Chapter Text
The night was chilly as their van pulled up to the outskirts of the house, the air frozen in time. The wooden structure loomed before them, shrouded in the night, the moon only barely outlining the jagged roofing.
The GIGGS crew climbed out, armed with gear that was very familiar to them. “Okay, soo… we all agree to sacrifice Gem to the ghost first?” Skizz chuckled, grabbing his flashlight and laughing at Gem’s fake annoyed expression.
“Hmm… sure!” Scar agreed, waddling towards the house with hesitation and fake confidence.
“This isn’t our first house guys! We have survived Tanglewood and other places too!” Grian replied, already fiddling with the emf reader. “Also, we might get to see Impulse be folded by a chair again!”
Impulse rolled his eyes, adjusting his head gear. “Thanks for the reminder, G! And maybe if Scar hadn’t dropped his flashlight and screamed ‘take him, not me!’ things would’ve gone differently.”
“Hey!” Scar said indignantly, coming up behind the others. “I was just uh- I was just testing you!”
“Sure, Scar. Totally testing the smartest guy.” Grian said with a smirk. “Anyways, we need to focus! Lots of angry reports of loud noises and even screaming. You know… our usual Tuesday night!”
The crew shuffled in reductantly.
“I’m calling it now,” skizz muttered as the musty smell began to heavy. “It’s a demon! It’s always a demon. Why do we bother guessing?”
“You’re just salty cause ghosts target you!” Impulse teased.
“You guys leave me as bait!” Skizz shot back.
“Shh…” Grian interrupted, holding up a shush signal. The hallway was dark, only light coming from their flashlights. “Okay- standard plan: we split into pairs and-“
“Nope!” Scar immediately responded, shaking his head. “No splitting up! Do you not remember our last few houses? I say we stay together.”
“Yeah! It makes the ghost have a trickier time killing us!” Gem said, nodding.
“Fine, we’ll stick together but let’s be quick at setup, we don’t need an angry ghost.” Grian responded, already looking at the EMF.
Scar wanted to help by using his camera to take silly photos of everyone! However, while distracted by a cat photo, he noticed a newspaper.
Usually, he would merely look at it before getting back at admiring the cat or dog photos but something felt wrong.
He glanced over his shoulder, checking grian was occupied by the emf before walking to take a closer look at the newspaper. The paper was tinged a coffee-stain yellow, and the words were barely readable in the dim lighting.
At this point, he had completely forgotten about his wonderful cat pictures, and was distracted by the out-of-date paper he had found. It was issued over 10 years ago, according to the date written on the cover. Scar wasn’t expecting it to be new, I mean, he was in an abandoned building. Would anything be very new?
Squinting to take a closer look, he read the words etched into the front.
‘Corporation pulled to ruins after numerous mystery deaths.’
Weird.
Scar blinked. Corporation pulled to ruins? What a shame. Although, his morbid curiosity was in fact piqued, and he opened the first page to survey the content.
“Slacking on the job, scar?” Skizz asked, looking over scar’s shoulder. His gaze landed on the paper, and he raised one eyebrow, “trying to read the news, buddy? You might be a bit late trying to read that one.” He gestured to the page, not even bothering to read the words.
“Not slacking on the job! Just.. taking a quick pause.” Scar said cheerfully, shutting the newspaper and sliding it to the side, “has grian got anything on the emf?” He asked quickly, changing the conversation.
Skizz blinked at him, “no.. not yet!” He shook his head, turning around and walking to impulse.
Scar debated turning back to the newspaper and reading more, but he figured he had better things to do. And he didn’t want skizz sneaking up on him again.
“Oh- oh! The cruci’s burned!!” Impulse announced, crouching down to take a look at the crucifix, which was burning a bright, hot red colour.
scar picked up his camera from where he had placed it down, and walked over to snap a picture.
“Hunting so early? Maybe it is a demon.” Skizz commented, grinning. Although he couldn’t help the grimace that crossed his face at the thought.
“Great evidence though!” Scar nodded, looking at the picture on the camera. He couldn’t say it was up to the standard of some of his other lovely photos, but in the darkness of the room, it wasn’t bad.
“The crucifix isn’t going to hold as light for long, can we turn the power on?” Grian asked, appearing in the doorway. He had found the spirit box, and was holding it in both hands like his final lifeline.
He stepped into the room, careful of any creaking floorboards. It didn’t look like a particularly stable building, and he hoped that they wouldn’t be here for much longer.
“Power isn’t gonna turn itself on.” Impulse smirked, elbowing skizz in the side.
“Fine- fine! Ill do it.” Skizz said dramatically, swiftly exiting the room.
A few, quick minutes later, the sound of skizz yelling echoed from down the hallway.
“I tried to turn the power on- and sparks flew out!” His voice got nearer, before he came into view just behind the door. His stark blue eyes were wide, and he was glancing around warily.
“sparks- dudes!” He gestured infront of himself.
The group fell into silence, all looking at eachother unsurely.
“..Do we think it’s worth it to stay here?” Gem grimaced, looking up at the lightbulb overhead. She quickly stepped to the side, afraid of spark’s falling atop her red hair.
Impulse shook his head, “might be better to gag.” He stated, suddenly becoming conscious of where he was standing.
“Oh- oh! Another thing!” Skizz said, stepping back and pointing down the hallway, “I walked into one of those rooms, and it was SO cold in there! Are we sure that this is the right room??”
“Could be the twins.” Scar mentioned, idly sifting through his journal.
“Not much we can do without power. Let’s go with twins and get out of here. We’re broke enough, we don’t need to be paying for property damage.” Grian scoffed.
They all quickly collected up their equipment, and got out the house before they ended up setting it alight. They didn’t need an accident occurring.
Hospital bills sucked to pay. Grian grimaced at the thought.
Entering the van, gem breathed a sigh of relief.
“I wasn’t exactly wanting to work today anyway..” gem said thankfully, sitting down in one of the car seats. Impulse and skizz went to sit in the front, and grian and scar sat either side of gem.
Buzz…
“Whose phone is that?” Scar asked, eyes scanning the room for the ringing device. Grian closed his eyes, opening them directly towards Impulse’s phone.
“Impulse someone is calling you.”
“Oh! I’ll answer that.” Impulse responded, hand reaching into the back as he grabbed his phone. The brunette assumed it would be a call from a friend, maybe asking how the ghost hunting was going but it wasn’t. It was a random number.
“I- uh I don’t recognise the number. Should I-“ impulse asked before being cut off by Skizz. “Remember we put your phone on our website, it’s due to that most likely! Don’t hang up!“
Impulse answered the call.
“Hello! This is impulse speaking from the GIGGS ghost hunting company.” Impulse formally said, ignoring the childish giggles of Gem, Scar and Grian behind him.
“Oh hello! Can I request your services, For a ghost investigation.” The man from the other end of the call asked, his voice distinguishing British.
“Yep! What’s your name and phone number? We can talk about addresses and everything later but I can note you down and message you later!” Impulse responded, finding a small ripped up piece of paper and a pen from his pen.
“I’m xisuma! My phone number is on the call screen.” Xisuma… that felt familiar? Impulse didn’t quite know why but that name and voice, it was memorable but from what?
He decided to not ponder more, Skizz always calling him an overthinker. “Ah right! Thank you.” He scribbled down the numbers as quickly as he could before speaking again. “I’ll message you at some point! We will be there as soon as possible!”
Xisuma sounded exhausted from what Impulse could hear. “Yes thank you. Talk to you soon!” Xisuma responded.
“Yeah, see you soon.”
And like that, the call was over. “Soo! Who was that?” Skizz asked, turning slightly to face him while still maintaining eyes on the road.
“Just someone asking for an investigation.” Impulse decided to withhold that he recognised the others name and voice, not deeming it worth worrying about.
However, if Impulse late at night was still wondering about Xisuma, no one would know.