'come with me
i'm easy
and then we'll see who's got the secrets'
no one has to see
believe me
oh, i'm sorry about the dark

Friday, March 15th, 2013 -- afternoon

The lights flickered in his office sometimes. It was an old building, and he?d never thought twice about it when it?d happened before. This time, though -- this time was different. This weird creeping feeling of dread came with it; the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He very pointedly did not look up from the file he was poring over because-- why, exactly? What did he think he was going to see?

Ben doesn't believe in ghosts -- not the traditional kind, anyway, the supernatural kind. Things that went bump in the night, sure, and things that reached you from-beyond-the-grave? Every day, he was affected by that one.

But ghosts? He'd been a homicide detective. Death, dying, the dead themselves, usually didn't bother him. Even when he was young, for whatever reason, he hadn't had that fear.

Ben doesn?t always live with both feet in the present. Sometimes -- not often; oftener his consciousness is likely to skip town altogether, leave his body with somebody else in charge -- but sometimes, he?ll straddle that line, drift through real-life detached and half-there, while fuzzy, dust-covered, hypersaturated dream-memories play out in front of him. It?s disorienting, and it?s exhausting, and it?s that whole ?life feels like a copy of a copy of a copy,? smudgy and only half-decipherable and maddening because you almost can make out what it?s supposed to be, but not quite--

This isn?t that, though. This isn?t that at all.

Because he looks up from the paper he?d been staring down at, and his stepfather is standing there, in the middle of the room, just paces away. Roland has been dead for five years now -- but there he was. Not quite see-through, the way you?d expect a proper ghost should be, but not quite there either -- too-sharp, ultra-contrast, so unreal he had to be real.

Ben jumps up from his chair like the surface of it burns him; his eyes are wide and his mouth is agape, working around words that he can?t seem to pull himself together enough to form. Finally, after what seems like forever, ?No, it can?t be you.? The line uttered in every movie about ghosts. ?You?re dead. I watched you die--?

And there it is, just a blip -- here and there, still standing in his office, somehow aware of his real surroundings, with the shadowy, too-real wisp of memory playing out in his vision at the same time, blurred and hi-def, muted, still turned up to eleven: Ben, kicking the door to the motel room open. A blip of fastforward-- Roland, dropping the container of takeout Chinese, clutching at his chest. Blip, and Roland is clinging to Ben, begging for forgiveness, blip, and he?s staggering backward, and Ben can hear his own voice in his ears, echo-y but clear, I hate you.

The memory vanishes in a slow-to-fade flash of white light, but the apparition doesn?t. It?s real. It?s real, real-life-right-now real, and it drifts toward Ben, Ben-in-real-life-Ben, and the voice that wheezes out Ben?s name is the exact same that he?d just heard in that memory, begging, begging, forgive me, Ben--

Ben takes two steps backward, but then his back is pressed against the wall, and there?s nowhere else to go, and the very, very real figure of Roland keeps coming toward Ben, floats right through his desk, he's only a few feet away and he's still coming closer--

And it all goes black.

(part of this sl!)

For a moment, they just sat there. Stared at each other. Ben could feel his heart in his chest, pounding so hard he swore it was going to explode any second.

Roland looked so calm, so quiet, so still. There's a flash of it across Ben's vision, the way Roland looked back then -- anger, rage, cruelty, maliciousness -- and when Ben's back in the present seconds later, he finds himself on his feet. "You aren't here. You're dead, ghosts aren't real -- I'm just hallucinating. It's the illness. It's getting worse, and you're just--" Real, a ghost, a reminder -- back to haunt the one responsible. "You're a symptom," but there's a tremor in his voice, and he realizes that he's poised to run.

"No, son," and it makes Ben's skin crawl. The voice. That Roland calls him 'son.' Roland leans forward, arms folded on the table; he's corporeal, and little bits of glass from the light bulbs stick into his arms, but he doesn't flinch, doesn't seem to notice. "I'm really here."

"Why are you doing this?" It comes on suddenly, almost like a response, the splitting headache. "Not now, why now?"

"Because I need to be forgiven, Ben. And maybe you do too, for--"

"No. No, you shut up, because you aren't real. You got out somehow--" Got out, from where? The afterlife, or the infinite loop of repressed nightmare memory? "--but you aren't real, so you shut up, and I'm not talking to you!" There's a strange numbness in his hands, and he can hardly breathe. "But you, where are you? Isn't this why you're here, what you're supposed to do?" The pain in his head is near-unbearable; his hands raise to press to his temples, press hard, like his skull might not stay together.

"Who are you talking to?" It's a valid question, really, and Ben almost wants to laugh about it -- the voices, the Others you created in me -- but Roland looks sorry for him, and that's what sets him off.

Ben lunges across the table for him, all expletives and rage; his hands go for his stepfather's neck--

They pass right through.

***

Ben comes back hours later, curled up in a corner of the coat closet. The headache is still screaming, but here's no sign of Roland once he steels himself up enough to peek out into the hall, and then to creep into the dining room. He has just enough time to pick the little pieces of glass from his forearms and his hands, clean up the dining room table, and put new bulbs in the light fixture before he has to leave to pick Adam up from school, and while he does it all without looking back over his shoulder, he feels like someone is watching him the entire time.

It's been months since Ben's been here, but everything was exactly as he'd left it. A few blankets and a pillow near the small window, a little table and a couple of chairs not too far from the ladder down to the rest of the house. A first aid kit, a shoebox full of essentials. Everything is dusty, cobwebbed, and Ben spends a little time clearing some of that away.

Over time, the dread, the terror, returns. Spikes his heartrate, makes him afraid to shift his gaze, because he knows someone else is here.

During the day, or surrounded by other people, it was easier to manage. Catching a glimpse here and there of the ghost of his childhood abuser -- of his destroyer -- wasn't ever easy, but it was easier to brush off, easier to get over, to ignore. At night, these days, alone and only growing more isolated in his path down the spiral, it became near-impossible.

He keeps his eyes trained on the bloodspattered floorboards (it had seeped in, stained, in the weeks Ben avoided this place after being attacked by his own alter, almost one year ago now), creeps across the attic to the makeshift bedroll. Closes his eyes as he sinks down, pulls the blanket up.

It's quiet, but the silence isn't a still one, vibrates with the being Ben pretends isn't there -- hopes, prays isn't--

"You know I'm here, son." The voice is the wheeze of a dying man, but Ben knows -- he's already dead. "And you know avoiding me doesn't change what you did to me--"

"I didn't do anything!" Ben sits bolt upright in the mess of blankets, opens his eyes; Roland is sitting close by, in one of the chairs at the tiny table. "So stop! I didn't do anything to you, and I have nothing to be sorry for, so go awa--" Roland stands; Ben is struck dumb, mouth partway open, midword.

"Do you really believe that, Ben? Do you really believe you didn't do anything wrong? That you're clean?" He takes a step closer. Ben drops his head into his hands, holds it together, barely. Feels like he has to hold it together physically, too.

"You don't exist. There's no such thing-- This is guilt, I just feel guilty, even though I shouldn't. I've just been carrying it so long, and it's worn me down, and this is all in my head, just seeing things, hallucinating, because there's no such thing as--" His throat tightens when he feels the hand on his shoulder, tongue turns to lead. The touch moves to the back of his head, and he lifts his face, blue eyes wide. "You aren't real," and in his own ears, his voice is a child's.

Roland Miller smiles, and Ben is in the basement of that rundown house in Whalley again. "As real as you are."

Blur, rush, undertow, overcome--

* * *

It's quiet, when Ben comes back. He's alone in the attic, sitting in the chair that had been occupied moments (minutes? hours?) ago. His wrists are bruised, rubbed raw in spots, like he's been tied up. His shirt sticks to his back in places, and when he peels it off, he sees what he already knows are there, stripes of red staining the fabric.

He could have done this to himself during the blackout, somehow. He's always getting injured when he's not around. His nose had even been broken once, while he'd been fighting internally with Sam, and Sam's not real either--

You're real, you're real. As real as I am. Ben's breathless admission, months ago, to the relentless taunts in his head.

As real as you are.

Deteriorating.

He doesn't panic. He can't panic.

He pushes it out of his mind, he pretends it didn't happen -- because it didn't happen, or at least, not to him -- he doesn't remember it, there's nothing to forget or ignore.

He pulls his shirt back on, finds his discarded hoodie on the floor, finds his phone in the pocket. Makes his way back to bed, pulls the blanket up. Listens to the birds chirping in the blue halflight of predawn for a while.

Jackie's phone hasn't been working for days, not after a mishap at a watering hole in Georgia, but he types out and deletes a dozen texts to her anyway.

I miss you.

I need you to come home.

Don't feel like you need to hurry home, but

He's real. It's not in my head, he's

I'm coming apart without

I'm losing it. I'm losing.

He

I don't know what to do. I'm not

When you get home, you should know, I'm staying at Lucie's. For now, but

I'm not safe right now. He's evr

I need somewhere to stay. I need somewhere safe.

I love you. I love you.

He falls asleep clutching his phone, willing it to buzz to signal a text he has no reason to expect will come -- and it doesn't. He has no reason to expect sleep to come, either, but it does, and it is blissfully empty, dreamless, devoid of any memories that are or aren't his.