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It’s just after dark in the old neighborhood, but the village is unusually active. Masked children take to the streets, going from doorstep to doorstep in hopes of filling their pillowcases with candy. Here and there an adult can be seen tagging along, but mostly they go alone. A car makes its way down a dimly-lit road, stuffed full with a gaggle of children and a dutiful but bored teenager.
Elk got the Bug used for his seventeenth birthday. Unlike most cars in Blackwood, with each passing month it gets shinier and newer under its owner’s loving hands. Truth be told, he would much prefer to be at the Halloween party in the high school gym, but long before it was planned he had promised Ralph that he would chaperone trick-or-treating.
In the back, Darling is weaving a tall tale about the old gray house that sits on top of the hill on the neighborhood’s outskirts. The house is the subject of legend year-round among the children of Blackwood, but the shades of the story tint one way or another depending on the season and local news. It’s Halloween, so today the house is haunted and home to a monster. Splint sits beside Darling, arms crossed, nodding along to her every word.
Ralph has a window seat, and is staring blandly into the darkness, apparently not listening to Darling’s tale. She is commanding the attention of Splint and Sheep. Sheep sits in the passengers’ seat beside Elk. Pudgy and sour-faced, she is dressed up (to her own dismay) as Little Bo Peep, bonnet and shepherd’s cane and all. Sheep is the runt of this tiny pack, brunt of the jokes and oft left out. She is bad at saying no and doesn’t have a mean bone in her body, which doesn’t bode well for her in the slightest. He feels sorry for her, but Elk learned a long time ago – a lifetime ago – not to meddle in the affairs of youngsters, even when he’s barely more than a youngster himself. It never ends well.
“Oh! Right here!” Splint yells. In the headlights, standing on the street corner, are Sheriff and Raptor. Sheriff is dressed up as Michael Myers and Raptor wiggles his long sharp Freddy Kruger claws. Darling, Splint and Ralph hop out of the car as soon as Elk shifts it into park. Sheep hesitates.
“Go on, you’ll have fun. Maybe you can look out for some lemon drops, they’re my favorite.”
Sheep smiles up at Elk sweetly, a rare expression on her crabby little face. He imagines if they were closer in age they might have been good friends.
“Cut it out with the net casting!” Shouts Ralph as he taps on Sheep’s window. Ralph is perpetually annoyed with him these days – or maybe always. He tells him he casts a net way too wide, that he can’t possibly use everything he catches in it, let alone treat it right. Elk doesn’t understand, but Ralph says it with such authority he can’t help but worry that it’s true.
Either way, whatever “net” he was casting has been intercepted by Ralph, and Sheep makes a distressed little squeak before hopping out of the car. She turns around and looks at Elk in earnest, opening her mouth to say something, but Ralph slams the door and takes her hand, tugging her off before she can pass on the message.
Elk sighs and sinks back into the driver’s seat. He’s supposed to go following them along in the car, creeping behind at a snail’s pace, but this neighborhood is safe, old stories about the gray house be damned. Anyway, for all his surly disposition, Ralph is perfectly responsible. More than Elk will ever be.
–--
They’re not even to the first house yet and Sheep is already having a hard time keeping up. The shoes for her costume – a perfect match – are a size too small, and her plump little feet are beginning to swell. She doesn’t dare complain. She’ll never hear the end of it, especially from mean-natured Darling with a tongue so sharp it could slice a falling sheet of paper.
Darling and Splint seem to have a game going between the two of them, a girlfriend-boyfriend thing. The more they carry on, the clearer it is that neither of them have any idea what they are doing. Sheep doesn’t understand, either, and she’s not about to go around pretending like she does.
Ralph doesn’t seem to notice this new development, let alone care. That’s why it’s a little bit comforting for Sheep when Sheriff and Raptor start groaning, rolling their eyes and making puking noises. They surreptitiously high five each other, throwing elbows, like their inside jokes are the world’s best kept secrets.
Sheep likes the two of them, even though their trickster bad-boy images have no room for someone like her. Darling can’t stand her so by default neither can Splint, and Ralph doesn’t seem to like anyone. She gets along with Homer okay, but his mother won’t let him go out on Halloween on account of how it “celebrates Satanic imagery”.
So she’s left tagging along by herself in the back, too-tight shoes in her silly costume, toddling along after a pair of serial killers, an American 1920’s dancer girl, a mummy, and Ralph, who is simply wearing all black. When asked what his costume is, he just smiles and holds up his 3-fingered hand.
“Spooky, right?”
Something about Ralph behaving in a good-natured way is more spooky than missing appendages or a teen scream massacre.
“And then the wolf-spider thing catches you in his net and wraps you up so you can’t even breathe, and then the frog-vampire thing bites a hole in you and slurps out your blood!” Darling cries in delight, still going on about the inhabitants of the old gray house.
“Frogs don’t have teeth, genius,” Raptor scoffs, annoyed.
“That’s why it’s a vampire frog. Aren’t you listening?” Splint feigns righteous indignation in defense of his beloved.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ralph offers a rare interjection, “Everyone knows it’s a toad.”
Silence ensues. Black Ralph has spoken, and although the status of the thing in the house as a toad rather than a frog does nothing to explain the lack of teeth or blood-sucking qualities Darling had ascribed to it, no one thinks to argue.
They trick-or-treat at the first three houses without incident. The driveways here are long and winding and uphill, but most of the neighborhood folks are generous with their treats. All of them except long-faced Laurus in the house across the street, who only gives out raisins and has jazz piano blaring from a gramophone at all hours of the night. They skip him.
It’s the driveway of the fourth house that gives them pause. The gray house, the very one they’ve been talking about. It’s custom for trick-or-treaters to cut their losses and skip this one. Sheep had assumed that would be the case with their little group tonight. She should have known better.
“So,” Darling drawls, hands on her hips as they look up the dirt driveway. “Who’s going first?”
Splint, previously all brawn and bravery for his girl, suddenly has a cough and needs a moment to catch his breath. Raptor and Sheriff exchange glances. Ralph pinches the bridge of his nose.
“According to your stories, the best thing that can come out of this is a bag full of rat eyeballs instead of candy. Is that really worth the trek?”
“Obviously this isn’t about candy,” Darling says, as though overwhelmed by Ralph’s small-mindedness. “It’s Halloween! It’s about bravery in the face of fear! Showing your true colors!”
“Ha? Then why don’t you go first. Show us your true colors.”
“I never said I was brave,” Darling says, examining her nails. “Anyway, I’m a lady. Gentlemen should always take the lead.”
“Good thing there aren’t any gentlemen here!” Cries Sheriff, and Raptor hoots and cackles along with him, two guffawing fun-sized mass murderers. Sheep can almost feel the way the insides of their masks must be fogging up, hot and swampy from their breath and spittle as they laugh. She grimaces.
“What about you?” Darling asks, her dagger-like black eyes honed in on Sheep. “You’re always saying girls can do just as much as boys. None of these guys are up for the challenge. Why not walk the walk for a change?”
Sheep clutches her ribbon-clad cane to her chest and glances up the dark driveway. There are absolutely no lights, not even through the windows of the old house. Odds are, nobody even lives there anymore.
“I-it just seems silly.”
“Well, if it’s so silly, why not prove that you’re not a wuss and go first? Come on.”
And just like that, Sheep finds herself leading the group up the path to the old gray house. Strangely, Darling’s tales and Raptor and Sheriff’s laughter have all run dry. The group proceeds in silence. The only one who isn’t acting any different is Black Ralph, bringing up the rear with his hands in his pockets.
Ten meters up and the darkness is palpable. The driveway doubles over on itself a few times to account for the steep incline of the hill, and most of the way is shaded heavily by thick, overgrown trees. Sheep can barely see her own hand in front of her face. She creeps forward at a snail’s pace, going so slow that Sheriff’s potbelly bumps her a few times.
“Speed up, will ya?” he hisses, but is mysteriously mute when Sheep haughtily offers to let him lead instead.
They go around another bend of the driveway, about halfway up, and the road fans out into a broad loop, likely made to give larger vehicles enough space to make the next sharp turn. Sheep is rounding the turn when she hears a rustle in the bushes, then catches sight of a ghostly white face. She shrieks, jumping back, stepping on Sheriff’s toe and clocking Raptor with her cane in the process. They both shout in pain, which causes Darling to scream in terror, Splint to curse loudly, and Ralph to withdraw his hands from his pockets and stand poised as if he would be able to intercept whatever ghastly being is coming his way.
Instead of a ghost, though, what the hear is a shrill “Yarr!” before Whitebelly bursts out of the bushes, face painted to look like a skull with a black eyepatch over one eye, all beneath in a 3-pointed pirate hat.
“Avast! What be ye landlubbers doing in me pirate domain!?” He cries. Then he pauses and blinks.
“Sheriff!” he squeaks, dropping the rugged pirate affect. He trots over to Mr. Myers himself and envelops him in a big hug. Sheriff, still hopping on one foot, manages to put an arm around his shoulders.
“Hey, Pardner. What are you doing out here?”
Whitebelly hops back, all cute and sorry under his pirate makeup. He is missing both of his front teeth.
“I went trick-or-treating with Fly but a bunch of other kids were coming down the path. She got scared and ran up here and hid in the bushes and won’t come out.” He points back to the place he came from.
“I almost convinced her when we heard you guys come stomping through.”
“Sorry,” says Splint, of all people, looking contrite. The rest of them take a moment to feel dutifully embarrassed that shy little Fly had gone bolting up this driveway alone without a second thought while all of them fought over who would go first.
“Anyway, she won’t come out while all of you are here. Why are you here, anyway? This house doesn’t give candy. Nobody even lives here.”
“Do you know that for sure?!” Demanded Darling, pushing Sheriff and Splint aside. “Did you knock!?”
“Well, no, but...”
“Then don’t go spreading misinformation.” She huffs and folds her arms. “We’re testing our bravery.”
“Well, okay,” Whitebelly says good-naturedly. He glances back into the bushes again. “How about you get a move on so me and Fly can get back to our candy? Catch you around, Sheriff.”
Sheep, still rattled from being startled, takes a moment to compose herself, brandishes her cane dutifully, and proceeds.
It’s impossible, but it seems like as they get closer to the house, the forest grows even darker. Impossible, because it can’t get any darker than pitch black. More like the quality of the darkness changes, becomes thick and viscous and foreboding. Sheep glances over her shoulder and cannot see anyone behind her, but she can hear the sounds of their footsteps. It’s only a little bit reassuring.
They round two more sharp corners the same way, before the trees thin out. There are no stars or moon visible now; the cloud cover has blotted them out completely, keeping them shrouded in inky blackness. Sheep can barely make out the silhouette of the old gray house. She stops and squeezes her eyes shut, waiting for the feeling of Sheriff bumping into her again.
It doesn’t come.
Sheep turns around and squints into the darkness. She really can’t make out a thing. She walks forward a few steps, hands outstretched, looking for any of her friends.
“Guys?” she calls.
Nothing. Sheep grips her cane, white-knuckled, and continues walking forward with the intention of retracing her steps, when a blood-curdling scream erupts maybe ten meters in front of her. She cries out and whirls around, running blindly away from the sound. She doesn’t stop until her shins meet something wooden and solid and she falls, face-first, onto the front steps of the house.
She sits up and whimpers, rubbing at her shin. It’s going to bruise. Her feet feel like they are on fire from her too-small shoes, and she is certain she can feel blisters forming. She strains her eyes and ears as she looks out into the darkness, but she can’t see or hear anything. She hugs her knees and feels her heart pound against her legs.
Some time passes, maybe a minute, maybe an hour. Sheep tries to stand up, but the blisters are so painful she can’t. Gingerly, she slips out of her shoes and winces at the damp feeling on parts of her socks where some of the blisters have already ruptured. She is reaching down to remove her socks when she hears the creak of a door opening behind her.
Sheep whimpers and hugs her legs tightly, curling up to be as small as she can. She knows she should run away, try to hide somewhere, but she can’t bring herself to move. She tries to hold her breath, to be as quiet as possible, but it’s hard to be quiet when your heart is beating so fast.
She feels the step beside her shift with the weight of someone else on it, then feels someone ease down and have a seat beside her.
“What’s all this? What are you doing here?”
The voice is neither monstrous nor mean, just a little low and raspy. Sheep peeks between her fingers and sees a person with long black hair covering half of their face, a single dark eye peering at her curiously.
“I-I’m sorry, I d-didn’t know anyone lived h-here, and I--”
“There there,” says the person, and just like that, Sheep is being scooped up, “You hurt your feet.”
Sheep doesn’t protest. She realizes as she is carried into the house that although she had been able to see this person’s face, her vision is once again shrouded in darkness.
“How come I can only see sometimes?” Sheep asks, too confused to keep quiet.
“Because this is Blind’s house, and the rules belong to him here. I thought everyone knew to stay away.”
“No one knows anything like that,” Sheep mumbles. Inexplicably, she holds onto this person who is carrying her. She feels safe.
They pass two dark rooms in the house and enter one in the back. There is a fire burning, the only light source in the whole room. Sheep dares to take stock of her surroundings – everything looks worn, but not decrepit. The far peripheries of the room are invisible to her, cloaked in shadows that deceive the eye and conceal everything. Once, for a brief panicked second, she swore she saw a wolf crouching beneath the window, but the longer she looks the less sure she was that anything was there at all.
Right in front of the fireplace, in the brightest part of the room, she is gently deposited on a small sofa. The person kneels down in front of her and begins to rummage around somewhere out of sight, then returns with a small first aid kit.
“Let me clean up your feet.”
Sheep lets her small, chubby feet dangle off the edge of the sofa. Her legs are much too short to reach the floor. As the person peels off her socks and tends to her blisters, Sheep studies them openly. There isn’t much to see. They’re thin and their hair is long and stringy and black and covers up so much of their face it’s hard to distinguish much about their features – including whether they are a boy or a girl. Their voice and dark clothing tell nothing.
“I’m Sheep,” she offers by way of introduction.
“I’m Rat,” says the person, the name giving Sheep no more information about their gender.
“If you are Rat, then what are you doing in Blind’s house?”
“He’s an old friend,” says Rat. “I’m visiting.”
“Then,” Sheep begins, “This Blind, is he here too? Is he the spider and the wolf, or the toad and the vampire!?”
Rat looks up at her, and Sheep covers her mouth, feeling embarrassed. She hadn’t meant to blurt all of that out. The look Rat is giving her isn’t an angry one, but it’s not kind either. Sheep is worried she is going to be in trouble, but after a long pause, Rat turns their attention back to her feet.
“I forget that time moves differently down there. Toad-vampire is one way to put it, I guess. That’s not Blind, though. That’s me.”
“You don’t look like a toad at all.”
“Not right now, maybe.” Rat finishes bandaging up both of Sheep’s feet.
“Your socks are all dirty, I’m not putting them back on you. So answer my question. What are you doing here?”
“I was trick-or-treating with my friends, and they dared me to lead the way up here because of some ghost stories. I didn’t think anyone lived here at all, honest!”
“Sure, sure. I’m not mad. Blind won’t be either. It’s Halloween?”
Sheep nods.
“Right, the costume. I should have guessed.” Rat stands up and sighs, brushing off their knees. “Well. I don’t have any candy, and neither does Blind. We don’t really eat things like that.”
Sheep remembers the part of Darling’s story about the rat eyeballs. Her eyes widen.
“Eyeballs,” she whispers, and Rat gives her another strange look.
“You’ll have to stay for a little bit until time fixes itself again. We’re just a little off right now. Then you can get back to your friends and be on your way, no great loss.”
Sheep doesn’t have time to ask Rat exactly what that means, because Rat disappears into a pitch-black doorway. It’s not clear how they manage to navigate in the darkness like that. Maybe they are just familiar enough with the place.
That’s what Sheep thinks to herself while she sinks back into the couch, shifting her view just enough to catch the sight of something dangling near her head. She lets out a squeak and jerks away, only to realize another person is standing silently right beside her.
She screams, and the thing dangling near her drops onto her lap as the person sticks their fingers into their ears and grimaces.
Rat appears in the room again in moments, demanding to know what’s wrong. They calm down when they see the person plugging their ears beside Sheep.
“I told you,” they say to the other one, “You can’t just sneak up on people like that. It scares them.”
Sheep has stopped screaming enough that the other one deigns to unplug their ears. “Sorry. I thought I was being obvious.”
This one is definitely a boy, judging by the low voice. He lowers his hands to the couch, feeling around for something. His hand grazes Sheep’s leg and she yelps.
“Sorry,” he grumbles again. “I dropped the thing...”
“There,” Rat says, pointing at what fell on Sheep’s lap. She picks it up. It’s a little spherical charm on a soft leather strap.
“Since we don’t have any candy, you can have that instead,” says the one apparently called Blind. The name and the groping around hands suddenly fall into place, along with the darkened windows of the house. Sheep blinks and looks up at his face. Hair falls in front of it, even more than Rat’s, but behind the dark strands she can see two blank white eyes.
Rat pats her on the head, as though they read her thoughts. Embarrassed at being caught, Sheep tears her eyes away from Blind’s face, only to notice a silver band hanging from a chain around Blind’s neck. She recognizes a matching one on Rat’s finger. Her eyes widen.
“Are you married?” She asks.
“No,” both of them say at the same time.
“It’s a long engagement,” Rat smoothly interjects, perhaps to prevent Sheep from asking more questions. “What do you think of the charm? Blind always gives thoughtful gifts.”
Sheep peers back at the sphere. It’s pretty, hinting at iridescent when it catches the light.
“It’s nice,” she says. “Thank you. I’m sorry for disturbing your night.”
“You didn’t disturb anything,” says Blind, dropping down onto the floor in front of the couch. Rat sits down beside Sheep, legs bumping against Blind’s shoulder. Sheep lets herself take stock of the two of them now that she feels a little safer. Pale-skinned and dark-haired, they could almost be twins, but it was more in how they presented themselves and less in how they actually looked. Blind’s fingernails are dirty and his neck is covered in scratches and bite marks. Rat’s skin is suspiciously absent of any of this. Sheep remembers what Rat said – that they were the vampiric one.
She catches herself looking at Rat’s mouth, to see if she can catch a glimpse of fangs. As soon as Rat notices they huff and run their fingers through their hair, pulling it to more securely hide their face.
“How long have you been up here?” Sheep asks, brimming with curiosity.
“A long time,” Rat says, and places their hand gently atop her head. “No more questions, but you could ask for a story.”
“Or a song,” suggests Blind, but Rat tenses.
“It’s not a night for singing. The moon isn’t out.”
“A story, then,” Blind says amiably.
“A story...” Sheep thinks hard. “Tell me about a brave girl?”
Rat smiles in a way that looks wistful and a little bit sad. Blind is the one who starts talking.
He tells a story about a lonely girl trapped in a basilisk den. She was very afraid but also very angry and very clever. She wore dozens of mirrors around her neck so that she could always see without looking, and she refused to be turned to stone by their stares because it would be the same as giving up, and she had already been through too much to do that. The girl had to go hunt for supplies for her village, and was the bravest and best at it, so everyone was always relying on her. But she didn’t stumble even once, and was the most reliable hunter the village ever had, so when they finally built paradise, she got her pick of jobs. But the girl was so humble, all she wanted to do was help the little ones find their way, so she kept right on working hard forever, but she was happy doing it, and never had to go into the basilisk den again.
Sheep barely has time to digest the story before Rat picks up. They tell a story about a girl who worked a difficult job full of cruel people. But no matter how cruel the others were, the girl stayed kind and patient and polite, and never resorted to name calling or being cruel herself. And at the end of a long, hard life, the girl didn’t get any reward – she died, was reborn, and started the cycle all over again. But the girl wasn’t resentful at all. She just kept on working and refusing to be cruel.
Rat trails off and stays silent for long enough that Sheep thinks the story is done, and is astonished at how hopelessly sad she feels.
“But then,” Rat says, “Maybe not the next time, or even the time after that, but eventually, the girl found some of the answers she didn’t even realize she was looking for. And then she found her way to paradise, too. And she made friends for the first time, and realized she belonged somewhere.”
“I like the first girl better,” Sheep admits. “She sounds way braver.”
“Maybe it sounds like that, but you’re wrong. Because without people like the second girl, the first girl would have lost her way a long time ago. She might not have even made it out of the basilisk den at all.”
Sheep is still skeptical, but Rat sounds so sure of themself it’s difficult to argue.
Blind suggests coffee, and Rat scolds him and reminds him that Sheep is too young for coffee. In apology, he offers hot chocolate instead. Rat is the one who makes it, and the three of them each have a mug. It is nothing special, just regular old instant hot chocolate from a packet mixed with water, but it’s warm and tastes good all the same.
After Sheep finishes her drink, she asks Rat to tie the charm around her wrist and help her out of the bonnet, since the string is digging into her chin. Rat brushes her hair and gives Sheep a spare shirt to change into – a worn, soft flannel button down that is so big on Sheep that it drags on the floor. Rat laughs and helps her roll up the sleeves, and tells Blind all about it, so Blind laughs too.
Rat brings Sheep a pillow and blanket and tucks her in on the couch, then sits down on the floor next to Blind. The last thing Sheep remembers is watching the two of them, bare feet stretched out towards the flame, and the very real impression that they were somehow communicating with one another without talking, purely for the sake of not keeping her awake.
–--
The clock reads a quarter past two when Blind rises from his spot on the floor. With unclouded eyes, he lets himself take in the sleeping form of their visitor for the very first time. She does look the way he did when he was younger, all but the light brown curls and the chubby face. Elk’s shirts, as it turns out, can drown any little soul they please in their tender warmth. It’s ridiculous, how long he can linger in an object. Blind swears he can still smell his brand of soap and cigarettes.
In reality, those traces are long gone, but the memory never fades.
“She’s one of yours,” Blind murmurs, “Do you remember?”
“Of course I do. Maybe not the details, but I can feel it.” Rat strokes the sleeping girl’s hair. It’s rare to see their expression so soft. Blind selfishly takes it in with working eyes.
“Anyway, take her back. It’s easier for me to say my goodbyes here.”
Blind nods. Carefully, he scoops the sleeping girl up into his arms, letting her head rest on his shoulder. He takes a step towards the door, then pauses.
“You could bring her over, you know. If you wanted to.”
“That’s not my place.” Rat says. “Any more than it would have been yours.”
Blind nods once, like that was what he was hoping to hear.
–--
Sheep wakes up with a start at the foot of the old gray house driveway. Beside her is her costume, neatly folded up, with her too-small shoes placed on top. She is wearing a worn flannel shirt so large the hem of it almost drags on the ground when she walks.
She reaches down to gather up her clothes, and as she does, notices the thin leather strap tied around her wrist with a little spherical charm dangling from the end. She blinks, peering back up the driveway. She knows she was given all of these things as gifts, and that she was safe, but she can’t remember anything else.
Further up the drive, she hears the familiar shouts of her friends rapidly approaching. Raptor appears first, followed closely by Splint, then Darling, then Sheriff and Ralph. All of them stop short when they see her.
“Sheep!” shouts Sheriff, “Thank goodness! We thought you were a goner.”
“Wait!” Darling cries, grabbing Sheriff’s shirt before he can get much closer. “Think for a second. There’s no way she could have gotten down here before us. And look, her clothes- This isn’t Sheep at all. It’s a changeling!”
Splint, Raptor, Darling and Sheriff erupt into discourse. As usual, only Ralph is quiet. He is looking at Sheep carefully, taking stock of the situation. Sheep hugs her clothes more tightly to her chest. Her cane is missing. She must have left it where she dropped it, by the steps to the house.
“Well?” Ralph asks, and everyone falls silent, “What do you have to say for yourself? How did you get down here so fast?”
“Someone carried me,” says Sheep, carefully. “Time moves differently up there.”
The four of them exchange bewildered glances, but Ralph has a strangely knowing look in his eye.
“Well, Darling, you wanted us to test our bravery, and we did. Let’s hit the rest of the block before it gets much later. Sheriff, carry Sheep on your back. Her feet are hurt.”
Everyone’s eyes are drawn to Sheep’s feet, carefully wrapped in bandages. The questions all hang in thin air. Who? How? When?
Ralph clears his throat, and Sheriff takes a knee in front of Sheep, allowing her to climb on.
–--
Elk flips through every station in range five times before pushing the “off” switch in defeat. He slouches low in the driver’s seat, propping his sneaker-clad feet first on the steering wheel, then out the window, then back on the floor again.
He wishes he had brought along a book to read, or even some homework. As it is, he has nothing to do but wait.
That’s what he’s thinking when he glances in the rear view mirror and sees a person standing a few meters back, illuminated red by the taillights.
Elk sits up with a jolt, fumbling for the “lock” button on the car door. When he looks back up, the mirror is empty. Slowly, heart racing, he turns his gaze to the driver’s side window.
The person is standing there, calm and unmoving. Long black hair, white skin, an oversized sweater that looks oddly familiar. Elk squints up at the face, trying to see if it’s someone he knows, someone from the school or the neighborhood playing a prank. The face isn’t completely strange to him, but he can’t place it no matter how he tries.
Against his best judgment, Elk cranks down the window.
Without the glass between them, Elk can get a better look, and realizes this person can’t see. He feels ashamed for being afraid and scolds himself inwardly. The man is not too old, but certainly older than him, and barefoot.
“Can I help you? Are you lost?”
“No,” says the man. “Just wanted to get a look at you. Have a good night.”
He crosses the street then, heading towards a patch of trees. Elk watches him go, and as he does, he can’t shake the sense that he’s losing something important, that it’s slipping right between his fingers. The feeling comes to a head as the man steps into the woods. Elk gets out of the car.
“Wait!” He calls, but the man doesn’t stop. He vanishes into the brush. Elk races after him, but by the time he reaches the other side of the road, all trace of him is gone.
He stands there for a minute, gazing forlornly into the dark trees, trying to understand what it was he just missed.
He turns to head back to the car just in time to see the five shapes strolling down the sidewalk, one of them significantly taller than the rest. That one turns out to be Sheep astride Sheriff.
None of that seems especially out of place until he notices that Sheep is barefoot and wearing a grown man’s shirt. None of them have an explanation for this, not even little Sheep herself, and Elk is so beside himself he nearly gives them a scolding.
“Not so fast,” says Ralph, “You were supposed to be watching us. If we get in trouble so do you.”
“Touche,” he says, “But this is serious. Where the hell did you all go that no one saw Sheep change clothes!?”
Sheep, of all people, can’t seem to stop smiling. It’s so out of character that Elk worries she’s been drugged, but he asks her questions every which way and for all he can tell she’s sound of mind. Just… Happier.
Before dropping all of them off, they pull over at a gas station so Sheep can change back into her costume, sans shoes, so that no one further questions the happenings of that night. If anyone asks, Sheep solemnly swears that Elk helped bandage her feet.
They pull up to Sheep’s house, only Ralph left in the back seat, and Sheep smiles up sweetly at Ralph, a gleam of something in her eye. She leans over and whispers in his ear.
Elk stares at her, dumbfounded, as she hops out of the car, toting her candy bag behind her and rushing up to the front door. He doesn’t pull away until he can see she is safely back inside.
“What’d she say?” Ralph asks as they drive back home.
“Nothing,” Elk mutters. The rest of the ride is in silence.
---
The flannel shirt that Sheep had been wearing was so thoroughly worn and soft that Elk couldn’t bring himself to throw it out. It was big on him, but he hoped as he grew more and more into a good man, he could build up the strength to fill it out. He ran it through the wash once he got home and brought it to his closet. As he was placing it on the hanger, something caught his eye.
On the tag, in black marker and handwriting identical to the rest of his shirts, someone had written the letter “E”.
---
When he returns to the house, Blind feels a weight settle into his limbs that he hasn’t experienced in a very long time. He walks through the halls like he’s dragging his arms and feet behind him, navigating the doorways by memory alone until he makes his way to the back room. There, he senses more than sees Rat curled up on the couch, underneath the blanket and head on the pillow where the little girl had slept.
He knows the feeling well enough to wrap himself in ill-fitting shirts day in and day out, even after so much time has passed. He makes his way over, and Rat curls up their legs to make room for him. He takes their feet in his lap once he sits.
He doesn’t have words of reassurance to offer them. This sort of emptiness lingers and lasts, and nothing can banish it. He supposes this is what people are talking about when they say they miss their parents. If so, it’s an even newer experience for Rat.
Rat turns their head towards him, one eye peering out from their curtain of hair. Wordlessly, they hold out their arms. Blind goes to them willingly, expecting that Rat will want to bite, but instead they hug him tightly and bury their face into his hair. It’s just a strange night, he supposes.
They squirm around until they are laying on their sides, facing each other. They’re both small enough that there’s plenty of room for the two of them on the couch. Rat smells like petrichor. It reminds him of warm rain, the kind with fat droplets that plunk down from the sky and disrupt the surface of still water. That’s a scene they watched together, from the mouth of the burrow, what feels like decades ago. They always welcomed the rain. It banished the mosquitoes and made the frogs sing.
“Maybe we’ve been stagnant for too long,” Rat murmurs, and Blind swears he can hear rainfall on the roof. It might just be wishful thinking, though.
“You can go whenever you want,” he reminds them.
“Yes, I know that,” they say, but they don’t make a move.
A lifetime ago, Rat stole a bus and taught the most unpleasant person Blind had ever met how to drive it. They supplied him with a fake license and all, and he’d used it to abscond from the only world he’d ever known, dozens of others in tow. Rat had not gone with them, but instead had taken a different kind of bus, volunteered for another lifetime of running around, all because Blind had mentioned it.
And when the work was done, Rat had come padding quietly up to the door, not terribly changed from the life they first met in. A little less morose, hair a little bit longer, nails unpainted. Still inclined to show off the tattoo but less inclined to show the face. No more mirrors. No more visits from father.
Blind hadn’t been planning to stay home for long. He split his time between so many places as it was. But he hadn’t expected Rat to come back to him. He thought they would cross paths years down the line, maybe nod knowingly or reminisce for a night. Maybe he’d visit the burrow for a bloodletting. But not this.
Instead, he and Rat did not so much make a routine together as fall into one side-by-side. He hadn’t left the house since that night when Rat appeared at the door.
They were the same height, with Rat maybe a centimeter or two taller. The platform boots had given them an edge before, but Rat cast them aside once they crossed the threshold and went barefoot. Neither needy nor demanding, expecting only equality and time alone, which Blind could easily give since he wanted the same.
He thinks of Sphinx for the first time in a long time, princely in his demands while playing the role of the pauper. He’d had his very own partner hand-selected just for him and they still managed to argue. He and Rat just found each other like this.
Blind feels Rat smooth the crease between his eyebrows with their thumb. They don’t say things like, you’re thinking too much, or penny for your thoughts. They rarely say much of anything.
The rain picks up on the roof. It’s real now, whether he willed it to be or not. Perhaps Rat extended some of their influence. They do it more and more lately, though they don’t seem to realize.
Rat begins to speak, not sing, but with a cadence that’s almost lyrical.
“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,” they say.
“But I have promises to keep,” Blind murmurs.
“And miles to go before I sleep,” says Rat.
“And miles to go before I sleep,” echoes Blind.