fic: The Witching Hour Part 3 (WIP) - Zachary Quinto/Chris Pine
12:30 am
The hallway looks endless. The long stretch of opened doors and dark entryways make Chris feel uneasy. He tries not to focus too far ahead and busies himself with the video camera in his hand. He holds the camera up, presses record, and frowns at the screen.
"So, am I supposed to be looking for orbs or something?"
Zach makes a quiet sound under his breath and keeps walking a few paces ahead, "Uh. No." He says sternly. "Orbs are a load of shit."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Naught but dust, Christopher. Naught but dust."
"Okay then, so what exactly am I supposed to be looking for."
"I don't know..." Zach flails his hands a little, "'Paranormal anomalies.'"
"Vague, Zachary," Chris dead-pans.
"Uh..." Zach sighs and stops in a doorway to peer inside. "You see a guy that shouldn't be there, let me know..." His voice trails off as he slowly pans his camera from left to right across the room, studying the LCD screen intently.
"'Kay," Chris stops and watches Zach curiously. He slowly steps up behind him and looks over Zach's shoulder. "You see something?"
"What? Oh. No, just looking."
Chris makes a small noise in acknowledgement and simply turns and continues walking further down the hallway on his own. He stumbles a little on a piece of fallen plaster and he forgoes focusing on his camera and instead uses his own eyes to navigate. Once his eyes adjust to the dark he takes the time to really look around. It's not so bad, really, once you get over the whole Hollywood-horror aspect of it. The sky outside has a solid layer of thick, bright, gray clouds that makes everything seem a little brighter, a little more solid. The light shines through the windows and is strong enough to illuminate his surroundings, and he finds he can see fair enough without his flashlight so he clicks it off and slides it into his back pocket. He idly thinks back to one summer when he was a kid, and his dad had taken him hiking in the woods...
***
"Turn your flashlight off, Chris," Robert murmured to his son.
"Why?" Chris looked at his dad in confusion.
Robert knelt down next to him, "Just let your eyes do the work." He reached out and twisted Chris' flashlight off. Everything went black.
"Dad!" Chris hollered and Robert chuckled softly next to him.
"Shhh, it's okay, just wait."
Chris squinted and blinked rapidly in the darkness thinking there's no way anyone could see like this, how was he supposed to see, everything's completely dark!, and then...
"Whoa!" Chris breathed out in amazement as he slowly started to make out the line of trees surrounding the trail they were on. It was like he was seeing in black and white but--
"I can see!"
"Told you." Robert laughed softly again and stood up. "Come on, let's keep going."
Chris trotted after his dad, gazing around in awe with his newly acquired super-power, most certain he was now officially cooler than that dickweed Tim Grady.
***
Chris smiles to himself at the memory.
"Tim Grady," he snorts. "What a dickweed."
He stops, and turns to look into a room he's just passed when he glances over his shoulder and sees nothing but a dark hallway behind him.
Zach is gone.