Chapter Text
"tyler? do you hear that?" josh's terrified whisper in the dark breaks through the slow, creaking footsteps on the floorboards. what they can only assume are footsteps, anyway. there's a distinct sound to a rubber boot sole on the old hardwood, and tyler hears it so often in the house that it doesn't even startle him anymore. but like this, when it's approaching him, his heart starts to speed up a little.
"yeah," tyler whispers back to him. they're each in their sleeping bags on tyler's bedroom floor, which wasn't really the plan when they started out. tyler was in his bed, but when he woke up at 11 to josh whimpering, he'd just assumed he was scared and moved down to the floor with him, only to find out that josh was still dead asleep and must have just been having a nightmare. he stayed anyway.
"but he's nice." he adds it as an afterthought, but tyler doesn't really believe that. neither does josh.
tyler and his family only moved in three weeks ago, and they've experienced something every day. at first it was just tyler, which is no surprise anymore, but zack had three occurrences last week, and just yesterday his mom was complaining about the fingerprints on her vanity mirror where neither of the boys are tall enough to reach yet. it's still mild, but tyler always seems to bring out the restless energy in a place, and neither he nor his family have made the connection yet.
they're only three weeks into a brand new friendship and it's the first time they've been able to convince both their parents to let josh stay over, but tyler's been updating him each morning at school. josh has been asking all day if tyler thought something would happen, and now that it is, he's not sure he wants it to.
something silent and oppressive settles over the room, but it's not something either of them can see right away. the creaking and thudding slows, then stops by the foot of tyler's bed.
it's quiet for a second.
josh feels heavy. tyler doesn't feel quite like himself.
when the room goes dark, it takes josh a moment to notice that the dim glow of the streetlights isn't coming through the window anymore. he blinks once, twice, then looks around the room. the red glare of the alarm clock by tyler's bed is gone. the blinking light on the power strip by the tv isn't visible anymore. a pressure in his ears makes everything so silent it feels like he's wearing earplugs.
faintly, there's a ragged, stuttering breath, and josh knows the lungs are too old to be his friend's. then he feels the worst feeling he's ever felt, but he's eight and has no idea how to explain that he feels like he's been dropped into a pit of eternal suffering, he just knows that he wants to cry, and he wants his mom, and he doesn't even realize that he can't remember where he's at for a second.
he sits up in a panic, wrestling his arms free from his sleeping bag just in time for the glow of the streetlights to shine through, and the glare of the alarm clock to return, and he can even see the flashing power strip. and then he can see tyler again, or the shapeless lump of a sleeping bag anyway, and he wants to ask if tyler saw it too, but he doesn't really know how to ask if he was suddenly seeing nothing.
it's all the same, because tyler hasn't expanded his lexicon enough to tell josh that when he gets like that, he's not really there. and he doesn't even know where he goes, it's not even always the same place, and sometimes it's easier to get out of than others. his doctors say it's just a vivid imagination. his parents have watched it happen, they've seen their eldest son slip away, and they know that the hollow eyes and vacant, rapid blinking stare isn't normal, but they also don't really know what to do about it other than seek medical help. it's not that they don't believe tyler when he tries to tell them, it's just that, by all accounts, it sounds likely to be seizures, even though there's no other evidence.
josh doesn't even see it all, just the tail end when tyler refocuses and looks at him. he can't explain how he knows, but he can feel the unease off of tyler afterward, and that's enough for josh to know he's been telling the truth.
"what was that?" he finally musters the courage to ask.
tyler wishes he had a better answer, but "i don't know," is all he can come up with.
for reasons completely unrelated to fear at all, josh flips the light back on, and they spend the rest of the night playing go fish instead of trying to sleep.
"i don't think she's here anymore." they're sitting in the center of a dilapidated room when josh makes the declaration, tugging the blindfold down from his eyes before he removes the headphones blaring white noise from his ears.
the cartwright house is set to be demolished tomorrow and josh hasn't stopped thinking about it since he found out. all the rumors have it that old man cartwright and his wife still inhabit the place, and josh is stuck on wondering what happens to them if the house is gone. where do they go then? are they just destined for aimless wandering with no purpose? do they move on if the last of their physical possessions are turned to rubble? it's too much for a thirteen year old to try to figure out, so tyler enlisted himself to help.
josh doesn't really like dragging him to places like this, because tyler never comes out of it unscathed. he doesn't know how to keep things out of his head, and it's so easy for him to be consumed by the energies that josh doesn't always have a chance to get him out before he is, either.
but tyler usually doesn't let him go alone, because josh is more sensitive to it than he knows. or does know, and downplays for the sake of keeping tyler off the ledge about it, but tyler has seen josh flip on a dime a time too many not to know. he can swing wildly when his emotional state is influenced, ups and downs in rapid succession until he feels like he's insane. sometimes he starts to doubt if any of it's really happening at all, or if it's just some elaborate hoax on himself that he's making up.
the house isn't safe, and they shouldn't be there for any number of reasons. there have been three failed demolition attempts in the past, but no one seems to want to talk about why they failed. the roof is gone in most spots, and there are holes from hail damage in others. large sections of the floor are rotting out from the exposure to the elements, and neither of them are convinced that what's left of the peeling, yellow wallpaper was yellow to start. but just in his peripheral, tyler swears he can see it like it was in its heyday. it's hazy and dark, but there are silhouettes of a couch, a recliner, an old box tv, an avocado green phone hanging on the wall. his bones ache, and his fingers start to tremble, then twitch against the leg of his jeans. he doesn't feel quite like himself.
"josh?" tyler is hardly ever scared of josh when he flips, but sitting across from him in the abandoned house, tyler's pretty scared of him. josh looks like he might actually kill him, and even tyler saying his name doesn't make him focus. he just looks like he's staring through tyler instead.
"why?" it's not a question, it's a demand, and the way josh's voice gets deeper than he should be capable of makes tyler so nervous he wants to puke. it's not josh that's angry, though. it's hard for him to explain, but the feelings are never his own. he isn't asking for him, but he wants to know why they've invaded his home, what they want from him, why they're there.
he stares tyler down, but for some reason tyler is too scared to move. he just stares back. and then josh is on him and he doesn't even know how he moved so fast, but there's a fist in the front of his shirt and josh is whole bodied slamming him against the rickety wall.
"shit. josh! look at me!" tyler panics in an instant, and josh does look at him, and he hates what he sees when he does. on the surface, he looks wild and dark. an unpredictable smoking gun. but there's something else, underneath it, where josh actually is, that he just looks scared and sorry that he can't reach the surface.
"why?!" he doesn't mean why look at him, but the question is the same as before. why are they there? what do they want? except it's more strained, like josh has to force the word up his sandpaper throat and out against its will.
and then it's over.
tyler stands unmoving against the wall, but it isn't until josh looks worried and filled with regret that he tries to touch him. tyler's hands lay on josh's shoulders, tentative and questioning. tyler doesn't have to ask out loud, josh just nods.
the house isn't demoed the next day, but neither of them ever go back.
"josh, come on. you know this shit fucks with your head." tyler's arguing like he isn't also loading equipment into the back of josh's mom's minivan.
"it's supposed to. besides, when will we ever have a chance like this again?" josh has made the argument more times than he can count now, because tyler keeps trying to talk him out of it. he shoves the last case into the last bit of space in the trunk. "no one's been since it closed, don't you want to be the first?" josh tries to reason with him, but tyler strongly maintains that neither of them are ready for whatever might come from an abandoned sanitorium.
historically speaking, shit does not care much for leaving josh alone. or tyler, for that matter. they've been lucky to not have any real harm done, and they both wonder if it's just a matter of time, but josh just can't shake the feeling that this is it. they're 18, this is their only natural and very specific skillset, and there just isn't much else for them to put it to use on.
and it turns out, josh is right, but so is tyler.
the video garners so much attention online that it makes it to actual media.
it's a wide angle shot of the two of them on opposite sides of a room. they're both blindfolded, both with headphones covering their ears and blocking any sound pollution or chances of them hearing the questions. josh just sits, leaned back in the chair, but tyler has a notepad on his knee.
"green." josh says the word out loud. tyler scribbles on his paper for a second, then holds it up with the word 'green' written at the top.
to josh, the answer comes as a single word thought. like someone whispered it straight to his brain. for tyler, he just sees the color green in his mind.
"can you tell us your name?" mark asks from behind the camera. he doesn't always come with them. in fact, it's rare. but he's willing and they needed a third for their experiment, which mark and only mark knows is off to a good start after they both answered correctly about the color of the flashing light on a battery pack. it's just to establish that they're dealing with something intelligent.
"b." josh calls out the single letter. tyler takes longer, then holds up his paper with "bea" scribbled.
"thank you, bea. what are you doing here?"
"where is he?" they don't know it, but both of them tap their pointer finger twice on their left knee. tyler is still scribbling.
"my body?" it's a question from josh, but it's not in response to anything, and tyler is still scribbling away on his paper.
"that man!" josh calls out a third answer without being asked, but it sounds as frantic as he looks. josh scrambles forward and off the chair with a terrified yell, ripping the blindfold down and the headphones off to clatter on the ground while his back arches and he spins around to face away from the camera. "what the fuck. dude, there's something over here!"
tyler, oblivious, holds his paper up to the camera finally. he's scribbled a hole in what they can only assume was meant to be the face, but the rest is solid black ink.
they don't know until they watch it back later, but a figure passes between the two of them, tall and dark and faceless.