prompt idea from @zillychu, set in the same universe as the rest of the Ghost Speak series (as in, Ryan Finn is here).
...
“Thanks for coming all the way out here, Ryan. I know it’s a long trip.”
“You kidding? A chance to see my buddy Edward, investigate some ghosts with him, and cap off the day with Eddy treating me to a basket of fries? I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Ryan Finn answered, one fry between each finger of his right hand in a sort of Wolverine parody. Edward Lancer would say he looked a bit wired from the 9-hour drive, but Ryan always looked like that.
“Still,” Lancer responded, though he didn’t feel all that bad about calling Ryan out here. He traced the rim of a heady glass of beer with his right index finger. Bass music wubbed from the speakers overhead, and in the dim light of the grill it built a small cocoon around Lancer and Ryan. It kept their conversation private.
Lancer sipped his beer, and he was not usually a drinker, but these things on his mind lately had him on edge. And they were so much more potent now that he’d dragged Ryan along to witness it, now that he had another person who had seen it and made it real.
Ryan jammed his arsenal of french-fries into his mouth. Lancer took another sip.
“So what do you think?”
“Hmm?”
“About Danny?”
“Ah, yep, I mean he’s definitely doing that.”
‘That’…was a way to phrase it, Lancer supposed. He’d taken Ryan back to Casper High, room 209, about half an hour after sunset. Lancer had wiled away many a sunset seated at his desk there, grading papers while the sun stole away from the sky. He wasn’t sure if it would happen, this time. If maybe it was a phenomenon only he could witness. But after 10 minutes of standing in silence, darkness cut only by a desk lamp, they’d seen it.
A shimmer. Glowing eyes. A warble cutting air not unlike the bass pumping overhead. It left a shape like an oil stain on space and time, and its eyes found them, and watched, and then shorted away. Gone. It took only another 7 minutes for the thing to reappear, farther back in the classroom, facing the opposite way. A warbling stain, here, eyes, up, staring, gone with a noise that left Lancer’s ears ringing just faintly.
“Am I haunted, Ryan?”
“Oh yeah, definitely. Well you or the room. You say it only happens in the room? Then the room, and you too probably, together.”
The confirmation sat heavy in Lancer’s gut. It left him feeling unsettled in a way that all the ghost activity of Amity hadn’t managed to plant in him.
“…So do you know how to make it stop?”
Ryan blinked, momentarily taken aback. “Well, yeah I do but—” He planted a hand firmly on the table and leaned heavily over it, elbow twisting out at an odd angle as he interrogated Lancer with his eyes, “do you really want it to stop?”
It was Lancer’s turn to falter. “I’m haunted, Ryan. Of course I want it to stop. That’s bad, isn’t it?”
“Only if you think it is.”
“It’s… not bad?”
“Well it can be bad. If the ghost haunting you is bad. Which this ghost—”
“—is not. It’s Danny.”
“It sure is.”
“So why is it happening?” Lancer pressed.
Ryan laughed. “Because he’s comfortable with you.”
Lancer seemed to miss a beat. His eyes shot a little wider. The silence settled between them. Ryan shoved another fistful of fries into his mouth and spoke through his chewing.
“I mean, he’s gotta feel comfortable around you, if he’s haunting you—your classroom—whatever all the same.”
“But why is he doing it?”
“Oh he probably doesn’t know.”
“So it’s not intentional?”
“Nah.”
“And he doesn’t realize he’s doing it?”
“You could ask him, but I’m guessing no.”
“So then… why?”
“Oh hard question, Edward. I mean, why do cats stare at you all soft and squinty when they’re comfortable? Why do rats do that bobble-bobble thing with their eyes?”
“This feels different, Ryan.”
“Trust me it’s very similar.”
Lancer ruminated on his glass for a moment. “Is this normal?”
“Oh, very.”
“And it’s not dangerous?”
“Nah.”
“Usually when you hear about a haunting, it’s dangerous.”
“Usually when you hear about a ghost, that’s dangerous. Do you think Danny’s dangerous?”
“No.”
“Well there you go. Harmless ghost. Harmless haunting.”
Lancer thought about this. “Okay, okay so just—hypothetically—you said you know how to make it stop? How would that work?”
“Oh, simple,” Ryan said. “Make Danny not feel comfortable around you anymore.” He picked up some more fries in his greasy grip. “You could get mean with him, fail him, stop getting his ghost papers translated, stop giving him leeway with the ghost stuff, and bam! I bet this would stop.”
“You don’t think I’d do that, do you, Ryan?”
“It’d break my heart if you did. I’d never speak to you again. I’d disown you and adopt Danny.”
“He has parents.”
“And they’re hunting him. He needs someone in his court.” Ryan crammed the rest of the fries in his mouth and swallowed. “Unfortunately I live 9 hours away. I hear you’re much closer.”
Lancer nodded, and he nodded harder, finding the tightness in his chest easing.
…
5:30pm came sooner than Lancer could have expected. The sun had vanished about an hour ago, sweeping away in a wash of pale pinks and deep reds. Lancer sat alone, halfway through a stack of English tests, desk lamp buzzing faintly at his side.
He heard it before he saw it—the wub of wobbling air. Then the oil stain followed, a shivering shimmering something which spilled into the air, and dropped the temperature a few degrees.
Lancer looked up. The thing’s glowing green spherical eyes looked back at him, mop of pure black hair providing the faintest of silhouettes to the thing’s shape.
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A secret santa gift for @thickerthanectoplasm - who asked for something with an OC of hers (I chose Annie!)
...
When Annie Fenton got home from school, she shut the door a bit harder than usual, and wriggled off her shoes a bit more forcefully than usual, and stomped to the kitchen to start eating cereal out of the box a bit more angrily than usual.
“How was school, Annie?” Danny asked over his shoulder. He kept his words light, hands still tinkering with the ecto-earpiece he’d been trying to sync to his phone’s bluetooth for a while. The gadget was meant for communication during battle, but Danny wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity for ecto-powered (therefore, him-powered) running headphones.
Annie only huffed. The sounds of fist-being-shoved-into-cereal-box and angry-cereal-crunching got louder.
Danny set the ear pieces down, and sat up straight on the living room couch, now properly angling his body around to see his daughter standing on the other side of the kitchen counter – phone in hand, angry-cereal-grabbing with the other. “Not great then?”
“School was stupid. I wrote an awesome essay and Mr. Flannigan failed me on it.”
James, seated at the kitchen table, perked up a touch. “Mr. Flannigan’s an asshole. You probably shouldn’t worry about it.”
“Hey, language,” Danny chided, now fully rising from the couch.
James looked up. “Dad I’m 15. I can say asshole.”
“No you can’t. I was 15 once and I definitely couldn’t say asshole.”
James grumbled. Danny smiled. He rounded the couch and stopped just shy of the kitchen counter. He lowered his elbows onto the countertop and leaned in. “So, that essay?”
“Look!” Annie tossed the cereal box down, yoinked her bag from the floor, tugged the zipper hard enough to risk snapping it, and rifled through the scores of smashed and stashed papers in her bag before emerging with a crumpled, stapled-at-the-corner document. “Read it!”
Danny took the paper from her. A half-sheet rubric was stapled on top. At a glance, Danny could see all categories of the rubric had been slashed-through. Scrawled at the top in black ink it said, “Not legible. Cannot grade. Please write neatly next time.”
Danny flipped the rubric. He cleared his throat and began reading. “In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, numerous types of symbolism are used throughout the story. Such things as Gatsby’s car, the green light, and T.J. Eckleberg’s eyes all are symbolic of the themes in the story.--”
Annie slammed her hands on the counter, then threw both arms out. “See! You can totally read it!”
James nudged his way into the kitchen, ducking under Annie’s outstretched arms and sidling up behind Danny to glance at the essay.
“Annie I can read this too. I don’t know what the hell Flannigan’s problem is.”
“Language, James.”
“What the heck Flannigan’s problem is,” James amended.
Danny focused back on the essay, a bit of righteous indignation rising in his chest. He continued to skim, and not a single word was illegible. Annie’s handwriting wasn’t perfect, perhaps, and the ink had smudged in a few places. But it was neat enough, and clear enough, and certainly readable.
The front door clicked open, a gust of crisp fall air funneling in as Sam wiggled her key loose, a complicated effort with both arms wrapped about brown bags of groceries. Danny, Annie, and James all turned to watch her as she kicked off her shoes, and kneed the door shut, and set the bags down on the counter.
“You would not believe the lines today. I’ve never seen that place so crowded on a Tues—what?”
Sam paused mid sentence, eyes flitting among her family members all gathered in the kitchen, hunched over a sheet of paper. “What did I walk in on?” Sam asked, more than a little used to catching her whole family conspiring to do something stupid, dangerous, or both.
“Mr. Flannigan failed me because he’s an asshole!” Annie shouted.
“I said language,” Danny responded.
“What?” Sam asked.
“He said my writing ‘isn’t legible’,” Annie continued with air quotes. “But that’s bullshit because Dad AND James can read it no problem. Flannigan’s just a jerk and too lazy to read the essay I SLAVED over.”
“Annie’s totally right like it’s not even that messy,” James chimed in, head angling past his father.
“Yeah I skimmed the whole thing and nothing’s wrong with it,” Danny said.
“See?! Validation! And corruption in the system!” Annie banged her fist on the counter top. “I will not stand idly by as the oppressing teaching class tries to tank my grades!”
“I think we should call the school, maybe,” Danny said.
“Or I can talk to Flannigan. He knows me, and I think kinda likes me,” James offered.
“And I’ll kick his butt!”
“Or we could—” Danny started.
“Give it,” Sam said, hand outstretched and fingers curling in twice in quick succession.
“Huh?”
“The essay in your hands that you’re waving around. Let me see it.”
“Oh, right,” and Danny handed the paper over.
Sam set her eyes to it. Annie pounded one fist into her open palm.
“Whole Fenton family’s got my back,” she said. “Flannigan’s ass is grass!”
Danny cuffed her lightly on the shoulder “Language.”
“Yup, it’s exactly what I hoped it wasn’t,” Sam declared, hefting a sigh that could be felt across the room as she set her free hand to her forehead and dragged it down her face. “It’s been what, 20 years maybe? Since I’ve seen this stupid language.”
“Wait, language?” Danny asked.
“What language Mom? This is my English essay.”
“Maybe she means all your swearing?” James proposed.
“Why the hell would I swear in an English essay James? I’m not stupid.”
“Annie for the last time you better watch it with that langu—” Danny stopped cold. “…Oh. Oh. Oh no,” he said with a single quiet breath. “Wait, give it back. Give it here.” He motioned for the paper, which Sam handed to him. He smoothed out the wrinkles, and began skimming the essay again.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, numerous types of symbolism are used throughout the story. Such things as—
No, Danny stared closer, squinted at the paper, willed himself to see the words one-at-a-time. Dissect. Isolate. Read. Really read.
Im F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, hyrrelt num krechnor fa knurriert gan tepeirier van flyrr. Grakk kann nyrut—
“Oh no,” Danny muttered. “Oh no Annie, not you too.”
“Oh thank god!” Sam declared, throwing her arms up in the air. “Some sweet sweet English!”
“Some sweet—wait—wait was I--?” Danny motioned to himself, fingers spread, palm toward his face, hand waving up and down. “Have I not been speaking English? This whole time?”
“Nope,” she poked Danny in the chest, “not a single English word until ‘Oh no Annie’.”
“…Really?” Danny asked.
“I walked in here. Put the groceries down. Asked ‘what’s going on?’ And all three—all three of you—just went off. None of it was English. I’ve been working off context clues.”
“Hang on what do you mean not English?” Annie grabbed her own paper back, skimming through. “I only know English. What other language could this even be in?”
“Danny, please, answer whatever she just asked, because I don’t have the first clue what she said,” Sam said, turning to rifle through her grocery bags. “I already did this whole dance with you. I’m clocking out on this one.”
“Ghost, Annie,” Danny answered, angling his shoulders just slightly to face his daughter head-on. “Ghost Speak. Ghosts and half-ghosts just kind of, know the language, I guess. We slip into it sometimes without meaning to. Well, I usually don’t. Anymore, at least. But I did right now, I guess, accidentally.”
Annie squinted at her paper. “I wrote an essay in Ghost? I can speak Ghost?”
“You’re speaking it right now.”
“This is Ghost???”
“Listen to yourself closely. You can like, hear it on the fringes of your words.”
“Are you messing with me?” Annie shut her mouth, suddenly tingling with the feeling of sharp edges and enunciations from her mouth that she wasn’t used to. Weird curves and curls of her tongue. A hiss. A light growl. Her smile spread across her whole face. “Oh wicked. Hell yeah, hell yeah! Also, um, how do I stop?”
“With practice. And with training. And with… help… unfortunately,” Danny muttered, seeming to go a little pale.
“Oh no.” Sam paused, letting the groceries sit. “Danny, you’re not going to.”
“I am. For Annie’s sake, I’m willing to make this sacrifice.”
“What sacrifice?” Annie asked.
Danny pulled his phone from his pocket. He thumbed through his contact list and settled on one, and raised the phone to his ear, and the sound of muffled ringing filled the room. A click. A muted hello?
“Hi. Mr. Lancer? It’s Danny. Yeah. Yeah. Good, and you? Yeah, so, I need a favor from you. And before you ask, yes I’m serious—”
…
Hardly 40 minutes had passed when the doorbell rang. Annie opened the door to the sight of an old man almost too tall for the frame, and yet comically too lithe for it as well, almost like she had opened the door for a tree sapling. The old man tipped his bowler’s hat, and seemed to roll and bounce into the house with limbs made of springs.
“Yo! Danny! It has been ages! How the kryypt are you?!”
“Ryan, language,” Danny said, his tone every ounce defeated.
The bean pole man wrapped Danny in a hug, gave him two quick pats on the back and shoved him back. “Yes, language for sure. What’s the damage? Where’s the culprit? I need details.”
“This…” Danny started slowly, motioning to Annie, “is my daughter, Annie. She slipped into Ghost today and hasn’t yet been able to unslip.”
Annie blinked, trying to catch up with the conversation. She got a good look at the newcomer for the first time, as he had finally stopped moving: The man was definitely in his 70’s, his graying hair spiked up front, smushed and disheveled slightly from the bowler hat. His face was deeply wrinkled, skin practically carved into puzzle pieces from—Annie could only speculate—the way his face seemed to bend to an absurd degree with every single emotion that crossed it. He wore square-frame glasses that magnified his eyes, bug-like. His outfit was thrift store chic: hawaiian palm unbuttoned shirt, graphic T beneath with a winking cartoon alligator, tie with stacks of library books printed on it, military camo pants, socks, sandals.
“Your outfit…” Annie spoke slowly, almost in mirror of her father. Her eyes lit up. “absolutely fucking rules.”
“Ha!” the man struck a pose, superman-like, and then flipped his tie over his shoulder. “Thank you! Someone who appreciates fashion!” He stuck a comically-too-large hand out for Annie to shake. “Ryan Finn, spectral enthusiast, and long-time-Fenton-family-friend!”
“More of an acquaintance,” Danny interjected.
Annie took his hand and shook it vigorously. “I didn’t know my dad had any cool friends. Besides maybe Aunt Val.”
“I set a high bar, that’s for sure!” Ryan angled his head over his shoulder toward Danny, still shaking Annie’s hand. “Danny, this child is fantastic!”
“I’m gonna take a nap,” Sam said, rising from the couch and shutting the book she was reading. “Wake me up if anything’s on fire.”
Danny watched her go, staring at the creaking staircase until she had vanished entirely. He looked back on the room, eyes a bit wider, as if suddenly much more afraid of his current company.
“Yeah I’ve um… got to go… patrol… actually… Box Ghost… you know… yeah…” Danny rose too, much more suddenly and tensely than Sam, and transformed on spot. “If you two need anything, don’t hesitate to call Mr. Lancer.”
“Good ol’ Edward!” Ryan chimed back.
“Wait, as in Zelda’s dad?” Annie asked.
“He owes me like, a million times over. Ryan’s kind of his, anyway.”
And with that, Danny shot through the roof, disappearing as a pinprick on the horizon already several hundred feet away. Ryan watched him disappear, then turned back to Annie with a grin.
“I’ve got plenty of experience teaching Ghost, so trust me you’re learning from the best of the best. I also had plenty of time to iron out the wrinkles with my lesson plans when I was running this course on your dad.”
“Wait, you taught my dad?”
“Oh he taught me plenty too. It was mutual! It’s the mark of real life-long friends to bring out the best in each other.”
“How long ago?”
“Oh, man, 20 years ago at this point.”
“So like, you taught him as a teenager? As in when he was my age?”
“Yup and yup.”
“Do you have embarrassing stories about him I can use as blackmail? Can you tell me?? Dad acts like he was only ever cool growing up, and I need to know these things. I need dirt.”
“I will tell anything to anyone who asks with enough enthusiasm! I can keep no secrets, ever! Except one, which is your dad’s identity. I kept that one. But you already know that so I am sworn to no one and nothing! And I can confirm your dad was an absolute mess as a teenager. But still, you have to earn embarrassing stories. Do well with these lessons and we’ll see what I can dish out on your dad. So! Ghost Speak Lesson One! How to stop speaking Ghost! Are you ready kid?”
Ryan struck another pose, and with a grin, Annie mirrored it.
“Oh fuck yeah I’m ready,” she answered.
“Hey!” Ryan stuck a finger out, pointed at Annie. He paused, and the grin on his face spread wider. “I like your fucking language, Kiddo.”
HOW WOULD RYAN FINN THINK OF THE GEMS??? I MISS HIM AND YOUR GHOST SPEAK SERIES FEATURING HIM AND LANCER. HE'S DEF THE BEST BRO FOR LANCER. XDDD
HA! (from this junk)
Oh he’d be awe-struck. His specialty may be ghosts, but aliens are his jam too. He’d be thrilled to find something other than the “little green men in UFOs” stereotype. (He’d probably ask them how they feel about that generalization)
They’d definitely 100% ignore him though. Not even out of annoyance. Just complete, utter indifference. (Amethyst might humor him and answer some of his questions with absolute bullcrap, but that’s about it)
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Humans speaking ghost speak learnt from ghost or halfa acquaintances, or through eavesdropping and careful piecing together, or from ancient tomes that utilised either of these.
Humans speaking ghost speak incredibly badly, in broken sentences with misapplied words or with poor grammar or mispronounciation or without the tones that cannot be made with a human mouth.
Humans speaking ghost speak unexpectedly and really surprising the two conversants that were interrupted.
Heh, Ryan Finn is an OC who kinda became more than I was intending.
(x)
Back when ghost-speak headcanons were huge (like, ghosts have their own language and Danny accidentally speaks it sometimes) he was introduced to fill a one-time role.
He's an old college friend of Lancer's, tall, lanky, baby-faced, socially inept, happy as all get-out, and fascinated with the paranormal. He doesn't have a job, but he's studied ghost speak on his own time. Lancer (sorta accidentally) recruits Ryan to help translate Danny's nonsense essays. Until Ryan gets a bit TOO involved and ends up tailing poor hapless Danny.
He was first in Ghost Speak: the Teacher part 1, then also in part 3, part 4, part 5, and this short fic with another popular OC Wes.
The Ryan Finn tag is full of hecka great people who've done awesome fanart and cosplays of him. (also the Ryan Finn tag on my blog)
tell us why Ryan got into the paranormal TELL US THE REASON
When Ryan was 10 his parents sent him to summer camp, one of those middle-of-the-road, 8-kids-to-a-cabin kind of camps without air conditioning or bug spray.
Ryan liked the sports and activities plenty even if he was no good at them, and he liked the other boys plenty even if none of them particularly liked him.
The beds in general were in pretty poor condition, but one boy in Ryan's cabin, Michael Valmer, was stuck with one that was really on its last legs. The tiniest movement made it creak like a ship at sea. The springs poked through. It groaned and huffed for seemingly no reason. Michael's parents dropped him off last at camp and thus he got the worst bed.
Unfortunately for Ryan, he overheard Michael and his friends bitterly joking that the crappy bed was haunted. Ryan had dug through his fair share of dollar store sci-fi novels and direct-to-television movies, and he was thrilled to catch on to a topic he had some knowledge of. He threw himself into the conversation declaring how interested he was in hauntings.
Typically the boys shrugged him off, but Michael latched onto his one chance to be rid of the crappy bed. He (and the other boys catching on) quickly feigned interest in Ryan's "ghost expertise" and suggested swapping beds so Ryan could better investigate the ghostly nature of Michael's groaning grunting sagging wheezing bed.
Ryan took up the offer with fervor. Not only were the boys talking to him, they were relying on him to solve the haunted mystery. He kept them posted on the sorts of exorcisms, rituals, and seances he attempted to shoo the spirit out of Michael's bed. The boys assured him each time he was doing an excellent job and to keep at it, (and he only got in trouble once for pilfering cans of salt from the cafeteria.)
Almost 40 years later, Michael Valmer (who's now married, has three kids and works in IT) occasionally remembers the last night of the summer camp he went to back when he was 10. He remembers the con he pulled to pawn off his awful bed on the geeky kid who didn't quite grasp the concept of personal space. Vaguely, he remembers waking up at 3 in the morning to whispers from the other side of the cabin, and he remembers cracking his eyes open to see Ryan--pajama clad--sitting cross-legged on the floor with a sparking green mist floating in front of him. Ryan spoke. The thing spoke back before vanishing entirely.
Of course he's certain he's fabricated the memory, especially considering Ryan Finn spent the entire next morning telling everyone at camp he'd successfully exorcised the ghost from his bed. It's the sort of thing that just gets drilled into your head, and it was definitely utter nonsense.
But still, Michael remembers that when his parents arrived to pick him up, he sat down on his bed one last time to tie his shoes. Except this time, the stupid old mattress didn't make a single sound.
