Quartet for a Haunting 4/5
J2 RPS AU
R
Part 4 of 5
Master post
Art
The next night he goes back to the theater, tries all the doors (and the ticket window for good measure), can't get in, yells at the building that he's really sorry, his friends are dicks, he didn't think they'd break into the place before Ross gave his okay, he gave them shit for it and they won't do it again.
He doesn't actually know that's true, and in fact he suspects it isn't, but he also knows they didn't come back today and maybe they - by which he means Chad and Misha - learned their lesson.
Ross still won't let him in. Jared doesn't know enough magic to break whatever lock spell Ross might have cast, and his affinity for mechanical things and door locks can't get him in either.
"Look, I fucked up, okay?" Jared yells at the backstage door, the one he's been breaking into the whole time. He doesn't really think Ross can hear him, not unless the guy is standing right on the other side of the door, but at least this way he's behind the building and no one is going to walk by and hear him yelling at nothing like a crazy person. "I don't know how to make it up to you, or convince you it won't happen again. I made everyone promise to stay out of the theater until you're okay with them using it" - this is half a lie, as Jared really only made Misha promise not to try and break in again - "although we really need to get in, and they wouldn't have broken in in the first place if you'd let them - "
He cuts himself off, realizing a little too late that this isn't a productive line of argument. He sighs.
"Can you just let me in?" he asks the door. "Please? It's their fault but I think I should apologize in person."
There's no sound from inside. Jared tries the door for what has to be the tenth time, but it still won't open. He resists the urge to kick it and goes home.
It takes four days before Ross lets him in. During those days Jared makes Misha go out to the theater to apologize, and Misha even sounds sincere doing it. Jared doesn't know if that's what finally convinces Ross, or if Jared has just worn him down, but one night he tries to jimmy the backstage door open, and this time he hears the lock click and feels the door move, and he pushes on it and finally gains entry back into the theater.
The tiny Christmas conjure lights are still twinkling over the stage, just like they were the last time Jared was here. Ross is pacing around under them, occasionally kicking paper out of his way when he walks too close to one of the drifts spreading out from the mattress. He looks the same as he always did, buttoned-up and serious and still barefoot, and when Jared says hi he doesn't answer.
"Thanks for letting me in," Jared goes on. "I just.. I can say it again - I'm sorry my friends broke in before you were ready. I made Misha apologize too, since it was his idea - I hope you heard that - he really felt bad that it turned you against me. They won't be back until you're okay with it."
"Good," Ross says, stopping with his back to Jared. "I trusted you."
"I know. I'm sorry. They put all your stuff back, at least."
From the way Ross tilts his head Jared thinks he might be rolling his eyes.
"Where did you go? Misha said they looked for you but couldn't find you. They would've asked if they could use the theater if they could've found you."
"Don't make this my fault."
"I'm not. I'm just saying, they didn't want to be rude. I know they were, I know you trusted me and they fucked it up. I know. I'm sorry, I really am. I like hanging out with you and talking about movies and music and shit. I wouldn't do anything to ruin that, you have to know that."
"I know. But you did."
"But you let me back in. That's something."
Ross sighs, turns around. "I like you too. But this is my place. I asked one thing of you - "
"I know. What do you want me to do?" It comes out a little whinier than Jared wants. The whine makes him sound like he's ten.
"I don't know." Ross sighs again.
"Did you see any of the rehearsal? I know Misha said they couldn't find you, but you could've snuck into the auditorium when no one was looking."
"I heard some of it. They sounded...." He pauses, apparently thinking of the right way to phrase it, because he settles on the diplomatic "It was clearly an early rehearsal."
"Yeah, and the script's not even done. I think Misha's just in a hurry. He'll edit as he goes. We've had this conversation, haven't we."
"We have." Ross grins a little. "How's your movie?"
Jared walks over to the mattress and plops down on it, relieved to be talking about something else. "I'm this close to the script stage. It's always the last thing I nail down before I actually shoot any scenes. I can't do what Misha does - everything's gotta be done before I even think about filming."
"And when I'm working on a piece, a lot of times I just start writing and see where it goes." Ross joins him on the mattress. "Art's different - I don't usually draw except to preserve something, so I know the end result I want. I already have the image in my head, I just have to get it onto paper. Music, I have a piece of it - a melody, a phrase, whatever - and I write it down to figure out the rest of it. I write the woodwinds, say, and then figure out the brass from that, and then do the percussion, or the strings. It sounds very...." He waves his hand vaguely. "Unfocused. But it isn't. I have a process, it's just that each piece demands a different one."
This is probably the most Ross has ever said about his work, either art or music, at one time. Jared tries to think of something else to say that will keep him talking.
"How many instruments can you play? I want to hear your work sometime."
Ross chuckles. "I can hum a few bars."
"Okay." Jared looks expectant.
"You mean now?"
"Yeah. Why not? If I could get the movie screen to come down I'd show you my thesis movie."
"There must be a trick to it," Ross says, starting to stand.
"Sit. Don't change the subject."
Ross sits. "Fine. This is what I've been working on. It's for a string quartet, not a full orchestra. So this is from the first movement. Pretend you can hear four separate instruments." He takes a breath, raises his arms like he's about to conduct an orchestra, and starts to hum. It's more like singing, really, just without words, and Jared is transfixed.
He watches, trying not to stare, as Ross sings his composition. And when Ross's voice drifts to a stop, he starts a little, as if he forgot Jared was even there.
"Wow," Jared says. "That was great."
Ross blushes. "You don't know anything about music, do you."
"No. But I know what I like."
"Now you have to show me something."
"You show me yours, I'll show you mine?" Jared's eyebrows jump up and down suggestively.
"Not like that." But Ross is smiling in a way that Jared chooses to interpret as Not yet. "You said 'thesis film'. You've mentioned it a couple of times. I want to see it."
"I'll see what I can do. I got the projector working, anyway."
* * *
"That can't be right," Osric says to himself. "That's gotta be a coincidence." He flaps the newspaper around in an attempt to fold it in half, gives up, and shoves the pages across the kitchen table at Jared.
"What am I looking at?" Jared asks.
"The wedding pages."
"What?"
"Give me that," Danneel says, taking the newspaper. She shuffles the pages back into order, folds them in half and in half again, and gives the paper back to Jared so he can read the wedding announcements.
"Mackenzie whatshername," Jared says, impressed he can remember her name after more than a month. "Ackles. Right. Why - " He skims, stops. The groom's attendants included one of the bride's brothers and a cousin, standing in for her older brother, died a couple of years ago, studied at some conservatory, named -
"Right?" Osric says.
"What?" Danneel asks, taking the newspaper from Jared a second time. "You're being weird. What's the big - whoa. That can't be."
"That's what I said!"
"You said Ross is a composer and an artist, right? Writes a lot of music. Nothing in here about drawing, but to be fair it's about his sister's wedding, and maybe it's a hobby...." She drops the paper on the table. "Your boy's a ghost."
...standing in for Ms Ackles's late brother, Jensen Ross Ackles, who was a student at the Lennertz Conservatory when he was killed in an accident three years ago.
Jared remembers Alona announcing, probably a month and a half ago, after he and Osric broke into the theater to look at the costumes and check the lights, that Chad told her they'd found a ghost. He remembers her offering to ask her grandmother to banish it, and he remembers - very clearly remembers - telling her the squatter wasn't a ghost, he was just a guy.
Was Chad right?
There's no way he could be. Ross is solid, Jared knows, and he writes music and draws and conjures Christmas lights over the stage. He drinks instant coffee with sugar and eats gingersnaps. Ghosts are diaphanous see-through beings, or feelings of unease, or cold spots in the air, or strange noises. They're not real people who walk and talk and conjure lights and discuss movies and draw pictures.
But Ross seemed to know this Mackenzie when Jared first mentioned her, and he had those sketches of her - "I draw people I want to remember," Ross said - holy shit. All those drawings and sketches are Ross trying to keep a grip on reality. He's drawing his baby sister so he doesn't forget her. He drew Jared so as not to forget him.
Son of a bitch.
Jared befriended - and might be falling in love with - a dead man. A ghost.
No. This isn't a movie. This is a coincidence. This is making shit up because, what, Danneel and Osric think it would be more interesting if Ross was dead? Because Jared is susceptible to that kind of thinking? Real life doesn't work this way.
"Jared?" Danneel waves her hand in front of Jared's face. "Are you freaking out? Don't."
"Wait until Alona finds out," Osric says, grinning. "You'll never get her in that theater now. She'll have to get a banishing spell from her grandma first. I wonder why he's haunting the theater. Did he die there? Did it belong to him, and that's why we can't figure out who it belongs to? Because it belongs to a ghost. Why are there gingersnaps and a can of coffee in the dressing room, though? Ghosts don't eat."
"You're freaking out," Danneel tells Jared.
"I'm not," he says. "It's a coincidence. Usually I'm the one trying to make real life into a movie, not you."
"There's one way to find out," Osric says. "You need to find his obituary and hope it has a picture."
The librarian at the local library is very helpful, even if she can't quite understand why Jared wants to see three-year-old obituaries, because he can't quite explain it to her. How do you tell someone that you need to know if the guy you've been getting to know over the past month and a half is a ghost, because your housemates are convinced he is?
You don't. But what you do is find - with the help of a slightly baffled but very obliging librarian - an obituary with a photo from three years ago, briefly describing the life of Jensen Ross Ackles, age twenty-seven, self-taught artist, student of orchestral music, older son of an old, wealthy family. And not just an obituary, but an actual article, a short one, describing the death of the aforementioned Jensen Ross Ackles, killed in a car accident, the other driver and a passenger were injured, yadda yadda.
He was apparently working on a commission when he died, a piece for a string quartet, intending to premiere it at....
"Holy shit," Jared says, louder than intended. Someone shushes him. He forgot he was in a library. "Holy shit," he whispers.
Ross was writing a piece that was supposed to be performed at the abandoned theater. The Sunflower House theater. Jared and Misha's theater. That must be why he's haunting it, and why he's so protective of it. He's keeping it empty until his final piece can be performed. Is that what he's working on, whenever Jared catches him writing music?
Jared makes some copies of the obituary and the article, thanks the librarian for her help, and goes home. The library took longer than he expected, and by the time he gets back to the house he has just enough time to swallow some dinner and go to work. The cinema is running midnight movies and it's his shift.
One of the advantages of working by yourself is that you have time to think things over. The disadvantage is that you don't have anyone to help you think those things over. But even if Jared did have someone to talk to right now, Jim doesn't like people who aren't the projectionist hanging around the projection booth.
When Jared's shift is over he leaves Jim a note - "What do you know about ghosts?" - and walks home. No one is awake, unsurprisingly, but he can't sleep, and he's sitting in the kitchen trying to figure out what to do and how to mention to Ross that he knows what happened, when Genevieve comes downstairs to make some coffee to take with her to the bakery.
"What are you doing up?" she asks, surprised.
"I haven't been to bed yet," he says. "Ross is a ghost."
"Ross is a what?" She drops into a chair and stares at him. "Did you say 'a ghost'?" She doesn't sound like she believes him but she also doesn't sound as if this is really new news. Jared guesses Danneel told her about their theory that the squatter in the theater is really the ghost in the theater, and she didn't believe it then either.
"Yeah." He shows her the copies he made at the library. She skims them, looks up, raises an eyebrow at him.
"Danny told me the place was haunted and I didn't believe her. I'm still not sure I believe her." She taps the copy of the obituary. "What made you - "
"Osric made me go to the library to research. My life is turning into a movie, except if it really was a movie, there'd be be a big dramatic reveal when I learned the truth. Instead I was just sitting in the library. Someone shushed me. How do I tell him?"
"Tell him what? That you found his death notice in the paper and you know he's a spook?"
"You mean 'spooky'. He's not a spy for the CIA."
Genevieve shrugs. "I don't know what you tell him. You know no one's ever seen him but you?"
"Yeah, but everyone who's been in the theater has seen his stuff all over the stage, and Danny was sarcastic about his clothes which were hanging with the rest of the costumes. Everybody knows there's someone squatting there. I watched him draw stuff. He sang some music for me. He can't be a ghost. He's solid."
"I guess ghosts can be solid if they want. Maybe he doesn't know." She picks up the copies of the obit and the article about the accident and hands them back to Jared.
"How can you not know you're dead?"
She shrugs again, stands, checks the coffeepot. "You should ask Alona if you want to know about ghosts. Where's my thermos?"
Jared doesn't want to ask Alona about ghosts for the simple reason that he doesn't want her to show up at the theater with a banishing spell before he can talk to Ross himself. Maybe he should start thinking of the guy as Jensen, since that seems to be his actual first name. Or maybe he just likes "Ross" better. He wouldn't be the first person who hated their first name and wanted to be known by their middle name.
Genevieve has found her thermos, filled it, and gone to the bakery. At some point someone else will wake up - probably Misha, who's an early riser - and come downstairs and Jared will have to talk to them. And he really needs some sleep.
He goes to bed. He can't sleep. He gets out of bed. He takes a shower. He puts on clothes and goes over to the theater.
Now that he's apologized to Ross - Jensen - whoever - for the rest of the house breaking into the theater without permission, it's a lot easier to pick the locks and let himself in. Ross - Jensen - dammit - isn't there, although the bed is made like it always is, and there's a pile of drawings and sheet music on top of the covers and scattered around the floor, like there always is, and the books on the crate next to the bed are the same as they were when Jared broke in the first time. The Christmas conjure lights are gone, though, and the theater is dark except for the beam of Jared's flashlight. If he were to go into the lobby he might see daylight through cracks in the boards over the windows, or under the shade pulled down behind the ticket window. But the auditorium is dark.
"Ross!" he yells, swinging the flashlight around. "Are you here? Where are you? I need to talk to you, I know - "
You know what, Moose? he asks himself, sounding like Chad in his head. You know the guy's a ghost? You read his obit and you know how he died?
If it was hard for Jared to admit it to himself, even after seeing it in black and white, how much harder it is to admit it to the ghost in question.
He tries again. "Where are you? Ross? It's important!"
But it's morning. Ghosts are more likely to haunt at night, in the dark. That's why no one from Sunflower House saw Ross when they broke in to rehearse. They came during the day. He wasn't here. He was wherever ghosts go when they're not haunting.
Although Jared can't call whatever Ross has been doing in the theater haunting.
"Jensen!"
Nothing.
Jared goes backstage. Nothing there either. He takes a closer look at the gingersnaps and the canisters of coffee and sugar and the tiny camp stove still sitting in their box in one of the dressing rooms. The gingersnaps are real and surprisingly not stale. They've never attracted mice. Has Ross just scared off the rodents? How - and why - has he managed to conjure up a box of still-fresh cookies?
The camp stove is cold, and Jared can't tell whether or not Ross has eaten or drunk anything. But the coffee is probably still fresh, if the cookies are. The sugar probably isn't even clumpy. Jared is almost tempted to take both canisters home and donate them to the house kitchen, and test to see if Ross would follow his coffee. But no, that would be stealing, and Jared doesn't want Ross to get pissed at him for anything else.
Maybe he should leave a note. But what would he say? I know you're a ghost. I want to talk about it. Except he doesn't want to talk about it. Except he has to.
Genevieve is far less gossipy than her girlfriend, delight in the newspaper gossip pages notwithstanding. She's not going to tell the whole house that Ross is a ghost. That's for Jared to share.
He turns that over in his head for the rest of the day - how he's going to tell the house, especially Misha, that the theater they want to use is haunted. Alona will bring her grandmother over to spell Ross out of the place. Sam, lapsed Catholic that she is, will probably want to get a priest in to perform an exorcism. Vicki will want to cleanse the whole theater, not just the auditorium and the dressing rooms, but the restrooms and the lobby and the ticket office and the catwalk and probably every individual costume. And Osric and Alex and Misha will want to talk to Ross, to learn the mechanisms by which someone becomes a ghost and why they haunt the places they do, and what will get him to move on, and how is it that he can still conjure lights and write music and draw pictures and lock people out of his theater?
Jared wants to talk to Ross first. He wants to know when Ross knew, if Ross knew, and what do they do now? Will Ross stick around? Does he want to? Will he be able to?
That night, changing reels at the cinema, Jared has an idea. If Ross is haunting the theater because he never got to premiere his commission, his quartet, Jared will arrange it so he can. Misha is getting crankier and crankier about having to rehearse his play in the house, and he's putting more and more pressure on Jared to get Ross to let them use the theater, especially now that the cast has actually been inside it and rehearsed on stage. So Jared will strike a deal with Ross - let everyone in, let them clean the place up and get it ready for public performances, and once Ross finishes it, he can premiere his final piece. Ross will give them the theater, and Misha will temporarily put his play aside in favor of a string quartet.
But first, Jared has a movie to show. He promised.
He enlists Alex and Osric to help him with the movie screen, even though he has the affinity for mechanics, because while they're working on the screen he can work on the projector. He brought his copy of his thesis film, he knows he can thread it through the projector, he just has to make sure the bulb is strong enough and the screen is good enough and the picture is clear enough.
It is. It all works. He can even hear Osric and Alex cheering from the auditorium as the first scene flickers against the movie screen.
"Now we can show movies until Misha's dumb play is ready," Alex says.
"It's not dumb," Osric tells him. "You're just ticked he didn't give you a better part."
"There are only four characters! Why is mine so weak?"
"At least you're not just playing a version of yourself," Jared points out. Genevieve is still annoyed Misha didn't write her a part that would let her actually stretch herself as an actress. She's trying to accept it, but that doesn't mean she has to like it.
Alex just snorts, and when Osric reminds him that there will be other plays, Alex announces that this is the premiere play for the new and improved Sunflower Theater, and he should have a better part in it. How will anyone know what he can do if Misha won't give him a chance to show off?
Jared has that night off so he shows up at the theater with his film under one arm and a bag of red licorice in his other hand. He brought the licorice partly to test whether or not Ross is really a ghost - since ghosts don't eat - but it didn't occur to him that the sudden appearance of candy might ruin his cinematic surprise.
"Are those... movie snacks?" Ross asks, the half smile on his face telling Jared he already knows the answer.
Jared holds up the film can with a flourish. A piece of tape across the lid says "THESIS FILM DO NOT TOUCH", and written in red marker on the lid itself is "The Wild Night of Mr Fright", in what Jared thought at the time was appropriately spooky handwriting.
"Finally!" Ross says, clapping his hands like a five-year-old. Jared laughs.
"I have to keep an eye on the projector," he says. "I can't just leave it. So you get a private showing all your own."
"I could sit in the projection booth with you. Will I be able to hear it in there?"
"You should. I could hear Alex and Osric in the audience when I tested it earlier."
The tiny conjure lights over the stage blink out as Jared and Ross troop up to the projection booth, which is unlocked. The controls for the screen are up here, so Jared lets it down, threads his movie in the projector, flips the switch.
Onwards!
R
Part 4 of 5
Master post
Art
The next night he goes back to the theater, tries all the doors (and the ticket window for good measure), can't get in, yells at the building that he's really sorry, his friends are dicks, he didn't think they'd break into the place before Ross gave his okay, he gave them shit for it and they won't do it again.
He doesn't actually know that's true, and in fact he suspects it isn't, but he also knows they didn't come back today and maybe they - by which he means Chad and Misha - learned their lesson.
Ross still won't let him in. Jared doesn't know enough magic to break whatever lock spell Ross might have cast, and his affinity for mechanical things and door locks can't get him in either.
"Look, I fucked up, okay?" Jared yells at the backstage door, the one he's been breaking into the whole time. He doesn't really think Ross can hear him, not unless the guy is standing right on the other side of the door, but at least this way he's behind the building and no one is going to walk by and hear him yelling at nothing like a crazy person. "I don't know how to make it up to you, or convince you it won't happen again. I made everyone promise to stay out of the theater until you're okay with them using it" - this is half a lie, as Jared really only made Misha promise not to try and break in again - "although we really need to get in, and they wouldn't have broken in in the first place if you'd let them - "
He cuts himself off, realizing a little too late that this isn't a productive line of argument. He sighs.
"Can you just let me in?" he asks the door. "Please? It's their fault but I think I should apologize in person."
There's no sound from inside. Jared tries the door for what has to be the tenth time, but it still won't open. He resists the urge to kick it and goes home.
It takes four days before Ross lets him in. During those days Jared makes Misha go out to the theater to apologize, and Misha even sounds sincere doing it. Jared doesn't know if that's what finally convinces Ross, or if Jared has just worn him down, but one night he tries to jimmy the backstage door open, and this time he hears the lock click and feels the door move, and he pushes on it and finally gains entry back into the theater.
The tiny Christmas conjure lights are still twinkling over the stage, just like they were the last time Jared was here. Ross is pacing around under them, occasionally kicking paper out of his way when he walks too close to one of the drifts spreading out from the mattress. He looks the same as he always did, buttoned-up and serious and still barefoot, and when Jared says hi he doesn't answer.
"Thanks for letting me in," Jared goes on. "I just.. I can say it again - I'm sorry my friends broke in before you were ready. I made Misha apologize too, since it was his idea - I hope you heard that - he really felt bad that it turned you against me. They won't be back until you're okay with it."
"Good," Ross says, stopping with his back to Jared. "I trusted you."
"I know. I'm sorry. They put all your stuff back, at least."
From the way Ross tilts his head Jared thinks he might be rolling his eyes.
"Where did you go? Misha said they looked for you but couldn't find you. They would've asked if they could use the theater if they could've found you."
"Don't make this my fault."
"I'm not. I'm just saying, they didn't want to be rude. I know they were, I know you trusted me and they fucked it up. I know. I'm sorry, I really am. I like hanging out with you and talking about movies and music and shit. I wouldn't do anything to ruin that, you have to know that."
"I know. But you did."
"But you let me back in. That's something."
Ross sighs, turns around. "I like you too. But this is my place. I asked one thing of you - "
"I know. What do you want me to do?" It comes out a little whinier than Jared wants. The whine makes him sound like he's ten.
"I don't know." Ross sighs again.
"Did you see any of the rehearsal? I know Misha said they couldn't find you, but you could've snuck into the auditorium when no one was looking."
"I heard some of it. They sounded...." He pauses, apparently thinking of the right way to phrase it, because he settles on the diplomatic "It was clearly an early rehearsal."
"Yeah, and the script's not even done. I think Misha's just in a hurry. He'll edit as he goes. We've had this conversation, haven't we."
"We have." Ross grins a little. "How's your movie?"
Jared walks over to the mattress and plops down on it, relieved to be talking about something else. "I'm this close to the script stage. It's always the last thing I nail down before I actually shoot any scenes. I can't do what Misha does - everything's gotta be done before I even think about filming."
"And when I'm working on a piece, a lot of times I just start writing and see where it goes." Ross joins him on the mattress. "Art's different - I don't usually draw except to preserve something, so I know the end result I want. I already have the image in my head, I just have to get it onto paper. Music, I have a piece of it - a melody, a phrase, whatever - and I write it down to figure out the rest of it. I write the woodwinds, say, and then figure out the brass from that, and then do the percussion, or the strings. It sounds very...." He waves his hand vaguely. "Unfocused. But it isn't. I have a process, it's just that each piece demands a different one."
This is probably the most Ross has ever said about his work, either art or music, at one time. Jared tries to think of something else to say that will keep him talking.
"How many instruments can you play? I want to hear your work sometime."
Ross chuckles. "I can hum a few bars."
"Okay." Jared looks expectant.
"You mean now?"
"Yeah. Why not? If I could get the movie screen to come down I'd show you my thesis movie."
"There must be a trick to it," Ross says, starting to stand.
"Sit. Don't change the subject."
Ross sits. "Fine. This is what I've been working on. It's for a string quartet, not a full orchestra. So this is from the first movement. Pretend you can hear four separate instruments." He takes a breath, raises his arms like he's about to conduct an orchestra, and starts to hum. It's more like singing, really, just without words, and Jared is transfixed.
He watches, trying not to stare, as Ross sings his composition. And when Ross's voice drifts to a stop, he starts a little, as if he forgot Jared was even there.
"Wow," Jared says. "That was great."
Ross blushes. "You don't know anything about music, do you."
"No. But I know what I like."
"Now you have to show me something."
"You show me yours, I'll show you mine?" Jared's eyebrows jump up and down suggestively.
"Not like that." But Ross is smiling in a way that Jared chooses to interpret as Not yet. "You said 'thesis film'. You've mentioned it a couple of times. I want to see it."
"I'll see what I can do. I got the projector working, anyway."
* * *
"That can't be right," Osric says to himself. "That's gotta be a coincidence." He flaps the newspaper around in an attempt to fold it in half, gives up, and shoves the pages across the kitchen table at Jared.
"What am I looking at?" Jared asks.
"The wedding pages."
"What?"
"Give me that," Danneel says, taking the newspaper. She shuffles the pages back into order, folds them in half and in half again, and gives the paper back to Jared so he can read the wedding announcements.
"Mackenzie whatshername," Jared says, impressed he can remember her name after more than a month. "Ackles. Right. Why - " He skims, stops. The groom's attendants included one of the bride's brothers and a cousin, standing in for her older brother, died a couple of years ago, studied at some conservatory, named -
"Right?" Osric says.
"What?" Danneel asks, taking the newspaper from Jared a second time. "You're being weird. What's the big - whoa. That can't be."
"That's what I said!"
"You said Ross is a composer and an artist, right? Writes a lot of music. Nothing in here about drawing, but to be fair it's about his sister's wedding, and maybe it's a hobby...." She drops the paper on the table. "Your boy's a ghost."
...standing in for Ms Ackles's late brother, Jensen Ross Ackles, who was a student at the Lennertz Conservatory when he was killed in an accident three years ago.
Jared remembers Alona announcing, probably a month and a half ago, after he and Osric broke into the theater to look at the costumes and check the lights, that Chad told her they'd found a ghost. He remembers her offering to ask her grandmother to banish it, and he remembers - very clearly remembers - telling her the squatter wasn't a ghost, he was just a guy.
Was Chad right?
There's no way he could be. Ross is solid, Jared knows, and he writes music and draws and conjures Christmas lights over the stage. He drinks instant coffee with sugar and eats gingersnaps. Ghosts are diaphanous see-through beings, or feelings of unease, or cold spots in the air, or strange noises. They're not real people who walk and talk and conjure lights and discuss movies and draw pictures.
But Ross seemed to know this Mackenzie when Jared first mentioned her, and he had those sketches of her - "I draw people I want to remember," Ross said - holy shit. All those drawings and sketches are Ross trying to keep a grip on reality. He's drawing his baby sister so he doesn't forget her. He drew Jared so as not to forget him.
Son of a bitch.
Jared befriended - and might be falling in love with - a dead man. A ghost.
No. This isn't a movie. This is a coincidence. This is making shit up because, what, Danneel and Osric think it would be more interesting if Ross was dead? Because Jared is susceptible to that kind of thinking? Real life doesn't work this way.
"Jared?" Danneel waves her hand in front of Jared's face. "Are you freaking out? Don't."
"Wait until Alona finds out," Osric says, grinning. "You'll never get her in that theater now. She'll have to get a banishing spell from her grandma first. I wonder why he's haunting the theater. Did he die there? Did it belong to him, and that's why we can't figure out who it belongs to? Because it belongs to a ghost. Why are there gingersnaps and a can of coffee in the dressing room, though? Ghosts don't eat."
"You're freaking out," Danneel tells Jared.
"I'm not," he says. "It's a coincidence. Usually I'm the one trying to make real life into a movie, not you."
"There's one way to find out," Osric says. "You need to find his obituary and hope it has a picture."
The librarian at the local library is very helpful, even if she can't quite understand why Jared wants to see three-year-old obituaries, because he can't quite explain it to her. How do you tell someone that you need to know if the guy you've been getting to know over the past month and a half is a ghost, because your housemates are convinced he is?
You don't. But what you do is find - with the help of a slightly baffled but very obliging librarian - an obituary with a photo from three years ago, briefly describing the life of Jensen Ross Ackles, age twenty-seven, self-taught artist, student of orchestral music, older son of an old, wealthy family. And not just an obituary, but an actual article, a short one, describing the death of the aforementioned Jensen Ross Ackles, killed in a car accident, the other driver and a passenger were injured, yadda yadda.
He was apparently working on a commission when he died, a piece for a string quartet, intending to premiere it at....
"Holy shit," Jared says, louder than intended. Someone shushes him. He forgot he was in a library. "Holy shit," he whispers.
Ross was writing a piece that was supposed to be performed at the abandoned theater. The Sunflower House theater. Jared and Misha's theater. That must be why he's haunting it, and why he's so protective of it. He's keeping it empty until his final piece can be performed. Is that what he's working on, whenever Jared catches him writing music?
Jared makes some copies of the obituary and the article, thanks the librarian for her help, and goes home. The library took longer than he expected, and by the time he gets back to the house he has just enough time to swallow some dinner and go to work. The cinema is running midnight movies and it's his shift.
One of the advantages of working by yourself is that you have time to think things over. The disadvantage is that you don't have anyone to help you think those things over. But even if Jared did have someone to talk to right now, Jim doesn't like people who aren't the projectionist hanging around the projection booth.
When Jared's shift is over he leaves Jim a note - "What do you know about ghosts?" - and walks home. No one is awake, unsurprisingly, but he can't sleep, and he's sitting in the kitchen trying to figure out what to do and how to mention to Ross that he knows what happened, when Genevieve comes downstairs to make some coffee to take with her to the bakery.
"What are you doing up?" she asks, surprised.
"I haven't been to bed yet," he says. "Ross is a ghost."
"Ross is a what?" She drops into a chair and stares at him. "Did you say 'a ghost'?" She doesn't sound like she believes him but she also doesn't sound as if this is really new news. Jared guesses Danneel told her about their theory that the squatter in the theater is really the ghost in the theater, and she didn't believe it then either.
"Yeah." He shows her the copies he made at the library. She skims them, looks up, raises an eyebrow at him.
"Danny told me the place was haunted and I didn't believe her. I'm still not sure I believe her." She taps the copy of the obituary. "What made you - "
"Osric made me go to the library to research. My life is turning into a movie, except if it really was a movie, there'd be be a big dramatic reveal when I learned the truth. Instead I was just sitting in the library. Someone shushed me. How do I tell him?"
"Tell him what? That you found his death notice in the paper and you know he's a spook?"
"You mean 'spooky'. He's not a spy for the CIA."
Genevieve shrugs. "I don't know what you tell him. You know no one's ever seen him but you?"
"Yeah, but everyone who's been in the theater has seen his stuff all over the stage, and Danny was sarcastic about his clothes which were hanging with the rest of the costumes. Everybody knows there's someone squatting there. I watched him draw stuff. He sang some music for me. He can't be a ghost. He's solid."
"I guess ghosts can be solid if they want. Maybe he doesn't know." She picks up the copies of the obit and the article about the accident and hands them back to Jared.
"How can you not know you're dead?"
She shrugs again, stands, checks the coffeepot. "You should ask Alona if you want to know about ghosts. Where's my thermos?"
Jared doesn't want to ask Alona about ghosts for the simple reason that he doesn't want her to show up at the theater with a banishing spell before he can talk to Ross himself. Maybe he should start thinking of the guy as Jensen, since that seems to be his actual first name. Or maybe he just likes "Ross" better. He wouldn't be the first person who hated their first name and wanted to be known by their middle name.
Genevieve has found her thermos, filled it, and gone to the bakery. At some point someone else will wake up - probably Misha, who's an early riser - and come downstairs and Jared will have to talk to them. And he really needs some sleep.
He goes to bed. He can't sleep. He gets out of bed. He takes a shower. He puts on clothes and goes over to the theater.
Now that he's apologized to Ross - Jensen - whoever - for the rest of the house breaking into the theater without permission, it's a lot easier to pick the locks and let himself in. Ross - Jensen - dammit - isn't there, although the bed is made like it always is, and there's a pile of drawings and sheet music on top of the covers and scattered around the floor, like there always is, and the books on the crate next to the bed are the same as they were when Jared broke in the first time. The Christmas conjure lights are gone, though, and the theater is dark except for the beam of Jared's flashlight. If he were to go into the lobby he might see daylight through cracks in the boards over the windows, or under the shade pulled down behind the ticket window. But the auditorium is dark.
"Ross!" he yells, swinging the flashlight around. "Are you here? Where are you? I need to talk to you, I know - "
You know what, Moose? he asks himself, sounding like Chad in his head. You know the guy's a ghost? You read his obit and you know how he died?
If it was hard for Jared to admit it to himself, even after seeing it in black and white, how much harder it is to admit it to the ghost in question.
He tries again. "Where are you? Ross? It's important!"
But it's morning. Ghosts are more likely to haunt at night, in the dark. That's why no one from Sunflower House saw Ross when they broke in to rehearse. They came during the day. He wasn't here. He was wherever ghosts go when they're not haunting.
Although Jared can't call whatever Ross has been doing in the theater haunting.
"Jensen!"
Nothing.
Jared goes backstage. Nothing there either. He takes a closer look at the gingersnaps and the canisters of coffee and sugar and the tiny camp stove still sitting in their box in one of the dressing rooms. The gingersnaps are real and surprisingly not stale. They've never attracted mice. Has Ross just scared off the rodents? How - and why - has he managed to conjure up a box of still-fresh cookies?
The camp stove is cold, and Jared can't tell whether or not Ross has eaten or drunk anything. But the coffee is probably still fresh, if the cookies are. The sugar probably isn't even clumpy. Jared is almost tempted to take both canisters home and donate them to the house kitchen, and test to see if Ross would follow his coffee. But no, that would be stealing, and Jared doesn't want Ross to get pissed at him for anything else.
Maybe he should leave a note. But what would he say? I know you're a ghost. I want to talk about it. Except he doesn't want to talk about it. Except he has to.
Genevieve is far less gossipy than her girlfriend, delight in the newspaper gossip pages notwithstanding. She's not going to tell the whole house that Ross is a ghost. That's for Jared to share.
He turns that over in his head for the rest of the day - how he's going to tell the house, especially Misha, that the theater they want to use is haunted. Alona will bring her grandmother over to spell Ross out of the place. Sam, lapsed Catholic that she is, will probably want to get a priest in to perform an exorcism. Vicki will want to cleanse the whole theater, not just the auditorium and the dressing rooms, but the restrooms and the lobby and the ticket office and the catwalk and probably every individual costume. And Osric and Alex and Misha will want to talk to Ross, to learn the mechanisms by which someone becomes a ghost and why they haunt the places they do, and what will get him to move on, and how is it that he can still conjure lights and write music and draw pictures and lock people out of his theater?
Jared wants to talk to Ross first. He wants to know when Ross knew, if Ross knew, and what do they do now? Will Ross stick around? Does he want to? Will he be able to?
That night, changing reels at the cinema, Jared has an idea. If Ross is haunting the theater because he never got to premiere his commission, his quartet, Jared will arrange it so he can. Misha is getting crankier and crankier about having to rehearse his play in the house, and he's putting more and more pressure on Jared to get Ross to let them use the theater, especially now that the cast has actually been inside it and rehearsed on stage. So Jared will strike a deal with Ross - let everyone in, let them clean the place up and get it ready for public performances, and once Ross finishes it, he can premiere his final piece. Ross will give them the theater, and Misha will temporarily put his play aside in favor of a string quartet.
But first, Jared has a movie to show. He promised.
He enlists Alex and Osric to help him with the movie screen, even though he has the affinity for mechanics, because while they're working on the screen he can work on the projector. He brought his copy of his thesis film, he knows he can thread it through the projector, he just has to make sure the bulb is strong enough and the screen is good enough and the picture is clear enough.
It is. It all works. He can even hear Osric and Alex cheering from the auditorium as the first scene flickers against the movie screen.
"Now we can show movies until Misha's dumb play is ready," Alex says.
"It's not dumb," Osric tells him. "You're just ticked he didn't give you a better part."
"There are only four characters! Why is mine so weak?"
"At least you're not just playing a version of yourself," Jared points out. Genevieve is still annoyed Misha didn't write her a part that would let her actually stretch herself as an actress. She's trying to accept it, but that doesn't mean she has to like it.
Alex just snorts, and when Osric reminds him that there will be other plays, Alex announces that this is the premiere play for the new and improved Sunflower Theater, and he should have a better part in it. How will anyone know what he can do if Misha won't give him a chance to show off?
Jared has that night off so he shows up at the theater with his film under one arm and a bag of red licorice in his other hand. He brought the licorice partly to test whether or not Ross is really a ghost - since ghosts don't eat - but it didn't occur to him that the sudden appearance of candy might ruin his cinematic surprise.
"Are those... movie snacks?" Ross asks, the half smile on his face telling Jared he already knows the answer.
Jared holds up the film can with a flourish. A piece of tape across the lid says "THESIS FILM DO NOT TOUCH", and written in red marker on the lid itself is "The Wild Night of Mr Fright", in what Jared thought at the time was appropriately spooky handwriting.
"Finally!" Ross says, clapping his hands like a five-year-old. Jared laughs.
"I have to keep an eye on the projector," he says. "I can't just leave it. So you get a private showing all your own."
"I could sit in the projection booth with you. Will I be able to hear it in there?"
"You should. I could hear Alex and Osric in the audience when I tested it earlier."
The tiny conjure lights over the stage blink out as Jared and Ross troop up to the projection booth, which is unlocked. The controls for the screen are up here, so Jared lets it down, threads his movie in the projector, flips the switch.
Onwards!