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Chapter Text

The year is 1926. The place is Arkham, Massachusetts.

A little college town situated on the upper banks of the Miskatonic River, Arkham holds on with white knuckles and a stiff New England upper lip as strange events unsettle its foundations. There are flickering lights over the dark water, and unearthly singing in the graveyards. Disappearances, sudden and unexplained. Human remains found in the woods, their unspeakable condition attributed to wild animal attacks and the underworld war over the county's illicit liquor trade. Troubling tomes and unsettling artifacts once locked away in private collections or encased in lead and thrown into the sea have found their way into the hands of eager academics and those with more mercenary interests.

Something is awaking as the decade roars.

Ancient gods and creatures of unfathomable form, once relegated to the void beyond space and time, now draw nearer to a place where the fabric between one reality and the next wears thin. A place of thresholds and doorways. Few in the town of Arkham dare consider what is waiting in the shadows, sensing perhaps that to glimpse what lies behind the veil is to risk not only death but madness. Fewer still are willing to pursue investigation, and to barricade whatever door they can find and wait with grit and a shotgun for whatever tries to come through.

It's raining tonight. A key has been found and destroyed, and the three investigators responsible have regrouped under the overhang in a dark courtyard on the campus of Miskatonic University: a junior due back to his dormitory before all the night's hubbub results in a headcount, a young woman with sore feet grateful that tomorrow is her day off, and a man with a mild concussion and a heart five thousand miles away in Argentina.

Play: Fortune or Fate
Calvin Wright leans against the back wall of the science building, carefully easing his aching temple to the comfort of cold stone. His battered cap has already surrendered to the damp. His threadbare jacket won't make weight for the fight against October. The day's been a long one, and it isn't over yet.

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The jouncing of the mail van keeps you upright and conscious on the drive from the university. Back streets, smart. Sidelong flashes of the electric lights of downtown. The glittering dark water as you cross the bridge, and then the ruts of the railroad tracks.

"You still with me, Mr. Wright?"

You lift your head from the protective cradle of your arm. "I am, Miss Clark."

You've only known Stella Clark five days, maybe six depending on whether the clock has rolled past midnight, but you're glad she was with you when things got hairy. She's a decent shot, a good driver, and moreover she's not some corn-fed kid like Pete Sylvestre. Uniform or no uniform, she knows what "no police" and "no doctors" means. Doesn't ask any questions no good will come from answering. She just cuts the engine before pulling up quietly into the alley beside what might be that hat shop on the corner of Armitage and Garrison.

"This way, honey," she says when you get out of the van and try to bid her goodnight, like you've simply gotten lost.

You don't argue, but only because she's managed to herd you into the stairwell and you don't want to make trouble for her with the neighbors. Her apartment is on the second floor. A nice place. You can tell by the insulated tapping of rain on the roof and the clean soap flake and polish smell, even before she gets the lamp on. One room, which gets your back up less than hallways and closed doors these days. You eye the dressing screen warily all the same, watchful for shadows behind it as Miss Clark sits you down on a gold-striped sofa, tilting your face this way and that as she takes in the damage.

"Sit tight. I've got a tonic from the druggist."

Play: Painkillers
A small brown glass bottle with a label all in fine print waits for the mixing.

Play: "I've Had Worse"
You need your wits about you, sore head be damned.

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"Thanks. Obliged."

For all that it's your mother tongue, English no longer feels natural in your mouth after so much time away from it. You sigh and rub your eyes as Stella pours a glass of water from a pitcher and stirs in a measure of the tonic. The seal on it was new by the sounds of it. Maybe it's only a fresh bottle of whatever she usually keeps on hand for female complaints or some other recurring issue, or maybe she bought it and set it aside the first time your paths crossed. She seems that sensible.

You knock back the tonic when it's offered, well past pulling a face at the bitterness.

"I ought to get going—" Before it hits, you mean to say.

"Lie down," she says, putting her cool hand on your brow. "It's all right."

Play: Cherished Keepsake
A small silver locket lies body-warmed against your chest, pinned to the inside of your shirt for safekeeping.

Play: Lantern
A light shines out in the distance through the blurry window, bobbing as if in the hand of some meandering carrier or borne on its own clumsy wings.

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You hesitate. Your aches and pains vote yes for whatever relief they can get, but you dream poorly enough on your own without needing to lock yourself in with the thing in your head and throw away the key.

"I've had worse," you say. "I'm all right."

Miss Clark looks poised to argue, but she pursues it only as far as pursing her lips. "Stay awhile, at least, won't you?"

"I shouldn't—"

"I'd feel better if you would." The girl's all big brown eyes and sincerity, as if she can't tell from the state of you that you've been sleeping rough all week. "After the things we saw tonight..."

After the things you saw tonight, you're not so eager to be alone either.

"All right."

Play: Perception
The apartment is tidy and the kind of on-a-budget elegant that any ladies' magazine would credit. It's arranged for entertaining about as well as a single room can be, but something gives you the sense that few visitors have entered.

Play: Moment of Respite
How long has it been since you've stayed anywhere awhile?

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You lie back and pretend not to see a thing as Miss Clark hurriedly takes down certain items of washing from the line strung over the stove. Whatever you took packs a wallop. The sofa starts to sink beneath you, and after a couple of hard startles you realize it's just the dope. Your limbs grow heavy and so do your eyelids. You reach with a slow hand for the reassuring shape of the locket fastened to a loop under your shirt. Its exterior is tarnished but smooth, and inside its protective shell lies a little piece of a painting. The one you fell in love with in Buenos Aires, two weeks before you fell in love with the man who painted it.

Your eyelids finally give up and slip shut. You can see it: the morning light sparkling on the sea. The sky so warm and rosy it puts a pang in your chest. João's strong, smooth hands wielding the scissors to trim a piece from the canvas.

"So you can look at it whenever you like."

Did he always know you would leave someday?

You can hear it: the sound of the waves and the whisper of his paint brush. Or is it only Miss Clark pouring fresh water into the basin and sweeping the floor?

"Hush. It's all right."

You press the locket against your chest and imagine it melting through flesh and bone and flesh once more to fill up the hole in your heart.

Play: Manual Dexterity
Artist's hands, graceful and paint-speckled. The way they moved...

Play: Voice of the Messenger
The thing behind your eyes, having no mouth, whispers all the same.

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It's hard to tell when you've closed your eyes. The light remains, floating out in the distance, and in time you start floating towards it. You dream, your feet skimming cold, wet grass and then bare earth warmed by the sun. South of here, but not all that far. Westwards, back some ways from the water to the still, marshy land where you were a boy.

There is the sound. Something blunt hitting something soft. You try to raise your head.

"Don't mind me, honey. Get on back to sleep."

The light carries you on, one moment a Coleman lantern and the next a pale yellow sun in an overcast sky.

Play: Baseball Bat
A group of gangly, half-grown youths play ball in a barren field in the fading light of autumn. One of them strikes the ground with his bat as he steps up to a makeshift home plate marked by a folded-up jacket.

Play: Gravedigger's Shovel
A child wakes in his bed in the dark, hearing the thump and slide of a shovel moving dirt in the yard outside.

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Your eyes take measure of the place as Miss Clark disappears behind the folding screen to wash her hands and face in the basin. The apartment is outfitted with older furniture, worn but polished. Cheerful yellow curtains frame the pair of windows, and a stout shelf bears a row of books, an assortment of trinkets, and a set of dishes that you have to look at twice to tell that they aren't all of a kind.

It suits her, you think, as she excuses herself out to the hall to fetch more water. Homey and sweet. She's a pretty girl, in a wholesome way, like the kind a different man than you might set his sights on at a different kind of church than the one you grew up in. The kind of girl who'd make her favorite suitor a peach pie or a blueberry buckle to let him know he could have a talk with her daddy.

You don't linger overlong on the question of how she came to be mixed up in matters like these. She has eyes—the kind that see what's in front of her. That's enough.

You wash up gratefully when she brings the water in, then sit quiet as she lights the potbellied stove and puts a kettle on.

Play: Backpack
A battered leather pack sits at your feet. You need something to do with your hands.

Play: Token of Faith
A wooden cross is affixed to one wall on top of the mint green wallpaper. Beside it is a framed sampler with the Lord's prayer stitched in red.

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It gets quiet on this side of town, and town-quiet is quiet enough to begin with. It's different from the city, where drunks and drug store rowdies might be staggering home at this time of night. Different from the countryside and the jungle, where insects drone all night and every rustle in the brush brings you bolt upright with your knife in your hand. The street is empty. The walls are thick enough that if anyone's husband is snoring or baby is fussing, it doesn't reach your ears.

You close your eyes, letting your head lean back for just a moment. Sleep tries to drop like a heavy curtain, and when you hurriedly pull it up again, Miss Clark is watching you with folded hands and assessing eyes.

"What is it?" you ask.

Play: Fine Clothes
In this light, the bloodstains show on your clothing. At least to anyone who knows that you did harm to something that bleeds purple.

Play: Meat Cleaver
You look like you need feeding up. It's a fixed quality these days.

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You dream of the apartment in Buenos Aires. The lingering smell of coffee and toast. Laughter in the street below, and the woman next door singing as she hangs her washing. Mid-morning sunshine pours thick and slow through the upstairs windows, tempered by a breeze off the water.

"Good light," João calls it, and your man would know. He paints with the stuff, streaks of oil that lie dull on the palette somehow becoming white and golden flecks on whatever he creates. His hands move like a symphony conductor's, lively and musical as he works.

Remember how he touched you?

The sofa bowing beneath your back. The smell of paint on his collar and the hot, hungry press of his lips against your own.

"What about your light?"

"It will be back tomorrow," he says with that bright, sweet smile of his, unbuttoning your shirt.

'So will I,' you meant to say, mean to say, and maybe you did. Maybe he even believed you.

Play: Knife
A wooden-handled painting knife with a diamond head, unhoned but sharp enough to make its point with sufficient thrust. You would do anything to protect him.

Play: Guts
A man's boots sit beside a large bed, and a half-filled backpack sits on top of it. It took courage to stay. It takes courage to leave.

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It speaks to you in a language that sounds like the cracking of small bones and the snapping of sinew. The words mean nothing, but you understand them all the same. It wants you to do as you're bid. It will reward you for your service. You will be as a king in the new promised land, and nothing will hurt anymore. There will be no indignities, not for you. No man living will look down on you. You'll sleep in a fine bed, with doting servants to warm it. You will never be hungry, never be alone.

"And what about João?" you ask, you always ask.

Its answer doesn't come by speech but in the sharp, acrid smell of smoke. Your man will burn, as all good things will burn when this world gives way to the next.

Play: Leather Coat
A heavy brown coat of unknown vintage, made from cowhide and lined with shearling.

Play: Dark Horse
Who is a man to believe in the old gods and yet refuse to serve them?

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In your dream, your body is a monster. It's too tall, too thin, stretched out in all the wrong ways in a fit of recent growing. Your bones are restless, your chest and stomach hollow. Your skin is fitted too tightly, and your blood runs too hot.

The only thing that feels right is swinging as hard as you can, feeling the satisfying jolt as you connect with a hurtling fastball. You hit what rightly ought to be a double and press your luck, long legs stretching as you make it to third. These are rare games. The pitcher, the catcher, the basemen—they all have responsibilities just like you. They work, they study, they serve the church. But sometimes the stars align behind the sun on a cool Sunday afternoon, and for a few hours you're all just American boys.

Play: Hiding Spot
Off the field stands a small forest of elm, ash and red maple, some ways into which lies a small hollow hidden from common view.

Play: On Your Own
The other boys disperse one by one to the sound of distant dinner bells and mothers calling them home.

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You dream of waking. In the middle of the night, you open your eyes to the comfortable shadows of the bedroom you share with your brother and sisters. There's a sound that woke you. Not the usual tossing and turning or getting up to use the pot. Not even voices, which you're accustomed to sleeping through when Daddy's friends gather in the next room to talk about church.

Thump...thump...thump...

It's a dull, damp sound. Someone steadily digging in the wet ground.

You wiggle out from the nest of blankets, careful not to disturb your older brother. The drop to the floor is a long one for a boy so small, and you need to stretch down slowly to make it a quiet one. On bare feet that have only known shoes on Sunday, you creep to the door. You have to reach up for the latch, straining on the tips of your toes.

You know that there shouldn't be a door at all. That only a curtain separates your bedroom from the bigger room that serves as kitchen, sitting room, and your father's bedroom all in one. But in your dreams the door is heavy and stout and swings outwards slowly into the night.

The sky is full of cold, bright stars. There's Daddy in the yard, digging a long, deep hole. Something big is bundled up next to him, something you don't want to look at. You stand there in the doorway, dressed only in your shirt, shivering in the cold.

Your father looks up and sees you. You shrink back, but he isn't angry. He doesn't shout.

He smiles, his white teeth flashing in the moonlight.

Play: Ancient Covenant
There are voices in the dark, chanting in an ancient tongue that only the foolish believe to be long dead.

Play: Grisly Totem
A large laundry pot bubbles away on top of a fire, sending up the smell of rendering fat as it boils something clean.

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You brush your backpack off as best you can before setting it on the coffee table. The contents are dismayfully damp, and you shift them around to try to minimize the spread. You take out your spare clothes, hoping to dry them a little near the stove if it's not too much trouble. Then you pull out a few more items, hoping to clear a path to the hidden pocket at the bottom where you keep a few dollars stowed for emergency.

The post office must pay decently, for Miss Clark to keep an apartment of her own instead of boarding at a rooming house, but you'd feel better leaving her a little something for the hospitality.

Play: Old Keyring
A tarnished brass ring from which hangs two skeleton keys. Its charm is the winder for a watch you no longer own.

Play: Improvised Weapon
The stone is roughly the size of a fist, pointed at one end and stained with flecks of dried blood.

Play: Newspaper
The broadsheet of La Razón has turned yellow and is slowly returning to pulp, its pages fused together into a makeshift sheath for a small knife.

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"Are you a church-goer?"

"Every Sunday, at the Christian Fellowship." She smiles. "But Lord, wouldn't sleeping in tomorrow be nice?"

You keep hold of your tongue. The world has enough meanness in it without you asking if what she saw tonight didn't change her mind. How she can square evil like that, taken in by her own two eyes and felt in her marrow, with a god who's never shown his face or had a thing to say on the matter.

She seems to hear you all the same.

"I'm sorry," you say.

She shakes her head with what you suppose someone might call grace.

Play: Grimm's Fairy Tales
A thick book bound in dark blue cloth with gold-stamped lettering lies on the shelf, out of place.

Play: Mariner's Compass
A compass fixed inside a stout wooden box sits on the table beside the lamp, pointing just slightly east of true north.

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Miss Clark disappears behind the dressing screen that separates the bed from the rest of the room and re-emerges shortly after with a clean white shirt in her hands. It's obviously old, but well-mended and smelling of cedar.

It's a man's shirt, you realize when she hands it to you. You wonder briefly if maybe she's a young widow, but for all you know it was simply left behind for mending by a gentleman friend or bought secondhand for working in. You stand up gingerly, unsure of whether to turn your back to change.

"You don't have anything I haven't seen before," she says, and then pauses. "Unless you've got tentacles or extra eyeballs hiding somewhere."

You laugh, a rusty sound. "No, ma'am. None of those."

Play: True Survivor
A man and a woman sit at ease, silently comparing scars and keeping their weapons close at hand.

Play: Five of Pentacles
The card reversed: Plenitude, recovery from financial loss or spiritual poverty.

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"I could eat a horse," she declares, and takes the two decisive steps into the six square feet of what might be called a kitchen.

A skillet comes down off the hook on the wall. A can of corned beef from the shelf. The meat cleaver came from who knows where, seeming to simply appear in her hand. She wields it upon an onion with strength, speed, and accuracy that would have you taking heed if you were a different kind of man with a different kind of intention.

Salt, pepper, and some kind of spice from a little twist of paper. A dab of lard. Soon enough the first spitting of fat and savory waft starts to fill up the little room, making your empty stomach grasp at nothing.

"Can I help?"

She smiles. "There's some bread in the cupboard, if you want to toast it up."

Play: Thermos
A silver flask sits on a small stool next to the peg that holds her mail bag.

Play: Stray Cat
Something moves on the fire escape: a handsome creature, sleek and striped.

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You dream of the hot metal taste of fear in your mouth at the sound of someone outside the gallery. The quickness of your hand reaching for the painting knife. João glancing up, poised to laugh and then immediately sobering at the look on your face.

"Calvin?"

"Shh." You sidle to the window, pressed to the wall and peering down into the alley.

Once upon a time, you were sure that anyone kind was either stupid or a liar. But João falls silent and holds still. He might see only the sunshine on the water and the starlight in the dark night sky, but he's loved who he's loved and danced where he's danced. He's no stranger to taking a punch, and you have no doubt he's gotten in a lick or two of his own.

You dream of his hand on your shoulder, squeezing gently.

"Calvin? It's all right. I'm here."

Play: Until the End of Time
Home lies on the Avenida Viceroy Vértiz, in the airy rooms above an art gallery. There is a light left on in the window each night.

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You dream of gently waving curtains painted with peacock feathers. The crisp, smooth coverlet creasing under the growing weight of your backpack. You'll try to smooth it out, but you'll only make it worse.

In stories, people steal away in the dead of night. How's that supposed to work, when you know you wouldn't be able to pry yourself out of his arms?

Birds are twittering on the rooftops and calling out over the water. Love songs and warnings. It's going to be a beautiful day. João is out at the cliffs, painting as the ships come in. The gallery isn't due to open until noon.

You're well away by the time he knows it.

Play: Until the End of Time
A slightly built man with round gold spectacles and a peacock blue pocket square sits alone in a study, and with an artist's sentimentality writes a letter each week that he drops—unaddressed save by name—into the mailbox on the corner.

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His name was Ben, and that's all you can remember about him. That and his hands fumbling with your belt, and his clumsy mouth 'practicing' with yours as you huddled together in the woods. His shoulders, broad, pushing against yours to see who would go over first. It was more jostling than sex, both of you seventeen and stupid.

There's no romance in it. Neither of you know what the word even means. The next world is coming soon, and if it's not coming soon enough, you'll get married to make sure your children are here to prepare the way. You both tell yourselves that this is just a way to burn off some energy, to keep yourselves clear-headed so you don't go and trespass with a girl. Or maybe that was his story that you swallowed down and made your own.

"Would you rather I miss him?" you'll ask João years later, laughing, tangled up in bed on a warm afternoon in Buenos Aires, trading tales. He's got that little crease between his eyebrows, the one he always gets when you talk about where you've been.

He takes your face between his hands and kisses you softly on the mouth. "I would rather think of people being kind to you."

Play: Until the End of Time
The fading of memory is a mercy sometimes.

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You dream of frog song and crickets. The whistle of wind through the trees. All sound and no sensation as the moon rises and the stars appear one by one like pinpricks pierced through the firmament.

Somewhere north of here is the city, and somewhere over the water is a whole other world you only know through maps and newspapers and voices on the radio. Boston, New York City, and Chicago—Egypt, Liberia, and France. They're each of them equally far away from where you are, one step further than the marsh you're sinking into will allow you to go.

Argentina. You haven't even heard of it, not then. Your world is small and dark and quiet, and almost comfortingly doomed.

Play: Until the End of Time
Travel long enough and far enough, and eventually you'll learn that every map is a lie.

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Who are you to refuse? You're a man who against all odds knows what a good thing feels like. A man who knows what it's like to give a damn about something in this sorry world.

"No," you say. "You won't have him."

You can believe in that too, with everything that's inside you.

Play: Until the End of Time
One day, the sun will go dark. The earth will cease to turn. All things will die. That day is not today.

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"Are you cold?"

Something settles gently on top of you, its warmth spreading like a drop of ink in water. You can smell leather and wool. A good winter coat.

Remember that night coming back from the dance hall, crossing the Plaza San Martín? Legs sweetly sore, sweat cooling down your back, the music of the tango sextet still writhing in your ears. João let go of your elbow and draped his coat over your shoulders. Tenderly, like a gentlemen. Like you would catch your death in fifty degrees. You pulled it around yourself like armor and felt invincible.

You stare down the waiting thing behind your eyes.

Play: Until the End of Time
An answer lies on your tongue, burned into it like a brand.

Chapter Text

Daddy sits at the table, making something. He's good at making things, everyone says so. He makes a living with his hands, which are big and clever and rough enough to scratch you when he pats your head sometimes. You come closer, peeking over the edge of the table. Your stomach twists when you see what he's making, but before you can scamper away, he lifts you up in his warm, strong arms and sits you on his knee.

"This is for you," he says, running his hands over the thing made of bleached bone and scraggly hair. "For you and your brother and sisters."

You reach out hesitantly. It's warm.

Daddy's arm tightens around your middle, and he makes a noise that sounds like laughter but isn't. "You're all going to have a better life than your Mama and me."

Play: Until the End of Time
Human hands have wrought such things as human minds can scarcely conceive.

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"Nehes, nehes, nehes! Anekh brak, anekh brak."

You learn the old tongue along with your letters and numbers, recited at church on Sunday mornings and Wednesday afternoons. Prayers to the past. Prayers to the darkness. Prayers to the world to come.

"Awake, awake, awake! All praise to you, all praise to you."

You chant with all of the breath in your childish lungs and all of the belief in your heart. You hold your head high, proud of your learning. Proud of your secrets.

Play: Until the End of Time
There are names that must not be spoken.

Chapter Text

"Now that looks mysterious." It's said in the tone of voice of a woman who's learned quick to mistrust a mystery.

You shake your head. "Just old gate keys, I promise."

You found them in the street in Mexico City, having had your own keys to the apartment and João's gallery melted down so no one else could get their hands on them. But you kept the keyring all the same. Like it holds the ghost of what used to be on it. Like maybe someday new copies could hang there again.

"Home?" she asks.

You look down, rubbing your thumb over the winder. "Yeah."

"Not anywhere around here, I'm guessing."

You shake your head, wondering when exactly you stopped looking like a man who was traveling and started looking like one with nowhere else to go.

Play: Until the End of Time
At an apartment above a gallery in Buenos Aires, the locks remain unchanged.

Chapter Text

Soft as you set it down, the rock still makes the same sound hitting the coffee table as it might hitting a skull.

Miss Clark stiffens, and you follow her gaze to the faint rusty speckles. They don't match the decor, which is all sunshine yellow and the bright hues of summer flowers.

"You've been doing this awhile, I guess," she says.

You nod, your hand covering up the rock. "I'm sorry."

"Please," she says, shaking her head. "Don't be."

She's not Pete, you remind yourself. No starry-eyed college kid who thinks you're all getting a medal at the end of this. She might be a nice girl with a good job, but she wouldn't have got here without knowing the world's a hard place. You don't need to explain it, not to her.

Play: Until the End of Time
A man and a woman sit in shared understanding, listening to the rattle of a freight train in the distance.

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"What kind of writing is that?" Miss Clark asks, tilting her head as if trying to read the smudged old print from upside down.

"Spanish."

"How about that," she says. "From Mexico?"

You hesitate. "Argentina."

"Oh, southern rate! Fifty cents per quarter ounce." At your quick, baffled glance, her smile turns sheepish. "I've never really traveled anywhere, but I can tell you how much it would cost for a letter to."

"Traveling's overrated." You pause, scratching the back of your neck, looking down at the newspaper. "You being an expert, maybe you can tell me something. Is there a way to send a letter to someone without telling where it came from?"

"Not if you do it the right way." She looks at you for a long moment, and then her smile turns from sheepish to conspiratorial. "But mistakes do happen. Would it be family someone was wanting to write?"

You think of João, home in Buenos Aires. Happy, you hope. Safe. Painting his seascapes and making friends with everyone who sets foot in his gallery. You nod.

She takes the kettle off the stove once it's started to bubble, and fetches a teapot covered in marigolds. "I've sent a letter or two like that myself. Sometimes you want your people to know you're all right, even if them coming to see you might not be for the best."

"Yes," you say quietly. "That's the way."

Her hand briefly rests on your shoulder. "Bring whatever you want to send to me, don't put it in the box. And a standard letter's best, nothing that needs weighing."

Play: Until the End of Time
For some, bosom friendship is formed by the confiding of secrets. For others, it is the tacit agreement that secrets need not be shared.

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She turns her head, her skin glowing in the lamplight and her long eyelashes casting shadows on her cheeks. She looks up at the cross for a long moment and then lays a hand on the cloth-bound book of fairy tales, shrugging her shoulders.

"I suppose...I believe in anything that tells us that we can be saved. The bible, or fairy tales, or even a good story at the pictures. Something that tells us we can save ourselves. That we can save each other."

What can you say to a thing like that? "It's a nice thought, Miss Clark."

She turns back with a soft laugh that isn't half as bitter as it ought to be. "Isn't it?"

Play: Until the End of Time
Long ago, in a faraway land, there lived a princess and a carpenter's son...

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"People know what's right and wrong somehow," she says. "Deep down, we know, whoever we are and wherever we come from. Someone must put that knowing there, don't you think?"

"People don't always know," you say flatly.

She's silent for a little while, looking at you with a searching light in her eyes. Then she nods, slowly. "Not always. But I think they come around to it."

Play: Until the End of Time
Knowing is worse. You remember that story from the bible, at least.

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Miss Clark makes tea and toast, daintily decanting the marmalade from the jar into a little porcelain dish. All the while keeping her purse close by so casually that you might not even notice it if you weren't attuned by habit to where every weapon in a room lies.

She's tougher than she looks, this girl with an itty-bitty gun and a van whose mileage she's clocking so she can make up the gas money to her employer. Tough enough to be a little wary of you. Tough enough to be kind.

For the first time a long while, you wonder if maybe there's hope.

Play: Until the End of Time
The light in the window above Florence's Millinery stays lit behind the curtains until just after one o'clock in the morning.

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You're fed and watered, with no argument brooked. The last of a good loaf of brown bread is toasted on the stove and spread with spiced marmalade. You drink the lion's share of a pot of sweetened tea, and blankets migrate from Miss Clark's bed to the sofa until you protest that she'll be sleeping with nothing but the ceiling over her.

"I'm up for a while," you say, revived by black tea and seeing the way she glances up every time the rain comes down a little harder. "I'll keep watch for a few hours."

She bites her lip.

"You don't have anything to fear from me," you say, looking down at your hands. "No reason to believe it, I know, but..."

"I know," she says, and her hand flutters onto your shoulder like a bird, like a blessing. "Thank you, Mr. Wright."

Play: Until the End of Time
Outside, the moon rises, fat and yellow in a sky as dark and still as the sea.

Chapter Text

Miss Clark puts the kettle on to boil as the hash fries up, moving with the efficient ease of a woman accustomed to doing for herself.

"I only have the one kind," she says, a touch apologetically, as she takes down a painted canister that proves to be full of tea leaves.

You shrug. "I only know the one kind. Two if you count with sugar and without."

She fetches the thermos flask along with two cups, setting it beside the stove. "In case you want more later tonight."

You know what she means. In case you get it in your damn fool head to sneak out before morning.

"Thank you."

Play: Until the End of Time
Fighting the darkest forces of the cosmos is hungry work, and settling down in the wake of it even hungrier.

Chapter Text

At the flicker of motion in the corner of your eye, you reach out and grab the closest thing to hand: a carnival glass ashtray with decent heft. You start forward, but Miss Clark glides ahead of you and opens the window with an unworried coo.

You blink as a ginger tomcat all but oozes over the windowsill, dropping light-footed onto the rug below to wind between Miss Clark's ankles.

"He always knows when I'm cooking, somehow," she says, leaning down to scratch it behind the ears, setting off a rusty purr that sounds like an engine starting.

The creature looks at you disdainfully with narrowed green eyes, then pointedly ignores you in favor of the hash.

Play: Until the End of Time
A home has no greater protection than a notched-eared cat.

Chapter Text

When this is over...

If there's a this left when this is over...

If...

Doped and weightless, your thoughts drift from your head and float away from quiet Arkham to the noisy din of Boston Harbour. You'll take a ship to Havana, then another to Rio. If your money runs out, you can jump a train from there. Hitch rides. Walk. Crawl on hands and knees if you need to.

"I'm going to bed," someone murmurs. "But you stay put, all right? You can stay here tonight."

The sofa sinks slowly under you, melting into the soft, cool feather bed that you haven't let yourself think of in four months lest it bring you to tears.

"My hero," João says, and kisses your forehead.

Chapter Text

You surface and drift, buoyed on the soft sounds of Miss Clark putting herself and the apartment to bed. The fading patter of rain on the windowpane. Something warm and soft settling atop you. A quiet and sweet "Goodnight, Mr. Wright," and your own sighed and muffled reply.

Goodnight, goodnight.

The tide rises again, covering you up and filling your ears with the sounds of gentle breathing. Deafened, you sleep, oblivious to the almost silent whisper of an envelope dropping from nowhere into the mail sack hung from the door—bearing your name, postmarked from Argentina.

Chapter Text

You sleep soundly that night, for all that your knees are bent over the arms of the sofa and your neck is fixing to crick. You bob along on the surface of miles and years, slowly catching back up with the here and now. The light spreads and thins, turning over into the pearly gray that comes just before the sunrise.

It's the milk truck that wakes you, or some other delivery van with business that predates the dawn. Your eyes flash open, but you manage to keep from jolting upright. You sit up gingerly instead, the pain in your head having eased and your bruises coming along to that dull, distant ache.

Miss Clark is still sleeping. You can hear her breathing soft and steady on the other side of the dressing screen that half stands in for a bedroom wall. Maybe you ought to clear out before she wakes, you think. Leave a dollar on the table for her trouble and spare her the awkwardness of asking you to leave.

You rub your eyes, trying to remember what you were dreaming of, and change your mind. Maybe making coffee first is the kinder thing to do.

Chapter Text

You stay for breakfast at Miss Clark's insistence. Toast and coffee, and the generosity of a can of peaches split between you. The rain has stopped and the sun's risen up, and the street below is coming to life on a lazy Sunday morning schedule.

A little smile tilts up on Miss Clark's lips as she watches the red and gold leaves skitter in the breeze down the sidewalk.

"You like it here?" you say, half a question and half plain statement of fact.

She glances your way, and then that smile lights up her whole face as her gaze travels around the comfortable little apartment, to the cheery yellow curtains, and out the window again to the line of shops and the houses beyond.

"I do," she says with the quiet sincerity of a woman who's been a place or two she didn't.

You nod and take a sip of your coffee, promising to yourself that you'll keep as much of it standing as you can.

Chapter Text

Eventually, the sky lightens. The birds start cheeping. You wake cotton-mouthed and twisted into a pretzel on the sofa, your head tender but tolerable. You rub the sleep from your eyes and sit up with a twinge in your back.

Down in the road, the milk truck is making its rounds. You can see the news stand opening up. Someone's sweeping off the church steps.

The bed creaks softly as Miss Clark gets up. There's a pause and some general rustling before she peeks out from behind the dressing screen in a ruby red dressing gown that matches her turban.

You clear your throat to get your voice working. "Another day."

"Another dollar?" she asks, smiling crookedly.

The corner of your mouth rises despite yourself. "Another day, at least."

After a night like the last one, that's not nothing.

Chapter Text

"Go fuck yourself."

A thing can't retreat when it's nowhere and everywhere at once. But the sound of twisting limbs falls silent. The smell of burning subsides.

Under the protection of Miss Clark's coat, you settle into peaceful dreams of cool nights and hot music. A hand on your elbow and a voice in your ear. Until the first light of morning, you walk through the park with João, home just a few steps ahead.

Chapter Text

You wake earlier than you should and lie silently on the sofa in the early hours, watching the pale light reach the trinkets that Miss Clark keeps on her shelves. They're all pretty little things: a delicate seashell lined with mother of pearl, a tiny wooden box carved with flowers, a brass bell with the figure of a dancing woman for the handle.

There's space on the wall above the sofa where the wallpaper is wearing thin. You think about what would fit there and wonder if she would like a painting. One of João's seascapes, bright blue and silver-shot to catch the light through that western window when the sun's going down. In the quiet before it can even be called morning, with a roof over your head and your cheek pillowed on the softest thing you've felt in weeks, you can almost imagine that you'll make it home to your man. That there will be beautiful things again, and friends to share them with.

He would like her, you think.

Chapter Text

"Hush up now and go to sleep," Miss Clark says, and in her domain all with ears to listen obey.

You still believe. Of course you do. You'd be as much a fool to deny the old gods as you'd be to deny the sun and the moon and the Saturday Evening Post. But believing in a thing more powerful than himself doesn't hold a man to serving it.

Your lips stop shaping your childhood prayers, and the thing behind your eyes grows cold in disappointment.

"That's better. You get some rest."

You don't owe your liberty to the gods, or to anything else that lives or pretends to. You were born with it.

Chapter Text

"It's a long way off. Someone's minding it. Someone's..."

You falter, blaming the hour and the knock to the head for loosening your tongue.

"...waiting?" Miss Clark asks, her eyes and voice going soft.

You nod. "I hope so."

She smiles as she fills up the teapot. "I know so."

For tonight, at least, you think maybe you can know it too.

Chapter Text

"Will you teach me?" she asks. "How to fight, I mean."

"You were doing pretty well tonight, from what I saw."

Her hands fold together in her lap. "Is 'pretty well' going to be good enough?"

You pause, giving the question all the thought it deserves. Then you shake your head. "Probably not."

"Then please," she says, "stick around and show me something better? I'm a fast learner."

Maybe someone else would tell her that keeping her windows locked and that derringer loaded might be enough if she keeps her head down. But you know that some people don't have to ask for trouble to get it all the same.

"All right," you say, leaving the rock where it lies on the table as she takes down the teacups. "We'll start in the morning."

Chapter Text

Dear João, you think as you sip what you're told is black Darjeeling in the comfortable quiet of the late night hour.

(My João, my man, my sweetheart.)

I miss you. I love you. I've met a woman you would love to paint, and she saved my sorry behind tonight with only a peashooter and some moxy. It's going to take the end of the world to keep me from coming home soon, so please—wait for me.

Chapter Text

"I've never been much for stories," you say, lying through your teeth as you lean tiredly back on the sofa.

She takes the book off the shelf and sets it down on the coffee table. "You could borrow these ones. If you wanted to, I mean."

You start to shake your head, but stop in the middle of it. Maybe you ought to take whatever weapon you can. "That's mighty kind of you, Miss Clark."

Who can say what happily ever after really means, but happily for now is a borrowed down pillow and someone else's gun at the ready. Even if it is only a derringer.

Chapter Text

She pours the tea when it's ready and offers you sugar, apologizing for not having any cream like you aren't a blood-splattered lunatic who's all but imposed himself unannounced at midnight.

"It's fine, it's more than fine," you say, wrapping your hands gratefully around the warm cup and inhaling the steam. "And don't mind me and my big mouth. I was raised up in...well, a funny kind of church."

"I see. Snake-handling?" she asks, settling into the chair across from you with her own cup and tucking her feet under her like she's in it for the long haul.

You laugh—a sound that almost startles you, stiff from lying untested for so long.

"Miss Clark," you say, "you don't know the half of it."

Chapter Text

Her teacup clinks daintily against your own with a high, pure ting.

"To making it through another day," she says.

You'll drink to that.

"To making it through another day."

Chapter Text

She turns in for the night, awkwardly quiet and careful as she goes about wrapping her hair and changing into her night clothes behind the dressing screen. You fuss with the blankets and then page through one of her magazines so she can hear just where you are, hoping that makes it easier for a woman who's obviously accustomed to her privacy.

The rustle of bedding and the sigh of a mattress. Self-conscious breathing that melts, in time, into something soft and steady.

It does you good to hear someone sleeping safe. You ease over silently onto the sofa and twitch aside the curtains to look out at the moon. Hoping that five thousand miles away from here, your man—alone or not—is sleeping just as well tonight.

Chapter Text

Your head grows heavy as the hour grows later, and the ache in it has eased in favor of the fullness in your belly. The two of you sit in the dim lamplight, sipping tea as you drowse. You can't remember the last time you closed your eyes willingly with someone else in the room. No, in point of fact you can.

"It's been a heck of a day, Mr. Wright," she says softly.

You set down your cup, giving in and curling up on your side on the soft, plush sofa. "It surely has, Miss Clark."

You're asleep before she puts the light out.

Chapter Text

Despite your appetite, you manage to comport yourself better than the cat. The three of you eat in contented quiet, cleaning your plates—or saucer as the case may be—until the dishes could pass as clean to the casual eye.

Once full, the cat immediately hops up to claim Miss Clark's lap. Glaring at you, it flicks its tail restlessly and resumes its purring, which rumbles into all corners of the room like a warding.

You settle back with your tea, giving the creature a small salute as sleep starts to creep up on you. Don't worry, you say with your unraveling posture and your backpack between your feet. That's not my window. This isn't my sofa. I'm just visiting for a little while.

Chapter Text

Something waits in the darkness behind your eyes. That's the only word for what it's doing, waiting. It doesn't stir, doesn't breathe, doesn't give one damn sign of being alive, at least according to any natural definition of living. It's simply there, cold and still. Patient and expectant.

With a mind you can only imagine filled with burning stars and the space between them, it considers the state of you. The bruises coming up on your knuckles and your knee. The throbbing ache at the back of your head where a fever-shook professor who read something he shouldn't have clocked you with a paperweight. It assesses, takes your measure. Considers whether you're finished yet. Considers whether you've been laid low enough to give in.

"Mr. Wright? Calvin, can you hear me? Pete, honey—stop gawking and help me get him in the van. I think he's had his bell rung."

Play: The Letter Carrier
Stella Clark, rattled but determined employee of the U.S. Post Office, briskly wraps her soft wool scarf around your neck before leading the way back to the mail truck. You wouldn't expect a respectable girl like that to be so handy with a derringer, or so insistent on dragging your sorry bones to safety.

Chapter Text

• Introduction
• Fortune or Fate
• The Letter Carrier
   • Painkillers
      • Cherished Keepsake
         • Manual Dexterity
            • Knife
               • Until the End of Time
            • Guts
               • Until the End of Time
         • Voice of the Messenger
            • Leather Coat
               • Until the End of Time
            • Dark Horse
               • Until the End of Time
      • Lantern
         • Baseball Bat
            • Hiding Spot
               • Until the End of Time
            • On Your Own
               • Until the End of Time
         • Gravedigger's Shovel
            • Ancient Covenant
               • Until the End of Time
            • Grisly Totem
               • Until the End of Time
   • "I've Had Worse"
      • Perception
         • Backpack
            • Old Keyring
               • Until the End of Time
            • Improvised Weapon
               • Until the End of Time
            • Newspaper
               • Until the End of Time
         • Token of Faith
            • Grimm's Fairy Tales
               • Until the End of Time
            • Mariner's Compass
               • Until the End of Time
      • Moment of Respite
         • Fine Clothes
            • True Survivor
               • Until the End of Time
            • Five of Pentacles
               • Until the End of Time
         • Meat Cleaver
            • Thermos
               • Until the End of Time
            • Stray Cat
               • Until the End of Time