Work Text:
Things weren’t quite right with Junior.
It had been a whirlwind few weeks of packing and moving across the country, uprooting the poor boy and taking him away from his mum, albeit temporarily. The new house was comfortable, not so big as to feel crowded with just the two of them but spacious enough to carry its fair share of secrets.
Secrets like the ghost boy in the attic.
John sank into the armchair by the bookshelf which was fast becoming his seat of choice. Getting Junior to bed had been an exercise in patience for the last few nights. He wouldn’t settle down without a great deal of convincing although he refused to acknowledge that this was the case. He’d invent excuses to keep John in the room for longer than normal, asking for glasses of milk or trying to get a final phone call with his mum before he went to sleep.
John, dealing with enough guilt after dragging him away from all of his friends in New York City, was struggling to deny him these things. Junior, his son with the wide eyes and perfected pleading expression, was hard to say no to.
Scraping a hand down his face, John tried to settle without looking up at the ceiling as if he could see through to the room above. The house still creaked from time to time, even without a ghost’s footsteps to trigger the sound and he was still getting used to the small noises that punctuated a quiet evening.
The story about the ghost had come out in fits and bursts from Mr. Nelson. He had looked quite literally haunted that night John had found the two of them emerging from the attic. And then their mysterious new neighbour vanished into the night with nothing but a rushed explanation that John had barely focused on out of sheer relief that he hadn’t left his son with a dangerous stranger on their third night in the new house.
Junior had explained more of it the next morning, too sleepy at the time to give a coherent narrative. Even his more lucid version of events had still left John flummoxed. He was a rational man; all things, like clocks, had mechanisms and a proper working order to keep them in check. He would be the first to acknowledge that he had a narrow worldview but it was a perspective that kept things from becoming overwhelming.
And in that narrow worldview, there wasn’t much space for ghosts.
He did believe Junior though. It had helped that his story was corroborated by an older eyewitness although John had been given more than enough reasons to discount most things that the slightly eccentric Melson Nelson said. His loose definition of his own name didn’t inspire confidence, after all.
Junior had never been one for wild fantasies though. He took after his dad in that way and John was strangely proud to see that part of his own behaviour reflected in his son. He was proud of everything Junior was, in fact, although he struggled to find the words to say that aloud.
What he had gathered from the two explanations that he had been given was that the boy on the roof from that awful story Melson had told him had in fact ended up trapped in their attic. And that boy – Jim, he kept reminding himself, although Melson had later explained that he was known to most of his friends only as L – had been a restless spirit before Junior had found him.
When telling this story himself, Junior had fallen quiet before rushing over the next few points. He worked out what had happened to Jim. He heard Melson downstairs and went to fetch him at Jim’s request. The two of them explained the situation to the older man and somehow worked out that L’s parents needed to learn the truth of what had happened in order to set L free.
Melson’s account had been rather more detailed, including details that John was still trying to work out why Junior would omit. Details like the way L had spoken ‘through’ Junior, almost possessing him for a moment. But when John had asked either Melson or Junior more about that, they’d both been vague. Melson, because he seemed more shaken up by everything else to do with L. And Junior, for reasons John was none the wiser to, had kept quiet as well.
The long and short of it was that Melson had gone rushing out of the house, seemingly with the ghost boy in tow; the creaks had lessened since then, although not stopping entirely; and Alice thought John was just indulging Junior’s fantasies every time he had tried to put all of this into words on the phone over the last few days.
The stairs whined beyond the living room door, the telltale shuffle of Junior’s feet announcing his entrance. He was blinking blearily, one hand lifting to fuss with his hair. It was getting long, John reminded himself. They should find a barber at some point.
“Junior,” he said, part weary and part sympathetic. He glanced over to the clock on the mantelpiece, the first he’d fixed since moving there and it was still keeping time well. “I only put you to bed half an hour ago.”
Junior glanced at the clockface for himself, face screwing up with childish frustration. And when he replied, it was with nothing but a self-conscious mumble. “I know. I just – can’t sleep.”
John roused himself from his comfortable position, meeting Junior at the doorway and crouching down to his level. Junior walked into his offered embrace wordlessly, his chin dropping onto John’s shoulder with a small sigh. He murmured something else that sounded like an apology and John’s stomach clenched.
“Hush now,” he soothed in return, stroking through Junior’s fine hair and momentarily reevaluating the necessity of a haircut. The little curls in the ends of Junior’s hair when it got long rather suited him. “Let’s get you back to bed, eh?”
“Don’t want to,” Junior complained under his breath. “I’m not tired.” John felt him yawn almost instantly and stifled a chuckle.
“You seem awful sleepy, peanut,” John coaxed, already feeling Junior’s weight sink against him, quickly becoming boneless.
“Not – really,” Junior replied sluggishly, smothering another yawn against his shoulder.
“Why’d you come downstairs when you were this close to sleeping, eh?” John asked quietly, the question mostly rhetorical given Junior’s slumped position. He adjusted his grip and apologised silently to his back before pushing to his feet with Junior wrapped around him. Junior was getting far too old to be carried but John often found himself making exceptions.
He was often making exceptions when it came to Junior.
Junior’s breath had already evened out by the time John got them safely to the top of the stairs. His hands were fisted gently in the back of John’s shirt, fingers pulling away with little resistance when John eased him into bed again. For a moment he settled on the mattress, squirming onto his side and becoming still. But then John draped the duvet over him and started to back up and Junior’s eyes flickered open again.
“Where’re you…” he trailed off, still sounding lethargic.
It had been a long time since John’s presence had been demanded so insistently. He thought about what Alice would say if she was there – that he needed to be less soft with Junior sometimes. And then he remembered that Alice wasn’t there and he was free, for now, to enjoy feeling needed.
He sat down on the edge of the mattress and returned his hand to Junior’s hair. “I can stay.”
“Jus’ till I’m asleep,” Junior whispered, his blinks getting heavy again. John didn’t expect to be kept waiting for long.
He was woken by the creak of the door hinge, bringing with it a brief moment of disorientation. First, he had to remember that he was no longer in New York. Then, that Alice was. And finally, that it was far too dark for him to be awake.
The door clicked shut again before he could bring himself to roll over. The other end of the mattress dipped although it barely made an impression. Not enough to be an adult, so it had to be Junior.
“Junior?” John murmured questioningly regardless of his suspicions. He turned onto his back and blinked in the gloom, met by the faint outline of a curled-up Junior.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Junior whispered what was becoming a refrain for every night. He turned his face into the pillow and curled up a little tighter. “Sorry for waking you.”
“Hey, don’t worry about that,” John assured him, turning over properly and resting a hand on Junior’s arm. He might have been growing up quickly but he still seemed tiny sometimes – this fragile, young thing with a lifetime ahead of him. “What woke you up, peanut?”
“Nothing,” Junior said too quickly. He sounded far too eager to be believed.
“Right.” John let him get away with it, wondering if they’d have more success in the morning when they’d both got some sleep. “Are you staying in here, then?”
“Can I?” Junior asked, his voice too small and uncertain.
“Course you can,” John replied firmly. “You try and get some sleep now, okay?”
“’kay, dad,” Junior was sounding tired again, sleep seemingly coming easier when he wasn’t alone. Or maybe that was just John wanting to feel needed again.
“Sleep well, kiddo,” he murmured, ignoring that persistent voice in the back of his head. They had plenty of years of Junior still turning to them for help before they had a distant teenager to deal with instead.
But regardless of how clingy Junior was being at the moment, he sensed that there was more to this behaviour than a simple case of attachment issues.
They seemed to have chosen a place with an affinity for storms to move to. A week of respite was all they were given before the rain was lashing at the windows once more, bringing another round of thunder and lightning just to rub salt in the wound.
John concentrated on making dinner, ignoring the instinctive flinching jumps that accompanied each rumble from the sky. He thought about his parents as he chopped an onion, using the excuse of stinging eyes to excuse any other emotions that might have been trying to creep out.
L had returned to the house a few days earlier without a fanfare; just an uptick in creaking upstairs to show that he had come back. John found it hard to make him out completely, mostly seeing a loose, shimmering outline only a little taller than Junior. He heard faint whispers of sentences and the occasional breeze of laughter when the two boys were playing together.
Junior, on the other hand, could describe L’s appearance in vivid detail. He talked about messy hair and bright eyes and a mischievous smile, all of which were lost in John’s cloudy view of their new ghost companion. He’d often hear Junior talking aloud in his bedroom, leaving pauses that L was clearly filling. Junior would laugh as if he was hearing jokes but John would rarely be able to hear the other half of the conversation.
Still expanding his view of reality to include ghosts, he hadn’t yet ascertained the reason between these differences. Perhaps Junior and L shared a certain sort of kinship being similar ages. Perhaps there was something significant about Junior being the one to find L in the attic. Or maybe John’s mind was still a touch too sceptical to let himself believe in a ghost completely.
Despite being confined there for years without choice, L didn’t seem to mind being back in the house. He kept Junior company and then would disappear to wherever he went when he wasn’t with them. Junior said he was spending some time at his parents’ house although the change in age and appearance had been jarring for him. John tried to imagine how L was dealing with the sight of his parents after so many years; he wondered if the parents felt a new depth to their grief having L nearby but still not close enough to touch.
The kitchen window rattled with another howl of wind. John flinched, listening out for Junior’s one-sided conversation but not hearing anything beyond the weather. He focused instead on the rhythmic downward swing of the knife and the satisfying thud it made against the chopping board. He had always been the cook in the family; Alice worked late nights sometimes and over the years he had grown to value a meal shared long after sunset.
He missed her.
Junior was still being uncharacteristically quiet when L wasn’t around. John couldn’t help but tell himself that Alice would have been able to fix that were she around to see it.
These thoughts were his main accompaniment as he robotically prepared the remainder of their dinner. As the sauce started to bubble on the stove, he waited for Junior to appear in search of food. The smell always drew him in before it was ready and he’d stand beside John, gripping the kitchen counter and swinging back and forth as he complained about his hunger.
When Junior didn’t appear even when the sauce was ready, John felt the familiar prickling of anxiety start up in his chest. He always worried when Junior behaved unpredictably. There were patterns to a child of his age – habits and rituals that John found comforting. When Junior broke them it either meant he was growing up or that something was wrong, neither of which reassured John.
“Junior, are you going to wash your hands before dinner?” he called out from the kitchen doorway, listening for the usual reply in the form of pounding footsteps. “Junior!”
He stepped out into the hallway when he was met with no response. And then he found himself at the bottom of the staircase, calling for his son again but still getting no answer. He walked upstairs while wondering if he was meant to be more demanding – if Junior needed a firmer hand to keep him in check.
And he imagined Alice, again, doing a far better job of that than he would.
“Junior, did you hear me?” he asked once he was on the first floor. He walked to Junior’s bedroom, the door left open as always and presenting nothing but an empty room. He tried the bathroom, heart eager to start pounding in a way that was entirely unhelpful and only added to his stress. “Hey, Junior? Where have you got to?”
Another crack of thunder made him smother a curse under his breath, glancing around instinctively to make sure he hadn’t been heard. He looked up at the attic trapdoor and thought back to Melson’s story about L with a shiver. It was a cruel way for anyone to go, especially a kid who was just trying to play.
He’d forbidden the boys from going back up to the attic after worrying about the structural integrity of the floorboards. Junior said L had laughed at this; a few rotten planks weren’t much of a worry for a ghost; but John wasn’t going to let Junior play up there when he had plenty of space downstairs that seemed far safer.
That being said, there was a pile of dust on the floorboards beneath the attic’s entrance. The ladder tended to dislodge it when it was pulled down from the ceiling but John knew he had cleaned up after everything that had happened. No one had been up there since – unless…
He grabbed the pole from its position against the wall, wishing he had hidden it somewhere Junior couldn’t get to, and hooked the trapdoor carefully. The ladder came down with a rattle and another shower of paint chips and dust.
“Junior, are you up there?” John called, managing to muster a hint of the parental frustration he usually tried to suppress. “I told you not to play in the attic.” He climbed high enough to poke his head into the darkness, glancing around and trying to spot Junior in the gloom. “Dinner’s ready. Didn’t you hear me call you?”
Still, there was silence. John’s eyes weren’t adjusting to the darkness quickly enough and he almost assumed Junior wasn’t there when there was a quiet, damp-sounding breath.
“Junior, where are you?” John’s tone softened in an instant and he clambered all the way up the ladder, looking around until he spotted the curled-up figure of his son against one of the walls. His chin was resting on his knees, arms wrapped around his legs as he tried to make himself small. “What are you doing up here?”
Junior nestled into his side once they were sat together, turning his face into John’s shirt and instantly making the material wet. John tried to smother a small, distraught sound at his son’s distress and tugged him into a hug, all previous attempts at stricter parenting forgotten.
“My little badger,” he murmured, “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
Junior shook his head firmly and then tensed at another round of thunder. John stiffened as well but tried to turn it into a tightening of his embrace, squeezing Junior for a moment as his pulse levelled out again. They’d both reacted too similarly for him to ignore it – Junior was afraid of the storm.
“I thought I was the one who was meant to be scared of a bit of rain,” John said, aiming for something gently teasing but instantly worrying he’d gone too far. Fortunately, Junior lifted his head and managed a small laugh, a weak smile on his face when John strained his eyes to see it.
“I keep thinking about L,” Junior whispered eventually, his head tilting naturally into John’s side again. He closed his eyes when John carded a hand through his hair, settling at the methodical action. “I’m scared, dad. I don’t want to get hit by lightning.”
“Hey, that won’t happen to you in here,” John soothed. They’d talked a little about L’s death. Death in general was a hard-to-grasp concept for Junior. He’d never had grandparents on John’s side of the family and Alice’s dad had died shortly after he was born. Junior still had a grandma from that half of the family, a rather intimidating lady who John had never quite figured out. She loved Junior fiercely despite her hard-to-read demeanour though and John had always thought that Junior’s first experience of losing someone would likely involve her.
“But he was so scared,” Junior mumbled, his voice suddenly sounding faraway, “It was hot outside – the air was all sticky. He thought it was fun to start with – an adventure – but when he got up on the roof it wasn’t fun anymore. The kite was stuck on something and it kept hitting the roof every time the wind blew.”
John paused, feeling a protective jolt as he worried L had been telling Junior more than he was currently able to handle. “Has L been scaring you with stories?”
“No!” Junior protested instantly, “It wasn’t – he didn’t – we haven’t talked about it.”
“What you just said sounded awful specific,” John pointed out, wondering about the missing parts of Junior’s story again. How had Melson understood what L needed so clearly? How had he communicated with L if it seemed only Junior could really hear him?
“He was in my head,” Junior mumbled suddenly, his voice thick with tears again. “I wanted him to be able to talk to Mr. Nelson so I let him in my head. We didn’t realise that meant I’d be in his head too.”
“You saw something?” John realised. Whatever form of possession had happened, it was clearly far more intense than either he or Melson had assumed. When L had taken over Junior’s body, it must have given Junior access to his thoughts and memories just as it gave L access to Junior’s voice. “You had his memories?”
“He got upset with Mr. Nelson,” Junior said quietly, “He was thinking about the accident a whole lot. I wasn’t in control of it – I just saw whatever he was thinking about. The roof. A flash of light. Something painful.”
“Oh, peanut,” John whispered, his hands trembling as he hugged Junior even tighter. “Why didn’t you say?”
“You don’t like storms,” Junior replied as if it was obvious. In the black and white logic of childhood, perhaps it was. “I didn’t want to scare you.”
“You don’t ever have to worry about that,” John said adamantly, “I’d rather you scared me than kept it all inside, okay? It’s my job to look after you, kiddo, not the other way round.”
“But what about my grandparents?” Junior pushed. John sank his chin into Junior’s hair and tried not to think about the hardest parts of his own childhood, all too aware that what Junior had seen of L’s past was likely to stay with him.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have talked about that,” he said apologetically. “But again, you don’t have to worry about me. You just need to tell me when you’re not okay.”
“I never used to be scared of storms,” Junior protested stubbornly, shivering he waited for another rumble of thunder. When it came, no matter how inevitable it was, Junior’s shoulders lifted towards his ears and he folded back into John’s side with a faint whine. “Dad…”
“Hey, now,” John soothed softly, using Junior’s fear to keep his own at bay. He could only be relieved that his own fears hadn’t imprinted on Junior – that this had developed entirely independently of his own associations with storms. That feeling was somewhat dampened by the deep sense of parental worry that came with seeing his child looking vulnerable though. Regardless of the root cause, he didn’t want Junior to be afraid of anything. “It can’t hurt us in here.”
L came back after the worst of the storm had passed.
John had got Junior out of the attic and into the kitchen, reheating their food and trying to get something warm and comforting into the shaken boy. They sat on the same side of the table as they ate with Junior’s chair pushed up against John’s. He periodically huddled into John’s side without warning, settling each time John wrapped an arm around his shoulders.
“I’d say it smells nice in here but I’d be making it up.”
John almost leapt out of his own skin at the unfamiliar voice behind them, throwing a glance over his shoulder and struggling to close his mouth when he saw the boy behind them. It had to be L; he was a spitting image of what Junior had described with an ethereal edge to him as if his outline was smudged at the edges. John could just about see the fridge through his translucent figure.
“You heard that?” Junior muffled around a mouthful of food, brightening for a moment as he turned to L excitedly. “Dad can hear you now!”
“About time,” L quipped, grinning at John in a rather carefree way considering how recent the latest storm had been. John wondered if it stirred up the memories in L in the same way it had got to Junior.
“I can – see you,” he stuttered rather than asking any of that. He almost reached out but managed to keep his hands to himself. “You’re – actually real.”
“Dad!” Junior protested instantly. “You didn’t believe me?”
“I believed you, kiddo,” John promised, unable to take his eyes off L who merely continued to smirk at his reaction. “I just – didn’t think I’d be able to see him.”
“I’m right here,” L reminded them, half-walking and half-floating to one of the opposite chairs. Rather than sit in it he seemed to simply hover above it although he looked pleased with himself for achieving such a feat. John supposed there hadn’t been any chairs in the attic for L to pretend to sit on. There hadn’t been much of anything in there, actually.
“Big storm,” L continued conversationally, his eyes flickering to Junior when the other boy tensed again. He seemed to be trying to hide it now that L was there too as if he was attempting to appear stronger than he was. John couldn’t help but find it a little endearing.
“Yeah, pretty big,” John replied, deliberately keeping his voice level as he nudged Junior. “We managed alright though, didn’t we?”
“Yeah,” Junior mumbled, returning to his food in earnest and not lifting his eyes again. John squeezed his shoulder automatically, feeling L watch every interaction between them with an intense focus.
“What’s going on?” he asked suspiciously after a moment, eyes narrowing when Junior jolted upright again. “You’re being quiet.”
“I’m fine,” Junior said firmly.
“You can tell him,” John coaxed under his breath.
“Tell me what?” L asked more insistently. Junior merely shook his head, looking to John and silently asking him to take care of it.
“When you – when you were talking to Melson,” John said gently, not sure how L would respond to the news, “When you were in Junior’s body – he experienced some of your memories. Memories of…”
“The storm,” L finished with a despondent frown, all of his energy vanishing in an instant. His bottom lip quivered slightly, jutting out in a way that was hard to reconcile with the fact that he was technically as old as Melson.
“It’s okay though,” Junior rushed on to say, “I don’t mind. I’m fine now. Dad was there.”
“I made you scared of thunderstorms,” L mumbled unhappily, curling into himself in a way so reminiscent of Junior that John wished he could hug him.
“It’s not your fault,” Junior promised earnestly although L was still talking under his breath to himself and didn’t seem to hear him.
“…only friend… now he’s scared of thunderstorms,” he whispered to himself, “No…” he raised his voice slightly, “No, I can’t repay you like that.”
“Repay me?” Junior echoed, the concept of owing people still rather foreign to him. “I just wanted to help.”
A smile cracked across L’s face despite his continued turmoil. He shook his head almost fondly and John found himself glad that L and Junior were quickly becoming friends. He got the impression that they would be good for each other.
“You know what – I can – I can do something about this,” he said determinedly, turning slightly to present his right shoulder to them. He had a short-sleeved plaid shirt on, presumably the clothes he would be stuck with forever, but poking out from beneath the material were a series of marks that made John’s breath catch in his throat.
L had Lichtenberg figures trailing down his arm, the scars from a lightning strike that would normally fade within days or weeks but had become permanently preserved on his skin after death, John could only assume. They danced down his arm from beneath his shirt sleeve, a red web spreading out like a river splitting into separate estuaries.
“I got this from the lightning.” L shuffled forwards, holding his incorporeal arm across the table in Junior’s direction. John watched Junior reach out for a moment before remembering himself as John had a few minutes earlier and tugging his hand back again. L flashed one of his quirked smiles, looking older behind his eyes than he did physically. “Kind of cool, isn’t it?”
Swept up in the sight of it, rather than the implications of the scars being directly tied to L’s death, Junior nodded cautiously.
“Kind of,” he replied softly, shuffling away from John’s side slightly.
“I find it comforting,” L admitted with a shrug that seemed designed to take away the severity of what he was saying. “It’s nice to think that it wasn’t all bad.” He visibly brightened again. “And hey, I’m a ghost now. That’s cool too.”
“Pretty cool,” Junior agreed more enthusiastically. He still had a wide-eyed uncertainty to him but it didn’t seem quite so anxious anymore and John believed that things would be alright eventually. Junior hadn’t changed all that much because a moment later he was back to looking at John with a small frown. “Not that I want to be – I don’t want to be a ghost.”
“You’re not going anywhere, peanut,” John promised with a blossoming smile. He glanced at L’s arm again, tracing the scars with his eyes and remembering how his had looked after his own tangle with lightning – a twisting jumble of red thread, spreading out in tendrils from his shoulder.
It had happened a few years after his parents died. A freak accident that he’d been lucky to survive but that had cemented his belief that their family was cursed when it came to lightning. His had faded as they were meant to, those red lines of fate slowly dying away and leaving behind nothing but a sense that someone had been looking out for him that day.
And now he’d make sure to look out for Junior too.