like sand as they take their first tentative steps inside the building. Alice proves to yet again have thought of everything as she takes several torches out of her backpack-of-holding and hands them out.
White LED light slices through the pitch black, illuminating towering steel shelves that climb higher than their torch beams reach. Spider webs as thick as ropes drip from the ceiling, heavy with dead insects and grime, their makers long dessicated and withered, their childrens’ childrens’ children likely the ones scuttling about overhead.
“Alright oh sighted one, show us what you've got,” Marty whispers.
Elliot scowls, “I still don't understand why we have to be here , the source is irrelevant as to the positioning of the thickness of the ties.”
“Actually,” Alice whispers, “Research from the Swedish Paranormal Institute suggests that the ties are seventy percent more likely to be closer to the source than the host.”
“If that's true, then why doesn't your… client just reach out to the Paranormal Protection Service? She has a ghost, she doesn’t want a ghost, what else are they for?”
“She tried ,” Marty points out. “They don't give a shit about a warehouse that the landlord can't be arsed paying to fix up, and they definitely don't care about a sad old woman that wasn't even legally married to her partner.”
“She was referred to the ‘low risk monitoring’ program,” Alice explains. “Someone knocks on her door and asks her how she is, then writes that she doesn’t need any help and leaves. Because Lillian and Cathy weren't legally married, Lillian isn't able to access the services that would be available to another couple, and she can't afford a private service.”
Elliot's thoughts briefly stray to Clipboard Man.
A lifetime of benignly knowing something is wrong but never being able to escalate it.
There was never a risk from him.
“Come on,” Jase whispers, “We just need you to tell us where the ties are thickest.”
Elliot sighs. “Fine.”
He squints. The dust is thick enough and the darkness deep enough here that the sight springs forth easily.
The haunting is easy to spot – a colourful river of light flowing through the warehouse. Soft pinks like the feeling of Jase’s fingers gripping the edges of his in the rain. Warm golds, strong enough to build a life on. Deep oranges, knowing each other, knowing what to do, what to say to get the perfect laugh, the perfect smile, the perfect kiss on the cheek before heading off to work.
There's none of the fading that Elliot would expect. The colours are as vibrant and bright as if Cathy died only yesterday.
There are no ‘thicker’ or ‘thinner’ parts to the ties, at least not the way Elliot sees them. He knows that different people see the ties slightly differently, and Alice and Marty don't have the sight, so they must be going off entirely second hand information.
What they describe as thickness or thinness, Elliot sees instead as depth and intensity. All the ties are bright, but some places are brighter. Elliot follows the ties, only distantly aware of the others following behind in reverent quiet.
And then the ties run out.
There's very little information about what, exactly determines the source of a haunting. Some people think it's the place where the person experienced the most pain in their life. Others believe any place with a significant emotional connection to the deceased will work.
There's a brown, rusty smudge on the concrete. Otherwise, there is no other visible sign.
A breeze picks up, cloud soft against Elliot’s cheeks.
“Is this the source?” Alice whispers.
He nods.
He senses Jase reaching for his hand, but he steps forward, and their fingers never meet.
“Hello?” he calls out.
The breeze intensifies, but only for a moment. As if the ghost is saying hello.
“Your wife sent us. She thinks you're lonely. Are you?”
“What are you doing?” Jase hisses, but Elliot ignores him. Ignores everyone.
The breeze blows harder, tugging at Elliot's clothing and hair, but that really isn't an answer.
“They want to soften you, is that what you want?”
It's like being hit behind the knees - an invisible force pushing Elliot to the floor as the wind whips around. He gives in, and his knees crack against the hard concrete.
“Elliot!” Jase cries out, lunging forward. He tries to drag Elliot up, but Elliot writhes out of his grip.
“We need to get out of here!”
“Then go!” Elliot snaps.
“It’s dangerous!”
Elliot scoffs, “It’s barely even a stage two.”
Which is strange, because it's been ten years since Cathy died. She should be well into stage three.
Jase tugs on Elliot’s arm, trying to pull him up as the strange pressure forces him down. His fingers dig painfully into muscle and sinew, skin rubs against clothing. It's not Elliot’s own strength keeping him down, it's Cathy's. Jase is strong enough to pick Elliot up if he wants to, to toss him where he wants him, to overpower him.
A tight, panicky feeling that has nothing to do with ghosts seizes Elliot's throat.
Don't think about it–
Don't think about it–
Don't think about it–
“Get off me!” He shrieks, wrenching his arm out of Jase’s grasp hard enough that cloth rips.
“Fine! If you want to get murdered by a ghost!” Jase lets go. Footsteps.
The wind surges, Elliot's clothing flaps about him. The ties coalesce and swirl, as if they too are caught up in the maelstrom, warm and bright, filling Elliot up with so much of the love shared between the two. Overflowing with it, so much that it seems to leak out and seep into the air.
A slight pressure on the back of his head, pushing him to look down. He does so. There, streams of fine, elegant dust have formed, making the shape of eight words;
Tell her I've decided I love her more than toast.
“I will,” Elliot promises.
Alice is waiting outside for him. Alone.
“Sorry,” she says, a bit sheepishly, “It was getting scary in there.”
Elliot rolls his eyes, “I don't know what you were expecting. She wasn't even stage three. I–” he course-corrects before he says too much. “I've seen worse on school trips. But it doesn't matter. We need to talk to Lillian.”
“Now?” Alice asks, looking up at the pitch black sky.
“I don't really want to ever have to see any of you again after tonight, so yes, now.”
“Fair enough,” Alice says.
The buses stopped about an hour ago, so they call a taxi which Alice pays for.
“I did sort of leave you for dead,” she says as the taxi pulls up outside the warehouse.
If the driver is perturbed to pick up two teenagers from outside an abandoned warehouse in the middle of the night, he doesn't show it, instead chattering merrily about the gold necklace he's saving up to buy for his wife for their anniversary before dumping them outside one of the small cottages on the way out of town.
The cottage has a pretty garden and an extremely loud gate. Elliot winces as Alice pushes it open, then follows her up the cobbled path.
A woman in her fifties answers, wearing a knitted cardigan over fluffy pyjamas. “Alice dear? Is everything alright?”
“Yes auntie, we came from the warehouse. This is my friend Elliot, he has the sight and he wanted to talk to you.”
Elliot raises an eyebrow at ‘auntie’.
“I don't think I've seen this one before,” she says, “A bit young for your little group isn't he?”
“He's just small for his age, do you mind if we come in?”
She sits them in her living room on a comfy purple sofa with an abundance of cheerful throw pillows and a hand-knitted cover draped over the back. A sleepy little Yorkshire terrier trots over and hops up to sit on Alice's knee whilst Lillian sets about making tea.
“How do you take your tea, dear?” She calls from the kitchen.
“As coffee,” Elliot says, and then, at Alice's disapproving look, adds, “Er, if you have it please.”
She comes back with two teas and a coffee, then takes a seat on the armchair under the soft glow of the standing lamp.
“So you…” She grips her spotty pink mug in manacled nails, “You saw her?
“That's not quite how the sight works,” Elliot says. “You could probably see her, if you went to the warehouse, but I can't.”
She clutches the mug tighter, “They don’t let me go. I don't really like that you all went there. You could get into a lot of trouble.”
“We don't mind,” Alice says.
“I minded,” Elliot mutters, but quietly, because that isn't why he's here. “Anyway. Cathy gave us a message.”
“I thought you couldn't actually see her?”
“It was… complicated. Anyway, she wanted me to tell you that she decided she loves you more than toast. Does that mean…”
Lillian is crying.
“Sorry!” She says, dabbing at her eyes, “Don't mindIme, usually I'm much better than this but, oh… Cathy you silly woman.”
Elliot glances desperately at Alice, who goes quickly to her aunt's side and gently pats her hand, “It’s alright auntie, it's okay to be sad.”
Lillian sniffles, “You're a good girl Alice, I hope that mother of yours tells you that too.”
Alice smiles, “She does, don't worry.”
Lillian takes a few slow, deliberate breaths. “Sorry,” she says, “It’s just… that was one of the last conversations we had.” She dabs at her eyes again, and Alice offers her a kleenex from her pocket. “She was joking that she wasn't sure if she loved me or toast more.”
Elliot nods as if this all perfectly reasonable.
“Thank you, for telling me that. Is she…? I don't feel any different…”
Elliot shakes his head, “She’s still there, our softener fled like a coward.”
“Oh, it wasn’t dangerous was it?”
“No, she's still at stage two - that was actually what I wanted to talk about.”
Lillian stares down at her lap, and Alice rubs her back. “I don't want her gone. But the thought of her being alone… I can't bear it. Especially seeing as it's my fault. And I've heard about what happens to ghosts that stay too long. They start to– to rot.”
“But that's the thing, she isn't rotting. She's stable. If you went to see her, it'd be perfectly safe. She's been stage two for probably ten years now.”
Lillian is already shaking her head, “I can't risk losing my job. She… she wouldn't want that. And… and I don't know if I could bear it.”
“Okay,” Elliot says, “But I would think carefully about if you still want the ties to be softened. There's risks. And I don't think she's as lonely as you think. You're tied together, whether you see her or not.”
“I'll think about it,” she says.
And Elliot supposes that's the best he could have hoped for.
“I think we need to have a talk,” Joe says, and Elliot’s stomach drops because he knows where this is going.
“What?” He asks, setting down the guitar he'd been practicing with hard enough that the strings jingle.
“Jase.”
Elliot scoffs, “Wow, so you're a homophobic old man now? You introduced me to Bowie! You can't be homophobic and like Bowie!”
“That's not a very nice accusation to make,” Joe says, “Come on, sit down. That's not what it is at all.”
He flips the sign on the door to ‘closed’ and locks it, then sits next to Elliot on the step that leads from the section with the records to the one with the instruments.
It isn't that Joe’s homophobic and awful, just that he's awful.
Elliot doesn't really her exactly what he says. His ears are whistling.
Jase told him about their ‘breakup’. Joe can't have Elliot around if it's going to make Jase uncomfortable.
Joe offers Elliot a guitar to keep, as a gift, but he turns it down, thinking of the piano under his bed. He probably isn't going to play guitar again, not now.
It was probably silly to even try.
Notes:
Click or tap for content warnings
Abuse
Aftermath of sexual assault in previous chapter - including a lack of support and inappropriate comments from teenagers
Institutionalized homophobia typical of the pre-same sex marriage 00s/10s
Interpersonal homophobia/biphobia between queer people, including a poor reaction to someone coming out - similar to canon, but not quite the same.
Age gap relationship (not sexual like canon) - Elliot is 13 and in year 9, and Jase is in year 11 (so 15/16)
Chapter 11: Elliot, Age 13? 14?
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
When Dad comes back from hospital after his collapsed lung, he can barely handle the stairs. Elliot has to help him, one step at a time. Supporting him when he's in too much pain or too breathless.
Elliot doesn't help him into the attic, but he finds his way up there anyway.
Elliot takes up his position at the foot of the ladder, head resting against the wall, drifting in and out of the sight with sleep.
Elliot sits at the keyboard and stares at the thin book of piano exam pieces.
Guitar is a non starter, so he might as well get back to what he knows.
He needs to pick a new piece though. because every time he plays the old one he feels sick and starts shaking and gets swept up in the sight so vividly it's like the ties are screaming at him.
The song he picks is angry and hateful, but the main advantage is that it probably won’t give him brain damage.
They burn the inside of his nose in the hopes that it will stop the nosebleeds. He looks at his nostrils in the mirror - it's a bloody, black and red mess. He slips into the sight, and ties wrap around him on their way through the bathroom.
His nose starts bleeding again.
The phone rings. It’s Clipboard Man's number.
Elliot doesn't answer, instead he turns off all the lights and closes the curtains. He sits, slumped on the floor where there will be no shadows or shapes visible in windows, and then he waits in the cold, breath rising in front of him like clouds.
About an hour after the phone call, someone bangs on the door.
Elliot closes his eyes and buries his face in his knees, listening as Clipboard Man shouts for him. He says he knows there’s someone in the house. Eventually, he gives up and Elliot is alone.
The woman has hair like his, curly and red as it floats around her face. Bubbles stream from lips shaped like Elliot's, and what Eleanor always called his ‘pianist fingers’ curl into fists and slam into the windows.
She struggles and fights and the car sinks. The seat belt wraps around her neck, and then she can’t get out of that either. She thrashes and kicks, one of her flats comes loose, revealing a stockinged foot, green painted toe nails sticking out of a hole in the nylon as the shoe floats off.
And then the kicking grows tired, fatigue weighs her limbs down, she can barely lift them. Her eyes close. No more bubbles stream from her lips.
Elliot wakes up in the bath again.
He’s shivering, his pyjamas are soaked through, his chest is heaving but he doesn’t feel scared, just so, so heavy.
Dad finds him there, after sitting for too long. He doesn’t help, he just tells Elliot to stop messing around and clean up.
The drain groans as Elliot pulls the plug, but he doesn’t get up, he just rolls over and draws his knees up to his chest, longing for the fear to come back and displace the emptiness.
It's not just a dislocation. There's nerve damage this time, and Elliot has to help Dad take his shirt off to get into the shower.
They don't talk, and with each blink Elliot slips between the sight and regular vision.
He sits outside the bathroom, listening to Dad’s muffled grunts of pain. The ties look even worse than they normally do, leached of all but the slightest hint of colour. He runs his hands through them, and catches only an echo of the joy and wanderlust that he knows characterises the link between his parents.
Dad finishes in the shower, and Elliot helps him get dressed in silence, then he helps him into the sling that's supposed to be helping his shoulder heal.
Elliot starts reading about grief.
PPST track D level 3 makes use of rudimentary counselling skills, but it focuses a great deal on the outdated five stages of grief model. It doesn't make sense, when he thinks about ghosts - about Annabel flipping between love and care and despair, about Lillian and the way she never stopped loving Cathy, but was never consumed by that love. About his father, who has been consumed by it. Who is being consumed.
The quiet consumes the house, slowly and completely, until bieng interrupted again by Clipboard Man, who shows up and bangs on the door and doesn't stay for long.
Before he goes, he posts a leaflet through the letterbox that hits Elliot squarely on the head, with a piece of paper clipped to the front.
If you won't talk to me, please talk to someone.
It's a leaflet for childline. Elliot tears it up and puts it in the bin.
Elliot wakes up drowning, Adam holding his head under the water until it passes, and he realises he’s in bed.
The day that follows is a can’t move kind of day.
Dad has to shout him three times to get Elliot to help him get dressed for work, and afterwards, Elliot just collapses back into bed. His limbs feel like concrete, and the thought of going to school makes his breath freeze solid in his chest.
Dad doesn't try to persuade him to go, he just leaves.
Elliot drifts, after that. The ties flickering and blurring so much that he can't tell what he's really seeing versus what's just an afterimage, burned onto the sight, his mother there no matter what.
His mother doesn’t like Elliot’s new reading habit, and makes her displeasure appear as blood splatters across the pages of his books. It isn’t her that stops his research, however. Eventually, he just hits a wall.
Elliot is not in university yet, and when he tries to look for the articles his books talk about, the body of research into grief, why some people attract ghosts and others don’t, the role that trauma plays, he cannot access them.
Fourty pounds to read one article, one website quotes. Another says fifty.
He wants to give up then and there. Almost does. But then he finds a reddit thread with a link to a website he’s fairly sure is going to give his laptop a virus, and then he finds another that says he can just email the researcher, a lot of the time they’ll provide a copy of their work for free, especially if he says he’s still in school.
So Elliot emails Dr. Swift.
Dr. Swift more than comes through. She’s working out of a university somewhere up north, and her field of study is positive hauntings.
She’s a parapsychologist who started her career as just a regular psychologist, and most of her early work was part of the recent explosion of studies into bereavement and resilience.
When he asks, she doesn’t just send him the study he’s asked for, but what amounts to pretty much her entire body of work, along with over a hundred research articles she apparently just has saved. She says she’s happy to discuss anything he doesn’t understand, that she’s available to talk over skype. That she doesn’t get a lot of interest from teenagers, so he must be very advanced for his age.
Elliot learns how to do stitches off YouTube. He lights a candle to sterilise the needle, soaks the thread in rubbing alcohol, then stitches together the two halves of Dad's face.
After, he can't get the blood out from underneath his fingernails, so he files them down so low they lie flat against his flesh.
Dr. Swift tells him about a positive haunting she once went to.
Elliot is sat on his bed when they talk, and notices too late that she can probably see the posters in the background. There’s quite the selection; Full Metal Alchemist because what self respecting nerd hasn’t seen that show, the poster they were handing out at one of the gifted and talented trips he went on in primary school that has different types of marine mammals that you can see from Plymouth on it, the pictures from Luke’s new years party with the three of them in ridiculous cowboy hats.
It’s a child’s wall in what’s obviously a child’s bedroom.
Dr Swift notices, of course, but she’s kind enough that she only compliments him on his taste in anime before moving on.
Elliot misses enough school that the social worker comes to speak to Dad. Promises are made that won't be kept. The social worker leaves believing that their family has been going through a difficult period but that they’re otherwise strong and supportive of each other.
Elliot wonders which social worker Dad made such a positive impression on that in every meeting his presence is noted as a protective factor in Elliot’s life.
The message Clipboard Man leaves on the answering machine is professional but concerned. He mentions unusual readings in the neighbourhood.
Elliot understands PPS classification enough to know that they're already down as being low risk and it will take an actual complaint to change that. There's nothing Clipboard Man can do.
Dr. Swift is willing to pay Elliot's train fare so that he can travel up to her lab in Manchester and see the research they're doing into resilience and positive hauntings.
Elliot can't leave for that long.
Because of obligations.
Because of school.
Because his whole body is so heavy so much of the time.
One of Mum's old medical textbooks shows Elliot how to pop Dad's arm back into its socket. The sound it makes is enough to firmly jolt Elliot into the sight.
The sight is different.
He doesn't have to touch the ties to feel them anymore. Just focusing pulls him into bright joy and pride and wonder.
Touching them, on the other hand…
He runs his hand through a blue tie, and the woman with hair like his is dancing in a night club, glitter smeared over her cheeks, breath smelling of blue WKD.
It frightens him enough, the totality of it, that it snaps him right out of the sight.
Summer hits, and Dr. Swift gives him her personal phone number, because she won't be in the office if he calls the university phone.
It's very kind of her.
Dad seems grey and folded up on himself. He barely looks up when Elliot asks him what he wants for dinner. He certainly doesn't answer.
Elliot goes to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water, but he slips into the sight. There's barely any colour, barely, except for a single, thrumming strand of green.
He reaches out, touches it.
Wind rattles the sash windows in Elka's room, the sheets are wrinkled, not from sex, but from lying opposite each other, staring into each others’ eyes.
He's been crying. There's a damp patch on her shoulder from it. They've barely known each other a month, and already he doesn't know what he'd do without her.
He wakes up on the floor, there's glass and blood. Real blood.
He cleans himself up and gets started on dinner.
When Elliot calls Dr. Swift, her husband picks up. He delivers a warning; Elliot is not the first teenager his wife has developed an interest in and he will not be the last. Something about an uncle a long time ago.
He imagines the two of them, her crying as she confesses the bland series of conversations and emails she shared with Elliot. Maybe they talked about therapy. Maybe they talked about how much they could pay him to go away.
The husband tells Elliot not to call the police. Blandly, Elliot tells him the last time someone took advantage of him sexually, the police didn't care to do anything more than ruin Elliot's life.
The husband goes very quiet, and when he speaks again it sounds like he's been crying as he apologises and says he's going to make sure his wife gets the help she needs so that this doesn't happen again.
Elliot doesn't care. He hangs up.
Dad goes into the attic and doesn’t come down for three days. Elliot emails his boss pretending to be him so that he doesn’t lose his job.
Elliot doesn’t go to school.
He doesn’t shower.
He doesn’t eat.
He touches the ties, lets himself be swallowed by what few hints of colour remain.
Three days of country lanes and long late night drives. They eat blackberries from brambles at the side of the road, staining their fingers just a shade more purple than blood.
They fall into hedgerows tangled up in each other, her red hair splayed brighter than any star could hope for against spring-green grass.
They don’t sleep, they just criss-cross England until they make it to Wales, where they wade into the ocean and leave all their clothes tacky with salt.
When Dad comes down from the attic, bleeding, Elliot binds his broken fingers together with tape.
Not everyone grieves like Dad.
Logically, Elliot has always known this, because otherwise every student in his class whose parents had ever lost someone would be as bitter and spiky as Elliot.
Reading the science helps.
This is not normal. Nothing about this is normal.
It's bitter comfort when Dad comes down for toast and a fresh bottle of whiskey and then Elliot doesn’t see him again for days.
The lights are still on and the curtains are open when Clipboard Man comes. Elliot sits in the living room, staring out at the silver birch trees that line the pavement, watching Clipboard Man walk up the drive.
Dad's in the attic, and Elliot doesn't get up when he knocks.
He can't do anything if they don't answer. He doesn't have a key or legal powers to break in without evidence.
Elliot drifts into the sight before he leaves, runs his fingers through an angry red thread.
She tells him that he doesn't need anyone but her, and he agrees.
Damn them all. It's him and her and none of the rest of them matter.
He says they should have children, and she agrees. They won't fuck them up like their parents did them. They'll do better. There won't be screaming matches at three in the morning, slammed doors, bruises.
There will be love and only love, because they have more than enough for two.
When Elliot blinks the last of the tie away, there's tears in his eyes and Clipboard Man is gone.
He dreams that he’s driving. She’s in the car next to him.
Each time he looks at her she wears a different face.
Adam.
Jase.
Dr. Swift.
It’s always her though, he can always tell it's her.
The world will always want to hurt him, she says. The world only wants to take and take, to gorge itself on what it can get out of him. He is an object. A body. A thing of flesh made special only by the heat under its skin. Better to destroy than to let them take. They can go together, she says, it will be easier that way.
He wakes up in the bath again.
Slips into the ties as easily as breathing.
Most of them are grey, but a faint strand of washed out lilac drifts overhead. He runs his fingers through it–
Elka stops after the baby comes.
Stops going out.
Stops showering.
Stops eating.
She lies in bed, and he brings her single slices of unbuttered toast and tea that go cold on her bedside table.
The antidepressants increase in increments of twenty milligrams, then change names and increase again.
The counselling waiting list is unmoving. He screams at the GP receptionist on the phone so badly that they have to change GPs. The mental health service calls them every few months to see if they still want to be on the waiting list, and he screams at them too.
They go and sit in urgent care, then in A&E, and then at home when the nurse tells them she doesn’t think Elka's threats of suicide are anything to worry about.
He doesn't leave her in the bathroom alone, doesn't go out unless he has to, he almost calls his mother for help when he can't take anymore time off work.
He doesn't leave her alone with the baby.
Nursery, babysitters, neighbours that are far too kind when he turns up on their doorstep clutching a screaming infant.
He loves her so much.
It doesn’t stop him slipping.
It doesn't stop him coming home and finding the car gone.
–the lilac flickers and then, like a whisper, it fades.
Elliot stares up as the ties hang, listless, dead.
Something changes.
The ties, previously limp, pull taught, like they might ping if he plucks them.
A deafening stillness.
Then in a breath, they shoot inwards, leaving the air clear and Elliot alone.
The house feels empty without the ties.
Silence strung out between one heartbeat and the next.
Elliot doesn't know how to feel about the memory the tie revealed. His head hurts too much to properly process it.
It echoes in time with Gregory telling a panel of social workers and police officers and teachers that Elliot's assault should be forgiven because Adam had a dead Dad. It stings like Joe choosing Jase, even though Elliot needed him and Jase didn't. It hurts the same way Dr. Swift's husband thought a weird uncle was free license to do whatever she wanted.
Elliot doesn't see Dad for a week. He doesn't come down for toast or whiskey or to use the toilet, and Elliot would know if he had because he starts sleeping at the foot of the ladder when they hit day five.
He doesn't hear anything, no laughter or voices, and the ties don't come back.
He looks up how long a person can survive without water.
With shaking hands, he then looks up how long a possessed person can survive without water.
On day ten, he goes up into the attic.
It's ridiculous and childish and stupid, but before doing anything, he goes to his room and stands on his desk to reach the top shelf.
They're thick with grease and dust, and the colours, once bright and childlike, have been bleached by the sun, but he feels better as he set Optimus Prime and Pento-Jon down at the foot of the ladder.
When the ladder creaks, it sounds different under Elliot's feet to how it sounds under Dad's.
He puts his fingers on the hatch. It weighs more than anything he has ever lifted.
He pushes upwards.
In his imagination, there was always light in the attic. Sometimes from torches, sometimes candles, most recently, from the very ties themselves casting Dad's skin in a rainbow of hues.
The only light is from the lamp in the hallway, shining up behind him.
Dark shapes and swirling dust. A smell like decades old sweat and sickness, so powerful that Elliot gags, choking on it.
He doesn't shut the hatch behind him as he climbs up into the space, splinters catching on his jeans.
“Dad?” He calls out.
Something moves in the corner.
Sweat pricks the back of Elliot's neck as the thing's shadow lengthens to the height of a man, staggering on unsteady feet.
It stumbles to one side and throws out a long, lumpy arm to catch itself–
–and punches clean through the wall.
Sunlight floods into the attic around its fist, and Elliot stares, frozen as it approaches.
It wears Dad's face, his greying hair, his clothes that haven't been changed in over a week. But at the same time, something is very obviously horrendously wrong.
His skin sags, his movements stumble and shudder as though this body is several sizes too big, his expression twitches and writhes as though he's attempting to command each individual feature into some form of human expression but he’s forgotten how.
It jolts towards him, and he takes a step back, heart pounding. “Is that you Dad?” He asks again.
No response.
Elliot swallows, mouth sour with fear. “M- mum?”
It lunges.
Elliot scrambles back, but his foot catches on a loose plank and he falls. He hits the ground, and the impact sends static dancing across his vision.
It hurls itself towards him, feet dragging behind it. Elliot scrambles back, bare wood and rusty nails scraping at palms and clothing. Something rips. A splinter lodges itself deep enough that blood spills and smears.
It crashes into his legs, he kicks but it's too strong. Its nails are long and grey, they draw blood as they sink in, ripping long bloody tears into his jeans.
He reaches out blindy, snatching at something, anything he could use as a weapon, but his fingertips dance across empty air.
The stench of ammonia is overwhelming, the weight crushing. It's eyes are bloodshot, bulging out. Its breath is hot against his face.
He struggles, writhes, and then its hands are around his neck. Squeezing.
“My… son,” Its voice is breathy, too high for Dad's throat. “I… am not….”
Elliot is dizzy, the world spinning, strength leaking as the unbearable, blinding agony crushing into his throat.
“...sorry.”
His fingers touch cold metal.
He snatches it, swings it round, and slams it hard as he can into Its head.
It roars, wheeling backwards, and Elliot dives for the hatch.
He falls, stomach churningly, scream inducingly hard.
He only allows himself a moment curled up on the floor, drowning in shock and pain, before he forces himself back to his feet with only one thought in mind.
It’s an hour long walk to get to Luke’s house from Elliot’s.
Longer than that if you definitely twisted something when you fell out of the attic.
Longer still if you have to stop every ten minutes to deal with the sudden weight of your entire world falling more and more to pieces with every step.
Elliot’s breath keeps catching, and he can’t tell if it’s because he was nearly strangled to death or because he can’t cope with any of it. He goes over what he knows about possession.
Mass casualties. Structural damages. Inquiries and prison sentences by the handful.
He goes over what will happen to Dad.
An emergency softening. A level four paranormal risk management unit at first. Then he’ll probably face charges, child endangerment, for having a minor in an active haunting for fifteen years and not seeking assistance.
If he’s even himself anymore. Elliot's read the studies. Brain damage. Severe and enduring mental health issues. Profound cognitive decline. Parkinsonism.
He doesn’t remember most of the walk in the end, just being outside Luke’s house at four in the morning and knowing that it’s ridiculous to knock on someone’s door at four in the morning.
He sits on the cold ground, leans his head against the wall, and slips into unconsciousness.
Notes:
Click or tap for chapter specific warnings
Grooming (gets stopped before anything 'more serious' happens, but is a pretty risky situation all round)
Mental health issues - more detail than previous chapters
Abuse
Suicide - more detail than previous chapters
Medical gaslighting specifically wrt mental health and suicidality
Blood, violence, and injuryIt's a bit of a rough one fellas
Chapter 12: Elliot, Age 14 - Part One
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
“Funnyface?”
Elliot jerks awake, heart in his throat, no idea where he is, and the first thing he sees is Luke’s Mum.
“Luke’s mum?” His voice is so hoarse. Will it stay like that?
She’s wearing a fluffy green dressing gown and Ghostface slippers. “The hell happened to you?”
This is it. The moment where he has to tell a grownup he trusts everything that’s happened to him. Elliot’s had a lifetime of hour long school assemblies with special guests and TV Very Special Episodes to build up to this, right here, this exact moment.
He chokes. And then he actually chokes and starts coughing everywhere.
Rachel's face crinkles, concern flooding her features, “What- what happened to your neck, kid?”
He can't.
He takes a deep breath and hauls himself to his feet, gripping the wall for stability. Hoarse and rasping, he asks, “Can I stay here for a bit?”
Rachel sits him down at the breakfast table with a pot of activia and some honey and ginger tea, then disappears into the next room over with her mobile phone. He wonders if she's googling ‘what to do when your teenage son's friend who he hasn't properly spoken to in months turns up at your door injured and obviously traumatised’.
He would laugh if anything could pierce the thick, heavy fog that's settled over his mind.
He hears her talking very quietly to someone, “I'm sorry Janet, I'm not going to be able to come in today, we're having a bit of a family emergency. No, I know it's a bad time, but yes, I really can't–”
A beat, the sound of her hanging up, then a muttered, “God, what a bitch.”
There's the sound of feet coming down the stairs, and then Luke’s Dad, quietly asking Rachel what's going on. Elliot can't hear most of what they say, but he picks out snippets like Michael saying, “I should've picked up that there was something going on with that kid after the camping trip,” and, “Luke said he's been avoiding everyone at school ever since…”
It would be humiliating if he hadn't left what little pride he had left back in the attic.
They come back in not long after. Rachel has her game face on, and Michael is wearing his ‘I will feed you cookies until you stop being sad’ face.
They both sit opposite, and Elliot slumps a little further down in his seat.
“Not hungry?,” Rachel asks, spying Elliot's half eaten yoghurt.
Considering he was recently chased out of his childhood home by his father, who happens to be possessed by his dead mother, Elliot thinks “No, thank you,” is a very reasonable answer.
Rachel doesn't press the matter, she just nods, “Alright. Well, I'm sure you can understand we have some questions before we say yes to anything.”
“Okay,” Elliot rasps.
“Is there someone we should be calling?”
They're being so nice, but Elliot wants to roll his eyes so badly. He'd love to see the social worker that could go up against a possession. Certainly none that he's ever met. He just shakes his head in the end.
“Would you be alright with us calling social services?”
The head shake is more insistent this time.
“Kid, you can't just move in here without us letting anyone know, that's kidnapping .”
“I only need a few days,” he croaks, “Just to… to…”
He doesn't realise he's shaking until she reaches out and squeezes his hands. “Okay, a few days, but after that we're calling someone, all right?”
He nods. “Okay.”
A few days will be enough.
Rachel cracks open the first aid kit after that. She goes very pale when she spots the blood on his jeans, the scratches torn into them by thing's ragged nails, and he has to splutter quickly, “It’s not what you’re thinking.” He needs a lie, then he remembers her bandaging the scratches on his wrist, “I did it to myself.”
Her face is a different kind of awful at that, but at least she doesn't think Elliot's Dad is doing that to him.
She gives him a pair of Luke's shorts and throws his torn up jeans in the bin. After dabbing antiseptic on his various cuts and scrapes, she insists on taking pictures of his neck, which makes sense considering she thinks he's been horrendously abused and it probably looks fairly bad.
Someone's alarm goes off upstairs, and Elliot looks out of the window. Leaves are starting to brown on the trees. “Has school started back again?” He croaks at Rachel.
“Today's the first day,” she says.
Elliot straightens, “I won't have to miss any then?”
She raises an eyebrow, “Are you sure you didn't hit your head or something? Because if you think you're going to school in this state…”
Elliot frowns, “You're right, they'll definitely start humming and saying things like ‘safeguarding issue’ if I go in like this.”
“Please stop talking before you convince me I need to call the police.”
Elliot isn't entirely sure what she thinks the police will do, but he obligingly shuts up as she finishes sticking plasters over the last of the scratches.
There's shuffling upstairs, and Michael's low voice drifts down. And then Luke, louder and shriller, cries, “What!?”
Elliot winces.
“Have you figured out what you’re gonna tell him?”
“Car accident?” Elliot suggests weakly, right before there's the sound of feet barrelling down the stairs and Luke appears - clad only in boxers, normally perfect hair perfectly askew, dark shadows under eyes wide with alarm.
“Morning loser,” Elliot says limply.
“You're alive,” Luke says, blinking, “You're… in my kitchen.” He scowls, “Where have you been all summer?”
Elliot shrugs, “You know, around.”
“Why wasn't ‘ around’ anywhere where me and Serene were? We've barely seen you since… since…”
Since Adam assaulted him, since Gregory betrayed him, since Elliot ditched them for a boy he never told them about.
Luke’s eyes drift downward then, “What happened to your neck? Have you been getting into fights again? Is that why you haven't been talking to us?”
“Luke,” Rachel sets a hand on her son's shoulder, “My beloved, my radiant son, my world, I think your friend here's had a bit of a rough go of it, so maybe go easy for now, hm?”
“No,” Elliot says, “It’s okay, I deserve all of that,” and probably more besides. “Um. Luke?”
He raises an eyebrow.
“Could you… bring Serene here after school? I need to talk to you both.”
“Fine,’ Luke huffs, “It had better be good.”
Rachel sets Elliot up in the guest bedroom, a different set of mum-sheets and the curtains half drawn, and the second he's alone, it catches up with him. A wave of exhaustion rolls over him, and Elliot has only moments to realise that this is the first time in quite possibly years that he's been able to fall asleep without worrying that a ghost is going to try and make him drown himself in the night before he passes out.
His rest is broken, but it's the normal kind of broken - the kind that's more to do with the inherent trauma of being nearly murdered by your dead mother possessing your father's body than being tormented by said ghost in sleep.
He wakes up at one point to find a landline and a list of printed out phone numbers by the door. It's things like Childline, Young Mind, Samaritans - the usual troubled teen contenders.
A mix of boredom and curiosity drives him to call Childline, and the robot who answers informs him it will be an hour long wait to speak to a human and that if he’s in crisis he should call nine-nine-nine. He hangs up and stares at the wall. He wonders if adults are lying on purpose when they say help is available, or if it's one of those polite fictions everyone goes round believing because society would collapse if people can't, in the back of their mind, tell themselves that someone must be doing something for kids like him.
The day drifts past him. He stares up at the ceiling, floating between waking and sleep, between the world as it is and the sight. He's so used to a house filled with thick ropes of ties that the sparse few that flitter through this otherwise happy household seem strange.
In the sparse moments of silence between the churn of the washing machine and the whispered arguments that Rachel and Michael are having about him, he closes his eyes and it's almost like he can hear the ties without touching them.
I miss you, says one, we'll never get to travel the world together, says another. Wistful, but not bitter. Is this how grief looks when it isn't all consuming? Sad, but with enough room left around the edges for sunlight to float between the ties?
Dad never chose to be consumed, Elliot knows that. He's not so much of a child that he can't recognise his impulse to condemn his father’s grief for what it is - selfish. Wanting Dad to be better so he could have what, loved Elliot more? What a cruel thing to ask for.
Elliot doesn’t really understand softening. They talk about it in class, he knows that it is a response to stubborn hauntings, he knows that it can be risky. People have developed symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder from being softened. Grief that is already complex and seemingly insurmountable inevitably worsens, functioning decreases, happiness decreases, people develop more health conditions, there have even been studies linking the use of the process to cancer.
Elliot has met Luke’s grandmother only once, but if the sad old woman curled up on the floor of the campsite utility room swearing at her son and her grandson’s friend is what happens to people after being softened…
He rolls over and goes back to sleep. Better not to think about it.
Elliot is woken up by a soft knock on the door to the guest room. He rolls out of bed, yawning as he slips on his borrowed jumper and borrowed socks and opens it.
It’s Rachel, cup of tea in hand. “Hey kid, school finishes soon, I know you said you wanted to see your friends so I figured I’d wake you up. How’re you feeling?”
She’s being extremely nice to him. Elliot wonders what Rachel Sunborn, officer of the Paranormal Protection Service, will say if she finds out he was concealing a haunting for most of his life. There will likely be fewer cups of tea. His stomach churns as he takes it with a quiet thank you.
“Hey,” she says, just before heading out, “I know you and Luke haven't spoken much recently, and I know that things between the two of you have been… turbulent, but I thought you should know, he's had a bit of a difficult time recently, and he's not really at his best. Go easy on him, okay? Give him the same grace you’d expect him to give you.”
Elliot doesn't expect grace from anyone. He nods and says, “Okay, I will.”
He sits and waits, until he hears the key in the front door, and a cold sweat breaks out over his skin. Luke and Serene’s voices, low and muttering, float up through the floor.
Right. Moment of truth. Elliot feels sick.
He gets to his feet and ventures out into the hallway.
And then Luke and Serene are just there.
She looks just the same as Elliot remembers, and it's this shock that makes him realise how long it's been since he saw either of them. Six weeks of school holidays, plus the time from November onward last year.
He looks exhausted. His blonde hair is askew, blue eyes a little puffy, tie that's ordinarily a perfect ten stripes hovering short at nine and a half.
Elliot swallows. “Hey,” he says, “Can we…?”
Luke nods, and leads the way for them into the guest room.
The sheets are rumpled, mugs of tea that Rachel brought throughout the day are in varying states of finished throughout the room.
Elliot sits on the bed. He has one of Michael's crocheted blankets, and he pulls it up over his head and around his shoulders. He needs a shield of some kind, and it's the best he's got.
Serene slips out of her shoes and takes a seat, cross-legged and opposite Elliot on the bed, her eyes wide with concern. Luke opts to stay standing, arms folded, like some kind of insane bouncer of the guest bedroom.
Elliot draws his knees into his chest. He can’t look at them if he's going to say this. It already feels too much like a betrayal.
“I need to tell you something,” he says, throat raw still. “But I need you to promise me you won't tell anyone. Not even your parents.” He looks at Luke for that part. It's hard to imagine Serene tearfully confessing anything to the mountainous woman she calls a mother.
Serene reaches out to take his hand, “If you are being hurt, Elliot, then we must–”
Elliot snatches it away, “No, none of this is what you think. If you tell anyone, things will become exponentially worse, that's why I'm telling you , because it's your help I need, not someone else's.”
The two share a glance, but it’s Luke that says “Fine, we won't tell anyone.”
Elliot takes a shaky breath and nods. “Good. Okay. You know about my mother.” They nod. “Well. I've never told anyone about this before, and I don't want you to panic, but she's actually a ghost and my father is the host.”
They wear twin confounded expressions, which is… not the reaction Elliot was expecting.
“I am a trainee ghost hunter living in a haunted house, that's despicable, why aren't you being all… despising.”
“But Elliot,” Serene says, “I thought your mother died when you were a baby?”
He remembers that final tie, his mother's decline. “Yes, I know.”
“But that's fourteen years ago, hauntings always form within the first six months.”
“I know .”
Luke decides to get in his two pence then and says, “How do you know it's a haunting? Psychosis can look a lot like a haunting under the right–”
“I have the bloody sight you idiot!” Elliot snaps. “I've been in every class you've been in, done all the same homework and more. I know a haunting when it's been in my attic my entire life!”
Luke looks chagrined. Serene says, “That's fourteen years though Elliot, it must be at least a stage three by now.”
He shakes his head.
“But–”
“I think it transitioned to stage three when I was… about seven? That's when Dad first started getting bruises. Now it's…” His hand drifts to his neck. “Worse.”
Luke’s eyes are wide, and Serene's are narrow. Her voice is very low as she asks, “Your father kept you, a child, in a house with a stage three haunting for seven years?”
Luke is shaking his head, “Your dad's possessed?”
“Only recently. If we could just move on from all this stating of the obvious that we're doing and get to the part where we fix it?”
“Does my mum know?” Luke asks.
Elliot raises an eyebrow.
“Right. Well, I think we need to tell her.”
Elliot groans, “Have you not been listening to one word that I just said? My Dad is possessed , he had a child in the house for fourteen years during an active haunting. I nearly died so many times in that house, he will be in prison for so long if anyone finds out about this.”
Serene has the pretty duvet balled up in her fists, spots of colour appearing on her cheeks, “Perhaps that is what he deserves.”
“Is it what I deserve?” Elliot asks.
“What are you talking about? You won't go to prison, you were a minor,” Luke says.
How does he not get it? “Where will I go?”
“You can live with us of course, I'm pretty sure my parents like you more than me.”
“After Gregory? Not likely.”
“That's not–”
“I'll tell you where I'll go, into foster care with a stranger, or a children's home, and let me tell you, I wouldn't last five minutes in the dumping ground, I already basically have ‘bully me’ written on my head. My Dad might only talk to me once every other week, but at least I currently only get milk dumped over my head at school.”
“You're being dramatic,” Luke says, “What happened to that man you were living with after…”
“You don't get it,” Elliot snaps, because he does not want to talk about bloody Joe, “I don’t need somewhere new to live, because we're going to make the place that I already live safe.”
“Elliot,” Serene says, “We haven't even taken our level three exams yet, there are only three of us, we're teenagers. We can't handle a possession alone.”
“Those rules were made for everyone else, I know you two are a million times better at all that soften-y stuff. Especially if you've got me to distract the ghost - how often is the son of both the haunting and the host present for this stuff? That's a major advantage!”
“Possessions kill people!” Luke hisses, “Not even sometimes - most of the time!”
Elliot rolls his eyes. “ Now who’s being dramatic.”
Luke’s jaw twitches, but he takes pains to keep his movements slow and not-terrifying as he moves away from the door and sits opposite Elliot, all of which makes Elliot feel a million times worse. Does he really seem that fragile right now?
“Look,” Luke says, “I know that this is what you do–”
“What do you meant by ‘this’?” Elliot retorts.
Lukes lips get even thinner, “Interrupt people, for one. And the rest of it - being all… all…”
He glances at Serene, and she pipes up with, “Prickly. Contrarian. Distrustful.”
“Right. But this is actually very serious, and we need to handle it… maturely. We need help from people who know what they’re doing.”
“What, and that’s the PPS is it?”
“ Yes.”
Elliot is already shaking his head, “You really haven’t been paying attention to anything if you think they actually care about anyone they’re supposed to help.”
“My whole family is in the PPS Elliot! Are you saying that they don’t care?”
“I’m not saying that inidividual officers don’t care,” His mind goes to Clipboard Man, and as usual, he feels a tiny little bit bad for the man. Only a little bit though. “But they can’t do anything without approval from the system, and according to the system, my Dad’s just a line on a spreadsheet that was turned from high risk to low risk the second a year passed since my mum died.”
Luke opens his mouth to speak, but Elliot holds up a finger, “ And, ” he continues, pressured and forceful, “Before you say anything about the trust your family has in ‘the system’, go and ask your Dad why he refused to even let the PPS near your grandmother.”
Finally, Luke falls quiet. Serene doesn’t even bother with a questioning look.
She reaches out and takes his hand again, slowly she rubs the back of his knuckles.
“What you are asking is extremely dangerous,” she says, “Not just for you, but for us as well.”
And that’s the part that Elliot hates the most. The one thing that gives him pause.
They will be in danger, no matter what he does to try and distract the ghost. But what choice does he really have? The PPS are useless, any adult softeners he goes to will just report him, so if he wants to be in with even a chance of the world not completely crumbling down around him, his only option is Luke and Serene.
“I know,” He says, “But that’s why I’m going too. If it looks bad for even a second, I want you to run.”
“We can’t just leave you ,” Luke hisses.
“I don’t know,” Elliot says, “Most people find me to be immensely leavable.”
Placidly, Serene says, “We're not most people.”
It's okay, they'll change their minds when it comes to it. Everyone does.
They decide that it will be best to do everything under the cover of darkness, mostly because that’s the easiest time to sneak out. Serene calls her mother and tells her that she’s going to a sleepover, and Michael, apparently touched by their show of support for Elliot, agrees to let all three of them sleep in the guest room.
Michael makes macaroni cheese for dinner, and Elliot doesn’t realise until the vanilla ice cream dessert that he’s thinking about Elliot’s throat. Said realisation prompts him to retreat into the bathroom for a good ten minutes whilst he tries to not look like a moderately considerate meal choice made him cry.
After dinner, they hole up in the guest bedroom, textbooks propped up in places where they can easily be moved out of sight during the frequent parental check-ins. Luckily, Luke’s parents seem to have decided that they need their space, so they're letting them keep the door closed. A requirement, really, when you're making plans for an illegal unlicensed softening.
“Do you know how long your father has been possessed for?” Serene asks, her lovely brow creased with concentration.
“Well,” Elliot says, “I think I may have seen it happen, and if I did, it was about ten days ago.”
She looks up sharply, “You saw it happen?”
“Well, I saw the ties.”
“You are extremely lucky, the number of people with the sight who have had the chance to witness the transition from stage three to possession is miniscule.”
Elliot doesn't know if he'd quite use the term 'lucky’ to describe any part of what happened, but he supposes this is better than her going on about how stupid this whole thing is.
“Elliot,” Luke interrupts before they get too off topic, “Your dad's been possessed for over a week . People get brain damage within hours of being possessed.”
“So what? I'm supposed to just abandon him?”
Serene places a placating hand on Luke’s shoulder, “Of course not, but it's probably a good idea to be realistic about what might happen.”
“I can handle him being a vegetable,” Elliot says, “As long as he's not actively trying to murder me, it'll be fine.”
He doesn't miss the look they give each other, but he does choose to ignore it. They don't know anything.
“So,” he says, “The plan. First, we need to figure out the best way to soften a possession.”
“None of our books really talk about how to specifically deal with softening a possession,” Serene points out, leafing through the level two PPST study guide for softeners. Elliot’s read it before of course, it mostly just talks about what a possession is , not what to do about them.
Luke huffs, slumping back against the bed. “Maybe that's because we're not supposed to know.”
“Don't worry,” Elliot says, “I did account for this. Why do you think it was Luke’s house I turned up at looking all traumatised and pathetic?”
“My parents are under the impression it's because you trust them enough to let yourself be vulnerable around them,” Luke mutters.
“Pfft, ridiculous,” Elliot lies, “I've yet to meet an adult who isn't a useless slave to the system. No, I'm here for books. ”
“Of course you are,” Luke sighs. “My parents keep all of their work things in the study, they'll have questions if they find us poking around in there.”
Elliot doesn't know how he managed to end up sort-of-not-really-kinda friends with someone so wholly unimaginative. “That's where I come in. They already think I have some kind of dark, terrible home life, and they're just desperate for the gory details–”
“Desperate to help , and I don't know how I feel about you taking advantage of their good will.”
“Yes yes,” Elliot says, moving as quickly past that uncomfortable topic as he can. “Anyway, I'll distract them with my vulnerability, whilst you two sneak into the study and grab anything you can find on dealing with possession.”
“I don't like this,” Luke said, “What are you even going to tell them? I thought all of this was because you don't want to tell anyone anything.”
“Correction,” Elliot says, “All this is because I don't want to get tossed upon the merciless shores of local authority care. I have things I can confess that won't result in that happening.”
“Like what?” Luke’s fists are at his sides, digging hard into the carpet.
“Well,” Elliot says, “Like being bisexual. Apparently people care about that sort of thing.”
“You can't just- just make things up !” Luke snaps, “Those things actually matter to people.”
“I'm not making it up,” Elliot says.
“Oh? Then why were you so absolutely shit when I came out?”
“You know why,” Elliot snaps, and he can't say more than that, because his chest feels tight and his mouth is numb. He leans over, resting his forehead on his knees. Luke doesn’t stop though.
“No I don’t! I don’t know anything because you haven’t spoken to any of us! You disappeared, Elliot!” His voice is going higher, louder, “You haven’t answered our texts, in school you were just hanging round that creepy year eleven, and that was when you bothered to show up at all!”
Each new thing is like a chisel, each word a stroke of the hammer, pushing it deeper and deeper, through skin and sinew and bone, hovering above his fragile, vulnerable heart. Elliot holds his breath, waiting for the next strike.
“Luke,” Serene says quietly, “Perhaps now is not–”
Elliot, cornered, bites back, “Perhaps I just know where I’m not wanted.”
Luke wastes no time. Straight into the quivering muscle of Elliot’s heart. “If that was true you would’ve stopped going home years ago.”
Silence.
Elliot’s fingers are tingling. The ties float, bright and clear as ever, through the room.
Footsteps echo, as Luke’s sister pads about her bedroom upstairs.
The TV covers the sound of Luke’s parents.
A car goes past.
Serene speaks first, but all she can say is, “Luke…”
Luke’s face, red with anger, has gone very, very pale. “Elliot, I…”
They stare at each other. Luke’s blue eyes are as desperate and wild as a storm at sea. Hungry, for ships, for lives, for Elliot’s forgiveness.
Elliot knows Luke wants to apologise, that Elliot should help him along, but he can’t. All he can do is get up and walk away.
It's been years since that New Year's Eve party when they came out here, but Elliot feels safe in the wendy house at the bottom of the garden. It wasn't an easy fit back then, but he has to get on all fours now, in the dirt, to get in.
He doesn't mind.
He feels numb. It's familiar, a blanket he's used to wrapping himself in. The wendy house has leaked badly, and moss coats the wooden floor where it used to be dry. The plastic windows are broken, and the floor is thick with dirt and spindly leaves, brown and rotten from the tree next door.
He pulls his knees in, buries his face in them. He doesn't cry.
Ties float through his vision, silvery and sparse. As if on cue, his nose starts dripping blood, hot where it lands on his hand. He takes out a tissue.
He isn't surprised when he hears footsteps coming down the path, and looks up to see Michael Sunborn.
“Hey kiddo,” He says, kneeling down so his bulk is framed in the door. “Luke told us what he said to you. Can I come in? I brought cookies.”
He didn't just bring cookies, Elliot finds out after he's squeezed through the door.
He has his trademark hot chocolate, blankets, and blessedly, tissues. “Figured you might be having problems with the sight,” he says sheepishly.
“Am I that predictable?”
He shrugs, and Elliot realises he doesn't really care and takes a bite of cookie. He barely tastes it, just copper from his nose.
They sit in silence for a little while, until Michael says, painfully gentle, “You know he didn't mean it, at least, not the way you’re probably thinking.”
Elliot’s eyes do not water as he, eventually, mutters, “It doesn’t matter what he meant, he was right. And I deserved it.”
Michael offers the tupperware of cookies again, and Elliot takes one. “Doesn't matter how true it is,” he says eventually, “I didn't raise him to speak to people like that.”
Elliot snorts dryly, “I guess he picked being terrible up from me then. Sorry for breaking your son.”
Michael's brow furrows, “That's… not even close to what I was trying to say. Do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“Twist things so that they’re your fault.”
Elliot can't think of many bad things in his life that weren't his fault. Adam, maybe, but that's more of an intellectual one because he knows victim blaming is very bad. And what happened after with Gregory was definitely Elliot’s fault. A few days ago, he might've said his mother killing herself. But now he knows that even that was his fault, ultimately.
“Oh boy,” Michael says, “I know what that face means. Whilst you might've wound Luke up, and I'm sure there were some… mitigating factors, he's old enough to know where the line is and to take responsibility when he crosses it, and as his father, I expect him to apologise.”
Elliot finishes his cookie, and Michael offers him another. “Can we please stop talking about this? I came out here to mope in peace.”
If he doesn’t stop talking about it, the ties will stick around, and then he'll pass out and everything will become needlessly dramatic.
“Alright kid, I'll leave you be, in fact - I think there's someone else here who wants to talk to you.”
Serene’s face appears behind Michael, arms crossed over her midriff in an uncharacteristically reserved gesture for Serene. Luke hovers behind her, expression all crumpled in on itself.
Michael squeezes Luke’s shoulder on his way out, then disappears down the garden path, leaving Luke and Serene to crawl into the wendy house.
It's much too small for all three of them to fit comfortably, but not in a bad way. They're packed in tight enough that he can hear their breathing, can hear the rustle of their clothing as they try to get comfortable.
Luke’s expression is pained as he says, “I'm sorry, what I said was… really, really bad. Um. Yeah.”
Elliot swallows, then immediately regrets it because ow.
“It’s okay. You…” He looks down at the rough chipboard floor. He can’t look them in the eyes for this. “You weren't wrong. We all know you weren’t wrong.”
“Elliot…” Serene says softly. She reaches for his hand, but he pulls it away because he can't deal with touch and emotional vulnerability at the same time.
Quickly, quietly, he mutters, “I'msorrytoo, um.” He hunches his shoulders up to his ears. “I… I've been a bit of a shit… friend.” He inhales like he's drowning, “Things have been really hard for a long time, and then this last year everything got even worse, and I don’t think I've coped very well. And I took that out on you both. Sorry.”
“We know,” Luke says quietly, “And it's okay. We've just been worried. After…” Elliot isn’t looking at either of them, but he can feel the glance being exchanged over his head.
Serene picks up where Luke trailed, “I don't know how well you remember that night with Luke’s cousin–”
Vividly. Painfully. Mostly in nightmares, both sleeping and waking.
“--But right after, you were just… gone, and you kept…”
Luke picks up, “You kept scratching yourself, and we saw you'd obviously… obviously been doing that before. And we got so scared. ”
That's probably the only part Elliot doesn't remember.
“And then after that,” Luke continues, “You haven’t spoken to us in months, Elliot. It's been terrifying.”
“I'm sorry,” Elliot whispers again. He can’t really understand it, that worry. But he supposes it would be frightening to see anyone acting like Elliot had.
“I went too far,” Luke says again, “I'm sorry. But I'm also really, really scared.”
“Well,” Elliot says, finally looking up and meeting both their eyes, “If tonight goes as it should, you won't have to be.”
“Oh!” Serene says, “I got the book!”
She unfolds her arms from her chest, and out from under her shirt, she pulls out a heavy textbook with the title ‘Official Paranormal Protection Service Guide to Possession’.
“If there's anything that will help, it's in here.”
Notes:
Tap or click for content warnings
Abuse
Mentions of past self harm and sexual assault
Teenagers being teenagers
Chapter 13: Elliot, Age 14 - Part Two
Notes:
See end notes for content warnings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J18k5Sx3Dw
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Luke’s parents go to sleep at exactly half eleven on the dot every night, Luke informs them. Louise is less reliable, but she should be asleep by one at the latest.
They pour over the book until it feels like their eyes are going to start bleeding and their backs ache from hunching over.
At eleven, Michael brings them all a final round of hot chocolate that they end up supplementing with two teaspoons of coffee each anyway.
At around midnight, Serene rests her head on Elliot’s shoulder and closes her eyes in spite of the caffeine.
Luke frets, and Elliot whispers, “Let her sleep, there's not much more that we're going to get from those books anyway.”
Luke tenses his jaw, but keeps his voice low anyway, “If we're doing this, which I still don't think is a good idea, then we need to be ready.”
“We're as ready as we're going to be.” Or at least, Elliot is. But his job's easy.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Luke whispers.
“It’s the only way.”
Luke glances at Serene. Her hair is long enough that it drapes down, tickling the back of Elliot's hand.
“If anything happens to her,” Luke says, deadly serious, “I'm not going to be able to forgive you.”
And Elliot doesn't have an answer to that. Not really. He already can't forgive himself.
At two, they hear Louise’s light switch click.
“ Finally, ” Elliot mutters, and shakes Serene’s shoulder gently.
She blinks, slow and sleepy, bathed in the moonlight sliding in through the slit in the curtains. “Elliot?” She says, “Is it time to–” she stops, a yawn splitting her in two, “Time to go?”
He nods.
“And you're really sure you want to do this?” Luke presses.
It's not about want. There's no choice. There never was.
“There's still time to ask for help,” Luke says.
As if it could ever be that easy.
They take a taxi from outside the mini Sainsbury's around the corner from Luke’s house using a combination of Luke and Serene’s pocket money. Elliot is glad of it, he definitely twisted something falling out of the attic yesterday, and his ankle is throbbing and swollen.
Elliot is learning that a concerning number of taxi drivers are happy to pick children up and drop them off in the middle of the night, but at least this one seems to care about their opinions on his music, as he explains, “I know it's probably not as cool as what you kids normally listen to.”
He's listening to Billy Holiday.
All of me…
Elliot leans his head back, the smooth crackle of old vinyl and brass swallowing, if only for a minute, everything to come.
Why not take all of me…
A warm hand in his. Serene, curling their fingers together.
Can't you see…
And then Luke takes his other hand.
“Loser,” Elliot mutters. In reply, Luke just squeezes harder.
I'm no good without you…
And then Luke and Serene are splitting the fare, and the taxi driver is disappearing into the darkness beyond the orange glow of the street lamps, and the house is there .
The grass lining the path is overgrown because Elliot hasn't had the energy to cut it, and there's junk mail hanging out of the letterbox because Elliot has had bigger priorities than throwing it away.
There are spots of blood leading away from the door, dried to brown crisps dyed black in the darkness.
“And you're absolutely sure about this?” Luke whispers.
It's all the prompting Elliot needs to become unstuck.
The paving slabs wobble underfoot, the lock sticks as he turns the key, the silence screams as he opens the door.
“Wait,” he whispers, “Until you hear talking or fighting. When it's distracted, you know what to do.”
He doesn't wait for verbal assent.
If this were Luke’s house, the sense of wrong would be pervasive, insidious. The quiet would be too quiet, the muffled thuds from the attic threatening.
But it isn't Luke’s house, so these things are ordinary.
He strides past Dad's chair. Heads up the stairs. This is not the last time he might do this. He is not heading towards certain death.
It's after school, Dad's not been round for a few days, but that's okay. Sometimes he just isn't around.
Pento-Jon and Optimus Prime are still at the foot of the ladder. The hatch hangs open. Hand over hand, Elliot climbs.
At first glance, the attic is empty.
The smashed lamp that Elliot hit Dad with last night is in pieces on the floor, blood splattered, congealed and sticky amongst the ruin. The hole in the roof is still there. He was expecting it to be fixed, somehow. As if the problem might just go away.
He takes a step forward.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
His heart pounds, his palms sweat, his breath is raw and thunderous.
“El…liot?”
His veins freeze.
The voice, thin and rasping, comes from the darkest corner of the attic.
He blinks, slipping into the ties as easily as breathing. The dark corner is illuminated by a faint glow.
Hidden behind stacked boxes of old clothes and knick knacks, a lump curls in on itself, wreathed like a cocoon in glowing, shimmering ties.
“Dad?”
Nothing.
“M-mum?”
“My…son…”
He drops to his knees and crawls towards him. Her. It?
His father’s body looks worse than yesterday, somehow. Blood seeps from the wound in his head, his lips are peeling and cracked, he's been scratching himself, deep, and chunks of flesh are trapped under his nails.
Elliot's stomach churns. He averts his eyes, then at the first sting of guilt, forces himself to look back.
“I should… be dead…” he rasps. She rasps, this is his mother talking.
Elliot can't reply.
There are plans, to keep her talking, to lure her away from where she's hiding, get her back facing the hatch.
He can't. Dread has slithered tight around his throat and isn't planning on letting go anytime soon.
“I waited…” she croaks. She lurches. Heart racing, Elliot steps back, but she doesn’t move more than an inch.
“For you…”
Another step back.
He can hear Luke and Serene. Footsteps in the hall. House creaking to accommodate every shift in weight.
Elliot swallows dryly. He needs to take control of the situation. Be confident. Carry out the plan.
“Mum…” he says.
Her head snaps, eyes trained on him. Hollow and bloodshot, whites turning yellow.
“El…liot…”
“I…”
There is no coming back from this.
He didn't realise it until now. But there is no coming back.
His father is gone. Has been gone for a very long time. His body has been lying empty, alternating between work, his chair, the attic, for so long there was room for a completely different person to crawl inside.
Elliot has always told people that he never knew his mother. Only now does he understand that may be even more true for his father.
He remembers in primary school, a school trip to an old, disused coal mine. On the surface, it had looked no different to any of the other industrial buildings dotting the countryside, but then they'd gotten in the lift and gone down for what felt like hours.
He remembers stepping out of that lift and finding an eternity of empty, echoing black.
That's what this feels like.
An infinity of darkness where the Earth should be. Hollow space where his heart should be.
“Why… are you… crying?” The possession rasps.
Elliot grits his teeth and wipes his eyes. Finally, he manages to speak. “No reason.”
With a cracking, squishing sound, the possession opens its arms, “Come… here…” The stench is overwhelming. Like rotten fruit and cats. “Let… your mother… help.”
Elliot takes another step back, shaking his head.
They can still call for help. There's still time. Luke’s parents, he knows, could be here in under ten minutes with how many speed limits they'd break if he told them he was in trouble.
He glances back towards the hatch. Towards Luke and Serene.
If they die here, it's Elliot's fault.
He lured them here.
They're here for him.
He dives towards the hatch.
The possession roars, an iron grip snatches at his ankle, long claws digging into the flesh of his calf. Elliot barely feels it as he lands on the half open hatch with a thud. There is a yelp of pain that sounds a bit like Serene, but Elliot doesn’t pay it any mind as he slides shut the ancient bolt over the hatch.
They're stuck down there. And in turn, he's stuck up here.
“Elliot!” Luke screams, pounding on the hatch, “What are you doing!?”
Raw floorboards scrape across Elliot’s back, his shirt riding up and exposing bare flesh to the splinters and loose nails as the possession drags him across the floor.
Elliot screams, kicking his leg and trying to shake its grip, he yells, “You need to run! Get help!”
“Elliot!” Serene yells, “Let us in! We will help!”
“Call your par-!” He's cut off as he is whipped up into the air and slammed into the ground. Pain explodes across his back to the tune of splintering wood, air is driven from his lungs. Black spots dance in front of his eyes.
A sopping, stinking weight crunches on top of him, but he can’t even struggle to break free, his whole body in spasm.
“I… watched…” it gasps, fluid gurgling in its lungs. “Whilst… you… rotted …”
He manages to move again, squirming, but it straddles him, its fingers digging into his shoulders.
“Let- let me up,” he gasps. “I'll leave you, you never have to see me again, just let me go.”
“No!” it hisses. “You… you did… this… to me…” each breath it takes sounds like there is a bubbling swamp in its chest.
He remembers what he saw in that thread. Before Elliot, everything was fine. It was his arrival that ruined everything.
It lifts him up, its grip is like iron in spite of the physical desiccation. “You… destroyed… my… body…”
“Elliot, Serene’s gone for help!” He hears Luke shouting, “So just let me in!”
Its fingers squeeze so tight that Elliot's shoulder bones shift under his flesh. He screams, but it's muffled by the volume of the stinging, searing pain of his skin tearing under the force of the posession's nails. Blood seeps down Elliot's arms as he struggles and writhes to get free, his legs kicking, meeting resistance, but barely even causing it to stumble.
“You… destroyed… my… mind…”
Its fingers sink deeper, his feet don't touch the floor as it lifts him even higher. In the miasma of pain and terror, Elliot barely registers that its feet are no longer touching the ground either.
“Elliot!” Luke yells, “What’s happening?”
“You… watched…” it rasps, “As he… destroyed… my… soul!”
Elliot has the length of time it takes for his heart to give a single, desperate thud, before it slams him down.
Pain explodes across Elliot’s back and shoulders as they collide with the floor. It should be over, but no, they're still falling. Elliot’s brain takes a second to compute how, but then he realises they've gone through the ceiling, and they're still falling.
They thud into a smooth plastic surface, sending zig zags of pain spasming across Elliot’s chest. The shower curtain railing rattles against porcelain, empty shampoo bottles clatter from the shelves like skittles.
Bathroom, they're in the bathroom.
“Elliot!” Someone yells, feet pounding. The possession throws out an arm, and the bolt in the door slides shut.
“Y-you don't have to- to do this…” Elliot wheezes.
The possession leans in closer. It's breath wafts over him, pungent and rotting. It rasps, ‘I…have waited… years…”
It reaches out again and with a flick of its wrists, water roars out of the taps on the bath, the shower head, the sink. At the same time, porcelain melts around the plugholes, sealing them over.
The water hits Elliot's skin like a slap. He shudders, struggling fruitlessly to get free, but the posession still has him pinned.
The water creeps up, an inch, two, five.
It's halfway up his body.
It's tickling the shells of his ears, then in the canals. He writhes, kicks, but the creature has bones made of iron moulded in place. Luke and Serene are both battering at the door. They might make it through, they might not. If they do, it won't be in time to save him.
Something warm uncoils in the pit of Elliot's stomach as the icy water creeps higher and higher, dancing across his cheekbones, slipping over his eyes and lips; he's going to die here. Nothing he can do will stop it.
Eight weeks without food, eight days without water, eight minutes without air.
He's going to die.
The water covers his nose, the last few slithers of air escape his lungs, and Elliot starts to drown.
Relax, a woman's voice whispers. It's over now. All of it.
What a lovely thought. No more fighting.
No more struggling.
No more lies.
No more hiding.
Black fuzzes the edges of his vision.
The ties flicker, their glow distorted by the water. His mother could almost be an angel, like this.
She stares at him through his father's eyes, and her hands around his neck feel almost tender. She understands him. He doesn't need her to tell him, he just knows . No one gets Elliott like she does. No one understands how lonely it is, keeping it all to yourself. How necessary .
The darkness was always there. Ever since she was a child in a northern post industrial hellscape - watching as her father came home, day after day, no work, a tin of beans and nothing else for tea the fifth night in a row. Days spent sitting on the bridge overlooking the motorway, wondering how much it would hurt to fall.
Not as much as you think, she promises, and Elliot believes her.
Her own mother had tried to tell her the same thing, right before she took too many of the diazepam the doctor gave her to shut her up. Through the ties she showed Elka that it didn’t get better, not really, not ever, definitely not for them. She’d be better off ending it all before saddling whichever poor sod she popped out with the same troubles, the same emptiness.
Cavernous.
It always comes back. It might go away for a little while, but never for very long .
“Elliot!” Serene screams.
It sounds so far away. Serene would probably be better off if she stopped fighting too. There’s no saving someone like Elliot.
Something heavy slams into the door frame. Splinters and plaster rain down from the gaping hole in the ceiling. Dust floats in the water covering Elliot’s face.
Another crash, then another, then–
The door swings open.
Elliot’s mother screeches,but it doesn't matter because Serene collides with her back and clings on tight, and Luke isn't far behind her.
They’re too late.
There’s no strength left in any part of Elliot. Nothing he can use to fight back. He isn’t even entirely sure if fighting back is a particularly good idea anymore. They’re softening her - he can feel it - her grip is loosening - but they won’t manage it in time.
There’s a part of him that always suspected he would die here. Except it wasn’t suspicion, it was knowing. At least it will end with him. If Serene and Luke manage to soften his mother, no one else will get hurt. Elliot won’t be able to hurt anyone else.
His whole body feels warm and tingly - it’s quite pleasant really, even as the violence above him unfolds - Serene’s head hits the sink with a thud, but she clings on, Luke’s arm makes an alarming crack but he keeps fighting.
If only Elliot could…
If only…
“Hold on Elliot!” Serene screams, and her eyes…
They’re eleven years old, crashing in a laughing, giggling heap on the floor of the wendy house at the bottom of Luke’s garden.
They’re twelve, and Serene is eating cookies upside down whilst Elliot tuts over Luke’s homework.
They’re thirteen, and Elliot is on the floor of Gregory’s study with Serene and Luke are gripping his hands so so tightly, like they’re terrified he’ll disappear if they let go.
They’re fourteen, and still here. By his side.
And Elliot is a bloody idiot, because there is no cavern where his heart should be. There’s only a small, borrowed bedroom, and his best friends walking into a haunted house, facing down a possession, just for him.
I’m sorry that you were alone, he says to his mother in his head, but I’m not.
Elliot explodes upwards, gasping for icy breath, easily dislodging his mother's weakening grip. She stops fighting Luke and Serene, the ties dimming with every second they hold on, instead, she fixes her attention fully on Elliot.
She slams him backwards, and his head hits the tap with an impact that coils through his whole body. But Elliot is already bleeding as he grabs hold of her, wrapping his arms tight around her.
She thrashes, but there is no fat on her bones, no muscle, nothing stop her splintering and cracking in his grip. She lurches, and pulls them under the water together. Thrashing, jerking, struggling–
For a moment, her hair is red and long and flowing.
For a moment, she is shrieking with laughter as she runs into the sea.
For a moment, she is leaning over the crib of a tiny, sleeping infant. Running the back of her finger across a warm, round cheek for the very last time.
And then she's gone.
Elliot isn't really there for most of what happens afterwards.
There are lots of paramedics, and they talk to him, but he doesn't remember answering. They use the gentle, sickly soft voice people use when they find out about his mother, and they handle him as though he'll turn to powder if they nudge him too hard.
They're probably right. He can't look for too long at the covered bundle that gets left on the bathroom floor, or he might actually disintegrate.
Luke’s parents arrive just as they're loading Elliot up into the ambulance, and Rachel insists on going with him. He lets himself wonder what it would have been like to have his own mother there, and then he lets himself cry.
He must pass out at some point, because when he wakes up he isn’t in the ambulance anymore. He's in a bed, and cold wires and tubes snake up and down his arms, monitors beeping at irritating intervals. It reminds him of going to visit…
The monitor beeps a little faster, and beside him, Rachel Sunborn jerks awake from her light doze by the side of the bed. “Luke’s Mum?”
“Hey kid,” Her smile is haggard and tired. Deep shadows sit in the hollows beneath her eyes and in her cheeks. She looks gaunt in a way that Sunborns are never gaunt, except, apparently, when Elliot is involved. “How're you feeling?”
“Actually… not that bad.” A little foggy and stiff, and weirdly relaxed. He squints suspiciously, “I'm drugged up to the gills aren't I?”
She squeezes his hand - the one that doesn't have what's probably a horrifying needle coming out of it hidden under all the tape. “Like you wouldn't believe.”
He closes his eyes.
“It's going to be okay.”
That 's the thing he doesn't believe. His voice cracks as he whispers, “How?”
“Because you're not on your own anymore.”
Notes:
Content warnings
Blood, gore, description of violence and injury
Abuse
Heavy discussion of suicidality
Minor character death
HospitalsLong time no see! Honestly I have no excuse for the delay on this one other than getting distracted by other newer and shinier projects. But I *will* finish this fic haha. We're in the home stretch now though fellas - just the epilogue left, so see you then!
Chapter 14: Epilogue - Everyone
Chapter Text
Whiteleaf
This isn't the worst possession that Chief Officer Whiteleaf has ever attended.
Far from it. He was there for the Griffiths case in ‘98 - the parents pasted to the walls of a reasonably priced semi in an area with good schools and nice neighbours, the kids left cowering under the stairs. He was one of the first responders at the Trafford Massacre - seventeen dead, by the time they found all the body parts.
But it feels… different. Maybe because it's three kids, or maybe it's because he last saw two of them at the annual PPS barbecue. Maybe it's the way they cling to each other - he'd arrived just as they were getting the Schafer kid into the ambulance, and the medics had to physically hold the other two back.
The on-call surveyor gives the all clear on the house being safe to enter, and Whiteleaf heads in - directed to the second floor bathroom where Constable Wavechaser is crouched over the body.
Body. Singular.
It's a bloody miracle, even though it doesn't feel like one.
“Any ties?” Whiteleaf asks.
“No sir.” Wavechaser says.
“Pathologist been?”
“Preliminary report puts the time of possession at just over ten days ago. Terminal point a few days after.”
Whiteleaf nods.
As far as possessions go, it's a clean one.
“You look troubled, Constable.” Whiteleaf says, because there's a furrow in her brow to rival his own.
Wavechaser stands up, dusting off her trousers. “Sorry, sir. My son is in the same year as those kids at school.”
It's not just him then.
“They all made it out. More than any of us were expecting when we got that call.”
He'd been expecting four bodies. They all had. One, maybe two if the Schaefer kid doesn't pull through…
It's not bad.
“I've a call to make, Constable. I'll see you at the office.”
“Witness statements, sir?”
He shakes his head. “I'll handle them. You get yourself home. Nasty business.”
Michael Sunborn
Michael Sunborn is a worrier.
You don’t manage to see two kids and ten times as many nieces and nephews out of infancy if you're not a worrier.
Rachel worked full time when the kids were little - she made the most money, so it only made sense to do it that way, with Michael dropping down to part time hours until they were in secondary school. But that meant he had to catch every sniffle that might turn into a cold, every cue that meant they were tired or hungry or lonely, every socket perfectly placed for tiny fingers and every pot of boiling water positioned at perfect grab-height for tiny hands.
Worrying kept them alive, and Michael loves those kids more than he'd ever thought it was possible to love another living thing before, so he got very, very good at worrying.
And so, when Michael picks up the phone, worrying is the only thing it makes sense to do.
“Before I tell you anything,” Whiteleaf says, “Luke is safe.”
Rachel flicks on the bedside lamp and sits up. She squeezes his hand as Whiteleaf speaks, and he only thinks to put him on speaker about halfway through.
“Your son was involved in an incident on Wildfell Road just under an hour ago. He's safe , but he has suffered some minor injuries.”
Rachel's grip on his hand is deathly tight. He knows what she's thinking. Wildfell road is where Elliot lives.
In an instant, both of them are out of bed and down the hall. They get to the guest room and of course, it's empty.
Rachel is fuming.
Michael only has eyes on the book on the floor - the PPS handbook for possessions. He holds it up, “You don't think…?”
Rachel's face drains of colour. She takes it from him, leafs through a few pages, then her eyes harden with rage. “Come on.”
The drive is the longest of Michael's life. “He said Luke was fine,” Michael says. “Minor injuries.” It doesn't make him feel better. It doesn't seem to make Rachel feel better either.
They lapse into silence, only the sound of the road filling the car.
The street looks different at night. It's not the same quiet, suburban lane where Michael has dropped his son’s friend home for the past several years. Blue lights illuminate hedgerows and bystanders, and a police cordon blocks both ends of the street. Neighbours have been evacuated from their homes and are gathered around in dressing gowns and coats and slippers, and a journalist snaps what photos they're able to.
Rachel parks badly, and they both flash their PPS IDs at the police officer guarding the cordon before ducking under it.
The next few seconds - racing down the street, Rachel's hand in his, heart in his throat - barely exist for Michael.
But then he lays eyes on Luke.
His son looks so small in the back of the ambulance, arm in a white triangle bandage, other hand clasping Serene’s loosely as a paramedic dabs at a vicious looking gash in her head. She's going to need stitches. It'll be a miracle if she's not concussed.
Luke barely reacts when Michael joins them in the ambulance, “We're his parents,” he explains to the paramedic, before proceeding to check Luke for any other injuries.
“Is it just your arm?” He asks, and Luke nods, but still doesn't talk. In fact, he can barely meet Michael's eyes.
Whiteleaf and Rachel both join them after that. In low tones, Whiteleaf explains what Luke refuses to. “From what we've been able to gather, the haunting has been a stable stage three for about ten years. It transitioned to a stage four just over a week ago.”
It takes Michael seconds to reassess nearly four years of his son’s friend’s life. Offhand comments now make a sickening kind of sense. The way he always had to be forced to accept a lift home. That time they all went camping, and Elliot didn't seem to have anything with him that he needed, how after they played board games and Elliot left, Luke came to him and said he'd found Elliot crying in the tent. Michael had thought it was the kind of mundane, ordinary horror, the kind that lots of, if not most, kids dealt with at that age. He'd resolved to be a steady presence in the young lad’s life, should he ever decide he wanted to talk to an adult about it.
He remembers his own adolescence, when his dad’s drinking was bad and his grandmother's cruel tongue was worse, spending most of his days at Rachel's house. He'd sobbed into her mother's shoulder more times than he cared to count, ate cooked dinners around their table, helped her dad fix their car and unblock the sink and paint the living room.
The other day, when Elliot showed up, bruised and limping and brittle, it had seemed like they'd taken a step towards being able to be that for him. But this…
Rachel looks equally troubled, and the sick white light of the ambulance washes her skin sallow.
“We work for the PPS.” Michael says, “He's our son’s best friend. How did we…”
“You weren't the only ones,” Whiteleaf says, “We've had them on the system for years, the assigned welfare officer’s been flagging concerns for just as long.”
“Heads will roll for this,” Rachel says.
Whiteleaf wears the expression of a man who knows his will be one of them. “Undoubtedly.”
Rachel sighs, “Alright. Well, how did we get from there to here?”
“These two,” he nods towards Luke and Serene, “and the Schafer kid decided to take matters into their own hands. They got very lucky. We were expecting four bodies, not one when we got the call.”
Rachel whirls on Luke. “What were you thinking? ”
Luke shrugs, and Serene stares morosely at the wall of the ambulance.
“Of all the hare-brained, idiotic, stupid– ” Michael places a hand on her arm, and she reflexively takes a breath, pauses, then falls quiet.
“Son,” Michael says, “What happened?”
Luke glances at Serene. His lip wavers, then very quietly, he says, “One of you should go in the ambulance with Elliot, he–” The breath he takes is halting, “He doesn’t have anyone else.”
Michael and Rachel share a look, and she gets out. Whiteleaf follows. Michael runs a hand through Luke’s hair, then clasps the back of his skull, and kisses his forehead. He stays there for a moment. His hair smells like mint and tea tree shampoo still - even after everything, the scent of home lingers. He touches their foreheads together, and Luke closes his eyes.
No one has said, explicitly, how exactly everything played out. But Michael's no idiot. He can put two and two together.
“It's not your fault.” He reaches and takes Serene’s free hand and squeezes. She looks startled for a moment, but doesn't pull away. “I want both of you to listen to me. This wasn't your fault .”
They stare at him with matching, terrifying blankness.
“That man was already dead by the time you got here. You understand that, don't you?”
They both nod. It would have been in the book they found. They will have studied it in school.
It's Serene who speaks up. “There have been no known cases of Possessions who have survived the twenty-four hour mark without experiencing catastrophic brain injury.”
“Luke?”
He nods. It’ll have to be enough for now.
The wait at A&E is unforgivably long. Five hours before they get an X-Ray, then another two before someone comes to fit Luke with a hard plastic splint and a sling. It’s morning by the time the nurse is giving them leaflets and a prescription and an appointment at a fracture clinic.
Luke is silent throughout the whole ordeal.
It’s only as they walk out of A&E and into the crowded hospital welcome area, that Luke says, almost too quiet for Michael to hear, “Can we go and see Elliot?”
This is not a welcome area conversation, so Michael makes a hasty diversion to the hospital cafeteria.
There, over styrofoam cups of tea, Michael explains the whispered phone call he had with Rachel.
Elliot’s prognosis. Surgery. Internal bleeding.
With every word out of Michael’s mouth, Luke gets smaller and smaller. When he finishes, the silence stews thicker and darker than any hospital vending machine tea could ever dream of.
“I’m sorry for sneaking out,” Luke says.
It’s such a non-sequitur that Michael almost spits up the aforementioned tea all over the freckly plastic table. “That’s–” He stops himself, because it definitely isn’t okay - the half an hour when he didn’t know what had happened to Luke wil probably haunt Michael to his deathbed. “I worry about why you think you had to do that, but I think you’ve learned your lesson there, haven’t you?”
He nods, then goes quiet again. It’s thinking quiet though, so Michael lets him have his space, until he says, “I needed Elliot to know he could trust me. If it was just me, I would have told you, but it wasn’t.”
Oh.
He doesn’t have anyone else.
That, Michael thinks, is the thing that has always worried him the most about Elliot Schafer.
Elliot needed Luke and Serene in a way it seemed unfair for any child to be needed. It made sense that neither Luke nor Serene had known how to handle that need. Michael himself had struggled when faced with only a fraction of it - sitting at their breakfast table and eating yoghurt what felt closer to months than days ago.
It’s not the only thing that worries him, of course. Not anymore.
But that’s not what Luke needs to hear, “You did the best you could.” He says. “I’m proud of you.”
“I abandoned him.”
“You didn’t know.”
Luke’s jaw works, and he looks so like his mother it’s a little disarming, “Yes I did.”
“Really?” Michael sets his arms on the table in front of him. “What did you know?”
“I knew something wasn't right with his Dad. I knew I hadn't seen him in months. I knew he was unhappy.”
“There were a lot of adults that knew those things too.”
Luke shrugs, then winces when it jostles his arm. “Just because they also f-messed up doesn't mean I didn't.”
“It wasn't your responsibility.”
“Then whose was it?”
And really, if that isn't the question everyone will be asking very, very soon. Michael could probably come up with a million answers, but he doesn't, he just affirms, “Not yours.”
Rachel Sunborn
The bedside vigil isn't new for Rachel. She's worked enough rough possessions that she's sat it for more than a few colleagues, and it's one of the reasons her and Michael refuse to be on a team together. On one occasion, she was even here for Louise after she was injured on placement.
None of those times were like this.
Elliot doesn't sit and joke whilst they wait for the doctor to arrive, he doesn’t make cracks about being back in time for dinner, doesn't bemoan the waiting paperwork.
He just asks if they can have the TV on, so they watch Come Dine With Me in silence until the social worker arrives, and then Rachel has to wait outside.
She goes and stands at the window, forehead pressed up against a view of the car park. Yesterday, she'd been worried about abuse. Bullying, maybe. Today…
She calls Michael.
“Rach?” He sounds tired. Raspy - like he's been up all night at a club, like they’re kids again. Not like he’s been sitting in A&E with their son.
“Hey love.” She probably sounds like shit too.
“It’s good to hear your voice.” As if they've been separated for weeks, not hours. She watches as one of the nurses she recognises from A&E leaves the building, walking to his car. He gets in and he sits and texts someone, then leaves. Like he hasn't watched lives being rent in two. Rachel probably looks the same when she finishes work. It’s different on this side of the glass.
“How's Luke?”
Michael doesn't answer straight away. She can hear the TV in the background - one of those Japanese cartoons all the kids seem to be watching these days.
“He didn't want to go to bed when we got in, says it'll ruin his sleep schedule.”
She can't not smile at that. Anyone else would've been out like a light after a night like that, but not her Luke. “I give it half an hour before he keels over,” Michael continues. “His eyes are already drooping. I might make some hot chocolate and boost the heating to speed things along.”
“Does he know he's grounded?”
“I figured best leave that for tomorrow.”
She scoffs, “Leave it for me more like.”
“I just feel like it's best to deal with things like this as a team!”
She laughs, she can imagine the mock indignation on his face. Can imagine, too, the smear of flour on his cheek from the stress-baking he's doubtless engaging in, his hair ruffled from dragging his hands through it.
“How about you? Do you need me to come and take over at the hospital so you can get some sleep?”
“Don't be daft, you've not slept either. And waiting in A&E is worse than–” she has to stop herself before her voice breaks. She's stronger than this, if she's going to help Luke through it, she can't go bursting into tears at every opportunity.
“How is he?” Michael asks.
She swallows the aching lump in her throat. “The doctors wouldn't tell me much because I'm not his legal guardian. They only let me stay because I flashed my badge at them. But he's stable, conscious. It'll be a long recovery, but he’ll recover.”
“Small mercies,” Michael says, exhaling, and she remembers the last time they talked Elliot had been getting rushed into surgery.
“The social worker is with him now.” She says, glancing towards the closed door. You can tell it's the pediatric ward - the art of much younger children decorates the walls, and there had been a mural with a giraffe and a rainbow on the wall of Elliot’s room.
“And there's no way we could take him?” Michael asks.
“We already went over–”
There's a rustling on the other end of the line, and Luke’s voice crackles over the speaker. “Mum?” He says.
She keeps the surprise out of her voice when she replies, “Hey sweetheart, how're you feeling?”
“Fine– but that's not important.” Rachel would be inclined to disagree, but she doesn’t interrupt. “You need to get the social worker to call Miss Woodsinger. She's the only adult on the planet other than you and Dad that Elliot actually likes, but he's too Elliot to tell anyone that himself.”
“Your PPST teacher?” Rachel mostly knows her from parents evenings, and had never gotten a particularly… parental vibe from her. “She doesn't seem very nurturing.”
“That's literally the point. After one of me and Elliot’s fights, he actually went and found her, for emotional support. ”
Rachel doesn't know Elliot that well, but the one thing she does know about him is that he kept a haunted house a secret for his entire life, so this seems like an impressive feat. “Okay. I'll let him know.” She says, “And Luke?”
“Yes?”
“You are so grounded when I get back mister, you have no idea.”
Clipboard Man
Terry has never had a case go so wrong that it makes the evening news, but when he sees the house lit up in blue and red, there's no mistaking it.
His tea sloshes over the rim of the cup as he slams it down on the kitchen cabinet, and his sister looks up from the shallots she's dicing when he snaps, “Low priority my arse!”
“What?”
He points at the TV, visible through the open door to the living room - “That's the house that, ‘Probably isn't even haunted anyway.’”
The headline scrolls across the bottom of the screen, ‘One dead and three injured in Plymouth Possession’.
“Looks pretty haunted to me.”
He remembers a boy who treated every check-in like a war. A father who was there in body only. A house that felt colder just for walking through the door.
“I told them there was a problem,” he says, as his sister carefully eases the mug of tea out from his hand.
“Are you about to crusade? I need a warning if you're about to crusade.”
“You bet your bloody knickers I am.”
“Pleasant image that Tez, cheers.”
She tips the shallots into a pan and they sizzle and hiss. It's so ordinary, an ordinary day in an ordinary house. He swallows. “There's a child involved.”
Sizzle. Hiss.
“Oh.”
She sets the spatula down. “What are you going to do?”
Miss Woodsinger
There’s someone in the kitchen, and it takes Miss Woodsinger a terrifying ten seconds too long to remember that she doesn’t live alone anymore. Her bed is warm and she wants to go back to sleep, but she made a promise to both herself and the young man currently impersonating a home invader, so she gets up and pulls a hoodie over her pyjamas before heading towards the sound of the boiling kettle.
Her bare feet stick to the vinyl floor as she boosts the heating up, enough for the boiler to rumble to life, and the kettle clicks off as she arrives in the pokey kitchen. Schafer starts a little at her arrival, but he doesn’t turn around, he just takes another mug down from the shelf and drops a teabag in, “No sugar, just a splash of milk?” He asks.
“Thank you, Mr. Schafer.”
He brings the drinks over to the kitchen table, and they sit opposite each other. Woodsinger smooths out the tablecloth - plastic, grey with white dots. Orange light pools on the shiny surface from the streetlamps outside, catching on the raindrops on the window on the way in.
Schafer stares down at his tea, and Woodsinger stares at him.
Sallow skin. Dark pits under his eyes. Greasy hair.
“Nightmare?” She asks.
He shakes his head. “Sleep paralysis.”
They don't talk about it tonight because they talked about it a month ago. On a night similar to this one but worse, because Schafer still needed crutches and his stitches weren't out yet and the number of medications was three times what he was taking now.
“It’s worse than a nightmare,” He confessed. His eyes were bruised still, because the blood from his head injury had pooled in his orbital bones, and the blueish purple stood eerily against ghoulishly pale skin. “ In a nightmare, you wake up and everything's okay. But this you know you're awake, you know there's no waking up, it's real.”
He hasn't been that vulnerable again since. It's always drenched in acid and sarcasm and anger now, so Woodsinger doesn't say anything. She just drinks her tea.
“I told you that you could call me any time, and I meant it,” Officer Sunborn says when she turns up at Miss Woodsinger’s door at eight in the morning.
“Thank you,” Woodsinger says stiffly, as she invites Sunborn in and gestures for them to head into the kitchen. “I would have taken the day, but my year elevens have their level threes next month and I’ve taken too much time off already.”
“Just tell me what I need to know,” Sunborn says. She looks tired enough herself - dark circles under her eyes, clothing that clearly hasn’t seen an iron, and Woodsinger hesitates. Is it really okay to ask this much off her? She barely even knew Sunborn before all of this.
Sunborn must notice her hesitance. “I want to help. It’s not just for you.”
Of course. Perspective. Woodsinger nods, and points to the padlocked drawers, “Knives,” the cabinet, “Medicines,” a different cabinet, “Cleaning supplies. I’m going to pick up stronger padlocks on my way back, but for now, please just pay attention to those.” Not that Schafer is the type of child to be deterred by a padlock, no matter how strong.
On the kitchen table, there is a purple plastic folder and a single day pill sorter, “Medications in the day section need to be taken with breakfast, the folder has exercises from the physio that need to be done first thing too. Bedroom door needs to be open, I…” She coughs, disguising the crack in her voice. “I’ve been checking every fifteen minutes.”
Sunborn squeezes her shoulder. “It’s not the same, but my niece had a rough patch like this a few years ago. I know the drill.”
Woodsinger nods, then goes back to packing up her sandwich. The tupperware clicks into place, and she puts it in her bag. She hesitates, her hands are shaking. Not a lot, just a little. She counts backwards from ten in her head, forcing her breath to even out.
She can’t forget last night though.
Opening up the search history on her computer to look for an article she wanted to read again. Finding…
“What, you think I want to kill myself?” He’d laughed bitterly when she confronted him, “ Do you not think it would have been easier to just let my mother do it for me? It’s not like I need to google how, anyway.”
But she’d ignored her gut with him before, let him laugh it off and deflect, and where had it gotten them all?
“How’s the CAMHS referral going?” Sunborn asks, very gently, jolting her from the memory.
She forces herself to exhale. “He had an assessment last week. They mostly said what we already knew. Gave us some phone numbers.” There’s a little card filled with crisis numbers and firm instructions to present to A&E if you experience suicidal thoughts that everyone who works with anyone vulnerable in the city carries. Schafer seems to think it’s hilarious and takes a perverse glee in collecting them - she counted six on the desk in his room when she last went in there.
“That's good,” Sunborn says, with a naivety that would be comical if it weren't so depressing.
“The waiting list after assessment, in my experience, can be over a year long.” Woodsinger says.
Sunborn doesn't seem to have an answer for that. Her gaze trails to the window, and she bites her lip. “We'll figure something out. I promised you both that we're in this with you, and I wasn't lying.”
He doesn't tell her when he's hungry, he just goes and cooks for both of them. He doesn't tell her when he needs a new bag for school, one just turns up one day and she has no idea where he got it. He doesn't tell her when he needs ingredients for food tech, she just finds him haggling for them with other students in class when she strains to overhear what they're talking about.
“Mr. Schafer,” she says, pulling him outside after that particular conversation. “What are the responsibilities of a parent towards a child?”
“Don't worry, you haven't thrown me through the floor yet, you're doing fantastic.”
“That’s not–”
Someone down the corridor slams a door, and he flinches, eyes darting up and down the corridor.
It's only Mrs. Sandmoor. She gives them a sympathetic smile as she passes, and Elliot’s startled expression gives way to one of disgust. “Nosy old–” he cuts himself off at Woodsinger’s glare, “Kind woman.”
“When do you have food tech?” She asks him.
“Last lesson.”
“What is the list of ingredients you need?”
“What do you care?”
She folds her arms. “You can tell me or I can go and ask your teacher.”
He sighs heavily and hands over a crumpled list. “Good lad,” She says.
At lunch, she goes to the Co-Op round the corner. It feels good, to actually be able to do something.
She meets Griffiths in the park cafe just before lunch. It's filled with dogs and children, but it's the only decent latte in walking distance for both of them.
As soon as they sit down, he's pushing papers towards her - this one looks like CAMHS patient notes from the early 2000s.
“Can you believe this?” He insists, pointing at a line written somewhere in the muddle of shorthand.
She doesn't really know what he's pointing at, so she goes for the tried and true best way to get him to get to his point - getting it wrong on purpose. “That Schaefer was recognised as a menace to society and referred to CAMHS at the grand old age of eight? It’s probably the most believable part of this whole mess.”
“No no no, this–” He points to a specific line, “ Discharged by therapist upon recommendation of father, who expressed that he did not think therapy was necessary.” He looks up, and there is light behind his eyes that hasn’t been there in a long time. “The amount of people who had to say ‘something is wrong here’ for it to even get to that stage. I referred them to social services when I suspected there was a ghost in the house with a child, then one of Elliot’s teachers also had to make a referral when she realised he didn’t have a winter coat, then the social worker had to refer him to CAMHS, then the CAMHS assessment team had to refer him into the service, then after the year long wait the second assessment team had to do the same thing, then the CAMHS caseworker had to refer him for actual therapy - only for the therapist to discharge him after one session. Because his father, the person who was doing all of this in the first place, said so. Six people said something was wrong, then because one person said it was okay, it goes down in the notes that no one can do anything ever again.”
“Do you think that’s why my referrals never went anywhere?” She asks, drumming her fingers on her cup.
“Almost definitely.”
They were friends once. He's the reason why she never turns children away when they show up to her class with neither the sight or the ability to soften. It’s no real mystery why they don’t talk much anymore - they both became the types of people that it seems like a waste of energy to maintain a friendship with. Griffiths doesn’t work for the PPS anymore though. Unemployment looks good on him.
They talk about the inquest for a little while longer - things are going well. The advocacy group that Griffiths is volunteering with has mountains of evidence, not to mention the ear of several MPs that are already pushing for reform.
Neither of them thinks it will be enough. “I'm not even sure what reforms could do. The alternative to too much leeway is no leeway at all, which is an entirely different problem,” Griffiths says, emphatically. They've left the cafe now, and are walking round the park. A huge husky stops to sniff at Griffiths’ pockets, and its owner apologises and beckons the dog onwards.
“The alternative to too much leeway is softening people against their will over a stage two.”
They pass a children's play area - a young couple take it in turns pushing their daughter on the swing whilst the little girl shrieks in delight.
“There has to be a better answer.”
“Maybe,” Woodsinger says.
“Oh!” He says, “Before I forget,” He routes round in his pockets, and out comes a business card. “My sister.”
She turns it over, examining the embossed print. ‘Amber Leeman, psychodynamic therapist’.
“I can't afford this. We would have gone private already if we could.” She tries to hand him the card back, but he pushes it away.
“She takes on possession survivors pro bono.”
She’s about to ask why, but then she remembers an ill-advised conversation over too many drinks at the PPS Christmas Party, his grandmother haunting the family home, and it all makes sense. It suddenly feels wrong to accept this, knowing how personal it is. Like she would be taking advantage of her friend and his family's trauma.
Griffiths stops, resting a hand on her wrist. She looks up to meet his eyes. “I have spent the past twelve years of my career watching nobody do anything to help that young man. Please.”
Woodsinger examines the card again. Schafer needs this. If it was herself that was going to benefit, saying no would have been easy. But she made a promise.
“I'll call her.”
“How did it go?” She asks Schafer as he slumps into the passenger seat of the car.
“Terribly. Just drive us straight to the bridge, it'll be faster.”
Woodsinger’s heart clenches painfully, before she remembers who she's talking to. “Do you really think that sort of joke is appropriate, Mr. Schafer?”
“Honestly, one little google search and suddenly everyone loses their sense of humour. A few months ago you would've been cheering me on.”
Best to manoeuvre around remarks like that, she's found. “Do you want to go back?”
He shrugs. “Sure. Whatever.”
She'll take that as a win.
They finally release the body from the PPS forensics department, and Griffiths adds the length of time that it's taken to the list of fuckups. Woodsinger tells Schafer, and he immediately slips into the sight and isn't able to come out of it until he passes out.
“You don't need to do that,” he says from the living room sofa as she cleans up the spatters of blood in the kitchen. “I can clean my own nose blood.”
“Have you finished your banana?” She asks.
“I don't need–”
“I told you you could get up when you finished your banana.”
It's a bad night after that. One of the worst they've had in a while. Woodsinger doesn't even try to sleep after the first panic attack hits, she just finds a good book and sits in the living room, one ear open - staring at a spot of blood on the carpet that she hadn't been able to get out.
At school, they both move through the day like sleepwalkers. Halfway through, Mr. Standfast from pastoral care comes to tell her that Schafer had ‘a funny turn’ in DT. It's an overwhelmingly unhelpful description, but they're letting him sleep it off on the trolley in the first aid room.
She feels pathetic for calling the Sunborns again, but she knows Michael Sunborn isn't working today, and she really can't miss anymore school.
He meets her in reception. After pleasantries, the first thing he says is, “You look terrible.”
“Thank you.” She feels terrible too - her year sevens spent most of the morning teasing her because she nearly fell asleep at her desk, and one of the year thirteens went so far as to get her a coffee from the sixth form common room.
“I know things must have been tough, with the body.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “Mr. Schafer has been struggling a great deal, but he insisted on coming in today.”
“And how are you? ”
The receptionist takes that moment to discreetly leave to do some photocopying.
“I don't see how that's relevant,” Woodsinger says.
“You're the one I'm talking to, so I'd say it’s extremely relevant, I'll ask Elliot how he's doing later.”
“I am well,” She says, because apparently he won't leave her alone until she does.
“Well,” he says, “I'm not.”
She raises an eyebrow, but he carries on, “I feel like I have to check Luke’s room three times a night to make sure he's still there, and Rachel's mad at me because I keep waking her up to do it. I can't watch any news about possessions on the TV anymore, and I hand off any cases at work involving children to other people. Luke keeps waking up crying, and I feel so… helpless to do anything.”
“I'm sorry you're having a difficult time. It must have been quite traumatic, to be woken up to that.”
“It was,” he agrees, “Now, your turn.”
She shakes her head, “Come on, they're waiting for us.”
They head through the school's grey, winding corridors, past walls that are more brown smudge than paint, and students that should definitely be in class and run to hide when Woodsinger passes.
“Elliot can stay at ours tonight,” Sunborn says.
“I don't think–”
“You're dead on your feet. You're not going to be able to stay up if it's another bad night.”
He's not wrong. She agrees.
Schafer is quiet in the car on the way back from the Sunborn’s house. When they get back to Woodsinger’s house, he goes up to his room and stays there until she calls him down for lunch.
They eat egg and cress sandwiches in silence, and when they do the dishes, she washes whilst he dries.
He doesn't go back upstairs afterwards. He joins her in the living room, and they watch the newest Endeavour episode.
When the advertisements come on, Schafer puts the volume on mute, and shifts round to face her on the sofa.
“If you're planning to get rid of me, I would appreciate a warning.”
She stares at him, uncomprehending. He obviously didn't sleep well last night, and he bobs his leg up and down, refusing to meet her eyes.
“What are you talking about, Schafer?” She asks, when she manages to push past the bemusement.
“It was quite traumatising, last time it happened. And it's not even me that's saying that, it's Amber.” His therapist, she remembers.
“Miss Leeman said I was going to abandon you?” That definitely doesn't sound right.
“Obviously not, that would be a stupid thing for a therapist to tell a teenager with abandonment issues and complex trauma. I'm inferring that part, because I'm not a moron like everyone seems to think.”
Woodsinger turns the TV completely off. “Schafer. I have no plans to abandon you.”
“I think it might be better if you did.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know I'm not easy , and I know you probably were expecting that on some level going into this–”
“Mr. Schafer,” She interrupts, “I have known you for nearly five years. We weren't even in the realm of easy when I was considering taking you in.”
Considering. Like she had to think about it.
“Yes. But there is a difference between ‘troubled teen you see in class a few times a week’ and ‘teen with complex trauma and abandonment issues who bleeds on your beige carpet and keeps you awake all night because you think he might off himself’. I should come with a label, really, but I don't. So you can have an out instead. Get rid of me now and I promise not to burn down a school or kill myself about it.”
His hands are shaking, he notices her noticing and screws them into fists.
“What on earth has brought this on?”
“Nothing. Just common sense.”
“Common sense that I'll want to kick you out after just a few months?”
“Fine. Experience then.”
Woodsinger is not a hugger, but damn all if in that moment she doesn't wish she was. “Experience should tell you that I haven't run away yet.”
“What was yesterday about then?”
Her stomach drops. How could she have been so foolish? Of course that's how he was going to take it. And what is she even supposed to say? She did get the Sunborns to have him specifically because she needed a break from caring for him.
“I'm right, aren't I? You couldn't hack it, so you left me with them. And you might think now that it'll get better, but it won't. My mum offed herself after having to deal with me as a baby , living with me drove my dad to get possessed , Gregory thought rapey Adam was worth more than me, and–”
She reaches across the sofa, and pulls him into her arms. He lets out a strangled yelp and makes a half hearted attempt to push her off. He starts to shake, and for a moment hot panic flashes through her - has she completely misjudged this? Is he frightened?
But then she notices the damp spot on her shoulder where his face is, and he grabs handfuls of her scratchy polo shirt to pull her closer, and she realises he's wracked with desperate, silent sobs.
They stay like that, until he's too exhausted to cry anymore. She cards fingers through his curls, like her mother used to do for her when it felt like the world was ending and no one else even cared. She doesn't say anything, because there's nothing to say.
He ends with his head on her lap. He has a crocheted throw - gifted from Michael Sunborn - that he pulls up to his chin.
“Yesterday,” she says softly, as the shadows lengthen and his breathing calms, “Was something that I did because I don't want to get rid of you. You needed someone who would be able to wake up in the night if you needed them, and I hadn’t slept in nearly forty-eight hours. I started snoring in front of my year sevens.”
“Oh,” he says. Then, “It felt… it felt like the first cracks.”
“I’m sorry,” She says, “I never intended for you to feel that way. I should probably have communicated better. It was absolutely not ‘the first cracks’, I can promise you that much.” She gives his shoulder a squeeze. “You’ve been through so much.” He scoffs, and she shushes him, “No, you have. That means you have a lot of complicated problems, and need a lot of support. And…” She’s glad he isn’t looking at her, because her face burns as she says, “I need help too. Asking for that isn’t ‘the first cracks’, it’s making sure we have a solid foundation so they don’t show up at all. Cracks would be leaving you alone whilst you weren’t well, or being so overwhelmed myself that I’m not able to help.”
“Like my dad.”
“Like your dad,” She agrees, restraining the urge to go and discover necromancy with the sole purpose of killing him again.
“I’m sorry for being a brat,” he says.
“And I’m sorry for being insensitive. I’ll do better, I promise.”
Later, when Elliot is asleep, she calls Michael Sunborn.
“Hello?” He answers, “Is everything okay?”
It pours out of her like vomit. “Everytime I say anything, I'm terrified it's going to be the wrong thing. I’m exhausted. Sometimes I just start thinking about everything and start sobbing because I don’t know how anyone could do that to a child. I feel guilty for not noticing, angry at my parents because they certainly had their fair share of screw ups that I’m starting to remember, and I feel like the emotional equivalent of that time I fell asleep sunbathing and couldn’t bend for weeks without my skin peeling off.”
“Welcome to the club.”
Serene
Serene has never been to a funeral before, and she feels a bit like she’s playing dress up when she puts on the black dress she borrowed from Louise and the blazer she borrowed from Rachel. She doesn’t have much time to reflect though, because moments later Luke is knocking on the door and saying it’s time to go, and the whole family is piling into the car, Luke squeezed in between Serene and Louise in the middle.
There’s another family coming out of the crematorium as they arrive, and another one heading in. It’s not like how Serene imagined. “You only get a short time slot,” Rachel explains as they gather under the shelter outside the entryway. “They shuffle you through quite quickly.”
Luke pulls her aside a little before they’re due to go in, and asks, “Are you going to tell him?”
“Of course not.” It’s a ridiculous suggestion really.
For the first few weeks back at school, all three of them had been confined to a spare classroom at break times due to their injuries. The forced proximity had been good for all of them, but by unspoken agreement, they hadn't talked about the possession.
It made sense at the time. It was the only thing any of the adults in their lives did want to talk about. So instead, they talked about school work, or how much they wanted a second season of Attack on Titan, or they caught Elliot up on the drama he’d missed during the time he’d been off school.
And if Luke sometimes looked like he was about to start crying when he thought no one was looking, or if Serene had to ask the teaching assistant for her migraine tablets because apparently light just hurt now, or if Elliot had to go home early because he had another panic attack, then it didn’t matter if they didn’t talk about it, because they already knew everything there was to know. They’d been through it together.
When the funeral car and the hearse pull up, only Elliot, Miss Woodsinger, and the funeral director get out. Serene realises, when the maths teacher and some of Luke’s uncles step forward as pallbearers, that she knows almost everyone here. It’s a lot of people from the PPS, teachers from school, some of their classmates.
Inside the crematorium, Elliot sits next to Miss Woodsinger in the front row, with Luke’s parents beside them. Luke and Serene sit directly behind Elliot, but he doesn’t look at them. There is a funeral program on every seat, with a picture of Elliot’s Dad on the front. He doesn’t look happy in it, but his flesh isn’t hanging off his bones and he isn’t wearing his own facelike a new pair of uncomfortable shoes, so he looks a million times better than he did the only time Serene met him. She can even see a family resemblance - Elliot has his eyes.
There are hymns, and the vicar talks a little bit about Elliot’s dad’s life, although even she seems uncomfortable. Everyone knows now what Elliot’s dad was like. Talking about him like he was just a person seems wrong, because he wasn’t. He was the person who tormented her friend.
Luke offers her a tissue and a curious look, but she ignores the latter, accepting only the former to dab at the angry tears leaking down her cheeks. There are some people who are actually crying, which seems ridiculous. Not even Elliot is actually crying, although he has the most reason to. Instead, his hands curl around the edges of his seat, clenching and unclenching.
After the hymns and the bible passages and the slow close of the curtain in front of the coffin are over, Rachel gives her and Luke a pound each for the collection dish. The money is going to the NSPCC, something that Elliot had informed them of with a vicious glint in his eye at school last week. Everyone gives generously. On the way out, people shake Elliot’s hand and tell him they're sorry for his loss. Elliot looks like he wants to shout at them, but in an admirable display of restraint, he doesn’t.
They end up in the old conservative club round the corner from the crem. People aren’t really talking about Elliot’s dad, from what Serene can hear, in spite of the imperative from the vicar and the back of the funeral program that they should do just that. The teachers are discussing the upcoming Christmas play, the people from the PPS are discussing some procedural change that has everyone up in arms, their classmates are talking about the latest drama with Adara. Elliot is nowhere to be seen, until she gets a look out of the window and spots him striding across the muddy field at the back of the building.
“Luke,” she says, pointing him out.
Luke frowns, “Where’s he going? He’s meant to be resting his ankle still.”
They follow him regardless of their personal feelings on the matter, and by the time they catch up with him, Elliot is halfway up one of the trees in the wooded copse that separates the field from the row of houses behind it.
“That is definitely not resting,” Luke mutters, but Serene ignores him, and climbs up after Elliot. She is also supposed to be resting, but this seems more important.
Elliot is sitting on the thickest of the branches, blazer hung next to him, feet dangling, as he stares out at the spring, bubbling between rocks and winding through the town. He looks up just as she’s edging out along the branch beside him, and frowns. “The branch will snap and I will break all of my bones again, and you’ll give yourself another concussion.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. The branch creaks, but holds.
Begrudgingly, Luke follows them up into the tree as well, but he stays by the trunk, not risking coming out onto the branch, which is sensible because it would definitely snap with all three of them on it.
“How are you, Elliot?” She asks. It feels like a bit of a stupid question, which is probably why she hasn’t asked in a long time, but she finds herself suddenly desperate to know.
He grimaces, “Let’s not talk about that.”
“Okay-” Serene begins, but Luke cuts her off.
“Hang on. What kind of answer is that?”
Serene wonders briefly if the strength of Elliot’s eye roll is what will cause the branch to snap.
“Seriously? You want to do this now?”
“When were you planning to do ‘this’? We’ve been worried sick about you, but you won’t talk to us about anything serious!”
“Maybe because it’s pretty shitty to talk about!”
“Please don’t fight,” Serene says futilely, “We’re up a tree.”
“The only reason any of this even got so bad is because you refused to talk to anyone. If we’re going to end up fighting for our lives against a possessed Miss Woodsinger next, I think you need to get over your aversion to talking about shitty things and let us know!”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“
You’re
being ridiculous.”
“Well–”
Serene can’t take it anymore. She goes for the nuclear option. “I don’t have the sight anymore!”
They both fall silent.
Elliot says, “What?”
It leaves her in a breathless rush. She hadn’t intended to tell him, not yet. “The doctors think it happened when I hit my head. They thought it might come back, but it hasn’t.”
The stream continues to burble. The leaves continue to rustle. Serene’s heart continues to pound - fast, then slower with each breath she takes, with each second of air she’s bought with her confession.
Elliot stares at her, and behind his eyes there is a ruin. She remembers reading about kintsugi in some pretentious social media post about trauma - sticking broken pottery back together with gold. This is like if they used wax instead and left it out in the sun to melt.
“I need to get out of this tree,” He says eventually.
“But you’re the one who made us all go up the tree!” Luke says.
With a deliberately flat voice, Elliot says, “I need to get out of this tree because it seems like a very bad place to have a panic attack.”
They all get out of the tree.
Elliot scrambles the last few steps, then collapses at the base of the tree. His breath hitches, and fists his hands in his trousers. He squeezes his eyes shut, like he’s trying not to cry, but it’s futile because the tears leak out anyway. Serene hates seeing him like this. He knows that, so normally he tries to hide it, but there’s no hiding it out here.
She feels bad, but then she feels bad about feeling bad. She had to tell him sooner or later.
“I’m going to get Miss Woodsinger,” Luke says, because that’s what he does when they’re at school or one of their houses and this happens.
“No I’m okay,” Elliot says through gritted teeth, “I just- I just need a minute.”
Serene goes and sits next to him. The ground is wet, and she gets mud on Louise’s dress, but it’ll wash out. “Can I touch you?” She asks.
He nods, and she wraps an arm around his shoulders. He buries his face in her shoulder, and Luke eventually comes to sit on his other side, squeezing his knee.
It passes, and they end up sprawled, all three of them, with their backs against the tree trunk, legs splayed out in front of them, hands loosely entwined.
“Sorry,” Elliot says, “I totally just made your big emotional confession all about me.”
“That’s okay,” Serene says, “I did deliberately tell you just now because I knew it would shock you enough to get you to stop fighting.”
“I hate you sometimes,” he mutters, muffled by Rachel’s borrowed blazer. He sits up, properly, and rubs at his eyes. Exhaling unsteadily. “You don’t have the sight anymore?”
She nods, “I can still soften, but I no longer see the ties.”
“Are you… okay?”
It’s a good question. She feels like she should feel worse, she has lost a whole part of herself. But she’d had hope at first, that it might come back, and that had lessened the blow somewhat, that she’d been able to process it in pieces. “I think so.”
He nods thoughtfully. Then, something shifts in his expression, as he looks up at her and, with absolute sincerity, asks, “Will you go out with me?”
“Elliot, we are at your father’s funeral.”
He sighs dramatically, “Foiled once again by circumstance.”
It would be cruel, Serene reasons, to tell him about the golden haired boy who has moved in next door and has been sliding love notes under her window.
“Will you start fighting again if I ask you how you’re doing?” She asks.
“No,” he mutters, with a glare towards Luke, “As long as he doesn’t.”
“I won’t,” Luke says.
“How are you doing, Elliot?”
He draws his knees up to his chest, then apparently changes his mind halfway and spreads them back out again and shrugs. “Terribly. We’re at my father’s funeral and I just found out one of my best friends was permanently maimed by my own stupidity.”
“Thank you for sharing,” she says.
“Not even going to argue, huh?”
“Well you weren’t exactly wrong.” She shivers, an icy wind whistling through the trees. “But for what it’s worth - I think it was worth it. We both knew what we were risking when we walked into that house with you, and as every single authority figure has been telling us for the past three months, it could have ended up a lot worse.”
“You should have told me where to shove it,” Elliot says.
“You would have died if you’d gone alone. Losing the sight was worth your life. Also I decided I don’t want to work for the PPS anyway.”
That gets a loud, almost harmonious, “What?!” from both of them.
She untucks her hair from her jacket. “Well, we already did what they do all the time, and it was both quite terrible and much easier than they made it out to be. I would like a career with more of a challenge. I’m only glad I realised it now rather than in ten years time after getting all the qualifications.” She shoots Luke a bewildered look though, “I don’t know why you’re surprised though, didn’t you wonder why my mother kicked me out?”
“What?” Elliot yelps.
Serene nods, “I live with Luke’s parents now. Unofficially. Don’t tell Woodsinger.”
Elliot groans and buries his face in his hands.
“On that note,” Luke says, “I think we should be heading back.”
He gets up, offering each of them a hand, then pulls them to their feet and they amble back across the field.
Luke
“Are you going to tell me yet why we’re on a train to North Wales?” Elliot says as the city begins to roll past the window, and Luke supposes now is as good a time as any to tell him.
“I’m half Welsh.”
Elliot’s reaction is lacklustre. “No you’re not. Also, that’s a nationality, not a reason.”
Right. That was probably quite poorly worded. “I am,” he says, “On my father’s side. And the reason is that he’s dead.”
Elliot looks alarmed at that, as does the woman with the book on the seat next to them who was clearly eavesdropping on their conversation. “No, I’m pretty sure your dad drove us here. My dad’s the dead one,” he also has apparently spotted the eavesdropping woman, because he adds on an obviously performative, “You’re the one who killed him, remember?”
Luke drops his voice to a whisper, “Please don’t loudly announce to the whole train that I killed your dad.”
“I thought you wanted to talk about it more.”
“Not if it’s going to get me arrested for murder!”
“Don’t worry,” Elliot tells the train, “There were extenuating circumstances. He was possessed.” He lowers his voice again, “Anyway, back to your dad being dead. No he’s not.”
And so, Luke explains the uncomfortable revelations regarding his biological family that had come about over the summer.
“Wait,” Elliot says, “You had all of that going on and you didn’t say anything? And you accused me of being closed off?”
“You weren’t talking to me when I found out,” Luke says, “And then all of your stuff was kind of a bit of a bigger deal.”
“I suppose it did make the evening news,” Elliot admits. “When I told my year three teacher I wanted to be on TV I didn’t mean like that.”
“ Anyway ,” Luke says, because this journey has a point beyond the wonders of finding used chewing gum stuck to the underside of the fold down tables on the backs of the seats in front, “My dad’s dead, but his ghost is still around.”
Elliot freezes. “Luke…”
“No no no, it’s not like that– he’s like that woman you told me about. The one whose ghost is in the old factory and is just completely fine.” Luke hadn’t believed it either, when his aunt had told him about it. But he’d gone to meet her over the summer and she’d been… overwhelmingly fine.
Elliot’s eyes go from horrified to wonderous in the space of a moment, “Your dad’s a positive haunting?”
Luke nods “Culturally, they have a completely different perspective on ghosts in Wales, apparently. The PPS is tiny, and no one calls them ever. It’s all handled on a community level - my aunt was telling me about it and I thought…” He breaks off. Is this too much? He suddenly regrets even getting onto the train. Elliot’s still wounded, he’s handling it better now, nearly six months on from his father’s funeral, but it hasn’t gone away. It probably won’t ever go away - he was in that house for so
long
…
“Oy, loser,” Elliot says, snapping Luke out of it, “Thought what?”
“I thought you might appreciate the perspective, after, you know… everything.”
The inquest wrapped up last month. Luke wasn’t allowed into the room when Elliot gave evidence to the coroner, not because of any legal reason, just because his dad said it would be too upsetting. He’d seen the headlines afterwards though - ‘ Wildfell Road Possession Survivor Recounts Harrowing Tale of Neglect and PPS Institutional Failings’.
Afterwards, Luke’s parents had been teary eyed and hugged him and Louise a lot. When Luke asked Elliot, he’d just shrugged and said, “ I just told them what it was like growing up with Dad. ”
“ Could you tell us, too?”
Elliot had just rolled his eyes and said, “ There’s a reason your Dad didn’t want you in the room .”
The story has still crept out of him though, in bits and pieces. Now that he’s not trying so desperately to keep it hidden.
“I used to wake up in the bath a lot,” he’d said once, “ The water would be running, like she’d been trying to get me to drown myself.”
Another time, when they’d been discussing their first drinks, and Elliot had said he was five when he’d had his - he’d balanced on a chair to get to his Dad’s whiskey shelf, curious about what it was that made his Dad so sad.
There were as many late firsts as there were early ones.
First hug at ten years old from a teacher, first ‘I love you’ from a girl he was playing house with in reception, first winter coat when his teacher threatened to report his dad to social services at around the same age.
Luke holds the confessions to his heart, as much as they wound and bleed, and waits to figure out what he’s supposed to do with them.
Beside him, Elliot stares out of the grease-smeared window. They’ve left the city, and bright hills churn past.
“Yes,” He says eventually. “You’re probably right.”
They lapse into silence again. Serene texts him to ask if they got on the train okay, and Luke replies that they did. He’d been worried about her for a bit. Waiting for her to break down over the loss of the sight, but she seems… strangely fine. He’d talked to his aunt about it, his Welsh aunt, and she’d said that not all losses were an end. Some were a new start.
“You know,” Elliot says, “I actually got a bit obsessed with the idea of positive hauntings when I was err…” he grimaces, “Spiralling. There’s a lot of research into what causes them, and no one really agrees, but most people agree that the stronger your relationships are with the other people in your life, the less likely a haunting is to progress past stage two.”
The question pops out of Luke before he has time to catch it, “Do you blame your Dad?”
Elliot doesn’t seem offended, but he also doesn’t look like he knows how to answer. Luke watches his faint reflection in the train window, superimposed over rolling hills and flocks of sheep. It takes him a long time to say, “I don’t know. I think I blame him for what happened to me. But he was so lonely, and they were only in their twenties when she died, and he had a whole me to look after. Of course he couldn’t cope.” He rests his head on the glass, “But then… I think about all the things that got really messed up for me just because he was too ashamed to ask for help. And he taught me not to ask for help either and that made everything so much worse. And I don’t know. I don’t even know if I loved him. I wasn’t even sad that he was dead, just… numb.”
“I think that’s okay,” Luke says, “To not be sad.”
“I know that!” Elliot snaps, then takes a very deliberate breath out. “Sorry, sorry. I’m trying not to do that.”
“You’ll get there. Maybe,” Luke says with a grin.
“One day,” Elliot agrees.
The journey rolls on, and they coast through cities and stations, people getting on and off, luggage piling up in the rack beside them, then emptying as they pass through a dozen different cities. They change trains at Derby, and then again at Crewe, as the sun hikes its way above them then begins a slow crest downwards.
Elliot falls asleep, and Luke lets him. He needs it, nowadays. He slips out of his jacket, and slowly eases it under Elliot’s head. Eventually, the train pulls into the sleepy station under a golden pink sky, and Luke nudges Elliot awake.
“We’re here,” He says, and Elliot blinks up at him. As he yawns and stretches, Luke’s jacket falls out from under his head. Elliot frowns at it, “Is this yours?”
“I thought your teeth were going to rattle out of your head,” Luke confesses, but Elliot isn’t making fun of him, instead his smile is… fond?
“Loser,” he says, as he dumps it over Luke’s head. Luke pulls it off, then offers Elliot a hand up. He takes it, and they shuffle out of the cramped seats, grab their bags, and step outside together.
The End
Notes:
Content Warnings
- Discussions of past abuse
- Mental health issues
- Mentions of suicide, speculation over suicidal ideation
- Elliot's dark humour gets cranked up to eleven
- Discussion of non-typical grief reactions
- Funerals
- Reference to past sexual violenceOMG WE'RE HERE!!!!! AT THE ENDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!! I literally have never in my life actually typed the words 'the end' on something so long before, so FEELING PRETTY PUMPEDDDDD. Thank you so much to everyone who commented/left kudos along the way - it really helped spur me on to finish this thing :)
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glints_of_light on Chapter 1 Thu 14 Aug 2025 04:03AM UTC
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glints_of_light on Chapter 2 Thu 14 Aug 2025 04:19AM UTC
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glints_of_light on Chapter 3 Thu 14 Aug 2025 04:38AM UTC
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glints_of_light on Chapter 4 Thu 14 Aug 2025 09:07PM UTC
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four_ravens_in_a_trenchcoat on Chapter 5 Fri 18 Oct 2024 06:42PM UTC
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glints_of_light on Chapter 5 Thu 14 Aug 2025 11:08PM UTC
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glints_of_light on Chapter 5 Thu 14 Aug 2025 11:13PM UTC
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Lorical on Chapter 7 Fri 27 Dec 2024 11:17AM UTC
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glints_of_light on Chapter 7 Thu 14 Aug 2025 11:36PM UTC
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Lorical on Chapter 9 Fri 27 Dec 2024 11:35AM UTC
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glints_of_light on Chapter 9 Fri 15 Aug 2025 12:06AM UTC
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KOMQueen on Chapter 10 Wed 13 Nov 2024 05:57PM UTC
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isnt_it_pretty on Chapter 10 Sun 22 Jun 2025 07:55AM UTC
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KOMQueen on Chapter 11 Thu 28 Nov 2024 08:05PM UTC
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Ashertmarn on Chapter 11 Fri 29 Nov 2024 11:27PM UTC
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Lorical on Chapter 11 Fri 27 Dec 2024 11:54AM UTC
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KOMQueen on Chapter 12 Wed 18 Dec 2024 12:49AM UTC
Last Edited Wed 18 Dec 2024 12:49AM UTC
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jublis on Chapter 12 Sat 21 Dec 2024 12:25AM UTC
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Lorical on Chapter 12 Fri 27 Dec 2024 12:07PM UTC
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s0nnii on Chapter 12 Sat 11 Jan 2025 06:14AM UTC
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meltysnowfox on Chapter 12 Sun 16 Feb 2025 08:17PM UTC
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meltysnowfox on Chapter 13 Wed 12 Mar 2025 06:27PM UTC
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