i spent three years driving around

Fic:  Belly of a Whale

Author:  Nakanna Lee

Pairing: Gen, Grant / Jay friendship (Ghost Hunters)

Warnings: character death

Disclaimer:  I know nothing and know no one.  No harm meant.

A/N:  Written after watching the Buffalo Central Terminal investigation.  Very angsty.  Sorry, I’m working on a happier Steve / Tango but it’s not quite ready yet.  To come!

***

The first thing Grant loses is time, the sense of it, the hours of darkness and light.  He has no idea how long he’s been unconscious.  Waking up, blinking against the bleak dust and shadow, he takes some time for feeling to return to each of his limbs.  He pats down his legs, feels the tears in parts of his jeans and the graininess of disturbed dust that has fallen over him like a shroud.  The hair on his arms are coated with it.

Any movement vibrates in his bones.  The stretch of time is in them, like the hidden circles within a tree trunk, swirling and unknown until someone tunnels within to reveal the secrets.

He must have fallen a long, long way.

Consciousness is not a given.  Sometimes he wakes up long enough to realize he passed out, and then he’s gone again.  His brain works, pulling at pieces and pictures—Jay’s flashlight bouncing in front of his face, Steve on the walkie, checking Dave and Kris’ locations.  There was movement, he remembers, down a hallway.  The sound of his shoes thudding down the wooden stairs eaten by rotting water, and how his ankles complained of the dead vibration in the floors.  A grab, a push, Jay yelling—then his eyelids will collapse and the darkness will sweep back, close and internal, calming in its simplicity and assurance.

***

Why are you so late?

“I’m not,” Grant says.

But you are, you are.

“I’m sorry.”

Don’t be.  I miss you.

“I’m sorry.”

Grant turns his neck against the board it rests upon and pain trickles down his spine.  He freezes in an effort to make it stop.  The radiation goes in and out, bringing dark, sharp aches nearer and then letting it fade.  He can feel something warm slipping down his temple, over his cheek.  Blood, kind fingertips.

“I’m trying,” he says.

I know.  Me, too.

***

Jason woke up with a headache.  He got dressed and silently moved out of the house before the wife and kids were up.  Outside, the morning light burned low on the horizon, a stretch of brittle yellow that just barely warmed the dark gray of the sky above.  Rhode Island was miserable in winter.  It grew dark too early and wasn’t morning soon enough.  Everything smelled of old snow and diesel.

There was no Rotor-Rooter work today, Sunday, so it was straight to headquarters to knock out upcoming travel arrangements.  Kris had left a file of paperwork on his desk to be reviewed.  There were several cases lined up—no more for the show, thank God—and later on in the week the team was making the long-awaited drive back to Buffalo.  Long-awaited for Jason, at any rate.  He didn’t expect the others to feel the same, if they were coming at all.  But no one asked to pass.

Steve had stayed in town the entire time since it happened.

***

Grant’s eyes adjust.  The space around him is small, nothing more than a storage closet or a section of hallway cordoned off at some point or another.  Above he can see the breaks in planks where he fell through.  The steps weren’t the safest.  He assumed they’d be fine, after watching Kris give them a go, but he ignored the small detail that Kris was no more than a waif.  She descended timidly, her feet hardly touching the stairs.  Grant went trampling down them, chasing after a shadow, heedless of weight and rot.

A push, a grab, Jason yelling—

Craning his neck, grimacing, Grant tries to ascertain the length of his fall.  There’s no light above him.  The hole just leads into the pitch dark.  Maybe another board fell over top, he thinks.  It’s so dim, right now he could be in a pit, or a grave, or the belly of a whale.

He lays in a pile of wooden beams and rubbish.  He remembers during the investigation, Jay pointing his flashlight at papers strewn across one of the rooms:  1972, just a few months after he was born.  The entire terminal seemed caught in a time warp then, and still does now.  Grant turns his throbbing head to the side, blinking, and reaches for the nearest paper.

It’s a strip of caution tape.  Badly corroded and blotted from water, its yellow now dingy and gray.  It reminds him of something but he can’t place it, and it’s too tiring to strain his mind.

Grant dips his fingers in the puddles caught in the flooded unevenness of the floor.  Every so often he shudders at another bout of dampness creeping up the fabric of his shirt and cloaking his body in the cold.  But it’s not so bad it can’t be dealt with by a strong mind.

Grant focuses on the thought of standing.  He considers the quivers in his legs a good thing, a sign of the muscles trying to fight off dangerous relaxation.  When he shifts his back screams at him to stop, and his arms that had been steadying himself give way.  He collapses back against the rotting wood and water-logged papers.

When he shouts for help, his voice carries until the web of darkness ensnares it and leaves it hanging still in the silence.

***

Are you coming, yet?  I’ve just been waiting so long.

Grant half-hears the voice, half-feels it.  But he knows it’s there.

“I’m trying.  You have to help me.”

What am I supposed to do?

Grant’s eyes are closed, sleep pulling him deeper.  He winces, swallows the dry croak in his throat.  Shakes his head.

“I don’t know, just—just don’t leave yet.”

I was never the one who wanted to leave.

“I—I know.”

Is no one else waiting for you?

“I don’t know.”

Maybe they’re standing at the wrong platform.  Should I go check?

“No, wait!  Please—”

There’s no need to yell.  Here.

Grant rolls his head into the touch.  Forcing open his eyes, he can see the dim outline hovering beside him, can feel the ruffles at the end of her sleeves.

***

The central terminal in Buffalo loomed no less intimidating than what it did at first sight, but Jason didn’t dwell on its sheer size.  He had a plan of attack already settled in his mind.

It was hand-helds only tonight.  There was no need for a large investigation.  Steve passed out the equipment and offered to come along with Jason, but received only a glare in return.  But if they’d learned anything from that night, it was that no one should go alone.  Steve rounded up Dave and Kris, and the three of them followed several steps, though not many, behind.

Since last time there had been plenty of others through.  Police and news reporters, investigative journalists and city officials.  The caution tape was ingrained in his mind, the shocks of yellow cordoning off the area.  Finally the building was condemned and closed down.  Renovations were given time tables.  If things didn’t look up, the plan was to demolish most of the building in the upcoming year.  They’d had to get special clearance to regain access for this investigation.

“It feels different,” Steve said quietly to Dave as they walked down the halls.

Dave agreed, but then, he almost always agreed.  Steve appreciated the certainty.  Soon after the incident Dave had come to him about leaving the team all together, but Steve had talked him into sticking it out.  Things were bad, but they could get better.

They could.  It just needed time.

When they arrived at the staircase it was exactly as it had been before—dank, long, flimsy.  Leaning over the railing and down into the black Jason could see where the planks gave way and broke.  And yet they were barely even jagged angles, having been so waterlogged that the wood had not so much as snapped as it had sunken into the pit of black below.

Jason wished he’d never seen that shadow.  Had never started running after it, had never paused for a thermal sweep and let Grant dash ahead.

***

Footsteps above give Grant pause.  He hasn’t heard any sound for a long while, other than the shuffling he makes himself and water trickling, and sometimes the there-not-there sound of his companion when she comes as he drifts in between sleep and consciousness.  But these sounds are footsteps, no doubt.  Yards above him, the creak of boards and reverberation of soles pull his energy together.

He calls out, loudly.  The footsteps stop.

He doesn’t blame them for taking this long.  The terminal is huge, he fell a long way, the entrance of his drop can be sealed off somehow by other fallen debris.  And time, indistinguishable time.  There’s been too much of it.

What’s important now is contact.  He lifts his head, ignoring the sparks of white that flash in front of his eyes.  If it wasn’t for pain, he doubts he’d feel anything.

He calls again.

***

Who’s Jay?

Grant hasn’t taken his eyes off of the space above him.  Darkness that has to lead into light.

“A friend.  Can you help me call?”

Call who?

“Above us, the people above us—”

I don’t hear anything.

Grant nods as the footsteps continue.  “There, there!  Don’t you hear that?  There’s at least three people, maybe four.”  He doesn’t say what he hopes.

Aren’t you tired of waiting?

“Yes, but they’re here—”

I really think you should come with me now.

“No.” Grant’s voice trails off.  Exhaustion settles over him as she rises and stands beside him.  Her skirt is more distinctive today, as is her long pea coat and the veins in her hands.  He can’t see the veins in his anymore.

The footsteps echo above his head.

I just wanted my Jonah to come home.

Grant’s eyebrows furrow together.  She touches the creases on his forehead, and he understands in a second.

A terminal, a waiting, a mother and a war.

The belly of this whale.

Please come home.

“I can’t, I’m—” He checks skyward for more sounds.  “I’m not ready.”

Don’t you want it to stop hurting?

Grant’s throat tightens and he drops his head, looking to the side.  The burn in his chest radiates all the way through, past skin and bone and blood, until it hollows him out.  He feels her fingers touch his hairline before leaving him in peace.

“How can it stop?”

Are you afraid just because you don’t know?

Grant shakes his head, the words hard to keep straight.  “That’s what fear is.”

You can know.

“I can’t hurt them anymore.”

Tell them it’s all right.

“How?”

Come home.

***

Jason shined his flashlight down past the broken stairs and into the shaft.  The beam bounced off planks and dim corners, all the way down until it could no longer penetrate the dark.  His stomach reeled.  He felt Steve, Dave, and Kris standing just behind him, their silence increasing the burden that had ripped his nerves raw.

Then there came the breeze.  Light, at first, the coolness of an open window.  He stilled the hand that held the flashlight and couldn’t help but turn the camera in the wind’s direction.  Hoping to catch something.

The air grew colder, but not bitter.  Goosebumps shot up his skin and made his hair rise.  They pebbled the back of his neck.

He stole a glance at the hand-held screen.  It indicated a drop in temperature but no strange heat signatures showed.  He wasn’t sure what he expected, what he hoped for.  What would make him feel most relieved.

Jason had just switched the contrast setting on the camera in attempts to capture something, anything, when a pressure settled on his back.  He froze, stopped breathing.  It neither pushed nor pulled, just set there, cold and noticeably static.

“Jay—?”

He was afraid to even wave Steve off, as if any movement would dislocate the connection.  The touch was dropping in temperature but had never lessened in pressure.  In his ear he could almost sense a formation of words, like there was breath slipping in and creating syllables within his mind.

He heard his name, and pain, and couldn’t help it.  Jason turned quickly and extended a hand towards the presence.  It was like popping a balloon, or throwing a stone at birds settled on a tree.  The temperature change dispersed and evaporated.

***

Jason said nothing.  To return to the terminal was either respectful or morbid, and the line between both was too blurry.  He knew Steve, Dave, and Kris would also say nothing.  He just couldn’t tell his family, or Grant’s.  Five years to the day was hard enough—they didn’t need to know how he spent it.

The sun in Rhode Island was setting fast when he parked alone in the cemetery.  The grass crunched, brown, beneath his shoes.  He came every year on the day, usually more.  He could find the spot with his eyes closed.

“Hey, G,” Jason said.  He glanced down over his gut and at his feet poised at the base of the plot.  The grass had long since grown over.  He still remembered the smell of the dirt as it was shoveled over top, thick and dark, the smell of worms after rain.  Someone had left fresh flowers.

Jason cleared his throat.  “Sorry I’m late.”

You’re not.

“I am, though.”

It’s okay.

“No, it’s not.”  He took off his cap, rubbing his head.  Reset his feet.  “I miss you, man.”

It’s okay.

“I’m sorry.”

Don’t be.

Jason thought of the breeze he felt earlier in the night, already hours in the past and growing faint, disrupted by that dim sense of uncertainty.  Despite all their technology, all their experience, it was difficult to give a strong yes or no either way whether or not something was legitimate.  If it was real.  Or if it was willful imagination.

“I’m trying,” Jason said.  He closed his eyes and waited for the cold.

I know.  Me, too.

end