Chapter Text
“Blainey Blaine Blaine!”
Blaine sighed and pushed back from his desk. He had hoped to leave before Cooper showed up to harass him. His brother was always so cheerful, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Coop.” Blaine grimaced.
“I came to collect you. It’s Christmas Eve after all.”
“Hardly an achievement to flip another day on the calendar.”
“Always such a Scrooge you are,” Cooper scolded. “Come on, we’re having a party at my house. We’d love to have you.”
Blaine rolled his eyes. “I very much doubt that.”
“Blaine, you shouldn’t be alone on the anniversary of Dad’s death. It’s been seven years Blaine. And it’s Christmas.”
“Christmas is just another day, Coop.”
--
Once he was rid of Cooper, Blaine went back to his paperwork. He never left the office before eleven and Christmas eve was no reason to break that habit. Besides, he had paperwork to finish up before finalizing the purchase of Hummel Tire & Lube on the 26th.
He was shuffling through the final purchase agreement when Sam knocked on his door.
“Come in.”
“Oh, hi Mr. Anderson.”
“You were expecting to find someone else?”
“What? No. Just you. You’re always here.” Blaine waited. He knew what Sam was working up to. “Um, about tomorrow?”
“What about tomorrow?”
“You said you’d think about it, my request? For the day off?”
Blaine frowned. “I imagine all you’ll do all day is think about not being at work anyway.” Blaine sighed. If only everyone would just do what he wanted, everything would go much smoother. “Fine. Go off, have a beer or whatever it is you do.”
Sam laughed. “If I stop to have a beer on Christmas Eve before I get home Mercedes will have my neck.”
Blaien shrugged whatever. “Be here on the 26th, for the Hummel deal. I need you to do the bank run.”
Sam opened his mouth, as if he were going to say something, but wisely thought better of it.
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Anderson.”
--
Anderson Capital Inc. was located in an office building in the center of town, not that there was so much town that it could reasonably be expected to have a center.
But it did, and so when the church bells - which were located in a church that was also located in the center of town - struck eleven, Blaine put down his pen, logged off of his computer, and opened the bottom drawer of his desk only to find an empty bottle that had once been filled with bourbon.
“Damn it.”
One of the things Mr. Anderson Sr. always insisted on was having a personal driver. Part of the Anderson family creed, he would tell Blaine, to always hold yourself unapproachable by those who might want something from you. So the Anderson home was the most expensive home in Lima, and it was the furthest away from the Anderson Tower (where Anderson Capitol Inc. was located), and every day Mr. Anderson would ride in his car, being driven around town like a modern day Henry Potter, as if Lima were a town anything like Bedford Falls.
When Blaine took over the company he fired the driver. Not because he had done anything wrong, but because Blaine Anderson didn’t need a driver. He didn’t live in the big house at the edge of town, he opted to live in the penthouse apartment on the top floor of Anderson Towers, which, in all honesty, served to make him even more unapproachable than his dad had been. There was no need to keep paying the driver if there was nothing to drive. He pretended to assume his dad would have been happy about at least one of those facts.
But none of that changed the fact that Blaine was going to have to walk to the liquor store if he wanted a nightcap.
--
Blaine took the elevator to the ground floor. The building was of course open all night, should any of the employees of Anderson Capital wish to put in extra hours, but there was no one in the building at this hour, other than the night receptionist at security, and Blaine nodded at him when he walked out the front doors.
Blaine walked down the festive block to the liquor store he knew would be open, and made his purchase.
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Anderson,” said the clerk as he handed Blaine back the plastic he used to purchase his spirits.
“I know the date,” Blaine grumbled, taking his package and heading back out into the street.
Main Street should have been empty, and would have been on any other evening at this hour, but for some reason Christmas Eve celebrations in Lima went late into the evening. It was bad enough that everyone wanted the day off on Christmas, Blaine thought, but they couldn’t even keep their celebrations behind closed doors.
So Blaine walked past the people gathering for the midnight Christmas tree lighting, and the high school kids out passing out hot chocolate - all of them out far too late, and a group of carolers dressed as Mrs. Claus, singing medleys of someone’s Christmas favorites.
Blaine stopped a safe distance away, watching the carolers for a few moments, wondering what could possess grown adults that would make them want to stand in the freezing cold singing novelty songs for strangers.
By the time Blaine arrived at the door to his apartment he was cold and wet, and had already unscrewed the top from his bottle and taken a few swigs. He stared at the door before entering.
His father had built two apartments on the top floor, expecting both of his sons would eventually live there. Cooper refused (“they look like military barracks” he’d protested). BUt they suited Blaine just fine. He didn’t have visitors (other than the occasional, nearly anonymous, hookup), though it wouldn’t have mattered if he did.
The one exception to the Spartan decor was the door knocker Jacob Anderson had hung on the door to the apartment. It was an intricate head of a lion, far too large for the door. It cost upwards of $10,000, and Blaine thinks it likely that his bought it from someone who had pirated it away from it’s rightful owners. Blaine often stared at it, since it was too large and too tacky to outright ignore. Nothing about it was unfamiliar.
And yet, as Blaine stood in the hall, staring at the knocker, it seemed to transform before his eyes until, instead of a lions head, the face on the knocker was unmistakably that of his father, Jacob Anderson.
--
“What the --” Blaine blinked, but the knocker still held the distinct image of his father’s face, unmistakably so. Even after all this time, the disapproving ‘v’ of his brow and the thin line of his mouth could crush Blaine’s spirit in a flash.
Did he drink more than he thought? Blaine looked down at the bottle of Benchmark he held in his left hand - it didn’t seem so, only the few gulps he’d indulged in on his way home seemed to be missing.
Blaine closed his eyes tight, counting to ten. The last thing he needed right now was the ghost of his father telling him he hadn’t sacrificed enough for the family business. Blaine had nothing left to give.
When he opened them again, the door knocker was back to its gaudy, tasteless, original form. Maybe he was just tired, and the anniversary of his father’s death was playing tricks on his mind. He just needed a few hours sleep and he’d be fine. He let himself in, deciding to take his bottle to his room and watch television until sleep took him.
But Blaine had let down his guard, and the door slammed loudly behind him. The noise made his heart leap into his throat as it echoed throughout the apartment.
“Get it together Blaine,” he mumbled, walking through the dark rooms until he reached his bedroom. He didn’t bother turning a light on, just flicked on the television bathing the room in long shadows. He didn’t change into pajamas - Blaine had long ago given them up - he just stripped down to his underwear and sat on his bed, with his bottle and a glass on the side table.
Blaine flipped the channels on his television, bored with everything offered. He passed real housewives and holiday specials, old movie and local news. Nothing worth looking at, yet he didn’t stop.
He shot upright in bed at the sound of a loud siren, so loud it felt like it was inside of his apartment. It took more than a few seconds for Blaine to realize that what he was hearing was the sound of some sort of emergency vehicle out in the street. He shook his head, running a hand through messy hair.
Blaine picked up the television remote intending to shut it off. He might as well turn in. Sleep would bring the entire debacle of a holiday closer to ending. But when he pointed it at the television, he noticed that the program currently playing was some old black and white science fiction series - complete with cheap costumes and cheaper sets. As he stared, one particular actor began to look familiar. Unbelievably, this actor resembled his father. So much so that Blaine could not bring himself to turn off the television, or even to look away. When the camera angle changed, Blaine choked a noise into the silence. The actor on the screen didn’t look like his father, the actor was his father.
As Blaine continued to stare, the image that was his father appeared to get closer and closer, and the image on the television smaller and smaller, until his father literally appeared in Blaine’s bedroom.
“Who are you?” Baine asked. It could not be his father. Jacob Anderson had died seven years ago this very night. Also he appeared from the television. Blaine must have had too much to drink. “What are you?”
“Better you ask who I was,” the image asked. “Don’t you recognize me, son?”
--
“It can’t be,” Blaine said, even while he leapt from his bed and pulled on a bathrobe. “You are a shadow of my memories,” he sputtered. “You are not real.”
The apparition frowned; an expression so exactly like his father that Blaine took a step back. “You may believe your eyes, or not. I am what I am.”
Blaine glanced at the bottle on his table then back. The image - no, ghost, seemed to be deteriorating before Blaine’s eyes. Before it had seemed whole, but ragged, dressed in the costume of the television character. But now his posture was slumped, the rags that covered him were a dingy gray-green, and showed bones beneath them. Not limbs covered with skin so thin you could see the shapes of bones underneath, but actual bones. If this was a dream he couldn’t wake himself from, he could at least try to hurry it to its end. “What do you want?”
“Only to help you avoid my fate, Blaine.”
“And what is that? Your fate?”
“I’ve been condemned. Condemned to wander the earthy and witness what I can no longer share, but could have if I had taken the time in my life.”
“I don’t understand,” Blaine said. “What does that mean? ‘Witness what I can no longer share.’”
“I wasted all of my life, in pursuit of money, in pursuit of success. I alienated your mother, and your brother. I smothered the best parts of you son, and made you just like me.”
Blaine’s chest constricted. All he ever wanted was his father’s approval, but he was never good enough. Blaine received no praise from his father before he had died. “I made my choices”
The ghost raised his arm, causing the sleeve of his rags to fall open. Blaine could see for the first time huge chains held in his fist, through his sleeve and all of his clothing. The ghost rattled them with a force that echoed all through the small apartment.
“Those were not your choices,” he bellowed, chains rattling. “They were mine. But you can choose now.”
“Choose what? If I’m destined to end up like you, how can I possibly change my fate?”
“Show mercy, kindness, compassion to those around you. There is still time for you to change things in life. To have what is right in front of you, but something could not see until it was out of reach.” The ghost paused, as if to give Blaine time to reject whatever was to come. “You will be haunted,” the ghost said, “by three spirits.”
Blaine hugged himself, shaking his head. “Is that all?” He muttered.
“The first will come tomorrow, at one am. The second will come the next night, and the third will come the third night. Heed their warnings, son.”
“Can’t I just promise to do better?”
The ghost said nothing, just walked toward the bedroom window; the window opening as he got closer. He beckoned Blaine with a boney finger. What he saw astonished Blaine. Everywhere he looked he saw ghosts, spirits, phantoms, swirling around as if riding the air. Their faces were twisted, silently wailing, their arms reaching out as if touch something that remained forever too far away. Blaine shuddered. The entire scene looked like something out of a horror movie. Blaine turned to his right to ask the ghost what it all meant, but he was gone, and when Blaine looked out the window the entire display was gone. As if it had never been there at all.
Blaine rubbed his eyes. It had to have been a dream. He was simply sleepwalking and if he just went back to bed he would wake up tomorrow with only a vague memory of the whole ordeal. He looked at the clock - it was late, after two am. He checked the locks on his door, just in case, he told himself, and crawled back into his bed, falling asleep instantly.