Bump In The Night- Highboom

And in the smoke, there was...

The next few hours were less eventful than Jesse had expected.

He had thought, maybe he had been followed by this ghost, or one of his friends at the very least... But nobody had called him when everyone had gotten home to speak about it. Just some playful banter about how one of them had screamed like a girl, and it wasn't Hana.

He took that as a good sign, that nobody had been followed, and he was just being paranoid and dramatic.

So he sat down on the tiny couch in his tiny apartment, with the fuzziest blanket he owned, and ate some chips while he watched a dramatic romcom about some guy trying to figure out whether he should date his new demon best friend or exorcise it. He enjoyed this particular show as it was good for lazy nights.

The power would flicker occasionally, and he'd have to go all the way back to where he had left off when it turned back on. Maybe someone downtown kept screwing with the poles to get free electricity again, he didn't know, and didn't think anything of it as it wasn't far off from what had happened in the past.

As he watched his show, he started getting sleepy and before he could catch himself he'd nodded off to the sound of the characters on the TV giving each other the silent treatment.

With a startled grunt and a less-than-dignified scramble to get on his feet, Jesse looked around, seeing only forest. He could only see about 5 feet in front of him as some sort of fog was blocking his view from all angles. The plants and trees didn't have any color, they were just a lowly-saturated, ashen-looking type of dark grey mixed with navy.

He called out, "Hello?", but there was no response. Only the sound of his feet crunching over the dry leaves beneath them as he made a full 360 degree turn. "Any- uh.. Anyone there?" He said cautiously.

When there was no response, he started walking around. The more he walked, the worse the fog got, and it started to smell ominously similar to smoke. He could see a blurry source of light, and so he walked faster, towards that light, hoping that meant some sort of direction as he couldn't see anything now except his own two hands.

The light seemed to get more powerful the closer he got, so he kept going. He started to hear the tiniest, faintest amount of crackling.

The smoke and the trees blocking the way to the light and the crackling, they all lessened without him taking any notice, and he immediately saw what it truly was.

A little house, in the middle of nowhere, burning to the ground and taking anything nearby with it.

Jesse shuddered, and just stood there, wondering how that had happened, how something so small could be burning so violently like that.

Then he heard a scream, and a small little wail, and then some more screaming. Jesse started to panic. Everything started spinning and suddenly he was inside that little house, unaffected by the putrid smell of smoke or the heat, and he saw a man.

The man looked scared for his life, and it felt like those eyes burned into his own. Jesse lumbered over to him, blurting out stuff like "I'll help you" and "It's okay, I've got you," but he knew those were lies. The man had a chunk of wood trapping his arm and holding him in place, all the while roasting said arm in the process.

The guy suddenly didn't look so scared anymore, not at all, and instead he looked... Satisfied, somehow.

"No, Mate, you can't save me. I admire the effort, though." Jesse shook his head in absolute confusion, and it certainly showed. "Well, I guess that's as good of a greeting as you're gonna get, eh?"
The man snapped his finger.

Jesse woke with a start.

He took a few minutes to fully wake up and recall his dream, and then reached over to his phone.

McMeme to CHATGROUPGROUPCHATCHAT:
McMeme: Is anyone awake?

Pinkachu: Yeah theres me, y? do u wanna tell us smth? ;3 ;3 ;3

McMeme: im being haunted

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Sorry if these first few chapters suck; I've never really written out Mccree before.
I'm honestly exited to introduce Jamie though, I've had a tiny bit more experience writing with him but only a smol bit oof