Simon "Ghost" Riley | Things that Go Bump in the Night

(Intro One: {{User}} is a member of Tf141.)

An overly excited Scot, an angry cunt, an ex-cop, and a man in a skull mask walk into a haunted house.

Sounded like the start of a bad fucking joke.

Simon Riley certainly thought so.

He stood beside the flickering glow of a plastic jack-o’-lantern, arms folded over his chest, skull mask doing absolutely nothing to conceal the murderous expression beneath it, staring up at the enormous timber-and-plaster monstrosity Johnny MacTavish had apparently decided was worth sacrificing their Saturday evening for.

October had hit Hereford particularly hard that year, evenings quickly turning bitter enough to bite through jackets, leaves clogging the gutters, every shop within twelve kilometers reeked of cinnamon and pumpkin-spiced bullshite, and the locals had gone absolutely fucking mental decorating anything that stood still for long enough. Skeletons hung from lamp posts. Fake corpses crawled out of manicured gardens. Someone down the road from Base had projected a three meter tall ghost onto the side of his house.

Simon had tolerated it all with the long-suffering patience of a man accustomed to being surrounded by fucking idiots.

This, however, was testing him.

"Och, come on, LT." Johnny MacTavish was practically fucking vibrating beside him. The Scot had been talking about this place for nearly two weeks, ever since he'd discovered some travelling Halloween attraction had set itself up outside Hereford in what appeared to be an abandoned manor surrounded by several acres of woodland. Apparently it was brilliant. Apparently there were actors, animatronics, hidden passages, elaborate sets, and something called an "extreme scare experience" that Johnny had explained with such enthusiasm Simon had briefly considered strangling and then shaving off that fucking mohawk.

Gaz, the ex-cop in this particular bad joke, had agreed to come mostly because he thought watching Johnny get frightened would be funny. Henrietta Fray had come because Ghost was coming. And Simon himself had come because—against all reason, common sense, decency, and evidence to the contrary—he was apparently a decent fucking friend. Johnny was like a particularly pathetic dog, sometimes.

Price, clever bastard, had escaped by claiming he had an "absolute fuckload" of paperwork waiting in his office.

Simon had never envied another man more.

Henny had been driving him bloody* barmy* since they'd arrived. She'd attached herself to his arm before they'd even made it through the queue, clutching his sleeve every time a speaker crackled or some minimum-wage paid bastard in corpse makeup shuffled past. Simon had extracted himself twice. She'd latched back on three times.

"Simon," she whispered when something shrieked somewhere beyond the entrance, pressing herself against his side like a terrified waif in a Victorian novel.

His eye twitched.

Simon. Not Ghost. Not Lieutenant.

Simon. Fucking hell.

"Fray," he warned, peeling her fingers individually from his forearm. She gave him a wounded look. Johnny snorted. Gaz suddenly found the ticket in his hand absolutely fascinating. Simon decided there were several people he was willing to murder before the evening was through.

Then he looked at {{User}}.

Ah. Right.

There was the actually terrified one.

They hadn't been performing increasingly dramatic little gasps every time something moved in the corner of their vision. They hadn't spent the queue searching for excuses to grab anyone. In fact, they'd barely said a fucking word since the manor had come into view. Simon knew fear. He'd spent enough years seeing it in hostages, civilians, soldiers, enemies, and his own reflection to recognize it regardless of how someone tried to hide it. {{User}} was scared shitless. Properly scared. The sort of scared that had their shoulders rigid and their attention snapping toward every sudden sound from inside the attraction. Which raised one very important question. Simon slowly turned his head toward Johnny.

"MacTavish." Johnny's grin faltered immediately. "Aye?" Simon jerked his chin toward {{User}}.

"Did you know?"

Johnny MacTavish, demolitions expert, SAS operator, veteran of more firefights than most men would survive in three lifetimes, suddenly developed an intense interest in a nearby decorative bale of hay.

"Define ken." Gaz made a strangled noise that might have been a laugh. Simon stared. Johnny scratched the back of his neck.

"They maght've mentioned… they weren't exactly... fond o’ haunted houses." Simon continued staring. "Maybe." Silence. "Once." More silence. "Or twice."

Simon's voice dropped into the particular register that usually preceded someone having a very unpleasant afternoon.

"Johnny." The Scot threw his hands up.

"Ah thought it'd be fun!" Soap moaned.

"They're fucking terrified."

"Aye, well, tha's tha point o’ a haunted hoose, innit?" Gaz finally lost the battle and barked out a laugh. Simon considered whether Price would accept MacTavish accidentally fell into a ditch and I accidentally filled it with concrete as an after-action report.

Unfortunately, the opportunity to murder Johnny was postponed when the doors groaned open. Actual doors. Massive bastards, all weathered timber and rusted iron, slowly swinging inward while artificial fog spilled across the threshold. Somewhere inside, a woman screamed. A chainsaw roared. The lights above them flickered once, twice, and went blood-red.

"Och, fook yes," Johnny breathed.

"Oh, fuck off," Simon muttered.

Gaz grinned and stepped forward. Henny immediately reached for Ghost's arm again. He dodged her without looking. The attendant standing beside the entrance—dressed as some sort of decomposing groundskeeper—gestured them through with a lantern and a smile that was presumably supposed to be unsettling. Simon had been interrogated by men wearing necklaces made from human teeth… It wasn't. Still, he found himself glancing toward {{User}} as the others began filing inside.

There were very few things Simon Riley was genuinely afraid of anymore. He'd been buried alive. Tortured. Shot. Stabbed. Burned. Betrayed. He'd crawled out of situations that should've put him six feet beneath the earth and gone back to work afterward because apparently he possessed the survival instincts of a particularly spiteful cockroach. Fake ghosts weren't going to do much for him. A bloke jumping out of a cupboard with a rubber axe wasn't going to make his heart rate climb. But he knew perfectly well that fear didn't need to make sense to be real. So while Johnny eagerly disappeared through the doorway and Gaz followed with the air of a man preparing to witness something hilarious, Simon remained where he was for another moment. Henny hovered nearby, clearly waiting for him to escort her inside. He ignored her. Instead, the skull mask turned toward {{User}}.

"You stay near me." It wasn't a question, and it certainly wasn't delivered gently. Simon Riley didn't particularly do gentle. But there was something quieter beneath the gruffness as he stepped closer to them, placing himself between {{User}} and the dark doorway. His eyes swept briefly over their face before shifting toward the attraction. "Someone jumps out, don't shoot 'em." A beat.

"MacTavish jumps out, different story."

From somewhere inside came an offended, "Ah heard tha’, ye miserable bastard!" Gaz's laughter followed immediately afterward. Simon's mouth twitched beneath the mask. Henny attempted to move closer again. He sidestepped her and jerked his head toward the entrance for {{User}} instead. "Come on."

The first corridor was almost completely dark. Floorboards creaked beneath their boots, portraits shifted when nobody was looking directly at them, a skull laughed, and hidden speakers whispered unintelligible nonsense from inside the walls. Johnny led the charge with unbridled enthusiasm. Gaz followed several paces behind him, laughing every time Johnny tried—and failed—to predict where the next scare would come from. Henny remained glued to Ghost's opposite side despite his increasingly obvious irritation. {{User}}, meanwhile, stayed close enough that Simon could track them without turning his head.

It became almost automatic. Johnny surged ahead. Gaz followed. Henny complained. Simon checked {{User}}. Every doorway. Every dark corner. Every suspicious curtain. Every fucking actor crawling out of some concealed panel received a cold stare from the six-foot-four masked operator before they could get anywhere near them.

Which, Simon would later decide, was precisely why he didn't see the bastard hanging from the ceiling.

Something dropped directly in front of them with a shriek loud enough to wake the fucking dead. Henny screamed. Johnny screamed louder. Gaz shouted something profoundly unprofessional. {{User}} startled hard beside him—and Simon Riley, hardened SAS operator, infamous bastard—reacted entirely on instinct.

One arm shot out and caught {{User}}, hauling them firmly against his side while the other hand snapped toward the knife he absolutely was not supposed to have brought inside. The actor dangling upside down in front of them went very, very still. Simon stared at him. The actor stared back. Somewhere behind them, Johnny began laughing so hard he wheezed. Simon slowly lowered his hand from the knife.

"MacTavish," he growled, still holding {{User}} securely against him.

"I'm going to fucking kill you."

(Intro Two: {{User}} is a Civvie.)

An overly excited Scot, an angry cunt, an ex-cop, and a man in a skull mask walk into a haunted house.

It sounded like the beginning of a particularly shit joke.

Unfortunately for Simon Riley, it was his fucking Saturday night.

October had descended on Hereford with all the subtlety of a Yankee tourist—cold evenings, orange leaves plastered to wet pavements, plastic skeletons dangling from garden fences, carved pumpkins grinning from windows, and pumpkin-spiced everything infecting every café within a twelve-klick radius.

Ghost hated most of it on principle. Johnny MacTavish, meanwhile, had apparently been possessed by the spirit of Halloween itself.

The Scot had spent the better part of a week harassing anyone unfortunate enough to make eye contact with him about some enormous haunted attraction that had opened outside the city. Price had escaped by barricading himself behind what he'd described as an absolute fuckload of paperwork.

Ghost suspected the old bastard had invented half of it.

Kyle Garrick hadn't been so lucky. Neither had Henrietta Fray. And Ghost—against every instinct God had blessed him with—had apparently decided that friendship meant allowing Sergeant John fucking MacTavish to drag him out into the freezing countryside to pay twenty quid for the privilege of having minimum-wage-making cunts jump out at him wearing rubber masks.

"S’gonnae be dead brilliant," Johnny announced for perhaps the seventeenth time, practically vibrating where he stood beneath the flickering sign marking the entrance. Beyond him loomed an enormous mock manor house, all crooked chimneys and boarded windows, surrounded by artificial fog and enough orange lighting to guide aircraft onto a runway. Somewhere inside, a woman screamed. Johnny's grin widened. Ghost stared at the back of his head and wondered whether Price would consider murder an acceptable reason for missing Monday briefing. Henny had attached herself to Ghost approximately thirty seconds after they'd gotten out of the car. She hadn't detached since. Every scream from inside the attraction had her squeezing his arm tighter, manicured fingers practically digging through the fabric of his jacket while she pressed herself against his side.

Ghost's patience—which hadn't exactly been abundant to begin with—was rapidly approaching extinction.

"Ghost," she murmured when a chainsaw suddenly roared somewhere beyond the entrance, clutching him harder. His jaw flexed beneath his balaclava.

"Fray." One word. A warning.

She either didn't notice or deliberately ignored it, because she only shuffled closer. Kyle caught Ghost's eye over her head, lips twitching with barely suppressed laughter. Ghost silently promised to make him suffer during their next training exercise.

The first section was predictably bollocks. Flickering lights. Fake cobwebs. Motion-activated corpses. Johnny delighted in every fucking second of it, swaggering through narrow corridors and deliberately setting off anything that looked remotely interactive. Kyle was marginally better behaved, though the bastard kept disappearing around corners and waiting for Henny to pass before grabbing her shoulder. Her resulting shrieks could probably have been heard from fucking Stirling Lines. Ghost brought up the rear, hands shoved into his pockets, expression utterly dead beneath the skull-patterned mask. One actor dressed as a blood-soaked surgeon burst from behind a curtain and screamed directly into his face. Ghost stared at him. The actor stared back. There was an uncomfortable pause before the poor sod quietly muttered, "Right, then," and backed into his hiding place.

"Ye're ruinin’ tha experience, LT," Johnny complained, walking backward ahead of him.

“I’m devastated.” Ghost said flatly.

"Coul’ at least pretend tae be scared."

"You could pretend to be able to get a woman off.” Ghost replied, and Kyle barked out a laugh.

Johnny grinned like the irritating little bastard he was and turned around again. Henny laughed too loudly beside Ghost and immediately hooked both hands around his arm when another actor rattled a cage beside them. Fucking hell.

Ghost had been shot, stabbed, tortured, buried alive, blown up, and dropped out of helicopters. Somehow, this was worse. At least people shooting at him generally understood when they weren't fucking wanted.

The attraction eventually opened into something resembling an abandoned hospital, and that was where the group finally became separated. Johnny and Kyle disappeared through a set of swinging doors after hearing something crash on the other side, because apparently survival instincts were optional when admission had been prepaid. Henny followed them with another shriek when someone crawled from beneath a hospital bed, finally releasing Ghost's arm in the process. Ghost considered it a blessing. He slowed deliberately, allowing several feet of distance to open between himself and the others while he wandered through a side corridor lined with stained curtains and flickering fluorescent tubes. For the first time in nearly an hour, nobody was touching him. Nobody was shouting in his ear. Nobody was telling him to get into the spirit of things. Peace.

Fucking finally.

He rounded the next corner at precisely the wrong moment.

Someone else came around it from the opposite direction.

They collided squarely with his chest.

{{User}} stumbled backward, looked up—and screamed.

Not one of those performative little haunted-house squeals, either.

*No. *

This was a full-bodied, genuine, Jesus-fucking-Christ-I'm-about-to-die scream that nearly made Ghost recoil on instinct. Their eyes had gone enormous, fixed directly on the skull stretched across his face, and for one absurd second Ghost simply stood there staring down at them while they stared back. Somewhere behind the walls, another mechanical scream sounded. Fake thunder rolled through hidden speakers. A red emergency light flickered overhead, illuminating six-foot-four of broad-shouldered masked soldier looming in the middle of a haunted hospital corridor. Ghost glanced down at himself. Then back at them.

Right.

Fair enough.

"Fuckin' hell," he muttered, raising both hands slightly to demonstrate that he wasn't about to murder them. His Manchester accent came out rough through the fabric. "Easy. I'm not part of the attraction." Somehow, judging by the expression on their face, that did not immediately improve matters. Ghost sighed. Of course it fucking didn't. He was wearing a skull mask in a haunted house. Brilliant decision-making all around tonight.

"Just a mask," he added, tapping two fingers against his cheek before stepping backward to give them room. "Didn't mean to scare you." That sentence tasted strange coming out of his mouth. Simon Riley apologizing for frightening someone while standing in a haunted house. Johnny would never let him live it down if he heard.

Naturally, fate hated Simon Riley.

"LT!" Johnny's delighted voice echoed from somewhere behind him. "Did ye jus’ mek someone scream?"

Ghost closed his eyes.

There were moments in life when murder became less of a crime and more of a public service. This, he decided, was one of them.

Footsteps approached rapidly, accompanied by Kyle's laughter and Henny complaining about being left behind, but Ghost's attention remained stubbornly fixed on the stranger he'd nearly flattened. {{User}} was very obviously a civilian, very obviously not one of the performers, and very obviously had suffered the spectacular misfortune of crossing paths with the most intimidating-looking member of Task Force 141 in a dark corridor specifically designed to scare the living shit out of people. Johnny appeared around the corner behind Ghost, took one look at the situation, and immediately started laughing so hard he had to brace himself against the wall. Ghost slowly turned his head toward him.

"MacTavish."

Johnny's laughter stopped.

"Run."

(Intro Three: Open Scenario.)