Buried Within (Lockwood & Co Fanfic)

Irregular Regularities

"Do we really have to?"

"We've been through this before, Maisie," the woman sitting in the driver's seat of the car said, her mouth pressed firmly as her hands clenched the steering wheel, trying to get her daughter to get out of the vehicle. "It's not open for discussion. You know why it's not open for discussion."

Maisie knew and let out a sigh, sliding down in the car seat she sat in, her black curls sliding up slightly as she did so. Her mother hadn't even looked at her or the house and instead looked forward, unfocused on anything. She eventually swallowed, knowing the streets wouldn't be safe for anybody after a particular hour, not since The Problem.

The thought of being homeless and living out of the car surrounded by the ghosts that haunted the streets of London streets wasn't pleasant. The car was made of iron, and while it protected from many of the apparitions that haunted the street, it didn't protect them from all. There was also the way spirits would lurk just outside the car, resulting in sleepless nights, something Maisie learned the hard way the first night they were homeless and living in the car.

Nothing, though, that her mother did made sense to her.

They'd once lived in a perfectly safe apartment with Maisie's father, and then her parents separated for reasons neither of her parents explained. Her father moved out and into his own place, leaving the apartment to Maisie and her mother. Then, out of the blue, her mother announced they would not be staying at the apartment because she would take no coin from that man she'd kicked to the curb, still not explaining why they'd separated to Maisie.

Home after that was the car, driven to different locations each day with different specters floating around the sky. Her mother slept as if they weren't there, yet Maisie found herself—a Sensitive—stuck seeing what her mother could not. Yet, she wondered how her mother wasn't bothered when she heard even adults were, to some level, sensitive to the apparitions that haunted places. Lack of sleep, in turn, made Maisie cranky.

And now her mother bought a place that her mother said they could afford, with plans to renovate it on the cheap just as she'd found the place on the cheap. "Thankfully, it's still during the daylight hours, and there will be time to get settled before the curfew sets in, but that will be much preferable to living on the streets, won't it?"

"Even more preferable would be living with dad," Maisie said, shrinking further down in the chair, not wanting to know, let alone sense, what kinds of ghosts were in the area.

"You know that's not possible," even though her mother never explained why that wasn't, let alone why, "He's the one to blame." Her mother also focused on, "but we're lucky to be able to afford this place to renovate and live in."

"Do you not even understand how scary that is?" Maisie said, hugging herself. "We're renovating a house that we don't know whether or not it's safe or not."

"We do because, by law, the previous owners must disclose any hauntings," her mother said. "That's how it is, so that's how it will be." And with that, her mother got out of the car before lowering her head to peek back in. "You can choose to stay outside in the car or come inside. I'm not stopping you."

"You are stopping me, though, from living with dad, or at the very least not explaining why that's not a possibility right now," Maisie sighed before getting out of the car and letting the car door slam behind her. She jammed her hands into her jeans pockets and walked after her mother, noticing the place looked old, and in her mind, old always meant ghosts, and ghosts meant danger, a danger other children such as Night Watch and Agents were trained to deal with, but not her.

"Do you want to?" her father had asked before he moved out.

"Do I want to what?"

"Learn to protect yourself from what you sense?"

"I don't know," she'd said, but the question hadn't come up again before he'd moved out. The porch creaked under her foot as she stepped up while her mother unlocked the door, smiling the entire time she did so. Stepping inside, she inhaled the dust, her head turning to look around the place to see how run down the house was, with peeling wallpaper and damaged walls, the sort of thing which would set off alarm bells in a world where ghosts suddenly become a reality—a deadly one.

Her mother headed to a pile of freshly purchased supplies, picking up the sledgehammer, saying, "I'm thinking of an open floor space between the front room and the kitchen, don't you agree?"

Maisie frowned, watching her mother head to the wall, which she assumed was between the kitchen and the front room. "You don't know what you're doing, do you?"

"Of course, I know what I'm doing!" her mother said, clumsily swinging the sledgehammer back and swinging it towards the wall in question, not caring if she took out electrical or plumbing in the process.

There came then the sickening thud.

And then another thud.

There came more thuds, likely more than what it would have taken for her father to create the hole in the wall her mother did, which in turn allowed Maisie to look around for anything that might be a source for a ghost that she should run front, only to find it staring out of the wall at her. She swallowed. "Mum."

"What?" her mother said.

"There's a dead body in the wall."

"I see that. And?"

"We need to leave," she said. "Before curfew."

"Why?"

"Because of that," she said, pointing at the body. "That means there is a ghost."

"But they have to disclose all possible hauntings, and there was none," her mother said.

"They lied."

"But the law says," her mother said.

"I don't care what the law says! I care what I see, and I care what I sense!" Maisie said, her voice straining. "And if you don't want your daughter to lose her mother because she ends up Ghost Touched, you'll leave now, and we'll get an agency to take care of this!"

"You're being paranoid," her mother said.

Maisie turned, heading for the door, hands still jammed into her pocket, hating she was leaving her mother behind her, yet there was nothing she could do should a ghost attack. She opened the car door and got in, knowing she would not step into that house knowing there was a dead body in the wall.

Or that her mother might become a ghost there out of her foolishness.

The car door on the driver's side opened and closed, and her mother slid in. "You do know that we can't afford a Paranormal Agency, right?"

"You should have thought of that before you bought the place on the cheap," Maisie said, shaking her head. Her mother opened her mouth. "And no. I can't do anything about it like an Agent can."

"I was thinking we just ignore it and live there."

Maisie looked at her. "And what? Become Ghost-Touched?"

"Right. Right," her mother said, letting out a sigh. "Ghost-Touched. Need to find an agency we can afford."

Maisie let the back of her head hit the car seat slightly, thinking such a thing was impossible, or at least when it came to the reputable ones. "We're screwed. We're seriously screwed."