Archive of Our Own ^beta

OJ heard strange voices in the barn. Going to investigate, he saw Lucky’s stall door open. He sighed.

They never should’ve told them which horse had survived Jean Jacket’s final hunt. He couldn’t even explain the concept of celebrity to the poor horse. It was a good thing Lucky had been well trained, and wasn’t spooked by the camera flashes and shouting that followed him every time they took him out. But until now he’d at least been left alone when he was in his stall.

OJ strode toward the open door, planning his words. Something polite, yet firm. Hey, sorry, this is still a working stable, you can’t go up to the animals unattended.

Their visitors couldn’t go anywhere unattended, or they’d start pulling the Jean Jacket shrapnel out of the house, picking up bits of Jean Jacket trash from the ground, scraping bloodstained paint chips off the sides of the house. They had to sign a form, listen to an introductory monologue, look at signs directing them to stand back, and even closely monitored, someone always found a way to screw something up. (On one of the days when nothing else had happened, an overly helpful visitor had shouted at OJ for walking behind the signs, not realizing he lived there.)

When OJ reached the stall door, he was momentarily shocked speechless. He knew not many people would be able to fit in the stall next to Lucky, but from the voices he’d been expecting a couple of people, or maybe one person recording a video. He found three—a mother and two children.

The mother was standing with her back to him, grinning, holding her phone up to take photo after photo. The little girl was sitting on Lucky’s back clutching fistfuls of his mane, mirroring her mother’s photo-ready smile back at her with one missing tooth. The little boy, a toddler clutching a juice cup in one fist and picking up bits of straw with the other, was sitting under Lucky’s belly, directly in range of getting kicked in the head if Lucky moved any of his hooves.

“Woah,” said OJ, gesturing for Lucky to hold still. Lucky’s already still body became a statue as he obeyed the command.

OJ swept forwards and dragged the toddler out from under him.

The mother gasped. “Who are you?!”

“Out, please.” OJ lifted the girl off of Lucky’s back and deposited her, with the toddler, outside the stall.

“I said, who the hell are you?!” She was holding her phone up in recording position now. Probably on video. He tried to ignore that.

“I’m OJ Haywood, I’m the owner, and this is a live animal, not a prop. He could’ve stepped on your boy there.” And then she’d have sued them, most likely, because of course.

“Well, don’t touch my kids!” she said, finally leaving the stall.

“Don’t touch my horse,” said OJ, closing the stall door and leaning against it. “I’m serious. He could’ve fucked your toddler up for life without even noticing it.”

“Hey, don’t swear in front of my kids!” She made an exaggerated face and scrambled to cover their ears, couldn’t decide whose to cover, and ended up covering one ear on each confused child.

“Ma’am, if you bring your kids where there’s animal shit, they’re gonna get into shit they shouldn’t. You’re not supposed to be back here at all.”

The mother was so offended by that that she could only make horrified noises and grimace at him. Every expression she made was some form of her permanent smile, contorted. She finally gave up and retreated, dragging the kids with her, encumbered by her still-outstretched phone.

“This is disgusting! You’ll hear from my lawyer about this! You shouldn’t be allowed to work with children!”

“I don’t,” OJ pointed out.

She was leaving, which was what he wanted, so he didn’t belabor the point. He stayed where he was, blocking the door, until she was out of sight, then entered the stall with Lucky and checked him over. They hadn’t done anything to him except brush some of his hair the wrong way. He smoothed it out.

“You did good with those kids,” he said. “You should be a babysitter.”

They hadn’t known the woman was bringing kids when she signed up. She had not paid for, or declared, the two extra people she was bringing along, and when Em had commented on it she’d protested that she couldn’t find an option for children’s tickets, and thought it was fine, that she was certainly paying enough for three people. “And the baby is in arms,” she’d said. “Like airplane rules, right? And you can’t turn Magique away, she’s obsessed with Lucky.”

They technically didn’t have any rules against children. It hadn’t occurred to them that people would bring their kids to the “Haunted Haywood Ranch” where an unknown lifeform had vomited blood, but it looked like it was time to add some very specific wording to their website.

It had been Em’s idea, after the TMZ reporter had met his untimely end. Like it or not, they were famous now, and people were going to come onto their property and snoop around. The best they could do was try to control how.

They could charge admission, for one thing.

OJ made a final check that all was well inside the stall, patted Lucky and closed him in. The stall door closed with a normal latch. They’d have to install locks everywhere, he needed to finish putting up the rest of that high electric fence around their property, and the signs… their family home was starting to feel like a maximum security prison. Not that it had felt particularly homey since Jean Jacket shat blood all over it, but still.

Em had argued that the increased activity could actually be good for the horses, help desensitize them to noise and crowds of people. He wasn’t sure he agreed with that—it would hardly be as controlled an environment as he’d like, and the horses would need to be comfortable with crowds before any crowds got to them. She’d also said it would get the Haywood’s Hollywood Horses’ name out there. What it was actually doing was getting the name "Haunted Haywood Ranch" out there--not a name they'd picked; the official name was still just the Haywood Ranch, but that's not what anyone called it and the "Haunted" was starting to appear on their merch. OJ wasn’t sure it was the kind of publicity they needed, but conversely, he doubted it would damage their image much more than it already had been. But if people were going to keep coming into the stables and bothering Lucky, they might have to find somewhere to move the horses. Angel had already suggested they move Lucky to some undisclosed location so nobody would try to steal him—he’d thought it was paranoia at the time, but now he was starting to think he had a point.

He’d have to move himself, too, because he went where the horses went, but also because he wasn’t sleeping right out here. None of them were. Angel would only stay to chaperone when there were overnight tours. Em had stayed a few nights, the past few weeks, even when there were no overnight tours--they hadn’t talked about it, but he knew she was keeping him company, and he was grateful. But the house bothered her even more than it bothered him, and it bothered him enough that he’d spent the night with Em a couple times (on an air mattress on the floor, as he didn’t fit comfortably on the couch) and Angel a couple times—Em didn’t like getting up early, but trying to deflate the air mattress always woke her and leaving it inflated inevitably tripped her when she got up, so neither of them were happy with his hours, and having to impose on Angel made him nervous. (It hadn’t been terribly awkward in the end, they’d smoked a bowl and watched Scooby Doo until they fell asleep on opposite sides of the couch. But he didn’t feel right about making it a habit. Angel was technically his employee now.)

OJ made a quick search of the stable, making sure there were no other lost tourists roaming loose. Fortunately he found nothing, and turned towards the house.

Down by the arena was a white cross with Otis Sr.’s name on it. They’d placed it there after multiple people had asked that OJ show them where he’d collapsed. Now he could say “it’s where the cross is” without having to stop what he was doing, look, remember where he’d been standing, and see it happen again. He tried not to look at all—he had enough reminders—but he still had to answer the question every day they were open.

The quarter was framed on the mantelpiece in their living room. There was a small informational plaque on the bottom of the frame. Like a museum piece. Like the bloodstained shoe in Jupe’s personal collection. Crystal, and only Crystal, had their permission to take it down to use as a centerpiece in her séances. OJ had thought he didn’t care, but the first night he’d lain awake in bed, wondering if séances really did work, and if they were subjecting Pops to an afterlife of being crank called by circles of hobbyist ghost hunters 3 nights of every week. Around 4am he’d finally gone downstairs and sat looking out towards the cross at the edge of the arena.

“If you can hear me, and you don’t want this, give me a sign,” he’d said into the dark house.

All quiet, except the ordinary creaks of wood that had been familiar to him since childhood. There was a video up on a popular ghost hunter’s youtube, now, that recorded what they claimed was a conversation, nighttime wood creaks “responding” to the leading questions they asked. OJ had watched it, and knew the sounds their equipment picked up were normal for the house—he distinctly heard the radiator ticking, the rush of air conditioner coming off and on, the creak of a board settling in the night chill. He’d watched to the end anyway. He’d never believed in ghosts, at least not before, but at the moment he almost wanted to believe they’d been able to find something that he hadn’t. To know Pops was still with them.

When he thought about it rationally, of course he thought it would be better if Pops had passed on, rather than hang around seeing them struggle to salvage his business. And he definitely didn’t want some youtube ghost hunter talking to his dad when he couldn’t. But for a moment, he’d wanted to believe.

But the house was silent and empty, except for the noises he knew the ghost hunters would pay thousands of dollars to record the next night they were open.

It felt like a scam, selling the ordinary sounds of their house settling to breathlessly eager buyers, over and over again. Like taking money from a baby. Just as dissatisfying as taking money from a baby, with the same amount of tantrums.

He opened the door to their house and heard Crystal giving her evening talk. She was their cousin, with the Otises dark skin and Em’s expressiveness, and was dressed in a long, lacy white dress, with waist-length locs twined with gold thread, beads, and crystal pendants. She was talking with her hands, and by the quality of her voice—OJ intentionally tuned out the words—he could tell she was just starting the story about the blood rain.

Em and Angel were both tired of talking about it and OJ had avoided talking about it unless forced, so they’d brought in Crystal Nelson-Haywood, the middle child of their aunt Jenna. She was a medium, a tarot reader, a music festival fortune teller and a freelance life coach, but until now she’d never had much skill with or interest in the family business, to the disappointment of her parents and uncle. Em and OJ had been fine with this, whatever their parents had hoped; Crystal was welcome to pursue her own interests and leave Haywood’s Hollywood Horses to the immediate family. But after Jean Jacket, struggling with sudden notoriety, they’d reached out to someone they knew they could trust with the family business—whatever that was at the moment—and found that she was exactly the person they needed. She could conduct séances, and knew how to market her services. People would pay incredible amounts of money for that kind of thing.

First they’d let in the respectable folks, reputable scientists, reporters who promised not to touch the wreckage. Then less-reputable scientists, “scientists”, and hack reporters. Now they were letting in anyone who could pay admission—they’d become popular among ghost hunters, alien believers and cryptid seekers (three groups that sometimes had a total overlap, and sometimes had vicious slap fights over whether Jean Jacket had been an alien lifeform, an evil spirit, a magic alien, or just previously-undiscovered Californian megafauna. The few tattered remains of Jean Jacket’s body that had been found, now hidden in a lab basement refrigerator somewhere, had answered remarkably few questions and raised new ones.) There were also visitors who had got confused and thought this was part of Jupiter's Claim, and ones who believed the whole thing was an elaborate hoax. Sometimes they just wanted to see the house, but often they wanted a séance, and on those nights Em and OJ gratefully let Crystal take over.

Talking about it every day was like deliberately keeping a wound open so it couldn’t heal. The moment was over, but even on the other side they couldn’t escape the idea of it—had to watch it consume them, grow larger than them, turn into something else, something no one could control. Riding the back of a developing mythology felt like riding a bucking bronco, and again and again OJ thought they were just like Jupe, only a little luckier. Maybe they hadn’t tried to tame Jean Jacket, but they were selling him, like he’d tried to.

The woman and her kids had rejoined the group around Crystal. She gave him a dirty look as he walked past. He ignored her. They’d actually let a few people ride Lucky, earlier in the day—he wasn’t sure why the little girl hadn’t gotten a ride then, there had been plenty of opportunity when he was there to give a safety talk and keep an eye on everything.

The steps creaked as he started up to the second floor, but Crystal’s voice covered the noise. Once he’d tried to slip past while a séance was going on. The wood had creaked at his weight and one of their visitors had gasped “I hear something! Knocking!” and he’d had to declare himself with an awkward “that’s me… sorry.” He’d worried that the uncomfortable silence would last for the rest of his trip up the stairs, all of them watching him, but Crystal had redirected everyone’s attention fluidly. She was good at that, even having to deal with the occasional space cadets they got. The day before, she’d come to find Em and OJ with “I got a funny one.”

“Yeah? Tell it, I could use a joke,” Em had said.

“I told this guy my name was Crystal and he said, ‘like the burger joint?’”

“…There’s a burger joint Crystal?” said Em.

“Yeah, yeah, the like—offbrand White Castle,” said OJ.

“What’s a White Castle?”

“Fast food place that makes tiny slider burgers. It’s an East Coast thing.”

“Oh. A burger chain,” said Em.

“Wait, it gets better,” said Crystal. “I thought he was making a joke, so I did like a pity laugh, and I was like haha, no, the rock. And he just stares at me like he doesn’t understand what I’m saying and he goes…. Dwayne Johnson??”

“Dwayne The Rock Johnson????” Em whispered in disbelief.

OJ laughed silently.

“So then I said, no, like—crystals, like rock crystals, like the gemstone. And he just stared at me like he thought I was making it up?”

“Oh my God,” Em breathed.

“I don’t know if he was messing with me or if this man really didn’t know there was any Krystals but the tiny burgers. I don’t want to believe it was the last one but I think it was.”

At least now it was just the furious mother watching OJ go upstairs, unlatching the orange plastic chain with the “private” sign to let himself through at the top of the stairs and replacing it after himself. Like the latches in the stable, this didn’t actually stop anyone from following him if they were determined.

He knocked on the door to Em’s old room. She opened it almost immediately and gave him a distressed look.

“Had a situation with Lucky,” he started.

“I heard,” she said, motioning him inside.

He came in and closed the door. “Already?”

“That bitch had the audacity to scream at me about how disrespectful you were. Disrespectful, she said. She came into my house and yelled it at me. Disrespectful.”

“Did she say she threatened to sue me because I wouldn’t let her photograph her kids getting stepped on by a horse for Instagram likes?”

“OJ I am so fucking through with these people.”

“Heyyyy, don’t swear in front of the kids now.”

“Fucking kids. Don’t bring kids to the fucking murder house. Especially surprise kids you forgot to mention before showing up with them. Does she honestly think the alien murder site is toddler-proofed?”

“Oh, he’s a babe in arms. Airplane rules.”

Em screamed almost-silently, jabbed a finger down towards the talk they could just barely hear continuing below them, and said “I hate this. Oh my God, I hate this. I know it was my own fucking idea and I’ve been trying to stay positive but holy shit.”

OJ nodded. “Yep.”

“I hate this. Fuck! I made you do this crazy shit and now we’re stuck running a dude ranch for Area 51 enthusiasts.”

“You didn’t make me do anything. I let you take over because you had a good idea.”

“You don’t have to say that.”

“No, it was. You were right,” said OJ. “We kept the house. Kept the horses. Stayed in business.”  

“At the cost of what? It doesn’t feel like it’s ours anymore, it’s some kind of fucked up museum. Don’t even have time to sit down and think about what happened here, we’ve got all these strangers coming and shitting in our house.”  

“At least they shit inside the toilets,” said OJ, attempting to joke.

Em gave him a Look.

“…Em? Did—“

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

He lifted his hands.

“Actually, I do want to talk about it," she continued, "Why does people shit smell so much worse than horse shit?”

“Don’t know, but it do."

It said a lot about how bad Angel’s last job had been that his mood had generally improved while working for them.

“Oh, and I just remembered what I was about to do before Instagram bitch mom yelled at me, I need to add something to the website that says please tell us about any dietary restrictions if you’re booking an experience with food because some lady waited until after I brought out the lunch to ask if we had gluten free options! I had a full conversation with her about what I was making for lunch an hour before, she could’ve told me then!” Em continued.

“Some people still won’t read that.”

“Sure, but at least I can tell them it was on the website, you clicked ‘no dietary restrictions’, you have no excuse!” Em sat heavily on the desk chair, spun it to face her laptop and opened it, drumming her fingers on the desk while it turned on.

OJ pulled a neon green beanbag out from under the desk and sat on it, facing her. “I don’t like it either. But you were right. People were going to come anyway. Might as well make something out of it.”

Em sighed, tapping a key and waiting for her computer to load.

“It’s different, but it was always going to be different after all that shit that happened.”

“I guess so,” Em mumbled.

She didn’t even sound angry anymore, which troubled him. She sounded defeated. His sister never sounded defeated. He was pretty sure she didn’t know how to quit.

“You got plans for the night?”

“Make sure the idiots downstairs don’t break anything. Clean up after they leave. I dunno, you want me to stay over?”

“I think we should get out of here and do something fun. Tour ends at 8 tonight, that’s not too late.”

She turned to look at him. “OJ, that’s the most normal thing I’ve ever heard you say. Are you okay? Did you hit your head?”

“Nah.”

“Fun? Did you say fun? I don’t believe it.” She clapped her hands. “Actually, there’s this arcade bar I’ve been wanting to go back to, but none of my friends were free, and then all this shit happened.”

“What’s an arcade bar?”

“It’s a bar that’s an arcade, keep up. You used to like pinball machines, yeah? You pay a flat rate at the door and they give you unlimited tokens to play so you’re not even wasting quarters. Good strong drinks too, live DJ. Might meet some cute girls.”

“Sure.”

“It’s a plan, then. Damn, is this what it takes to get Fun OJ? Almost getting eaten?”

“I’m fun all the time, we just got different opinions on what fun is.”

“We sure do. Well, I’m going to make sure we have a better time tonight than you have mucking out the stables, or the downstairs bathroom for that matter.”

“That’s a low bar.”

“You know you love working with those damn horses.”

“So do you.”

She laughed. “You got me. Can’t get away from this place.” She sighed, checked the time on her laptop. “8 O’clock. I assume some people will hang around wanting to talk about their theories or take more pictures, so 8:30, it’ll be 9 or 9:30 by the time we get things cleaned up and get anywhere, but shit, the bar scene doesn’t even really get started until 10. We’ll have a good long night. Maybe I’ll ask Angel and Crystal if they want to come? Oh, I need to finish editing this.”

OJ watched her talk to herself. A little fire had come back into her, and he was glad. Maybe they could forget everything for a few hours and be bad at Galaga. The house, the bloodstained trash, the supernatural-disaster tourists would still be there when they got back, but for the moment this room felt like their own, and they had something to look forward to that wasn’t drenched in blood.