Train graveyard
Jon had been helping Melanie with her research into more intense hauntings and monsters around the London area. After the episode that was released with the Dark house, many of her crew bailed, not to unlike the first time around since her pursuits were growing a little too dangerous for their tastes. Even with a diminished team, her views went through the roof. And they continued that way, so Jon took up helping her out more frequently. Either by helping her find nice destinations or by being her cameraman.
Melanie spent some of the time trying to push Jon into trying different filming methods, various equipment, and seeing how they interact with his powers. They ended up learning that recording with VHS camcorders makes it show Jon can appear on film, it even can pick up his eyes with little to no glitching. That footage converts to digital with little to no errors, specially if they got Nikki to handle the conversion to digital.
That led to Jon needing to explain that Nikki was also something less than human, even more so when he was, but her deal was that details can’t be specified or it hurts her. So Melanie let it slide, but also clarified that Nikki wasn’t allowed to join the team.
In the end, Jon continued to used the normal stuff he used with the Dark mansion. Occasionally helping cheese some glitch effects here and there. He was starting to enjoy it, partially for how lack of end of the worldly it felt, and partially because he had a hunch when people saw his glitches, it counted as feeding the Eye. People loved the effects in the comments, so no harm done in the end.
CF Booth Scrap Metal and Recycling Yard in Rotherham sometime in April.
“You sure security is distracted?”
“No. Not like I’m able to watch where each of them are at all times, or distort all the video feeds we are passing.”
“Oh piss off.”
Jon snickered.
“I was just checking. I don’t want to get caught here, they take trespassing very seriously.”
“I’m aware. Hope they don’t end up pulling a strike on your channel when this goes up. If we are able to post the footage at all.”
“Why wouldn’t we? You’ve gotten good at not corrupting the footage files.”
“I’ve told you, Melanie, the ghosts here are violent. The only reason I’m here is to make sure you don’t get stabbed.”
“You’ve said, and I don’t quite believe you. But I’m still wearing leather for you.”
“My leather. I’m going to be bummed when there is a hole in it. I’ll make you replace it.”
“Still can’t believe what happened to your taste in clothes. Thats the spookiest thing of all this is how you lost all taste in clothing. Anyway, there is something here that no one else wants to investigate. Locations most ghost hunters avoid have become a thing for my channel, I’m not going to pass this up.”
“I know. And I keep telling you the reason.” Jon sighed as he got footage of the scraps and metals in the area around. So they would have enough footage for the editors to fill in the space if the Slaughter ended up getting too gorey, which Jon was almost certain that it would.
“Yup. And it's come upon me, to share it with the world. We close.”
“Yes. Let me get some more footage before we get there or there won’t be enough for an episode.”
“You are surprisingly good at this. Like know it’s been months, but who knew you would be so into it.”
“I was into theater and had a band. Why do you always get so surprised when I do things?”
“Cause your you.”
“Very lovely explanation. Look my way for a sec. You don’t have to say anything, I’m going to make some glitches in the window behind you, and I think it will look nice if you are oblivious to it for the shot.”
“Look at you, Mr.Sims setting up shots.”
“Hmm, indeed.” Jon didn’t plan to feed that uncombated. “While I’m learning about setting up a new career, don’t you think it's about time you started thinking about setting yourself up with Georgie?”
“Jonathan Eyeball Sims. How dare you say that on film!”
“That’s not my middle name. Don’t worry, Static is recording for effect, niced shocked look by the way. Works with the shot.”
Melanie growled and turned with a huff.
“That wasn’t an answer by the way.”
“I- That's not the point. I’m sure she isn’t into me.”
“I assure you if you ask her out on a date, things will be smooth.”
“Why are you pushing?”
“Surprisingly, it’s because I’m capable of caring, and think you two would be sweet together? You like her so what is the problem.”
“The problem is I don’t want to talk about it while on my way to confront the murder ghosts you are scared of.”
“I’m not scared of them. I’m scared for you. You are far more fragile than me.” Jon could see the rage growing from her. “Not that you are weak. I’m just, I have rapid healing, Melanie. You know what I mean.”
“Fine, yeah. Enough about my lack of love life.”
“Mmm, want to talk about mine?”
“Ugh Jon you are so gross sometimes.” Jon could see the rage settling a bit. No reason to get her mad before an encounter with the Slaughter. He might have picked a bad time to push buttons. He was minorly unsure if it was just his own lack of tact, or if it was the Slaughter in the air. He was able to taste is as they got closer.
“I know. I’ll have to gross you out later though. We just got into range. Should see the car soon.”
They got quiet as they approached. There was the boxcar. The blood in the air was enough for Melanie to taste, while Jon seemed to almost enjoy it. She’d gotten used to that look, like he was preparing for a meal. Melanie learned to take it as a sign there were going to be some good shots.
That was in fact an understatement. She opened the door and there was blood. It coated the door and dripped from the car. She made a ‘blehk’ noise as the blood stuck to her hand and looked into the car.
Melanie exhaled shapely. There was a moving body bag and a muffled scream coming from it. Almost as if on queue, a figure lunged from the shadows wielding a scalpel. They stabbed into the victim just as before, and it noticed Melanie. The scalpel didn’t connect with her arm like it had in the past, though she wouldn’t have known the difference.
Jon did. He gave her a push to get her out of the way. Melanie collided with the bloody cot that held the screaming bag, blood getting all over her in the process. The blood came from the direction of Jon.
Jon opened all his eyes to stare down the Slaughter ghost whose slash connected with Jon’s throat. Martin was going to be upset and his shirt was ruined, but those were thoughts for later. This was going to be a pain to heal, so what came out of his mouth was Static.
“Tel̯͂ļ̓ ͎̘͡͠m̳͍̏̈́e ̙͚̺̆̐̀yo̗̹͂͟ȕ̧͕͙͝r̢͎͍͔̲̂̊̇̌͗̔͟ ͓̎S͔͒t̟o̲͍̲̖̗͐͊́͊̇͘͟ry̡̫̟̏̇͝.̡͚̠̤͍̱̟̻̗̼̊̂͐͌̅̈́̑͘̚”
The Ghost did. While it told tales of terrible violence and gore, all three present in the car were froze by Jon’s Gaze. The bag didn’t scream, Melanie could barely breathe, the wound on Jon’s neck seemed to heal as the ghost of a man, who looked to be some sort of medic, told it’s terrors.
As the Ghost got close to the end of his tales, his form started to glitch, as well as the body in the bag. Once finished extracting the story, the Ghost let out a scream and vanished, leaving an empty car with only Jon’s blood remaining.
“Shit.” Melanie’s breath was no longer stuck in her throat as she took a moment to process everything.
Jon closed his eyes and fell to his knees and reached for his throat.
“Oh God. Jon.” Melanie rushed over, panic on her face.”Let me see. Christ there is so much blood...”
“I’m- I’m fine. Just hurts a little. See?” He removed his hand, and there was a cut across his throat that was starting to form what looked to have started to scar already.
“Christ Jon. I’m so sorry. You kept trying to warn me.”
“S’fine. I’ve had worse.”
“That doesn’t make it better you know.” Melanie took a closer look at it but wanted to keep talking for fear of just panic kicking in. “What did you just do?”
“That was...Sorry, it’s not pleasant to witness, but that was how I eat fear. And since they were only ghosts, their entire being was fear. So once I took it...They kinda didn’t have anything else to keep them existing.”
“Oh. That’s...hm...“ She took a deep breath, and regretted the smell of iron that came in with the air. “Did it taste good?”
Jon let out a choked laugh. “What??”
“Like, did it taste good? Would you want to keep doing it if we continued going to dangerous places, if we went better prepared?”
Jon paused for a moment to think. “If we went better prepared...it wasn’t bad. I’m not the biggest fan of this kind of...these kinds of fears. But they are filling.”
Melanie nodded and pulled away from checking out the cut on his neck. It was already finished bleeding. “Then. We keep on. But maybe tone down the content, or least the way we frame it for youtube. Unless we started to set it up like it’s a show. Like being all, ‘this is intentional gore for effects’ kinda thing.”
“You... you seem to calm about all this…”
“Well, I’m not the one that got stabbed...Thanks for that, and we aren’t in a good place for me to freak out. I’ll do it later once we are home or something.”
Jon nodded. “I’ll be here for you if you need to.”
“Mmhmm, probably once we get clean up and settled in the hotel room. How to get there covered in blood…”
“I got that covered. Keeping eyes off us isn’t so hard. Especially after a meal.”
--
They had returned to the hotel without incident, so this time Melanie didn’t become a crazy meme because getting caught by security. Melanie did end up freaking out quite a bit in the hotel room where Jon helped her calm down, with maybe a little help from compulsion to get her to breath when it got bad.
Took about a week for Melanie to be able to discuss what happened enough to turn it to an episode for the show. They ended up toning things down, and rerecorded some of the narrative that Jon took from the ghost, cut a great deal of footage, and mixed in the research that Jon remembered and helped Melanie to rediscover in the institute’s library.
Martin wasn’t the only one frustrated with Jon, nor the only one on the receiving end of frustration. The group chat titled “Jon support group” was updated to “Jon and Melanie need babysitters” with everyone agreeing on it.