A/N: Gosh, no love eh?
The locals were not friendly.
They had started their first official day in the field by introducing themselves to everyone. She had some butterflies in her stomach as she went door-to-door, but didn't expect to be coldly told off by the homeowners.
"Good morning! My name is Dr. Erin Coffrey. My partner Dr. Davies and I are running a clinic in town. If you-"
"What?" the narrow-faced woman said, interrupting her.
"We're offering free medical services"
"No no no, get off my porch!" the woman abruptly shut the door in Erin's face.
She met similar resistance as she worked down the line. She met up with Jonathan again a little later.
"What the hell was that?" she asked.
He didn't seem as surprised as she was and gave a shrug.
"Never said the job would be easy, Erin. Be professional and move on"
Door after slammed door made for a bleak afternoon. Erin's smile was beginning to deteriorate into a pasted caricature of her real grin. It wasn't the end of the world, but everything else had been going so well, this felt like a catastrophic failure. She looked over to where Jonathan was. He had managed to shove a pamphlet into one house, and jogged further down the street, into the dodgy end of town.
Litter on the streets was now more visible. The houses had fallen behind in upkeep and were shucking their colors with curled peels of paint resembling birch bark. As she followed his trail, she saw shadows flit from behind the dirty windows. Shades were pulled back and dropped down abruptly.
There was life here. But she wasn't sure if they were friend or foe.
She looked over the house she was walking up to and cautiously rapped on the wooden door twice. No answer. She tried again and waited, wagging her leg a bit in impatience. Fine then. Onto the next house it was. She didn't have any luck until maybe the 6th house down the line. It was just as dreary as the rest of them, with the added embellishment of some broken milk bottles on the stoop.
She kicked the shards aside with her boot and resumed the knocking stance. She was startled when the door was yanked open before her knuckles could make contact. She jerked her arm back and had to remember why she was doing this in the first place.
"Good afternoon, I'm Dr. Coffrey. My partner and I are starting a free clinic here. We just wanted to introduce ourselves"
He was dressed in a plaid shirt that was haphazardly buttoned and stood there biting his thumbnail.
"We'd love to have you over at our place- it's just outside town on Fern Ro-"
"You shouldn't be here," he said.
"I'm sorry?" she asked.
He was now biting the muscle adjacent to the thumb, and looked at her with buggy eyes as he gnawed on his hand.
"Sometimes they got the ghosts and the hoods and the De-"
He stopped speaking suddenly and wrinkled his nose, then twisted his neck sideways in what looked like a painful contortion.
"Sir," she said, taking a step forward.
"Gaaaahhhh-!" he groaned, and righted himself suddenly, "Who're you? Whatchyou doin' here?" he asked her, bobbing his head and he looked at her from head to toe and back again.
Her brow creased and she slowly took small steps backwards.
"Just wanted to say hi. Good day," she said, and didn't turn around until he slammed the door in her face.
"God," she muttered to herself as she walked on.
She looked ahead to see that Jonathan had finished and was now trotting back over to her. They got to several more houses and once in a while, they had similar experiences to the "ghost" man. Jon took it in stride, and made sure to leave their information with everyone who opened their doors.
Erin meanwhile was quickly building theories on what was doing on with these people, what the possible differential diagnoses were. She saw hand tremors, torticollis, nystagmus, and fasciculations of some facial muscles. It had to be something environmental- the grouping of affected people was much too tight and massive for it to be a coincidence.
Was it the water? The food?
Questions whirled around in her head and she walked back to their car in a daze.
"That was bizarre," she finally said.
"It's bad," he agreed.
They got into the car and as Jonathan drove back to their place, Erin mentally reviewed the day's events.
"Jon, did you get a lot of people mentioning ghosts?"
He glanced at her briefly before looking back at the road.
"A bit. Why?"
She shrugged and scratched her eyebrow.
"Just wondering. I...just feel like I'm missing something"
"We just need to get everyone to come to us so we can get a better look at them. Which means we're going to have to be very sweet and very irritating"
"Your forte," she quipped.
The trademark Davies smile she had been missing made a brief reappearance.
"Incorrigible," he said.
When they got out, Jon let out an aggravated sigh. He bent down to scoop up some gravel and throw it at the murder of crows that had settled in their tree. They squawked loudly, offended, and all but one flew off.
"What are you doing?" she asked, bewildered.
"Ahh, I just don't like their beady eyes. My mum said they were bad omens," he said.
He stood facing the last crow, with his hands on his hips and narrowed eyes. She came around to his side of the car and looked at the bird. It cocked its head and cawwed at them.
"I hope it doesn't do that all night. It's damn loud," she said.
Jonathan grumbled something incomprehensible and gave the bird one more look before being corralled into the house by Erin.