Who: Chris and Kenzie Where: The high school When: Late Evening, Wednesday, January 17 Status: Complete
After their visit to the cemetery the week before, Kenzie had kept pretty busy in Point Pleasant. She had started spreadsheets for each place they had visited, along with any incidents that might have occurred there. For Kenzie, it was important to note each one because not everything was going to be caused by an anomaly. She wanted to determine what were, and if they might happen again. She was also gathering any information she could on the local myths, like the dark man that Rostislav had told her about. It meant a lot of research, but that was okay. Kenzie loved research. For most of the week she and Chris had gone out to revisit some of the places, taking photos and getting better readings on them. There was definitely a lot more unnatural activity happening around them, although it was hard to gauge just what it was.
After receiving an unexpected reading near the high school a few days before, Kenzie and Chris decided to head over to the building after dark this week to check things out. She couldn’t believe how much activity was going on in one small town. It was thrilling and unnerving at the same time. The parking lot was empty and the windows dark by the time they approached the high school. It was cold and still snowing, so her boots crunched with every step. Not for the first time, she wished Point Pleasant had been tucked away somewhere in the south, where it was at least warm enough that they didn’t have to worry about being snowed into their hotel like they had a couple of days before.
“Do you want to check inside before we go around the perimeter?” Kenzie asked. She knew the doors would be locked, but that had never stopped them before. She never considered it breaking and entering, given the nature of their job.
Point Pleasant was definitely a hotbed of activity. Chris had expected some of that, to a degree, but the things he and Kenzie were seeing were just nuts in terms of sheer volume of activity. It seemed to be ramping up, which was kind of disturbing. He’d mostly been working on the technical side of their research, sending data back to headquarters and analyzing the results the labs were sending back to him. Most places they were dispatched to were fairly straightforward -- this building was haunted, this person possessed, there were creatures here and there. Point Pleasant was just a tangled fucking mess of conflict on all levels. It was job security, at least.
Chris was always game for a little B&E, especially into someplace fun like the high school. As he and Kenzie approached the big silent building, he got a fond sort of nostalgia. He hadn’t been a delinquent teenager, really, but he’d done a few things that weren’t strictly legal in his own high school. “Yeah, I’m already freezing my nuts off, let’s go in,” he answered Kenzie’s question, making a show of shivering for a second. When they reached the door, he squatted down in front of it and un-shouldered his backpack to pull lockpicking tools out and get to work.
Kenzie kept an eye out for any possible interruptions, but given the time, and the fact that it was snowing, she doubted they would see anyone. Point Pleasant did not seem like the kind of town that had enough money for a night guard to walk around the high school, of all places. She bounced a bit on her heels, just to stay warm while Chris worked on getting the door unlocked. Kenzie had already done her homework on the building and knew there wouldn't be an alarm to worry about either. Chamberlain High School was in desperate need of some equipment upgrades, that was for sure. "I think the last time I stepped foot in a high school was a few years back in Austin when I had to confiscate a 1982 yearbook." Kenzie rubbed her hands together, feeling impatient to get in out of the cold now. "I got to go in undercover as a substitute librarian. That was actually a lot of fun."
Chris had to laugh at that. “You would think so,” he said, but there was an affectionate grin on his face. Kenzie was honestly the most adorable nerd he’d ever met. “Been years for me ... there.” The lock clicked and Chris stood up to pull the door open, more than happy to get inside out of the snow himself. They kept the temp fairly low overnight, naturally, but it was still much warmer than the fucking snow. He shivered as they shut the door behind them and slung the backpack over his shoulder again. Chris clicked on a small flashlight to get his bearings. “Bet you were valedictorian too, weren’t you?” he asked, smirking over at Kenzie.
Kenzie stuck her tongue out at him briefly before stepping into the darkened hallway of the school. She made sure to wipe her boots against the floor mat just inside as not to track any snow down the hall. Now that they were out of the cold, she pulled her pack down from her shoulder to get her camera out of the front pocket. Chris's comment drew her gaze and she smirked briefly. "I was, thank you very much. And what were you in high school, if I'm allowed to ask." Kenzie realized she had never given a lot of thought to Chris's life before they met at work. She knew he had been a firefighter, but there were parts of his life that remained a mystery. Kenzie had never cared about it before, but now she found she actually wanted to know. It was kind of fun, putting the pieces of the Chris Washburn puzzle together.
It wasn’t too far of a stretch for anybody who knew Kenzie at all, but Chris still felt amused and smug that he’d been right. He could just see a younger version of her proudly striding across a graduation state with all those extra sashes and shit they gave to the accomplished kids. He wanted to see pictures of it all of the sudden. “I was smart, graduated in the top ten percent of my class, but I was mostly a jock,” he answered with a shrug, starting to amble down the hallway with her, shining his light here and there. “My dad thought sports made you into a real man, and he was very insistent that I become one of those.” It was a light way to put it, since Chris didn’t really want to get into how toxic growing up had been for him, but he definitely wouldn’t have pushed himself to be on so many teams if it hadn’t been for his old man.
"You were a jock?" Kenzie's eyes widened in mock surprise. "I'm speechless." She knew it shouldn't have surprised her that he graduated in the top ten percent of his class, but it did... a little. It wasn't that Kenzie thought Chris was stupid, far from it, but she supposed it was hard to see him as a teenage boy, applying himself to academics. She always figured he was a hot, popular jock who got away with everything and had a bazillion girlfriends. But she supposed he could have been that and a brain too. She slipped her pack back onto her shoulder now that she had her camera. It would at least be able to tell her if there were any anomalies about. "No offense to your dad, but what on earth is a real man, anyway?" She turned on the camera and began to look through it as they walked down the hall. Already she could see splashes of green and red along the walls. The excitement of it had her heart beating a bit faster.
Kenzie’s imagining was only half right -- Chris had been a fairly popular jock, he had just resisted the girlfriends and abusing his privilege at school. It was hard to feel like he was hot shit when he was constantly torn down at home. His father had made sure Chris knew that he could never actually make him proud, and after a certain point Chris had known he was leaving town as soon as he possibly could. That made it easier to keep people at arm’s length through his last years in high school. “Full offense to my dad,” he corrected Kenzie, his tone still casual. “His version involved a lot of moving goalposts that I could never get right. So who gives a fuck.” He glanced over at her camera and gave a little grunt. “Readings already, huh?”
Kenzie glanced at Chris, momentarily distracted from the readings. There was obviously more there to unpack, despite his dismissive tone. She just wasn't sure this was the right place or time for it. Sleeping together didn't necessarily mean Chris wanted to open up the book of his past and let her read it. "There's definitely activity going on here," Kenzie said, turning her focus back to the camera. "I just can't tell what kind it is yet. I think we're going to get a lot of data to analyze though." And she couldn't help but sound excited about that. How this town managed to survive this long was beyond Kenzie's comprehension. There had to be something holding it all together. "What sports did you play?" she asked after a moment, still watching the camera, so he wouldn't feel like she was putting him on the spot. "I did track for three years, but that was the extent of my athleticism. I just figured some kind of team activity would look good on my college applications."
Maybe someday they would talk about his upbringing and history and the more intimate aspects of his life, maybe not. But it definitely wasn’t appropriate here and now, so Chris was glad that Kenzie didn’t push him to talk more in-depth about it all. He pulled his backpack around to pull out another instrument and clicked it on, the machine giving a high-pitched little whine. “Football, baseball, basketball, I did some track too my freshman and sophomore years,” he said. Chris tried to picture Kenzie in those little track shorts and that made him feel better about talking about all of this. He gazed down at the needle bouncing around on the meter in front of him. “The first fire station I worked for had a pretty damn good baseball team in the local league, I pitched for them for a while.”
"Wow, so when you said you played sports, you really played sports." And yes, she was picturing Chris in those uniforms. She had a feeling that if they had gone to the same high school, she probably would have had a reluctant, annoying crush on him. No, she definitely would have, considering she'd had a reluctant, annoying crush on him as colleagues. She grinned a little and paused at one of the hallways that led to the right. "If you have any pictures of yourself in those tight baseball pants, I'd love to see them. Let's head down this way." The rows of lockers and the various banners and posters on the wall made her feel oddly nostalgic, even if high school hadn't exactly been enjoyable for her. Not the way it had been for so many others. "Were you prom king too?" she asked, still lightly teasing.
Chris grinned a bit. “I can do you one better, I’ve still got a few in my closet,” he said. “I’ll wear ‘em for you sometime.” He hadn’t brought any uniforms along with him, of course, so it would be a while until he was back in Atlanta with his closet, but if Kenzie wanted to see him in baseball pants, he could make it happen for her. Assuming they were still hooking up or whatever this was when they went back. That wasn’t something Chris really wanted to think about at the moment either. “But no, not prom king. Believe it or not, I wasn’t as charming back then, so I wasn’t as popular as you might think,” he said with a chuckle. “I think I stayed at my senior prom for about an hour.” Chris kept his gaze ticking between the hallway around them and the readings on his meter.
"Sorry. I think I just assumed any good looking jock in high school was going to be popular," she said sheepishly. "If it makes you feel any better, I didn't even go to prom." There seemed to be a cluster of red in the corner of the hall where it reached a classroom and Kenzie walked towards it, wondering what the hell was hanging out there. Was it an entity? Something else? Everything on the surface looked normal, but the readings were pretty strong. "There's definitely something here. And it doesn't seem like it's dormant either. The readings are pretty active." Kenzie crouched down and lowered the camera to try and see if there was anything on the surface she could take samples of, but it was just the wall and some chipped paint.
It still gave him a little thrill when Kenzie complimented him, even in a sideways sort of fashion. He knew he was handsome and always had been, but it was less of a source of consternation now than it had been in high school, and he was grateful for that. Chris was also happy to drop the subject completely and get back into why they were there in the first place. He walked over to where Kenzie was crouched, slowly moving the meter back and forth and watching the needle dance. “I’m getting a strong reading of something too,” he murmured, his brow furrowing. Chris stepped back and looked the area over again, from the floor to the ceiling tiles. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, but that was the thing, wasn’t it? “Doesn’t seem spectral, really ...”
Complimenting Chris came much easier to her now than it had before they arrived in Point Pleasant. And the teasing wasn't tinged with as much snark as it used to be, which was also nice. Kenzie was still trying to maintain the appropriate amount of separation between their work and personal relationship, if that's what it even was, but it was nice not to always be on the defensive when Chris was around. At least now she understood that their occasional bickering had risen from unresolved sexual tension. "No, definitely not spectral. Not even a hint of blue on my readings." Kenzie straightened again, eager to check out the rest of the school. "But we'll check the entire building and see if it's widespread or just contained to these areas. Do you want to split up or stick together?" She would be fine either way. Splitting up might mean finishing up more quickly, but it was always safer to have back up in a place like this.
Chris found huge empty buildings to be kind of creepy, especially in places like Point Pleasant, but that never stopped him from doing his job. Creepy was just a state that they had to constantly live in. “We can split up,” he said, pulling his backpack around to his front again. Chris unzipped it and rummaged around until he found the two small walkie-talkies he kept in there. He offered one to Kenzie. “Channel three.” The walkies would be easier to communicate with in case one of them ended up needing help. He’d found that he felt a little more protective over Kenzie these days, now that they did have a relationship. He definitely saw it as one of those, whether it lasted or not. “You didn’t happen to find a map of this place, did you?”
Kenzie took the walkie and slipped it into her pocket. They would cover more ground a heck of a lot more quickly if they split up, so she was more than okay with it. The sooner they got what they needed and left, the better. As much as she enjoyed her job, there were plenty of aspects of it she disliked, like traipsing around in the cold. And Point Pleasant was cold. Already she was imagining being back at the inn in her pajamas with something hot to drink. Chris's question drew a look from Kenzie as she tugged open her pack and rummaged a bit before pulling out the print out of the map of the school. Of course she had a map. He should really know better. "It was on the auditor's website," she told him, handing him a copy. "We can meet up in the gym when we're finished, if you want. Just radio me when you're on your way there?"
Chris was grinning as he accepted the piece of paper from her. He did know better, and he wasn’t surprised at all that she even had multiple copies handy. That was his Kenzie, and honestly Chris loved her Scoutmaster levels of efficiency. It made his job infinitely easier, for one. “You’re so sexy when you’re prepared,” he murmured as he glanced over the map to find the gym. It wasn’t hard to spot, and Chris tipped Kenzie a little smirking salute. “Yes ma’am. Radio if you need me before then too.” He didn’t think anything too crazy would happen while they were there, but he also hadn’t expected the sex ghost in the basement of Juniper either. Who the fuck knew, in this town. Chris turned to head off in one direction, map in one hand, flashlight and meter in the other.
Kenzie snorted softly at the compliment, if that's what it was. At least now she knew he meant it, and it wasn't just something to say to get under her skin. "You got it, Washburn." She saluted him with vigor before pulling her pack up onto her shoulder to continue on her way with her own camera. She did her best to hit every hall and every empty classroom that had the door open, or unlocked. Eventually she passed the music room, slowing momentarily when she heard the faint sound of violin strings. With her camera in one hand, and the other falling loosely to her walkie, just in case, Kenzie approached the open doors and stepped inside. The room was dark, empty chairs curving around a grand piano in the middle of the room. The violins had stopped, but her camera had picked up some electromagnetic energy in one of the empty chairs. Streaks of blue and yellow appeared on her camera, though invisible to the naked eye. Kenzie held her breath and watched before it flickered and then faded. She didn't feel like the ghost, or whatever it had been, was a threat to her, there was no change in air pressure or temperature, but it was still fascinating. This entire fucking town had to be haunted.
Now that the room was silent again, Kenzie turned away to continue on. The walls still had splatters of red light, which made her think what she had found did indeed cover the entire school. Soon Kenzie started for the gym, tugging her walkie out of her pocket. "Washburn? Where are you?"
Chris walked fairly slowly as he explored his side of the school. He was getting steady anomalous readings from the meter, but it was hard to tell what was ‘normal’ for this building and what might be related to all of the red spots Kenzie had been seeing. That was until he approached an outer door and his machine started beeping and vibrating like crazy. “Well hello there,” Chris murmured as he moved in closer. He carefully ran the meter along the doorframe, stopping when the meter reached a constant frantic whine, the needle hugging the red side of the scale. Chris muted it and crouched down, aiming his flashlight at the edge of the metal door frame. There was a small blob of ... something there. It was just a black smear on the edge, tucked away where no one would notice it, but it was obviously something.
A surge of excitement went through him. Finding real, physical evidence was so rare in their line of work. He unshouldered his backpack to pull out some supplies, and made quick work of scraping the dried goop off into a small container. They could ship it back to the lab in Atlanta and see what results came back. Once he had it bagged and labeled, Chris gathered his stuff and started off again. Kenzie’s crackly call made him jump a little, but he grinned as he brought the walkie up to his mouth. “On my way now, Novak,” he said. “Everything all good with you? I found something that’s gonna get your panties wet.”
Kenzie rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, but she was grinning. "Don't be gross. I'm fine. Had an encounter in the music room that I was able to record, but nothing dangerous and I don't think it'll... tent your boxers or anything." Was that a saying? She was generally only somewhat decent at talking dirty when they were actually in bed together. Everything else just sounded awkward coming off her tongue. "I'll meet you at the gym." She kept the camera on, just in case something else happened, but all was quiet but for her footsteps as she walked through the cafeteria to the gym doors. There were posters plastered on the wall about the upcoming Winter Formal and Kenzie paused to check them out. They hadn't even had winter formals at her high school, but she supposed in a small town like this, the teenagers would make as many social events as they could to fill their time.
Chris almost asked her why she thought her own natural -- and hot -- bodily function was gross, but he decided to cut her some slack. He still liked to harass her a bit, even though they were seeing each other now, but Chris reveled less now in making Kenzie uncomfortable. There were other, more fun ways to get under her skin. So he just chuckled to himself and walked faster toward the gym, the plastic sample bag swinging from his fingers. He spotted Kenzie in front of the gym doors and grinned as he approached. “Hey, check it out, Novak,” he said, lifting the evidence baggie for her to see. It just looked like dried black paint inside, but Chris knew it was so much more.
Kenzie turned off the camera when Chris approached and she eyed the baggie before arching a brow, her lips curved in a questioning smile. "You found some dirt?" She knew it was more than that, obviously. Chris wasn't an idiot, and he knew what to look for. But she still liked to tease him too. There was definitely something going on in this building, and while she had plenty of footage to send off to get analyzed, having something more substantial like what was in Chris's hand would be major.
Chris gave her a look, but he couldn’t be annoyed for real about it, because it was funny. “I found some anomalous dirt,” he corrected her archly, then grinned again. Chris flicked on the meter again and held it close to the bag. The alarm squealed again and the needle jumped crazily into the red, and Chris looked more than a tiny bit smug about it. “It was on a door frame, just chilling out like it belonged there. Look at it through your camera, let’s see what colors it’s giving off.” Chris flicked the switch on the meter again to turn it off and offered the baggie out to Kenzie.
Anomalous dirt. Kenzie turned on the camera again, intrigued as soon as the needle on Chris's equipment shot towards the red. Holy crap. "On a door frame? Only this amount?" If so, that would explain why it hadn't been cleaned off yet. She took the baggie from Chris and turned on the camera, holding it in front of the lens. "This is what's in the walls," she explained, her eyes bright with excitement as she looked up at Chris. "It's the same thing. And it's everywhere, with some patches on the floor too. I don't know what it is, but it's definitely something. This is amazing."
Chris had moved to stand next to her and peer at the camera screen, and he grinned broadly at Kenzie when she looked at him. “That’s what I was hopin’ it was,” he said. Even though it had been the equipment that had led him to find the splotch, he was still kind of proud of himself for securing some solid evidence for them. Especially when Kenzie called it ‘amazing.’ “But yeah, that was all I saw, so ... whatever left all those traces everywhere, I think this was the source material. I guess the rest of it just got ... cleaned up? Not sure how that’s possible with as many hits as you were getting, but I’m not sure what else it could be.”
Kenzie’s eyes went back to looking through the camera. The red matched what she had seen all over the school, but Chris was right. If it got cleaned up, why was she still seeing it through the camera and not with her own two eyes. It was there, but not. And yet this little bit was visible. Why? “Maybe... maybe the red I’m seeing is residue. When we get back to the inn I’ll start searching through the news to see if the school had some kind of leak or spill that they couldn’t explain. Maybe it had to get cleaned up but it left its presence behind and they just missed this spot.” She didn’t know for sure, and Kenzie didn’t sound too certain. But she was thinking out loud and trying to find an explanation for how Chris found this physical evidence in the midst of its source being all over the damn place. There had to be more to it. “I guess the important thing is to secure it and send it off to Atlanta and see what they come up with.” Kenzie handed the baggie back to Chris and turned off the camera. “Not as exciting but I think the music room is haunted. I heard a violin and I caught a spectral form on camera in there. So there’s definitely a hotbed of activity here.”
Chris tucked the baggie into his pack along with the meter and re-settled it on his shoulders. The lab might be just as clueless as they were, but that prospect was actually kind of exciting. Their whole job was to explore the inexplicable, and it was always kind of a big deal for agents to find something that nobody else had ever found before. This might not be that, but Chris had for sure never seen these sorts of results on any job he’d ever worked. It was intriguing. “Ooh, fun,” he said to Kenzie. “Wonder if there’s any record of any band students dying here. Or maybe it’s a ghost that picked up a hobby after death.” Chris offered a lopsided grin. “Was the music any good?” It totally didn’t matter, but he was in a good mood now and curious.
"Well, it wasn't bad," Kenzie said about the music. "But I may look later and see if there were any deaths in or around the school in the past. Considering the nature of the town, I'm willing to bet there's been more than one." She slid her camera into her pack and slipped it back onto her shoulders before smiling at Chris. "Are you ready to go? I would challenge you to a game of one on one in the gym to gauge your athletic prowess, but I don't want to overstay our welcome in this place." And really, it wouldn't even be a fair game, considering Kenzie didn't even know how to dribble a basketball. But she was imagining Chris doing all sorts of athletic things now and it was getting her feeling kind of warm and fuzzy inside.
Chris would’ve loved to see how Kenzie handled a basketball, but he agreed that doing it in a haunted high school in the middle of the night wasn’t the right setting. Especially if she was any good, he might’ve ended up wanting to fuck her in the locker room or something, and they definitely didn’t need to tempt that sort of fate here. “Oh, I can show you my athletic prowess in other ways,” he said, smirking as he slung an arm around Kenzie’s shoulders. Now that they’d done some good work, he felt more free to be affectionate with her. Chris turned to lead them back toward the door they’d come in. “I do have some basketball shorts in my drawer, and I bet your ass would look super cute in them.”
Kenzie didn't mind the affection and her arm itched to slip around his waist, but she felt like maybe that would be a bit too "couple-y". They were sleeping together, yes, but that wasn't the same thing as being an actual couple. "So do you want me to wear your basketball shorts to bed? I don't have any sexy underwear, so I guess I could try to seduce you in those." She snickered softly. For as much time as they had been spending in this town, Kenzie was thrilled to finally have some substantial evidence and reports to send back to Atlanta. She had so much research to do now, especially on the school, and she was itching to get back to her room and open up her laptop. But... she also kind of just wanted to turn off her brain for the rest of the night and hang out with Chris, preferably in his bed, or hers. She knew that wasn't professional at all, but they had to "clock out" eventually, right?
Chris didn’t give two shits about professionalism anymore, at least not while he and Kenzie were alone. The distance from Atlanta made it easier, of course. They were unsupervised, handling their own business. And doing a damn good job, he felt. So they deserved to let their hair down sometimes and lick each other all over. Chris chuckled and shook his head. “I just said cute, not seductive. My bed is a no-bottoms zone. If you try to wear my shorts under covers, they’re gettin’ taken off, Novak,” he warned her playfully. He hadn’t given a lot of thought to whether they were a capital-C Couple or not ... it didn’t really matter. It wasn’t like they could live normal lives with normal relationships anyway. He cared about Kenzie as more than a colleague and even more than a friend, he was stupidly attracted to her, what else needed to be established? It was enough for now. Chris shot her a sideways glance. “You wanna come back to my room once we get back? Stay the night?”
The distance definitely played a factor in Kenzie's behavior at the moment, although she was still aware that Nick Cooke was down the hall from their rooms. He had thus far stayed out of their business but for work, and he didn't really seem like the type to raise a stink if he found out Chris and Kenzie were sleeping together. Still, Kenzie took her job seriously and she didn't want anyone else to know what was going on. The last thing she needed was someone in their organization thinking she was being unprofessional. Kenzie smirked softly as they approached the doors to head outside. They would need to remember to make sure the doors locked on their way out. "Now I'm going to wear your shorts to bed just to see how quickly you can take them off." She had work to do and it nagged in the back of her mind. But it was late, and sleeping in Chris's bed did sound extremely appealing. Her reports would still be there tomorrow. "But yes, I want to stay the night. Just remember it's your turn to go out and get the good coffee in the morning."
Since they were almost to the door, Chris dropped his arm off of Kenzie’s shoulders. He chuckled and tipped Kenzie a dumb little salute. “Yes ma’am, I am here for all your coffee boy needs.” He zipped up his coat again before he pushed the door open for Kenzie to walk outside. After a bit of fiddling with the lock, Chris followed her out and closed up behind them. He made sure it wouldn’t open again, then headed with Kenzie toward the car, walking faster now that they were out in the freezing cold again. Why couldn’t Point Pleasant have happened in like, southern Florida or something? Fuck. As it was, he was more than ready to be back at the inn with Kenzie, stripping off clothes and climbing under blankets. It had been a successful but long night.