Ch1-Who You Gonna Call?

Introduction to 606 Rush Street

In a busy city, by the Midwest coast of the United States, on a thin street, there stood a large, white house.

 

In a large city, by the Midwest coast of the United States, on a long black road, there stood an empty house.

 

In a restless city, by the Midwest coast of the United States, on a lonely street, there stood a silent house.

 

That, of course, until five hunters burst through the door.

 

 

~Soundtrack- Royal Deluxe- Make a little money~

 

 

Five hunters, a brother and a sister, a clown, a genius and a grumpy cat, walked into a house.

 

One of them said, “I think I’m gonna cough my blood out.”

 

“Oh, shut up already.” another one retorted.

 

“I’m gonna go get a beer.” the third declared nonchalantly, heading towards the kitchen.

 

“He could be dying, Harley, and all you can do is go get a drink?” the fourth one yelled at the third one.

 

The fifth hunter stayed silent.

 

And coming to think of it, that pretty much summed up their personalities.

 

Seth Hart, the extremely alert and slightly annoyed fourth speaker held the extremely wounded and slightly optimistic about it first speaker, Ryder Rhodes, dropped over his shoulders, while the extremely compliant and slightly worried fifth non-speaker, Abigail Morrison, went to grab a first-aid kit.

 

As for our extremely sarcastic and slightly bored second and third speakers, Logan Freeman and Harley Hart, they simply minded their own business, one watching as Ryder Rhodes was dropped back on his feet and onto a chair by Seth, and the other going to get said beer.

 

So, five hunters walked into their home, or more likely a temporary house on a temporary street in a temporary city, and dealt with the aftermaths of yet another successful hunt.

 

“Abby, hurry with that kit,” Seth yelled again, uncommon for someone as calm and composed as him. Why did it look like he was the only concerned one?

 

“No, Abby, take your freaking time with it, s’not like I’m bleeding my brains out in here,” Ryder said sarcastically, which was not at all uncommon.

 

“It’s on the top shelf,” Abigail said from the kitchen, trying to reach the drawer where the kit was and thinking about how she really hated being 5.5 feet sometimes.

 

Wordlessly, Logan came next to her and reached for the medical kit from the top shelf to hand to Abigail, making it look like he was doing the entire human race a favor.

 

Harley kept sipping on her beer.

 

What a huge mess they all were.

 

 

606 Rush Street, the white house on the large street in the busy city kept five ghost hunters and countless secrets inside its walls, and it had done so for over two months now. It’d started to shelter them ever since the Benefactor had chosen these five hunters carefully, one by one, and had made an offer they couldn’t refuse, both because the offer was undoubtedly good and because they were far too desperate for any help that came, even from a stranger they hadn’t even yet met. After all, that was why the five of them had been selected in the first place. They were already well aware of what a hunting lifestyle meant and that they had nowhere else to go. The solo ride was not a pleasant one after all, not for this particular job.

 

So the Benefactor, through Mrs. Jessica Ward, had come to each and one of them and put the offer on the table: hunt as you’ve hunted before, on our terms and money, and work with four other people.

 

And as it’s been said, they had been far too at the end of their tethers to turn down such an opportunity. After all, a new home, full of food and cozy beds and running hot water that a motel couldn’t offer, all of those things that came for free, were not something to refuse. It’d been a good bargain, they’d all individually said at the time. But now, they were starting to regret that decision.

 

“Could you stop moving, Ryder?” Seth asked calmly, now that he’d seen that the bump on Ryder’s head wasn’t bleeding as badly as before, and that all of his panic had been in vain. “I’m trying to clean the cut.”

 

“Were you a doctor?” Abby asked from nearby, thinking that he looked like he knew what he was doing. But as soon as the words left her mouth, it hit them all how few knowledge they had of each other.

 

“No,” Seth said absent-mindedly, his attention mostly focused on Ryder’s forehead wound. “I just taught myself to clean cuts and wounds.”

 

No one commented on that. The hunting life forced you to learn how to patch yourself up whenever you had to. So whether they’d wanted to or not, they’d had to teach themselves how to survive with the little information and skills they had.

 

It took Seth minutes to clean Ryder’s cut, minutes in which everyone remained silent. Ryder was too tired to crack a joke right now, too dizzy to even speak at all, while Seth was too focused on the wound. Abby stood to Seth’s right, watching his hands work carefully, hands that were covered in cuts from the hunt as well, but that could still work with precision. He could’ve been a doctor, she thought, looking at his hands, and stopped her staring as soon as she felt Logan’s eyes studying her carefully from nearby.

 

Logan was too caught up in noticing everything around him to speak. Logan Freeman, the silent observer, everyone called him, and not without reason. He noticed the slight tremble of Seth’s hands that he tried to hide, noticed the way Ryder was trying to get himself to speak, to crack a smile, to give no one a reason to believe he was anything but fine, like he always did. Logan noticed Abby’s stares in Seth’s direction, noticed the blush that colored her cheeks every time she would catch herself doing it over and over again. He noticed Harley’s restlessness as she tapped her fingers on the bottle of beer, noticed how her body craved continuous movement. He couldn’t help but notice, but he sure as hell wanted to.

 

They were perhaps a huge mess, each and one of them with their own messiness, with their own habits, with their own secrets and own silences. They were messes who hadn’t yet learned how to be a mess together.

 

“I’m done,” Seth announced, getting back up and throwing the cloth full of blood on a table. “Can you talk?” he asked Ryder.

 

The former simply nodded.

 

“Then what the f**k, Ryder?”

 

Abby’s eyes grew wide, while Harley let out a laugh from the kitchen and even Logan snorted from around, his own strange and brutal kind of laugh. Seth Hart was not one to swear, his sister knew. Which meant he was a little pissed.

 

“That was not one of my proudest moments.” Ryder grinned up at Seth, touching the bump on his forehead and the stitch on it.

 

“Not one of your proudest moments?” Seth repeated more loudly, placing his hands on his hips. Ryder was in for a big lecture, Harley guessed, since she’d gotten enough of those during their years hunting alone. She would hurt herself during jobs, get stabbed or cut, and every time, Seth would insist on patching her up. She’d be angry at first that he could not get that she was capable of handling herself, but when she saw the worry on his face at the sight of all that blood, her anger would disappear. Her brother overreacted like that only when he cared.

 

“Look, man,” Ryder spoke, struggling to get up from the chair, while grunts of pain and groans followed. “I appreciate the concern but it was just an accident. I thought you got the son of a b***h, I didn’t expect him to attack me.”

 

“And what an attack that was,” Harley commented, coming to stand in the living room with them and handing Ryder his own beer, who took it with a grateful expression on his face. Nothing healed a wound better than alcohol. “Dude, the ghost just flew a fire-extinguisher at your face and you went down like a bag of potatoes. Yeah, what a savage spirit.” she commented sarcastically.

 

“Yup,” Ryder laughed at himself, too, like he always did. “I bet it looked funny.”

 

“It didn’t,” Logan’s voice ringed in the living room, guttural and sharp, as he went up the stairs and headed to his own room. “It looked stupid.”

 

Everyone in the room rolled their eyes.

 

“We appreciate your comments, Logan, as always,” Ryder called after him, but Logan had already slammed the door to his room and locked it, a clear sign for everyone not to disturb him that night.

 

“Anyway,” Seth broke the awkward silence after that, clasping his hands together and looking around the tired faces of the hunters. “We could use a good night’s sleep.”

 

“I could use a good decay’s sleep, to be honest,” Ryder declared, heading off to his upstairs room as well, not before ruffling Abby’s hair and fist-bumping Seth and Harley like he did every night before he went to sleep.

 

“Good night,” Abby muttered under her breath at the two remaining hunters, before she turned on her heels and headed upstairs as well.

 

And that left the Harts alone. Before Seth could say he would head off too, he saw Harley drop herself on the couch in front of the TV, with another beer in her right hand and the remote control in the other.

 

“Aren’t you going to bed?”

 

Harley shook her head and surfed through channels. “I’m not tired.”

 

 

~Soundtrack: Naughty Boy feat. Bastille �" No one’s here to sleep~

 

 

She never was, Seth remarked. Even after coming back from a two days hunt, she would either stay up all night waiting for the phone to ring, or pretend to go to sleep and just turn in bed, with no chance of falling asleep. Sometimes, he would let Harley be, try to let her make her own decisions for once, since he knew how badly his sister could ignore his advice.

 

But tonight he sighed, took his journal out of the inside of his coat and dropped next to Harley on the couch.

 

“That thing again?” Harley remarked, raising an eyebrow at the notebook covered in black leather.

 

“You know I have to write in it.” Seth didn’t look at his sister as he opened the journal to a new page and marked today’s date on the top.

 

As soon as the five of them had agreed to be a part of the Benefactor’s mission, Mrs. Jessica Ward had told them their responsibilities and duties. And among them, the Benefactor had requested one of the hunters to mark in a small notebook the beginning and ending of their every hunt in a couple of sentences, with few details. And of course, none of them had actually agreed to that, thinking it would be useless for the Benefactor to keep track of their hunts like that, but Seth had been just happy to please the Benefactor.

 

In these two months, they hadn’t had more than five hunts, since they’d gone only through two stages of new moon so far. But at the end of every hunt, Seth would take out his ‘hunting journal’, like he liked to call it and write the results of their previous jobs. And tonight wasn’t any different.

 

“No, you don’t, Seth,” Harley protested, muting the TV and turning to look at her brother. “You don’t have to do everything the Benefactor says.”

 

“I actually do, Harley,” Seth dropped the notebook on his lap and threw his sister an exasperated look. “He brought us here, gave us a chance to do what we were already doing on our own, but now with a safe roof under our heads and with three other skilled hunters covering our backs. And all we have to do �"“

 

“Is be his little b*****s,” she finished for him, voice full of venom. “Go hunt this, go hunt that, then wait around for stupid, skeptic people to call for our help like we’re some goddamn pizza delivery guys.”

 

“Lower your voice,” Seth warned, finally remembering that everyone in the house was asleep, and that they definitely didn’t want to wake up an angry and tired Logan.

 

Normally, if he’d told her what to do, Harley would’ve simply done the exact opposite. But now, she looked at her older brother with almost pleading in her eyes as she whispered back, “I don’t want to be here, Seth. None of us do, except you maybe. We don’t know each other, sure as hell not trust each other, and we have no idea who this Benefactor is either. We don’t even know if it’s a she or he.”

 

A pause followed after that. The images kept changing on the TV, while Rush Street remained quiet outside, with not a single car passing by, and Seth looked at his sister with defeat in his eyes. All he’d ever wanted since their parents had died was to let her have the life she’d wanted, to let her have as much of a say in what happened next as him. And out of all the options, she had chosen the hunting life. And now, after years, when Seth thought the future finally looked quiet promising, she was choosing to drop it all.

 

“I’m sorry, Ley,” he spoke eventually, quieter and more kept than before. He was not sure he could let her call the shots this time, too. “But it’s too late now. We agreed to do this, both of us. And plus,” he captured her small, yet calloused hand in his and gave it a small squeeze. “I have a feeling we’re going to grow to like it here. If not now, then later.”

 

Harley sighed through her nose, but squeezed Seth’s hand back. “I doubt it. But I’m sorry, too. I’m throwing tantrums.”

 

Seth gave his sister a reassuring smile, letting go of her hand only to grab back his hunting journal. “Just wait and see, Ley. Something tells me the best is yet to come.”

 

Harley didn’t comment on that anymore. She let him believe whatever he wanted, let him worship that Benefactor, let him write in a journal like an obeying, good boy.  But at the end of the day, she knew better. She knew their stay was temporary, that Logan, Ryder and Abby were temporary, too. She’d known from the beginning. She’d known that one day, they would part ways, whether it would be in a pleasant way or not.

 

They stayed like that for a few minutes, with Harley changing the channels absent-mindedly and with Seth reporting their last hunt in the journal, until eventually, the elder brother closed the notebook and got up from the couch.

 

“You know the phone is not gonna ring tonight, right?” he told Harley, who simply shrugged.

 

“The night is young.”

 

“We’ve got only one more night of new moon, who do you think is gonna call now �"“

 

But before Seth could finish his sentence, the phone in the living room rang.

 

It was perfect timing.

 

Both hunters looked at the phone on stand, one with a vexed expression, and another with a wicked grin spread on her face, as if anticipating a sweet, terrible thing.

 

“Not to say I told you so,” Harley smirked at her brother. “But I told you so.”

 

And 606 Rush Street came to life once again.

Author's Note

Hey, guys! So, this is my story, The Hunter Diaries. I hope you're enjoying it so far, though so far is not so much, I'm aware. And I'd really love to know what you think :) Any kind of feedback is appreciated. Also, for those of you who haven't read my stories so far, I just wanna let you know I'm used to adding little song suggestions for certain scenes and moments, I hope you enjoy those as well :3. Another thing I'm used to doing is having some face-claims for my characters, if any of you is interested in knowing.



Thanks for reading this, see ya next time! :D