HOOOOOOOO NUH GAW FORD BUILT STAN A COFFIN FROM THE SCRAPPED STAN O' WAR
And lemme tell ya something that probably taxed Ford's mental fortitude to its limit. A body not discovered for a week will ROT. And more than that, it will STAIN. When Stan's body was recovered from the Stan O War, it must have been unsalvageable for an open-casket funeral due to the inevitable decay and exposure to the elements.
I imagine Ford showing up to the Stan O' War, toolbox in hand, ready to give his brother a gift and a promise all in one, only to be met with the lingering sick-sweet scent of decay, and a damning yellow stain in the vague shape of a body lying on the floor. Blackened blood still clings to the floorboards like dried paint and, for the first time since Stan's return, Ford is truly hit with the weight of what has happened and what he must now do.
So with a roll of his shoulders, he jams a crowbar into the planks of the floor - made soft by his brother's leaking corpse - and starts pulling up the boards.
ONE THOUSAND YEARS OF EVIL SICKO CHEERING!!!!!!!! YOU GOT IT IN ONE THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I WAS IMPLYING!!!! Can I talk about the Stan'O'War? Because I'm dying to talk about the Stan'O'War. Because, in a certain sense, you're right on the money. Dead bodies in a humid environment do not last very long at all. The inside of that boat? Oh, baby, that's ruined. Irreparably so. But, wait-- Filbrick was called to the coroner's office to identify it. And the corpse he described was very… in-tact. Not rotted. That's weird. It took a week to find the body, and in late March on the beach? It should be mid-putrefaction.
As for what Ford found when he went to build his brother a coffin, well. I can tell you what happened. Enjoy~! I've been cooking this for DAYS.
Statio Bene Fida Carinis
The waves lapped at the shore's edge with solemnity, drawn back with the low tide as if to respect Stanford's trespass upon the Stan O' War. It was late in the day, with the sun's last sliver just about to duck under the sea. Heat hung heavy on his brow, not yet dissipated by the evening winds; he would rather have come out just before dawn, when the night had fully whisked away the muggy summer air and it didn't feel so thick to breathe, but then Stanley would…
He put the thought out of his mind for a moment. Stanley was awake, either at home or just about to make his nightly rounds. He would not be in the boat. Stanford repeated this to himself within his mind as he approached it, the old yellow police tape twisting itself in the breeze or trapped by the garbage-filled sand underfoot. Apparently, if there was a murder on an abandoned children's refurbishment project, they didn't just tow it away. No, it sat there on the beach with the rest of the trash, forgotten and discarded. He hefted his toolbox to shift his grip and steeled himself for whatever may lay inside of it.
He'd taken biology. More than that, he'd seen enough drowned rats and choked seagulls to know what the humidity and heat would do to a cadaver left unattended on the beach for a week. After rigor mortis, body decomposition would set in. Fat would melt and muscles would degrade. Fluids would leech out of the skin wherever pressure was the greatest. The wood would definitely be stained. But that was ok. He could deal with that. It had been four months since the police had found-- well, since the science fair. Everything should be long-since-dried. It would be a little gruesome, a little macabre, but it would all be old. Like a bad memory.
That's what he told himself as he set the toolbox on the deck and pulled himself up over the sloop's railing. He could pull up the old boards, the ones Stanley had laid on, and he could make something useful with them. He could scrub the surface and sand it and lacquer and seal it, and he could take that awful night and the days that followed and all the lonely months between the spring and the summer and toss them all out, and his brother would have a better place to spend his mornings than this cruel joke of a rig. Stanford opened the companionway to the below-deck, pulling the double-doors open with the expectation that inside would be musty and yellowed and gross, but dry and workable.
The smell of iron, wet and fresh and drowning, hit him like a bus. The deck below his feet thumped hollowly as he tripped backwards over his toolbox with a heaving gag. The smell-- that smell choked him out. It wasn't like a dead body, all fetid and rotting. No, it was fresh. It was too fresh, like something had been torn asunder just inside, just moments ago. Like it was Stanley inside, bleeding out all over again. Stanford threw his palm over his lips and heaved again, his eyes watering. Rolling over to his hands and knees, he hung his head low and tried to breathe through his mouth. The scent wasn't nearly as strong here, with the open air around him. He took a moment to collect himself before he struggled to his feet on a bruised ankle, and turned.
He couldn't see below-deck. The bow of the ship faced the shores of the bay, which meant none of the fading westward light of the evening to help him. Knowing this, there was a flashlight he'd brought that sat in the toolbox. The overturned toolbox, with its contents spilled out on the deck in a huge mess. Stanford frowned, looking around until he spied it teetering on the edge of the first step, about to plunge into the bowels of the ship. He limped forward, curled his fingers on it, and pointed the bulb towards the darkness.
"You can face it. Whatever is in there is just… a manifestation of Stanley's psychic residue. Yes. If this is where he returns when he's- he's resting, then it makes sense that it would have been affected by peri-mortem imprinting." He swallowed and breathed through his mouth. With trembling hands, his thumb found the switch. He was still hesitating. "It's just your brother. Whatever is in there won't hurt you."
He flipped the switch.
Bright white light split the shadows into fragments, throwing everything into stark contrast. The pale grain of the unvarnished wood seemed like white paper against the black shadows. On the lowest step, there was a bright red splatter, like a drop of paint, about the size of a quarter. Smaller drips and droplets spackled the wood around it. A smear on the wall near the gangrail, shaped like a handprint, pulled down, down, down with gracelessness alongside it. Deeper within, the starboard bench was bare of its cushion. The old thing they'd salvaged at a garage sale for a nickel, gussied up with some recycled curtains was on the floor instead, dragged there by clumsy hands.
There was a pool of blood on the floor, still spreading. Its color was rich and dark, and unlike all the other places painted over with red, this one held no smears. It was undisturbed, entirely, not even whatever chalk-mark outline the police would have laid down. Stanford could see its shape clearly, the way the ovoid shape had two pointed extrusions at either end. If he blinked, the imagined mirage of his brother overlaid it, his legs akimbo and his head on the blood-soaked cushion for the smallest measure of comfort.
"It's psychic residue," he whispered, unable to raise his voice any louder. The fear and dread crawled up his spine with icy nails. One foot stepped down, and the feelings nearly overwhelmed him-- foggy panic, disorientation, an aching despair that carved his stomach out from under his ribcage-- but he bit his lip and pressed on. "It's a snapshot. One highly emotional moment, carved into a particular place by a particular person's soul at the m-moment of expiration. None of this is real. Stanley is fine."
A second step down. A third, even harder, and then a fourth until both of his feet were at the bottom of the stairs and he was inside the ship and surrounded by the blood and the smell of death and the knowledge that this was where his brother died, this was his grave, that these unbearable feelings belonged to Stanley, that they were the last things he'd ever felt--
And, after all that, Stanford remembered the fact that he hadn't even bothered to bring the toolbox down so he could promptly get to work. Which meant that he'd have to subject himself to this same experience twice in a row. He let out a tight wheezing noise and clenched his empty fist until his fingers dug painfully into his skin. He could deal with it. Whatever he had to do, he could deal with it all.
The second trip coming down was not improved by his having seen everything. Knowing ahead of time seemed to make it worse, actually, twisting up his own feelings of sickly anticipation and stirring them together with the supernatural miasma that already seeped into every crack in the place. But he had a flashlight, and a bit of twine to lash it in place, and a toolbox full of things that he would use to peel back the sickly ache and return at least part of this place to some kind of normalcy.
He pulled out his notebook with its carefully-ordered blueprints and parameters, then grabbed a grease pencil and the measuring tape. That, at least, was simple enough. Etching black lines onto the wood to mark where to cut and what to take was soothing in its mundanity. Nothing but himself, the wood, and the numbers; everything else could be blocked out or, at least, tucked away to deal with later. There would be the boards for the outside of the vessel, which could be reclaimed from the companionway's roof and the sides of the sloop. The inside would need boards pulled from the center of the spectral activity, which meant dealing with the puddle, but that was-- he could manage that.
Stanford set the handsaw to the wood and dragged it along his marks, scoring the wood and pushing down how the sound of it set his teeth on edge and made his stomach twist itself into knots. The smell got worse, suddenly. He grit his teeth and pulled his shirt up over his nose, then started breathing through his mouth when that did nothing to help. Something began to drip, in single staccato sounds before it moved to a trickle, then a patter almost like rain. He was so focused on his work, though, that it didn't occur to him where the sound was coming from until he watched as rivulet of blood leeched into the grooves he'd been making and moved downward towards his hands.
He blinked, looking up, and realized that there was blood oozing from the boards overhead. The hull was full of it, a thin sanguine layer over most of the floor and pooling towards him like a living thing. Stanford, startled, stood up and scrambled back. His palms slapped wetly against the floor, spattering into something warm. It was in his shoes, on his jeans, leeching into the cuffs of his shirt. Pulled out of his work, the weight of the psychic imprint on the space crushed into his mind and his body. He was-- he couldn't breathe. Everything hurt. The red all around him was warm, almost boiling, like the summer sun; he was sure that he was full of nothing but ice. He was exhausted, but he had to move-- had to keep working, to prove-- prove something. That he wasn't-- he was--
Gulping for air, Stanford leaned forward and struggled to his feet. "Psychic residue. It's psychic residue--" he mumbled those two words under his breath, a reminder and a curse at the same time as he lurched to the stairs. His arms curled around the painful twinges in his stomach. Air. Fresh air, outside this tomb. He needed to breathe. He needed-- he--
He hit the deck outside, tripping halfway up the three whole steps and scrabbling to get out, to escape that feeling that he was going to die in there. Hot blood smeared off his skin and onto the wood below him as he crawled the last of the way out and laid there, gasping like a beached fish. His hands curled into fists, and he brought them up to his face to tear his glasses off and press his palms to his pricking eyes. The frames clattered off to destinations unknown.
"Damn it. Damn it all," he croaked out. Damn his weakness, damn the grave at his feet, and damn the sorry son-of-a-bitch who'd murdered his brother.
"Yeesh," his dead brother said to him. "You've been watching too many soaps." It was the kind of tone reserved for gawking at hysterical strangers, or when he'd gone too long neglecting his own human needs only to be pulled from the brink of stench by a slapped hand to the back pushing him to the bathroom. When Stanford pulled his shaking hands away from his face, he saw a pair of red sneakers. Above the sneakers, and a little blurrier, was a crouching Stanley.
"Hey, Sixer," he chirped. In his hands was a folded pair of glasses.
"Stanley." Stanford blinked dumbly. "You… what are you doing here? The sun isn't up yet."
His brother's eyes flicked above him, towards the companionway, and back down in a moment. His tone was light and carefree as he said, "Uhh, it's my grave, smart guy. Kind of hard not to notice when someone messes with it."
He chuckled. Stanford stared, slack-jawed, and didn't say anything. He wasn't even really sure that he could. His hands felt tacky, the drying blood getting oddly gummy the longer it sat on his skin. Stanley watched him back, tapping his hands idly on his knees before he seemed to grow too impatient.
"Sooo… what'cha doing?" he asked. "It's a little late in the day to be working on the old girl, isn't it?"
It was strange, going from the interior of the Stan O' War to this… calmness. Kind of like vertigo. Stanford felt unsteady, tilted at a forty-five degree angle to the world around him. (He was prone, which meant that technically his body was tilted at one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, but that only proved his point further.) Stanley was here, calm as a tide pool, acting happy as a clam while the world shook to pieces around Ford. It was sickly familiar, and he hated it.
"Don't--" he started, "Don't act like that."
Stanley blinked. Cocked his head to the side, like a confused dog. "Like what?"
"Like nothing's wrong," Stanford croaked.
"Nothing is wrong," Stanley argued. "You're just getting in your own head again."
"Stanley--" Ford started, but his brother held a hand out for him to take. Hesitating, he grasped it in his own. It was cool and dry, so unlike the consistently sweaty palms he remembered. Which was odd, actually, because his own were still filthy from all the work below deck. He looked down and squinted. His hands were clean. Before he could dwell on that, however, Stanley yanked him upright. A second tug had him scrambling to get his feet underneath himself so he wouldn't go sprawling all over the deck again, but his brother didn't let him go until he'd more or less gotten himself steady.
He swiped his glasses from Stanley's other hand and slid them roughly on.
"Don't treat me like I'm being hysterical. The Stan O' War is filled with blood-- your blood. It was dripping from the ceiling. I was soaked in it! I'm going to be upset about it! What I can't understand is why you aren't!"
"Woah, take it easy! I didn't mean anything by it, I just thought--" Stanley stuttered to a stop, shrinking a little bit at Ford's tight expression. "…Maybe it'll be easier to show you. C'mere."
When Stanley led him back down, Stanford was-- well, not quite surprised, as he'd had several theories running about his mind already, but-- startled to see the inside of the Stan O' War was… dry. The same salty air that was outside was also inside, and that strange and oppressive feeling no longer hung itself from his mind like an albatross. There was, perhaps, some mustiness that came with a dark, humid space being closed off to air circulation, but beyond both that and the black stain on the floor, it was as if nothing had happened.
"…Remarkable…" he breathed. Stanford set his hand against the unsealed floorboards. It was rough and dry. "It's all gone."
"See?" Stanley said with a bit of smugness, "Nothing's wrong."
"But there was so much of it. Why change now? Is it because you've returned to your… 'haunt'? 'Domicile'?"
"Tomb?" Stanley offered with a shrug, which made Stanford flinch and wince. "I dunno. Or-- okay, well, I kind of know. Y'know how when you get a chill up your spine, people say someone's walking on your future grave? It's like that. I swear, Six, if I'd've known it was you in here, I wouldn't've let it do all that. I didn't wanna scare you."
He paused, then amended, "Well, okay, I do like scaring you sometimes, but I wouldn't-- it wouldn't be like this. Not with the Stan O' War. Not where I… y'know."
He stuffed his hands into his pockets and scuffed at the floor with one sneaker. It sent a stray nail rolling off into the darkness beyond the flashlight's reach, and there was the soft clatter of metal-on-wood after a moment.
"It's… okay." Stanford took a deep breath and let it out. "The ship isn't doing it anymore, which means I should be fine to keep working."
He leaned down and picked up his hammer, then held it out for Stanley to take. "Would you like to join me? Maybe make the work a little faster?"
Stanley's usually-chipper expression fell at the sight. He pulled at the collar of his shirt and tried to smile, saying, "Y'know, I, uh. I'd love to, but…"
"But what?"
He didn't speak for a moment. "It's… hard to explain?"
"Well, can you try to?" Stanford asked. "I know you love skipping out on work, but this is our boat."
Stanley scowled, then crossed his arms. "Put your hands on the ground with your palms facing up."
Stanford blinked at him. "Is this necessary?"
"Just humor me?"
Stanford did so, casting a suspicious look upwards at the other.
"Now stand on 'em."
He complied with a sigh. "And what's this supposed to accomplish, exactly?"
"Try picking yourself up."
"That's absurd. I can't pick myself up like this-- I'd be using the very same force to lift myself up with my hands as I am pushing down on my feet."
"Exactly. That's why I can't help."
Stanford blinked, putting the pieces together. He slipped his hands out from under his sneakers and wiped the sand caked into his skin off on his jeans. "…Because your center of psychic force is anchored here. You can move around within its circumference, or to its limits, but you're unable to use that force to move itself. Fascinating."
"I would if I could, you know I would," Stanley said. "There's nothing I want more than to go back to working on her, but…"
"I understand. Don't worry about it," Stanford replied. "I'll take care of this for you. And then-- well, we can figure it out from there. You won't be trapped in Glass Shard Beach."
Stanley smiled back. It was a small, weak thing, but it was there, and that was enough.
Stanford returned to the work. It was easier than before for a number of reasons, not the least of which was Stanley's mere presence, even idling there without being able to help him. He'd forgotten how much tension there was in his body until his brother was there in his peripherals, chattering on about anything for which there were things to chatter. The wood groaned under his hands as he pried up each thin board and set it aside, checking his measurements to the background noise of Stanley's voice. He'd just gotten into a good groove of things when, from tired carelessness, the hand saw slipped and sliced into him.
He cursed under his breath and stuck his thumb in his mouth. When he pulled it back, there was a small cut in the flesh that trickled blood the moment he stopped putting pressure on it.
Stanley scrambled to his feet, his easy-going attitude abruptly shifting as he cut off mid-sentence. Stanford looked up at him; his brother was covering his mouth, pushing himself against the wall like he was trying to get away.
"Stanley?" he asked.
His brother shifted, sliding towards the stairs and speaking through his fingers.
"Y'know, Ford, I just remembered, actually, I got somewhere to be."
"Wha- somewhere to be? It's the dead of night."
"It's-- I got business."
"Business."
"Yeah, business! Ghost business. Business that ghosts get up to when the sun goes down. Hauntings and, uh, scaring old security guards, and-- and floating! Eerily!"
Stanford frowned. "Floating… eerily. Stanley, I'm sorry, but I'm not inclined to believe you."
"I'll be back before the sun's up," Stanley said, continuing to retreat. "I just-- I can't-- I gotta go."
With that, he turned tail and dashed up the stairs. Stanford scrambled up to his feet as well, trying to follow, but when he surfaced he found that his brother was nowhere in sight. He turned in a circle, looking down the empty beach and the boardwalk, but even the sand held no sign that Stanley had ever been near. Which was fine. Stanley wasn't technically alive anymore. Legally, sure. Functionally, yes. But logically, factually… he wasn't. So it stood to reason that he could do things that living people couldn't.
Like vanish into thin air without a trace.
Stanford stood there a moment more, the hand saw still in his grip, the small cut on his hand already scabbing over, and ignored the curling of his stomach as he went back below-deck to continue working. As the night wore on, despite his deconstruction and for once true to Stanley's word, the boat didn't enact any further terrible supernatural occurrences upon him. If he ignored the black stains on the wood and his exhaustion and the reason why he was here, it nearly felt cozy. Like once his brother had recognized who had intruded upon the space, it had decided it no longer needed to defend itself from him.
The night wore on, until his heavy eyes slipped shut and refused to open.
Stanford snorted himself awake as the hammer he'd been leaning his cheek on gave out from under him. His face hit the floor, and in an instant he'd pushed himself back up. Light was trickling down into the belly of the ship from above. There were gulls screeching. Was it morning again already? Stanford sat up and scrubbed at his face, which felt waxy and stiff from an uncomfortable night spent on hard wood instead of a bed.
He struggled to remember where in his project he'd left off. Working in such a frenzy, he'd managed to get the vessel itself pulled more-or-less roughly together. The lid was still half-finished on the floor, and the whole thing still needed lacquering and sealing and water-proofing. The thought of more work yet to be done when he was already so tired was stomach-sinking, but it had to be done.
With a sigh, he rolled his shoulder and stretched his neck. So much for finishing before Stanley came back-- he paused. Stanley wasn't below-deck with him. He hadn't come back before the dawn broke. Had Stanford been incorrect in his assumption that he could tamper with the boat without ill effect? He dropped his hammer and it struck the floor. He didn't know how to find Stanley if Stanley didn't want to be found. He didn't know how to call him, or summon his spirit. What if he'd destroyed his brother's anchor to the mortal world?
He stood up. Then he swayed from the suddenness of the action and his lack of sleep. Then, after trying to push through the fatigue, he tripped over the box he'd built last night and came crashing back down to the ground. Catching himself on the lip of the wood, Stanford sat up-- and realized there was something in the box.
It was Stanley. Or, Stanley's… corpse? It was his brother laying in there, that much was certain. Stanford sat up and reached out to shake the other boy by the arm.
"Stanley?" he asked. The body didn't react. It was cold as the wood around him, though the flesh was as soft and supple as any living thing. He lifted his hand and held it up to Stanley's mouth, but there was no warm breath. He pressed his fingers to the underside of Stanley's chin, but the jugular vein did not pulse with a heartbeat.
Which was perfectly fine and expected. Truly, it was. It had been a month since his brother had come back, and a couple weeks since Stanford had convinced him to divulge some of the secrets of his new, anomalous existence. Stanford preferred it over the alternative.
He laid back down, relieved that he hadn't somehow ruined his second chance, and decided that now was as good a time as any to catch a little bit of rest. He couldn't work on the vessel if his brother was inside it, after all.