Chapter Text
“Of course, while I’m in the wood,
if I decide never to come back,
well then, that will be that.”
- Natalie Nesbit, Tuck Everlasting
The kettle has not even begun to screech yet when Richie comes blundering down the stairs two at a time, skidding into the kitchen with a flurry of wide-eyed excitement that, Stan thinks, is far too much for half seven in the morning.
Stanley Uris takes a deep breath and continues staring out the window of the cabin, electing to ignore his friend for the time being. That time, to be exact, is a total of twelve two seconds. While Richie catches his breath, Stan continues to admire the red-feathered Northern Cardinal hopping from branch to branch in the young sycamore tree, which grows outside their window. Sunlight streams down in ribbons on the grassy floor of the forest outside, a natural spotlight shining on various plants – carnivorous or otherwise, and natural and not entirely natural – that Stan has dedicated quite a decent amount of time and effort into ensuring they bloom. This morning, nurtured by the sparkling sun rays, they are thriving.
A young blossom sways left to right on its own accord and shakes its peaky green leaves at Stan as if to say, what now?
Richie straightens his shirt – the day clothes he had been wearing from the night before, which tells Stan that he is doing that Not Going To Sleep thing again – and shifts his weight. He scoops another teaspoon of sugar into his mug and steadies himself.
Richie intakes a breath and begins, “Stan –”
The kettle has begun to screech.
“Richie,” Stan says, removing it from the stove before the high whistle becomes too much, and follows with the question, “Do you know what time it is?”
“Uh,” Richie mutters, and when Stan takes a good look at him, he is scratching his scalp, tufts of unbrushed dark hair fluffing upwards. His glasses perch lower on the bridge of his nose than he would normally wear them, and Stan can easily see the red-rim blush of a sleepless night. “Right, yeah. Good morning.”
Stan drops a tea bag into his mug and pours the water, the steam rising upward and curling his hair. “Can you really say that if you’ve been up all night?”
“I haven’t –” Richie laughs, a sheepish titter, “I haven’t been – okay, fine, yeah, I have. But for good reason!”
Stan opens the cabinet door to hide his eye roll and pulls out the box of mixed flavour oatmeal. “Maple or superfruit?”
“I’m not hungry,” Richie says.
“Superfruit it is,” Stan says, dropping two packets on the counter. Richie continues to complain at his elbow.
Stan is by no means a morning person, and three years behind the Wall has done nothing to change this. If anything, it’s worse.
(In the mornings, he wakes to the sound of birds singing lullabies and frogs that harmonize with the grasshoppers, who provide backup vocals to the birds and aid with melody. Warm sun stained sheets tangle around his ankles, and even with the high ring of the alarm clock bouncing around the table at his bedside, Stan finds it incredibly difficult to drag himself out of bed.
This morning has been an exception for a particularly exceptional reason, of which he will explain in three, two …)
“Richie! I don’t want to hear it!” Stan snaps when Richie doesn’t relent, padding around at his ankles like an insistent pup. He turns on him with a spoon in hand, cooked oats clinging to the lip, and waves it at his friend threateningly. “You haven’t been able to sleep. Guess what? Me neither. Ask me why?”
“Um.” Richie chews his lip in contemplation, eyes narrowing on the spoon before flitting back up to Stan’s face, which wouldn’t be much more pleasant. “My dear Stanley,” he begins, waveringly, “what could it be that possibly kept you from your beauty sleep? Which you totally don’t need, by the –”
“What kept me up,” Stan cuts him off, “Was your pacing around you room all night, books being dropped on the floor, and oh!” Stan swings the spoon at Richie’s fingers, barely missing his knuckles, “You tap-tap-tapping away at the fuckin typewriter all night, Richie! I’m tired of this.”
(To be fair, this does tend to happen once or twice a month, so maybe it isn’t particularly exceptional.)
Richie’s face screws up, and he says, “I’m sorry.”
Stan, with a sigh, turns back to cooking their breakfast, and quips, “You’re not sorry.”
“No, I’m not,” Richie agrees. Stan groans at the pot of oats. “Not not sorry that I kept you up, Stan – no really – but listen to me. Are you listening? I’m going to assume you are. I found something!”
It’s far too early, and Richie is at that point of sleeplessness where his sentences take longer than a second to figure out, so Stan says, “Tell me after we’ve eaten,” and takes their bowls into the dining room without another word.
-
At the approximate hour of seventeen-past-four in the morning, and somewhere around the time when it seemed as if the ink itself was lifting off the pages of the books to whisper in his ears, Richie Tozier hit his very first breakthrough.
It isn’t exactly Richie’s fault they wandered into this world and got stuck, and Stan would never blame him for it, but Richie acknowledges that he is somewhat, even a smidge, at fault for their predicament. This is why for the last three years – a day short of exact – Richie has searched through every book, memoir, and even a couple grimoires he’d managed to get his hands on.
(He returned them after a group of furious toads knocked on their door and demanded it back, Stan giving him That Look).
So far, nothing he’s read has been any use in figuring out a way over or through the Wall that surrounds the land, and seems to stretch on for infinity lengthways. Not to mention the highways covered in countless thorns and poisonous flora that could strike you paralysed with the slightest touch within seconds, and kill you in minutes.
Three years and nothing.
Until now.
-
Richie waits patiently until Stan has finished his bowl of oatmeal as promised – which he does agonisingly slow, savouring every berry and every god damn piece of oat – before pouncing. Stan levels him with an irritated glare, as if his insistent patience holds the same amount of spite as the speed in which Stan consumed the oatmeal, sighs, and says, “Fine. Go ahead.”
Richie slams the book on the light oak table between them hard enough that the spoons clatter in their bowls, and Stan swears.
With a huff, Richie says, “I found something.”
“No shit?”
“Yes shit.”
Richie grins broadly and flips open the book – golden and worn, but not quite as old as half of the other books Richie has stacked in his bedroom like he’s building a tiny labyrinth. It lands with another clang on the table to a page Richie has marked. Dust hangs in the air above it, glittering in the morning sunlight, reminding Stan of fireflies hovering above a grassy bank. Stan tilts his head in an attempt to make out the words before Richie spins in to face him properly.
Stan has become used to Richie’s research tactics, ranging from scouring books and records (the most current) to marching into inns and taverns and demanding information off whatever poor patron, andromorphic or vegetable-face alike, catches his eye first (previously). Whatever phase Richie is in now or whatever is coming next, Stan is just glad he’s moved past sitting by the river bank and interrogating frogs. They simply stared at him with humour and a smidge of pity, and sang lullabies at him until he passed out.
“Okay,” Richie begins, “Read from here … to here.”
Richie pushes the book closer to Stan until it touches his chest.
Stan takes one proper look at the book and closes his eyes with a sigh. “Richie.”
“Just read it,” he insists.
Stan opens his eyes, already feeling a headache coming on. “Richie, this is a poetry book.”
“That’s what I thought at first!” he says, “but then I started looking deeper into it, and – just read? Please. If you hate it, I promise I’ll find you some, I don’t fuckin’ know, the raven dude or road less travelled?”
Richie cracks a smile, but despite the humour, Stan can see the desperation in his friend’s eyes, and decides to throw him a bone.
The passage reads:
O Traveller, fear not the road ahead but the road past
For the road past is a road that will not last
While in the road ahead you may be mislead
By false whispers , and tales to beware
Seek the Historian, for he will know
A way through the veils, and past the scales
So you, O Traveller, may walk the road of ere
Stan reads the poem two, three more times before his eyes glaze over. “This literally does not make any sense,” he says. “And I think there’s a part missing in the middle.”
“Yeah, I had to read it a couple times, too. The whole book’s scattered like that. But!” Richie stabs the page with his finger, “This bit where it talks about seek The Historian? For he will know a way through the veils?”
Stan glances at the book once again, eyes lingering on the word scales. “You think this Historian person, if they’re a person, is real?”
Richie’s brown eyes, unobscured by his glasses that now perch on his head, securing his hair back from his face, fill with excitement and promise that Stan finds himself softening over. Whatever this lead is that Richie thinks he has, he feels passionate and hopeful over it, and who is Stan to deny him that? After three years over the Wall, Stan is just happy at least one of them retains some sliver of hope inside them.
“I think so,” Richie says, leaning forward over the table, “and I think I know how to find them.”
-
Richie bounces in the seat of the wagon like an impatient child, and Stan snaps the reigns for the horses to go faster.
One of the horses grunts, and says, “Apple.”
“After,” Stan tells her, for the fourth time in the last half-hour, “We get into town, and then you’ll get your apples. That’s the deal, that’s always the deal.”
The other horse mutters, “Carrot,” and Stan feels a twitch developing on his eyelid.
They’re good horses. Stan and Richie found them during their first week in this world and named them Apple and Carrot respectfully, for obvious reasons. It was a bit of a shock at first to discover that the animals spoke, however after a handful of time listening to AppleCarrotAppleCarrot over and over, the appeal got old pretty fast.
It almost makes Stan wish they never stole them from that barn. Almost.
(It was either steal the horses or have to deal with the Whatever it was that was growling at them from the darkness of the woods on foot.)
“We can just give them half a carrot,” Richie says.
“We can’t give them anything, Richie,” Stan says, eyes never leaving the road ahead. The town is finally beginning to appear in the distance, and he can see the tip of the belltower piercing the bottom of the horizon. Stan and Richie take the plants they grow outside the cottage to the town every Saturday to sell to townsfolk who buy in bulk. They’re nice enough people, kind of freakish and off-putting at first, with their broad smiles, blackberry eyes and corn husk clothing, but no one has raised a threatening hand to Stan or Richie yet.
Chrysanthemums are the favourites of most townsfolk, followed by belladonna and archangelica, but do not, under any circumstances, try and sell them vegetables. They’ve made that mistake once, and the haunting hiss that travelled and grew across the town still haunts Stan’s dreams.
Richie sends him a side-eyed glare. “You’re such a priss today, Uris. The fuck’s your problem?”
“Fuck off, Rich,” Stan mutters, hunching over the bar of the cart and gripping the reigns tighter. “For all we know we could be walking into a murder house.”
“In order to walk into a murder house, we must first be heading toward the murder house, Stanley,” Richie says, sagely.
“Okay, you’re right, I’m sorry,” Stan says, placing his hand over his heart. Carrot whinnies. “We’ll just forget about selling our stock to the creepy townspeople and starve for the rest of the week. That sounds like a plan.”
Richie says, “I understand that you’re nervous.”
Stan clamps a hand down on Richie’s thigh, putting a stop to the insistent bouncing. Richie blinks down at his leg as if he hadn’t known it was doing anything other than existing there, being a leg, his dark hair slipping from hind his ear, and curling around his chin. It’s getting longer. Stan offered to cut it for him last month, but Richie had insisted he liked it long, keeping it at bay with a bit of twine or a hat.
“Looks like I’m not the only one.”
They ride the rest of the way into town in silence.
-
Richie’s sure if Stan hasn’t managed to kill him just yet on this whole journey, seeing the outside of the house he’s led them to will be the defining factor that pushes him over the edge. Richie will be strangled to death by his best friend at the tender age of eighteen, and he has accepted that fate.
Afternoon sun glares off a polished golden plaque nailed to the face of a stone wall that holds up a gate. The gate leads to a very unwelcoming mansion that stands in the middle of the woods four stories high. Colourful stained-glass windows adorn the house's front facade, and what looks like gargoyles, or this world’s equivalent of gargoyles, at least, perch on pointed arches around the sides. The world is painted in orange brushstrokes that take extra care in the detail of the unmaintained garden and frighteningly large cobwebs strung from either side of the path leading to the house like they could support lanterns.
“A museum?”
“Where else would you find a historian?” Richie asks. Stan has no biting remark for that.
They park the cart outside the gates. Apple whines, “Apple,” and Carrot echoes with, “Carrot.”
Stan scoops out the bag out from the back of the wagon and gives them what they want. When Richie raises a questioning eyebrow at him, his friend remarks they’ll need every bit of energy to ride away should he and Richie need to make a quick escape.
The gate opens with one push, leaving a dusty residue on Richie’s fingers. A frog croaks at them from a nondescript coner of the garden void as the two of them walk down to dirt path. When Richie feels Stan jump closer to him against his back, he does his best to hide a smirk.
A bronze frog stares at them eerily from the large oak door, perched above a door knocker engraved with vines. Taking a deep breath, Richie reaches out and knocks twice, the sound of the metal hitting the wood reverbing in his ears.
They wait for some moments. Nothing happens.
Stan says, “Rich, I don’t think anyone lives here.”
Richie knocks again.
“Richie, look around you,” Stan whispers, gripping his arm, “This place looks as if it’s been abandoned for years. I don’t think –”
The door opens, slow and with a creek that hurts Richie’s teeth. No one is on the other side. The house interior is dark and dusty, light shining through the windows in interrupted ribbons, creating oblong patterns on the carpet.
The boys look at each other, and in a second, have their fists out to compete in a quick and tense game of Rock Paper Scissors, best two out of three. Stan loses, and with a daggered glare at Richie, begrudgingly enters the house with Richie at his heels.
Stan isn’t quite tall enough for Richie to properly hide behind, but just enough. Both of them have grown since climbing the Wall and entering this world at fifteen years old. The years have been spent with the two competing in a game of tag and growing at a pace that raced to beat the other. At fifteen, Stan stood taller than Richie by all of one inch, and then at sixteen Richie’s chin touched Stan’s eyebrows. At seventeen, they were equal once again, but by Richie’s eighteenth birthday, it was clear that Stan’s height considered itself happy where it was, and Richie’s stubbornly agreed he could go a little more. Now, he can comfortably rest his chin on the top of Stan’s curly dark hair.
If Richie were to slump a little, he might almost be obscured entirely by Stan.
Stan fiddles with the cuff of his shirt and takes a cautious step further into the house. Richie reaches out and takes hold of the tan suspenders crossing his back.
Stan clears his throat and calls out, “Hello?” his voice echoing down the hall. When nothing happens, he tries again, “Hi, um. We’re looking for someone named The Historian?”
The wind outside whistles and rattles the windows.
“If we have the – the wrong house, we’ve very sorry. Just let us know and we’ll be on our way, but if you are in here …” Stan takes a deep breath, and says, “Please.”
They hear footsteps to the left, and turn their heads in quick tandem. A figure emerges from the darkness of the hallway, tall and great, with a long cloak dragging on the floor, and a large head with branch-like appendages that protrude off the round shape of it in any which direction, scraping along the walls as it walks.
Together, Richie and Stan grab each other and scream.
The creature screams, too.
The three stand in the entrance of the house and scream, Richie holding Stan by his middle as Stan clutches at his sleeve hard enough to rip, and the creature –
Is holding its hands up – its surprisingly human-looking hands – and says, “Whoa, whoa!” at them, waving those human appendages in the air. Suddenly, the creature steps out of the shadows and pulls off its head – a mask, and a horribly disturbing one at that – to reveal a young man underneath. He drops the mask to the floor and shouts, “It’s okay!”
Like a slow fall, Richie and Stan stop yelling.
“I’m not going to hurt you!” The man is saying. Or he could be a boy, Richie thinks. It’s a little hard to tell. He is tall, skin a warm shade of dark brown, and at that fuzzy age where the tilt on his chin could mean he is no older than eighteen, but the strength of his shoulders and perfect way in which he holds his posture could be twenty-five. His smile is sheepish as he unties the string holding the cloak around his neck and pushes the horrific mask away with his foot, attempting to conceal it behind a pillar holding a vase of dead flowers.
“You’re not?” Stan asks, voice a hushed squeak.
“No, not at all!”
“Why are you doing in that thing?” Richie demands.
“Sorry, forgot I had it on,” he says, then gestures to the front door, “How did you get in?”
“Door swung open,” Richie and Stan answer at the same time. The man grimaces.
“Oh yes,” he says, “I’ve been meaning to get that fixed. Anyway. So sorry about all of that. How can I help you?”
Richie releases Stan, and Stan releases his death grip on Richie’s shirt, who straightens his ruffled collar and clears his throat.
“We’re here to see the Historian.”
The man’s eyebrows raise, and he straightens his shirt. Grinning, he says, “Alright, then you came to the right place. But I prefer Mike.”
Halloween night, three years ago today, Stan and Richie found themselves chased through the streets of Derry. As they ran past houses adorned with Jack O Lanterns, skeletons hanging from porches and orange lights strung from windows, some noosing the skeletons, the crazed roar of Bowers and his two lackeys followed them.
“You’re fuckin’ dead!” screamed Bowers, “Both of you losers are fuckin’ dead!”
Richie took hold of Stan’s wrist and began to steer him through a small opening through the back fence of a random yard. “This way,” he hissed with urgency, while Stan nervously grumbled something about trespassing.
Richie doesn’t even remember what it is they did to make Henry Bowers so mad that night, and set him off on one of his triyearly murderous rampages. He guesses it doesn’t matter now, as what’s done is done.
The path through that yard had been long – strangely long by the time they hit the old swing set shoved into a broken corer or fence, vines and plants curling around the metal as if to slowly drag it under the earth, and abnormally long when they reached the well.
“The hell is this place?” Stan asked, his breath coming out as frost. “Richie, I don’t think we should be here. I don’t have a good feeling about this …”
Though he did not admit it at the time, Richie felt the same creeping dread and chill in his bones as Stan. But, Bowers' murderous growls were near inaudible in the distance, so Richie pushed against the warning gut feeling and continued on anyway.
“Where do you think we are?” he asked. The yard, or wherever it was they were, grew stranger the more they walked through – dirt paths turned to cobblestone, gardens full of flowers too vividly purple and blue to be natural, and ironstone benches that looked they were designed and built for a small child.
“Private property,” Stan said as they trudged on. “Man, whoever lives here must be filthy rich. They’ve got a whole fuckin’ national park back here. If we get caught, our parents are defiantly getting sued.”
That’s when they first saw it: the Wall. Stone covered in trellises of vines and flowers. It looked easy enough to climb, Richie remembers thinking, and it looked nothing how it does today. The thorns and poisonous buds were not there as they are now. The Wall was inviting them to climb it; the Wall wanted them to climb it.
Stan looked at the Wall with wide eyes, and huffed a single, awestruck, “Whoa.”
That is, of course, when Bowers’ cries returned with an alarming closeness, and there seemed as if there was no other choice.
Richie and Stan entered the new world dressed as a werewolf and a wizard, respectfully.
-
Mike places tea filled with jasmines in front of Stan and Richie, and joins them at the table. They’re seated in a sunroom at the very back of the house, where the stained-glass casts shadows of rich reds, yellows, blues, and greens across the room. The jasmine petals swim in a circle in the centre of the teacup, almost as if they’re dancing.
Mike asks, “You want to leave the Unknown?” with an incredulous lilt in his voice that doesn’t sound all too hopeful.
“That’s the plan,” Stan says, “And word around town is you know how to do that.”
“Where did you hear that?”
Richie scoops the book out of his bag and dumps it ceremoniously on the table. The teacups whine.
Mike’s eyebrows shoot up at the site of the book, and slowly, with a cautious hand, he reaches out to trace the pads of his fingers over the engraved front. “Well then,” he says, “I haven’t seen this in a very long time.”
“It talks about you in there,” Richie says.
“Well, it talks about the whole land,” Stan says.
“Yes,” Mike agrees, opening the cover and examining the first page, “That’s generally what history books do.”
Stan’s hand pauses halfway lifting the teacup to his lips. “I’m – sorry. Did you say history book?”
Beside him, Richie grins, broad and smug. Stan tries not to give him the satisfaction of reacting too much.
Mike turns the book around so they can read the Acknowledgements page, “It says it right here: A Brief History of the Unknown.”
Stan feels his cheeks redden. Staring down at his tea, he mumbles, “I thought that was just a … thing.”
“It’s very much not just a thing,” Mike says. “A friend of mine wrote this a very long time ago. Some years after I first wandered in here, like I assume you two did?”
Richie nods, “We climbed the Wall after finding it in some rich bastard’s back yard, and we’ve been stuck here ever since.”
Mike closes the book. “Yes, that’s –”
“Sorry for interrupting,” Stan says, holding a hand up. Richie gives him an annoyed glare. “You said your friend wrote that? That book right there? Some years after you came here?”
Mike’s eyebrows furrow. “Yes?”
“That book is … it’s old. It’s really old. Mike, how old are you?”
Something shifts in Mike’s eyes. They turn glassy and thoughtful, his forehead smoothing out as he leans back in his seat and mutters, “Huh. I guess I haven’t thought about that for a very long time. I was … nineteen when I came here. Yes, and that was,” he pauses for a handful of moments, eyes squinting into space and lips moving minutely as he counts quietly to himself. When he is finished he blinks, and settles his gaze on Stan and Richie once again. “What year was it when you arrived?”
“1966,” Richie answers.
“Wow, okay. Then it would be about two hundred years, give or take a decade.”
Stan, who had been taking a sip of tea, chokes on it.
“You’re two hundred years old?” Richie cries as he hits Stan on the back. “You are? Holy shit, that’s … that’s fuckin’ crazy, man. Why don’t you age?”
“Not sure,” Mike mutters, and there is something in the underlining of his tone that tells Stan he doesn’t much like to think about it. Then, Richie shouts and flips to the very back page of the book as Stan wipes away tears. There, on the back cover and beneath an author’s note, is a small photograph is Mike and another man, whom he assumes is the author. Mike looks at it fondly, a small smile pulling at his lips.
Richie asks, “You really know how to leave?”
“I do,” Mike says, “And, to be perfectly honest, your timing couldn’t have been better.”
Mike leads the two of them into a room that could not have been more purple if it tried. He sits them down on a velvet couch and flits around the room, collecting various books from the bookshelves that stretch all the way to the ceiling. Thin candles held by a candelabra shaped like a small bronze tree flickers ominously. The curtains are drawn to block out any hint of the setting sun. For all Stan knew, it could very well have been the middle of the night.
After a good five minutes, Mike and his armful of books settle on the twin couch opposite the one Stan and Richie sit on, and he begins, “Okay. Have either of you heard of the Beast?”
The boys blink at him in unison.
Stan thinks, despite not having lived in this world too long, that if he and Richie managed to go three years without hearing a single mention of this Beast, then that would have been an achievement. There is a special type of root the townsfolk ask Stan to grow – or highly suggest he grows – that, upon handing it to them, they whisper a small chant and murmur, “For protection from the Beast.”
Eventually, after some months, one of them (it was Richie) finally built up the courage to ask. In a very Richie like manner; “Fuck’s up with this Beast thing, anyway?”
The phrasing sent the villagers into a crazed panic at the outward and blatant way Richie had said the creature’s name, and they had to run. Long story short, Stan does not grow plants for that particular town anymore.
(That day sticks in Stan’s mind too clearly: Running, Richie tripping over something on the ground, and that very same something cutting his skin and causing an infection which snowballed at an alarming rate. It was when they met the strange boy in the woods, with his blue clothing and backpack full of herbs and medicine, who helped Stan take Richie home and single handily nursed him back to health. When he’d left, and Stan was a pale, sniffling mess, he’d only stopped in the doorway to for a second when Stan asked his name. Eddie.)
“Okay, that’s a dumb question. How much do you know about the Beast?”
Richie says, “He’s evil? Folks here are scared shitless of him?”
Mike shows them a photo of a map. “Basically, there’s one way in and one way out of the Unknown, and it involves crossing the Wall. Every three years the door opens up, and anyone may come and go. However,” he says, tracing his finger along a winding road, “the Beast guards this road that leads to the exit. It wakes up when the door opens, and remains awake until it closes. If you want to leave, you’ll have to get past the Beast.”
Richie says, “We didn’t see anything when we got here,” at the same time Stan asks, “What does it look like?”
“The Beast won’t attack those who enter, only those who try and leave,” Mike says, and to Stan, “No one knows exactly. It’s said It will change Its shape to whatever it is that frightens a person the most.”
“How do we get past it?” Richie asks.
Mike shrugs, “Pick something non-threatening to be afraid of? Maybe a small dog.”
Stan leans back against the couch with a sigh.
“Are you serious?” Richie says, his fists balling on top of his knees, “That’s your advice? You’re supposed to be the only one in this world who knows how to do this!”
“Just because I know how, doesn’t mean I’ve ever done it.”
Richie flops back against the couch with Stan.
“How do we know if the door’s open?”
“It opens and will remain open,” Mike repeats. He leans forward over his knees, resting on his elbows and levelling the both of them with a solemn, serious look. At once, he appears both ancient and young.
“You will know that the door is open when something changes,” Mike continues, “You’ll need to look out for anything that looks different or out of the ordinary. Find that change, and there you have it. The door is open and the Beast is awake.”
“Okay,” Richie says, “Great. What happens after that?”
“The books say that there’s a total of three things that will happen when you meet the Beast.” He holds up three fingers and begins to check them off one by one. “The change is the first. The second thing that will happen is you will be visited by two animals – a bird and a toad. One will be a warning, and the other will be an ally. All of the writings are oddly specific about this point.”
Stan feigns coughing into his fist, turning slightly to Richie and sending him a wide-eyed, what-the-fuck stare.
“Lastly,” Mike says, “to truly be able to fight the Beast, you will have to encounter it once without seeking it out.” Then, because of course, he says, “Most who have tried to go up against the Beast haven’t gotten past that last one.”
-
“Riddles,” Stan mutters, “The man is a human riddle book.”
“Is he human?” Richie asks, chin in hand, shoulders jostling with every bump and gravel the wheels of the cart drive over, “He said he’s, like, 300 years old.”
“219-ish, Richie, come on,” Stan chides.
The sun has painted the valley in deep orange. The leaves on the trees turn gold, and the prairies on their left resemble liquid amber. This land transforms everything around it into jewels and precious minerals at sundown, and, if he had to admit, it is one of the few aspects of this world that Richie likes. If he really does have to stay here forever, well, at least the sunsets will be pretty.
But that isn’t going to happen. They are going to leave.
Finally, after three long years, he will get to go home.
They will just have to figure out a way past a mythical death monster first.
Richie’s stomach rumbles. Stan clicks his tongue. “I told you to eat before we left.”
“Mike’s raspberry strudel looked as old and stale as he is.”
“Don’t be a dick, Dick,” Stan says, and Richie sighs, feeling bad. Mike’s straight-toothed smile and laugh lines pinching the corners of his eyes do not mask the obvious youthful invigoration that shines outward from Mike like a beacon. Something has kept him this way despite all the centuries Mike has spent behind the Wall. That is a thought Richie cannot begin to entertain, the very notion of it sending shivers down his spine.
“Have an apple,” Stan says.
“Apple?” Apple neighs.
“When we get home.” Stan reaches behind and slips his arm under the burlap tarp that hangs over the back of the wagon. When the appendage returns with a shiny red apple and throws it in Richie’s lap, Richie feels a stab of guilt in his belly. “I’m not listening to your stomach growling the whole way back.”
Richie lifts the apple and examines it in the light. It, like the rest of the world, looks gilded. Maybe it’s the frustration at coming so close only to be knocked back again two paces, or perhaps it is the anger and restlessness slowly building inside Richie day by day, hour by hour, that makes him throw the apple over his shoulder. With an innocent shrug and an, “Oops,” the apple bounces on the gravel and rolls into the thick woods.
Or, maybe, he just wants to piss off Stan a little.
However, what Richie didn’t account for is Apple crying, “Apple!” and tugging so hard on the reigns to follow the fruit where it bounces off into the woods that she pulls the wagon off the road.
“Richie!” Stan cries, and then, “Apple! Carrot, calm down!” and then, “Fuck,” as they are sitting on the side of the road, tilted about twenty-degrees off their axis, with not one but two excited horses neighing and pawing the ground.
Richie thinks he sees a vein popping in Stan’s neck and opts to get out of the wagon as quickly as possible.
“I think it rolled over this way,” he says, hopping over the side of the wagon and landing in the dirt. Stan stutters something at Richie, but he has already run into the woods, the trees enveloping all sound.
They’re like a cavern, these woods. Sound works differently once you’re under the shelter of the forest; bird songs echo everywhere at once, frogs croak, and the sound rumbles beneath your feet. Riche steps on a twig and the sound of it reverberates across the grass like a strong wind, and the water in a small pond a few feet ahead of him ripples.
Richie takes a deep breath. Time bends and twists and forms a knot that coils around your body and holds you still in place, while everything else around you carries on.
The apple sits at the edge of the pond, caught against a stone and some cattail plants. Richie bends to grab it, just as the crunch of leaves underfoot – hurried, frantic – startle him. The noise shakes the long grass moments before someone comes blundering into the pond, the murky water splashing Richie.
A boy has fallen into the water. When Richie gets a good look at him, it is instantly obvious that 1. he hadn’t meant to, and 2. he is running from something, or someone.
Richie stares. The boy stares back. His eyes are blown wide, chocolate brown, and his hair curls below his ears, a collection of twigs and leaves burrowed inside it. His clothes are odd; all blue. A thin red line of blood streaks down his cheek from a cut across his cheekbone.
He is also staring at Richie, mouth fallen open.
A moment, only a brief one, before Stan comes running into the scene in a very Stan-esque calibre – leaping over bushes and stones, arms flapping almost annoyingly graceful – it looks like the boy’s mouth is forming the word You.
“Richie, for fuck sake, where did you –?” he stops in his tracks, skidding on the moss, stares right at the boy in the water, and says, “Eddie?”
And the boy in the water says, “Oh, hi. Good to see you again,” and Richie’s brain skips a few tracks. A rumble comes from deep in the woods, somewhere where the trees shroud darkness that the eye can’t see beyond, and the boy in the water – Eddie – says, “We need to go. Now.”
Richie’s mouth is still hanging open, as is Stans, when Eddie pulls himself out of the water and grabs the both of them by their hands, insistently pulling them back toward the road. Richie is gasping, “Who – how –?” right up until they reach the road.
Amazingly, he is still holding the apple, throwing it to the excited horse the moment they are in sight once again. She catches it between her teeth, biting down and gobbling it up in two bites. Apple neighs, “Apple,” appreciatingly, while beside her Carrot stomps his hooves, happy for her but envious.
“What was that?” Stan asks, as the same time Richie says, “Who are you?”
“I’ll explain later,” Eddie says, and Richie is unsure who’s question he is answering. “We need to go now.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that,” Richie says, as Eddie attempts to climb in the back of the wagon. He reaches a hand out and grabss him by the back of his jacket. Eddie makes a noise of surprise when he is yanked down suddenly. Grasping on to the wooden grooves of the wagon, he continues to stare at Richie with those same wide, frightened eyes, and something inside Richie quietens.
“Listen. You look like you’re in a bit of a hurry, and that’s fine, but I don’t know if you noticed we have a slight problem with the …” Richie glances down at the wheel of the cart, the one that popped off when the horse got over-excited after Richie threw the fruit, and finds it perfectly attached as if nothing had ever happened, “… wheel.”
Stan is staring at the wheel as well, scratching his head with a dumbfounded look on his face.
Eddie says, “We can go now,” and shrugs Richie off, climbing the rest of the way into the wagon and disappearing under the tarp.
The growl rumbles the trees yet again, and that settles that matter. Richie and Stan jump back in the front and take off without another word.
When the sky has transitioned from golden orange to burnt umber, the words come, and Richie is hissing, “Who the shit is that?”
“Oh,” Stan stares ahead. His shoulders are tense, and there is a look on his face Richie can’t quite put a name to, “That’s Eddie. We met him last year.”
“We met him?”
“Well. You were unconscious,” Stan says, “for most of the time. Delirious the other part. Remember when you got stung by that thorn?”
Richie tries hard not to flinch at the memory. Yes, he does remember. A searing pain, unlike nothing he had ever felt before spreading beneath his skin. All the while, his vision played seesaw between pure darkness and blinding lights. He was in the woods, and then at the house with Stan. There were cool hands on his burning hot skin and a soothing voice in his ear.
At the time, Richie thought he was simply hallucinating. There was only Stan in the room, and he saw double. For a while Richie was content to believe that Stan had miraculously revived him from the brink of death, in a foreign, unknown world using herbs and remedies he barely understood, because he’s just perfect like that.
Now, when Richie thinks a little more deeper about it, he realises how in probable that concept is.
Stan bites his lip and says nothing else. Richie leans back against the seat with a deep breath, thinking about how he owes his life to a stranger who sits behind him, and hides beneath a sheet.
-
By the time they reach the town, Mike’s words Look out for anything out of the ordinary are almost non-existent in Stan’s mind. What he does have on his mind include cooking a stew with the fresh mushrooms and herbs that have sprouted from the garden (they are most likely the last that will sprout before the chill off winter falls over them, so he plans to savour that) pouring himself a glass of ale that Richie stole from the tavern the other month, and going the fuck to bed.
Those plans become sidetracked when the distant sound of shouting and cries catch their attention, growing louder as they approach. Richie looks at him with raised eyebrows, and Stan cracks the reigns and spurs the horses on faster. The wagon reaches the hill's apex, and it suddenly becomes very clear what the commotion is all about.
Two – no, three – separate people run in circles down below while the townsfolk either 1. chase after them, yelling and screaming, 2. throw vegetables, or 3. chase after them while yelling and screaming and throwing vegetables. One of the three leads the other, who holds a large pumpkin in their arms, the act itself making the running part quite difficult, and the third looks like they are just trying to dodge everything and everyone. They don’t appear to be doing such a good job of it.
Richie says, “You think that’s what Mike might have been talking about?” and, after a fond hum, “Kind of reminds me of us.”
The tarp behind them lifts, and Eddie sticks his head between the two of them. “Oh,” he says, “they’re getting the forks out.”
“Shit,” Stan hisses, and spurs the horses on to trot faster into Pottsfield.
The scene is even more catastrophic close up – the boy holding the pumpkin and the girl leading him wear what looks like costumes to mimic Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. The townsfolk chase them in an attempt to protect their territory and, Stan has to admit, it is quite funny to watch them run with those bulbous, orange heads that sit on their shoulders.
It had been startling at first, as most things in this land were, to stumble across a town where the people wore nothing but pumpkins on their heads, eyes, mouth and noses carved out to resemble a Jack O Lantern. Stan got over it pretty fast, and they turned out to be nice enough people. Just mind the pumpkins, and don’t mention the masks.
Neither Richie nor Stan know what these people look like under the pumpkin masks. When the newcomer who runs around like a headless chicken almost knocks one of them down, the mask teetering for a moment as if it will fall, Stan finds he is more terrified than curious to find out.
“Dirty thieves!” and “Intruders!” are among the phrases being thrown at the newcomers when the wagon finally rolls into the town square. Stan jumps over the side before it has a chance to roll to a stop, Richie following suit.
The one holding the pumpkin stops dead in his tracks upon seeing them. His mouth falls open, and his eyes widen to the size of saucers. For one heart-stopping moment, he almost drops the pumpkin. Almost, if not for Richie lunging forward right as it is slipping from his fingers, when he is jolted forward by the girl who ran into him from behind, and manages to catch it before it could fall and burst into a million juicy pieces.
“Easy there!” Richie grunts, safely lifting the pumpkin while the boy stumbles over his words, half formed when they rise to the surface. One of the bolts glued to his neck is hanging loose and the other is lost completely. The girl, who’s red hair is streaked with white paint on either side of her head, pulls him by his shoulders away from Richie, who grunts more profusely under the full weight of the large pumpkin.
“You don’t look like them,” she says.
“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Richie says.
“Who are you?”
“Someone who just saved you asses. Again, you are welcome.”
“Maybe not quite yet,” Stan mutters, watching as the third visitor is being backed into a corner by a couple of very angry townsfolk holding very large, very sharp desert forks. Pointing, Stan asks, “That your friend?”
“Oh shit,” the boy gasps, and cries out, “Bill!”
“Leave him alone, you cabbage head fuckers!” the girl shouts.
Richie raises an eyebrow. Eddie jumps out from the back and mouths, “Cabbage?” at Richie, who shrugs in return.
Stan clicks his tongue. “Okay, easy there. This is their town, and they want to protect it.”
Richie heaves the pumpkin on his shoulder, and says, “I’m just going to give this back. I’d get in the wagon if I were you.”
“Wait, where are you going?” Dr. Frankenstein anxiously bellows at Stan’s retreating back.
“To save your friend from being shish-kebabbed!”
The third, who the others called Bill, is being cornered against the side of town hall, and does a sort of zig-zag run to narrowly avoid being stuck with a large fork. One manages to get close, and skewers the cape he wears to the stone. Vampire was his choice of monster for this Halloween, if Stan had to take a guess. Auburn hair halls over one eye and his white shirt's sleeve is ripped, blood tainting the edges as if he’d cut himself on a thorn bush. There are many of them on the way to Pottsfield from the Wall. Stan remembers being pricked by a couple of them himself.
Out of the corner of his eye, Stan notices a familiar pair of shiny pointed shoes, a blue jacket, and an oval-shaped pumpkin head and shouts, “Jerimiah!”
Jerimiah pauses at the call of his name, cowbell raised high above his head mid-ring. The police marshals on either side of him protect their Mayor against the villainous intruder with their forks. All the lawmen of the town have those, while the others settle for regular dinner utensils.
They thrust their forks at Bill, who flattens himself against the wall as much as humanly possible. Stan, before he can think better of it, leaps to pin himself between the forks and Bill.
“Jerimiah, wait!”
Jerimiah turns to Stan and gives a shocked gasp behind his pumpkin mask, which remains perfectly neutral. Behind him, Bill makes a similar noise of surprise, however, more strangled. Stan imagines he expected to be skewered at that moment, given the way he curled into himself towards to wall and shut his eyes tight.
“Stanley!” Jerimiah cries, cowbell clanging as he thrusts it at Stan, “Why, thank goodness you’re here! These – these –” he stutters, barely concealed fury scrambling his words, “thieves seek to make a travesty of us all! Stealing from our flock. Why, right before harvest, too!”
The police give a shout and thrust their forks hard to the ground.
Swallowing down a flinch, Stan holds his palms up and says, “Alright, listen. Everyone just needs to take a deep breath, and –” lowering his voice so only Bill can hear, he says, “– get ready to run.”
Behind him, with a voice strained in fear, Bill stammers out and, “What?”
Stan turns to look at him – dry paint clinging to the corner of his mouth, supposedly to mimic blood, red powder rimmed under eyes that shine a clear green in the setting sun, that are taking in the human features of Stan’s face – and says, “Now.”
He grabs Bill’s hand, and they run.
Richie is standing on the wagon's seat and is shouting, “Come on!” waving an arm wildly in the air. Eddie holds the tarp up for Bill when he comes running into the arms of his friends, who, after a short but tight embrace, lift him by his arms into the wagon. Stan’s feet have barely left the ground before Richie clacks the reigns, and they are off.
-
The frogs sing Home on the Range to the fireflies who dance in rhythm to their throaty serenades, and Stan spends the entire trip home with his head in his arms, knees pulled up to his chest.
Richie drives them home in the dark, with only the glow of the moon, fireflies, and occasional moss infested street lamp to light their way. Owls hoot from the thick wood that accompanies them on their journey home, eyes glowing yellow and beady within the darkness. The world around them is loud, but unease in the pit of Richie’s stomach keeps him quiet.
At their backs, the newcomers whisper amongst each other.
“Where are we going?” the girl whispers.
“I’m not sure,” Eddie’s voice responds.
“Do you know them?” comes from one of the boys.
Eddie responds, “Um. Sort of,” and Richie tightens his grip on the reigns.
“Did you come from over that – that weird wall, too?”
Eddie says, “The Wall? No, I live here. My name’s Eddie.”
“Bev,” the girl says, and the one who isn’t Bill says, “Ben. Nice to meet you.”
A soft, not quite timid but stammering voice, asks, “Are we … in danger?”
“I highly doubt that.”
“Would you tell us if we were?”
No answer.
Richie sighs. As it grows colder, he finds himself wishing they had the foresight to bring their thicker jackets with them, however Richie can confidently discern that neither he nor Stan expected to be out this late. An anxiety tends to creep up from Richie’s chest whenever he has to exist outside in the darkness of the woods too long, tickling at the back of his throat and itching the back of his knees. Stanley tells him it is irrational, and if anything were going to kill them, it would have done it by now, so on and so forth.
The thing is, Richie knows it is irrational. The knowledge does nothing to stop the fear that the next hoot of an owl or croak of a frog will be his last.
His ankle itches. Richie leans down to scratch at it, his shoulder bumping against Stan’s. He lifts his head but remains quiet for the remainder of the trip.
The house bathes in shadows, save for the lanterns hanging from the porch awning that host the fireflies Richie caught to light the front facade and give them some leeway to navigate the woods. The dirt driveway remains pitch black in all the places that matter, which is the logs and stones and bushes where, if something sinister were to choose a place to lurk, it would most definitely be one of those options.
They need more fireflies.
Richie parks the wagon in the regular parking spot by the barrel and well and cheerily announces, “Honey, we’re home!” and waits with a grin and an eager heart for Stan to roll his eyes, or scoff, or tell him to be quiet.
Instead of any of those things happening, Stan simply continues to sit with his gaze forward. The fretful light of the dancing fireflies highlights the curve of Stan’s nose, the edge of his eyelashes, and the stressed pinch in the centre of his forehead.
“Fuck,” he whispers, to himself and then again, “Fuck,” to something else – possibly Richie, possibly to the swaying flowers or the pigeons sleeping under the awning, or the newcomers in the back.
Before Richie can say anything, Stan is up and out. Richie scrambles to follow as he is pulling aside the tarp from the back of the wagon where they’re all sitting, frozen and silent.
“Hey, Stan –” he attempts.
“Well?” Stan says to the newcomers, an irate sharp edge to his voice, expectant. “Get out.”
They continue to sit and blink at Stan, frozen in place. His grip tightens on the tarp. With shoulders tensing, he half-shouts, “Now,” and Richie watches as they all near jump out of their skin in their hurry to exit the back of the wagon.
“Stan,” Richie begins, nervous, because Stan has now started to pace, and nothing ever good following him pacing, “Stanley. Pal. Stanny. You’re buggin’ out, man, what’s the matter?”
Stan stops short on his third round, shoes kicking up a small cloud of dirt, and looks at Richie as if he has gone mad. “What’s the matter? Are you kidding me right now?” He says, “Did you not see that shitshow back there? We’ll be lucky if Jerimiah lets us past the gates again!”
“And what if he doesn’t?” Richie asks, a tremor of anger fizzling up his chest, “What’s the big deal?”
“What’s the –” Stan stops, blinking, stepping back as if Richie’s words psychically shoved him, “Are you serious? Winter will be here soon, Richie, and that town –” Stan points into the dark of the woods, “is the only way we get through it. It’s all of our food, our money, our resources. Everything we need to not starve! And today we – I – you – why were you holding a pumpkin?” he yells at the one with bolts glued to his neck – Ben, Richie remembers – who’s eyebrows pinch with shame.
“Look just chill out, okay?”
Stan says, “We’ve been through this before, Richie.”
“I know, but –”
“But?”
“What does it even matter now?”
Stan blinks at him. “Pardon me?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Richie says, words falling from his lips one at a time, and he is vaguely aware of the others watching them tensely from the sidelines, “because we’re getting out of here soon.”
“You don’t know that,” Stan says, “You don’t. I don’t. Not for sure.” Wiping a hand down his face, Stan turns towards to horses with a sigh and begins to unwind Carrot’s reigns. The horse lifts his head from the water barrel with a confused neigh. “But what I do know is we can’t take that kind of chance based on maybe.”
Carrot gives a huff as Stan climbs on him, and Richie asks, alarmed, “Where are you going now?”
“To do some damage control,” he says, and leaves.
Once he has disappeared into the trees, Richie groans loudly and kicks over the water barrel, spilling water everywhere. Apple rears up in fright, kicking her legs and shaking her head. Richie swears and rushes to calm her.
“Apple? Apple!”
“Whoa, whoa, easy girl! I’m sorry, it’s okay, shhh, I’ll get you some more. Fresh. You’d like that, huh?” he whispers, stroking the front of her nose until she calms down. When she looks toward the woods and huffs, Richie tells her, “They’ll be back.”
Someone makes a choked-off sound to his left, and Richie turns to find the firefly lit faces of the newcomers gaping in shock. Eddie, he notices, has flit off somewhere.
“I’m suh –” Bill starts, struggling, and Richie frowns, “Sssorry? Did that horse just talk?”
“Erm.”
“Oh my god,” Bev says, “you heard it, too.”
“Talking horse,” Ben mutters, complimented with a far off spacy gaze.
“Apple?” Apple says, and Ben falls down, the other two shouting and scrambling to catch him.
Richie swears.
Eddie reappears from the either when they carry Ben inside and deposit his semi-conscious body onto the couch. Once a blanket is draped on him and tucked up to his chin, Richie watches from the doorway as Bill and Bev fall to the floor with their backs against the couch. Their eyes are rimmed with purple, and their skin is pale beneath the bit of makeup that sticks around. He realises they are hungry, exhausted, most likely dehydrated, and haven’t eaten in a while.
When Richie asks if they’re hungry their eyes light up, and even Ben mumbles a little.
Eddie is perched on the dining table so deathly still that Richie doesn’t notice he’s there until he turns on the gaslight and nearly shits himself.
“What the fuck!” Richie hisses, clutching his chest as if he can still his heart hammering against his ribcage, trying to be quiet as not to alert the three in the living room. “Where did you come from? Where did you go?”
Eddie grins for a brief moment but swallows it down. He just shrugs and says, “I took a look around. This area of wood is pretty dense so it’s hard to see anything. What’s it like in the daylight? I think I can hear a river about, um, three-point-two miles south, if I had to guess – no, wait, three-point-four. Yes. I don’t remember it being this dark last time I was here. Is it seasonal? I’ve heard of seasonal darkness, my friend told me about it once, but I don’t get to see him often as he’s always locked up in his big old house. He needs to get out more, I guess, but don’t we all?”
Richie blinks. Then he blinks again. Eddie continues to stare back at him, brown eyes almost black in the low light, and unblinking. His mouth moves faster than Richie can form full sentences in his head.
“Um,” he starts, “I guess I’ve never really thought about it much? It’s a hellscape any time of the year, but … maybe it’s not as dark in Summer, now that you mention it. Do you want food? Water?”
Eddie nods. He looks down at his knees and says, “I would love some water, thank you.”
He fills a glass of water and hands it to Eddie. The tips of their fingers brush for a second, and Richie is surprised to find his skin strangely warm. Maybe it’s the way he is bundled up in all those clothes or is hunching his shoulders like he needs to keep warm.
“We’ve got bread, and Stan has some left-over jam in here, somewhere,” Richie mutters, searching the cupboards.
“Oh, I’m not hungry.”
“Fine.”
Richie prepares the bread and jam in silence, Eddie watching him from the table, still sitting, swinging his legs now and then and sipping at the glass of water.
When the silence starts to become intolerable, and the tap of Eddie’s fingernails against the glass makes Richie’s teeth hurt, and puts down the butter knife and says, “Eddie, was it?”
Eddie hums. Richie turns towards him, crossing his arms and leaning against the counter. His hair falls from behind his ear, and Richie hurries to push it back. Eddie continues to stare.
“Stan, um. He mentioned that you were there that night that I got hurt.”
“Poisoned,” Eddie corrects, “Yes, I remember. You were flipping between throwing up and passing out in quick intervals. It was pretty impressive.”
Richie clears his throat, pushing the embarrassed blush that rises up his neck down to the depths of Tartarus. “Well, I just. I want to say thank you. You know, I, um, I’d probably be dead right now if it weren’t for you showing up when you did, so,” – a pain like nothing he’s ever felt spreading up his calf, Stan’s worried grey eyes replaced by warm brown, curls that smelt of pine needles and honey, hands on his face and Richie cried I’m going to die I’m going to die and a voice whispered back I won’t let you – “Thanks. For that.”
Eddie’s unblinking stare is softer now, and the skin in the corners of his eyes wrinkle when he smiles. It’s endearing, and Richie finds it weirdly difficult not to smile back.
“Excuse me?”
He jumps only slightly when Bev pokes her head into the kitchen, peering timidly around the doorway with an awkward, pressed smile.
“Sorry,” she says, “But do you, um, have a bathroom somewhere so I can wash off –” she waves a hand over her face, indicating the dried makeup and paint in her hair “– all this?”
Richie tells her to climb the stairs and find the first door on the left. After she gives another awkwardly polite smile and flits away, Richie remembers the others in the living room waiting for their bread and jam, and hurries to take the plate over to them. Ben is sitting up but still fairly out of it when Richie returns, he and Bill talking quietly amongst themselves. Bill, sitting perched on the arm of the sofa, stands upright when Richie enters the room.
Richie rolls his eyes and drops the plate on the rattan coffee table. “Relax, I don’t bite,” he says. “Eat. And sit wherever you like.”
Every day for months after he and Stan stumbled upon this house – it was somewhere on day seven or eight of sleeping in stables or inns, when friendly innkeepers took pity and allowed them to stay for a night – Richie had slept fitfully, worried the owner would return and knife them in their sleep. It looked well enough abandoned, but in that ‘The cobwebs have barely begun to decorate the cornices and the fireplace is freshly snuffed’ kind of way.
He and Stan slept in the living room for the first three weeks, huddled together like two pre-teens during a sleepover, Stan with the fire poker clutched in his white-knuckled hands, Richie with a kitchen knife in his. Eventually, it became evident that the owner of this home, whoever they were, was not coming back when Richie pried open the trap door to the basement one day, and found him swinging in the middle of it, head cocked at a sickening 90-degree angle. Richie had screamed so hard he knocked himself backward into a tall wardrobe, which knocked over a box atop a box which alerted Stan, who came running down the stairs so fast he nearly tripped.
They buried the man by the river stream, a few minutes walk from the cottage. Lugging the poor man’s body that far was probably a more traumatic endeavour than simply finding a nice spot for him in the garden, but neither Richie nor Stan would have been able to sleep with him being so close.
In his pocket, Richie found an old heart-shaped locket. Upon opening it, there was a picture of a young man smiling with his arms spread wide, the Hollywood sign behind him.
“Thank you,” Bill says, taking a piece of bread, “Um …?”
“Richie,” Richie says, “And don’t mention it. Hey, would anyone mind if I bring the horse in here?”
-
Apple is in the living room when Stan finally walks through the door in the morning.
She stands with the patchwork blanket thrown over her back, and her head is peeking through the open window, greeting Carrot outside. Stan sighs. Richie – sitting curled up on the couch, writing in his journal under lamp light – always insists on bringing the horses inside when Stan isn’t there to say no.
“Good morning,” Richie says without turning around. His long black hair hangs loose and unrestrained around his face, and his glasses sit folded on the arm of the couch beside his elbow. The pencil scratches away at the page at lightning speed.
“Morning,” Stan mutters, throat scratchy and raw. He closes the door quietly behind him. “You’re awake.”
Richie hums. “Couldn’t sleep,” he says, and upon moving closer, Stan notices the punched pillows and blanket beside him. “Where were you?”
“It got late and Carrot was tired, so we stayed at the Inn.”
Richie hums again. “So, how did it go?”
Stan sighs, eyes fluttering shut. The events of last night are both a blur and a vivid stain on his memory.
“Well, I all but got down on both knees and begged Jerimiah for mercy,” Stan says, throwing his jacket over the back of the couch. “I apologised about fifty times and asked him to forgive our wily friends from over the Wall,” he waves his hands in the air. “I might’ve also made something up about how it’s a custom to feast on a pumpkin when entering a new land. I don’t know, Richie. He’s agreed to give us a second chance.”
Richie closes the journal, bookmarking it with the pencil, and looks up at Stan for the first time. His eyes are weary, and his lips are chapped. Stan feels a stab of guilt in his stomach. “You did good, Stanthony, okay? I’m just happy you’re back.”
Stan swallows. When they were in Derry, before they climbed the Wall, casual words of comfort and endearment was not a common feature of their relationship.
Regardless of the colourful protests showcased on television, the men and women carrying banners and posters spelling the words FREE LOVE in bright, bubbly letters, it was a movement that Derry hadn’t quite been ready for. While Stan secretly sat attentively in front of the television in his home, watching the broadcasts and news anchors detail this so-called Sexual Revolution his parents always scoffed at and turned the television off quickly when it came on, Derry remained the same.
“What do you think about that stuff that’s happening in the city?” Stan had asked Richie one night.
Richie snorted, and asked, “You mean all that queer shit?” and snorted some more, like that was the funniest thing in the world. Stan pressed his face further into the pillow and thought, if an outsider were to see them like this, curled up in Richie’s bed with the blankets tucked up to their armpits, they would assume.
A handful of months later, Richie met Stan by the quarry where he was set up for bird watching, and dropped onto the picnic blanket next to him with a cigarette already lit, and a shiner begging to form. Stan nearly fell over himself asking Richie what had happened, but Richie, voice wavering only a small amount, says, “Bowers pounded me ‘cause he thought I was fuckin’ trying to mack on his little cousin.”
The words had to circulate in Stan’s brain for a minute before they made sense, and eventually, he asked, “Were you?”
Richie had simply kept his eyes forward, expression blank, and shrugged.
Stan watched a red cardinal peck at some leaves for a while and said, quietly, “I think it’s neat, the free love thing,” and that, somehow, was all he’d needed to say, Richie understanding perfectly.
Pushing himself out of his thoughts, Stan clears his throat, and asks, “Speaking of, where are they all?”
“Upstairs sleeping,” Richie says, “I gave one of them your bed, by the way. Hospitality and all that.”
Stan keeps his sour expression out of Richie’s line of sight, ducking his head as he climbs the stairs. Richie is mad at him, Stan can tell. Bringing the horse inside the house is one of the clear giveaways, and casually allowing a stranger to lock himself inside Stan’s bedroom is another. If it weren’t for Richie’s very obvious loan of his own bedroom to one or possibly more of their guests, he would call him livid.
Stan has half a thought formed in his mind of what he would say or how he would greet the person behind his bedroom door when he gets up there, but the initial attempt of it dissolves the moment the door swings open just as Stan reaches for the handle. Sleepy blue eyes and a nest of auburn bedhead greets him on the other side of the threshold, as Bill blinks up at him and stops in his tracks, his face doing several things before his mouth stammers out a quiet, “Hello.”
“Hi,” Stan says back, cautiously, “Um. Good morning.”
“This is your room?”
“That it is,” Stan says.
Bill nods, his arms fidgeting by his sides as he seemingly fights to decide whether to do something with them or keep them stiff at his side. The paint and grey makeup has been washed off to reveal pale skin and natural dark circles beneath his eyes. Stan’s mattress is filled with a mixture of cotton, hay, and soft grass – he re-stuffed it last summer – and while Stan is used to it, he can imagine it wouldn’t be all that comfortable to lie on when you’re used to the comforts of a store-bought mattress.
That, and the experience of finding yourself trapped in a strange land with no clear way of getting out wouldn’t help much, either.
Bill fiddles with the cuff of his sleeve, suspenders hanging by his hips, and Stan bites the inside of his cheek.
“We’re all really sorry about yesterday,” Bill says, “We just – the pumpkin thing – we’d been wandering the woods all day and when it started to get dark we. Panicked, I guess. Wha-what if we don’t find any food? You know? So Ben saw the pumpkins in the pah –” pause. “The patch, and he just took it.”
“Bill,” Stan cuts in, quietly.
“Yeah?” Bill says, looking a bit like a startled rabbit.
“Water under the bridge.” He smiles. “Just maybe don’t show your faces there for a while.”
A loose, crooked smile finds its way onto Bill’s face. “Cool. And that won’t be a problem.”
Cool. The word causes a brief moment of pause, but before he can think to query it, Bill says, “I’ll, um, get out of your way. Where’s the bathroom?”
Stan hooks a thumb over his shoulder. “First on your right.”
Bill flashes a brief thankful smile and squeezes past. He is barely two inches shorter than Stan, and the collar of his shirt smells of pine and dirt. For a second Stan finds that he has forgotten he can move, feet glued to the floor, and Bill’s shoulder bumps his on the way past.
Stan ducks into his room and shuts the door quickly behind him.
The first thing he notices is the window is open, allowing a soft, morning breeze to enter, fluttering the thin curtains. Taking a quick glance around the room, he sees that everything seems to be in its place. A stab of shame for checking follows.
The book he left by his bedside sits crooked, like it had been picked up and examined. On the bed, the covers are tossed to the side, the sheets below it pulled and ruffled.
Stan places his face in his hands and breathes deep.
The sun has settled comfortably in the middle of the sky when Stan wakes up. Changing out of yesterday’s clothes, which has begun to obtain a thin outer veil of grime from riding in and out of the woods a series of times, and showering before wandering downstairs, Stan is pleased to note two things.
One, Apple has been removed from the living room and returned to the outdoors, and two, there is a small bird sitting on the open windowsill.
Stan sets the kettle to boil. Outside, the clouds have drawn in, and it smells as if it will rain. He closes his eyes and takes in a deep breath, and for a microscopic moment, he finds he has forgotten there is anyone in this house besides him and Richie. The reminder comes with a smack on the back of his head when he turns, reaching for the cupboard where they keep the oats, and finds Eddie sitting up on the counter beside the sink, a spoon hanging from his lips. Stan jumps backwards into the wall.
Eddie frowns and, pulling the spoon out of his mouth, he says, “Everyone keeps doing that.”
Stan swears, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Please get off the counter,” he says. “Fuck.”
“Fuck,” Eddie echoes, like he is testing the word in his mouth. “Richie says that a lot. And the redhead. And the boy who passed out yesterday, and Bill. Is this an over the Wall thing?”
“No,” Stan says, “I don’t know. Shit, Eddie, what – it doesn’t matter. Where is everyone?”
Eddie cocks his head to the window, finally sliding off the counter. He has scared the little bird away, a single blue feather left behind on the windowsill. “Outside. Richie ordered everyone to help him carry some water from the well.”
“Okay. You didn’t go with them?”
Eddie says, “Someone had to stay behind and make sure you didn’t run off again.” Suddenly becoming serious, he says, “You know, it really isn’t good to run off into the woods like that. Last night was cold, and that jacket you had on wasn’t adequate clothing enough to keep you warm. If you ask me, you’re lucky you didn’t catch a fever. Did you at least eat something when you reached Pottsfield? Something warm?”
“I, um,” Stan croaks, “Soup?”
He gave most of it to Carrot, too exhausted and high on adrenaline to be able to stomach much of anything, but he does not tell Eddie, who seems relatively satisfied with this answer. Despite slightly longer, curlier hair, Eddie looks the same as when Stan first met him, right down to the clothes on his back. The events of that night are startlingly vivid in Stan’s mind, where if he closed his eyes he could feel the warm, summer rain on his skin and hear Richie’s helpless, sick whimpers. He wonders if it is equally as vivid for Eddie or if they remain the same as Richie’s, and what Stan sometimes wishes it were; a fever dream.
Eddie turns his head toward a noise from outside that catches both their attention, and Stan notices the cut on his cheek, the one sliced across his skin and dripping blood when they found him in the woods, has calloused over into a thin, pink line.
He is about the mention it when Eddie grimaces and says, “I think they’ve figured it out,” just as the noise grows louder – the noise, Stan realises, is shouting. And a lot of it.
“Figured what out?”
Eddie does not answer the question, but instead looks at Stan with a soft, almost sad expression, which turns his stomach upside down.
Stan wastes no time running outside when the shouts escalate only to find Richie, standing in the centre of the garden with a bucket kicked over at his feet, water absorbing into the dirt. Bill is giving as good as he’s getting, standing tall to shout back at Richie, shoulders square and neck flushed pink with an obvious exertion mixed with anger. Beside him, Beverly looks to be a torn between breaking the two up and standing up for her friend, while Ben does not appear conflicted in the slightest, pulling Bill away from Richie by his shoulders and pushing himself between them, holding a hand up to Richie in a warning.
Stan clamps two fingers between his lips and blows hard. The high whistle cuts through the leaves in the trees and the volatile tension in the air, and everyone stops.
“The hell is going on!” he shouts. “Richie?”
Richie comes to stand beside Stan. Before he’d interfered, Richie had been crying You’re a liar! over and over.
“What?”
“I’m –” His cheeks are red. Tears linger in the corners of his eyes, and Stan feels his heart lurch upwards into his throat. “We’re … they … I can’t, Stan, I’m sorry.”
With that, he walks off down the trail leading back to the river, holding his stomach like he is about to be sick.
Stan turns to the three newcomers, singles out Bill and says, “Tell me what that was about.”
Bill remains pressed-lipped and grim-faced, looking at Stan with something akin to fear that turns the skin on his arms into gooseflesh, and in the end, it is Bev who speaks.
“Stan,” she says, her soft voice slow and cautious. He notices Richie has given them all a fresh pair of clothes, and it is one of Stan shirts she wears, loose around her shoulders and the hem tied around her slim waist. “When you came here from Derry, it was the Sixties, right? Richie said 1965?”
“1966,” he corrects, “Why? Why did you say it like that?” The sixties.
“See, um,” Bev inches closer, her hands twitching by her sides. Something in her stance makes Stan think she’s about to take both his hands in hers and call him Honey. “The thing is for us – outside, I mean – the year is 1993.”
