Title: The Other
Summary: "When I became a CSI I felt like I had to choose: science or... the other? Today, they're demolishing the slaughterhouse. Today, Greg chooses the other... and ghosts speak.
Genre: Supernatural, Drama
Rating: K+
Spoilers: Ghosts of the Past
Six o'clock: on a long, dim road, stretching as far as the eye can see.
The evening light hovered blankly over the asphalt. He drove. He stopped. Sat in his car. Turned off the radio. Cut the engine. Listened to the silence.
…
He was wearing the same leather jacket he'd been wearing when she gave him the pendant. Would they notice? Would the ghosts notice? He'd had her pendant clenched in his hand the whole drive over. Romiel—Loviel—Gabriel—Oriel.
But would the ghosts notice?
Six fifteen: staring at a cold, tired building about to be destroyed.
The sight was dismal: three men, one bulldozer. Haunted and lost.
And just a few minutes later—nothing. The entire slaughterhouse razed to the ground.
And he thought: I almost died in there.
And he thought: she did.
He got out of the car.
Six thirty: waiting.
He sat on the trunk of the car, staring at the demolished building. Nothing. He felt just like the desert he inhabited: bereft, raspy, soulless.
Ghostless.
Six forty-five: still waiting. in the rain.
It had come out of nowhere. Now he was soaked. Did she feel the rain? Of did she slip through it, a dry little spirit?
He'd stayed too long. The demolition team was gone. He was alone; was wet, cold, shaky and achy. The ghosts were just under his skin.
But they weren't talking, and he was sitting out in the rain waiting for nothing.
Seven o'clock: on the steaming, wet asphalt.
He jumped off the boot of the car. His feet hit the ground. His knees buckled.
His desperate hands reached fruitlessly behind him to grasp the slippery, wet car and keep himself from falling.
He shivered, shuddered, closed his eyes.
The wet wind swam around his head, through his head, into his head. It permeated through his chest. It slammed into his heart. It squeezed his lungs.
After what felt like mere seconds, he opened his eyes. The hiss of the wind died down. He checked the time.
Seven twelve: Did the ghosts have no sense of time?
The wind and the ghosts were gone. He withdrew into the car, and collapsed into the seat. He may as well have spent the last twelve minutes running up a hill; that's how he felt. Not like he'd been standing still listening to the wind.
He started the engine and turned the heater on full blast. He stared at his face in the rearview mirror. He looked like a spooked horse: wild and wet and scared.
He put his foot on the pedal; cold hands on the wheel. He was about to drive away.
He tossed his head back against the seat.
Eight thirty: the evening comes to consciousness in a now overheated car.
His face was pressed against the steering wheel. He was sweating. He sat up and turned the thermostat of the AC down till the hot air turned cold. The sky had darkened; the night had covered him up.
His heart was beating too fast. He felt broke and empty. Haunted.
"I fell asleep." Broken whisper. "How the hell did I fall asleep like that?"
He rubbed his bleary eyes. Then he saw that the dashboard was open, and he frowned. He stared down at his lap. His mind ached.
The LVPD notepad he usually kept in his dashboard lay in his lap. He loosely gripped a ballpoint pen in his right hand. What was happening to him?
He shook his head violently and threw the notepad and pen in the direction of the passenger seat. They tumbled to the floor. He tore off his jacket; it was wet, it smelled, and it stuck to him like skin.
He threw himself out of the car.
Eight thirty-seven: in the car again—like a cage, or hell, or worse.
Time was flying by, minute by sickening minute. He reached over the passenger seat and picked the notepad up off the floor.
On the top page, in ballpoint pen, in his own handwriting, the words:
And you asked for protection, and it has come.
Hush, now. No fear tonight.
—Carrie and the boys.
It all made sense: the open dashboard, the notepad and pen in his lap, the sleep that wasn't sleep at all, but the ghosts taking over.
And, yet, nothing made sense.
Nine ten: in a trance, driving. The phone rings.
"Sanders."
"Where are you?" Russell.
He was late.
"On my way." No time to go home and change. "Sorry. I… lost track of time." Not a lie. "I'll be at the lab in twenty."
Nine thirty: standing in the doorway—half-in, half-out.
The cold blast of air hit him as he entered the lab. Here, at work, he was Greg Sanders. Back at the slaughterhouse, he hadn't known what he was.
"Hey buddy. Where ya been?" Nick.
Greg glanced up. Nick looked strange to him. Too real and too solid. He's spent too much time with the ghosts.
"Sorry I'm late." Greg.
Nick reached a hand out towards Greg's chest. Greg took an unsteady step back. His hand closed around something dangling near Greg's chest.
"What's this?" Nick.
Greg frowned. He didn't know. He looked down, and there, flat on Nick's palm, was Carrie's pendant. He felt behind his neck, and realized, with horror, that the chain was tucked under his collar.
He couldn't remember ever having put it on.
"You okay, buddy?" Nick. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Greg's head shot up, and he laughed incredulously. Nick's frown deepened.
"Look man, I-I gotta go change." Greg. He tried to pull away.
"Hey, hey, hey!" Nick. His put a hand on Greg's chest, pressing the pendant down against his sternum. Greg glared at him, and—
"Greg?!" …Morgan.
He closed his eyes; frustrated. Nick was confused, questioning, but Morgan was worse, because she knew—too—much.
He felt Nick pull away, but the weight of the pendant remained. His sternum ached like a bruise.
"Greg…" Morgan, again, but gentler. She was standing in the doorway to the break room.
"Excuse me." Greg. "Bye."
He pushed past Nick. Every step was hard. The lab was stifling him with all his science.
He felt a small warm hand close around his wrist and he stopped in his tracks. His mind flashed back to when Carrie put the pendant in his hand.
"Why are you wearing that?" Morgan.
Greg turned around, and gazed at her solemnly. "I—don't—know."
"Did you go back there?" Morgan.
Nick walked up to them. Greg was trapped. Again.
"Where?" Nick. He seemed confused and irritated. "What the hell is going on, Morgan?"
"The slaughterhouse." She looked straight at Greg, and ignored Nick's second question. Greg could feel the accusation simmering beneath her words.
Greg grimaced and shrugged. "It was demolished today. I had to go back there."
Morgan shook her head. "I—I don't get it." She shrugged. "You—"
"It's about Nana Olaf, isn't it?" Nick. His hand on Greg's shoulder; his gaze sharp as an eagle's.
The science whizzed about Greg's ears and he felt weak. "How'd ya know?"
"You told me about her some years ago," and then quieter: "I know you."
"I didn't think you ever took what I said seriously."
Nick swallowed hard and shrugged. "I do now."
The pain in Greg's chest eased. These were his friends, after all.
Morgan's hand tightened around his wrist. "You went there two days ago. You were almost killed." She shook her head. Greg thought that maybe she pitied him. "Did you really expect that they'd talk to you this time?"
How could she ever understand what they'd said to him this time?
"I have to go." Greg. "I got caught in the rain. My clothes are wet and it's cold."
He turned around. He was really walking away this time.
"Do you really believe?"
"I believe," Greg slowed to a stop but didn't turn around. "in more—than either of you could understand."
Nine thirty-nine: in the locker-room; alone at last.
The ten minutes he had spent talking to Nick and Morgan had really felt like ten minutes. It seemed that time was no longer functioning at the whim of ghosts, when hours felt like mere minutes.
He hung the pendant back on the peg in his locker, and closed the locker-door. It swung open. He closed it again.
The masquerades that time resumes:
The science.
The lab.
His friends.
Life.
And he had to leave the ghosts in his locker and live by the rules of time again.
But what does time matter after you've known the truth?
Nine forty: No fear. No fear tonight.