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It all started when Jonathan Crane hid in the library during study hall, hunched over a book of Victorian ghost stories. He had learned the hard way about ever taking the books home; he didn’t want any delinquents ripping up school property that he would have to pay for, and he never knew what books his great-grandmother would turn out to disapprove of. He was only one table away from the Satanic Trio (as he’d heard a teacher call them when she hadn’t thought any students were listening), and that was probably why they turned their attention to him.
“Hey,” said Marcy. Jonathan recognized her vaguely from English class, where she’d written an essay on the influence of Tolkein on rock music which had earned some tepid praise from their teacher. “Are you doing anything? I mean, do you usually do anything during this period?”
Jonathan shrugged, for lack of anything else to say.
“Great!” she responded, as if trying to make up for a lack of enthusiasm on his part. “Have you ever played Dungeons and Dragons?”
Jonathan shook his head. He was aware of the concept from a few magazine articles asking whether the occult sensation was corrupting the youth, but he somehow doubted the supposed Satanic Trio was actually practicing black magic. It would have been awesome if they were, though.
“It seems complicated, but it’s really easy to pick up once you try,” said David, who was wearing a Star Trek t-shirt. “There’s some math, but nothing too hard.”
Brian, who’d once been caught reading the book The Shining by Stephen King during world history class, passed over a much-used book with a picture on the cover of a grinning demon. “It would be great to have a thief in our party,” he said. “Wait, that came out wrong! I’m not calling you a thief! It’s a role you can play in the group. I’m a magic-user and David is a fighter and Shelley used to play the thief but then she moved away between semesters. The idea is that we all fight monsters, and the thief is sneaky and stabs them in the back and disarms traps and stuff. Marcy is the dungeon master so she makes up the stuff we have to do. It’s really great!”
Jonathan’s instinct was to shy away from the trio, but he had to admit the demon on the cover was pretty cool.
***
Jonathan’s great-grandmother was just barely convinced to allow him to attend ‘study sessions’ with his classmates on Wednesdays after school, and probably only because Marcy’s mother made dinner for all the kids. He liked walking to her house with the group; they would still be harassed by bullies on the way, but the bullies were less likely to actually attack them (maybe there was strength in numbers, or maybe they knew beating up a girl might get them in serious trouble.) Once at Marcy’s place, they would spend time on homework with reruns of The Twilight Zone on tv in the background, then gather around the dining room table for a game as soon as they could plausibly claim they were done.
It took Jonathan a little while to get the hang of the rules, but David helped him out a lot when it came to character building and before long his thief character (Ulysses the Swift, who sought treasure and glory to prove himself to the village that had cast him out) was pretty well optimized. Marcy would set deadly trap-filled mazes when she was feeling kind and dramatic political situations when she was feeling unkind, and the three boys developed into something of a comedy trio as they bumbled their way through them.
One afternoon there was an episode of The Twilight Zone about a small town driven mad and tearing each other apart from paranoia. This gave Jonathan an idea.
“Do you guys mind if I try and DM a one-shot adventure?” he asked. Nobody minded. Marcy said it would be nice to be a player for a while.
He ran a game about a villain called the Scarecrow that sowed fear in its wake, using fear toxin instead of acid in its traps. Everyone agreed it kicked ass.
***
Jonathan didn’t get the courage to talk to his friends about his great-grandmother for months, but he finally started obliquely answering questions about why he had scratches or bruises. The others didn’t hassle him over it, and nobody told their parents when he asked them not to. Still, he didn’t tell them the whole truth until the school year was almost over.
“I’ve got to talk to someone about this, but you have to promise not to think I’m crazy,” he said one afternoon during study hall.
“We’d never think you’re crazy!” said Brian, who was himself often called crazy for weird but harmless compulsions and obsessive talking points.
“Yeah,” said Marcy, and David leaned in, performing an unconscious imitation of a movie psychologist.
“Well.” Jonathan averted his eyes. “Sometimes my great-grandmother does weird stuff to me.”
“Sex stuff?” asked David, without any malice or salaciousness in the question. (Brian and Marcy each smacked him nonetheless.)
“No, nothing like that. But when she’s really mad, she-” if he said it out loud, he knew it would sound ludicrous. “She makes me put on this old suit and locks me in this building outside. I swear to god I’m not making this up, but birds attack me there. Every time. I don’t know how she does it, but she’s making them somehow. I’ve been thinking it has to do with the scarecrow outside somehow because they always seem to hang around it instead of being scared away.” He looked up at his friends with pleading eyes. “You have to believe me, I swear I’m telling the truth!”
His friends took a moment to respond, and he was deathly afraid someone would burst out laughing.
“I think crows can recognize faces,” Marcy said. “Maybe she’s training them to attack you?”
“I don’t think we should rule out witchcraft,” said Brian, without a touch of irony in his voice.
“Or chemicals,” added David. “My parents keep some acid for when I’m away at camp or with my grandparents. They think I don’t know about it. I don’t know, maybe there’s something we can do?”
Jonathan absolutely did not cry to hear his friends’ responses, but it was a close thing.
***
The next time his great-grandmother sent him to the old aviary, Jonathan went calmly and without complaint. She waited outside the aviary to hear the screams, and there were indeed screams- but they weren’t human screams. The birds cried out in terror and swooped in bizarre patterns. When she unlocked the door and opened it a crack just to see what was happening, several crows flew right into her head and knocked her over.
“You aren’t the only one who can play with drugs,” Jonathan said. For the first time in his life, the suit seemed to grant him an air of suave authority. “My friends were the ones who suggested we look at the suit, and do you know what we found under the school microscope? I don’t know exactly what it was myself, but you painted it in something. Something almost clear. Something chemical. Maybe I’ll try burning it to see what happens.”
He took a step towards the quivering old woman.
“Crows learn very easily,” he went on. “They used to come back to this suit because you made it smell so appetizing, but after this dose of LSD, I think they’ll keep away. I learn easily, too. Next time you want to hurt me, you’re going to have to do so permanently.”
He would be the one who killed her, though. Shortly after his high school graduation, Jonathan’s great-grandmother died of a heart attack brought on by the remaining LSD he had been storing for just such an occasion. Nobody thought the old lady’s natural death was at all suspicious or worthy of an autopsy. If Marcy, Brian and David suspected anything, they never brought it up.
***
Jonathan and Marcy went to prom together. They’d been worried it might ruin the group dynamic, but David made gagging noises and Brian warned them to look out for pigs’ blood and that was it. He bought a suit at a thrift store with money her parents had given him to clean out the garage, and she wore a bridesmaid dress that she had dyed dark purple and cut up, and they managed to look weird-on-purpose. The mere fact that they were there and having fun was enough to unnerve their classmates, and that on its own was worth it.
Marcy kissed him and they fooled around in the parking lot. They reached second base but were both too nervous to go any farther. It still felt like a triumph.
***
None of the D&D group went more than a state away for college (David stayed in his own town to work on his dad’s farm, which was alright by him.) They worried that they wouldn’t keep in touch, and indeed they started to drift apart until a new setting was released for D&D: Ravenloft, the Domain of Dread, specifically made for horror games. Everyone called each other and agreed that they had to meet up for Jonathan to run a Ravenloft game, and that was what they did during breaks and holidays. He brought back the Scarecrow as a villain, even creepier now that it had a whole setup to terrorize.
“You should write horror books or something,” said Brian, and the others agreed. Jonathan was flattered, but shook his head.
“I feel like scaring people wouldn’t be fun if I had to do it for work,” he said, and meant it.
***
Jonathan started teaching at Gotham University shortly before the Batman sightings started. Marcy, Brian and David each independently called to ask him if he was Batman, and he gave them each the same exasperated sigh in response.
***
One day, Jonathan’s psychology students were alarmed in class by the sound of a gun. There were shrieks and jumping, and then their professor revealed a hidden tape player. Everyone laughed in relief, though a few people also groaned.
“You see how you all reacted?” Jonathan asked them. “If you’d had time to think rationally, you’d know there was very little possibility that I would actually shoot a gun in class, but your fear and adrenaline took over. It’s a reaction that can lead to panic- named after the wild god Pan, as in the story The Great God Pan by Machen- but it can also save your life.”
He got reprimanded for it, and falsely promised to be less dramatic in the future.