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Willy dropped Close’s son with a snap of his fingers. Why he genuinely thought calling him a ‘boomer’ would paralyze him was evidence of the Close lineage’s stupidity.
He crumbled where he was trying to run past, and Willy enjoyed the last edges of the high watching Close’s son struggle to remain conscious before going limp.
Willy made eye contact with the self-appointed leader of the group, Darryl Wilson. The man slid the backdoor of the minivan shut amidst one child’s particularly loud screaming and told the spare child, his son, to keep the doors locked. Wilson thought he wouldn’t be perceived telling the boys to escape when he was distracted, but Willy did hear. He scoffed, disappointed and annoyed. How firmly did he need to make his point clear?
He took the few steps over to where Close’s son laid unconscious, hooked a foot underneath his stomach, and rolled him onto his back.
It would be better if it was Wilson whom he had knocked unconscious. Not that Close seemed particularly attached to his son, the idiot was still waiting on the bridge, but harvesting the daddy magic would be harder if the boys watched their fathers be harmed.
That was what Ry’Oak was good for at least.
Willy set a boot against the man’s throat, not applying pressure yet but making his point clear. The child, the Asian one with the too-long black hair, was still screaming for his father to wake up. Clearly, more of the Close brood’s overwhelming intelligence.
“Are you done?” Willy asked the group.
The minivan lurched forward, and the one who turned into a tree, Ry’Oak’s son, lifted the front wheels off the ground to keep it from plowing forward. He told his twin sons to stop, becoming emotional, and Willy rolled his eyes at the dramatics. If they had attempted running him over, he could have recollected the children.
“If you give up, it will be much easier for them.”
Wilson was still gripping the minivan’s door closed but was focused more on Close’s son than him. His expression was rigid with anger, but he had yet to respond. Willy wondered if killing Close’s son in front of them wouldn’t put a stop to this drawn-out waiting as they thought of another plan, but no, having them voluntarily give up their children was better.
He was running out of patience with them though. Sure, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, but it was fun to break people apart.
Ron was looking at him with that pitiful, fearful expression again. It was the same sad look he would get as a child when he couldn’t figure out why something bad was happening to him. As if he couldn’t understand why he was facing the direct consequences of something he had brought on himself.
“You should have warned them,” Willy told him.
Ron’s eyes averted and his shoulders raised slightly, defensively, like all of the other times he had been a disappointment and knew he was about to be hit. He would if he continued this façade.
A blonde head appeared from the driver’s side, one of Ry’Oak’s twin grandsons named after fucking birds, and shouted, “We will never live with you! Never! Father! Kick his ass!”
The children inside the van began a chant of ‘kick his ass’ as if the adults’ motivation had simply been lacking.
Willy felt the itch of wanting to stomp down, solely for the juxtaposition it would create against the children’s naïveté, but no, again, no. He could not kill every single father in front of his child no matter how tempting it was as a way to get them to shut up. It was the betrayal that mattered, to have the children visibly see their fathers disown them and know they were abandoned as they rode away on the bus.
However, the last straw was Ron raising his head and ignoring him to squint into the tinted backseat windows.
“Huh?” Ron called stupidly.
The backseat window rolled down partially, and the child Ron had picked up from a marriage stuck his head and arm out and pulled Ron’s head into a hug.
“I said I love you, and we’re going home to see Mom together. Right?” Willy could hear him say over the chanting.
“Oh. Y- yeah.”
The boy let go. “Good. Now kick the stupid fish fucker’s ass. I believe in you, Dad.”
It was a poor bluff, saying he loved Ron, saying he believed in him, but Ron being an idiot didn’t see through it. He no longer looked afraid, and it pissed Willy off enough to get the highest initiative entering combat even with the disadvantage from Ry’Oak’s son shifting into a tree for some godawful reason.
He used a non-lethal Finger of Death against Ron.
For the second time in under a minute, Ron’s knees buckled and his head tilted. He slumped sideways, already unconscious before he hit the ground. The boy thinly connected to Ron reached out as if he could catch him but, of course, couldn’t. Wilson noticed too late to summon his Spirit Shield. Now, Willy had his full attention.
Willy walked forward. Ry’Oak’s son cast Entangle, but everything that touched his robes rotted away with the slightest resistance. From behind the two remaining adults, Willy could see Ron’s step-son turning from anger into fear. That was nice. At least someone understood the situation.
With child safety locks in the van, Willy figured he could drive it across the bridge after knocking the fathers unconscious. Maybe if Close ever found the braincell needed to cast the Sleep spell, Willy could drive without the sons screaming his ears off.
Wilson cast something barbarian-related about ancestral rage, but it was all time-delays at this point. All more opportunities to unequivocally show that he was strongest, the better choice of father. At least Wilson had given up on fleeing.
Four figures in different class-specific outfits appeared in front of Wilson. A tall paladin in blue. An Asian man in decorative dress but the black accents of a rogue. A short man in thick, red fighter armor. A blonde woman with a flapper-styled bob in green monk garb.
Wilson seemed surprised at however the spell apparently misfired and switched to trying to capture the four figures’ attention. The four figures, however, had become quickly occupied talking to each other in tones of surprise and happiness. The one in the sky blue robes of a paladin attempted to hug the two men of the group with the fighter returning the embrace and the rogue pushing him away with reproach in his voice.
Wilson was speaking and gestured towards where he was approaching, and the members seemed to gradually pay more attention as their posture straightened. Despite Wilson’s confusion of whom he had summoned, he was trying to capitalize on it nonetheless. Willy doubted four ancestral ghosts would have much of an effect even if Wilson was at a high enough level for them to fight.
The paladin tilted his head at Wilson and released the short fighter to turn towards Willy with the three others following suit. The face had scars lining the sides of his eyes and across the bridge of his nose like someone had taken a boxcutter and slashed across without hitting the eyes themselves. Willy could not place why the face several yards away was distantly familiar.
Then the paladin beamed with elation. “Willy!’’
Willy’s stomach lurched with the recognition. Before he could begin to process what Stud was doing here, his uncle appeared in front of him with a Teleport’s pop and lunged forward. Willy stepped backwards, half forming a spell to counter, but was wrapped into a tight hug. In his surprise, Willy could only process that, besides the scars surrounding his eyes, Stud looked exactly as he did in 1939. The bastard was still taller than him.
Stud ruffling his hair as he passed through the living room. Stud describing Broadway and his dream of being a movie star long past the point when Willy cared to listen. Stud crying over his dead cats.
Stud standing in the small living room with a lunch sack over his shoulder. “I’m heading out, Willy. I’ll see you for dinner.” and not leaving.
“Then go,” the thirteen year old had muttered under his breath. Stud was interrupting his breakfast, again, like he did every day he went to work and thought Willy would miss him.
“I’ll see you later tonight, Willy. Try to go to school today, if you feel up to it, and stay out of trouble. Alright?” His hand touched the door handle but didn’t turn it. He added with an expectant look, “I love you!”
He still didn’t leave, waiting for something.
Willy gave up. “Just go already! Bye!”
Stud bursted into a grin that drew laugh lines across the corners of his eyes at the victory. Only then he opened the door and called as he shut it, “Bye, Willy!”
Willy glared as the door closed and huffed. Dumbass.
“You’ve gotten so tall,” Stud whispered, voice thick with emotions, as Willy tried to push him off, feeling smaller and younger at the reminder that someone had known him when he was once small and powerless. What was Stud doing here?
The operator girl repeated with a note of confusion, “He says, and I quote, ‘Despite everything, will you tell him that I love him and that I don’t think he should have any children in the future?’ Is there something I should tell him back?”
Willy had laughed and said that he definitely was having children. And when Stud was declared a missing person, Willy knew that Stud had left him, whether he planned to or not.
Stud smelled like sulfur and felt like something that set his nerves on edge. Willy didn’t dwell on it as he shoved Stud off of him. Stud looked slightly hurt that he had been rejected but was glancing up and down at his robes and appearance. Ignoring him, Willy looked back towards the three summoned practitioners in front of the minivan for some form of comprehension.
“That’s your nephew?” the Asian man called over, both scornful and interested. He studied him before giving an amused smirk. Stud had been talking about him to strangers again. Sixty years. Sixty years after disappearing. The man propped his hand on his hip and asked with a laugh in his voice, “Strangled any cats lately?”
Ancestral Guidance. It wasn’t hard to connect the Asian man to Close and his son. Which meant Wilson summoned the other omega fathers’ parents and Stud as an ill-conceived means to stop him.
It was almost funny as a strategy, but it mainly pissed him off.
Willy reflected the man’s amusement back. “No. I’ve moved on to beating your grandchildren.”
Willy enjoyed watching the man frown, confused, and then piece the statement together. Noticing Close’s son behind him to the comment. The superior attitude slipped, and a handgun was drawn from its holster as he stalked forward. “You son of a whore.”
“Willy!” Stud shouted in anger and concern at the beginnings of a fight. Instinctively, he drew on magic, and a portal to an empty field opened. He grabbed the back of Willy’s hood and pulled him backwards into it. It closed at the start of Willy’s indignant shout.
Two men were unconscious on the ground.
Stud couldn’t explain how he understood the magic system, but he knew as he raised his hands and cast Aura of Life that the spell would revive them from necrotic damage and keep further necrotic damage from occurring within a thirty foot radius of himself for up to ten minutes.
The burly man said that they were trying to escape with their children and Willy, amongst other fathers of the men, was stopping them.
There was very little to misinterpret, but Stud wanted there to be a misunderstanding somehow. He knew there wasn’t. Willy had likely gone unchanged when he had, for all intents and purposes, died in Tennessee, but he wished that Willy had. It would have been nice to come back and know the short time spent raising him wasn’t for nothing.
“Willy will come back in one minute,” Stud said loud enough for the people near the vehicle to hear and felt the bitterness bubble up in the back of his throat. He nearly added an apology for Willy’s actions but didn’t. Willy wasn’t a child anymore. He couldn’t swoop in and try to clean up his messes.
He had been hoping for some quiet, self-contained insanity when he finally sealed the eldritch god. Instead, he was trapped again in a situation he didn’t fully understand. The rest of the Blue Planet crew seemed unharmed at least.
Meryl was silent except for lowering the gun. The man who was possibly Meryl’s grandson--based on Willy’s taunt at least--was groaning but starting to sit up from the Aura of Life restoring his health to a point above consciousness. The man waking up by the vehicle was taking longer to sit up but quietly mumbling something about being alive to himself.
“Explain, and be quick with it,” Hildy snapped, and Stud felt relief that she wasn’t directing the demand at him but the burly man.
“Who are you, fine-? Actually, never mind. Darryl Wilson.” He stuck out his hand. Robert took it. Handshake completed, he continued, “Our fathers, three of our fathers—I don’t know where mine is—kidnapped our sons for ‘daddy magic’. We’re trying to leave with our sons, but Willy, who is your nephew if I heard that right?—he was stopping us and hurt Glenn and Ron. I was actually trying to summon my father. Or someone higher in authority. Thank you for the help. Who are you four fine gentlemen, or three gentlemen-”
“So leave, while you can,” Hildy interrupted. She was different than Stud remembered, more severe. Or it was the robes or any number of things, “while he is gone. Besides Stud, I doubt the rest of us have anything to do with this.”
“I would appreciate it if you could help, even to give us a headstart,” Darryl answered, skirting between polite and firm. “And, I would like to know your names.”
Robert spoke with a gesture to each of them. “Robert Wilson. Hildy Russet. Stud Stampler. Meryl Streep.”
What sounded like the start of Hildy arguing for them to leave and Darryl Wilson introducing himself again was interrupted. The vehicle’s doors rolled backwards, which was impressive engineering, and a boy shouted, “Nick!” as another boy sprinted across the stone ground.
The running child shouted for his dad, and Stud stepped out of his way as he tackled the man who had been starting to stand backwards onto the ground. He clung to him tightly, and the man started patting his back and trying to soothe him. The boy looked around Willy’s age the last time Stud had seen him. Meryl holstered the gun and cautiously approached, looking more than a little skeptical at his alleged descendants.
The group quieted to listen to the man’s reassurances that he was not badly hurt before Darryl Wilson called to the man, Glenn, that they had less than a minute to escape in the ‘minivan’.
This urgency became derailed by Glenn noticing Meryl observing them. “Holy shit, Meryl Streep? Like, the Meryl Streep from The Cheat who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the 1930s? Dude, I have done so much research on you.”
Which derailed any frustration Meryl might have had at being… summoned? Suddenly assigned descendants?— and launched a short mystery of ‘which one of your parents never knew their father’ and ‘oh shit, Lao Lao always said she fucked a famous actor in the late 30s but no one believed her’ followed by Glenn beginning to explain true crime podcasts as a concept for how he knew Meryl disappeared in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in the summer of 1939, leaving only a crater near the alleged final film location for The Heart’s Greatest Desire. The young boy had let go of his father and was wiping his eyes and nose as subtly as he could. The man and Meryl were diligently ignoring him, Meryl out of clear discomfort and Glenn simply seemed too absorbed. His hand remained against his son’s back and was patting him though.
From near the rolling doored vehicle during this exchange, Robert asked, “You said your surname is Wilson and you were trying to summon your father? Are you- are you related to a woman named Sally?”
“Sally was my father’s mother’s name. You said your name is Robert Wilson?”
“Ah, y- yes. Robert Wilson. I, uh, did she… did Sally marry someone else named Wilson?”
“No? My father said that his father died before he was born. My grandmom never married. Are you- do you think-”
“Oh. Oh. Oh no.”
Stud listened as the conversation delved into a heavy but eventually pleasant back and forth about Robert’s son and Darryl’s father, who was apparently an excellent father even without Robby around. Stud got the sense that Robby was holding back a lot of emotions he might want to talk about later.
The person who was part tree, but in a way that did not cause more than a one point loss of sanity for Robert and Meryl, turned back into a human. Hildy commented, since they were the only blondes amongst the group, whether Bear wouldn’t be their common connection. This conversation quickly became derailed by twin boys emerging from the driver’s side door to fight and speak with her, respectively, because she had a dagger in her belt and looked twenty-three years old.
With the rest of the Blue Planet crew quickly becoming occupied with their grandchildren and some of their great-grandchildren, Stud watched a man dressed in scuffed, collared work shirt, missing his trousers, being fussed over by an African American boy calling him dad near the minivan. Four members of the Blue Planet crew, four fathers protecting their children. It wasn’t difficult, and Willy never listened to him when he was alive. Why would that change with his death? What would stop Willy from having a child?
It wasn’t fair to talk to the man. Stud knew, having more or less died, he couldn’t stop Willy’s behavior if he hadn’t changed. He only arrived now because he was seemingly summoned by accident. But, he still felt guilty for not being able to have possibly protected the child.
The man’s glaze swept from his son to Robert talking to Darryl Wilson to across the general area until they met each other’s eyes. The man glanced around area again, as if to make sure, and then tilted his head slightly at him. Stud knew that the man had drawn the same conclusion as he had.
They both knew Willy, but from different angles. Different points in his life. Strange tie to bind two people.
It would be better if he focused on stopping Willy. Stud slowly approached under the mental excuse of creating distance from where the portal would open again. The man didn’t seem opposed to him walking towards him, but the boy at his side was giving him a severe warning glare so he kept six feet of distance instead of immediately wrapping the man into a hug.
“Um, so you’re my… uh.” The voice was in a higher register and rough with awkwardness. Stud felt himself immediately warm to it. The man had some resemblance to Carl and Willy, or enough for Stud to imagine a resemblance. He smiled with guilt and happiness mixing that Willy didn’t take his advice to never have children. He had two more family members now because of it.
“Great uncle,” Stud supplied. But that was never very accurate, and he wanted to talk to his grandson like a grandfather. The grandson that he missed the childhood of. The boy next to him--his great-grandson?--glanced at him neutrally but didn’t object as he closed the distance and took a seat to be at their eye level.
“I prefer granddad, if that is not too strange. I took Willy in when his father died.” He gave up trying to hold back his excitement and continued happily, “I am so happy to meet you. You have every inch of the Stampler good looks! I’m sorry for the balding, but I promise my own father had it too and it gives a certain regal look, if you know what I mean, after another decade. Word, you are young though older than I look now. Geesh, this is confusing, but I am really happy to meet you.”
“Wow. S- so you’re my gran- grandfather?”
The man’s eyes seemed caught on the scars across his eyes, and Stud suddenly worried his appearance was too violent. He had caught sight of himself on the train after he had gotten his sight back. The injury looked worse than he had imagined. Maybe the scars were too much to see, too random and disconcerting for how Stud wanted to look in front of his grandson. How he wanted to be. Maybe he was too scarred past a point of comfort.
“You’re so nice,” the man blurted out. Stud felt his anxiety vanish.
Ron. That was the name Darryl Wilson had used for one of the two injured people when he was trying to quickly explain the situation. Ron Stampler.
“Dad, please. We really need to go. Nick, come on! We got to go!” the boy next to him shouted. The timer of the spell was nearing thirty seconds.
“Wait a minute, Terry. Uh, sir, this is Terry Junior. Terry, uh, I think this is your great-grandfather. And Paedan is your uncle, I think.”
“What?” Terry Jr. gave him a confused look.
“What?” Stud repeated with a sudden lurch. Willy had two children?
“I don’t really know, but I think? Anyway,” Ron stumbled on, looking back up at Stud, then averting his eyes to the side then returning, “do you love me?”
“Of course,” Stud answered without thinking much of the question. It wasn’t a hard question, after all. “I love you a lot. I think you’re stellar, you know, from talking to you now. Why you asking like I won’t?”
“I- I don’t really know. You do? My father, Willy. You know him. I was never really sure.”
“You weren’t sure of what?” Stud started to feel something rising in his chest. A worry becoming confirmed. A frustration and fear turning into hatred that he never truly felt before towards his son. “He didn’t hurt you growing up, right?”
“Oh. Uh, well, y- yeah. Sometimes.”
Twenty seconds left.
Willy. Willy, you didn’t. Tell me you didn’t.
“Can I hug you?” Stud asked.
The boy next to him muttered, “Jesus fucking Christ, can we get in the van now?”
“Uh, s- sure,” Ron said with some nervous enthusiasm.
Ron was a small man and fit snugly underneath his chin. Stud wrapped his arms around Ron’s shoulders and ran a hand across his short hair while Ron squeezed his sides. His hair was very soft against Stud’s fingers and thin in places that suggested the gradual balding would continue. He smelled of sickness though the smell was probably from Willy’s attack.
Stud had to remind himself that Ron was an adult even as he nuzzled the top of his head with his nose. Ron could take care of himself without him. A weight rolled uncomfortably around in his heart that Willy hadn’t listened to the advice to never have kids, but Ron seemed like a good man. His son clearly loved him enough to worry over him.
Stud ran a thumb against Ron’s cheek as they pulled away and cupped his cheek. He smiled. This was his grandson. He was a granddad and great-granddad.
“Are you going to kiss me?” Ron asked, sounding like he was confused but not entirely opposed if he was.
Stud stifled a laugh but quickly kissed Ron’s forehead. He might as well act like a granddad. If only he had some Werther's hard candies to give. He pulled them both to stand.
Five seconds.
“I need to talk to Willy,” Stud told Ron reluctantly and gently pushed him towards the vehicle where his son was pulling him. The great-grandchildren seemed much more alert in shoving their parents away during the last few moments. Notably, Meryl’s great-grandson had maneuvered his father and Meryl both across the distance even as they grew deeper in conversation.
Stud turned back towards the blackened portal opening in the air.
“I can deal with him,” he said for the other Blue Planet crew members’ benefits. They had been through enough. They didn’t deserve this, being thrusted into dealing with Willy’s anger.
“We’re not leaving,” Robert said because he was a good person like that. Always had been. He had come upstairs to save them at the research facility when he could have left. For a dizzying moment, Stud saw Robert being consumed by the god, but he made himself not think about it. That was somewhere else, another time.
As the portal opened wider, Hildy said, “We will guard the car.”
Meryl did not look enthused at the duty. Stud wanted to say something to him, say something else to the three of them, but he didn’t have time. They never really had time. It was enough that they were here, together.
The smell of stewing decay poured off of his son exiting the portal, and Stud approached to meet him.
“Stud,” Willy growled.
How embarrassing this was, Stud thought. Disciplining a grown man. All because I hoped he would change. But he hurt his own child. He kidnapped his grandchild. He hurt his own child.
“Willy, I am very angry at you right now,” Stud said, trying to keep his voice even, but all he could remember of the thirteen year old that Willy had been was his apathy when Stud found his two cats dead in the living room. Stud couldn’t think of what to do then as he couldn’t think what to do now because you don’t do that, Willy. That isn’t right. You know that isn’t right.
The thirteen year old glared out the window instead of meeting his eyes.
“Willy. Stop ignoring me. Look at me. Why did you kill them?”
There was only the flat glare and no answer. He never got an answer for any of it. At least not in the two months Stud had with him before he left for Oak Ridge.
It felt so fundamental to understand that you don’t hurt people or animals, especially ones under your care. Stud had tried to model it to him so hard but-
“Get out of my way, Stud.”
There was a disconnect. Why was there still a disconnect? Between them. Between Willy and how a man was meant to live their life.
“Willy.”
“Stud.”
And he couldn’t think how to say what he wanted, needed, to say to stop him or to understand him.
Willy snapped his fingers at him, but nothing happened. The Aura of Life was still in effect.
He was willing to hurt him. There weren’t any words to say then. That didn’t mean Stud could hurt him back, he knew as they drew closer to each other.
Frustration grew on Willy’s face. He snapped again, and Stud was engulfed in fire.
Stud put himself out by dropping thirty gallons of water onto his head. It put him off-balanced in reacting, and Willy landed a punch against his cheek and another against his stomach in quick succession.
It hurt but not by much. Willy was older, and Stud got the sense that he hadn’t punched someone in a while. He did it because he wanted to physically hit him. To show he could and wanted to physically hurt him.
He had gotten old. The thought hurt enough for Stud to refrain from swinging back, only headbutted him and rammed his shoulder against Willy’s chest to push him backwards into a stumble.
“You disappeared. Now you want a say in what I do?” Willy snapped. His forehead was bleeding slightly, and he wiped the trickle of blood off with irritation. Stud's own head hurt. He didn’t think he had headbutted him correctly. It was all he could think to do at the time.
They both were hard-headed over stupid things. How many times did they fuss at each other over what fish to buy at the market on San Dimas weekends? Willy calling his tastes Northern bullshit and Stud insisting that he wouldn’t buy a fish he didn’t know how to cook.
Willy possibly only said it in irritation, but it hurt more than the punch or acknowledging that Willy had grown into late middle-age. Regaining enough sanity to realize that he had orphaned Willy again had hurt tremendously.
“I did try,” Stud pleaded as Willy charged a spell. “Willy, I tried really hard to get back to you. I didn’t know-”
Willy released a thunder drop, and Stud had enough of a reaction to make a dexterity save and take only half damage by dodging. His instinct for this new world told him that it had a large range. He turned in time to watch Meryl and Robert become struck by the shockwaves and dissipate with the breaking of the ancestral spell.
The analytical part of his mind, the part that understood inherently how this world worked, said that Meryl and Robert were only at level three classes in incorporeal form. They weren’t truly killed by the attack because they were not truly a part of this dimension or alive in the way that Hildy and he were alive and part of the dimension. They could become resummoned, or specifically the ‘they’ of the parts of them brought to this realm when Stud and Hildy were sucked in could be. The ‘they’ that were tied to Hildy and Stud’s memories of them.
Oh. Stud looked to Hildy across the space. She released the barrier that protected the escaping vehicle. From her withdrawn expression, she already knew what he was now remembering.
He had the Doodler inside of him. Under his control, as much as you could control a god by its name. She had a piece of it inside of her too, separately, but he had Meryl and Robert’s true souls. Because the Doodler had killed them, and he commanded the Doodler once and been drawn into this realm through the ending of the spell. He had been trapped with it, tied to it, ever since, until his insanity faded enough to process where he was not. Then Robby’s grandson had summoned him from the self-contained plane and Stud answered because it was awful being alone, cycling through states of sanity.
He had the box, but he didn’t want to use it.
Stud stood and turned back to Willy, who was occupied watching the grandchildren escape in the vehicle. He turned his head and glared, hate-filled, with the intention of killing Stud and Hildy as quickly as possible clear in his expression.
And he could. If Stud let him, he would. And Stud might have let him, if not for Ron and his son, Hildy and Meryl and Robert, and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren trying to escape. He needed to take responsibility for leaving Willy, and right now, that responsibility involved stopping him from following the van.
Stud had a knife in his robes. He wasn’t sure if it was the same one he had used in Oak Ridge, but a part of him thought so. It was more cinematic that way. Bookended. If Willy was here because of him, he needed to end it.
A vile taste rested in his mouth because he couldn’t imagine himself stabbing Willy. He never wanted to hurt Willy. The last time they had seen each other, Willy had been a snub-nosed thirteen year old who skipped school. He was a terror, but he was a kid. Even with his voice changed and having become a warlock in this world, Willy was his son.
Stud used a spell to compel Willy into a duel and draw attention away from Hildy and the vehicle. Willy’s attention snapped towards him, and he growled low in his throat. Stud wasn’t sure if Compelled Duel had worked, or if it had failed but Willy was angry enough at him on his own motivation.
Blackened swords bursted outward from Willy, and Stud bent backwards to avoid his chest being punctured. Three blades sliced into his legs instead. He rolled backwards, pulling them out with the movement, and stood. It hurt, but he had been through worse. He cured the wounds on his legs in the time before Willy’s next action.
“Why are you a high level paladin?” Willy shouted in frustration. Healing period over, Stud straightened and wiped the blood off his hands onto his robes.
“Well,” Stud skipped out of the way of a magic attack that smelled like something burning, “I promised that I would love you no matter what, and you know, I never would have said this when you were a kid, Willy,” he jumped over a sweeping kick that was too low, “but you were a really hard kid to love sometimes.”
Willy paused to give him a disbelieving look. “You’re a fucking, what, level twelve paladin because you promised to love me?”
Stud winced. It sounded bad when phrased in that way. Really, it was complicated. The promise was the seed of his becoming a paladin in this world rather than something else. Willy had been something to hold onto amongst everything in the chaos. The entropy of the world was unyielding. All beings were insignificant to the cosmos, but Willy wasn’t insignificant to him. Stud could conserve a part of his self as the adoptive father of Willy Stampler. The role of a parent, the success of protecting Willy from becoming a part of the world’s consumption and destruction by sending The Doodler away, remained even if Stud couldn’t.
“Yes, sort of.”
Willy gave an exasperated head shake. He shot a glare past Stud, and Stud risked following his gaze to see the vehicle was gaining distance up the mountain ridge.
It was on the verge of exiting range, Stud thought, but felt a surge of something as Willy cast towards it. The compelled duel spell had ended without him noticing.
The analytical part of Stud’s mind labeled Willy’s attack as the cantrip Eldritch Blast. He sent a blackened beam towards the car with two separate streams splitting off towards Hildy and him. The energy tasted like blood in the back of his throat. It was familiar, Stud realized with a sickening horror and a rush of joy. He reacted too late to dodge and felt the familiar energy spear his stomach. He was sent sprawling across the ground.
“Stud!” he heard Hildy shout in frustration at him. He lifted his head to see her take a direct hit deflecting the other blast from the vehicle. She gave him a firm look before fading back into the spell. The vehicle exited Willy’s range.
He knew. He knew. It was only him now. He wouldn’t hurt anyone but himself if he made a mistake in trying to use The Doodler. He had to stop Willy.
Stud turned back to Willy, who was glaring down at him with a piercing edge of maliciousness. Stud missed the little kid that Willy had been. It hadn’t been all great, but as a kid, he had moments of being really sharp-witted with his humor. The times when he had been injured in a fight and Stud could lecture him while wrapping up whatever Willy had injured. When he had stolen a bootleg scotch from somewhere and drank half the bottle himself before Stud found him in the living room and cleaned him up. Carried him to bed and stayed home to nurse him the next morning.
He had centuries of missing him and thinking what he should have done differently, but it was too late. The kid was gone. Stud knew he needed to let him go. He needed to stop him. Possibly kill him.
Stud stood. Willy opened his mouth to speak, but Stud moved suddenly and slipped underneath him with a knife. Willy tensed his constitution in preparation for the stab to his abdomen. Stud dropped the knife and grappled him instead.
Willy struggled and found his arms pinned to his sides and Stud’s chin resting on his head. He used Eldritch Burst again, but Stud hugged him tighter.
He couldn’t. He couldn’t. Damn himself, and Hildy and all the others had the right to curse him too, but he couldn’t.
“I really liked meeting your son,” he said into Willy’s ear. Willy fought to break his arms out of Stud’s grip while Stud pressed the side of his head against his. “He is a good man. The type of man I had hoped you would be. His son loves him too.”
Stud could feel the death magic and decaying tendrils digging into his muscles towards his bones. He clenched his teeth to keep from crying out. His Aura of Life didn’t prevent this kind of magic. “I made a mistake somewhere with you. I’m sorry for that.”
“Will you stop that?” Willy snapped. He broke out of the hug and shoved Stud off of him.
They faced each other. Stud’s arms hung limp, shivering from the pain, and Willy stood clenching his fists because he needed to go back to the tower and get Ry’Oak to follow the van. But, he wanted to end Stud’s martyrdom more.
“Are you so stupid you don’t get it? Still? You are not my parent. You never were. And Ron is a mistake and fuck up. He barely exists as a person. He is a waste of space. No one would care what happens to him, least of all him. He was never ambitious and made nothing of himself. What is the loss of using him for daddy magic of this world? Why wouldn’t I? It is not as if-”
Stud had tilted his head to the side, his face etched in pain. He interrupted, “Why? Why do you talk about him like that? Who do you have to live for if not your own son?”
“Myself?” Willy gave him a baffled look like he was a fool for not understanding. He didn’t understand anything Willy did. “I don’t need anyone else to live for. If you still care about other people’s children so much, I would raise my grandson better than my useless kid has.”
“You would hurt him like you hurt Ron,” Stud argued back. He had a hand clenched onto his injured bicep to staunch the bleeding. The healing was minimal. Bad concentration. The sky blue paladin robes were growing into a darker shade. He had the sense that he broke his paladin vow the instant he heard Willy disparage his own son.
“Ron was a mistake.”
“Ron is your son.”
“Which means nothing, clearly. He is a mistake.”
“Even if he is, you aren’t going to take responsibility to care for him?”
“He made himself into a waste.”
“Ron, who arrived to rescue his son from you, is a waste? How could you say that about your own child?”
Willy glared at him for not understanding. Then he huffed like he did as a child when he thought someone was wasting his time. “Ron cannot maintain eye contact. He cannot manage the shallowest of emotions without becoming overwhelmed. He was a near failing student in high school and never went to college. He only managed to have a child because the woman he married already had one. He is pathetic. He is a loser. No wonder you would like him since you wanted me to depend on you like Ron depends on everyone around him.”
“You ruined his childhood,” Stud stated firmly, “and you are trying to ruin his life by taking his child. I don’t- didn’t want you to depend on me, Willy, but in the time I knew you, it felt like trying to rescue someone purposely drowning himself.”
“Drowning myself?” Willy furrowed his brow. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I know your father, Carl, made you grow up before you were ready,” Stud continued, trying to find a cord or some understanding between them. Before it was too late. “You weren’t allowed to act like a child, but, Willy, it’s been over fifty years. You can’t force your son and grandson to go through what you went through.”
“Is that what you think? You think this is about Carl?” Willy looked genuinely confused amongst his anger. His body posture was tight with suppressed emotion.
Stud waited patiently for some long-overdue conversation to take place. “If it’s not, let me know. I tried talking to you about it, but you wouldn’t talk back.”
The anger exploded, and the smell of rot intensified. Like being sealed in a room with a rotting body.
“There was nothing to talk about! My father was a drunkard! He let himself fall apart because he was weak and it was easier for him to die than live!” Willy started gathering a spell. “But he made me more of a man than you ever taught me. This has nothing to do with him and everything to do with power over this world. With never dying again.”
Stud watched as whatever Willy planned continued to build. He said, sorrowful, “I still don’t understand.”
Willy didn’t answer. Stud gave up trying to staunch the blood flow, let it flow out and stain the pointless signifier. All of his efforts to be a father to Willy, for what end? What was he hoping would happen? Why was he holding onto someone who didn't want him?
“Willy, I have to stop you now.”
“You can’t.”
A corner of Stud’s lip twitched into a sad, partial smile. “I think I can. I don’t think it will end well for either of us, but I can. Even if you don’t want me as a parent, I have to take responsibility for your actions. As your uncle at least.”
Stud closed his eyes and felt the shoebox in the back of his mind. It was worn and as foreign with its disproportionate weight and texture as it had been when he first held it after that night in Tennessee. The flames burning outside the government facility as the dry forest floor caught and spread towards the town. The whirl and click of the projector reel spooling black film from Hildy’s veins, dragging it from her unconscious body on the floor. Meryl, head obliterated into black and white paste mashed gray, his cashmere suit and open palms where his body had been discarded by Jay Jay Abramz. Robby dissolving into the Eldritch One with a handshake. And Stud had only watched and cried, helpless to prevent it but driven into reverence watching it unfold.
All the loss. All the death on that summer night, and yet how beautiful it had all been. Equivalent in its horror was the confirmation of beauty to see the slight imperfects that came with living. The security that they would all die, everyone, by turning to dust and hairs swirling through the air unnoticed.
He had stood by the window, looking down at the god--Meryl dead, Hildy dying, Robert dissolved--and spoke its secret name. He told it to return with the power he had gained at the loss of his sanity. He had closed the box and been left alone as punishment.
Stud felt the box in the back of his mind and dug his mind into the seams, prying enough to release a small amount of energy from it just to test how much he could take without losing himself.
The god reached back, touching Stud’s mental fingertips, and for a moment, Stud had to fight not to lose his mind. He maintained enough control of himself and inched his self out of reach, forcing the cracks closed again.
There were Meryl and Robert, and Hildy had been waiting for him to save her, to escape the building with her. To cut the film streaming out of her veins and stop the ink-blood from flowing out. She was only twenty-three, a kid with big dreams of making it as a reporter. He had Willy, thirteen and vicious but orphaned if he didn’t survive the confrontation. The god was present, had been present and undiminished in Stud’s memory, but he had to get home.
Willy’s attack struck Stud’s hunched figure, and Stud momentarily lost focus.
No. He couldn't save anyone. He was too late. They were dead. They were dead. They were dead, so why- They- Meryl and Robert. Hildy. Why? Where-?
Wait.
Oh. Right.
He had to protect Ron and his son.
Stud opened his eyes and smiled with the residual ecstasy of comprehending a portion of the god of random chaos again. Comprehending enough to know how to use the bubbling energy in his throat. To know what was crawling out of him.
The urge to pry the box lid off completely remained, but he resisted. This was enough. This was enough to stop Willy. He had passed his second insanity check. He hadn’t completely given in to the minor god yet.
The eldritch energy was stretching outward. Willy caught sight of the being in Stud’s eyes and stumbled backwards from where he had been attempting to corrode him. “What the fuck. What the fuck, Stud?” He saw Stud’s ecstatic expression, eyes aglow, and horror mixed with disgust. “What did you do? Stud! What did you do?”
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Stud whispered with his voice choking up with tears.
Willy was beginning to look scared.
But that wasn’t right, Stud thought consciously, because he never wanted to scare Willy.
On the payphone in Little Rock, when Robert and Meryl were alive and excitedly talking about guns they could use to stop the filming in Tennessee. When Hildy stood next to him as he called Willy for the second time to check on him and found him hurting cats again. When they all knew they were probably going to die but were alive in the meantime to study the script together and mediate and discuss comic books and laugh at the inane aspects of badly written scripts, the inane aspects of being alive.
When Willy refused to collect call for their last conversation, so Stud told him via the operator that despite everything he loved him and Willy didn’t say it back. That he couldn’t trust him to take care of a child and was proven right nearly eighty years later.
“Willy,” Stud said softly as The Doodler stretched a tentacle out of the robe and along his wrist where his hand rested against the cracked and frozen ground. “I never told you about Oak Ridge, did I?”
A tendril reached up from the gap around his neck in the paladin hood and cradled Stud’s cheek. He squeezed the eye shut to keep the tentacle from slipping behind it. Hildy had learned how to restore his eyes for a reason. He couldn’t lose one, even for the god.
The tendril whipped out its full length and Willy reacted to slow to keep it from clasping his wrist. The action snapped Willy out of his paralysis. He desperately tried to erode it, cut it, burn it, destroy it as the tendril pulled him closer to Stud’s manic expression growing more tranquil.
“You got the magic from somewhere, buddy,” Stud said with the affectionate inflection that he used to refer to the magic of cinema or pursuing your dreams. Even more than the joy of being the lead actor: the magic of possessing an eldritch god, alive in his memories and contained by his magic since the summer day in 1939. It was nearly overwhelming.
For the first time in his life, Willy was afraid of his adoptive father.
“No! Stud, stop it!”
Fighting was useless. There was a gulf of power. There was an island where Stud stood alone in possession of the god inside of him. A part of Willy’s mind refused to accept what he was seeing as reality, that it was impossible for Stud--Stud who cried over dead cats, who avoided arguments, who talked incessantly of his dreams, who couldn’t get him to attend high school, who tap danced and was effeminate--to overpower him in a fight. The other part of Willy’s mind was overwhelmed by the instinct to survive.
He had used all of his spell slots in the previous fight and trying to sever the grasp of whatever lived inside of his uncle. If there was a way to escape from the thing pulling him across the cracked ground towards Stud, his mind had gone blank. Stud, who stood peacefully watching him with half-lidded eyes and an empathetic smile.
“Stud, please. Stud, please. Please. Please, don’t do this.”
Something moved in Stud’s expression. Twitched. Willy didn’t know what was reacting to his fear.
The tentacle encircling his wrist was stretching past his shoulder to wrap around his neck, not squeezing but Willy could feel the strength behind it, that he would risk cutting into his neck for attempting to cut the limb away, but if he didn’t, it would decapitate him.
“You never hurt me,” Willy argued to the blank-eyed figure. Because he only had persuasion and it was the last defense against accepting this, and the disbelief kept echoing in his mind. “That’s why you are a paladin? You swore you would never hurt me?”
He meant it as a statement, but the vice grip suddenly tightened against his Adam’s apple as he spoke. His idea of Stud Stampler’s capabilities was being called into question.
“Stud,” he said in an exhale as his uncle’s hand reached out and rubbed a thumb against his cheek, wiping away a tear streak.
He never cried, he justified it to himself. He wasn’t crying. This was important. He was only surprised. It was only his body preparing for death a second time. A second time of not being able to breath.
Stud crouched onto his knees in front of where Willy was desperately trying to lean away. The tendrils around his neck and arm were stopping him. There was a gray coloration to Stud's eyes, like cataracts or a fog had superimposed itself across his vision. Stud, the being inside of Stud, licked his lips.
Willy, for whatever reason as the blood was becoming restricted from circulating and his vision began to shake, remembered their first apartment together after Stud moved to San Dimas. Stud had been angry at him for something; Willy couldn’t remember what. It was the first time he had made Stud angry enough to raise his voice, and Willy had sat on the couch and waited to see what punishment Stud gave. How his uncle operated as a man.
He had thought Stud was going to hit him across the face for not answering as Stud paced towards him, but instead Stud had squatted down in front of him on the couch and taken his hands. Said sincerely that he understood change was hard and that Willy would need time. Willy had understood then that Stud was a fool he could manipulate without consequences, and he had until Stud left his life.
Now Willy saw the glazed look in Stud’s eyes. Stud wasn’t there. He wasn’t listening as his body squatted in front of him. Willy used the last air in his lungs to beg one last time, “Please, Dad.”
Stud slowly closed his eyes and bent his head. Willy squeezed his eyes shut in meager protection against whatever lived inside of Stud turning one of his orifices--eyes, ears, nose, mouth--into the entry point. Or for the tendrils to squeeze down completely and to find out if death magic protected against an eldritch god decapitating him.
The limbs loosened from his neck. Willy shakily took a breath and blinked the white spots out of his eyes to see Stud’s eyes still closed as the creature pulled back slowly into the cloak, slinking along Stud’s arm. Stud shifted his hand from Willy’s cheek to the back of his neck, and a distant part of Willy’s mind recognized that Stud was keeping him upright as the blood rushed into his head again.
Stud opened his eyes as the eldritch energy faded and met Willy’s. They had returned to the fractal light green and focused on his fully.
“I’m sorry,” Stud apologized. His voice was rough like he had been speaking or shouting for too long. Tears were beginning to bead in his eyes. “I didn’t want to orphan you a second time, Willy. I really did try to live.” He let go of Willy’s head, and Willy set an arm behind his back to catch himself.
Stud Stampler stood. Willy watched wordlessly from the ground.
“I am going to haunt you, when Darryl Wilson calls upon me,” Stud said with calm determination, “and I am going to protect Ron. I am sorry I wasn’t there to raise you differently. I love you, but you cannot hurt people.”
With this said, the ghost of Stud Stampler faded.
Willy sunk to the ground and waited for the residual muscle tremors to still. He wondered idly how his death magic powers were connected to the creature inside of Stud but did not have enough precise information to guess. His ancestry was not like Ry’Oak’s messy gene pool. Something else, separate, inhabited a piece of Stud’s mind.
Stud’s comment on the phone in 1939 about losing his eyes and his situation being complicated made more sense now, Willy mused. Then bursted into laughter because no, it didn’t. None of that made any fucking sense. The relief of being alive, that Stud still refused to hurt him for some reason, caught up to him.
He was still lying on his back crackling with laughter when Bill Close and Bear Ry’Oak stopped a few yards away.
“So, is he okay?” Bill Close asked without sounding particularly concerned. “Or is this some magic bullshit thing?”
“I… am uncertain.”
“Okay, cool.” Close sat down a meter from his head and pulled something out of his robe sleeve. “Do you wanna go after the minivan while I stay here with him, or do you just want to call it?”
“I think… the first course would be wisest,” Ry’Oak answered. He casted another questioning look towards him crackling amongst frozen rocks but took off as a bird.
Over the next few seconds, a smell of weed grew stronger despite the wind. Close commented quietly to himself, or possibly to Willy, “This thing really blows like a motherfucker. Glenny boy’s a genius.”
Willy recovered enough sanity to comment, “My dead uncle has The Doodler inside of him.” because he needed to tell someone and Close was enough of a non-threat and non-person to be discounted in Willy’s mind to know what had happened. There was an old pain in his chest that he marked down as adrenaline.
“Oh,” Close said with some consideration. “Like, the cult Doodler or our grandkids’ mascot Doodler?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” Close replied almost hesitantly, “that at least explains some things, you know, about how you turned out. No offense.”
It didn’t, Willy thought, but pushed himself up to his feet. His balance stabilized as he started making his way back to the tower. Close followed behind with his son’s weed inhalation device creating a trail of smoke around his mouth and nose. He had plans needing to be made. Nothing large had changed, but Willy had solved the long-standing mystery of why Stud Stampler disappeared.
“Willy, c’mere.”
The man at the front of the children's home was smiling. He was handsome, in the way that movie stars were handsome, with a tall, slight build and strong jawline. Copper brown hair like old pennies. He was in nice clothes, and Willy wondered how he knew his name and why he was smiling at him like that.
“You probably don’t remember me. You were little last time I passed this way. I’m Stewart Stampler, “Stud”, your dad’s younger brother.”
He squatted down to meet Willy’s eyes like Willy was a small child, and Willy had the sudden knowledge that he disliked this man immensely.
“Hey, kid,” the man calling himself Stud said gently and looked at Willy with eyes tearing up. Willy felt the urge to punch him, “I’ve moved down to San Dimas to take care of you. Alright? I'm going to take care of you. I promise I’m going to love you, no matter what. Promise.”
People made useless promises to him all the time. Like every time his father had promised to stop drinking, then to stop drinking so much, then to stop drinking all of the time and find a job, before the anger and the sickness and the day he wasn’t breathing in the armchair he liked.
Willy wanted to be alone, build up walls around himself and let no one through. Why was that so hard to understand? Why did people keep thinking he could love them back?
Stud reached out and hugged him, resting a hand against the back of his head, and Willy tolerated it. No one stayed around him for long. Given enough time, Stud would be gone too.