AN: First fanfic~. Request from a friend. Thanks to Kennedy for helping me with details; I've seen the movie plenty of times, but I could never be quite as obsessed with it as you.
The sun had just dipped under the horizon when Jonah lay his head on his pillow. He noticed his days were blurring together into a certain routine. He'd get up in the morning, go to school, face the nervous glances and dumbfounded stares from his peers, come home, help his father with funeral arrangements, perform a séance here and there, and go to bed. The summers were no better for him. More time to stare at dead bodies, watch devastated families mourn the loss of their loved ones, sit at that dreaded table and communicate with the dead for tips.
After dark was the best time of the day for young Jonah Aickman. Most children fear nighttime, the stark silence, the frightening shadows that sneak across their walls and under their beds. But, then again, Jonah wasn't like most children. Anybody who talks to ghosts as an adolescent for pocket money can't be too normal. He wasn't afraid of the dark; it wasn't much worse than the things he had to deal with during the day. He was honestly surprised he wasn't plagued by thoughts of the corpses he saw all the time. He often helped Ramsey perform a ritual on them, one that supposedly involved putting the spirits to rest. It involved cutting their eyelids off and carving into their skin. Even though he was used to seeing them regularly, they scared him to pieces...
Either way, the night gave him the chance to let his mind wander and be as much of a child as he could. He could actually dream during the night, pretend he was a normal boy with an unbroken family...
The corners of his mouth rose into a small smile as his eyes fluttered shut. He couldn't help but wonder if he'd have any dreams about his mother. She'd died when Jonah was very young, too young to remember much about her, but he still had dreams about her. They were more like memories, actually. He often recalled him sitting with her on the couch in their parlor. Her arms were always around him protectively, her fingers stroking his chocolate brown hair. Her eyes were always baby blue like his, although he could never know if they were that color when she was alive. He only had one sepia-tone picture of her hanging in his room, and Ramsey would never mention her in front of him. Oddly enough, he was never in the memory, even though he was Jonah's father. It was just Jonah and his mother.
Oddly enough, that's just how Jonah wanted it.
The medium's breathing grew slower as he drifted off to sleep...
He saw himself sitting in a chair at the table, that horrible table. The last thing he wanted to think about that night was another séance, another sad family, another glare from Ramsey as he stood behind them, his eyes still visible behind the ever-present glare on his glasses...
Jonah gasped as he looked at the clients at the table. Surrounding him were dead bodies with some kind of language carved all over their bodies in blood red. All their eyelids were cut off, revealing distant stares and white eyes. Every single eye was cast over toward him.
The corpses that had been put to rest.
Something churned in his stomach. These were the bodies that he worked with on a daily basis, the very last thing he'd want to see in a dream. Jonah turned around to see if Ramsey was there to offer an explanation. The man wasn't there in his usual spot behind the boy. That meant that Jonah was on his own with this séance.
He knew he couldn't walk out now.
Jonah sucked in a large breath of air and ignored the horrible pain in the pit of his stomach. He reached out and joined hands with the dead clients. A shiver climbed down his spine as he felt the decayed skin on either of his palms.
His blue eyes glazed over as the séance began. He felt the spirits' connection begin to grow, heard the usual sea of voices, scared cries, panicked calls for attention...
He began to twitch madly as the connection grew stronger. He felt a pain inside of him, as though he was about to be sick, as usual. He hit his head on the table a few times, gagging and struggling for breath. Jonah sat up and fell into a trance.
Large, dark clouds of ectoplasm rolled out of his mouth and into the air. Spit dribbled down his chin as he felt the sickly tension climb up his throat, out his mouth, releasing energy in front of his audience.
The ectoplasm glowed a unnaturally bright color. Jonah wanted to scream. The tension grew stronger inside of him; he could feel that something was about to go horribly wrong...
Bam. A blinding white light.
He was right.
The boy sat up in bed and gasped. The room was still dark, but he could see a small white light outside his window casting a shadow into the room. He sighed and realized he wouldn't be able to fall asleep after that.
"It was only a nightmare," he said to himself. "It was only a nightmare..."
It was times like these that Jonah wished his mother was still around, that she could still comfort him whenever he had a nightmare like this. Ramsey loved him, he was sure of that, but his love was never quite the same as the boy's mother.
Jonah got up out of bed and carefully took the photo of his mother off the his wall. Even though he was terrified, he couldn't help but smile a little at the picture as he lay back down in bed.
He clutched the picture in his arms and felt a tear roll down his cheek, hoping to delay the inevitable morning a little more.
I'm just as curious to see where this goes as you are. R&R, let me know what you thought of it.