For dinner they ordered local bowling alley pizza. Keith knows this is just because it's the only thing still open, but his mother insists that she is trying to embrace the culture of the place.

Keith is now trying to down the 'culture' despite how greasy it is. The crust is rubbery and the whole thing is luke-warm, turning the cheese into a mass of solid lactose which will undoubtedly upset his stomach. Unfortunately, he's still a teenage boy with the metabolism of a squirrel on cocaine, so he takes another slice.

His dad and Shiro are now fighting over who did the best lifting the mattresses into the house. Shiro thinks it's him, because he lifted more of them, but his dad claims that he lifted the largest one. Both ignore the fact that both Keith, and his mom, had helped lift those mattresses. Neither him, nor his mother, seem to care much though, his mom sits atop a counter, swinging her feet to some rhythm that only she can hear, and Keith sulks at the breakfast bar, glaring daggers at the cabinet he had run into while carrying a box of dishes in earlier. 

He forces down the last bite of pizza and abandons his paper plate in the bin. 

"I'm going to bed." He announces, turning sharply up the stairs and stomping just loud enough to show his displeasure without getting reprimanded.

"Good night!" His father calls up after him.

"Sleep tight!" His mother adds, smirking at Shiro in a knowing way.

"Don't let the bedbugs bite!" His brother calls, finishing a perfectly performed example of why Keith's family will undoubtedly drive him up a wall. He groans in response and pretends not to hear the poorly concealed giggles that follow him down the hall. 

His room is the best part of the move so far. The fairy lights overhead and the large windows give the place a feeling of openness and light, even though outside the only thing visible is a strip of sidewalk, illuminated by a dying fluorescent street lamp. It feels like a place where he can finally breathe again. He sighs as he settles into his bed, which for now, is really just a mattress on the floor. A moment of silence passes with his eyes closed. Then another. And another. With a groan he gets up again, grabbing his phone that's plugged in to the wall and trying to find a playlist he can actually fall asleep to. He settles on some random British indie that his mom had downloaded and climbs back under his covers.

The music makes the place feel a little less empty, and slowly, he begins to nod off, sleep washing over him.

--------

A sudden crash jolts him from his slumber. With a start he sits up, scanning the room in the dim light to find whatever threat is lurking in the shadows. His gaze falls on the can of pencils that he'd placed on the window seat earlier that night. 

It's contents were spilled across the floor, a stray pencil still lazily rolling across a small dip in the old warped floorboards. Keith lets out a breath he doesn't recall holding and tries to calm the pulse which beats loudly in his ears. He slowly rises, immediately missing the warmth of his blankets, and trods over to the can, gathering the pencils back up. He places it back where it had been resting by the wall. As he takes his hand away, turning to go back to bed he freezes. 

The can had been much too far back to have been knocked off by a draft of wind.

 A sense of unease starts to grow in the pit of his stomach. His heartbeat sounding like a cannon in the silence of the room. 

Wait-

-silence?

He glances toward his phone charging in the corner, it sits lifeless and quiet. The silence grows deafening again, his ears straining for any sign of what could be lurking in the dark corners of the room. Again, it dissolves into static.

 The whispers are bolder this time. Words nearly surface, but just as Keith's mind reaches out to understand them, they're swallowed again.He can feel it welling up, something about to break through-

"What are you doing?"

Keith jerks around, searching the darkness behind him for the source of the noise. His breathing quickly becoming harsh and ragged. His feet shuffle backwards until his shoulder blades hit the wall. Now he has at least one safe angle. Even with the fairy lights left on, it's dim, the corners of the room nearly disappearing into blackness. He scans the room back and forth, straining to see any movement.

"Who.." a voice whispers, trailing off, back into silence.

"Sh-show yourself." Keith stutters to the empty air, cursing his voice for betraying his fear.

Silence envelopes the room, swiftly burying the echo of his words. He takes a deep, shaking, breath, and gathers his courage.

"Who's there?" His voice now ventures just above a whisper, "Are you a squatter? A thief?"

"No." the silence seems to mumble. It's so quiet that Keith begins to doubt whether he had heard it at all.

"Then what are you? What do you want with me?"

"You..." The words are a feather of a breeze against his ears, "I don't...know. Who?"

"So you're a ghost or something huh?" Keith huffs nervously, "So this is all just a bad dream and I'll wake up in a bit and everything will be normal."

His shoulders relax and he starts to walk back to bed, his panic forgotten. Ghosts aren't real. This is probably just some weird sleep paralysis thing. He's probably still in bed, his mind is just unsettled about sleeping in a new place.

"This is not a dream." The whisper is clearer now, the static fading.

"Sure thing subconscious, you do that." Keith sasses, climbing under his covers again and nestling down in an attempt to warm them up again.

"This is not a dream." The voice sounds irritated now, almost panicked.

"Mhmm" He hums, pulling the covers over his shoulders.

"Please..."

Keith's eyes open again at the pleading tone. It was almost...sad?

"What?" He asks, his voice feeling too loud in the silence.

"Please...not a...dream...I.." The static seems to take over again, covering the voice.

"Hmm" Keith hums to himself, focusing again on falling back asleep, or whatever. dreaming something else? Who knows.

He nods off, surrounded by a darkness that feels much less empty than before.

----------

Keith is rudely awoken by the sunlight streaming through the bay windows. He sits up, lazily rubbing his eyes and stretching his legs. The dust dances in the beams of light, swirling and spinning like tiny shimmering galaxies. He flops back down and throws the blanket over his head. Trying in vain to catch the sweet unconsciousness which has definitely abandoned him.

"Rise and shine sleeping booty!" Shiro bursts through his door without so much as a knock, "It's time to get up and face the day, adventure awaits! There are things to do, people to meet, weird rocks to see, all kinds of fun!"

Shiro swings a loose pillow at him, smacking him in the face through the covers. Keith considers one of his greatest curses to be the fact that he was given an entire family of 'morning people'.

"Come! On! Get! Up!" Shiro practically yells, emphasizing each word by jumping on his mattress, nearly throwing Keith off of it.

"Fine!" Keith yells, rolling out from under the covers, "I'm up! Now get out so I can change." 

He points Shiro out of the room with a pout, which loses much of its sharpness due to the fact that his hair is currently pointing every conceivable direction.

"I'll see you downstairs in ten!" Shiro calls with a grin before ducking out of the room and swinging the door shut behind him.

Keith sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose, cursing whatever deity that reigns for making people who could wake up at seven AM voluntarily. He quickly digs through his suitcase, putting on the first thing that he hadn't already worn twice, and trying to gather his wits. His phone shows no notifications except that it is apparently eighty seven-degrees Fahrenheit in Arizona. Which is completely and entirely useless.

He stumbles down the stairs, disoriented and still half asleep. His dad sits at the counter, sipping a coffee from some cafe and scrutinizing the local paper with his "editing face," a face he makes when he reads something that he wants to rewrite, a term proudly coined by Shiro when their father was editing his first novel. It involved scrunching ones eyebrows and turning the lip up just slightly with disgust. On special occasions one might utter a scoff or dramatic huff. Keith knew very well to steer clear of the "editing face" as it typically meant that any attempt at conversation would turn into a one-sided rant about grammar. 

Taking the safe road, he passes his father with a mumbled good morning and makes a beeline for the box of donuts on the counter. A note on the counter is covered in his mom's messy scroll:

'This is breakfast, I'm at the shops. If you need me call me. There's another box in the fridge and a gallon of almond milk. -mom'

Keith grabs a glazed donut and a glass of milk and slips out the back door.

The majority of the back of the house is lined by a long covered porch, complete with peeling paint, holey mosquito nets, and the occasional broken flower pot. He kicks the dust that had dried onto the floorboards and sighs. Its still early, but the humidity seems to make everything heat up faster, almost as though it sticks to you. Keith settles on the creaky porch swing, only partially trusting the bolts that hold it up, and nibbles his breakfast while glaring over the lawn in distaste. Even if it was muggy and miserable, at least it was quiet.

"Hey little bro what's hanging?" Shiro smirks, closing the door behind him and pointing at the chains that hold up the swing with a grin that is far prouder than it should be.

"Ugh." Keith groans, leaning his head back against the swing.

"Come on, that was good! Eh? Eh?"

Keith glares at him with a half-open eye, resigning himself to the fact that peace and quiet are a foreign language in this house.

"Okay, fine. Maybe it wasn't that good, but it at least deserved a chuckle." Shiro settles down in the swing next to him, taking it upon himself to swing them both, only because the option is available.

"So," Shiro starts, staring out over the lawn far too cheerily, "How was your first night in dust manor?"

"Dust Manor?"

"Yeah, I thought the name fit well."

"Heh, yeah I guess it does." Keith lets a small grin sneak onto his face, careful not to encourage more puns. Something that Shiro has a bit too much of a knack for. 

"So how was it? Sleep well?" Shiro presses, stealing a piece of the donut in Keith's hand, earning him a glare from the smaller boy.

"Honestly? Not so bad. I had this crazy dream though." Keith thinks back to his conversation with the 'ghost' in his room the previous night.

"Oh, do tell!" Shiro squeals in his best impression of a valley girl.

"You know I hate it when you do that, Shiro."

"Which is precisely why I do it. Now spill!"

"For some reason I thought there was a ghost in my room. It talked to me and everything. I 'woke up' because something fell over and this creepy whisper started talking to me, super weird. It was also strangely vivid, like, probably the most vivid dream I've had in years."

"Ooh, do you think we're haunted? That would be sick!"

"No. We are not 'haunted', Shiro." Keith shoots him another glare, "Ghosts aren't real."

"Prove it."

"Fine, come with me." 

Keith stands in a huff and leads the way upstairs. If everything is exactly where he left it last night then obviously no 'spirit forces' have come around to mess it up. He cringes at the way the stairs creak, they were so steep and he always worried about falling down them. The creaking just added to his lack of faith in their structural integrity.

He swings the door to his room open a bit more forcefully than intended and it bounces off the wall, he pays it no mind though and walks promptly to the window seat, proudly displaying the untouched can of pencils to Shiro.

"See, untouched."

"Uh, Keith?" Shiro eyes something behind him cautiously.

"Yeah?"

"Is there any chance you spilled those when you put them there last night?"

"No, they just spilled in the dream." Keith answers, squinting suspiciously at his brother.

"Then why are there four of them on the floor right there?" He points toward the corner where the window seat meets the wall. Sure enough, four pencils lay there.

Keith turns back to Shiro white as a sheet. 

It really wasn't a dream.