Chapter Text
Spamton rubs at his temples. He can't believe this stupid thing is finally going to be the thing to destroy him.
He’s the boss of this company, this building is his to rule and yet some rumors of a haunting are going to bring him to ruin.
It started with some papers going missing, not anything new lots of employees misplaced papers. But these papers were already on Spamton’s desk, and he never lost papers no matter what some employees said.
Then the voices had shown up. Even the other employees started to notice that one. Odd whispering in the halls, someone repeating phrases that have just been said. More than once Lanino swore he heard someone Spamton knew was never coming back.
That's when some of his employees started trying to quit, not that they could, Spamton had too much blackmail for them to ever leave.
There’s only one person who got out of the industry.
Stan grits his teeth at the thought of his old business partner. It was hard to blackmail someone back to a company if they vanished off the face of the earth. The man probably just changed his name and left Spamton to deal with everything himself.
Spamton moves the finished paperwork to the side of his desk and groans. He wonders not for the first time if he could bribe a member of witness protection to just tell him where he was.
Spamton huffs and glares at the clock, spinning widely, yet another one of the problems the employees claimed were hauntings.
The coward couldn't have gone to witness protection, he always got jumpy around cops, and besides they weren’t doing anything that illegal.
Spamton’s eye twitches as the clock’s hands begin to pick up speed.
While they can’t quit they can call in sick, even knowing they would be buried under work for it. And if they did show up they always left before the sun set.
Now only Spamton remains in the building. He grumbles to himself, this is no haunting, just one of his employees is trying to screw with him.
There have been rumours about Spamton going off the deep end and losing his mind ever since his business partner vanished.
He grits his teeth and tears his eyes away from the spinning clock. He takes a deep breath, turns on the computer. He looks at the clock, 12:30. He really should stop pulling all nighters but with his employees skipping work he has to pick up the slack.
He sighs and opens up his email.
He squints at the screen, there's no new emails, in fact there's no emails at all.
Save for one email titled ‘New FRIEND’.
Spamton squints and studies the email sitting in his inbox. It’s definitely spam. He’s made enough spam emails in his career to know what one looks like. It’s not even professionally done, probably a chain email from a middle schooler that's managed to find its way to his company email.
The only reason it's not in his spam folder is because he turned that whole system off. It's been a strange quirk of his but he can’t bear to have any emails marked as spam. It makes him feel sad that these lovingly crafted emails would just get thrown away so quickly with no other thought.
He doesn’t click on them but he at least gives them more of a time of day then anyone else.
He moves to delete the strange email, planning to figure out what glitched his inbox after. A hard reboot should do the trick.
“Mailman?”
Spamton’s whips his head around.
He blinks at the empty office around him.
He could have sworn he heard him using that dumb nickname. After he so graciously taught his tech deficient partner the wonders of email he started to refer to Spamton as his little mailman. Even after his partner learned how to use email, Spamton still found handwritten letters addressed to him. Spamton hates that he found it cute.
He hates that he still has them, locked in a box under his bed.
Spamton grits his teeth and shakes his head to clear the memory. It's easy to start hearing things in the empty building.
His brain his playing tricks on him, tormenting him with thoughts of his old-
Spamton sits up, spine rigid as he feels two broad hands begin to trail down his shoulders and arms. He struggles to breathe as he feels someone resting their head on top of his.
“Spammail,” the voice whispers right above him.
Spamton’s eyes go blurry, he can feel him but there are no hands on Spamton's own. He can feel them but he can not see them. The hands feel cold, nothing like how he used to feel. He was always warm.
Something begins to drip on Spamton’s neck, it’s warm and sticky and he can't bring himself to move and check what it is, lest the sensation of the ghostly hug vanish.
Oh god his employees were right, he is going crazy.
The hands stop once they cover his hands. For a moment Spamton can almost delude himself he’s holding hands with the strange apparition. Then the invisible hand guides Spamton’s hands still on the track pad to the email left on his computer.
He clicks it on his own accord and blinks when the sensation vanishes except for the liquid on his neck.
The email is blank.
Spamton takes a shaky breath and slowly turns around, nothing is behind him.
He remains alone in his office.
The old rotary phone sitting at the far edge of his desk rings sharply, snapping him out of his fear.
He glares at the old thing. The damned thing belonged to him. He never wanted to see the stupid thing again and had locked it away with all of the rest of his ex-partners stuff in their old shared apartment.
Locked out of sight and mind.
The only reason the old phone was back now was because of the people currently renting the old apartment from him.
Spamton had begun renting it out a year after his partner vanished, he couldn't keep entering the place every time he got drunk and the extra money was worth it.
However he left the tenants with a warning not to touch the things he had stored in one of the hallway closets.
That was until the new people moved in and Spamton let Pink take care of the transaction. The moron hadn’t mentioned the locked closet and the tenants got rid of half the stuff he had stored there.
Most of the stuff had been sold or thrown out by the time Spamton found out. It was mostly old clothes, some hair products that were mostly past date now and some old vhs tapes. It was the TV that hurt the most. It was An-
It was his pride and joy. Stan remembers many nights cuddled up with his business partner on the couch watching shows on the old CRT.
He loved that stupid video box.
Spamton had found out when Pink mentioned the tenants complaining about something weird going on in the house and then they figured out how to open the closet and found the stuff in the closet. Then they simply got rid of everything.
When Spamton got there only the phone and an old suit were left.
The suit was promptly locked in his dresser but the phone…
He doesn't know why he took the phone to work with him. He wasn't trying to be sentimental. He hated that man more than anyone in the company.
He was dead to him.
Spamton hated the phone as well. His partner always ignored him for the damn thing and carted it everywhere. He insisted on bringing it home and to work like a strange pet.
But one day Spamton showed up to work and it was in his car's passenger seat. He doesn’t know why he put it on his desk, maybe Elnina harassing him about getting some decoration had finally gotten to him.
Spamton blinks, he hadn’t realized the ringing had continued.
He signs to himself. He should get more sleep if all he does when he’s tired is think about him.
Spamton slowly reaches for the phone.
His hand freezes midair.
He never plugged the thing in.
He yanks his hand away.
The phone rises on its own accord and wraps around his wrist pulling him back roughly.
Spamton screeches and shoves himself from the desk. His chair rolls back but the cord continues to yank him forward. He leaps from his chair and grabs at his arm, trying desperately to pull away from the wire.
The phone pulls across the desk and falls to the floor.
Stan yanks the cord off his arm and stumbled backwards.
The phone lay on the ground, still and silent.
Spamton huffs out a sigh of relief and turns to leave the office.
“Sammy?”
Spamton turns sharply and stares at the phone.
“Sammy are you there?” The voice calls out sounding fearful. “Sammy I'm lost and I-I’m scared. Please pick up the phone. Please Sammy, I need you.”
Spamton stumbles over to the phone, reaches out and freezes in place.
He stares as black goo begins to ooze from the phone.
Spamton shrieks and darts away from the growing puddle of slime and runs to the door.
He looks behind him as he’s opening the door and sees goo has grown taller than the desk.
Then it blinks.
Spamton screams as multicolored pink and yellow eyes stare at him.
Then it grins at him.
Spamton runs.
He sprints down the hallway, throwing himself at the doors and struggling to open them.
They’re all locked.
He stumbles away from a door as the sound of his office door being ripped off its hinges rings through the building.
“Fuck,” he whimpers as he sprints towards the entrance.
Somehow the hallways around him seem longer than he remembers. The lights flicker around him and the shadows begin to stretch.
He can still hear that thing behind him, laughing at his attempt at escaping its grasp.
He curses again and turns a corner. He can see the exit door in sight.
He’s nearly there when something steps out of the shadows in front of him.
He screams and falls to the ground.
The thing steps fully out of the shadows and frowns down at him.
“Uncle Spamton are you ok?”
Spamton blinks up at the young girl and scrambles to stand up. “Noelle, shit we have to-”
He looks behind him, there's nothing there. The noises have stopped, the lights have turned on.
He glances at a clock. The time is 12:30, just like it was when he opened his computer.
He blinks again and lets himself fall from the floor. “I- but- there was,” he rubs his eyes. “Sorry kid, I've been working late. Forgot I was supposed to take you out to dinner tonight. How's college treated you this week?” he asks, trying to save face.
Noelle ignores and stares behind him. “There was something there, wasn't there,” she asks softly and holds out her hand for him to take.
Spamton waves her off and gets to his feet. He brushes off his pristine white suit and pushes his hair back. “Nah, just my imagination kid.”
Noelle narrows her eyes. “I’m not stupid there was something.”
“And how do you know that?”
Noelle grips her arms tightly. “Because something like this happened to me.”
Spamton just stares at her.
Noelle continues. “Listen, my friends can help. Their experts with this kind of thing. They’ve done it lots of times before. They’re the only reason I was able to get back to college a couple months ago.”
Spamton nods slowly. He remembers his niece vanishing from her school and refusing to return. It had been a stress induced breakdown, nothing any college kid hadn’t faced before.
“So,” Spamton raises an eyebrow, “these friends of yours are what? Experts in helping workaholics chill out?”
“No,” Noelle gives him a grave look, “they’re experts in demons.”