Chapter Text
Amity Park had been pretty boring so far. Sam didn’t understand why her parents insisted on moving here. They could have taken care of Grandma Ida anywhere. But Grandma wanted to go to Amity Park, so that’s where they went.
“It wouldn’t kill you to make some friends, Sammikins,” her mother said.
“Ugh, mom, stop calling me that,” Sam groaned.
“You just hang around the house all day being dark and gloomy, it’s so creepy,” her mother replied.
Sam loved that she creeped her mother out. Acceptance would be better, but if she couldn’t have that, being a freak was better. At least it was honest rejection.
“What, not a fan of witchcraft?” Sam sneered, summoning a ball of werelight into her hand.
Pamela Manson tutted. “Why you insist on pursuing magic is beyond me.”
Pamela herself had magic, but she only practiced what was necessary. Her married life resembled Bewitched more than she would like to admit, but overall she abhorred practicing magic.
Sam, however, had been utterly fascinated with everything her powers could touch since she was an infant. Grandma Ida had taught her everything she knew, to Pamela’s utter dismay,
“Well, I could just tell one of my new fancy school friends about magic, you’d love that so much,” Sam teased, floating upside just to terrorize her mother.
“Unbelievable,” her mother grumbled, stomping out of the kitchen.
“That’s my girl!” Cheered Grandma Ida. This brought warmth to Sam’s cheeks. She might even try to make some friends today.
Even though her grandmother encouraged her magical gifts, she had also stressed how important it was to keep it a secret. They couldn’t know how anyone would respond, and if too much word got out it could have been terrible.
Sam thought the best way to hide in plain sight was to play it up. She fully embraced the goth aesthetic from a young age. When she still had private school uniforms, she dyed all of them black. The school made her get new uniforms, but she simply dyed them again. It was much easier when she transitioned to public schools, giving her the freedom to go all out. Her parents tried to stop her at first, buying her exclusively pretty pastel and floral patterns. But Sam used magic to make them all black and goth anyway, so their efforts were futile.
The second benefit of embracing all things gothica was that it made it both easier and harder to make friends. It filtered out all the fake people who might pretend to be nice to befriend the new rich girl because they were afraid she might be a vampire. “If only you knew actual vampires,” she would chuckle to herself. So the only kids that actually approached her were those that didn’t have a problem with goth kids.
This had worked well at her old school, but unfortunately Amity Park was very small and this meant no one approached her. There was too much rural superstition to tolerate her degree of gothicism.
That was until that techno geek approached her at lunch.
“Hey Queen of Darkness, is there room for two at your table?”
Sam looked up to the source of the voice. He had clearly chosen 80’s vintage as his fashion inspiration, with the exception of the red beret on his head. He had an old 00s PDA in his hand, and a regular android phone hooked to his belt, and she imagined he had even more tech in his multi-pocketed backpack.
“If you’re hitting on me? No. But just to eat, yeah,” Sam said.
He pouted slightly at the rejection, but took a seat anyway. “The name’s Tucker Foley, or TF, which is short for Too Fine,” he beamed.
“Isn’t that just your initials?” Sam asked.
Tugger shrugged. “It conveniently works for both.”
“Uh huh,” Sam nodded.
From that day on they had a kind of friendship. They didn’t see each other outside of school, but they sat together at lunch, hung out before school, and sat next to each other in the two classes they shared: English and History. He was a nice kid, and quite chatty when it came to technology and girls. But Sam wasn’t sure if she wanted to see him more than that.
And yet after a few months she was growing incredibly bored. There was nothing to do in town. She didn’t blame Tucker for spending all his time on video games. She had tried some and enjoyed them, but they were only diverting for so long. Most kids hung out at the Walmart in the next town over, which made no sense to her. She assumed preppy kids were mostly having sex and getting drunk, and she had no interest in that scene. The only movie theater had two screens and mostly played second run movies. She had watched all their offerings a billion times by now.
She spent most of her time at home, working through her family library of spells. Every time her mother tried to nag her about her grades, Sam would simply show off her completed homework and perfect A report card. If not that, then Sam should be preparing for college, and Sam would remind her that she had a guaranteed entrance into her father’s alma mater. And then it was volunteer hours, and then Sam would remind her that she was already doing the standard number of hours at the local animal shelter and soup kitchens. She left her mother with no ground to stand on.
“Now that would be a fun spell to find,” Sam mused to herself when considering the idiom.
And yet somehow Amity Park was so boring that even magic was becoming boring to her. Magic! This was the stuff that most kids dreamed of, and she was bored with it.
“I think I need a healthy scare,” she sighed at lunch one day.
“Hm?” Tucker hummed through his sandwich.
“I just need a thrill, and I think a good scare is the solution,” Sam said.
“Oooh, a horror movie kind of person?” Tucker asked, his brow raised suggestively.
“No, like a real life scare. Is there anything scary in this dumb little town?” Sam asked.
Tucker smirked and the expression took over his whole face. “Actually, there is.”
And that is how Sam found herself approaching an abandoned house with Tucker on a chilly October night. She had wanted to come alone, but Tucker insisted he show her and be there in case she needed protection. She thought it was laughable that she of all people would need protection, but the nerd wouldn’t take no for an answer.
The house was such a stereotypical haunted house she almost laughed at it. The creaky steps, the faded paint, the broken windows, the door that barely closed — all the regular boxes were checked. The only true unique quality of the house was that there was some kind of UFO looking thing on top of it, larger than the house itself.
“And you’re sure the family wasn’t taken by aliens?” Sam asked skeptically.
“Would the aliens have left their ship? Come on,” Tucker huffed.
Tucker led the way, ever playing the chivalrous knight. She had to repress a snicker, because she wasn’t scared at all, only amused by Tucker’s own fear. He stepped carefully over certain boards, meaning he’d been here enough times to know which boards creaked the worst. But when he crossed the threshold, he was gone.
Sam’s heart only now began to drum faster. “Tucker?” She called out.
“I’m here!” Came his ready reply. She breathed a sigh of relief.
When she herself entered the house she understood what had happened. Something in her magical senses tugged, telling her that she had crossed into a ghost’s haunt. Fuck, this house really is haunted, she said to herself.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Sam said. She well understood the dangers of trespassing on a ghost’s haunt, and she did not want to offend the specter that occupied the old Fenton house.
“You’re the one who wanted a scare,” Tucker said, clicking on his flashlight below his face.
Sam’s heart jumped, but she masked the reaction to his childish prank. “Very funny,” she said dryly.
“Heh, that usually works,” he shrugged.
But their flashlights didn’t do much good. The house wasn’t just dark from boarded up windows and thick curtains — this was a supernatural darkness. It was a blackness that soaked into your bones, accompanied by a cold so sharp that no amount of blankets or warm layers would protect against it. This ghost wanted to be left alone.
“How many girls have you brought here?” Sam asked.
“Too Fine Tucker Foley gets around,” he boasted.
So not very many, Sam thought.
As they progressed deeper into the house, gravity began to hug and squeeze on Sam, making her regret the very air she breathed.
“Tucker—“
“We’ll be fine,” Tucker cut her off.
My apologies, ghost. I’ll get him out of here as soon as I can, she said to no one. But she hoped they would read her intent anyway.
And then Tucker began to cry. It was loud, retching sobs, from something deeper than himself.
“Tucker?” Sam ventured.
“I can’t help it. I just feel so sad!” He lamented. She embraced him close to her and he cried into her shoulder.
“It’s the ghost. They don’t want us here,” Sam said softly. “We should go.”
“No, I can do it!” Tucker asserted, pushing back from her and wiping his tears. He still had rebellious tears trickling down, but he was clearly determined to push on.
Sam repressed her desire to roll her eyes at his machismo.
“We’ll save the basement for last,” Tucker whispered. The windows rattled, except that there were no longer glass panes in them. Sam shivered. “So we’ll start upstairs.”
Tucker led her upstairs, still sniffling but seeming to overcome the initial rush of pain. Now that the sorrow was gone, Sam figured the ghost would try their next attack. Sure enough, hers and Tucker’s shoes began to stick to the floor. Not so much that they were frozen in place, but enough that it made them feel like they were trudging through snow to climb the stairs.
“The ghost doesn’t want us here,” Sam whispered close to Tucker’s ear. A wind rushed through the house.
“I ain’t afraid of no ghost.”
“You’re not a ghost buster.”
“It’s no less true that I am not afraid.”
Ugh. Boys.
They looked at the master bedroom first. It was bare, as if anything of value had already been stolen.
Figures.
There was a lingering taste of sadness in this room, but it was different from what they had felt in the foyer. This was tainted with shame, guilt, and regret. It even seemed like anger lingered in the air. What had happened here? There had to be more to the story than Tucker was telling her.
The ghost didn’t attack them here, other than the darkness and cold that lingered in the house. Were they afraid of this room for some reason?
Next was the sister’s bedroom. Notebooks and textbooks and novels were scattered all around the room. No human had thrown these books. The ghost had trashed this room. In anger? In longing? She could probably use some kind of detection spell, but she wasn’t confident in being able to hide it from Tucker. She would have to come back.
As evidence of her hypothesis, the same books in the room lifted from the ground. They thrashed across the room, whirling around her and Tucker like a tornado. The books hit both of them, the pages scratching them wherever skin was exposed.
“I don’t want to die of a papercut today!” Tucker shrieked, dashing from the room and leaving Sam alone. She was almost scared this time, but mostly sad.
“I’m so sorry,” she said softly to the ghost and exited.
“Has that happened to you before?” Sam asked when she found Tucker hugging the bannister.
He avoided making eye contact, fidgeting with the bottom of his shirt. “No, the date usually ends before we get there.”
Sam sighed. “Do you consider this—“
“No! I didn’t mean it like that. I genuinely took you out here tonight as friends. No ulterior motive,” Tucker rambled. Sam believed him.
“Do you want to keep going?” Sam asked.
“Yes! I’ve never made it this far and I want to see how far I can go,” he declared.
“Alright, if you’re sure.”
But the final bedroom was locked. Sam knew that she could open it, and contemplated if she could get away with a little magic in front of Tucker. If he couldn’t see it…
She twitched her nose and their flashlights died.
“Hey!” Tucker shouted.
Sam smirked and got to work on the doorknob. “Do you have extra batteries?” She asked Tucker while she worked.
“Yeah but I can’t see anything,” Tucker grunted. There was a click and Sam knew she had it. She twitched her nose and turned the flashlights back on.
“I think I got the door open!” She announced. A fierce wind tore through the hallway, ruffling their clothes and knocking the flashlights from their hands. It came with a loud howling, littered with several voices and tones, making it sound like there were several people screaming.
“Let’s get out of here!” Tucker shouted over the noise.
“But—“
“Now!” Tucker grabbed her shirt and propelled them down the stairs. She had no choice but to be dragged along with him. The house guided them along the way, pushing them out and slamming the door behind them.
Tucker collapsed on the grass as soon as they were out of the house. “Oh sweet earth, I was afraid I would never see you again,” he crooned.
“And you were so averse to the mud pie sandwiches during vegan week,” Sam scoffed. But she too was relieved. Unlike Tucker, however, now she was curious, not scared.
She would have to come back on her own, without Tucker.