Chapter Text
"please. we are so scared. i fear for our safety, especially the children. we cannot even be in the house after dark anymore."
tyler is kicked back in a camping chair, heel dug into the ground to rock the flimsy seat on its two back legs. he scrolls down the email on his phone, reads it out loud monotone, then drops his phone to the table while he shrugs.
"i dunno," josh pauses, lays his hand on the arm of tyler's tipped back chair and pushes down to force all four of the chair legs back to the ground and stable before he leans in to steal a quick, pop kiss from tyler, then stands upright again. "i just think we need to be extra on alert here," josh reasons, and tyler nods in agreement.
they're already at the house, and everything they've heard about it sounds too good to be true from a hunting standpoint, and too bad to be true from a reality standpoint. it hits all the classic demonic markers and then some, which is really their first tip off that there may be something more at play.
even as they pulled into the driveway in rural indiana, they agreed it felt weird there. and not "weird" in the sense that there was something, but weird in the sense that, for things like oil dripping down the walls, unexplained combustion, and the claimed levitation of a child, they expected to feel something. chaotic upset, or dark oppression, or literally anything but the serene calm that seems to settle on the property.
mark was already on team 'it's a hoax' from the very first email, but that's nothing new. he's a professional skeptic that keeps a team of 5 wholehearted believers grounded in reality.
tyler considers it all while he worries the inside of his lip and rocks the chair back onto its hind legs again, tapping the tip of his finger pointedly against the plastic tabletop.
"i wanna talk to the kids." he states after a second, final and definitive. josh agrees, no convincing needed. it's pretty clear that they're the only hope at something honest here.
it's still early in the day, just after 2 in the afternoon, but they all agreed they don't want to wait for nightfall on this one. according to the family's complaints, the activity is constant, and they haven't stayed in the house after dark for several weeks but still have plenty of things to report from their daytime stays.
in most ways, they all prefer the nighttime investigations, just because it's most of the crew's natural waking hours, and tyler especially has difficulty adjusting to early mornings when they have to. josh and tyler both say it's just that their brains finally start firing on all cylinders when the sun goes down. there are logistical positives and negatives to both day and night investigating, but they've always maintained that the things that go bump in the night can and do go bump in the daytime too, it's usually just that we're too busy to notice without the cloak and calm of night.
unless you're looking for it, which they are.
they have conflicting views on whether they want it to be real or not. josh hates the idea of a family and kids being terrorized by something unseen, and it scares him a little bit that there could, even if it's a small sliver of a possibility, be something real and dangerous for them to ward off. tyler doesn't even think about that and just thinks about how far something like this could go for research. it's not that he intends to remove the human element to it, it's just that sometimes he forgets to force some perspective on himself. other times, he does, and it doesn't change his opinion that sometimes one has to suffer in the best interest of the many, as shitty a truth as it may be.
"okay, so we have," lindsay's not even looking up when she appears from around the side of the trailer. "spontaneous combustion? uh, apparently their youngest son's bed just went up in flames one day. this is documented with the fire department, and the cause was never identified, though they confirmed the initial ignition was the bed. thankfully, mom had both kids outside playing when it happened, but because it took so long for her to notice, that room and the bathroom next to it were a loss and insurance paid to rebuild the whole east half of the house. dad says the kid's always been a little weird, but the last year he's been making some odd statements. no examples, though. mysterious wall fluids? apparitions, there's a figure commonly seen in the basement, because of course there is. and whatever that cloaked thing on the security video was. i'd shit myself if i looked out the window and –" she's the newest addition to the crew, but she's already invaluable, and not least of all because mark has a crush on her even if josh and tyler are the only ones that know it yet.
the NØPE crew has grown exponentially in the last couple of years especially. it started as just the name for their youtube channel, because they needed something to call themselves that wasn't "josh mark tyler" or any of the variants they argued over, and now it's something so much bigger than they could have imagined. nine over has three other bases now, one on each coast, and one in louisiana, plus their original home base and warehouse in columbus.
and it's not just them; there's a whole collective of weirdos that want to be a part of what they're doing and have done more to spread the word than any of the original crew have. a swathe of people that have fed, showered, and sheltered them on their travels, that have had their backs again and again, that have pushed them into new locations and new directions, created new tech, or tipped them off to frauds. they aren't just viewers, they're just as much a part of the crew as any of them on site is, and they all know they couldn't do what they do without them. they foster that as much as they can. they share their lives with them (mostly) and have meet ups with them and invite them into investigations with them, they have inside jokes and pictures and videos and memories. a whole network of friends that sometimes care more about them than they care about themselves.
josh and tyler only planted the seed, and somewhere along the way they went head down, only to come back up to a fully grown and thriving garden. for three years running, dead air ranks as the top paranormal web series. now, people reach out to them for help. it's surpassed a youtube channel and right into a full-blown business that neither of them saw coming.
it adds a particular kind of pressure that they've discussed at length, and the added crew helps them shoulder it.
lindsay is whip smart and quick to react to anything thrown at her, which is valuable anyway, but tyler swears she must have been like an DBI agent in a past life or something. between the core three of them, tyler's always been the one to deep dive into the history of where they're at, but since lindsay's joined up with them, she just naturally fell into the role, and she's so much better at it that tyler just implicitly trusts whatever she tells them now.
she's reading from a tattered notebook in one hand, like a checklist of all the claims made by the family, friends, and even one city official, which she notes, very importantly, is the wife of an uncle to the homeowner. suspicious.
her other hand is outstretched, and when neither of them moves to take the walkies and wires from her, she blindly dumps them in tyler's lap so he can handle it and she can get back to her list. it's not a short list, either. "disembodied voices, there's the recording of that hag laugh, and supposedly someone has a recording of a man wailing, but i've contacted four people about it and no one can produce it, so i think it's just lost media at this point."
when she finally reaches the last of her 15 claims, she just drops one hand to hang at her side while the other perches on her hip, and stares at the two of them like they should be able to read her mind. at this point she's kind of surprised one of them can't. "should be a fun night." she makes the statement with a shrug and only adds when she turns around to walk away, "or a really, really boring one."
none of them are saying what they think out loud, because none of them really need to.
the growing crew has, collectively, well over a hundred documented investigations under their belts, and lindsay's new to their crew, but she spent the last few years with another local touring group and has a handful of hands on investigations under hers, too. all of them can spot the hoax from a mile away, but there's an inherent danger in letting themselves believe it. they can't be caught off guard by whatever could be lurking within and outside of the walls, writing them off with disbelief is a quick way to be caught off guard, but the longer they're there, the more credence there is to their own claims.
"or a really boring one," josh calls a confirmation after her.
they're also careful about not saying it out loud, because they're all keenly aware that there is, in fact, a camera on them, even as they're preparing and setting up. there's a static camera mounted to a tripod a few yards away, and all six of them are outfitted with body cameras for the sake of not missing documentation on anything. right now, everything still looks like a mess in the driveway. the three SUVs backed in side by side at the end of the driveway creates an effective barricade from prying eyes, but the blue tent top draws attention anyway and people keep slowing down when they drive past. they're used to that now, especially with residential locations, which is how the SUV barrier came about in the first place.
what they find especially odd about this one is that people are surprised to see them there.
usually, when the locals find out that there's a paranormal team lurking around, which isn't hard to do with the giant nine over paranormal encounters logo on the side of the trailers, they aren't surprised. they've heard rumors or they've had experiences, or they know someone who died there. whatever wild things they have to throw at them. they're either scared to talk, or eager to tell their story, and there usually isn't any in between. today, four different neighbors have come to ask them what's going on at the house, and confirmed that they've never heard or seen anything out of the ordinary, and certainly no cloaked figures lurking around their properties.
so, like, they don't know that it's a hoax, but they're pretty sure they're about to know that it's a hoax.
tyler's mousy little tech check floods into josh's earpiece, and he looks straight at him from two feet away while he holds the button down and sends his own alien click check through for a thumbs up.
"you're cute." josh ends his check with the statement, no jokes. tyler's cheeks flush, bashful when he looks away, but smiles big and stupid anyway.
they're coming up on two years together, but that's not really common knowledge. their friends know, their families know, it's not a secret, exactly, but they keep the confirmation contained to the people who know them personally.
not that it's working.
neither of them is sure when the perception of them shifted. they were just kids a best friends doing best friend things, and then it seemed like overnight there were a decision made by neither of them that it was something more. and maybe it was, but they both agree that the rumors that sparked wildfire in their second year of high school also sparked the very first thoughts of there maybe being something more to the friendship for either of them.
and then they didn't actually do anything about that until graduation night, when tyler decided that he hated the taste of beer and josh decided that he liked the way tyler looked at him a little half tipsy and happy and freed from the prison of high school. and then it took another five years after that to agree that they were safe to use the boyfriend labels and still rebound from it without hurting the brand if it didn't work.
they've lived together since they were 18, they've built this brand together since they were 19, and now they're 25, six years into this unexpected career with a following of people that pay attention to them, and a large subset of that following that track their each and every move to catch any time that the two of them put that boyfriend status on for the camera.
at this point, it's a little like a game for the two of them not to feed into it. it's been like this since the start, though, and people have always clocked the way they search for each other in the most tense and terrifying times, how they call out to each other before anyone else, and worry for each other more than themselves. then, when they started including more and more of the footage outside of the investigation itself, they had a whole new list of things to try to spot. looks the two of them shared when they forgot the cameras were on, or statements made that, even in context, couldn't be anything but flirtatious, or josh's arm around tyler's waist when they were just standing there, or, most chatworthy, the one time tyler didn't even think before he reached out and pulled josh to sit in his lap on a livestream. it's been two years now and they still get comments on every video and tagged on socials about the 2011 halloweengate.
it doesn't bother them when people talk about these things anymore, and it isn't like they're ashamed or embarrassed, it's just that they don't want to sensationalize their work any more than it already is. they don't do these things for the followers; they were doing it way before that. and they don't make enough money to balance the work to say that it's worth that, either. the footage is just a byproduct of the investigation, and that's the part they're in it for. all of them, the whole crew, are only driven by answers. they all have their own questions and experiences, and they all have their own beliefs and hopes and motivations, but at its core, their mission is always to understand what happens to the soul once it's untethered from the body.
all the sidequests that come with that journey are just extras for them, and that's the only thing that makes this all work.
josh is the first one into the house, but that's always the way it goes. it's not that he's just so eager with it, but tyler has been jumpscared a time too many not to demand that josh goes first. or that josh goes to the room alone. or that josh goes out by himself. it's a running joke, and as much as josh bickers back about always being the brave one, they both know that he's just more likely to tap into something. he's more sensitive to things than tyler is, because josh doesn't have to wait for energy to find him. he's got some strange sixth sense for these things, like a human detector that's always drawn to the hotspots. for that same reason, josh has a lot more control over what he lets in and what he doesn't. now, most of the time, he can feel it, recognize it, and even acknowledge it, without letting it take him over, but early on, josh was a wildcard at best and there are several documented instances of the way his features can visibly change until he doesn't look entirely like himself anymore when he's overtaken by something. there are several other documented instances of him charging straight at tyler or mark with every intention of taking them out if they don't get it under control. he's only actually swung a handful of times, and thankfully that's been the final push to get control back, so every time he's only struck the wall and not an actual person.
most of josh's gift manifests in his emotional manipulation, and that channels through in some communication that he can only describe as thoughts, but they aren't really thoughts of his own. sometimes it's words out of the blue, others it's a direct response to a question, but sometimes it's something different altogether, something that feels like it's talking to him. it's just that he sounds crazy when he says that it's more like someone's bypassing his ear holes and talking straight into his brain.
but tyler kind of gets it, because his input is pretty much the same, it's just the way it presents itself that's different to him. tyler, on the other hand, has little to no control over who or what is coming at him at any given time. he's had this gift, or affliction, depending on who's answering, since he was little, and unfortunately every attempt at mentorship or assistance with managing it has been unsuccessful. or, well, tyler makes it unsuccessful, josh pointed out in a particularly heated argument about tyler's outright refusal to ward off an attachment. it makes josh crazy sometimes, and tyler knows that, but it's both obsession and compulsion to let it happen every time. to his own detriment, tyler needs to experience those things or he'll never be able to have the faith and confidence that he knows what he's dealing with. but sometimes, even when he does try, there's just no closing out the bad without closing out the good, too.
he found out too long ago that he'd rather feel something bad than feel nothing at all.
maybe he can't control it, but he has learned how to command it. anything can come at him, but it's a two way street now, and tyler has learned how to tap in and feed his own energy through to strengthen the connections he makes. that's the part that scares josh the most, because what neither of them have learned is how to predict the energy demand of whatever he's fueling, and sometimes they run him just a little too dry for josh's comfort. that's usually when it takes him days to come back completely, when he retreats into himself and whatever lingers with and around him. josh usually knows it's bad when tyler storms across the bedroom to unplug the nightlight that he suddenly can't stand but won't sleep without any other time.
the real problem is that when tyler is making contact with something, he can't really see anything else. he gets the same ear hole bypass style that josh does for the most part, but where josh's brain processes it like a thought, tyler's manifests the images for him to see. it's not like a movie reel or anything, there isn't always clear detail and color, but sometimes it's just a scratched outline of a door, and tyler can work through that line by etched line until a door is a room and he knows where they need to go next. other times it's a flash of something that will linger behind if he doesn't catch it right away, like it just sits in his peripheral while he tries to match it to a thought or something in the real world and make the connection, like a glowing stone birdbath that's really meant to lead them to the back yard flowerbed where they'll find the same stone birdbath. it's not always an efficient system, but it mostly keeps his contacts on the line to recall them back when he needs more information from them. mostly, but not all the time.
the crux is always that tyler doesn't get to initiate contact, he just has to wait sitting duck for something to decide to tell him it's there, so he's easily blindsided.
thankfully, josh usually has a pretty good idea ahead of time, and that's only one of many reasons they make a good team at this.
there are others they've collected along the way with heightened senses, too. there aren't many in the field that don't fall into that category in some way or another, and there's a sort of testing ritual among the community to weed out the ones that try to bullshit their way in. those are far more abundant; they just never make it too far before word gets out.
even though josh is first through the door, he waits to make any definitive statements. they all do. tyler is right behind him, and there are two other techs outside the door. it's a hard and fast rule to give them the most sanitized space at the start. it's their benchmark test of a place with only their energy and whatever is in the space. this part isn't even filmed for the production, but the body cams usually get it anyway, and sometimes it's a good indicator from the jump if shit starts going haywire.
they stand in it for a few long moments, just still and quiet and observant.
and nothing.
like. nothing, nothing. like, tyler's sure he's never been in a less haunted house.
they do their due diligence with a sweep of each room and a special lookout for anything to back up or debunk any of the claims they already have. the house is neat and tidy save a single cross on the floor, but none of them saw it fall so they just make note of it and put it back up on the wall.
"kids are out here." they both get the notice through their earpiece, and tyler immediately decides that's the more interesting investigation.
both the boys seem weirdly comfortable to talk to them, but it didn't start out that way. josh clocked a nervous energy that wasn't his own and wasn't tyler's and hadn't been around before. it's not nervous in the sense that he feels shy or bashful or even scared, but there's a faint phantom pit in his stomach that he can only understand as not knowing what he's dealing with, and being scared of whatever it is. the parents are understanding when they ask to separate, within eyesight. once they do, it's smooth sailing.
it's josh's idea to get them jumping, and tyler isn't particularly thrilled about trekking through a stranger's grass in his socks, even if it is just the short distance from his discarded shoes on the back porch to the trampoline ladder. but it works, so he'll take the hit to his comfort zone anyway.
josh is always better at interacting with the children they interview than tyler is, he has a special talent for meeting them at their level while tyler expects them to rise to his. he's getting better about it, but it just goes quicker if josh is there to break the ice and guide tyler into the right communication lane. it only takes five minutes before the 5 and 7 year old have given them more information than they probably were allowed to. they tell josh how they like playing out there, how sometimes their dad does smelly projects in the house. when josh asks them if they ever see anything weird out back, the 7 year old tells him that their grandpa comes over sometimes, and he lives just over the property line at the back.
it cements itself as the most interesting investigation when the younger brother stares tyler dead in the eyes and tells him this house is quiet, but the one next door is very loud, and for that alone, he leaves his number with the mother before they depart.
evidence recorded: it's a hoax
as the crew descends on the house for their first pass through when josh and tyler go to meet with the family, everything is still in perfect order with the cross back on the wall. they're laying gaff tape markers for camera placement when the owners come inside. there's nothing really of note at the time, at least not that any of them pick up. the mom makes a couple of comments about how she hates being in the house. the dad stays quiet for the most part.
nothing raises any red flags until the family's been gone for about an hour, and josh wanders back inside to set up a few motion detectors and he accidentally unravels several key components of the story.
first, he's sweeping the couple's bedroom for anything abnormal, like unseen audio equipment, or knock mechanics, or any other number of things they've seen to mimic ghostly activity, when his fingers catch on something taped up under the nightstand. immediately, he's aware of the moral limbo he's in with a decision to make.
he knows he really shouldn't pull the loose corner, but he's already too suspicious of the adults in the house to do the right thing. the cardboard mailer comes down in his hand when he tugs, and it takes him a second to comprehend what he's looking at. it's suspiciously flat and contract shaped and weighted, and, more suspiciously addressed to the travel channel c/o legal. josh switches off his body cam because he's definitely about to do something illegal.
he doesn't even hesitate to pull the tab on the closed envelope to rip it open and quickly yank the contents from it to skim. it's a lot of legal speak, but josh skips through enough to pick up that they've been offered a sizeable sum of money from the tv channel for the rights to their story to be made into a for-television movie. signed, ready to return if dead air doesn't make a better offer.
he doesn't bother hiding the evidence, he just leaves the opened envelope and signed contract on the couple's bed.
second, on his way through to collect the motion detectors he'd just put out, josh bumps a bookshelf on his way into the youngest kid's room and accidentally sends a stack of books clattering to the floor. it's really by sheer luck that he finds it, but the hansel and gretel book piques his curiosity. the witch illustration on the cover pulls him in first, but then he thumbs over the buttons on the side of it, and the speaker at the top, then curiously presses each one. and then he presses the witch's button again. and a third time, holding it closer to his ear. then he digs his phone out of his pocket and holds that up to his other ear to play the audio file of the hag's laugh that was sent to them by the family. he plays them both at the same time and his heart races like he's hit the jackpot when they fall into the same cadence. the recording sounds distant and fainter, like it was taken from across the house, but josh is certain they're identical.
third, it's really just sheer luck that he's right there, fiddling with the book, to even notice the smell of burning synthetic fibers when he does.
"hey we've got – tyler come here." josh radios out to him. tyler's not sure how long he's been standing there, but he's in the back yard on the east side of the property, and he's staring at the house next door. he understands what the kid meant. it's not quite like anything he's experienced before, but there's a near constant pulsing hum that's louder the closer he gets. louder isn't really the right word, it's more like a pressure building in his head that throbs with his heartbeat. it makes him nervous in the worst way, like he can't turn his back on it. like it wants him to turn his back. it unsettles him, puts him on edge and irritates him. josh's voice pulls him from the trance because he sounds a little too uneasy for tyler not to move. he thinks fast enough, and hits record on the camera in his hand on the way in through the back door.
"josh?" his voice nearly echoes in the dead quiet of the house, and it's not hard to follow josh's voice when he summons him down the hall and back toward the easternmost bedroom. he can't hear the hum of the next door house anymore. josh is standing at the side of the bed, watching, but he also has a plastic water bottle snagged from the nightstand in his hand to stop it getting out of control. there's a tiny, pinpoint beam of light on the corner of the pokémon pillowcase, and an even thinner ribbon of smoke starting to billow up from it.
he looks fucking angry.
"look at the window." tyler does, and it takes him a second to really notice. a couple of the ends are broken off the flimsy blinds, and that's nothing new, especially in houses with pets or kids that like to peel them back and look out the window. but they aren't broken, there are no jagged edges of the plastic where they've been bent back a time too many and snapped. they're razor cut edges. intentional.
tyler looks back at josh like he gets what he's getting at, but josh nods to the window again.
"now look out it."
tyler does, and he follows the magnified beam until his stomach sinks. there's nothing accidental in the placement of the prism, but it's designed to look like there is. a series of suncatchers dangle below the gutter, but one doesn't dangle at all. it's affixed to the gutter with wire, angled against the evening sun. intentional.
"get them back here." josh's rage is all his own, and he dumps the water on the pillow to stop the smolder before he snatches it off the bed. "oh, yeah," he laughs bitterly when he grabs the book again and mashes his thumb on the witch button. "here's that disembodied hag. they've got a deal with travel already, signed and sealed, ready to deliver."
and honestly, the cover's confirmed blown by that point, and there's no credence to the rest of their claims either, but they do all get a good laugh when they review the trail cams set up along the grandfather's property line and see a cloaked but very unhooded and very alive human man marching toward the house after sundown. he's taller than average, and lanky with sunken features, so it's easy to see how ghoulish he could come across in the grainy security footage aimed at the darkest part of the yard. like this, he just looks silly trying to pull a prank.
what surprises them all the most through it is finding out that it was the sole work of the father, and the mother was just as blind to it all as the kids, gaslit to oblivion until she wholeheartedly believes that she and her family were in imminent danger.
evidence recorded: they're boyfriends, your honor
two instances make the final cut of the episode.
first, an interview clip with the lady of the home seems routine enough, and it is at first. the questions are par for the course for most other investigations, but it's not what's happening in the foreground that garners the attention.
the background is out of focus enough that it leaves up for debate what's actually happening at the trampoline. the keen eyes in the camp correctly piece together that they're on the trampoline with the boys, and the even keener eyes and some photo editing to try to clean it up a bit correctly theorize that it is, in fact, josh offering his hand to help tyler sit on the edge of the ladder, and they do correctly assess that he's kneeling in front of him at some point, but the interview clip cuts away and none of them make out that josh is saving tyler from another sock-clad three foot hike in the too tall stranger grass and telling him not to be such a baby about it while he shoves his boots on for him anyway.
second, tyler does, in fact, call the family back to the property on josh's demand after the discovery, and as soon as josh sets sights on the man, all his anger bubbles over in an ultra rare display.
they debated for days whether the clip should even make the final cut, but there's an important line to be drawn, and they rarely have the opportunity to draw it so poignantly. josh isn't entirely comfortable with so many people seeing him like that, never mind having it immortalized on the internet, but he does eventually agree that it's important to set the stage right.
the homeowner isn't even three feet out of his car before josh snaps, and tyler catches the curse through gritted teeth too late to stop him from charging forward. and his hands are around the guy's throat before he can stop himself, but not to choke, just to push him back against the driver's side door so he can't escape facing what he's done. and josh lays into him, spitting and loud about endangering his kid's life and fucking with their heads to make some quick money, and the man playing dumb only makes it worse.
"this is not a fucking game!" josh's voice is so loud when he yells that it vibrates a little in his throat, and the heel of his hand slams against the door of the car beside the man pinned to it. "you got fucking lucky, that's it! you got fucking lucky that your five year old son wasn't in his room reading a fucking book. you got fucking lucky that you didn't murder any of my fucking people trying to get your movie deal!" josh gesturing wildly behind him with one hand, just in general, and the other shoves the man's chest twice for good measure. tyler takes the opportunity to step forward and grab the outstretched hand.
josh backs away without having to be told to.
"you're a piece of shit." he's clearly not done, but he is still backing toward tyler, and tyler's arm just instinctively wraps around his waist to keep the backward trajectory and walk him away from doing anything to catch an assault charge. "and a terrible fucking father." not done. "like what did you actually –" josh goes in again and starts to stomp forward, but tyler catches him tighter around the waist.
"okay, okay. i think he gets the point," he's just trying to save josh from himself, honest. tyler puts distance between josh and his target. the rest of the crew is up the driveway and the space between the trailers is empty and out of the way enough. there are no cameras to catch the way tyler pulls josh into his chest and squeezes around his shoulders, but the otherwise private conversation caught on their mics overlays the end of the episode, where the crew escort the father off the property and reacclimate the remaining three to their entirely safe and not haunted home.
"that kid's not safe with him." josh's statement is muffled against tyler's shirt. it's not that he thinks it was a targeted attempt at the kid's life or anything, but it's pretty clear that the man doesn't care who or what he takes out in his quest for a payout, and josh just can't help thinking that it could have just as easily been a tragedy on multiple counts. and he still doesn't care, even when he's confronted with it directly.
"he's scared of him," it's tyler's agreement, in a roundabout way. not that he'd ever defend the guy and his reckless negligence, but tyler can kind of understand the fear, and he knows that josh can too if he can just think a little clearer. curiosity spikes.
evidence recorded: whatever the fuck is going on next door
"come here." the quiet request already has tyler backing away to grab josh's hand and pull him toward the fence line curiously. "just. stand here." he stops them in the same spot he'd zoned out earlier.
josh obeys and stands right where tyler stops him. for a second his ears feel like they're ringing, like there's a pressure building from the inside out. he can hear his blood pumping in his veins. tyler watches his jaw clench and unclench, and the way josh's eyes start to narrow, then widen again.
in just a few seconds, whatever rage josh felt earlier is right back in his chest, the same one he'd initially tagged as all his own. and that scares him so viscerally that it wipes all the evidence of anger off his face and he recoils back several quick, wide steps. he never turns his back to it.
"what the fuck? what the fuck is that?!" it's the final sound bite of the episode, and there's a new brand of terror in josh's voice that tyler's never heard before. josh can't really explain it in any way except that it's the first time he's ever felt completely in something else's control. he's always been able to identify what is his and what is an outside energy source, but in real time he recognizes the specific brand of wrathful fury he'd felt in the bedroom, and at the car parked by the neighbor's mailbox, was whatever he's feeling now. and it scares him more that he briefly thinks he wants to walk toward it, so he backs further away.
tyler gets him out quick, and later when it's just the two of them, they acknowledge that negativity eased the further from the property line they got.