0Title: Bump in the Night (1/2)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Summary: Their captain can handle sneaky Klingons, pompous Omnipotents, and a murderous Starfleet Command – but tell Jim Kirk a ghost story and he’s done. It’s not a good thing, then, when Kirk, Spock, and McCoy find themselves stranded inside a facility overrun by the dead.
A/N: Believe it or not, I have not written a single (established) AOS McSpirk one-shot this year! So, using that paltry excuse, I present you with a story. A ghost story. Heh.
Leonard catches a portion of a conversation as two security officers step onto the transporter pad and arrange themselves to beam down with the others of the landing party. The words “legend has it” and “haunted” have Leonard spinning around and questioning them rather sharply, “What did you say?”
The men blink at him and his unexpected interest in their gossip. They echo each other with “Dr. McCoy?”
“What’d you just say about the Eisenhart Facility, Lieutenant?”
The lieutenant in question fidgets under McCoy’s narrow-eyed scrutiny. “Nothing really… Just a rumor I heard, sir.”
“What kind of rumor?”
The man flicks a help-me-out glance at his partner, but the partner is not dumb enough to intervene. If the other officer could have taken a long step backwards without displacing himself from the pad, he looks like he would have done so.
“What kind of rumor?” Leonard repeats, letting his tone imply the consequences for continued hedging.
“A, um, ghost story,” the lieutenant finally answers, seeming properly chastened. “I heard that it’s one of the top ten of the most haunted places in the Alpha Quadrant.”
Leonard sucks in a sharp breath and thinks, crap. Of all the places Command could have sent them for their latest mission…
In that moment, the lieutenant’s eyes widen as if he has cottoned on to something. “Are you afraid of ghosts, Dr. McCoy?”
Leonard gives both men a sour look. “It’s the living that I find frightening,” he counters. Pivoting away, he locks his hands behind his back with a stiff posture not unlike a certain Vulcan’s.
Silently, he thanks every saint he knows the name of that Jim has not yet arrived with Spock. First, Spock would be much too intrigued about the rumor once he had issued a scolding to their subordinates for bringing gossip into a mission rather than facts. An intrigued Spock asks too many questions. Second (and this is the most worrying to Leonard), Jim must never hear about a rumor, tall-tale or passing joke that concerns the supernatural. Leonard simply does not have enough hyposprays to handle the fallout.
He decides to hope for the best and forget what he just heard about their destination. Today is likely to be another typical mission.
It’s only after that last thought that Leonard remembers what typical missions are like.
Jim enters the room just then with Spock on his heels, eyes cutting curiously to the groaning doctor as he steps onto the transporter pad. “Is everything all right, Bones?”
Leonard grunts an “Aye, Captain.”
When Spock looks at him in curiosity too, Leonard ceases to pinch the bridge of his nose and drops his hands to his sides.
“Let’s do this,” he says to no one in particular, feeling not so prepared for their upcoming mission after all.
Jim nods ever-so-slightly and addresses the tech manning the controls. “Engage.”
The transporter builds up its charge and sends their molecules to the colony below.
They must have set a new record for fastest descent into chaos. One minute Leonard is listening to the ramblings of a congenial but somewhat slow-witted caretaker of an underground structure known as the Eisenhart Facility. (Once a workplace of some of the galaxy’s brightest and most talented scientists, it is empty now in a very disconcerting way.) The next moment, the lights of the control center malfunction and shut off, plunging their group into darkness.
“What the…?” Leonard starts to sputter just before the lights blink back on again.
“Hm,” Spock says, then turns to the caretaker, wanting to know, “do you typically experience power outages?”
“Only when the Missus is upset.”
Leonard’s brows draw together as he tries to figure out if ‘Missus’ is an euphemism for the facility like ‘Lady’ is for the Enterprise. What he tends to think of as his sixth sense for when bad things are about to happen gives a little ring just as someone cries out, “Captain!”
They find one of the security officers standing in the doorway to the control room, face white. “Captain, Garris is gone!”
“What?” Jim says, voice sharp, already crossing the large space in long strides to reach the quivering lieutenant.
“The l-l-lights went out, and when they came back on he was gone,” the man reports. “He was standing right next to me, I swear it!”
Leonard pulls out his medical tricorder to assess the state that the fellow is in, but a second later a gust of frigid air hits him and the tricorder goes flying out of his hand like someone swatted it. It hits the wall with a crack and the tinkling of broken pieces.
“What the hell!” he says, bewildered.
“The Missus doesn’t like you,” replies the caretaker, coming up behind him.
“Jim,” Leonard calls over his shoulder, unnerved by the amusement in the caretaker’s eyes and thinking he might be safer on the other side of the room with people he trusts.
There is a pop, like the sound of high voltage blowing out a transponder, and everyone in the room has but a moment to brace themselves as the control center is dropped into darkness again.
Leonard shivers from the sudden sensation that he is no longer among the group. It occurs to him, then, that Jim or Spock might have been targeted to disappear next, maybe even himself. He cries out both of their names in rapid succession.
Where are the damn emergency lights? he thinks with a bit of desperation, thrusting out a hand blindly before him.
“Jim, answer me! Spock?”
“…Bones?”
Why does Jim sound so distant if he is only across the room?
Leonard reaches out farther.
Someone brushes past Leonard with a mournful trail of words: “…Missus likes to keep visitors away…“
The lights nearly blind Leonard when they return, and he finds himself staring at a familiar face just beyond his fingertips.
Jim looks equally surprised. Spock is beside him.
Leonard drops his hand and takes stock of their surroundings. What he discovers alarms him.
“Jim,” he says with trepidation.
The three of them are utterly alone.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jim demands, pupils blown wide.
Leonard can’t answer that.
Spock looks between them, likely sensing an undercurrent but not knowing the exact nature of it.
Jim draws out a phaser. “Contact the Enterprise,” he tells Spock in a tight voice. “We need them on standby for emergency beam-out, and have Chekov scan the area for the others.”
“Jim,” Leonard says, “it can’t be… it just can’t. Someone else is here, someone that we don’t know about. For that matter, what happened to—”
“Bones,” Jim cuts him off, “stop. Just let me think, okay?”
Leonard falls silent and turns his attention to Spock.
Spock lifts his gaze away from his communicator. There is an expression in his dark eyes that Leonard never likes to see.
“My communicator is non-responsive.”
Leonard pulls his comm out, as does Jim, and they flip them open. The malfunction, it seems, isn’t restricted to one device.
“I’ve got a bad feeling,” murmurs Leonard.
The overhead lights flicker in response and, as the three men hold their breath, the room goes dark for the third time.
Jim is sweating. The temperature is freezingly cold, and still he sweats. This is Leonard’s first clue that there might be a problem. The second clue is that the man’s normally steady phaser hand has been wavering slightly ever since the lights went out and never came back on. The captain’s other hand remains twisted into the back of Spock’s tunic, who is in the lead of their three-person group.
Leonard brings up the tail-end of the line. While he isn’t uncomfortable with this arrangement, per se, he is worried about the root cause of it, and that sets him to thinking.
Jim laughs in the face of death (sometimes literally, much to the aggravation of the many individuals who work hard to keep their captain safe), but he never makes light of those who have given their lives. Jim understands in a way that neither Leonard nor Spock can what it really means to feel the end of one’s existence. He never offers to explain this understanding to them, however, and it isn’t a subject Leonard and Spock are willing to broach if they can avoid it. Jim’s link to death has simply become another facet of the man he is today.
Watching him now, Leonard knows that something else is at work. Superstition, he names it, but it too is not a word to be spoken lightly. Jim Kirk may be the most superstitious man Leonard has ever known, yet he is acutely aware that Jim will deny it if accused, probably is denying it even now, albeit in silence.
That doesn’t prevent that very man from jumping at a sudden scraping sound up ahead, though.
“What was that?” Jim demands, poking his phaser around Spock’s side to aim into the empty darkness before them.
Leonard resists the urge to say calm down. “Probably nothing. A rat.”
The science tricorder in Spock’s hands whirs away as it scans their surroundings. “I show no signs of life.”
If anything, that makes Jim tenser.
Leonard relents a little. “Spock, can you calibrate the meter to pick up the full spectrum of energy signatures?”
Spock turns his head to the side without glancing backwards. “Is there something in particular you suspect we might find, Doctor?”
Leonard lays a hand on Kirk’s shoulder. “Not really. But could you do it?”
Spock proceeds to adjust the tricorder as asked and relays the negative results to them.
“See,” Leonard murmurs to the back of Jim’s head, “like I said—nothing to worry about.”
Leonard feels Jim’s gaze slide in his direction. “The lights didn’t go out by themselves, Bones.”
“It could be faulty wiring.”
Spock has turned around to face the pair now, although Leonard doesn’t know for certain how much of their expressions he can see in the dark.
“Is there something I should be aware of?” he inquires. His tone is a shade too polite, a warning not to lie.
As if Jim senses Leonard opening his mouth, Jim hisses near Leonard’s ear, “Bones.“
Annoyed at that unspoken command to shut up, Leonard shoots back, “He’s going to find out sooner or later.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to tell him!”
“Like hell!”
“…Gentlemen.”
“You’re not in a relationship of one anymore,” Leonard goes on to say, “which means sharing!”
“I’m seriously reconsidering that decision,” Jim replies darkly.
Leonard moves in to poke the idiot in the breastbone but his aim is off because his sight is hampered by the lack of light; he hits a collarbone instead. He gives it an extra poke, along with “Don’t threaten me, kid. I’ve got enough ammunition to land you in a therapist’s office for the rest of your career.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
“Gentlemen,” Spock says again, his voice lower and more urgent.
It’s not Spock’s tone which stops their mounting confrontation, it is the hand that Spock places on either of their shoulders. The grip is so tight that Leonard feels the strain on his bones. Then Spock forcefully spins him and Jim around.
Jim makes a noise between a gasp and a whimper.
Leonard hates to admit it, but he does too.
Their visitor floats above the floor. It is vaguely humanoid in shape, grayish and opaque, with tendrils of something which leak out of it, downwards like dripping water. Its empty eye sockets are fixed straight ahead, but they know without being told that it can still see them.
“Should we…?” Spock begins in a tense voice.
It moves forward.
Jim jerks back with the instinct to run at the same time that he swings his phaser up with both hands and takes aim.
Leonard cries, “Jim, no!” but it’s too late.
Jim fires, and the specter vanishes.
Leonard grabs his captain’s shaking arms and lowers them until the phaser is pointed at the floor. He feels Spock pressing in close and wishes not for the first time that he could see something of the Vulcan’s face other than a vague outline.
For a full minute, they listen to the eerie silence of the facility they are trapped in. Jim’s pulse subsides enough under Leonard’s fingers that he can tell Jim has regained some of his control.
“What now?” he asks of the two men beside him.
“We move on,” Spock replies. “We must find a way out.”
Jim doesn’t answer at all.
They turn around again and resume their original heading. This time Leonard stays shoulder-to-shoulder with Jim, grateful that Spock takes the lead without being asked. As they move forward, Jim’s free hand finds the back of Spock’s tunic again.
“Stay close,” Jim whispers to them both.
You got it, kid, Leonard doesn’t say, instead removing his own phaser and mirroring Jim, with the exception that his left hand finds and latches onto Jim’s arm.
As long as they are connected, they’ll be okay, he thinks.
A chill touches his nape. He does not let himself turn around.
They’ve been turning corners for over an hour. This place is an endless maze, sometimes depositing them back to the place where they began but never offering them an escape. Leonard, tired from the mindless walking, suggests that they find a corner to occupy and drag over some of the debris they have occasionally encountered.
“We can use the loose bricks,” he says. “Heat them up so there’s no smoke. At this rate, we’ll be hypothermic in a matter of hours, and I’m not equipped to treat us properly.”
“Spock?” Jim questions for an opinion on the matter, even though Jim himself is shivering, has been shivering nonstop since it became evident that they are not alone.
“The Doctor’s concerns are valid. I have no additional suggestions.”
Leonard reaches out, finds a wall, and slides down it with a sigh. Once seated, he flips open his communicator and forces his numb fingers to turn the dial. Every frequency is still scratchy, which should definitely not be the case. He pauses on one channel when he thinks he hears a faint sound, as if someone is whispering, but soon the static overwhelms even the trace of a voice. No one responds to his repeated inquires of “Hello?”
“Great,” he mutters at last, snapping the communicator closed. “Jim?”
A shoulder bumps into his. “Here.”
Leonard’s hand makes contact with Jim’s knee, and he pats it. The presence looming over them is a protective one—Spock, Leonard surmises, waiting for instructions.
“You’re cold too,” he points out. “Come down here. We can search for stuff in a minute.” When Spock doesn’t move, he adds, “On Jim’s right,” so that the Vulcan can cease his lengthy deliberation over choosing one of them without offending the other.
After Spock is settled next to Jim, Leonard leans into Jim, and Jim’s arm automatically slips around his shoulders.
“Sorry, Bones,” Jim says.
Leonard sighs again. “I’m sorry too. I was harsh earlier. Believe me when I say I’ve got things that I need to work on, myself. Nobody’s perfect.”
“The best people usually aren’t. …Spock?”
“Yes, Jim?”
Jim sounds a little sheepish as he admits, “I’m afraid of ghosts.”
“A legitimate fear, it would seem,” comes the unperturbed response.
Jim relaxes ever-so-slightly between them. A minute passes by in silence before he murmurs hopefully, “Maybe it won’t come back.”
Leonard nods, silently echoing that sentiment.
“If it does return, we should try to communicate with it.”
The doctor thumps his head back against the wall. “Only you, Spock,” he mutters, partially amused.
Then he presses closer to Jim because Jim has started to shiver again.
Leonard is relieved that he can see Jim’s and Spock’s faces again. The reddish-orange glow of the bricks makes them all look slightly ghoulish but it’s better than no light at all.
“Heat is definitely a priority,” he tells them, “but water is important too. We don’t know how long it will take Scotty to break through whatever is dampening our communications signal, and I’d rather be prepared just in case it turns out to be a long while.”
“Assuming there is a water source, given the dilapidation of this structure, the odds are greatly in favor of it being contaminated.”
“So we boil it, Spock. Survival 101.”
“I am not familiar with your reference.”
“All right, all right,” Jim intercedes before the head-butting can truly begin. “Basic survival is a given, Bones. We’re all trained, and we’ve all been in this situation before.”
Not with a ghost for a company. Leonard knows better than to say that. “The present matters more than the past right now, Jim-boy. We need water. To find water, we need to be able to see. To see, we need light. It’s logical.”
“Your capacity for logic astounds me, Doctor.”
“Oh, shut it, hobgoblin—and nobody’s around but us. You’d better call me Leonard.”
“And if I do not?”
“Then I’m going to pinch your ears!”
“Careful, Bones, he might like that.”
“Jim,” Leonard and Spock chastise at the same time.
“I can’t believe I’m dating prudes,” Jim says with mock-surprise.
Leonard opts to reach over and pinch Jim hard.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“For calling me a prude. I’m not the one who blushes when Spock takes off his shirt.”
“Bones,” Jim groans, “that was one time.”
“Mm-hm. And how long did it take to coax you out of the bathroom?”
“Stop holding that against me!”
“Actually, I thought it was adorable of you to be nervous.”
“Thanks,” Jim responds dryly. “Let me know when you think my dignity can return without being attacked.”
Leonard quips, “You never had much of that to begin with.”
Jim drops his head forward and grins.
Leonard purses his mouth, somehow feeling like he didn’t win their little spar.
“As fascinating as I find parts of this conversation, perhaps our time would be best-served by deciding upon our next course of action.”
Jim shifts, causing shadows to collect across his face. “You’re right, Spock—and so is Bones. Fancy carrying some homemade torches?”
Uh-oh, thinks Leonard. “Will it be the kind that you can light yourself on fire from? Because, no, I don’t fancy that idea.”
Spock rises to his feet. “Unfortunately, Leonard, there would be no alternative.”
When Spock begins to remove his blue tunic, Leonard and Jim both declare a hasty timeout.
“What in blazes are you doing?” Leonard demands, standing up and tugging Spock’s shirt back into place over his stomach.
The Vulcan raises his eyebrows. “I would be removing my outer garment, as the material is suitably flammable.”
Leonard thinks he really ought to take a hand to Spock’s backside. “Don’t you dare,” he tells the idiot. “Of the three of us, you’re the most susceptible to lower temperatures.”
“I am able to regulate my body temperature.”
“Yeah, up until the point where you’re too exhausted to keep up your Vulcan hoodoo because it’s cold.” Leonard drags his own tunic over his head. “Use mine,” he says, chucking it at Spock in irritation.
Spock catches it with ease.
Jim is already trying to take off his tunic too.
“Keep it on,” Spock and Leonard say to that.
Jim narrows his eyes at them. “Why? Bones, you know you hate the cold. I, on the other hand, survived yearly blizzards. I was born in Iowa, you know.”
“Yeah, it’s a miracle you grew up,” Leonard mutters under his breath. Then, more loudly, “Jim, this isn’t a contest.”
“I can do it.”
“Leonard and I would prefer that you do not remove your clothing at this time. Should it become necessary, you will be notified.”
Ah, Spock… ever the diplomat. Leonard likes that about him, most of the time.
The stubborn set to Jim’s jaw lingers only a moment longer. Then the man quirks one of the corners of his mouth.
“Don’t say it,” Leonard warns him, knowing full well what that glint of mischief in Jim’s eyes means.
Jim shrugs a tiny bit—and grins anyway. “Who’s the prude now?”
Leonard calls him an infant, following the insult up with a threat to strangle him and dispose of the body. Jim jokes that he likes Leonard a whole murderous lot too, resulting in Leonard actually strangling Jim a little bit, up until Spock intervenes and tells them he is fully capable of proceeding through the facility without them and their childish antics.
Jim sulks at being called childish, and Leonard hides his embarrassment by prodding grouchily at the phaser-warmed bricks with a long stick that he realizes belatedly is perfect for a torch.
Across their pseudo-campfire, a soft noise escapes from Spock, not quite unlike a suppressed human sigh. Then the Vulcan begins to methodically tear Leonard’s uniform tunic into long strips.
They’ve been sporadically calling out for those who went missing, and each time there is no response, Leonard feels further disheartened. Jim has a grim set to his mouth that means he blames himself for the inability to locate his crewmen, and Spock keeps alternating his gaze between his tricorder readings and the path ahead of them. Although nothing is said, Leonard has a feeling that, like him, Spock believes the men are not simply missing but dead. They shouldn’t lose hope so quickly, he knows that, but at some point hope has to give way to practicality. It has never been an easy balance to maintain for any of them.
“Need a rest?” he asks Jim softly as they come abreast of a hallway he thinks looks suspiciously like one they have been down before.
“No,” Jim says, but he turns his head to consider Leonard with a hint of concern. “Do you?”
“I’m fine,” he lies. “These boots were made for walking.” They weren’t, really. They were pinching the hell out of his toes.
“Spock,” Jim calls to the Vulcan who is several arm’s lengths ahead of them waving his tricorder at a wall, “let’s take a short break.”
“Jim, I’m fine, I—”
“Captain,” Spock says, grabbing their attention just by the way he says Jim’s title, “there is a hollow space beyond this wall.”
“A room?” Leonard guesses, moving to Spock’s side.
“The dimensional readings suggest a tunnel.”
Jim’s eyes light up. “A secret passageway!”
Leonard studies the brick wall with dismay. “It’s secret, all right, if there’s no way to access it.”
Spock hands Leonard his tricorder and begins to press his fingertips at various spots on the wall.
Jim stuffs his phaser under his arm, ready to help. “There’s always a trick to opening it. Bones, move your torch closer so I can see what I’m looking at.”
“That will not be necessary, Captain.” Seeming to have to found a spot that he likes, Spock draws back slightly and before either of them can react, slams his fist into the wall.
Jim and Leonard gape at him as dust and flecks of mortar rain down on them.
“Did you just punch a hole through a brick wall?” Jim asks incredulously of his second-in-command.
“Affirmative,” Spock replies. “It is not difficult if one finds the proper weak spot.”
Leonard latches onto Jim’s arm. “No, Spock,” he says, voice strangled, “it isn’t difficult for you. But someone less Vulcan might break his hand.”
Jim shakes him off. “I wasn’t thinking about trying it, Bones.”
“Sure you weren’t, kid.”
Spock has returned to ignoring them in lieu of inspecting the hole he created. He pushes and pulls at the surrounding bricks, working them out of the wall like it is the easiest task he has done all day, and tosses them aside.
“On a scale of one to ten, how aroused are you right now?” Jim whispers to Leonard.
“Mm, eight—though it would probably be an eleven if we weren’t trapped underground and in danger of dying.”
“Yeah,” Jim agrees, “death can be a buzz kill.”
Leonard snorts, then coughs dust out of his lungs from the construction work going on, courtesy of their Vulcan.
Jim takes the torch from him and moves to stand by Spock’s shoulder. “I’ll go first, Spock.”
“Jim, wait,” Leonard calls as Spock sets down the last brick and steps aside, allowing Jim to stick a leg through a now man-sized hole. “Is this a good idea?”
Jim doesn’t dismiss the concern but he does say, “If we’re playing someone’s game, then the smartest thing we can do is turn the tables in our favor.”
Leonard gestures at the exposed tunnel. “And what if this is part of the game?”
But Jim shakes his head. “I have a feeling that it’s not.” A few seconds later, he is fully inside the tunnel and out of Leonard’s sight.
“Damn,” Leonard mutters, because he has long since learned to trust Jim’s instinct as much as his own.
Spock offers Leonard a knowing look before he follows Jim into the tunnel. Leonard is not far behind.
Jim is finally himself. He moves a faster clip than the other men, always keeping a few feet ahead while he runs his torch along the tunnel wall, peering at cobwebs and poking at small crevices. Leonard wishes there were less creepy-crawlies accompanying them on this journey into the unknown, but he is glad at least that Jim can explore what is visible rather than worry about the unearthly things that might not be.
Also, this is an opportunity he can seize to have a quiet chat with Spock.
“We need a plan,” he whispers.
“Beyond the one that we currently have?”
“Yes. This is a ‘if you see a ghost’ plan. If you see a ghost…”
“Talk to it.”
“No, Spock! If you see a ghost, grab Jim then run like hell.”
“Leonard, it is not reasonable to assume we must take evasive action.” Spock pauses long enough to indicate that he has considered something else. “Unless you have an objective beyond the obvious one. Would you care to explain?”
“You saw what he did before.”
“Yes. He fired his phaser.”
“That’s right, Spock, he used his weapon. Now tell me: if an ensign responded that way in the field to someone who had not been positively identified as a threat, what would you do?”
“I would require him to undergo additional training and, possibly, a psychological evaluation before I would be comfortable releasing him to serve in another field operation.”
“But Jim’s no ensign,” Leonard points out. “He’s a seasoned officer. He reacts that way because his fear takes control before he can think properly.”
“You are implying that he is emotionally compromised.”
“Yes, I am,” Leonard says grimly. “So unless you want to find yourself in the position of forcibly taking his phaser away from him, along with his command, I suggest you remove him as far as is physically possible when given the chance.”
“Is it possible to escape a ghost?”
The gravity of that question thunks Leonard over the head, and his shoulders slump. “I don’t know, Spock. I really don’t know.”
Spock shifts closer. “Leonard…”
“Hey, guys!” they hear.
With his torch held aloft, Jim has turned to face them. How long he has been watching them converse in low tones without interrupting they will never know.
“I think I found something,” he says now that he has their attention.
Leonard lets Spock go first, but it is to Leonard that Jim gestures with his hand when they come abreast of him.
“Bones,” Jim says somewhat cheekily, “meet Bones.”
“Oh great,” Leonard deadpans, looking at the skeleton crumpled across the tunnel floor ahead. “My future self.”
Spock’s eyebrows draw together. “How does this situation warrant humor?”
“Because Bones and bones,” Jim says, using the torch’s flame to highlight the rictus grin on the skull. “Get it?”
“The discovery of a corpse is not a matter for hilarity.”
“But—”
Leonard rolls his eyes heavenward. “He’s Vulcan, Jim. Let it go.”
Jim huffs and turns away, stepping carefully over the remains. Leonard does the same, not wanting to disturb the poor bastard that died in such a cold dark place. Spock lingers a moment behind them, running his tricorder over the yellowed bones in their partially petrified clothing. Then he makes some kind of adjustment to his device, probably to store the information, and joins them.
Some time later when the passageway comes to an abrupt end at a set of stairs, Leonard is relieved. “We can get out of here,” he says. “Thank god. I thought the torch wasn’t going to make it much longer.”
“Afraid of the dark, Bones?”
“Afraid of my fist, Jim?” he counters.
Jim laughs, then hands the dying torch to Spock. He starts up the stairs with Spock in close attendance. The door at the top is metal, unlike the crumbing material of the tunnel, and it gives way with a heavy groan as Jim sets his shoulder to it.
Leonard feels a waft of fresh, climate-controlled air brush past his face. When he is about to offer up another thank you to the Lord Almighty, Jim screams.
The ghost doesn’t need the darkness because it is no longer hiding. It drifts in the doorway, a silent figure, neither coming nor going. Faced with each other, they all are frozen, both the living and the dead.
The wheezing noise that Jim makes—a desperate, ragged sound—jolts Leonard’s brain back into action.
Jim’s face is paler than the apparition, his brow slicked with sweat. Abruptly, the man lists to one side.
“Spock, catch him!” Leonard cries the warning barely in time.
Spock drops the torch just as Jim goes limp and pitches backwards.
The ghost opens its mouth then, as the torch gutters and dies at the foot of the stairs, and releases an unholy shriek, rushing down at them like an unforgiving wind. The vice around Leonard’s chest is the ghost passing through him, and it feels uncannily like a heart attack. In the process, Spock has been overbalanced, Leonard loses his own footing and is not able to counter Spock’s fall. He cracks his elbow on a step as he and the Vulcan (and Jim too) go tumbling down to the bottom.
In the aftermath, Leonard just lies there under the weight of his loved ones and refuses to think or feel. If he thinks, he will have to acknowledge that, yes, they really are trapped underground with a ghost and, yes, it’s out to kill them.
If he feels, he’ll have to admit that he’s broken something important too.
Oh, no. I lied! This one-shot just turned itself into a two-shot. :/ I’m sorry – I may never learn.
Related Posts:
- Bump in the Night (2/2) – from December 19, 2014
