Disclaimer: I don't own any of the rights to Thir13en Ghosts. You should know that by now!
A/N: Well everybody, thanks for all your reviews and sorry this has taken so long. Like the dumbass that I am, I forgot to save half of my work on this chapter and it got deleted, leaving me to start the whole thing over. So you're getting the slightly edited version of the original. I'm beating myself up over this, because I had it perfect. But, c'est la vie. Life goes on.
Oh, and Rhiannon, I did in fact notice that. It comes into play later in the story. I'm glad you noticed! ;)
Chapter 7: Friends and Betrayals
*Excited, going to the prom, can't wait, beautiful dress, I've got the hottest guy in the class, anticipation, dancing, lights, noise, I'll be right back baby, I gotta get some air…hands grabbing, warm lips, moaning, he'll never know, screaming, door opening, hands grabbing at her, I'm sorry baby, I don't know what I was thinking! Shut up bitch! Undoing his tie, pinning her down, Baby, you're hurting me. Why? Why did you betray me you stupid whore? Pain, it hurts, WHY? Dancing lights, blacking out, darkness*
Dennis sucked in a breath through gritted teeth. The headache that had been plaguing him ever since he had stepped onto the old football field reached a sharp pitch, but it subsided after a few moments and he stood up in the soft grass, still damp from the afternoon's rain. Floodlights illuminated the field, but beyond that there was pitch darkness.
When he had stepped onto the field and felt the pain, he had taken out his pill bottle, but one look from Cyrus reminded him that it was unacceptable to partake of his drugs on the job, lest he lose track of their target.
But the pain wasn't the worst part. The ghost's name was Susan LeGrow, nicknamed the Bound Woman. Her boyfriend had caught her cheating on him at their senior prom, and the authorities had found her body a week later, strangled and buried under the school football field. That had been 1987. And Susan was still there. Besides the pain in his head, Dennis could feel her bitter ire pulsing in his chest, his bones. It made him edgy.
The rest of the crew must have felt it to some degree too, because whether consciously or not, they had all formed a tight circle around the glass containment cube, all facing outwards and squinting into the shadows surrounding their ring of light.
Dennis was on his own though, clutching in his hand a page full of Latin scrawling and yet another picture, this time of a beautiful young woman that was bound and choked.
Cyrus was also on his own, pacing the perimeter of their circle of light. He showed not a trace of the edginess the others felt, only a burning impatience. He looked over at Dennis and raised his eyebrows. Dennis shrugged, darting glances around.
On the two-day road trip from Jersey to this sleepy little town in Wisconsin, Cyrus had once again insisted that Dennis ride with him. The two had talked a lot, about Dennis' powers and his life, about Cyrus' experiences with ghosts, and about life in general. It was strange to finally talk to someone who accepted him, who didn't think he was sick or crazy. He was in fact an asset, as Cyrus constantly kept reminding him. He was crucial to the timely capture of these ghosts. In their time together, Dennis had stopped thinking of Cyrus as his employer and had started thinking of him as a friend. Cyrus made him feel important, as if he were a real person in a real world that just couldn't see what he could see. Dennis had started to wonder if this is what it was like to have a real friend. And he also wondered how things would have turned out differently had he had someone like Cyrus around when he was younger.
Lost in his own thoughts, Dennis failed to notice the presence behind him until the pain in his head flared sharply and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Terror iced his lungs, making it difficult to breathe. Dennis closed his eyes and reopened them, knowing what he would find behind him. He spun around slowly, but when he finally faced the opposite direction, there was nothing there. Mocking laughter drifted to him from somewhere, he couldn't tell where.
"Find anything?"
The voice came from right behind him, making him jump about a foot in the air.
"Shit, Cyrus," he wheezed, "You scared the hell outta me!"
"My apologies," Cyrus said smoothly, looking around, "Nothing yet?"
"I think she's playing with me," Dennis whined, still darting nervous glances all around him.
He could still hear her laughing. It was a girly, high pitched giggle. It made every small hair on his body stand on end, made his flesh crawl. And strangely, it made him angry. It was an irritating sound.
"C'mon," he muttered, "You stupid little slut, show yourself."
Wrong thing to say. He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth.
The laughter stopped abruptly.
Then, without warning, the pain in Dennis' head flared sharply, causing him to lose his balance and fall to the grass again. He looked up in time to see a blurred shape flying over him, arms outstretched like claws before her, aiming at where he had been standing only seconds ago.
Rolling to his feet on pure instinct, Dennis dimly registered that Cyrus was running for the cube, shouting to the others to start up the spells. Dennis, on the other hand, had other things to worry about.
Susan LeGrow stared at him out of ghostly eyes, her bloodless lips curled into a snarl. She lunged at him again, and this time Dennis ducked out of the way to avoid the onslaught of pain that would paralyze him if she came too close.
From across the field, the spells started playing on the giant speakers. The haunting, echoing words flowed over Dennis like snakes, slithering around and inside him. It was the first time he had noticed their strange power, what with being shaken to the core the first time and underwater the last.
Susan, however, seemed completely unaffected by the spells' powerful allure. She stopped again and turned slowly toward him, a depraved smile on her once-pretty face. Then she disappeared.
Dennis froze, once again darting looks all around him. The sensation of being watched combined with the chilling effect of the chanted spells to send a shiver down his spine.
"Rafkin," came a shout from halfway down the field. Kenny stepped away from the knot of people near the cube to get his attention, "What's the holdup?"
"She's gone again," Dennis said, making his way toward the clump of people clustered around the cube, "She was trying her best to rip my face off for a while, and then she dissa-holy SHIT!"
Susan suddenly appeared between him and Kenny, blocking his view of the blonde man. Dennis yelped as she swooped down on him, his mind numbing with blurred visions and pain. He heard her scream and felt her nails swipe his face.
Moaning, Dennis rolled into fetal position, his throbbing forehead touching the soft, cool grass and his arms covering his neck. Sharp nails continued to scrape at him and her cold fists pummeled him in indignant rage. She wasn't really strong, but what she lacked in body weight she made up for in blind fury.
As if from far away, he heard her screaming at him: "I'm not a slut. I'm not! How dare you! You don't know me, you don't care…" Dennis heard a distant sob and an agonized wail.
"I loved you, I love you, I'm sorry, why didn't you listen to me, I said I was sorry but you wouldn't listen!"
Linked as Dennis was to the ghostly girl's strong emotions, he recognized that she was in terrible pain, reliving the night of her death with regret and sorrow. She was, Dennis realized, just like any other teenager. She made mistakes and needed the chance to make up for them. But Susan wasn't given the chance. Her guilt still clawed away at her like she clawed at Dennis now, venting her emotions on anything male she could find.
Gritting his teeth and blinking away the blood that had seeped into his eyes from the slashes on his face, Dennis found his voice.
"Susan!" he yelled, trying to get her attention, not even sure if she could hear him, "Susan, I'm sorry, okay? I didn't realize…I had no right to judge you. One mistake shouldn't have to ruin, or end, your life. You made a bad choice, but who doesn't? I had no right. I'm sorry!"
Dennis didn't actually expect this to work. The continued pain in his head obscured the biting sting of her sharp nails digging into his back and arms. His head swam with visions, both hers and his own, and he wasn't actually quite sure of what he had said.
But by some miracle, it actually worked. The pain in his head receded slowly, leaving him very aware of the blood that ran down his face, his arms and his back. The back of his shirt was a mess of torn fabric and blood. He was shaking and gasping for air, as if he had just been submerged in the ocean again.
Silence hung in the air, and it took him a minute to realize what it meant: the spells had been turned off.
Dennis raised his head and looked toward the cube. Susan was inside, throwing herself at the closed doors in a futile effort to escape. Her eyes caught his and she snarled, looking a lot like some feral night animal. Her small hands pounded on the glass and he saw her lips moving, shouting something at him. Catching a small aftershock of her emotions, now dulled by the ectobar glass, he knew that she felt betrayed by him somehow. Which made sense. His shouting at her had obviously caused her to let down her guard enough for the summoning spells to take effect, drawing her into the cube.
Dennis looked down, away from the cube as an inexplicable wave of guilt swept him up. He couldn't help but feel bad for the kid, even though Cyrus had told him that a ghost had no real emotions, just a shadow of what their dying selves felt. Looking into Susan LeGrow's sorrowful, angry gaze somehow made him doubt that assurance.
The ground around him vibrated with the sound of running feet, and all at once he was surrounded by people. He automatically cringed from them, curling into a ball again to escape their voices. He suddenly felt as if he needed to be left alone.
He heard his name being called about a dozen times, then suddenly one sounded right in his ear.
"DENNIS!" Ailis shouted in his ear, "You're bleeding. A lot. If you don't get up this instant and get your skinny little ass over where I can look at those cuts, I swear I'll help you up."
Dennis cringed, knowing exactly what she meant. She would have no qualms about touching him to make him move.
"Everybody back off," he mumbled, and Ailis repeated his words louder for the benefit of the rest of the group. Biting his lip, Dennis ignored the sticky feel of the drying blood on his arms and heaved himself into a standing position. Now that he was paying attention, the cuts and bruises on his back really hurt. And as the destruction was immersed in the full glare of the floodlights, he heard Ailis stifle a gasp.
He turned his throbbing head slowly to look at her and caught her as she tried to conceal her shock and worry under a mask of her usual stubbornness.
"Is it bad?" he croaked, already feeling in his pocket for his painkillers.
She hesitated, then nodded, probably not trusting her voice.
Dennis finally found his pill bottle and, cringing as some of the cuts on his arm reopened, popped three dry.
He gazed at the sea of faces around him. Cyrus was nowhere in sight. He was probably just checking the cube to make sure nothing was wrong before he came to help Dennis.
"C'mon," Ailis said softly, waving her arm toward the pile of gear at one end of the field, "I'll take a look at those."
Dennis looked down his nose at her.
"Last time I checked, you weren't a doctor."
Her eyes flashed dangerously.
"I may not be a doctor, Rafkin, but I still know what to do for scrapes and bruises. And unless you have eyes in the back of your head, you can't see your own back. Now would you rather I examined you, or one of them?"
She nodded toward where most of the other crew members looked over at them, obviously still scared after what they had just seen occur. He hated to admit it, but Ailis was right. She definitely seemed the calmest of them.
Not acknowledging her, Dennis turned and stalked away toward the pile of gear, leaving her to jog to keep up with his long-legged stride.
"You know," she fumed from a step behind him, "You can be really childish sometimes."
Now normally, he wouldn't have let that get to him. But at the time, with his tensions running high and his nerves at their end, he just didn't feel like putting up with her.
He stopped so suddenly she overshot him and had to take a step back to see him properly.
"I'm childish," he stated blandly, "Right. Who's the one getting all uppity because she feels, what, like she has some duty to take care of me? In case you haven't already figured this out, my lifestyle doesn't generally include a lot of company. I'm a big boy and I can take care of myself. You, on the other hand, are obviously used to being with a group of people you can boss around and lord over to make yourself feel superior. That's just like a woman."
"EXCUSE me?" she shrieked, all eyes now turning in their direction. Dennis knew he would regret opening his mouth very soon, but right now he was in a lot of pain and really didn't feel like putting up with Ailis' mother hen bullshit.
"Excuse me?" Ailis repeated, her eyes bugging out. She really did look like a big puffed out chicken, squawking her little red head off.
"That is the single most sexist remark I have ever heard," she hissed. She had also noticed everyone turn to stare at them, and had the presence of wit to keep quiet. Surprisingly, this calmed Dennis down a bit. He took a deep breath and let it out with an explosive huff. The wounds in his back continued to burn, and his headache wasn't getting any better despite the meds he had just taken.
"Okay, whatever," he said, "Can we just go and at least get the blood off of me? It's starting to itch."
Right away, the ruffled look faded from Ailis' face. She grew serious again and nodded as she remembered the reason they were bickering in the first place.
They trudged the rest of the way in silence, and when they got to the pile of gear Ailis started riffling around, presumably looking for a first-aid kit.
She finally pulled out a white box and set it on the ground, then busily applied some thin, blue-ish liquid to a cotton swab. Careful not to touch his fingers, she handed it to him and instructed him to clean the cuts on his arms with it.
With a silent nod, Dennis pressed the liquid onto one of the fingernail marks on his upper arm. He cringed at the stinging sensation, but wiped away at the dried blood anyway. The cuts didn't look too deep, and what he had thought were long scratches just turned out to be small punctures from which the blood had smeared.
Concentrating on his arm, he jumped when he felt something jab his back.
"Whhaa!" he squeaked, turning to face his assailant.
It was Ailis, armed with a pair of long tweezers. She had a look of utter exasperation on her face.
"Do you want shreds of your shirt in your back, or do you want me to get them out?" she asked sardonically.
Looking with dread upon the lethal-looking tweezers, Dennis scrunched his eyes closed until he saw stars, then opened them again.
"Okay," he sighed, resigned, "But don't touch me."
With that he turned around and continued to cleanse his arm. For a few minutes the pair worked silently, Dennis wiping away at his arm and Ailis picking surprisingly gently at the shredded bits of flannel shirt in his back. Around them, the rest of the crew packed up their gear and loaded the cube into the large truck that awaited its ghostly cargo.
Ailis was the first to break the silence.
"Why you?" she asked quietly, done with the fabric and using the tweezers to apply the blue antiseptic to the wounds on his back.
"Why me what?" Dennis replied just as quietly.
"Why do they always come after you?" she specified.
It took Dennis a minute to understand what she was saying.
"I guess I'm just always in the way," he mused, "I mean, I must've been the first one the kid saw and so he shot at me. And I was stupid enough to lean out over the water so the headless guy could get me. And I…" he trailed off, wondering if he should continue.
"And you…?"
"Well, this last one…I kinda called her a slut."
A pause, then: "Good job, Rafkin. Only you could figure out how to piss off a ghost to the point where she tries to claw you to death. Are you like that with all women?"
Dennis didn't know why the blush crept into his face, but it did. Suddenly the frigid November air felt way to warm. Luckily he was saved from answering when a crunching sound was heard from behind him.
"Mr. Rafkin, are you alright?"
Not turning around, Dennis nodded.
"Yeah Cyrus, I'm just fine. It was a lot of fun, actually. I decided it would be a kick to grab the bitch's arm and use her nails to scratch the shit outta my back."
Gritting his teeth, Dennis took this opportunity to scold himself inwardly for letting his temper get the better of him. The old man had told him on the long drive here that the key to controlling his powers might be to keep control of his temper and sarcastic nature.
"I see," Cyrus replied, taking everything in with a brief look, "Now that that's settled, we can head out."
Dennis didn't turn around to see Cyrus leave, only nodded again and listened to the old man's footsteps die away.
Ailis riffled through the first aid kit for a minute and straightened, handing him a roll of gauze.
"Here," she said, closing the kit and putting it back in the bag it had come from, "Wrap that around yourself a few times. None of them are very deep, and the bleeding's pretty much stopped, but they're still fresh."
"Yes mother," Dennis grumped, rolling the bandaging around his torso. The rest of the group was piling into the vans that would take them back to their hotel. Dennis quickly ripped off the end of the gauze and tucked it in, freezing without his shirt.
Ailis offered him her coat again, but he refused this time.
"I'll be okay," he said, trying to control the chattering in his teeth.
She looked at him slant-eyed for a few moments before making a scoffing sound and stalking away, muttering something about overdoses of testosterone.
By the time they got back to the hotel, Dennis was shivering so hard he could barely sit up. Following the rest of the group, he walked stiffly up the concrete steps and through the glass doors to the lobby, then took the elevator to his room.
His usual roommates, Kenny Jarrod and Brock, were already there when he arrived.
Brock looked up from digging in his suitcase when Dennis walked in.
"Wow, Rafkin," he said, "You look like shit."
Dennis smiled weakly, still trembling violently. Kenny was in the shower and Jarrod was sitting in the small room's single chair, prying off the black combat boots he was wearing.
"You'd l-look like shit too," Dennis chattered, "If you had been attacked by and irate g-ghost and then poked and p-prodded by Ailis O'Shea for half an hour."
This earned a snort from Jarrod and a smile from Brock.
"Oh, c'mon," the shorter man said as he finally extracted the shirt he had been looking for, "You were enjoying it."
"Ahhh…" Dennis started to object, then gave up, shaking his head. He still had to get used to the idea that, unlike most people, these men weren't into being overly sensitive about his gift. Quite the contrary, they tended to forget about its effects. He had never thought he would be around such a group, and frankly couldn't believe it sometimes. It was the closest he had ever been to feeling normal. And Cyrus had promised Dennis that he would try to find out a way for Dennis to control his gift, curse, whatever it was.
Despite the cold that had seeped into his bones, Dennis suddenly felt a whole lot warmer.
He grinned, the grin of a little kid who was being teased about flirting with a girl for the first time.
"Yeah, okay, so I was enjoying it," he admitted, surprised to find that it was actually true.
Suddenly there came a chuckle from the direction of the bed. Jarrod sat up from where he had flopped over and shook his head at Dennis.
"Only you, man," he said, "Only you could manage to be attracted to a woman while she's picking at your eviscerated back with a big-ass pair of tweezers."
Dennis blinked, wondering if he should take offense to that, until he realized Jarrod was shaking with laughter. Behind him, Brock was making snorting noises to keep from laughing.
Surprising himself, Dennis let out a bark of laughter. He couldn't help it. Maybe it was the leftover adrenaline from the attack, or the fact that what Jarrod had just said was true, and oddly amusing.
"Let's not forget said evisceration was done by a ghost, of all things," Dennis added, "Most people would think I'm nuts."
It was true, he thought as Brock chuckled appreciatively from behind him, most people would never believe what he had just been through. And here were two people that not only believed him but had seen it happen, and were still able to laugh about it.
At that moment, Kenny came out of the bathroom, wearing blue boxer shorts and a raised eyebrow.
"What're you fuckin' weirdoes laughing at?" he asked in a mock-serious tone.
That comment drove it home. All three of them burst out laughing.
Raising the other eyebrow, Kenny shook his head and crossed to his suitcase, leaving the others to laugh themselves out.
Dennis couldn't remember what exactly had been so funny, but he found himself doubled up with laughter. Maybe it was adrenaline, or relief, or the realization that here, on this bizarre mission to capture ghosts, he had made the closest he had ever come to real friends.