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The first time Shane sees him is at grandma’s funeral.
The casket is finally being lowered after a two-hour-long service and Shane just wants to go home at this point. His eyes stray toward the distant tree line, blinking and trying to find respite against their dryness and the judging faces of his relatives. His attention catches on a man standing on the edge of where the cemetery becomes a forest, his checkered tan vest is almost a beacon, bright against the sea of black that surrounds Shane and he keeps following its hue despite himself. The figure’s dark short hair flows with the wind despite the umbrella held above it.
The creepy part is the mask, really.
Painted like the face of a porcelain boy, sharp nose and pursed heart lips, completely still and staring straight at Shane. He suppresses a shiver.
“Is he ok?” comes the hushed whisper from somewhere behind his back.
Shane can barely keep himself from rolling his eyes, knowing very well they are talking about him and not the weirdo at the tree line. He merely tightens his grip on the handle of the umbrella in response, his own mask firmly in place.
“He’s fine, Shane just processes things a little differently” comes Scott’s voice in hushed tones, and this time he does roll his eyes. Shane loves emotions, he has them all the time. He just doesn’t want to have them now, in front of all these people. Still, prop's to his brother for still having the patience to deal with all their cousins. At least he and Shane didn’t have to fake a fainting spell to show they cared about grandma. They actually visited her often.
As the gravedigger’s shovel hits the dirt for the first time, his eyes search the figure again, not wanting to see the casket being covered in dirt indefinitely. But when they hit the tree line, the man is already gone and he fails to mention him to anyone.
The second time is when he’s going through a box of grandma’s old papers.
“Oh, you found your childhood drawings”
“She really kept them all?” Shane looks down at his grandpa’s smiling face, a little wobbly around the edges, but still just as kind as ever.
“Of course she did, she loved them. Scott’s too. They are probably around here somewhere” he trails off, crouching down with some difficulty to look inside the box.
Shane peers back at the sheet at hand, where two small figures are crammed at the bottom of the page, leaving a lot of real estate all around them. The figure on the left has a huge head and very long legs meaning it can only be himself, as indicated by the poorly written “shane” underneath it. The one on the right is what gave him pause in the first place. Slightly smaller than him, the creep at the treeline is wearing the exact same clothes he did when Shane saw him at the funeral and sporting a poor yet unmistakable rendition of his mask. Scribbled underneath there’s simply the name “ryan”.
“This is definitely part of the creepy ones” grandpa has gotten up and is peering under his arm. It would be kinda funny if not by the matter at hand.
“What do you mean?”
“When I asked, you said that this freaky guy was your imaginary friend” he points to Ryan adjusting his glasses pointedly “You used to run around by yourself all the time and say he was chasing you”.
Shane chuckles “He’s not freaky, he just has a funny mask”
Grandpa snorts but shakes his head “I don’t know, I find him eerie I guess. Your mum found too” he looks up meeting Shane’s eyes “She brought you to get a blessing at the time. It stopped after that”.
Shane finds other drawings of Ryan inside the same box. It doesn’t escape his notice that they are holding hands in all of them.
The third time, Ryan is sitting at the swing set in the backyard of Shane’s childhood home.
He and Scott are spending some time with their parents while they sort out the piles of stuff from grandma’s house that grandpa won’t need. It’s also good to be with family when someone dies, Shane thinks. If only for the reassurance that they are still there. He gets anxious every moment he’s away from grandpa as if he would just drop dead while Shane is not looking.
His parent’s house has three bedrooms. His and Scott’s are on the top floor along with a bathroom, while their parents’ is on the bottom with the kitchen and living room. On top of Shane’s bedroom lies the attic. Kinda unusual for a kid to have a room all to themselves, but he was glad for the privacy, it was enough sharing the floor with his brother at times.
“Hey dipshit, there’s more stuff in the car”
Shane’s head snaps from where it was locked in a staring contest with Ryan’s mask’s soulless ones from his bedroom window. Scott is standing awkwardly at the door frame, grip shifting anxiously on the handle of his suitcase, but still eyeing Shane critically. As if suspecting he is up to something, but he doesn’t know what.
“Yeah, I’m coming” he nods, body relaxing from the position it was locked in for god knows how long.
His brother lingers a bit before nodding and going to his room. That’s when Shane realizes he probably should ask if Scott can see Ryan. This situation only has two options and none of them are good: either Shane is hallucinating and seeing things that are not there, or there’s a creepo stalker in their backyard.
He starts to call his brother back, but when Shane looks back Ryan is gone.
The fourth is, at least, unexpected.
That night Shane struggles to find a good position on his old bed. Childhood beds should never be hard to sleep on, the years spent on them being enough cushioning to lie in, but he thinks that maybe he just grew too much. The frame is too short, making his leg hang off mid-calf, and too narrow to be comfortable without the fear of falling over.
He gives in to the fact that maybe there’s just no sleeping tonight and opens his eyes to look up at his ceiling in despair. Gone is the mold from his teenage years. His mom painted it a tasteful rosemary green and turned his bedroom into a very nice guest room. Anyone who was staying over would think so. Except for Shane, as it is painfully no longer his.
He peers over to the corner that used to house his desk, always overflowing with homework, comic books, and empty mugs. In its place, there’s a thrifted rocking chair and a shelf full of miniature dolls. Shane particularly hates the vanity that lines the right wall, beautiful deep mahogany with a mirror that points straight to his face every time he turns to this side of the bed.
As if taunting him to fall asleep and get rid of the purple bruises underneath his eyes instead of getting lost in his own reflection.
He decides to stare at it for just a moment longer, that is, until a hand clamps down on his ankle from underneath and pulls .
Shane scrambles and kicks on the bed in his panic, trying with all his might to bring the appendage back into his own territory, though it soon becomes clear that that is simply not happening. The hand appears to take this as some sort of challenge and reaffirms its grip giving sharp tugs down and forward until Shane starts to worry it will break his leg in half.
He needs to make an executive decision to either risk it happening or fall to the floor and face whatever thing is fucking with him. He chooses the latter.
Shane scrambles for purchase on the wooden floor, scraping his fingers and getting barbs underneath his nails in the process. The hand keeps pulling him, this time successfully bringing him underneath the bed, so Shane closes his eyes going limp against the onslaught, finally sort of giving up. Another hand joins the first as they scramble to pull his full body further in. They stop suddenly at his wrists clamping them together against his chest.
Shane doesn’t know what to think, focusing only on the two sets of ragged breaths that fill the tiny space. He musters whatever courage he has and takes a chance, opening his eyes to come face to face with that fucking mask, barely two inches away from his nose.
He tries to stay very still, waiting with bated breath for something to happen, but soon it becomes clear that nothing will. His assailant is apparently just as panicky as he is. Shane can see his chest heaving up and down as he struggles to get a breath in underneath the mask. His hands press and bruise Shane’s wrists as if they would be wringing themselves if there was nothing in between them.
Shane takes a deep breath, swallowing against his dry throat.
“Ryan?” he says tentatively.
The hands stop and Ryan goes rigidly still, apparently not even breathing. This makes Shane tense as well and he flinches, expecting an attack.
That never comes.
“Shaney boy!” Ryan exclaims giddy “You remember me!”
He then proceeds to giggle in a stupid high-pitched tone that puts Mickey Mouse to shame.
Shane stopped counting after that.
This night Shane was finally able to fall asleep after a week of living with his parents, only to be rudely awoken by stomping on the floor above. The thing is: Shane’s house is old. Easily more than a century of existence, and every single noise reverberates through the whole thing. When he was young he and his brother liked jumping up and down and pretending that the entire building would fall on their heads just to rile his parents up.
Jokes on him, now he’s the one riled up. He fumbles beside the pillow in search of his phone that glares the fact that is 3 fucking am as soon as Shane manages to light it up. Oh my god, what the fuck is Scott doing in the attic at three in the morning? He’s about to go see what is up when his brother’s distinct snores reach his ears from the room next door.
Maybe it’s his dad then? Shane lets out a soft sleepy groan as he leans on his elbows and the stomping abruptly stops. For some reason, he stops and freezes too. Holding his breath, waiting for something to happen. His eyes sweep across the room and he sees Ryan holding himself deathly still on the rocking chair.
When he feels Shane’s gaze, a single finger lifts up to lay across the mask’s lips, begging Shane to be quiet. He notices faintly that the finger trembles lightly.
Shane lays back down carefully, and against all odds is soon fast asleep.
His parents claim they heard nothing last night, as does Scott, but his brother accompanies the denial with worried looks that Shane notes have become more frequent as of late. Still, he tells himself it sort of makes sense for him to be the only one to have heard it since the attic only occupies Shane’s portion of the top floor. He’s definetly not hearing things.
Who’s he fooling, Shane probably is hearing things. If someone saw Ryan they would have definetly brought him up by now, and it doesn’t help that Ryan was his imaginary friend. God, he’ll have to call a psychiatrist, doesn’t he? Shane rubs his hands across his face in slight despair before opening the door to his bedroom.
As it’s become usual, Ryan is already in there, this time facing the corner of the bedroom with his mask on the back of his head, muttering lowly to himself. It freaked Shane the fuck out at the start, but it is a testament to how many times he finds Ryan in odd places, that now he barely flinches.
“Had any luck?”
Shane shakes his head even though Ryan can’t see it “Nobody heard anything”
“Huh. Weird” Ryan rubs his mask’s chin in thought, using his arms just as if they were in front of his body. Shane suppresses a shiver at the unseemly sight.
“Are you sure you heard them too? Are you sure they were...real?” he chokes out the last word despite himself, putting his doubts almost on display.
“Of course. As real as you and me” Ryan answers simply, and as Shane expected, it only works to make his worries worsen.
He never hoped to be questioning reality on this fine Tuesday, and yet here he is. Shane always told himself that if he saw a ghost, if he had any concrete proof of the paranormal, he would believe it, but does this even classify as paranormal? He has no idea what Ryan’s deal even is.
His conflict must show because soon Ryan asks “Hey, what’s with the sour face? If we hear it again I can investigate for you if you want” Shane lifts his head to see slight trepidation in Ryan’s stance, but at least he has moved from the corner and his mask is back in its rightful place “If you go with me we can pretend we’re part of Scooby-Doo” he adds cheerfully.
This somehow just worsens his predicament. How do you tell someone that you are doubting they are real? Isn’t this trepidation to hurt Ryan’s feelings already proof enough that he thinks he’s a real person with real emotions? Should he say something?
“What?” Ryan asks again, but quickly loses his patience as Shane continues to fail to answer “ Tell me ”
“I’m worried you’re not real” Shane blurts quickly in one breath.
“What? No, no, Shane, no! Here, look” all tension ebbs away and panic takes its place as Ryan moves quickly behind Shane and drags him in front of the mirror, tucking himself under Shane’s arm, raising his hands to squish his cheeks.
“See? I’m real” Shane shakes his head, not sure exactly what he is supposed to be seeing.
“No one else can see you” he says instead.
“No one else can see you either, but I’m not here being unreasonable” he snaps and Shane can barely try to unpack what the fuck does that mean, before Ryan’s hands are squishing and pulling at his face, nails digging uncomfortably into his skin. “See? I’m real” he keeps repeating, desperation bleeding into his voice more each time.
Somehow one of Ryan’s fingers finds its way into Shane’s mouth as it’s being stretched into a clown’s grin, and for some reason that entirely escapes Shane himself, he decides to give it an experimental lick.
He barely feels Ryan still behind him, much too occupied tasting fresh dirt, and oddly enough, wet grass. This is somehow what does it, what convinces Shane to accept the reality of the situation. Yes, this is somehow an actual person who has a finger inside his mouth.
“Yeah, ok. You are real” he says around the digit and gives it another lick for good measure.
Shane has the privilege to see it all unfold in the mirror, Ryan’s body slowly comes back into action as he relaxes and giggles that high-pitched stupid fucking laugh of his and finally, shoves his wet finger in Shane’s ear.
When the stomping starts again Ryan gets up from the chair and closes the door gently behind himself without a word. Shane closes his eyes and pays attention. Even though the wooden floors amplify every sound, he doesn’t hear a creak from Ryan’s footfalls, only the noise of whatever is walking around in the attic constantly almost bringing the house down.
After a while, he hears the door open and turns around on the bed to direct inquisitive eyes towards Ryan’s form. His friend just carefully walks to him and lays his palm over Shane’s eyes.
“Sleep. We’ll talk in the morning”
Despite the protest on the tip of his tongue, Shane does just that. The last thing he remembers is Ryan’s trembling hand touching his face.
The morning comes when Shane is busy brushing his teeth. He leans down to spit in the sink, and when he comes back up, Ryan’s soulless mask is staring at him in the mirror.
Shane jumps so hard he hits his toothbrush in his eye and almost smacks his friend in the process. All the while Ryan wheezes uncontrollably, holding onto Shane’s shoulder for support as he tries to rinse the foam from his eyes.
“You gotta stop doing that” he says sourly once he’s somewhat recovered.
“And miss this look in your face? Never.”
He’s shooing Ryan away from the bathroom so he can go down get breakfast when he remembers the night before “Did you find anything? Yesterday?”
All playfulness leaves Ryan and he starts wringing his hands at the top of the stairs. Instinctively Shane mirrors his posture, stilling as well.
“Shane, there’s a man in your attic. A very bad man”
When they reach the kitchen Scott is already there, a cup of coffee at his elbow and a pile of waffles in front of him.
“Mornin’” Shane pulls a chair to his brother’s left at the small round table, determined to put the plan he formulated on the way here into action.
Scott merely makes a noise of accent and focuses on his waffles, not noticing the movement of the kitchen towel as Ryan sits to his right. Shane takes a moment to watch his friend while he pours himself coffee. He grabs a plate, cluttery, lays a napkin on his lap, and proceeds to pretend to eat imaginary breakfast as if they were kids playing house.
“Sleep well?” Scott cuts into another waffle, interrupting Shane’s musings, and he can appreciate the attempt at small talk for once, as it gives him the perfect opening.
He shakes his head “Not really, the attic thing is still keeping me up” he plops a waffle on his plate and focus on pouring syrup over it, attempting to appear nonchalant “Wanna go have a look at it with me after we finish?”
From the corner of his eye, he sees Ryan peering at him curiously as he dabs his mask with the napkin delicately, but his brother is already nodding his accent “Sure” he answers simply.
Shane thumbs his fork anxiously as he hesitates for a moment “Maybe you should bring your gun.”
This gives his brother pause and his cluttery clinks on the plate as he lowers it down “Why? What do you think is there?”
“Dunno” he shrugs “Maybe a very large rat, by the noise it’s making” Shane lies.
“You want me to shoot a rat” Scott deadpans.
Shane shrugs again “Maybe? If it attacks us?”
His brother pinches the bridge of his nose, looking like he’s trying to stave off an impending headache. Shane decides to change tactics “Please?” he pleads making the hugest doe eyes.
After a beat of intense sibling staring, Scott groans his affirmative, and Shane has the pleasure of seeing his brother start when Ryan suddenly pushes his chair back.
They climb the stairs to the attic in a single file, with Ryan leading the way and Shane following closely behind with Scott at his back. Ryan turns the knob and lets the door swing wide open, but makes no move to step inside.
“There’s no way I’m going in there first” he says in a pleading voice, looking up at him.
Shane rolls his eyes fondly but lingers in the doorway too. From what he can see of the attic, is safe to say it is empty, but still. What if the man is hiding? What if it is a ghost? At this point, Shane is open to anything.
“Are we going in?” Scott interrupts his thoughts. He can’t see Ryan, so he has no idea of what is keeping Shane from just getting to it. When he fails to move forward, or answer him at all, his brother huffs and shoulders past him, Shane and Ryan scrambling to follow behind.
“Huh. Mom really cleared it up in here”
Shane nods in confirmation as he looks around. He expected the room to at least have some furniture from their childhood bedrooms, yet, the only items present are some tools hanging from the right wall, and a single chair sitting underneath the window “There isn’t even a place something could be hiding in”
“Yeah man, I think your rat theory is a bust” Scott claps him in the shoulder “Will you be fine without me?”
He nods absentmindedly, knowing very well that he wasn’t thinking about the rat at all when he made that comment. He looks for Ryan to gauge his reaction, only to find him standing in front of the tool wall, pointing to a place Shane knows an ax used to be in.
That night Shane wakes up to Ryan shaking his shoulder forcefully. He blinks his eyes rapidly, his brain struggling to get back online.
“Shane, wake up” Ryan whispers, the shaking getting more frantic.
“M’wake…” he mumbles only to be shushed harshly.
“Be quiet!” he starts tugging Shane’s arm down “Come on, get under the bed!”
Shane does a half attempt at a protest but rolls down with a soft thud. On his way to the floor, he notes absently that someone covered his mirror with a dishtowel. Uh. Weird. Once Ryan’s satisfied with his compliance, he gets under the bed too and hugs Shane from behind, bringing up a hand to cover his mouth.
This is the point where Shane’s brain decides to cooperate and realize there’s something very wrong. He feels Ryan’s body trembling from where his chest is pressed against Shane’s back to the tips of his fingers. There’s also the way Ryan is curled up around him as if he could bodily hide him, or protect him from harm. He opens his mouth to ask what is happening, but Ryan must have felt it move and interrupts him before he can say anything.
“Not a peep” he whispers into Shane’s ear and presses tighter.
Not a moment too soon. Shane first hears the door of the attic slam upstairs and starts listening. Then heavy footsteps, a pause, and the unmistakable sound of his doorknob turning and the hinges groaning as it opens. Shane’s eyes widen as the horror of what is happening catches up to him. Ryan’s tremors only get worse and he can barely keep his hand still on Shane’s mouth.
The footsteps contour the bed, the wooden floor protesting about the weight loudly, and come to stop right in front of Shane’s head. From underneath the duvet, he sees the toes of a pair of combat boots and the gleaming curved tip of an ax. His parent’s ax. The one he used to cut firewood with during god knows how many years. Coming here to betray him, in the hands of a killer.
Shane is waiting for the man to lift the duvet and laugh at his face. This is how he dies, killed by a madman with an ax, he can only hope Ryan gets out of this mess. There’s no hope a childish thing like hiding under his bed can save a fully grown, six-foot-tall, adult. But against all odds, he hears footsteps again, moving away from him.
As soon as the killer has presumably left his bedroom, Ryan shoves him towards the headboard, where the nightstand might offer a modicum of protection. He puts Shane’s back against the wall, forcing him into a fetal position as Ryan presses Shane’s knees into his belly with his hips, and tucks Shane’s head into his neck, covering him more effectively.
The footsteps continue measured until Shane hears the bathroom door being wrenched open and slammed shut, then they come back quickly to his bedroom, and light floods around Ryan as the duvet is pulled off the bed. He presses harder around him, covering every inch of his body, and Shane can feel his adam’s apple bobbing when Ryan swallows reflexively.
There are a few seconds of torturous silence, where time seemed to be still, then Shane hears the noise of cloth slapping against wood from when the mirror is uncovered, followed by the sound of his door closing. He follows the footsteps down until he hears the front door opening and closing.
Only then he relaxes a bit, but neither he nor Ryan move from their position, or get any sleep that night.
They are definetly in a pickle. And they need a plan, fast.
When people see Shane’s ever-present calm exterior they assume he doesn’t feel fear. That’s just not true. He has a shit reaction time and when the moment to feel fear comes, his brain has already processed it, nothing showing in his exterior. But Shane does get scared very often. And he’s scared shitless right now.
But waiting around to die is simply not an option, so he looks for Ryan, and finds him reading a Goosebumps novel at the kitchen table.
He pulls a chair and holds his hands together, waiting. Ryan gets very skittish when he thinks Shane will ask difficult questions, and downright anxious when Shane does ask them. Ryan is just a very fearful being. Anything about his past is completely off-limits and he had a panic attack when Shane asked about it. He explained through lungfuls of air that his memory is all jumbled and that one day he just woke up with the knowledge that he had to find Shane. He didn’t ask again after that.
Soon it becomes apparent that Ryan will not divulge any information on his own, though he keeps sneaking glances at Shane, waiting for him to do something.
“So,” he clears his throat “How did you know what to do last night?”
Surprisingly, Ryan closes his book and gives Shane his undivided attention “I hear him mumbling. Sometimes”
This sends a shiver down Shane’s spine, and he forces the next words out “And what does he say?”
Ryan shakes his head “Not much, but I managed to gather up a few things” He pulls out a folded-up piece of paper from his shirt pocket and unfolds it in front of Shane, who reads it and arches an eyebrow at him. Ryan just shrugs “I told you I was going to investigate”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I didn’t want to scare you” he starts wringing his hands “I thought I could deal with it myself, before…”
Before it became too much, before you almost got killed, goes the unspoken words. Shane sighs.
“I couldn’t, I was too afraid. I couldn't, I tried.."
"Hey. Ry" Shane reaches for his hand before his nails leave crescent marks on his skin and stares intensely at the mask’s eyes "You don't have to deal with this by yourself. We are ghoul brothers, we are in this together”
“Ghoul brothers?” Ryan still sounds worried, but there’s some amusement bleeding into it.
“Yeah, and that’s a bond that lasts forever” Shane smiles and Ryan lets out a stupid giggle.
“That’s not gonna be too long if you die. We need a plan.”
Ryan’s list starts with “
Case file #1 -
Attic
Ax
Man
(?) Murderer.
” and goes as follows:
1- There is a man in Shane’s attic.
2 - He will leave the attic if he hears any noise.
3 - He has the key to the front door, but only comes in at night and always leaves in the morning.
4 - He has Shane’s ax! Shit!
5 - He wants to kill them. Oh god. But he will only do it when they are all in bed.
6 - Apparently he is waiting for a specific date. Unclear what he will do on such a date, but when it arrives the mirrors must be covered before anything happens.
New addition!: Something about the full moon? Needs further investigation.
The list is written with different markers as if Ryan added to it with whatever tool he found through the course of several days. Shane sighs. At least it clears up some of Ryan’s strange behavior at night.
There’s just one thing bugging Shane “How come my parents, or Scott for that matter, didn’t make the ax man come down? They didn’t know to be quiet.”
“Hum” Ryan shifts uneasily “I might have put them to deep sleep”
“What?”
“I don’t know!” he exclaims “I make people sleepy! I did it to you a few times too!”
Shane suddenly remembers that at all the times Ryan told him to, he immediately fell asleep, no matter how much insomnia.
“That’s… actually pretty cool” And then an idea strikes him “Have you tried putting the killer to sleep?” there is no accusation in Shane’s tone, only curiosity, but Ryan slumps on the table anyway.
“Yeah… I couldn’t. It doesn’t work when I’m scared” and the fact that Ryan is always scared goes unspoken.
“Hey buddy, it’s ok” Shane rubs between his shoulder blades “We’ll work it out. Did you figure the moon thing?”
“Oh! Maybe?” Ryan points to the calendar hanging on the kitchen wall, which helpfully comes with the moon phases “The full moon is on the 20th, and yesterday was the start of the waxing phase. I think he is preparing for something during the full, but I don’t really know what. I think he wanted to be… done. By then.
Shane nods and worries his lips “So he will probably try again tonight”
Ryan shakes his head “I think he will wait for the full” Shane starts to protest but he continues “The first night he came in was the new moon. Why wait until it hit waxing to do anything? These dates must be important somehow. He’s gonna attack on the full”
Shane taps his fingers anxiously but finally nods. That leaves them a week to prepare, but still, he can’t help but ask “What if he tries again before that?”
“I’ll hide you again” Ryan says simply “He always starts in your bedroom, and he didn’t check the closet last time. We might be safe there”
He relaxes, glad to have some plan of action “We really should call the police”
“I- I tried one night. The operator couldn’t hear me”
“Oh”
“Yeah”
“I’ll do it then”
“No!” Ryan turns panicky eyes to him “He’ll hear you! And he will come down, or he’ll leave. Your family never hears anything. Either way, the police will think you are crazy” Shane rubs the bridge of his nose in exasperation “We need to catch him in flagrante delito ” Ryan continues.
“The full moon then.”
“Yes.”
Shane has been a very foolish man when he thought he could get a single wink of sleep tonight. He never cared for little taps and creaks in the night. It was always the wind, or the wood creaking, but tonight they are someone shifting in a chair, an ax being sharpened. Steps coming downstairs. The door opens and he jumps three feet in the air.
“Sorry” Ryan whispers and walks towards him “Go to sleep, big guy”
He catches his wrist before Ryan can lay his hand over Shane’s eyes “Get in with me”
“You sure?” he looks cautious, but in the way you would when approaching a very small animal.
Shane just nods and scoots over a bit, almost falling over the narrow bed. Ryan toes off his shoes and curls around him immediately, tucking Shane’s head into his shoulder and caressing his hair.
“Go to sleep” he says, and Shane does.
“I need your help”
Grandpa hums and motions for Shane to continue “I need you to invite mom, dad, and Scott over to sleep here on the 20th”
This warrants an eyebrow lift in Shane’s direction “And why won’t you be among them?”
Shane knew the question was coming and he prepared for it, the lie coming easily to his lips “I’m having a date over”
“Oh?”
He nods and plows through the slight embarrassment, never the type to share his love life even if it is a fake one “They don’t really do well with crowds, and I wanted to introduce them slowly to the family”
His grandpa hums again and stays silent for what feels like a long time, then he smiles at Shane “Very well. You know your brother won’t like that”.
“What do you mean you’re not coming to grandpa’s sleepover?”
His brother is incensed, going on about ‘grandpa’s fragile state’ at this time, and Shane sighs for the thousandth time “I already told you! I have a business zoom meeting”
“In the middle of the night!?”
“Yes! 11 pm in fact. I told you! You do know how time zones work right?” he adds bitingly.
Scott rubs his hands over his face trying to calm down “And you told grandpa?”
“Yes”
“And you’ll make it up to him?”
“YES!” Shane is slowly losing patience over this. Scott is his brother, not mom, for god’s sake.
He throws Shane a dirty look, but acquiesces “Ok, then.”
Ryan is running through the aisle with a pumpkin hat over his head and Shane can only thank god for Halloween decorations. He strolls at a more sedate pace behind him until they reach what they came here for.
“You want one of these right?” Ryan turns toward him having exchanged the pumpkin for a Michael Myers mask.
Shane chuckles amused “Yeah, grab four of them” he pulls the mask off his friend and laughs himself silly over the fact that there’s another mask underneath, even though he knew all along it would be there.
Ryan just shoots him what Shane knows is a weirded look, but shrugs, and soon his attention is required somewhere else “Let’s see if we can find those lollipops that turn your tongue blue!” his joy is infectious and Shane runs from him through the whole store while Ryan chases him with a plastic knife.
On the evening of the 19th of October Shane decides to let doubt consume him for a little bit. The window above his bed lets in streaks of sunset, a rare sight this time of year, so he and Ryan lay in its glow. Ryan is on his side reading Edgar Alan Poe, and Shane is just reading his friend. The weird shape of his body, how careful fingers turn the pages, and how soft his hair always looks.
Tonight is either his last night of peace before the storm or his last night ever. Shane likes to think there’s a fifty percent chance he will survive, either he does or doesn’t, but he knows that in reality, the percentage is much lower. They’ve reached a point where they’ve prepared every step of their plan, every chess piece is in its correct position, and there’s nothing left to do now but wait.
Shane wonders if he has a dying wish. If he should spend tomorrow any differently than he has these past days. If he wants to see or do something he hasn’t ever done. If he wants to know something he didn’t learn yet.
Of course, the answer to these questions is yes, but there’s little he can do on such short notice. Actually… there’s one thing.
“Ry, since this is my last night on earth-”
“This is not your last night” Ryan interrupts him sharply without taking his eyes from the book “You are not dying Shane”
“Since this is my last night on earth” he starts again unfazed “Would you grant a dying man his final wish?”
Ryan drops the book to turn to him suspiciously “What do you want?”
“Now, a small disclaimer that you can totally refuse” Shane gives him a meaningful look.
“Out with it, legs”
“I want to see your face”
Silence, so thick you could hear a pin drop, envelops them. Shane doesn’t even hear Ryan breathe until it comes panicky rushing out of him all at once “Oh. Shane, I’m- I’m not… You’ll get scared. And- and- you’ll tell me to get out, cause I’m afuckingfreak-”
“Hey, no! Ryan” Shane makes a wild grab at Ryan’s hands “Calm down man, I’m not leaving you”
Ryan’s breath slowly returns to normal and Shane moves his hand to his neck, rubbing soothing circles with his thumb.
“My face is not normal” he says at last in a small voice.
“Ry…” Shane’s heart breaks a little, but he keeps pushing “I don’t care about that. I want to see it because it’s yours, and I want to know you ”
This seems to give Ryan some pause, but still, he doesn’t say anything in return, so Shane prods “Well, do you have an eye?”
“Yes” he answers wearily.
“And a nose?” Ryan nods “A mouth?”
“... Yes.” Oh. So he’s insecure about his mouth.
Shane doesn’t say anything after that and just keeps petting Ryan’s neck.
“Ok. You can look.” Ryan tries and utterly fails to sound resolute, but doesn’t make any move to remove his mask. After a few moments, Shane realizes he’s waiting for him to do it.
He slides his fingers under the edge and lifts it up with a caress to Ryan’s cheek. His eyes are brown and doe-like, staring fearfully at Shane, his nose has a slight downward curve, and he has an endearing mouth.
“So pretty…” Shane moves his hand to cup Ryan’s cheek and feels its warmth as he blushes and looks away.
Neither of them says anything for a while, but Ryan keeps anxiously worrying his lips.
“It’s something to do with your mouth, isn’t it?”
Ryan’s eyes are wide as dinner plates when they snap to his and he starts to pull away, but Shane keeps his hand on his cheek and keeps rubbing soothing circles as if holding something precious. After a while, Ryan nods.
“Want me to open your mouth for you?” Ryan nods again.
Shane’s thumb moves to rest against Ryan’s plump lower lip, and when they open the tiniest fraction, it slides in to feel his teeth. Oh.
Shane lifts Ryan’s upper lip to reveal a row of sharp, needle-like, serrated teeth. Like a snake’s, like Pennywise’s, like Venom’s. Honestly, that’s a kinda overused trope, now that Shane thinks about it. Only Ryan’s are perfectly aligned and pearly whites, and Shane tells him so.
“My dad was dentist” Ryan answers simply, and Shane can’t help it, he falls into a heap of giggles at the absurdity.
When he recovers Ryan is giving him the most charming smile. Anyone could be terrifying smiling with teeth like that, but Ryan only seems to manage adorable. Shane has little option but to kiss him.
Their teeth knock at first, Ryan wasn’t ready and he was still smiling, but once he grasps Shane’s intention they try again, making sure their lips meet first. Then Shane slides his tongue carefully in, but when they come up for air, he still tastes blood.
What a cruel world, Shane wonders as he kisses Ryan’s pulse, that allows him to gain something so precious only to have it wrenched from him the very next day.
They make out in the dying sun, praying the twilight could last forever.
Now it’s time for it to start, the game of cat and mouse.
Shane moved inside the kitchen pantry even before the murderer came down to put dishtowels over the mirrors. They stuffed Michael Myers masks and carefully placed them over pillows, but they can only stand in for a sleeping person’s body from so many feet away after all, and it won’t be long before the killer notices something is amiss. He and Ryan are sitting close together in the cramped space, knees up to their chins, listening to every noise, until it finally begins.
A distant door opens and closes gently, and quiet footsteps come down a set of stairs. Another door opens. Footsteps, a pause. Bed sheets rustling. Quicker, heavier footsteps, as the man notices their ruse. Another door opens more forcefully and the knob knocks against the wall with a bang.
Shane’s breaths are coming quicker and Ryan reaches for his hand in the dark, griping it firmly, not in a better state himself. The killer comes down the stairs that lead to the ground floor and now is their time to move. As the man opens the door to the last bedroom, Ryan and Shane sneak quickly and quietly up the stairs. Doing a sharp turn to the right, Shane presses play in Scott’s CD player before running to his own closet, Ryan hot in his heels.
His brother always has the same god-awful ‘trash metal mix’ in there, that is just loud enough to cover their footsteps, serve as a red herring and, hopefully, mask Shane’s voice as he calls the police. They settle in the farthest corner of the closet, behind the largest suitcase Shane owns, with Ryan’s body covering him just like he did under the bed.
Shane is reaching for his phone inside his pocket when they hear footsteps outside the closet door. What? How did the man get here so fast? Did he not fall for the racket inside the other room? Fuck. How didn’t they hear him coming? Just like last time, Ryan tucks Shane’s face against his neck and they stay very still.
The only sound reaching Shane is a stupidly long guitar solo and Ryan’s breath in his ear. Then the unmistakable horrifying sound of the closet doorknob turning starts. Under his cheek, he feels Ryan’s heart almost have an attack, and wills his own to be still, less the killer hears it too.
Light floods the small space from what Shane can see and he holds his breath while Ryan holds him tighter, hiding every inch of him. It worked once, it will work again. They are safe.
Then a low, cruel chuckle starts, sounding dumb and terrifying all at once, making a chill run down Shane’s spine. This is it. The murderer saw Shane hiding in a closet like a child and is laughing in his face.
He waits for an ax to come down at his head, but to his surprise, Ryan is the one who is yanked back.
Ryan screams as the killer drags him across the floor by the hair. He doesn’t stop at the bedroom and keeps hauling him towards somewhere else in the house, completely ignoring Shane.
He is in a state of shock, his heart hammering forcefully, but Shane needs to do something. Oh my god, how could the killer see Ryan? What can Shane do? He needs to go after him. And then do what? No, he needs to call the police! They are their only hope of maybe coming out of this alive. He reaches for his pocket with trembling hands to grab his phone. His phone. Where the fuck is his phone. Panic grips him as he pats his pockets frantically to no use. Could he have left it downstairs? Fuck! Shane takes a breath. He’ll go and get it. Either way, the kitchen has a landline.
Ryan’s screams follow him all the way downstairs and Shane struggles to focus. No, he needs to do this, he needs to call the cops. The sound is a constant backdrop as Shane localizes the landline in the space between the cabinets and the sink, but when he touches the telephone, the noise abruptly stops.
Shane almost drops it in worry but tries to remain calm. He presses 911. It’s ok, Ryan is not dead, he just passed out. Ryan just passed out.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
Shane breathes hard “Hi, there’s a man in myhou-”
He is suddenly pulled back by a hand on his shoulder and falls into a heap on the floor, the phone hanging uselessly by its cord. He scrambles back away from the killer, who rifles through his kitchen’s drawers with all the patience in the world. Shane is almost to the door when the murderer turns his attention back to him, this time with two serrated kitchen knives held loosely in one hand.
Shane redoubles his efforts to get away, trying to get up, but being stopped by a boot on his back, pressing down and knocking the air from him. The killer grabs one of Shane’s hands and pins it above his head, all the while Shane repeatedly kicks him, to no effect. Then, grinning, the man twirls one of the knives before stabbing Shane’s hand.
The old wood floor gives under the blade and Shane screams as it gets in his flesh to the hilt, effectively sticking him in place. He brings his free hand to try to dislodge the knife, but it too is grabbed by the man and receives the same treatment. Shane keeps struggling, tears blurring his vision, but not enough that he can’t make out the killer lifting up the ax.
Shit. This is how Shane dies, like a butterfly encased on his kitchen floor.
Just when the weapon is coming down, a small figure tackles the man, making him fall beside Shane, and he has a front-row seat to the sight of Ryan’s teeth sinking into the killer’s neck and ripping a chunk out. The man, somehow yet still alive, manages to hit Ryan with the sharp end of the ax, but Ryan is undeterred, sinking his teeth again, and not stopping until the man’s head is decapitated.
Ryan rights himself to sit on his knees, reaches behind his back, and unlodges the ax, throwing it into the killer’s face.
“You are just a man, and men die” he says with contempt, and Shane must be a hundred degrees of fucked up because he can only think of how beautiful and alive Ryan looks with blood staining his clothes and running down his chin.
Shane probably blacked out for a bit, because Ryan suddenly is on top of him, frantically touching his cheeks.
“Sh- Shane, Shane, please wake up, please wake up”
“M’ awake” he mumbles, disoriented.
“Oh, thank god. I’m gonna get you out of this, just hang on” he moves to free his hands, but Shane panics, mind working fast now that they are away from imminent danger.
“No, no, no! Ryan stop !”
Ryan looks like he was slapped, and he hovers his trembling hands over Shane’s face, uncertain if he’s allowed to touch. Shane gives him an apologetic look and tries to nuzzle them in comfort, barely being able to touch Ryan’s finger with the tip of his nose. This seems to be enough because he returns his hand to Shane’s cheek.
“The police Ryan. Call the police”
“But-”
“Don’t disturb the crime scene, Ryan. Call the police” understanding floods Ryan’s eyes, but he still seems hesitant.
“I don’t know if I can-”
“You can. I already dialed”
Ryan still seems unsure but moves to where the telephone hangs limp.
“Hello?” his eyes widen in surprise “Yes. I would like to report a murder”
Shane lays there looking like a lanky midwesterner Jesus until the cops have the good grace to kick the door open, but he can’t complain too much, as they spend the time waiting with Ryan petting his hair and peppering his face with kisses, all the while Shane complains about the pain in his hands. Ryan tenses when they enter, but it soon becomes clear that still no one can see him, and he moves to the corner, getting out of the way.
At least two officers vomit when they see what is left of the killer, and one almost shoots Shane in surprise when they realize he is still alive. But soon someone gets him wrapped in a shock blanket and starts asking questions. There is a little bit of confusion when he tells them that who attacked him was actually the pile of pulp at their side.
“And can you describe who killed your assailant, Mr. Madej?”
Shane tries to reign in a small quirk on his lips, as he stares straight at Ryan, and gives the officer an accurate description of his boyfriend.
All the while Ryan laughs that stupid high-pitched fucking giggle of his.