The first time he sees it, he mistakes it for a child on Halloween. The small stature. The round mask, bone white and chilling. Unnaturally still as it seemed to look right at him. Spencer is in his own Frankenstein get up and blinks twice, does a double take, can’t forget that mask. Until he does.

     Then he sees it again at a crime scene a month later. Then another, that same mask and unnerving silence. To be fair, Reid himself hadn’t tried to interact with the thing either. When Spencer turns too quick he can almost catch it, but other times he is too slow and wonders if his mind is playing tricks on him. If he was destined to be like his mother––Delusional and forgetting until he could remember nothing other than this thing. 

     Spencer only begins to really worry when it gets closer, comes more frequent, doesn’t appear in his dreams. 

     If Spencer acknowledges it, then he’d have to be acknowledging he was really seeing it. Which, as far as the agent was concerned, was out of the question. He spends days trying to pinpoint the creature, the child, the apparition that he swears is not a hallucination but is sticking around longer. Easier to see. 

     When Spencer finally caves, its almost two in the morning and he’s surrounded by books and haphazard notes. Books and notes on the night, on monsters, on lore. There’s nothing that fits the thing that follows him. Believing it was something supernatural was easier than accepting it was coming from his head.

     Doctor Spencer Reid has little pull in the asylum. He can alter schedules, sure, even coordinate some activities for the patients. However, terminating contact between visitors and inpatients was out of his jurisdiction. As was designing reward or punishments. If it were his choice, visits between Sabrina and her previous guardians would have been suspended the moment she’d walked through door. The canes would have been banned next.

     And yet, here the little girl stood with wet cheeks and a red nose, her fear nearly palpable. Spencer crouches down, smooths away the stray tears with a thumb. 

     “Of course you can,” He says quietly and snags a tissue from his desk, passing it to Sabrina. He has to think quick, before Sister Jude or the Monsignor came undoubtedly hunting for the girl in his office. It was the most obvious place she’d hide.

     Spencer Reid has been attending the meetings for over a month now. Not long, but no longer a newcomer at least. The cravings are still there and being clean comes in waves that he rides as long as he can, but he’s trying. God damn it. He’s trying and finally he wasn’t the new guy anymore. He knows each person by name, their story to the last detail, and has shared pieces of himself. In time, Reid hopes he may feel more comfortable and share more. Like therapy, the detective understood these sorts of anonymous meets only worked to the extent of effort, the honesty he was willing to put into them.

     He spots the new guy easily, right off the bat as the man shuffles in towards the tail end of the meeting. Reid watches as he selects his seat, a wavering heaviness present in the newcomer’s shoulders, a clear line of tension from head to toe. Spencer wonders if he himself looked quite so out of place and burdened when he had first started coming too. Decides he probably looked even more so, a gawky figure and an agent no less, immediately sentenced to be judged.

     When the meeting ends and the people disperse, Spencer finds himself stacking chairs and helping tidy up the room. He catches up to the newcomer, two folding chairs in hand.

     He feels as malleable as his shadow, lingering somewhere between tangible and unreal. Spencer isn’t sure if the backdrop of neighborhood homes was adding or taking away the dissociation. They lined the street right outside the living room window, stacked and evenly spread, colored and with neat cut lawns.

     Reid clears his throat, looks at his hands. Fingers interlaced and neatly propped in his lap, a cream cardigan bunched about his slacks, he’s having a hard time forcing the words out. The detective clears his throat again, unsure how to begin.

     ”They––Ah––They said maybe you could help.” There’s an unusual uncertainty present in Doctor Spencer Reid’s voice and he condemns the sound. Berates himself for being distinguished and yet so unsure.

     ”The migraines...They’re worse and the doctors can’t find any cause.” Psychosomatic, the doctor had told him. “A man told me I carry...” It was going to sound absurd, especially from someone as educated as him. But here, in a home of people who believed in this sort of thing, that dedicated their life to it, this was the safest space to even consider this idea. 

     To say it aloud. 

     “He said ghosts. That I’m carrying ghosts, or spirits, or something and that they’re causing the headaches. That they’re inside my head.” He leaves out the visions, for now. The sweltering nightmares. The auditory delusions that flit over his mind now and then. For the first time since entering the home and introducing himself, Spencer looks up and searches for eye contact.