Fffc Bingo Card - A haunting

[m_findlow]

Title: A haunting 
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Owen, Suzie, Jack, Tosh, Ianto 
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none 
Author notes: Written for Bingo Card Prompt 42 - Occult at fffc
Summary: Owen has disturbed something deep in the depths of the hub. 

‘You're mental.’ It wasn't the first time Suzie had told Owen that, and it probably wouldn't be the last either, he guessed. On this occasion however, he knew he wasn't mental, or at least he was pretty sure he wasn't. This was a job full of fine margins. 

‘I'm telling you, Suze. I was down here doing a stocktake of everything and suddenly there was stuff flying around everywhere.’

The whole incident had left Owen feeling rather tense and agitated. He knew that working for Torchwood was oftentimes dangerous but he didn't think that standing in a boring room where he kept all of his medical supplies would be the one place that he might need to consider his life insurance policy. He didn't love this part of the job, the administration required to keep their stocks of critical medical equipment and chemicals up to date, but it was far less onerous on him now that he had someone else to do all the menial ordering and packing it away. He'd been skeptical about Jack's new recruit Ianto, but he'd quickly found multiple uses for the kid that cut down on boring work he had to do personally. Ianto had even written him up a proper checklist for doing his inventory so that he could mark a box at the end of each line, specifying what he wanted their general support officer to order. 

Of course, Owen's stocktake was not expected to get the adrenaline going, and hadn't been. He'd been hunched down, counting off the bottles of liquid morphine when something went crashing off the shelf above him, smashing to the floor in a mess of broken glass and astringent odor. He assumed perhaps he'd jostled the shelf as he'd reached in, sending the bottle closest to the edge teetering off it. 

He'd sighed in an annoyed fashion and fetched a small dustpan to clear up the shattered glass. As he was tidying up the mess, a whole pile of neatly folded surgical scrubs suddenly burst out of another cupboard and spilled themselves all over the floor just next to him. 

This time he knew he hadn't touched the cabinets and was beginning to wonder if they didn't have a lean. He pulled open several of the doors, trying to inspect the general angle of the shelving when something whacked him from behind before clattering to the ground. 

‘What the?’ he muttered, as a metal tray - the kind he used to hold sharp medical implements when conducting his autopsies - lay on the floor. That had been stored in a cupboard on the opposite side of the room. He turned and found the door hanging open, and sidestepped just in time to prevent a packet of scalpels, unwrapped and sharp ends pointed in his direction, flying directly at his head. 

After that, he'd bolted out of the room before anything else could attack him. He knew he hadn't imagined it, running into Suzie on his way back up to the main hub area and dragging her down to see for herself. Things had stopped moving now of course, but the deadly sharp scalpels were now lodged in one of the cupboard doors, like arrows in a bullseye. 

‘I'm telling you, things were moving on their own.’ 

She gave him yet another sceptical look, fingering the surgical tools stuck tight in the door. ‘Forgive me for thinking this is just you trying to play an awful practical joke.’

Owen sneered. ‘As if I could be bothered.’ 

‘Well, you have to admit, it's a little bit far-fetched.’ 

Owen huffed. ‘Fine. I was going to tell Jack, anyway. I just happened to run into you first.’ 

Gratefully, Jack didn't shoot down Owen's story immediately. Instead he gathered up the team and dragged them all down there to investigate. Not that there was much more apart from the mess Owen had only half finished clearing up.

‘Things were flying around the room, you say?’ Jack asked. 

‘More like they were trying to attack me.’ 

‘They wouldn't be the first to try it,’ Suzie quipped. 

Jack scratched his chin, deep in thought. ‘It could be haunted down here, you know.’ 

Suzie scoffed loudly. ‘Haunted? You must be joking.’ 

‘No, seriously. Once upon a time this room used to house all kinds of mad stuff. There was this old house up off Penarth Road. Real Addams Family, all creepy and lopsided. The owner died and left everything in it to Torchwood. It was so packed full of demonic stuff that we just dumped it all down here and forgot about it. No idea what happened to all of it after that. Someone must have finally dumped it, but it was here for decades. I'll be honest, I was glad to see the back of that house when they finally bulldozed it. Even in broad daylight the place felt wrong. Not alien, just really, really wrong.’ 

‘And so, what?’ Suzie said. ‘You think something from that house ended up down here and never left? Ghosts?’ 

‘Stranger things have happened.’

‘I've taken some readings, but there's nothing down here that my equipment can detect,’ Tosh quietly announced, having focused on the task rather than speculation. 

Owen snorted and folded his arms. ‘You're not going to tell me I was attacked by a ghost, are you? That's rubbish.’ No sooner had trouble words left his mouth, a large bottle of disinfectant tumbled from the top shelf and exploded as it hit the floor between them. 

Jack fixed Owen with a look. ‘Not exactly being subtle about it, are they?’ Jack turned to the last member of their collective. ‘Ianto, think you could find us a ouija board?’ 

There was a subtle eyebrow raised.’ Would that be under O for ouija or O for occult?’ 

Jack raised his own eyebrow at the young man. ‘Does it matter?’ 

‘Probably not,’ he replied resignedly, leaving. 

‘Whatever this thing is,’ Jack declared, ‘I think it's time we had a little chat with it.’