Remember that ghost fic I started writing a few weeks ago? Here’s the third part that only like, a handful of people asked for, enjoy
Chapter One, Chapter Two
Ao3
Word Count: About 2,500
Eddie liked to think he was a rational, sane person. As of recent though, he started to doubt that more and more.
“So, what is the salt supposed to do?”
Bill, who was sitting down at the kitchen table with his laptop opened in front of him, looked at Eddie with so much concern he almost stopped what he was doing.
He knew it was silly. He knew absolutely nothing about ghosts. But, when Eddie had read how salt rings could keep out malevolent ghosts and spirits, he decided it may be within his best interest to try one. Of course, he wasn’t going to tell Bill that.
“Umm, it’s like the discount version of those fancy salt lamps, you know? The ones that are supposed to release healing and purifying natural energies?” Eddie had no idea if that was what they were supposed to do, but based off the way Bill nodded his head along in understanding, he either got it right or Bill was just as clueless as he was. “I figured we just moved into this new place, might as well try something new, right? This is harmless and supposedly good for the soul. Or something like that.” Eddie quickly turned back to making his salt ring around the edge of their kitchen, shutting his mouth before he rose any more suspicions in Bill.
Bill gave Eddie that look he always had when he knew something was wrong, and Eddie felt his gut twist as he continued to pour salt out all over the floor of their apartment.
He trusted Eddie with every ounce of his being. He would have died for him if he asked. And now, Eddie was crawling around trying to make a ring to ward off a stupid ghost that was beginning to seriously annoy him and was lying directly to Bill’s face about it. Lying was something you weren’t supposed to do to the people you love.
Although to be fair, Eddie didn’t want to get Bill involved with the whole ghost situation anyways. He could handle it on his own, no problem.
Three days ago, Eddie had been seriously freaked out when Casper the apparently-not-so-friendly ghost had threatened him. He figured the ghost would have thrown things around the room, turned into a demon, driven him insane, or anything equally as scary as that. But nothing like that happened.
Maybe he had just seen one too many horror movies and had a warped idea of what exactly ghosts are. He’s sure his local apartment ghost would agree with him there.
For some reason, the ghost had seemed completely appalled by Eddie’s lack of ghostly knowledge. Eddie wasn’t exactly sure where the man would have figured Eddie could have gotten that knowledge from though. It’s not exactly like Paranormal Activity 101 is a college course. Every idea about what he thought a ghost was had come from the ghost hunting shows Bill and their friends sometimes liked to watched when they felt like making fun of something. And Eddie couldn’t blame them. The shows were completely ridiculous.
Perhaps that’s why the ghost called him ghost-ist. He supposed stereotyping individuals was offensive, even if that individual was dead. And not commonly believed to actually exist.
Regardless, the ghost was sure determined to make his existence well known to Eddie though. But again, not in the way he expected.
When he woke Eddie up at night, it wasn’t by him grabbing Eddie’s foot and dragging him out of bed and down the hall, no. It was instead done by him flicking water in Eddie’s face.
The night of the bathroom encounter, Eddie was very hesitant about falling asleep. He spent most of the night with his back pressed against Bill’s chest and with Bill’s arms wrapped around his waist, staring wide-eyed into the darkness. Bill’s presence made him feel a bit more protected, but he was still on edge, constantly glancing around the room to make sure that he and Bill were the only people there.
It was probably almost three in the morning by the time Eddie had slipped into a rough and uncomfortable slumber. He wasn’t sure how long he was asleep, but he knew it wasn’t long before he was woken up by a faint and small tapping feeling against his face. When Eddie finally cracked his eyes open, he saw the ghost lazily sitting on his nightstand, flicking water at him from Eddie’s drinking glass that was resting next to him.
As soon as the ghost saw that Eddie had woken up, he went from bored to smug so fast Eddie hardly even had time to notice the change between expressions occur. The man stuck his nose in the air, smirking at him in victory for a second before he disappeared from sight.
Eddie had stared at his night table, confused and exhausted. He had no idea what had just happened. After wiping the water off of his face, Eddie leaned back against Bill and had stared at the wall in bewilderment of the rest of the night.
Due to the fact he had gotten only a few minutes of sleep, when Eddie finally had to get up for work that morning, he felt a kind of tired he hadn’t experienced since he had to pull all-nighters in college. After shuffling into the bathroom, a look in the mirror showed that bags were beginning to form under his eyes. He made a face of distaste at the sight before heading off to shower.
Throughout his entire shower, he had expected the ghost to come out and start messing with him like he had done the previous day. To his relief, nothing like that had happened. Once he shut the water off, he cautiously peeked out and saw that there was still no one else in the bathroom with him. He breathed a sigh a relief, and stepped out of the shower and began to dry himself off.
When Eddie turned around to glance himself in the mirror though, he saw that a crude scary face had been drawn in the condensation that had formed on the mirror during his shower. He wasn’t even sure if scary was the right word for it. It was about as intimidating as the trademark Jack-o'lantern face. In fact, that’s exactly what the face looked like, with triangle eyes and a grinning mouth full of pointed teeth.
Eddie had look at the face for a few moments, in complete disbelief, before wiping all the condensation from the mirror with his towel and leaving the bathroom.
The rest of that day had gone smoothly for Eddie. He had gotten dressed and left for work as quickly as possible, deciding to buy breakfast at a nearby cafe instead of making it himself like he usually did.
Throughout work, he had expected to see the ghost lazily batting things off of his desk like a bored cat, but nothing unusual happened at all. By the end of the workday, he had briefly forgotten that there even was a ghost at all haunting their apartment.
When Eddie had returned home that night though, he half expected to walk inside and see the entire place on fire or completely destroyed or something like that. To his surprise though, all he saw when he walked in was the dinner his lovely boyfriend had prepared for the two of them. Nothing supernatural had happened at all that night.
The next morning, Eddie had gotten up, happy and feeling good. He and Bill had had a wonderful night together, and Eddie had slept soundly all night long. He went about his morning business relaxed and feeling fine. He didn’t even think about the ghost at all.
Well, at least until the ghost decided breakfast was a good time to start messing with Eddie.
He had been brewing himself some coffee and waiting for his bagel to finish toasting when he had noticed that the toaster was slowly sliding forward towards the edge of the counter. Eddie had stared at it, confused for way longer than he should have been. When he realized this was the doing of a now seemingly idiotic ghost, the toaster had finally reached the edge of the counter and tipped over. The cord, still plugged into the wall, prevented the toaster from tumbling onto the floor, but didn’t save his bagel, which fell out of the toaster and landed on his foot.
He stared at the toaster, then at the bagel, and then simply turned back to his coffee, ignoring both of them for the time being.
The rest of that day had passed in relative peace. He didn’t see the ghost at work or when he got home that night. He and Bill had gone to bed undisturbed, but Eddie had once again been woken up at three in the morning by water being flicked in his face.
He had squinted his eyes open to see the ghost sitting there once again, looking smug beyond belief. Eddie stuck his middle finger out at the man, and rolled over, burying his face in Bill’s chest. He figured the ghost would have gone away like he did last time, but to his annoyance, he felt more water being flicked at the back of his head.
Eddie had probably laid there for five minutes, desperately trying to ignore the flicking. At last, it got the best of him, and he turned around and knocked his own glass of water off his nightstand onto the floor.
Satisfied that that was the best possible decision he could have made, he rolled back over, sighing contently against Bill. He had nearly fallen asleep again when he felt the light feeling of someone brushing their finger against his ear.
Eddie snapped his head over to look at the ghost, who smirked at him and returned the middle finger he had given him earlier.
Eddie felt a growl of annoyance forming in the back of his throat. He quickly grabbed the edge of the comforter and yanked the blanket over his and Bill’s head.
He must have disturbed Bill too much because his boyfriend lazily opened his eyes a smidge to look at Eddie. “What’re you doing, Eds?” His voice was slurred with sleep, and Eddie thought it sounded adorable.
“I was uh, making a blanket fort? Because I was cold?” It was the best lie Eddie could come up with on the spot.
Bill’s lips curled into a delicate and loving grin. He lightly pecked Eddie’s lips with his own and murmured softly, “That’s cute. You’re cute.” Bill snuggled up against him and fell back asleep quickly.
Eddie felt his face turn red. He still blushed every time Bill called him cute, even after nearly a decade together.
The ghost was gone. Eddie was left undisturbed the rest of the night, able to get an hour or two of sleep before the sun rose and started streaming into their room through the blind-covered windows. He was unsurprisingly up before Bill, so he headed out into the kitchen to make himself a pot of coffee. While waiting for it to brew, he opened up his laptop and started looking into ways to get rid of ghosts. Most involved having a priest or medium coming to his apartment and getting rid of the spirit through whatever ritual they did, but Eddie wasn’t going to get any other people involved. The next most common solution he found was a ring of pure salt.
“Do you know where we keep the salt?” Eddie had asked Bill when he walked out of their bedroom twenty minutes later. He had already gone through their pantry and spice cupboard, but he had yet to find the container of table salt.
Bill rubbed his eyes, thinking over Eddie’s question. His hair was sticking up in several places and he was only dressed in his boxer shorts and a sleep shirt. He always looked positively adorable to Eddie in the mornings. “I think it’s in the corner cupboard by the stove.”
After a quick look through said cupboard contents, Eddie had the salt container in hand. He smiled to himself. He felt confident this could work.
Bill sat down at their kitchen table and turned on his laptop to check his email like he did every morning. Eddie dumped the remaining coffee from the pot into a mug and gave it to Bill with a kiss on the cheek. His boyfriend smiled back at him lovingly.
Walking into the bedroom with the container of salt, Eddie scooted their bed forward a bit so it wasn’t pressed flush against the wall. Deciding it to be the hardest location to lay down the salt ring, Eddie started carefully pouring the salt down on the floor behind the bed. He could hardly fit his hand and the container of salt behind their bed, but he managed to leave a nice trail of salt behind the entire back of the bed against the wall. Careful to not break the salt line too much, Eddie carefully started working his way around the entire edge of the room.
Once he managed to outline the bedroom, connecting the trail’s end to its original starting point, Eddie stepped back to admire his work. The line wasn’t even everywhere, but it was complete. Shaking the container, he noted that he used up almost all of the nearly full container just outlining the bedroom, which wasn’t even the largest room in their apartment. He made a mental note to buy more salt on his way home from work.
Walking back out of the bedroom, Eddie decided he probably had enough to lay down a ring around the kitchen. As he started pouring, he noticed through the corner of his eye that Bill was looking at him.
“So, what is the salt supposed to do?”
“Umm, it’s like the discount version of those fancy salt lamps, you know? The ones that are supposed to release healing and purifying natural energies? I figured we just moved into this new place, might as well try something new, right? This is harmless and supposedly good for the soul. Or something like that.”
That lie was worse than the blanket fort one, but Bill was kind enough not to press. Turning his head back to his task of laying down salt, Eddie sighed lightly with relief. Connecting the two ends of the line together, he nodded his head in achievement. Two rooms of the apartment done, only a couple more to go.
Tossing the now empty salt can into the trash, Eddie noticed out of the corner of his eye part of the line being scattered. Almost as if someone had blown gently on the salt. But no one was there.
Chapter 4 is up and published! I was gonna draw art for it but I got lazy. Anyway. Everyone say hi to the author’s direct self-insert; he shows up for a good page or two
“I don’t know…the argument,” Richie shrugs. “Around the fire. I think I was being unpleasant, and I want to apologize for my prickliness. I hope you know it’s out of nothing but care for you guys. I want anything but to put you in the same danger I was in that night.”
“It’s okay,” says Pete. “Everyone was a little prickly then. It’s just a sensitive subject. We love you, Richie. We love you a lot. So to hear you say you want us to pull back on helping you hurts us a little. It’s no big deal.”
“It just feels like you guys are trying to brush away the idea that death is a very possible outcome for one of your decisions,” Richie shakes his head. “It’s like you’re pretending I’m still here. Like I’m not dead. Like I’m still a part of you and who you are. Like the thought of me actually being just a spirit hanging around you guys instead of in a body is unmanageable.”
Pete thinks about this for a very long time. He twiddles his thumbs, tilting back his head to look at the stars. “...I think that death is just something a lot of us are uncomfortable with talking about,” Pete says, “but to die is to be human. And anything human is mentionable.” He looks at Richie, offering a small smile. “And anything mentionable is manageable."
“...I’m not human, though, am I, Peter?” Richie asks. “Or at least not anymore. What would you call me?” He looks at his friend. “Is it mentionable?”
I’m nowhere near posting this chapter of TDDH, but I recently just got my google account back after it got disabled (long story) and I couldn’t not keep this little snippet to myself. Go wild with this one I guess 💪
