Title: Ghost Town
Author: roseveare
Rating: M
Length: ~30,000 words
Summary: A horror Trouble hits Haven. Duke's undead and Audrey's neck looks far too tempting. Nathan's dead (again) and has his hands full with former residents of Haven who want a piece of him. Audrey's hoping to solve this Trouble before the fake body count turns into a real one, but it's going to be tricky considering her new status as the one viable human victim left in town... [OT3]
Notes #1: I swear I'd had this idea long before spoilers even hinted at the show doing it. Dammit.
#2 Can be considered a sequel to Comfortably Numb, last years Spook_Me fic, but it's not necessary to have read that fic to follow this one.
Thanks: To Miah_Arthur for beta-reading!
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit, yadda, yadda, yadda.


Ghost Town

PART 1

"It isn't like you don't spend time with Duke when I'm not around." Audrey said it and grimaced, because that wasn't entirely true. Duke and Nathan had spent very little time with each other, lately, when she hadn't been around. "Or at least not participating. This morning, for instance." She certainly couldn't deny the benefits of Duke and Nathan being able to occupy themselves with each other when she was tired. But one handy alleviation of particular relationship pressures due to their arrangement was only replaced by other problems peculiar to it. She sighed in frustration. They were supposed to have a Solemn Pact not to talk about things like this at work, yet here they were again, in Nathan's office, sifting through the day's paperwork and arguing about three-way sex.

"I just-" Nathan swung out his long arms, helplessly. "I feel like I miss too much. Working late… Town meetings. I should be with you. Now more than ever." He was adamant that he wasn't going to let her disappear with the meteor storm, but the argument seemed to be exposing his anxieties. "It's not about Duke. Not like that. Not really."

"Which is good, considering that would be pretty hypocritical after what you and he were doing this morning," Audrey persisted. "Besides, if anyone should complain about… time-share… it's probably Duke. You and I are together all day. Plus, you know?" She swung away, pinning up the bulletins on the board, continuing to talk over her shoulder. "Mostly all we do without you is watch the movies and TV we like and you gripe about."

"Right. Because after dealing with monsters and aliens and the paranormal all day it's just what I want to go home and watch for fun," Nathan griped.

"Yeah, well, point being that's what we do without you, not an excuse to start that argument up again as well. We're not waiting to seize the moment to indulge in shenanigans that don't include you. And even if we did do that, you need to learn to share. Because that should be okay." It was pretty funny, though, and she and Duke were both agreed on it, that the presence of the guy who couldn't feel, who was supposed to be the staid type among their trio, was the factor that ruled their collective libido.

Nathan was sticking to his guns and pretending this was about work. "If I hadn't taken this job… If I hadn't taken it back after Merrill got killed-"

He didn't finish the line, and Audrey heard a soft sound like a whisper. She frowned, waiting for him to continue while she sank in the last pin. Then there was a harder sound, behind her - the thump of a heavy body falling to the floor.

"Nath-" she began, turning around. When she saw his sprawled out arms and the top of his head just visible on the floor behind his desk, she froze. Then urgency kicked her sharply, and she was at her partner's side in seconds. He was still, too still, and unresponsive when she shook him: gently at first, then more roughly. There was no movement in his body... not breathing, not reflex at her touch - and even unconscious or asleep, he usually stirred at her touch - not any of the other small movements even an unconscious body made. His skin felt colder than it ought when she pushed her fingers to his neck, feeling for a pulse, even though he'd literally only just collapsed, had been speaking to her seconds ago. She rested her head on his chest, listening for a heartbeat, desperate for any sign of life.

Nothing. There was nothing.

Her first thought was that something had happened to Moira. Only last week, Moira had raised Nathan from the dead, and... but no, because her sister, Noelle, had also died (temporarily) and the people previously resurrected by Noelle, including Moira, definitely hadn't all died with her. Was this, then, some other side effect or failure of Moira's Trouble? She had resurrected two people at once, after all...

Audrey saw Nathan's dead body in her nightmares, now. For the last eight days. Was... was she dreaming? Was this just another horrible, vivid dream repeating those awful events?

She didn't bother taking the time to pinch herself before she grabbed for the phone on the desk. Dialled the switchboard and gasped out to Laverne, "Nathan's collapsed! He's not breathing... Get me an ambulance here, now!"

She was already moving down again, drawing in air in a deep breath, then pressing her lips over Nathan's, breathing into him. His lips felt unnaturally, impossibly cold. But she couldn't think about that. There were any number of things this could be. Right now, she had to take it at face value, couldn't risk anything else - focus on Nathan lying collapsed in front of her, and apply CPR for all she was worth. Because even if there were all those other options... later would be too late if this was as simple as what it looked like.

The world vanished into chest compressions and a desperate struggle, her fight to pull Nathan back to life. It seemed no time at all before she'd been working so long that her head spun. Time was deceptive in straits like this, and a nagging feeling told her that something about her sense of timing was wrong. She risked a look up at the clock. Fifteen minutes! It had been almost fifteen minutes, and...

Something else was wrong, because if nobody had come in response to her call by now, then nobody was coming at all. She realised, holding her breath and trying to listen past the straining in her chest and the pounding of her heart, that the police station was silent. There were no voices chattering, and there was no movement of people heading about their business.

She ignored it and put her head down again, heaving in breath she couldn't really afford to give away any longer. Nathan! She must first continue trying to save Nathan. It had been a long time, but she'd been breathing for him, keeping his circulation going, all this time, and it might yet not be too long. She refused to give up.

She was still puffing breath into his slack lips uncounted minutes later where there was an almost accidental whump against the outside of the office door. She was so immersed that all she felt when her head jerked up was frustration at the interruption. Go away! she thought. Go away, go away, go away! She had no time to deal with it. She had to save Nathan!

Irrational, she realised, lifting her head from his a moment later and somehow finding the breath to yell, "Help me! Nathan's stopped breathing! I need you to fetch someone - an ambulance. Please...!"

The fumbling sort of scuffle at the door didn't come across as an urgent response. Again, that whump sounded against the outside, like someone was planting their whole body against it, trying to come in. It wasn't locked. The handle moved slowly, but failed to open, the movement not quite tripping the catch. The closed blinds swayed.

"Damn it, you need to get someone!" Audrey yelled, stumbling to her feet with a backward glance at Nathan's still form. What were they playing at out there? She couldn't keep this up forever. She needed EMTs, equipment, help. She dived for the door and wrenched it open. "What the hell are you-?"

Empty white eyes in a dead face greeted her. It was a uniformed officer... Darren, Dave, she wasn't sure. He was by-the-numbers and the overtime had to be wrung out of him drip by drip. He didn't look like himself, though. His face was twisted, pale and blank, scarred and pitted. He looked like he'd been dead for a week. He looked like a B-movie extra. Audrey drew her breath in sharply but didn't scream. It wasn't especially any determination to avoid damsel in distress clichés. She simply didn't have the breath. She struck out with her hand, clipping him on the jaw, and as he lurched forward, she ducked under his reaching arms and went the only way available - out, through the gap of the open door.

But no, no, no! Nathan was still inside! Nathan was-

Dead, and she'd just encountered a zombie. She watched another officer shuffling in slow steps at the end of the corridor and thought, please, please, let this be a Trouble. Nathan wasn't dead. He'd been caught in some sort of zombie Trouble. He was probably going to get up and start shuffling around, too, which was annoying because she'd rather fix this with her partner beside her, but it was okay, because when she fixed this, alone, he would be back to normal, and so would the rest of them.

She looked back to Nathan's office. Zombie Darren or Dave was moving around in there, confused, but wasn't paying any attention to Nathan's body. The other cop at the end of the corridor had noticed her, though, and was moving towards her now. She needed to get out. Laverne, she remembered, had never called the ambulance. That would only happen if Laverne couldn't call the ambulance. If this was the whole town, she couldn't help Nathan by lingering. She'd already exhausted herself trying CPR, and it wasn't working. She had to fix the Trouble. Then he'd be fine. He had to be.

Audrey ran, taking the other corridor and heading toward the back door of the police station. She saw the body of another officer, old Jerry Jackson, three months from retirement and bitching about it every day, sprawled face down with his nicotine-stained fingers outstretched. It wasn't charitable, but the sight increased her hope that what had happened to Nathan was almost certainly part of the same Trouble. What had happened to Nathan was no longer unique.

There were noises nearby, but she couldn't see the source: grunting, scuffling... Whipping around, she spun full circle and then dashed for the door. It was in sight now... She was almost there...

A heavy, furry blow hit her, bowling her over, bringing with it the stink of wet dog. Audrey cried out as she felt sharp pain sink deep into her shoulder. Moving only tore her own flesh against its teeth. She struggled anyway, trying to throw off its weight. Dug her fingers backward sharply, searching for weak spots. Found a knee joint, then a hairless groin. Stabbed with her fingertips, bunching them together and bracing them for maximum impact. There were some weaknesses all male animals had. A whimpering squeal resulted and the teeth in her shoulder parted. Audrey squirmed around, trying to ignore the pain. She dragged her gun out and raised it-

She was faced with an honestly bad B-movie werewolf. It still had vaguely human and bipedal features. That, more than anything, was what made her freeze. She didn't know who it might have been, but from what she'd already witnessed, she had a pretty good idea that it was someone. Probably a colleague, almost certainly blameless of any harm when this Trouble wasn't in force. She backed off instead of shooting. When it made another move forward, she fired into the floor in front of it, then as it was skittering back, lunged for the door, slammed through it, and shoved it closed behind her. It juddered horribly as the werewolf rammed the other side. She hoped werewolves weren't any better at opening doors than zombies were, and she risked letting go of the handle and ran, gun still poised in her hand.

The world outside seemed darker than it ought, and there was an orange, eerie cast to the sky. The buildings seemed to loom more. There was a trace of a full moon starting to resolve in the sky.

It was only about 11AM on a Monday morning.

Behind the police station and at the back of the main street, she couldn't see anyone - or anything - else. Out of sight of the police station, she dared to slow down, and gulp in desperate, panting breaths. She tried to quiet the rasping of her breaths, to listen out for new threats. Her steps jerked to a halt as she saw some kind of grey-fleshed monster looting in a bin. It raised its head and stared back at her in return, but didn't do anything except bare its teeth warningly, then carry on.

Audrey sidled past it.

She approached and peered around the corner. A few 'people' dotted the street, though that might not be the best description for what she saw. A few bodies dotted the street, too.

Was this the whole town? It wasn't just a zombie Trouble - she had seen more than those, now. More like a horror movie Trouble. The werewolf had been seriously rubbish. She couldn't explain the people who had just collapsed, but those who'd been turned into monsters didn't seem to care about the bodies of the apparently dead, just moved on by and left them alone. Audrey was relieved to think that Nathan's body, which she had been forced to abandon, was probably safe.

No. He was only safe if she could resolve this.

They had to turn back. It would be too much of a horror, otherwise. The body count she'd already seen...

She leaned against the brick wall of one of the buildings adjoining the police station, recovering breath, nerve and resolve. She needed a plan. She had to find out whose Trouble this was, to start with, and that wasn't going to be easy with a whole town to search. She needed her friends, if she could recover them. Nathan didn't seem to be an option, but perhaps Claire, Duke, Dwight, the Teagues... Claire knew a lot of Haven's Troubled, she might know whose could have exploded into this. So might Dwight. The Teagues always had their paper and information network. Duke could help her fight off the horror movie monsters.

Only if they weren't caught up in this already themselves.

First, she needed to get to her car. It wasn't far, but it was in full view of the whole street and she felt very exposed. This was one of those times when her immunity to the Troubles put her in danger - if these were all horror movie creatures that preyed upon humans, then she might be the only victim left here for them. One small blonde in an entire town full of monsters.

Audrey was never watching horror movies again.

"Okay," she said to herself. "I can do this. Don't run. Don't draw suspicion. Just… walk confidently and steadily..." She walked out into the street, controlling her nerves, telling herself that, sure, there was something she could be taken for that wasn't human, if she just kept control of herself and brazened it out. The zombies moved differently, and she wasn't up to shambling so slowly, lest her nerve break altogether, but there were other people walking around and they looked... kind of normal. Except for a flash of red or yellow eyes, or a warty nose, or...

She walked at a measured pace to her car. Got in. Got her foot on the pedal and pulled out, measured and methodical still...

Audrey drove through the streets of yet another altered Haven. The Christmas Trouble had been bad enough for Audrey's nightmares. This Trouble was a literal nightmare. As she drove, she could see that people were starting to gather in clusters. Groups of women and a few men dressed in black or other dark colours, with witchy features and paraphernalia, but there seemed to be different types of popular culture witchery represented, from the cartoonish warts and pointy hat to ragged crones, to the type of younger Goth witch popular with teens. Audrey guided the car past a group of men variously stylishly dressed; black was still a popular option. A good looking young man, with slicked back dark hair and pale, perfect features, leaned toward her window and flashed her a smile with fangs in it. Audrey's heart couldn't help but flutter a little bit despite herself.

Okay, so there were some benefits to crap pop culture vampires.

...Damn it. He was school age! She was a terrible woman for even thinking about it.

The Herald office was lit up with an eerie glow. Audrey slowed her car to a crawl and peered through the windows as she passed it. Vince stood in the window, looking out. His big frame had reached even bigger, ogrish proportions, and he had to stoop beneath the ceiling. She couldn't tell if that was recognition or even cognition in his altered face. A little goblin-like Dave jumped up and down next to him, trying to see out. Vince's hand rose incongruously in a big, lumbering wave...

Audrey sidled on, deciding this was not going to be her first stop. So. Duke, then. He was generally much easier to find than either Claire or Dwight, and with Nathan… gone… it was where everything in her was pulling her to go. She drove to the Grey Gull.

It had a dilapidated, shabby, spooky look in the new Haven. Shadows seemed to cling to the little building on the waterfront, making Audrey blink and pause. She had never thought of it as ominous before.

It was early for Duke to have anything in the way of a clientele, but as Audrey cautiously opened the door, a female zombie stumbled out. Yeeech, that whole problem with door handles again. Audrey backed off from it, internally cursing. If she shot it anywhere but in the head, would it obey the rules of its movie origin and keep going regardless, or would it be crippled by a lesser wound like the living human being underneath the Trouble? She didn't want to risk any shot at all. It was much slower than she was... Perhaps she could lead it away, and then double back...

"Hey." Someone else dived out of the door, grabbing the zombie's arm as it lurched towards her and hauling it back, shoving it off in a different direction. "Go. Get. Yes, you. Scoot." A brusque hand gesture accompanied that instruction set. "Freakin' mindless things."

"Duke! Oh my God!" Audrey almost flung her arms around him in relief. He looked... not exactly normal, because like everything else, he somehow looked darker, with more shadows, more contrasts. In Duke, it made him more devilishly handsome. She'd never really seen him wear black before, and it was... interesting in all the right ways. He'd noticed her impulse to hug him, and was holding both arms out to welcome the hug with what was a slightly lascivious smugness, and that was totally Duke in his own giant dork way. But still Audrey hesitated, and asked warily, "Duke? Do you... know me?"

"Now there's a question," he said, mock-morosely. "I thought you had an embrace waiting for your rescuer, there." Ever hopeful, his arms were still up, but as Audrey narrowed her eyes at him, he lowered them.

"Duke," she said again, with deep suspicion. Everyone she had seen in town was dead or altered. There was no good reason to believe he had escaped. "What are you?"

He smiled at her, opening his mouth slightly, and she saw the little points of his fangs.

It wasn't the logical reaction by any means, but she felt the heavy thump of her heart responding in her chest and her body felt suddenly... hotter. Pop culture had a lot to answer for. "Oh my God." She backed a step off from him. "Duke, you're a vampire?"

His smile spread out and for an instant his eyes flashed red, with maybe just a hint of silver for the briefest second, like two coins reflecting in there. Audrey's belly fluttered. She should be moving further away from him, but her feet didn't want to move in that direction at all.

He was faster than the zombies - faster than he should be. She barely saw him move, but he was suddenly in her space, his face pressed up against her neck, inhaling. "You smell really good," he told her. "I can hear your little heart beating, so fast, thump-thump." His fingers stroked the skin of her jaw. "You're so hot." He reached behind her, sniffing, and brought his fingers back red. The injury to her shoulder had become a dull background agony in the face of the strain of surviving and continuing in the moment. He licked his finger. "You taste... delightful." She made a noise of protest, which stifled to a squeak as his face pressed into her neck, and she felt a light nip.

He didn't feel any warmer than Nathan had, his black pullover not seeming to seep any body heat - his fashion choices hadn't changed, only colour choices, and it was so downright weird to think of a creature of the night wearing short pants that even in that moment she was kind of glad he was in jeans today. She pushed her hand to the 'V' of skin uncovered at his throat and ascertained that it wasn't just the layers between his skin and hers. He had no heat source within him. No pulse. No beating heart.

And what the hell was she doing, standing here letting him nibble at her?! As if he had some hold over her that slowed and dulled her reactions, made her thoughts sluggish?

A sharper pain spiked into her neck and she went for a jab into a nerve cluster with her fingers, catching and twisting his hand from her at the same time. "No, no, no," she said, voice incredulous and tone flat. "Oh, no! You are not... this isn't some freakin' vampiric mesmer, is it?" She broke from his grip and staggered back. "I'm immune to the Troubles! Which means that this... this is my freakin' libido! Twilight and Anne Rice have so much to fucking answer for!"

Her neck stung. There was blood on Duke's lips. He touched his fingers to it, then brought them away, staring at the red. It didn't sink into his skin, and his eyes didn't flash silver. Audrey had kind of wondered.

"I..." Duke stumbled over speech. "Audrey?" His forehead creased. He was still slightly curled around his midriff where she'd jabbed him. His head was down, but his eyes stared up at her. Slowly, he looked down at the blood on his fingers again.

Audrey wiped her neck and looked down at her fingers, too, even as she drew her gun with her other hand. "You bit me." She stared at him in challenge, trying to put from her thoughts how his dark hair and pale skin, black clothes, cloud of angst and little fangs fit a certain... a certain image, that was hardwired into certain pleasure centres of her brain. "Duke? Do you remember being Duke?"

Please be Duke, she thought. Some hope that she could pull people back from this Trouble. That she wouldn't be stumbling alone through this nightmare in search of a solution, after she'd already lost Nathan.

"...Shit." Duke lurched more upright, scrubbing the blood from his mouth with both hands and his own clear, outright revulsion. "What the hell...?" She saw his tongue flick out over the remaining blood smear on his lip, unintentionally, automatically, and his eyes went hazy as pleasure flooded his face. For a moment, he looked at her again with that naked want.

Audrey stepped back and levelled the gun despite herself.

Then he shook his head, shook himself out of it, and it was just Duke, swearing a lot, wearing black. He backed off from her, extending a hand between them with a blocking palm turned her way. "I am so sorry..."

They stared at each other.

"Do you know me?" Audrey asked again.

"Yes. Yes, I do. Please do not shoot me for biting you in the neck." He flinched. "Jesus, Nathan's going to kill me." Her heart thudded unpleasantly at the reminder of Nathan's situation. "This is-" He laughed bitterly. "It's just all his paranoia about that fucking Trouble of mine come true. Do I dare even ask what happened to me?"

"It's some kind of horror movie Trouble," Audrey said, soberly. She couldn't quite make herself stop watching Duke with wary eyes. She didn't trust that he wasn't still dangerous. The Trouble still had him wearing black and sporting fangs, after all.

Duke paced for the door of the Gull, also keeping his eyes on her, and maintaining his own wary distance. That didn't inspire her confidence much, either. "The thing is," he said, that near-hysteria laugh he sometimes had gathering under his voice, as though just beneath his surface he was battling hard against the urge to lose it, "you smell really good to me right now, in a really bad way... So I don't think you should come too close. Not to mention..." He stopped and reflexively licked his lips. His face froze... and he darted into the Gull, turning his back on her and fleeing. As she stared after him, he flung back over his shoulder, "I need a drink! Alcohol, I mean, because... alcohol! We are definitely liking the alcohol right now."

"Yeah," muttered Audrey. She touched her neck again, and then followed him into the shadows of the bar. "Me, too. "

He placed the counter between them and managed to slosh a generous amount of whiskey into a tumbler for her before succumbing to his urge to swig from the bottle.

A man was slumped face-down at the bar. Audrey finished off half her drink before going to him. She took his pulse - nothing.

"That's John MacDee," Duke said. His tone was more normal: liquid fortification of a different sort, or just the chance to gather himself. As he tended to when stressed, he chattered. "Lives in here most days. Drinking away his savings since his wife left him. I figured he must have whiskey running in his veins by now, poor bastard. Maybe the alcohol content of his body will preserve him like one of those pickled saints."

Audrey winced. She worked her mouth, which was abruptly dry. The taste of the whiskey only seemed to dry it more. "Duke, I need to tell you… When this happened, most people changed into monsters, but... some of them seem to have just... died." She swallowed hard, and went for the rest of the whiskey glass in one large gulp. "Nathan died, Duke. I tried to... I tried CPR, for ages, but it didn't do anything. I only hope it's part of the Trouble. Something that will just reset..."

She saw the shock hit his expression, strain and grief pulling at the back of his eyes. He leaned over the bar and refilled her glass, and she gulped again, uncaring that he'd had his lips around the neck of the bottle, which meant, currently, vampire spit. Whatever.

"Nathan's not dead," he said, words flat. "You'll find a way to put this right."

She spread her hands. "The best ideas I have right now for how involve riding around looking for someone else who isn't affected by this Trouble, based on the reasoning they must be the Troubled person. I've seen it, Duke. I drove here from the station. It's the whole of Haven. The whole town."

"Then that's what we'll do." His face set determinedly. He looked at the bottle in his hand, then shoved it away.

Nathan's in danger, Audrey thought. He always tries to come through for Nathan when he needs it, even if they're at each other's throats half of the time even in bed.

She sighed to herself. So far, this week had been a better week. The argument of the day aside, her boys had been playing nice with each other. She thought back to them making love next to her as she'd dozed in bed that morning, sleepy enough to cry off the sexual acrobatics. The tensions between them all had backed off as they made up time after almost losing Nathan. And yeah, losing Nathan... It seriously felt like this was some cosmic joke, when it hadn't even been very long since they'd last done this.

Duke looked back toward the door with trepidation, double-taking a bit. "Where is Nathan, this time? Your car - is he-?"

Audrey shook her head. "I wish he were in the trunk again. Then I'd know his body was safe. No, I had to leave him at the station. There were zombies there. We need to go get him as soon as possible." She shuddered. "Duke, I can't fight them. If they're all going to go back to being regular people when this Trouble clears up, I can't just start shooting people in the head!"

He pulled a face. "Yeah, that would suck." He leaned under the bar and drew out a shotgun.

"Duke!" she hissed.

His eyes went stony. "The way I see it, we have to fix this first. If I have to do something bad to protect you..." His pause stretched. "It wouldn't be the first time."

She searched his face for a long moment.

"In the meantime," Duke added, "I'll just have to be damned sure I don't become the threat myself." He touched a fang with a knuckle, dubiously. "But then, kind of used to that part, too."


It was like a wall of oblivion hit him, smack between one word and the next. Full black-out for an instant, but he did have a sense of certainty that very little time had passed. Then he was no longer standing at his desk talking to Audrey, but on the floor behind it. He could see her feet, still approximately where she'd been standing before his abrupt change of perspective.

Lacking sensation, he had no way to judge what had hit him - what the hell it had been - by feel. No pain, no other signals of any kind for clues. He'd need to move to examine himself. He looked up at Parker through chair and table legs, noticing a fallen pen that he had lost weeks ago, which had evidently rolled under the front of the file cabinet, and noticing also how badly the floor of his office needed to be cleaned. Audrey was moving, coming towards him, saying his name.

"I'm-" All right, he was going to say, but was he? Nathan rolled and pushed upward with his hands. There was resistance - a lot of it. He felt, oddly, a kind of pulling inside. It was both like and unlike sensation, and it couldn't be sensation... He still felt nothing else, no signals from his knees and hands as they strained to lift him up. Then, the odd hint of sensation stopped and the resistance snapped quite suddenly. He lurched upright, too fast now, reeling when he got there. His balance was off. His body wasn't moving the ways he was accustomed to. He felt... too light, like the movements came too easy, and he was overmoving; overreaching.

Something was very wrong with him.

Nathan looked down to check for blood and froze at the sight of his own face staring up at him from the floor. Unmoving, features slack as he'd never seen them, and the expression he was wearing wasn't a great one, but - still, that was definitely him.

Couldn't be. He was standing right here. He was-

He glanced down the length of his body, something he needed to do anyway, to assess potential injury.

...Wait, what?

He held his hands out and gazed through them.

Staring through his own transparent hands at what decidedly looked like his own dead body, there seemed little argument he could raise against the nature of the situation he was in.

Audrey had dropped down next to his body on the floor. She'd not looked at him at all. Nathan stepped forward, opening his mouth to speak, reaching down to her shoulder to show her what had happened to him, but she only had any attention for the body on the floor, and he realised she wasn't seeing him.

A flicker in the corner of his eyes turned into a blur coming right at him; a blur who might've been clad in jeans and denim shirt, but was as monochrome and transparent as his own form. Nathan cried out as the world slid sideways and there was a sort of - of not-sensation, again, not really, but a sort of a zzap. The internal structure of a brick wall went past his eyes too quickly and then he was blinking and even more transparent in the dimming daylight outside, staggering in the street.

The entity that had pushed him gave a raucous laugh, letting him regain balance and bearings as he circled Nathan. "Well, ain't this a turn-up. Knew if I hung around long enough, something interesting would happen. That's the thing about this town. Now we're back on more even footing again."

Max Hansen. Nathan's first instinct, after that first and only encounter at the earth rupture, was to reach for his gun in spite of what he now knew. That encounter had been full of undercurrents of threat and an instinctive scream of danger! through every cell of his numb body. Unfortunately, he was not sure at all what threat a gun represented, here, in this new situation, so he paused with his hand crooked behind him. He spun slowly to follow Max's progress around him and said, "I know who you are now."

Max's grin was as broad and as empty of conscience as it had been when he was alive. That wheedling, coaxing persuasiveness that played on the idea that threat was never far away; the dangerous glint in his eyes. He spread his arms, halfway, not quite committing to fully extending them, too wary by habit to leave himself that open. The grin dwindled until it was just a crooked flash of teeth at the corner of his mouth. "So how about it? Hug for the old man?"

Nathan jerked his head side-to-side once. "No. Not you," he said. The rest of his brain started to catch up and add things together. "You're… you died."

"Bingo." Max clicked his finger and angled his head. "Give the boy a gold star. I figured I'd hang around and haunt Garland, only things turned out even better. Might've killed me, but it didn't do him any good in the end. Didn't get to live long enough to enjoy it, did he?"

"Shut up," Nathan snapped. If Max had more of that to expand on, he didn't want to hear it. But what was Max doing here? Was this a Trouble? Or was Max really a- a damn ghost? Could it be related to what had happened to Nathan, when Max had already been dead for months? "Are you haunting me?" he asked incredulously.

"Haunting the Chief. Pieces came down and that turned out to be you. Pretty funny, seeing my own flesh and blood sitting in that chair." Max stopped circling Nathan like he was up for auction and stood and bounced a bit on the balls of his ghostly feet.

"I've never noticed a thing," Nathan said blankly, confused and frankly appalled. He didn't know what to do with this man; had barely had chance to talk to him in life, and hadn't known the connection between them at the time. Hadn't known to look for him, and still couldn't quite understand how the inconsistencies that said he wasn't Garland Wuornos' biological son had managed to escape his notice for so long. There was also a skittering unease somewhere inside him, that told him there were things he would remember if he let himself, but that he very much didn't want to do that. Terrors lurked in the lost corners of his memory.

"No, you didn't." Max's expression soured, and Nathan's mind was racing so fast it took a moment to remember what he was responding to. "Ain't you supposed to have keen observational skills, wearing that badge?" He waved a hand. "Then again, suppose I can't blame you for being about as sensitive as a rock." He gave a high-pitched hoot of laughter that sounded manic.

Nathan couldn't stop staring at him, jaw hanging.

It was one-on-one, but Nathan couldn't help but feel overmatched. He didn't understand his situation - what could have happened to kill him, all of a sudden? And was that truly what had happened? - and hadn't begun to process or accept his current state, and Max clamouring in front of him was a block on figuring out anything.

Max was between Nathan and the police station's exterior wall. Audrey was on the other side of the wall... and Audrey always had so many of the answers. When Nathan tried to circle around, Max moved to continue blocking him.

Nathan paused. He didn't have any sense he could win this fight, and Audrey - she hadn't been able to see him. Could he make her see him, somehow? Neither of them had ever noticed Max hanging about. Unless Nathan had actually had a sudden heart attack or stroke, though, wasn't this more likely to be a Trouble than anything else? If it was a Trouble, did that mean he even counted as being legitimately dead, the way Max was? The rules might not be the same.

...But then, last time there had been an undead Trouble, Audrey had not been able to see the ghosts.

Nathan still had to try to get back to her. He moved, steeling his body like a battering ram to shove through Max, the way he'd do with Duke, or anyone, relying on having a body that didn't feel to give him the upper hand, make him an unstoppable force. But Max proved to be an immovable object. They sort of bounced off each other with another zzap! Max had obviously been expecting it, more used to this status, and his reflexes were faster. He fisted his hands in Nathan's collar and dragged at him, pushing him back out into the road. They stumbled through a parked car, and the sudden surge of impossible views as his head slid clear through the roof just at nose-level startled Nathan enough that he yelled again.

He wheeled his arms, failing to lock them onto anything - car, lamp post, a second car stopped askew in the street. He tried to dig his heels in but the ground felt like it had turned the consistency of treacle, providing no leverage. It took him more time than it ought to process and reason through enough to thrust his hands forward and latch onto Max instead.

Max was touching him, after all. Nathan curled his fingers into Max's ghostly shirt and clung on tight in return. "Stop it!" he yelled. Panic was... decently buried, at the least, but still more present in his voice than he'd like. Anger was a part of it, too, but by no means as much as it should be. There was something... something that particularly bothered him about Max.

He'd thought about this, of course. Read the file, seen hints of something dark that wasn't mentioned, wasn't relevant in the police records, though it should have been damned relevant between Garland and himself. Just something else he'd needed to know that the Chief had never shared with him. A man like Max, all controlled violence... It couldn't have been a happy family life. Could it?

Nathan didn't remember. He'd sat scouring his memory for hours, after dad died and he'd learned about Max, but he didn't remember Max, and he didn't remember anything else that might connect to Max.

He just didn't know. If Max had mistreated his mother, mistreated him, the experience had left no echo in his brain. All he had was the psychosomatic churning in his gut. He could slam his fist into that face, older, broader and greyer than his but with so many more similarities than he'd ever seen in Garland's features, but it wouldn't bring any satisfaction. Wouldn't bring anything. In this matter, he was an emotional blank as much as he was a physical one.

He didn't know - nor did he want to know. Max might be his real father, but Max was a violent criminal lowlife, and Nathan had had Garland, which meant he hadn't any damn need to seek out a connection with Max.

He angrily started to struggle to peel Max's grip off him as the roil of psychological nausea subsided and things... well, they didn't level out, but returned to what seemed like more normal levels of tension for the situation of apparently being a ghost who was being dragged around by another ghost with an axe to grind.

"No," Max said sternly, like Nathan was somehow his to command. "Watched you walk away once. Not happening again, not when I've finally got my hands on you. Can you imagine what it's like - your own flesh and blood right there, day in, day out, but not being able to reach out and touch?" He barked another laugh. "I guess we both know that but, boy, it just went and hit a whole new level, I'm telling you. Not being able to communicate... Been waiting a long time for this. I'm betting Garland fed you all kinds of lies."

Nathan said, "Garland didn't 'feed me' anything." Was Max seriously expecting to carry out a meaningful conversation while they were grappling like this?

"You can deny it all you-"

"No, he didn't. He didn't lie. He didn't bother to tell me anything! Damn it, let me go-!" Nathan hauled again and managed to break the grip of one of Max's hands. He swung away, hoping the other grip would fail, but it didn't. They fell through the walls into the coffee shop across the road from the police station, still clamped together.

Max latched onto a shelf of cups and plates. It rattled... Damn it, if Max could affect substantial things, why couldn't Nathan? There was obviously a knack to it... He flailed out his hands for the edge of the counter, focusing hard on that angle of polished wood, but still failed to connect. Max started dragging him closer again. There was a woman behind the counter, but she didn't seem to have noticed either the two of them, or the rattling shelf in the real world. Her head was down and she was barely moving. Customers seemed particularly sparse. One lone man slumped over a table, unconscious or dead.

Something had definitely happened, Nathan realised fully, then, because it wasn't just him.

"Wait. Wait! Wait!" he gasped at Max. "You want to talk, we can talk. I swear, I won't try to run-" If he was no longer attached to his body, why did his voice sound like he was gasping for breath? Habit, he supposed. He spread his arms out, stopping his attempts to grip Max or anything else. "You know what's happening here? What happened to me?"

Max slowly came to a rest, too, shaking Nathan briefly one last time. "Looked like it got real crowded all of a sudden," he said. "That's Troubles for you." He frowned, eyes shifting. "You really saying Garland never told you a thing? I guess it's no real surprise if you don't remember me - damn Troubles - but it must've stuck in his craw something bad to go all those years and not whisper one spit of an insult on my name to my own son when he had your ear all to himself."

Garland wasn't like that, but Nathan didn't say it. He'd thought about Max a lot, kind of profiled Max in a way: the grudge against Garland had to have loomed large in Max's life through all those years in Shawshank. Protesting wouldn't counter that or help his current situation.

"Am I dead?" Nathan rasped. About that, at least, Max might care. Seemed to regard Nathan almost as property, the way he was carrying on.

"...Huh. That would be a downer," Max agreed. "Counted on grandkids one day, even if I'd have to watch 'em play with their daddy's gun and badge. This Trouble kicked in, seemed to me like a whole lot of people croaked fast. Missus behind the counter ain't dead, though. At least... not like we are." He stood back and released his grip, reluctantly, from Nathan, so they could both go and investigate. He was hesitant, casting Nathan narrow-eyed glances back and making very sure he followed.

Kathy Jay, the coffee shop owner, didn't look at all like herself. Max stood in front of her, smacked his hands together and yelled "Boo!" in her face. Nathan didn't know if she was supposed to react to that - if she could have reacted - because apparently he'd been working in a haunted office for months without noticing anything. He was pretty sure Max would have tried to get his attention.

Kathy sort of shambled against the counter, trying to walk but not seeming to realise it was in the way. Nathan peeped under her curtain of hair and thought that her shadowed eyes seemed dead, perhaps whited over.

"Maybe it's a temporary death, if this Trouble gets fixed," Max commented, whisking an arm through Kathy's middle. "Zombie. Right. Not much for those kind of movies, but I know that much." He transferred a pointing finger from her to Nathan, and Nathan didn't feel it, but it did seem to stop at his substance again. So they could interact with each other, but not necessarily with everything else. "Ghost. Nearing Halloween, is it? I'd have to ask. Not as big a thing from this side as they say it is."

"Temporary death I've done before," Nathan said with irony, and Max looked vaguely interested and perplexed, and it was a relief to know he wasn't following everything Nathan did. Maybe he was stuck mostly in the vicinity of the police station. Nathan set his jaw, glaring at Max. "Whether it's temporary or not, if this is widespread there must be a lot of scared people out there, and there has to be a Trouble behind it. I need to get out there and start doing my job."

Max's sneer was some part genuinely very amused. "Well, ain't you just the little badge-toting do-right." The rest of the sentiment radiating from him was nasty. "It's just like Garland's got his hand up your ass throwing his voice. Too bad that old bastard ain't around any more. Seems I owe him back for hell of a lot more than killing me."

"If it helps, you killed each other," Nathan snapped, "more or less." He took a breath - and even if he couldn't interact with the world and was therefore presumably not drawing in any air, all the signals he had still worked as if he were drawing breath. This situation… was not ideal. But he had to try and work with it. Max could perhaps still be a resource. "Max. If you're my real father, then help me with this. We can work together."

Max rolled his head on his neck, face twisting like he'd swallowed a bee. "I'll take a look," he grudgingly admitted. "Hell, I want to know what's going on here, too."

Nathan took a step back, cautiously nodding to the older man. He resisted again the urge to let his hand stray to his gun. His form and everything he'd had on his person when he was reduced to this state were intangible now. It seemed to him they were very unlikely to encounter any exterior threat he could use the gun against, but Max - there was no way in Hell he really planned to trust Max. A ghost weapon might still work on someone in the same state, and he didn't want to draw Max's attention to it or force a confrontation yet. Though it might be futile to hope that someone as dangerous as Max wasn't already well aware of its presence.

"So Garland isn't here?" he asked, as they paced each other, neither letting the other drop a step behind, to the front of the shop, and out through the front of the shop.

Max flapped an impatient hand. "Moved on to whichever-wherever-whatever. I never believed that horseshit, but then, never believed in ghosts, and look at me now."

"I see." Nathan's small hopes of seeing his proper father again faded. They would probably only have argued anyway. He wondered about his mother, or Dr Carr, but Max didn't seem the ideal person to ask.

In his brief glimpse of the street before - his head being pushed through cars was a barrier to any keen observation - he hadn't registered much beyond that things seemed off. Walking out into it now, still pacing Max, a cautious four or five feet between them, it was clear that the character of the town had changed. It seemed like night was falling already, the landscape gripped in a half-dark twilight. Buildings loomed, with ominous shapes and cavernous shadows they'd never had before. Haven was a pretty, bright town with a lot of grass and open space. The transformation shouldn't have been possible, yet here it was.

Nathan thought he could hear distant screaming. He turned his head, but couldn't pin down the source direction. Perhaps the unsettling sound was coming from more than one source.

As for the people out in the street...

"They're movie monsters," Max said, pointing. "I've seen that one. Twenty-odd years of Tuesday night movie night at Shawshank. That was Halloween year before last."

A hollow-eyed man was shuffling past like some sort of... of ghoul, and he stared at Nathan, pale eyes slowly blinking. His mouth fell slightly open to reveal needle sharp fangs. Not like a vampire's duo of pronounced canines, but a whole mouth full of them.

"You can see-?" Nathan saw the oncoming movement and lunged at the same time the transformed man did, ghoulish hand flapping out. Neither of them connected. Maybe Nathan could be seen, by some people, but he still couldn't be touched. Max gave a derisive snort. Nathan whirled a full circle on one heel, studying the 'people' around them, watching where their gazes fell and where they stopped. He made a few lunges toward others. Some reacted, but others didn't.

"You let me know when you've finished horsing around, there, boy," Max jeered.

"...All right." Nathan gathered himself. This… was more an expression of frustration than achieving anything. "We should get back to Audrey." He pointed to the police station across the street. "I need to tell her what happened." Hell, he'd left her with his own lifeless body, when Max pulled him away. What might she be thinking right now? Trouble, he repeated to himself. It has to be a Trouble. Of course she'll know that. Audrey won't be grieving for me, she'll be trying to fix this.

"That girl?" Max's eyebrows raised, watching him too closely, shaking his head. "She'll be fine. No. Don't you know what she is, fool?"

"What do you think she is?" Nathan grit out, prepared to fight on this. More people were passing them, now, not all of them adjusting their course for the fact Nathan and Max were in the way. A cadaverous Hammer Horror figure staggered straight through him, jolting him back a few paces as an odd resistance pushed at him. Some things - some creatures - could maybe affect him more than others. He wondered what it would have been like to feel that. Probably very odd. He supposed he had to wonder if his Trouble was actually even still in force, or if this was what it was like to be a ghost. No body, after all. He didn't see any point asking Max, who was the same as him. Would he even know?

He eyed the older man, mulling the idea over, and didn't get chance to ask.

That hovering background scream was coming closer. Or... not quite, since as it drew really close, it resolved into a very specific scream, and Nathan could now see its owner. A man, stricken-faced, wailing as he ran down the street. His form was as insubstantial and faintly glowing as their own forms, and Nathan knew him. He stepped out automatically to intercept the panicked spirit, catching Baylen Mellers by the shoulders. He was knocked back, but this time it only seemed like the basic rules of momentum were at work. The strength equation with Baylen wasn't nearly so uneven as with Max. He filed that note away for later.

"Just calm down!" Nathan exclaimed.

"This is the worst nightmare ever!" Baylen moaned, covering his face.

They'd been in the same class at school, and Baylen had been the golden boy back then, but ever since, his life had slowly declined, never quite managing the success predicted so boldly for him during his school years. As time wore on, Nathan had grown accustomed to seeing him moping about town events, almost invisible among the rich and the bigwigs, spending his family's money and failing to make any impact on the world of his own. Clinging to the coattails of his wealthy relatives and, mostly, avoiding life.

It seemed best not to try dissuade him from what he'd already decided this was.

"You're okay," Nathan told him. "You just need to calm down. Stop running before you-" Could he damage himself? Sure, he wasn't technically attached to his body right now, but would any damage carry back to it once the Trouble was over? Nathan patted him on the shoulder and, gauging the response, cautiously let him go when he was fairly sure Baylen wouldn't just start running again.

"Everyone's m-monsters," the unhappy man sobbed.

"Are they?" Nathan murmured, and more pointedly asked, "What happened to you? What did you see?"

"Geoff was a... he turned into this thing. Claws. Grey fur. Strings of drool. He went for Gary, but Gary was something else, something worse… the skin was hanging off him, like a walking skeleton, and they started fighting instead. I saw m-my own body, dead!" He clutched at Nathan and hyperventilated.

Max chuckled at the spectacle, but it wound down to something more sober. "If everyone's monsters out for blood," he observed, "then there's no prey for them here. Haven't yet seen anyone looked like they stayed human."

"Parker would have," Nathan said. "The Troubles don't affect her... We have to go back to the station!"

Max's arch look, sarcasm and veiled physical threat couldn't delay them this time. Maybe it was having Baylen there, and hauling Baylen around on his arm, someone having a worse crisis who needed Nathan, bringing out his sense of responsibility and the strength to use to defy Max along with it.

But when they got back to the station, there was no sign of Audrey. "Damn it - she's already left-" Nathan stared around helplessly. Officer Danny Rayner was walking repeatedly into walls, but didn't pay any of their party any heed. Nathan marched back down to his office and, mentally steeling himself again for it, through the door. His body was on the floor behind the desk. He dropped down and pushed his hand into it. "Come on!" He could do this. He wasn't dead, he was right here!

It didn't feel any different to anything else - it didn't feel - but that didn't have to mean anything. He lay back, trying to match his position to his own slumped physical form.

"You can't get back inside it!" Max said with disgust.

Nathan didn't trust him enough to take his word on that, but after he figured he'd given it a decent try, he left his lifeless form alone and rolled out of it, back onto his ghostly feet. "It was worth a try," he said snappishly to Max's judging look. He cast around, frustration and worry bubbling inside him. "I need to find Audrey. She's in danger."

"And exactly what are you planning to do about that when you find her?" Max asked, folding his arms.

If he'd had his body again, then something, Nathan thought, frustrated and annoyed. It seemed there wasn't anything he could do that would win this guy's approval. But he was used to that from father figures. "I can touch some of the creatures a little, maybe," he argued. "I can figure it out. There's something I can do. And trying is better than doing nothing. Parker's our best bet to put this town back to rights."

"Always been that woman," Max said, gritting his teeth a bit. He squinted hard at Nathan, spotting some give-away in that reaction. "You hitting that, boy?"

Even though he couldn't feel and was currently monochrome, Nathan was sure his form was blushing somehow. Embarrassment would find a way. He was also suddenly horribly certain that he didn't want Max to find out the rest of the picture as to what, exactly, he was 'hitting' - to find out about Duke.

"Can you make a phone call?" Nathan asked, pointing back down at his body, by their feet. Max was actually standing in his midriff. Baylen was looking close to a freak-out. "There's a phone in my left side jacket pocket. Audrey's in contacts under 'Parker'."

"I ain't doing that," Max said, shaking his head. "Technology's fiddly. Messes up your energies if you get it wrong. No gain in it for me, either."

"How about that your own son is asking you-" Nathan began with impatience.

Max just sneered. "Aw, you quit that, trying to call on us having some kind of relationship, when I'm damn sure you don't care spit for me. Garland addled your brain good, raised you into his little soldier..."

Nathan ignored that as the only possible approach and countered, "Haven's your home, too. Do you really want to stand by and watch this happening to it?"

"Breaks up the monotony," Max drawled with a shrug.

Clenching both fists and trying to hold onto his temper, Nathan looked at Baylen. "Can you...?"

Baylen wafted a hand through the nearby desk. "Hey, man, I can't touch anything either!" The edge of panic in his voice cautioned Nathan. Baylen didn't need this, didn't need anyone putting demands on him - he needed reassurance. And he wouldn't be the only one.

With a last look down at his body on the floor, Nathan backed off, beckoning the others and letting the wall swallow him up, emerging on the grassy slope heading down to the street. He couldn't quell the odd reluctance to part himself from his physical form, or the feeling that he was leaving behind a - a - at least a resource, for want of a better word, if he could only figure out how to put it to use.

"So what's your plan, 'Chief'?" Max asked, sarcastically.

Baylen was looking very nervous of Max, but Nathan could not reasonably think of a way to get rid of his nightmare father that didn't hold a high risk of making the situation worse, escalating it into ghostly violence. As long as he was only a verbally disruptive presence, Nathan supposed that he could and would have to cope with that. "We're going to check out the rest of the town. Help where we can. Look for Parker - my police partner - on the way," he said tightly.

Baylen snickered, "She's more than that, if I've heard right."

Max's snorted derision hadn't been made any less derisive by Nathan's bid to take charge.

"You don't have to come," Nathan said, not even bothering to nurse a dim spark of hope.

"What? Hey, now, boy... This is my chance to see the chip off the old granite block in action. Wouldn't miss that treat for all the world..."