Chapter Text
Aside from having been one quite a long time ago, Parker had no experience with children. He was the youngest child in his family, meaning that by the time he was old enough to hold onto memories, the rest of his siblings were quite a bit older than infants. Arthur had a daughter, once upon a time, until she died. (Arthur hadn’t offered anything more than that. Parker hadn’t pushed.) All in all: Parker’s experience with children was, to put it lightly, lacking.
Babies, though, babies were an entirely different matter. They were like living, breathing lumps of glass: too damn fragile. The little wad of blankets from which a wet crying was beginning to emanate from was only around the size of Parker’s forearm. He could feel the child shifting within the blankets as his footsteps jostled her, head shifting from side to side as she drew a breath in preparation for another wail. He shifted a hand (the only one he could move, now) to support her head, and she sniffled again; when he started to move the hand away, her head lolled to one side in a position that couldn’t have been comfortable.
He kept the hand where it was, supporting her head. That was what you were supposed to do with young kids, right? It was near impossible to make the journey a smooth one, what with all the running from someone’s evil grandmother business, and every movement seemed to provoke another complaint from his tiny companion. For something so small, the baby had a strong set of lungs and by god she was willing to use them.
“Shh,” Parker whispered, and the baby responded with another cry that was not quite as loud as before but still enough to give anything following them a good bead on their location. “Shh. Hey, hey. We need to be quiet, okay?”
He made the mistake of shifting his hand, then quickly shifted it back as the baby’s head threatened to pitch sideways again. Every step he took rocked her from side to side(why, he wondered, were people so fragile at such an important stage of their lives? How did anyone survive to adulthood when Parker was fairly sure a strong gust of wind would be enough to sweep an infant into the sky, never to be seen again?), but he didn’t dare move any slower than he already was. The woman who’d attacked their car was out of Watson’s line of sight, which either meant they’d lost her, or she’d followed them in such a way as to not draw the one fully functioning pair of eyes between their odd little group of three.
Even if they had managed to lose her, the baby’s crying was sure to alert her soon. Watson gave a frustrated groan—evidently, he hated not being able to see as much as Parker did. The storm still raged overhead, the baby’s blanket quickly turning sodden in the downpour, and aside from the odd flash of lightning, the woods must have been plunged into absolute darkness.
“Shout if you see her,” Parker hissed, not slowing as Watson voiced his agreement. “And, you know, don’t let me walk into a tree.” Parker still hadn’t quite grasped the concept of walking without sight. The natural instinct was to take smaller steps, test the waters so as not to crash. His was the only set of footsteps to be heard, not that much could be heard over the rain, and if not for all the deeply unpleasant memories the last several hours had held Parker might have forgotten he had a guide.
Not that he could have, because Watson had an audience of exactly one person, and despite earlier complaints he’d thrown himself headfirst into the whole ‘describe the scenery’ thing and didn’t give the impression of stopping anytime soon. If they did manage to separate themselves without incident(and there was bound to be incident, but a man could dream), perhaps Parker would help him find a job narrating nature documentaries.
The baby was crying again, perhaps due to the rain. He felt his left arm flutter upwards, perhaps to cover her mouth, before Watson thought better of it and dropped the arm back to Parker’s side. Parker’s attempts to quiet her were unsuccessful, though he couldn’t blame her; she had every right to be freaking the fuck out. Smart kid.
There is a clearing up ahead, Watson announced, and Parker huffed out a long breath only to be greeted by the taste of rainwater.
“Great. So? We out of the woods yet?”
Unfortunately not, in every sense of the phrase. No surprises there. Still, Parker rather thought the universe owed him a pleasant surprise at some point, to make up for all the decidedly unpleasant ones from earlier. The grass is long, almost reaching our knees, and the trees grow thick around us. In the clearing, up ahead… there’s a house.
“Are we back in a residential area?”
I don’t believe so. Watson paused, presumably to look around. There is a light on in the attic, but I don’t see any other houses, nor any other signs that someone may be home. It’s not exactly a small house, so it’s… strange, that it would be here in the middle of the woods.
“Finally we agree on something.”
The baby hiccuped, reminding Parker why they couldn’t stop. If they stayed exposed, there was every chance the woman—the one who attacked them and had presumably killed the other person in that cabin—would catch up.
“Does it look occupied?” Parker whispered. “I’d leave the office lights on sometimes, to try and discourage robbers and shit. Anyone home?”
It’s impossible to tell, Watson rumbled. It’s– oh.
“What’s wrong?”
Ah— Nothing, I don’t think.
“What do you mean you don’t think? What’s there?”
Watson spoke with far too little confidence for Parker’s comfort. The light, it’s… it’s gone out. Or maybe it’s just gone. I don’t know if it was ever there. Perhaps it was an effect of having been stuck together for most of the day, but his tone felt more transparent. Parker could almost imagine the pinched frown that would have mirrored the words.
“What’s that mean?”
There’s no light, Parker. The house is completely dark. Watson hesitated. I have a bad feeling about this place. We should go somewhere else.
Parker was inclined to agree. Barging into a stranger’s house in the dead of night having literally just crawled out of a car wreck sounded like a great way to get arrested or killed.
The child squirmed in his arms, reminding him that theirs were not the only lives at stake. “Where? If you see any other options, I’d take ‘em.”
We could continue on through the woods, said Watson, but he sounded doubtful. We… There’s no sign the woman who attacked us tracked us this far. We may have lost her.
The baby chose that moment to begin crying again. Parker’s meager attempts to comfort her did nothing to quiet her. The blankets had become soaked through from the downpour, as had Parker’s clothes, and every step seemed to sink a little deeper into the squishy ground, giving Parker the impression the earth was ready to swallow them at the first wrong step.
"We need to get a roof over our heads,” he muttered. “Does the house have a porch?”
The rain roared in Parker’s ears as Watson checked. Yes, came the bitter report, but the roof above it has fallen in. It won’t be any protection from the rain.
Beneath his feet, Parker felt the ground transition from drowned soil to rotting wood. A second later he heard it as well as one of the boards splintered beneath his feet, nearly sending him tumbling to the ground. The motion sent the infant’s head knocking against his chest, and he swore as she cried out again. “Sorry, sorry,” he murmured, extracting his foot from the newly formed pile of splinters at his feet. “Christ. How old is this place?”
I can’t tell, but it doesn’t seem as if this place has been used in quite some time. The front, put simply, is a disaster, strewn with piles of debris, and the windows have been boarded up. Parker, I have a bad feeling about this place.
“Tell me about it,” Parker muttered. “Shit. There’s nothing good waiting for us here. You don’t see any other houses?”
No, just the one. It’s not a small house, either. The woods seem to go on quite a long way in every direction, broken only by the small clearing this house is built in.
Parked forced himself to breathe. In, and out. Put the fear aside and treat this like another case.
Barring the supernatural shit that seemed suddenly drawn to them, there were no good options here. Best case scenario, the house was empty, Watson was imagining things, and Parker couldn’t trust his eyes. Worst case, someone else was taking shelter in that house and saw their entry as a threat. The absolute worst of cases—which, at this point, was looking likely—was that this was another something supernatural in this place, and it thought trying to kill Parker was the hottest thing since sliced bread.
That was a lot of conclusions to jump to, but his streak of horrendously bad luck (mixed with a healthy dose of lethal danger) gave Parker the sense that said conclusions were more likely to jump him, likely in a dark alleyway of some sort, and rob him for all he was worth. Best to be prepared.
Parker took a few steps forward, then shivered as a blast of cold air hit his spine. It took a moment to realize it wasn't cold air at all; the creeping chill running through his bones was terrifyingly familiar.
That was enough to make up his mind.
“Absolutely not. Let’s find another roof,” he announced, backing away and nearly tripped over the same piece of broken wood in the process. “Preferably one that doesn’t make me feel like someone’s stirring my intestines with a spatula.”
Watson voiced his approval, and it struck Parker that he had sounded almost… afraid. Though he had no spine to chill, he wondered if the entity had felt the same cold presence he had.
Running was still tricky, given the uneven ground and newfound blindness, but Parker gave it his best effort, hightailing the hell out of that clearing in the opposite direction of where they’d come. The baby was crying again; he wished there was something he could do to comfort her.
No matter how many times he’d done it, there was nothing more terrifying than knowing another person’s life was in your hands.
With control of those now divided, Parker could only hope theirs were the right ones.
Back when Parker new to being a PI, his first partner had given him a piece of advice. “Learn to tell the difference between a smart risk and a stupid risk,” he’d said. “Otherwise all you’ll discover is how easy it is to get yourself killed”
Lennox would have had an aneurysm if he saw how completely Parker had managed to fuck himself over.
The rain hadn’t let up even after they’d broken through the canopy of trees, and they’d ducked into a nearby phone booth to escape the storm. Parker had expected such heavy rain to blow over within a few minutes, but it had persisted for a good long while. None of them were keen to stay out in the rain, so they’d waited it out.
Following an extremely long half hour where Parker had recounted to Watson the plot of Murder on the Orient Express and Watson tried and failed to come off as uninterested, the rain had finally started to die down. The police lights that rushed past had been enough to convince them to hide a little longer, until Watson reported, watching through blurry glass made blurrier by rain, that the cars had passed and stopped, evidently responding to some unrelated emergency.
Not entirely unrelated, as they’d learned as soon as they felt safe enough to step out of the phone booth. They left the baby on the stoop of the restaurant. Parker did not understand how anyone became a father without suffering some sort of severe anxiety attack, because a million scenarios of the baby knocking her head against the pavement or just exploding into shards of glass had played within his head as he set her down.
But the woman had seen the child, and if Watson's description was any indication, the baby wasn’t just any baby to her. Parker had felt suddenly awash with relief. He’d become a PI to help people. In one day alone, he’d hurt plenty. This wouldn’t make up for it, but it wasn’t nothing, either.
Apparently that was too daring a thought, and the universe immediately set about to make things right by fucking up Parker’s life even more.
Parker wasn’t sure whether to blame Watson for not warning him properly or himself for having the approximate stealth of a bull in a china shop wearing squeaky clown shoes. Being newly blind, he reasoned, meant Watson had to afford him some slack, because how exactly had he expected Parker to know the flatbed wasn’t as empty as he’d implied it to be?
Long story short: They’d disturbed what was possibly the loudest pile of wood in all of the universe and alerted the truck driver.
They hadn’t even tried to sneak onto the right damn truck.
Now, Parker was in the passenger’s seat beside a man in a gas mask whose offer of a ride had sounded a lot more like a threat.
Watson was adamant they try to jump out, and honestly? Parker didn’t disagree. The police had come out of the restaurant just as the man gave his suspicious offer. Rock and a hard place and all that, Parker had decided that staying away from the police was currently top priority and hoped this stranger was at least someone he could handle if the need arose.
Still. As it stood, this man had made no explicitly threatening moves towards them, and ‘having a spooky vibe’ was no reason to purposefully antagonize him. Parker’s instincts (and the voice in his head) were screaming at him that this was a bad idea, but perhaps it wasn’t too late to turn things around.
“Thanks again for helping me out. I appreciate it.”
“Of course.” The man's gas mask muffled his words, as if Parker were hearing them from far away. “If you’re catching a ride with me, I’d rather you do it where I can see you.”
Internally, Parker groaned, because what the hell did that mean? In this case, it made no difference whether or not he had sight; the gas mask still hid the man’s face from view, and whatever expression he might have been making under it was just as invisible to Watson.
He’d dealt with people like this before. He tried to fall back on old habits: put the burden of civility on them. Make it clear that Parker wasn’t going to be the one to escalate this situation, and anything they happened to do would be on them.
“Name’s Kellin,” said the trucker, unprompted. “Kellin Holeman.”
Kellin didn’t ask for a name in return, which struck Parker as strange. “Good to meet you. Mine’s Parker.” No sense in handing out his full name if he could avoid it.
Parker, what are you doing? came Watson’s agitated hiss. Need I remind you that you’re still, most likely, wanted by the police? If this man were to turn us in, or inform someone of our whereabouts–
Parker cut him off with a (possibly overdone) cough, which, while getting the point across, seemed to draw Kellin’s attention as well.
He’s turned his head to look at you, Parker. I can’t see his face under the gas mask, but I’d imagine he’s giving you a dirty look.
“You sick?”
Somewhere within the words was a mood shift; Parker could sense the undercurrent of threat in Kellin’s tone. “No, no,” he said quickly. “Just running myself ragged, recently.”
“Hmm.” The car turned again. “I get sick some days,” said Kellin gruffly. “In the summer. You ever get that?”
Parker, Watson hissed, almost overlapping, something is wrong with this man. We need to get out of this car.
Trying to listen to both of them at once was like trying to juggle. Parker did not know how to juggle. Instead of trying, he addressed Kellin.
“Winter, usually. Cold season and all that.”
“That’s not what I asked,” said Kellin. “I mean the kind of sick you get when the air’s too hot to see straight and the dust makes your throat close up. I still get sick like that, sometimes, when the breeze comes. It’s like it’s the breeze that makes me sick.”
Kellin seemed to be drumming his fingers against the steering wheel. The car took another turn, sharper than before, nearly throwing Parker against the window.
“Can’t say I have.” The only response was a small huff of breath that could have meant anything. Distorted by the mask, it came out a low, almost growling sound. “It doesn’t sound pleasant.”
“No, it isn’t. You were coughing, is all. It made me wonder.” The silence only lasted a few seconds before Kellin spoke again, just as abruptly. “Do you know how to sing?”
“Sing?” said Parker, caught off guard. “I mean– I’ve never been much good.”
“Radio’s out.”
“Oh.” Parker was no longer sure where this conversation was going, if it even had a direction. “There’s a place over in Arkham, about a block away from Jack’s Bar. Saved my ass a couple of times, when my car broke down. They’d give you a decent price to fix it, if you brought it in, though it’s a bit out of the way.”
Through the gas mask, Kellin gave another sharp exhale. “It doesn’t make much difference. Plenty loud in here without it. Do you mind if I sing?”
“Uh… No, by all means. Go ahead.”
Kellin’s singing was more chant than music. The song wasn’t one Parker had heard before, though from the way Kellin sang, quiet and intense, like each syllable was a knife stabbed into hard-packed ground, he wasn’t sure he would have recognized it anyways.
It set the already-ringing alarm bells in Parker’s mind clanging loud enough to wake the dead.
Evidently, Watson felt the same. Parker. We cannot stay here. You need to get the fuck away from this man.
“Mhm,” agreed Parker in what he hoped was a quiet tone, only to be met with a “shhh” from the driver’s seat.
“If you don’t mind,” said Parker, putting some more force behind the words, not enough to anger (he hoped) but enough to say he meant business. “You could just drop me off at the next stop, if Harper’s Hill is too–”
Kellin cut him off with another shushing sound, grumbling under his breath.
“Why?”
“Why? I mean— it’s a good distance, here to Harper’s Hill, and you’ve already done… more than enough.”
"I thought you needed a lift."
"We do, and you've already—"
"I didn't have to give you a ride, you know," said Kellin sharply. "You were sneakin' around my truck. I didn't have to offer."
"No! No, you didn't, and it was... well, it was a nice surprise."
Kellin took another breath, this one shaking with angry intensity.
"So why do you keep trying to leave? Hah... You're just like all the others."
Parker didn't need his eyes to see red flags when they were there.
Watson was right. They needed to get out of this car.
As casually as possible, Parker rested his arm against the side of the door, inching towards the handle.
Yes, Parker. Next time he slows down, open the door and roll out. We haven’t passed any other cars in a long while. This road looks to be in the middle of nowhere, but if we get a head start–
“Shush,” Parker hissed, trying to disguise it as another cough.
Evidently, he’d forgotten to factor in Kellin’s reaction from earlier; the singing stopped.
“You’re coughing a lot. You sick?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Are you lyin’ to me?” Kellin demanded, more dangerously now.
Parker! Open the door and roll out!
“Shh,” whispered Parker, just as Kellin hissed “Quiet.”
“You asked me–”
“Shh! Not you. ” Kellin was drumming his fingers against the wheel again, so loudly that Parker began to wonder if he was steering at all. “Sorry,” he said with a grunt, “they sing so fucking loud, you know?”
The door, Parker! Now! Before–
“I said quiet! ” Kellin spat, and suddenly there was a new suspicion growing in Parker’s mind and he did not like the implications one bit.
The truck was pulling over; Parker felt the transition from smooth pavement to gravel, the truck jostling as the wheels struggled with the new terrain. A moment later it pulled to a stop, as did Parker’s breathing.
"Parker," said Kellin, in an even tone that was somehow worse. "I need a moment to consider how rude you've been towards me. And if you try to run, I will fucking kill you."
Parker, Watson began, then shifted gears as Kellin pulled a gun from the glove box, thereby eliminating most of their options.
Option one: Run blindly into unknown territory with a guide whose communication issues had gotten them into this situation. Oh, and also hope not to get shot in the process.
Option two: Wait until Kellin was forced to set the gun down—perhaps to open the door, or the unload the truck, if he was planning on doing that— and then make a break for it, somehow managing to take the gun with them in the process.
Option three: Wait it out. See what Kellin wanted.
And hope not to get shot. That was rather high on Parker’s list of priorities.
Unfortunately, options one and two were either stupid or suicide. Parker was desperate, but not that desperate. Not yet, at least.
Parker let his arm slip off the door and back into his lap.
This didn’t escape the entity's notice; he huffed a breath that dripped with contempt.
Coward.
Parker had envisioned dying plenty of times.
A fair chunk of those had been just that morning, considering the very large number of near-death experiences in a very short timeframe. He’d spent half the day high on adrenaline, all other thoughts besides survival chased out by fear.
Even before that, there had been close calls. Once, after Lennox gave up the business but before he scraped Arthur off the floor of that bar, a suspect he’d been tailing had gotten wise. He’d let Parker follow him a few blocks further, ducked into an alleyway, and used a broken beer bottle to give him a slash that had landed him in the hospital for a week and left a nasty scar in his side. The encounter had given Parker the evidence he needed, but meant the majority of the payout was spent on hospital bills.
The wound had gotten worse before it got better. For nearly another week, Parker was wracked with chills and fever, and the skin around the injury turned a sick-looking yellow color. He’d wondered, back then, if that was it. If he would expire, slow and painful, in an office that still felt empty, so disoriented he wouldn’t even realize he was dead.
He hadn’t imagined, in any of those scenarios, that it might be peaceful.
He could still feel the wound, a sizable slash across his abdomen that was surely still leaking red. It pulsed like a second heartbeat, an angry, smouldering flame, but one that seemed less and less a concern as time went on. The rest of him felt cold, as if all the warmth he had was pouring out of his stomach along with his blood.
The boat beneath him was wet. Parker couldn't tell if it was just grimy water shedding off of him or if the blood had soaked his clothing through and, seeing nowhere else to go, dripped down to join the growing pool, no doubt tainting it with red.
Straining his ears, Parker listened for sounds of movement on the dock but could hear only the gentle creaking of the ancient little boat they’d used to make their escape. Kellin had vanished from Watson’s view, and no doubt soon from the realm of the living altogether.
Kellin, on the dock. Parker, in the boat. Dead or dying, the both of them, and for what?
The sheer and utter uselessness of it all was somehow very funny in the silence, and a laugh bubbled through Parker’s throat.
Kellin had gurgled and hissed like a punctured tire when Parker slit his, in a frenzied violent motion he hadn’t known himself capable of.
He still had the knife, he realized. He’d been clutching it so tightly he’d barely even noticed. His right hand sat clenched around the handle as if squeezing it hard enough might mend the gaping hole in his flesh. The left, though he couldn’t feel it past the elbow, was moving slowly, fluttering around Parker’s stomach as if it might be able to press the severed bits back together.
How bad? he tried to ask. What came out was more along the lines of “hhhhhnd.” Why, he wondered, did a wound to the stomach manage to hurt everywhere at once?
It wouldn’t last very long, if he had to guess. The pain was beginning to fade to a numb sort of buzz, still pulsing, as if his heart was threatening to spill out of the hole in his stomach.
“How… How bad?”
Parker... Watson sounded shell-shocked, as if he’d been hit by a truck. Parker could feel his arm shifting as he hovered their hand over Parker’s chest, as if searching for something within that would allow the broken skin to repair itself. It’s… It’s bad, Parker.
“Hrmm. And… the fire?”
The smoke has engulfed almost the entire dock. I can only see the flickering light from deep within as the smoke pours towards the water’s edge.
Was Watson grieving for Parker, he found himself wondering, or for himself, or a strange mix of the two? This was surely a separation of sorts, though it was perhaps the worst possible scenario. Or perhaps it wasn’t; perhaps Parker would find himself in the Dark World alongside the entity, and they’d never be truly free from one another.
He wished, for a moment, he could see the stars. Stars had always been somewhat of a fascination of Parker’s. He’d never made too strong an attempt to study them in any way; it was as if, somehow, that would ruin their intrigue. The stars were bright, beautiful, and distant, watching through impassive eyes as humans rose and fell and ran themselves into the ground. There was something magical about the unknown, something Parker could never quite bring himself to spoil.
“The stars,” he found himself asking.
What?
“Stars. Tell me.” Was the water pooling at the bottom of the boat freezing, or was the cold somehow seeping right out of Parker’s bones? “Describe ‘em.”
The… The stars. The entity was fumbling. Parker wondered if he had experienced something like this in the Dark World, the odd detachment that sometimes came with goodbyes.
The sky above us is pitch dark. There is only the nearest hint of light beyond the horizon; the sun has dipped below it, and only a few rays still poke through, turning the edge of the horizon into a watercolor that is textured by the smoke that still rises from the shore. The stars, Parker. They’re… they’re beautiful. Some are clustered in strange formations like scales on the underside of some massive, majestic creature. Others are just beginning to wink into view, as if emerging from a pool of deep water. They lie scattered across the sky in sweeping, irregular patterns that glow against the dark of night as the last of the day’s light recedes. I… wish you could see them.
The stars above—god, Parker didn’t even know where they were—could not have looked much different from the stars above Arkham. Polluted by the smoke and light from the fire, they might almost have seemed dim by comparison.
Perhaps that was a benefit to not having his sight: it provided room for imagination.
Parker listened to the waves and listened to Watson keep speaking in a tone that was almost reverent.
Eventually he stopped, but only because Parker had allowed his eyes to slip closed, blocking his view of the sky.