Archive of Our Own ^beta

Frank is staring up at the cuckoo clock, watching the cheap plastic dial go around and around. 

After about three minutes, he goes to stand at the doorway to his parents’ bedroom. His footsteps are mostly silent as he pads down the hall; he might be getting a little too old for footie pajamas, but they make it really easy to sneak around, and plus, he likes wiggling his toes in them. 

He does so now, almost subconsciously, as he flicks on the hallway light and watches it stretch his shadow out onto the carpet. A dark Frank, with elongated limbs and no face. 

“Mommy?” 

He hears a startled inhale, and then his mom’s head pokes up. If she wasn’t squinting at the light, Frank can tell she’d look scared and confused. It’s in her voice when she says, “Frankie? What are you doing up? What’s wrong?”

“There’s something in the house,” he tells her. 

She just looks at him for a second. He looks back patiently. “What do you mean, ‘there’s something in the house’?” she asks, sitting up all the way. The blanket falls away from her shoulders and reveals the frilly collar of her nightgown.

“It’s in the walls,” he explains. He points at the wall in demonstration, the one with the pictures of his family hanging up, all three of them in cheesy poses with cheesy smiles. 

“I – sweetie,” his mom tries. She turns a little when there’s a half-snore and his dad mumbles something. “Did you lock all the doors?” she asks him, and he mumbles something again. 

“It’s not human,” Frank says emphatically. 

Neither of them answers, even though he definitely said it loud enough to be heard. Finally, his mom turns down the corner of the blanket and says, “You wanna sleep here tonight?”

She pats the mattress with her hand, and it looks awfully inviting. Frank glances over his shoulder at his own room, where the door is gaping open into the dark. It doesn’t look inviting at all. 

“Sure,” he says, turning back. He turns off the hallway light and pads over to the bed with hurried footsteps. He’s not afraid of the dark or anything, except if it happens all suddenly like that. 

“Go to sleep, honey,” his mom says. She pulls the blanket over the both of them as he rubs his cheek against her pillow. His dad’s already out again, breathing in soft snores. 

Soon after, his mom falls asleep too, but Frank stays awake, pretending he’s staring at the picture of their family at the lake, and not at the wall behind it. 


***


There's black slimy shit everywhere.

Frank spits cautiously, making “tp tp tp” sounds as he eventually works his way up to flinging whole gobs of saliva onto the asphalt. They splat noisily, the echoes magnified and multiplying in the open space of the parking garage. He rubs a spot clean on the inside of his wrist and wipes at his mouth afterwards.

“It's like Gak,” says Brendon.

“What?” Frank asks distractedly, speaking around his wrist. He spits again. 

“Gak. That gross goopy stuff that Nickelodeon made?” Brendon explains. He keeps blinking in rapid flutters, like there's something in his eye. Well, technically there is, since he too is covered in the black slimy shit. “I remember I got my mom to buy a huge bucket of it, but she didn't know that I already had another huge bucket, and like – ” he chuckles “ – I staked out the top of the stairs one day – ”

Frank cuts him off by holding up a hand and saying, “Shut up.” He drops to his knees and leans in a little closer to the mess on the ground.

Brendon, who talks almost nonstop but knows when to shut up, kneels down next to him and they stare together, hardly breathing.

When the demon rears up all at once, Frank already has the Holy Shotgun hefted in his grip. His arm flings out almost at the same time the demon lunges toward him and he pulls the trigger without hesitation, crooking his elbow in an easy arc with the backfire. 

Another wave of black goo explodes out; Frank closes his eyes just in time, wincing at the dull heat. It rains all over them for a second before dying down once again into unsettling silence. 

He reminds himself to thank Patrick for finding this gem of a weapon, then starts over with the “tp tp tp” sounds again, waiting until the excess drips off his face before squinting his eyes open. Fuck, the smell, though – the smell, he’ll never get used to. It’s a mixture of burnt rubber and hair, the curdled smell of garbage, and something vaguely like rotting flesh, like a morgue after the refrigeration’s been cut out for a week. The sound of the gunshot is still echoing around, but so faintly that Frank thinks he might be imagining it. 

Brendon says, “Ugh.”

“That’s why I like you,” Frank tells him between spits. “You’re articulate.”

“What else is there to say, you know?” Brendon shrugs. He gingerly pinches his jacket by the edges of a button and lifts it a little to get access to the inner breast pocket. “’Ugh, we’re covered in blood because you killed a demon with a shotgun that was blessed by some psycho priest a decade ago.’ Like that?” 

“You’re right. Don’t do that,” Frank concedes after a pause. 

They rise to their feet. For Brendon, the movement is decidedly easier than it is for Frank. He wonders if he’s getting old already, listening to his knees crack as he straightens up. “Do the honors, man,” he says, shoving the gun back into his shoulder holster. The handle is still warm, and he flexes his fingers when he releases it from his grip. 

Brendon smiles a little, then strikes a match with a practiced movement – and knowing Brendon, he really does practice it – before letting it drop. What’s left of the demon immediately becomes engulfed in flames and the blood starts evaporating off Frank’s face in tiny droplets, merging with the rest of the remains. 

“Better than a shower,” says Brendon. He tilts his head back while holding his arms out at his sides as everything staining the ground and their clothes slowly becomes gathered up as well, joining up together like some kind of supernatural mercury. The fire goes from yellow to orange to shades of red before folding in on itself and quenching abruptly, leaving the scene as cold and empty as any other parking garage in the city.

“Hellfire and brimstone,” Brendon announces into the quiet. 

“Hear ye, amen,” Frank says. He shakes his hair out of his eyes, trying to fight the exhaustion coming over his body. It’s probably only around 2:00 in the morning, which is way early compared to his sleepless nights as a teenager. Next to him, Brendon is standing attentively and Frank can tell he’s satisfied with how the night’s gone. 

It occurs to Frank that they’re evolving into the stereotypical duo – the world-weary trooper with his bright-eyed sidekick. At that thought, he considers taking the Holy Shotgun to his own head, but that would mean one less round for the demonic motherfuckers that actually deserve it and Frank is all for the better good, so he resists. 

He stretches his arms up, palms turned toward the ceiling, then drops them limply at his sides. “Pancake time?”

“Your turn to buy,” Brendon tells him. 

They begin the trek up the ramp, in the direction of the yellow arrows painted onto the concrete. “I feel like it’s been my turn to buy the past three times,” Frank muses. He feels the gun brush up against his upper arm with every step. 

“You’re the one with the day job. Me, I just stay at home and research shit in hopes that you’ll let me do something cool one day.”

“Like what? Shoot stuff? And I’d hardly call playing in a deadbeat band a day job.”

“It’s a job, that you do in addition to this other job. It’s a day job. And yes, shooting stuff,” Brendon agrees. “Poking stuff with sharp things from the first century. Exorcising stuff.”

“I let you burn stuff,” Frank points out. 

“True. That’s been a pretty recent development and I appreciate it muchly,” Brendon says diplomatically. “I’m hoping this is my big break.”

“This isn’t an audition for Star Search: Demonology Edition,” Frank snorts. They enter the stairwell and Frank squints against the flickery fluorescent lighting as they walk up to ground level. 

“If it was, I’d fucking take first prize, no question. A little demon killing, a little song and dance.” Brendon does some weird slide move through the end of the hallway and presses his back against the steel bar of the door, stumbling outside in his grand finale. “Ta da,” he announces to the empty street. It’s a warm night, no breeze. Everything is still in a natural way, not in the ‘something evil is lurking around the corner’ kind of way, and it’s actually kind of peaceful. 

“Sometimes I wonder about you,” Frank tells him as he emerges from the building in the closest thing to a good mood that he’s had in a while.

“You always wonder about me,” Brendon says. He grins.

The world-weary trooper and his bright-eyed sidekick. What Frank would never admit out loud is that he’s really fucking glad to have Brendon around. 


*

Frank wakes up with the blankets yanked up over his face and his heart pounding crazily. It takes a moment to figure out that it was a dream, but his body seems locked into stillness and he just lies there sweating for a good minute or two. 

“Fuck,” he says out loud, trying to snap himself out of it. His voice is muffled by the blankets. He feels like a kid again, huddled beneath the covers as he tries not to stare at the shadows. 

A whoosh of air immediately starts cooling his skin when he throws off the covers and sits up, swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress and tensing his arms at his sides. Nothing attacks him, not even any of the ants that’ve been plaguing his fucking apartment for weeks now, but he can almost feel the hands around his throat, the hot breath against his chin. 

He wipes his mouth for the hell of it, then gets up and walks around, patting his stomach absently. It feels like the pancakes from earlier in the night have formed an uncomfortable, semi-permanent lump. In general, he hasn’t really been eating all that regularly, but there’s still a bit of a paunch that’s hanging around his belly. Evidence that all the drinking and late night pancakes are getting to him. But fuck it – it’s not like he needs to be in supreme tiptop shape to shoot a shotgun loaded with bullets soaked in Holy Water. 

Most of the light sneaking through the windows is tinted blue or red, blinking and buzzing over the linoleum of the kitchen. It glints dully off every reflective surface – the guitar propped up in the corner, the base of his bedside lamp, the shotgun still lying on the dining table, the rows of bottles when he opens up the cupboard.

He closes his hand around the neck of an old bottle of whiskey and doesn’t bother with a glass. By the time he puts the bottle down on the counter and heads back to bed, there’s only a thin layer of liquid coating the bottom. 

Might as well sleep while he could.


***


It’s overcast the next day. Frank shoves his hands in his pockets and hunches his shoulders up against the cold breeze until a sunny yellow cab comes barreling around the corner and screeches to a stop about half a block past where Frank is standing. 

Frank sighs, then walks to the car and gets into the backseat. He shuts the door and says, “I had this weird dream last night.”

“About what?” Brendon asks, checking over his shoulder three times before actually pulling out onto the road. He drives really close to the wheel, which makes him scramble to make turns, like he’s digging a hole in the ground with his hands. 

“Some dude. A half-breed demon, telling me something was coming.” Frank watches the meter change numbers as it clocks in fifty cents for every fifth of a mile. He’s never paid the fare, though; he idly wonders if Brendon makes enough money off real paying customers who actually need a ride somewhere. 

“God, they’re always so unspecific,” Brendon says disapprovingly. “But cool. At least that warning makes it a lot easier for you.”

“I think it was more of a gloating thing than a warning. Like, ha ha, something’s coming for you and you can’t do anything to stop it.” Frank stares out the window. “Nanny nanny boo boo,” he mutters.

Brendon creeps into an intersection and has to wait until the light turns red before making his little scrambling turn. “Well, that’s just mean of them, isn’t it?”

“You’re being really helpful, Brendon, thank you – ” Frank gets cut off by his cell phone vibrating against his thigh. He digs it out and says, “Hello?”

“I’ve got one for you,” says Bert’s voice at the same time Brendon asks, “What?” while looking in the rearview mirror.

Frank meets Brendon’s eyes and silently points to the phone. “Where?” he asks out loud. 

“Sunset District. 29th and Noriega.”

“29th and Noriega,” Frank repeats for Brendon’s benefit. The cab immediately swerves into a U-turn in the middle of an intersection. Frank puts a hand on the seat to balance himself and says, “We’re coming.”


*


By the time they get there, it seems like the whole building is huddled around the door to the only bedroom in apartment 5D. People are bottlenecked and spilling out into the living room and kitchen, but they move aside easily enough when Frank weaves his way through. 

He pauses just outside the door to give the crying mother a halfway apologetic smile, then slips into the room, locking it behind him. 

Bert’s sitting in a ratty orange armchair next to the bed. “About time,” he says as he stands. The first thing he does is pluck the half-smoked cigarette out from between Frank’s fingers and press it to his own lips. 

“Can’t get the fucker out,” he says thickly, exhaling smoke. “Work your magic.”

Frank glances around the room first. There are scratches up near the ceiling, with pieces of the wall gouged out into shapes making up some kind of sword, or a dagger. He looks down at the girl, whose wrists and ankles are tied to the bedposts with strips of fabric. Her hair is splayed all over the pillow in greasy chunks; the smell of old sweat, salty and humid, is soaked into the air. Her eyes are closed. 

“This is, what, the fifth one you’ve found in the past two months?” Frank hefts himself up onto the bed, standing with one foot on either side of the girl’s hips.

“Yup,” Bert replies. He sits back down in his chair and crosses his legs. “Not a good sign, y’think?”

Frank snorts. “You’re a pretty astute guy, man.”

“Astute,” Bert muses. He snaps his fingers and takes another hit off the cigarette. “Astute. Yeah, I like that word.”

“I’m glad,” Frank says distractedly. “Bringing you exorcisms and words of the day, that’s my job.”

The keyring in his pocket has six symbols hammered out onto thin metal plates the size of pennies and they all clink against each other as he hefts them out. It isn’t until he holds the third one up against a stream of sunlight, making its silhouette blacken against the girl’s forehead, that she finally opens her eyes and hisses, limbs jerking with superhuman strength. 

“Heyo, we’ve got a winner.” Bert’s still sitting calmly in his chair. He scratches at his cheek and then at his collar, which has yellowed with age and probably also from not washing it ever since he was ordained. The amulet is sitting just above the first button of his shirt. 

“Light me another cigarette, will you?” Frank kneels down on one knee and presses the symbol, a modified version of a triskelion, onto the girl’s forehead. He holds it there firmly with his thumb as Bert passes him a cigarette. The girl’s limbs start drumming against the mattress as she tries to squirm her head away, which is expected. 

What isn’t expected is the sudden stopping of all movement and the smile that creeps across the girl’s face. Frank might as well be pressing a crushed soda can against her forehead.

“No good,” she says in a guttural voice. 

The cigarette droops between Frank’s lips, burning away slowly on its own. He stares down at her mottled teeth. It’s a triumphant smile, an expression of an overconfident, cocky demon. Problem is, there shouldn’t be any overconfident, cocky demons. Ever.

“Oh, fuck me,” murmurs Bert. There’s a click of a lighter and the sound of him taking a deep breath. 


*


“So, what? I don’t get it.”

“It was a soldier demon,” Frank repeats. “And it wouldn’t leave.”

Brendon glances in the rearview mirror, eyebrows knitted together in a deep frown. “You used your little amulets?”

“Yeah. It didn’t do shit. It was – it seemed like it was just one of those smushed souvenir coins you crank out in machines at Disneyland.”

“But you did get it out,” Brendon confirms. “Eventually.”

“Eventually, yeah. I appealed to its narcissistic side,” Frank replies. As last resorts, reflective surfaces are pretty useful in this business, serving as gateways, portals, thresholds, whatever you want to call them. They also catch demons between worlds – show one of them a mirror, and it’ll be too busy preening at itself to notice that they’ve been exorcised and are trapped on the other side of the glass, while the mirror’s already out the window and halfway down a five-storey drop. 

“How’d you learn that trick anyway?” Brendon wonders. 

Frank thinks about staring into the bathroom mirror as a kid, brushing his teeth and watching his reflection; how the eyes slowly filled with black and the face stretched downward, mouth opening into a hideous, gaping hole. 

“The handbook they give all of us,” he finally says. “Members only, you know. Sorry.”

“I figured,” Brendon sighs. He flips his turn signal and continues on their way. 


***


Bert calls him four more times in the remaining weeks of the month. All soldier demons, all unwilling to leave their pretty new homes. Brendon makes half a dozen trips to Target for mirrors and Frank racks up more years of bad luck than he knows what to do with. 

He also starts coming home to manila envelopes slid halfway underneath his front door or taped to his fire escape window, filled to the brim with newspaper clippings and scrawled notes made almost illegible with ink blots and Bert’s shaky writing. Strange Miracle at Hospital – Grisly Double Homicide in Apartment Complex – Witnesses say the body had been found in pristine condition – said that the strange lack of evidence in the scene would make it difficult to continue looking – check the morgue, check the morgue, check the morgue – 

Frank calls him one day. As soon as Bert picks up, Frank says, “Slow down.”

“Can’t.” Bert sounds distant; Frank can hear a faint rustling of paper in the background. “The voices, man. They’re getting way the fuck out of hand these days.”

“What did I get you that amulet for, huh? So you can do things like sleep and not stalk my apartment.”

“You can’t ever stop the voices, Frank. The amulet just dampens them out a little. Like little aural Q-tips,” Bert giggles hoarsely. “I – ”

He cuts to silence, though Frank can still hear his breathing over the line. 

“Hello?” Frank tries. “Bert? Oh, come on. Bert!”

There’s a thunk on Bert’s end. Frank sighs and holds his phone out in front of him, watching the call timer tick on. If he listens carefully, he can hear a stream of messy Latin coming through the earpiece, Bert’s voice sounding tinny and small, almost like a dream. 


*


Sometimes Frank wonders how more people don’t notice the shitstorms that are constantly popping up everywhere. 

He has his feet up on the kitchen table, heels brushing against the edges of newspapers and ancient textbooks and eight different kinds of Bibles, two of which are written in languages that died out centuries ago or never even existed in this world in the first place. He wonders how much Brendon would demand to be paid to be fluent in Koine Greek.

The sun is setting through the west windows. Orange light reflects off the jugs of Holy Water lining the walls, throwing shimmery patterns onto his bedspread and the kitchen floor. Frank imagines he’s in an aquarium of light, just swimming around contentedly for the rest of his life. That’d be nice. 

He’s snapped out of the daydream when the doorbell buzzes. None of the light from the windows reaches the front entrance, so he has to pause and blink a few times to get rid of the sunspots in his eyes before he can see through the peephole. 

Whoever rang the doorbell is facing the door across the hall, giving Frank a spectacular view of slumped shoulders and the back of a head instead of a face to identify, but he turns around quickly when Frank opens the door with the chain still on. 

They stare at each other through the narrow gap. “Francis?” the guy finally asks. He’s got a pale face and dark hair.

Frank shuts the door, slips off the chain, and opens it again, wider this time. “Frank,” he says. 

“Thank fuck.” The guy rubs his eyes. “Listen, it’s about my brother, Mikey. He’s – ”

“Why don’t you come inside,” Frank interrupts. Anyone who calls him ‘Francis’ isn’t anyone he wants to be having a conversation with out in the open. 

The guy eyes the carvings that cover all three edges of the doorway before he obediently crosses the threshold with a slightly exaggerated step forward. “What’s with the characters? Is that Latin?”

“Aramaic,” Frank answers. “I still need to close the door, you know.” He raises his eyebrows when the guy looks at him blankly. 

“Oh! Sorry.” He walks further into the studio, stopping in the middle of the kitchen as Frank clicks the door shut and sets both deadbolts. Frank sees him turn in a slow circle, glancing around at the Holy Water, the cheap-ass workstation that looks like a high school’s failing metal shop class, the unmade bed, the bathroom with empty hinges and no door, the frying pan on the stovetop that Brendon put there mostly for show. 

“So, um,” he says, facing Frank once again.

“Who are you?” Frank cuts in.

“Gerard. Way.” It looks like he’s about to stick out his hand, but he just ruffles his hair and shoves his hand back into his pocket instead.

“Okay, Gerard Way.” Frank has to suppress a smile. This guy is kind of funny in a way that he’s probably not aware of, which makes it even funnier. 

The urge to smile fades away once Frank studies Gerard more closely. There’s a slight twitch to his fingers, and Frank would bet he hasn’t changed clothes in days. His eyes look tired, rubbed raw from either lack of sleep or struggling not to fall asleep. 

“You knew my name,” Frank thinks out loud, more for Gerard’s benefit than his own, “so I’m guessing you’ve heard stories about me. You’re not freaking out, which means no one’s possessed. You’re not setting things out on the kitchen table, which means you’re not selling things. And I haven’t killed you yet, which means you’re not trying to kill me. That’s all I got figured out.”

Gerard blinks at him, like he’s spoken too fast. “I – like I said. I’m here about my brother, Mikey.”

“Mikey,” Frank repeats, and then automatically follows it up with, “Michael,” as some tiny blip goes off in his brain. Bert had left a single newspaper clipping taped to his window about a week earlier, with the headline underlined in red – Patient Commits Suicide Off Hospital Roof. The patient’s name hadn’t been released, but Bert had written ‘MICHAEL WAY’ in big letters over the article, the soft ink bleeding through the paper.

“Michael Way,” Frank tries.

Obviously Gerard hadn’t expected that. He stares at Frank, unblinking. “It didn’t happen like that,” is his answer, catching on just as fast as Frank had. “Whatever you heard, it didn’t…” 

Maybe Frank would believe Gerard if he hadn’t faltered at the end of his sentence. Frank crosses his arms and slowly leans backward until his hips nudge against the counter. “Okay, so what happened?” he prompts.

“I don’t know. I just, I don’t know.” Gerard doesn’t look crazy, but Frank’s learned that that’s not really something to go by. “That’s what I need you to find out.”

“Yeah, just hand me a magnifying glass and a time machine. You’re kidding, right?”

“I need you to find out what really happened. He wouldn’t have done this,” Gerard says in a quiet voice. “Mikey, he wasn’t like that. He never would have chose to do – that. And he was a devout Catholic. He just wouldn’t, okay? He was a real strong believer in all that stuff. It doesn’t make any sense.” 

A half-empty glass of whiskey is sitting by the toaster. Frank picks it up and takes a tiny sip, enough to wet his lips. “Was he always Catholic? A practicing one?”

The silence that follows is enough of an answer. “Look,” Frank begins exasperatedly, but Gerard interrupts him. 

“For the last few years,” he admits. “Not always.”

“People mess up,” Frank says, twirling the glass around. “It’s what they do. Maybe it all got too much for him, maybe he decided some things outweighed religious beliefs – ”

“He didn’t mess up,” Gerard interrupts sharply.

“There’s no proof that he didn’t,” Frank counters. He feels tired and angry and like the pile of papers on the table is never going to go away. “Listen, I get that he’s your brother, but stop letting that cloud your judgment. I’m all for saving innocent souls from hell, fighting the good fight, whatever you want to call it, but there’s no fucking way I’m risking my neck for some guy who you’re claiming didn’t commit suicide in a psychiatric ward.”

Gerard stares at him with his hands shoved into his pockets. Frank gazes back loftily as he finishes off what’s left in the glass. For a second, he thinks he sees a flash of something in Gerard’s eyes, but he can’t be sure of it since Gerard is already in motion, walking briskly past Frank and out the door. Frank feels the counter jump when the door slams shut.

“Too bad,” Frank says out loud. But he stands there for a while, sipping at his drink and thinking about the newspaper clipping. There hadn’t been many specifics – just the facts, and where and when the funeral was going to be held. 

The glass is empty when Frank turns to place it into the sink. He drums his fingers on the counter, thinking. 

If he weren’t focused blankly on the wall, he would have missed the blink of a shadow, as if an airplane had blocked out the sun. Too fast for an airplane, though – he recognizes this idly at first, and then with growing awareness.

Frank slowly faces the other side of the apartment. Something flickers past the window. 

Wings, Frank realizes. 

There’s a prickly feeling in his legs as adrenaline starts pumping through his body on instinct. He grabs a dirty rag and a gold-plated lighter from the top of the fridge and runs out the door, taking the steps two at a time and pushing off the wall to turn the corner at the ground floor. 

Gerard’s hunched shoulders are recognizable right away, about half a block east. Frank sprints towards him, his breath already coming in sharp stabs, and he’s about twenty feet away when the streetlights power down and everything becomes engulfed in shadows and an unnatural darkness. 

“Gerard,” Frank hisses, and very nearly runs into him. Gerard has stopped in front of a window display and is looking around with a scared expression. 

“What the fuck is going on? Is there a blackout?” he asks. Then he jerks his head up wildly when the demons start to fly in close. Frank, in turn, stares at Gerard. 

“You can hear them?” he asks in disbelief. 

But he doesn’t have time to wait for an answer, because those fuckers are getting too close, too fast. Frank shoves Gerard behind him, then wraps the rag around his hand, dribbles lighter fluid all over it, and flicks the lighter on as he ducks his chin down and raises his arm high above his head. The flames leap up and multiply immediately, with the power of a blowtorch against an exploding tank of oxygen.

There’s a horrible scream, like scratching fingernails over a chalkboard magnified by a hundred. Frank squeezes his eyes shut and smells sulfur. 

It’s over quickly. Even so, by the time the ashes settle and the streetlights come back on, Gerard’s gagging onto the nearest crosswalk, right in between the white lines.

“You know, you’re handling it better than most people,” Frank points out, hissing a little as he unwraps the scorched rag to examine the damage.

“What the fuck,” Gerard gasps, “was that.”

Frank’s knuckles are already starting to blister. He shoves the rag and the lighter into his pocket. Dragon’s breath as fuel – another thing he had to thank Patrick for. Seriously, he needed to send that guy an entire ‘thank you’ basket or something. 

“Rotten eggs gone bad,” he tries out, gauging whether or not the joke sounds just as bad out loud as it did in his head. 

Gerard doesn’t offer any opinions. He just says, “You’re going to have to explain more than that,” and then throws up again. 


*


When Frank pokes at the blisters, they bulge up on one side before settling back into an even bubble. A sharp pain balloons out from his hand. He shakes it out by his side, as if to coax the blood plasma back where it belongs.

“So you can see them,” he states. 

Gerard nods, more times than necessary. “When we were kids,” he starts, “I mean, I was able to see them first. I never told anyone though, ‘cause Mikey was still really young, you know, so like. They blamed it on typical moody teenager shit.” 

He takes a gulp of scotch and holds it in his mouth for a while before swallowing. “Then when I was seventeen, Mikey, he came to me and said, ‘You know, I can see them, too’. He was always so fucking calm about it. I was always the one who was freaked out.” 

Gerard’s voice cracks a little bit. Frank pretends not to hear, and just grunts in response. He’d like to think of it as an encouraging kind of grunt. 

“Is that what happened to you?” Gerard asks quietly. 

“Kind of. The beginning, anyway.” 

The view from the fire escape makes it look like the city is made only of flickering lights, bobbing silently in the distance, buoyed along by some unknown force. Frank smokes slowly and exhales to the side. “And then I decided I couldn’t take it anymore and killed myself when I was sixteen.” 

“Shit,” Gerard breathes. “How’d you – never mind.”

Frank turns his head and looks at Gerard, a slight smile creasing his mouth. Gerard looks back uncertainly, accepting the silent permission with an awkward shift of his body. 

He asks, “How’d you try to do it?” 

“Wrists. And I didn’t try anything, I did do it. In total, I was dead for two minutes. A fucking lifetime in hell.”

Gerard just looks at him without blinking. Frank shrugs. “Time passes more slowly there. Ten seconds is enough to realize that you made a huge mistake and be reminded of that a thousand times over.” 

“But they revived you.”

“They revived me,” Frank confirms. “And after that, I knew what I had to do.”

Gerard huffs out a smile. “What, you’re on some kind of heavenly mission? You should have gotten a book deal to write about the afterlife instead. You would have made shit-tons more money that way.” 

Frank smiles absently as he stares down at the ground. He touches his thumb against the corner of his mouth, then takes another drag off his cigarette. “I don’t kill demons for shits and giggles.”

“You’re trying to make up for what you did,” Gerard nods to himself. “I know. I get it.” 

“Yup. Yeah, it’s like that game, Chutes and Ladders. Except they’re all chutes, and that probably won’t change no matter what I do.”

They face forward and sit in silence for a while, swinging their legs periodically. Gerard rests his forehead between two of the metal bars of the fire escape, angling his face down to the streets below them. It’s a warm night; Frank can hear voices and footsteps, snatches of conversation and the crinkling of plastic bags, the roar of a passing bus and the quiet that follows. 

He lies down slowly, feeling the metal against his back, and smokes while looking up at the sky. 

“Some people say you’re born with it. They thought I was crazy, too,” Gerard offers, as if to reassure Frank he’s not the only one. He peers over his shoulder and passes the bottle back to Frank. “Checked me into the psych ward and all. I guess it was stupid of me to tell them about what I was seeing. But then I kept ignoring them, and kept telling Mikey that nothing was there, nothing was there. I don’t know,” he finishes in a stumble. “But eventually, there really was nothing there. I stopped seeing them. And Mikey got shipped off to the hospital for good.”

He faces forward again to squint into the streets and Frank suddenly realizes that Gerard isn’t offering anything, or trying to be eagerly empathetic. He’s just telling him the facts. 

Frank scratches his arm and wonders when he became so mistrustful of people’s intentions. He considers telling Gerard more things – then thinks, no, he wouldn’t even know where to begin.

“Those demons tonight, though. They were different,” Gerard says slowly, like he’s thinking out loud. “I could hear them, but – but I couldn’t see them.” He waves his hand in front of his face, as if to demonstrate what he’d been unable to see. 

“100% full-fledged demons from hell,” Frank replies calmly. “They would have mauled you alive. The ones you see here on earth, they’re in human form, and milder. Kind of like, you can be half-Japanese and half-Italian. Halfies. Demons in human suits. Or demons resurrected as humans. Whatever.”

“But you exorcise demons and stuff. How come you don’t…” Gerard trails off. 

Frank shrugs. “I can’t really do anything, as long as they play by the rules. They’re influence peddlers. Anything more than that, and I do have a reason to…” He deliberately trails off in imitation of Gerard. “But it isn’t so bad. Being here is a novelty for them, and they’re not really eager to break the rules and get sent back to hell. And plus, the other side’s got soldiers, too.”

“Hmm,” is all Gerard says. He swigs from the bottle again. Then, out of the blue, he asks, “Do you play?”

“What?”

“The guitar. I saw it inside. Do you play?”

Frank smiles. He doesn’t know why. “I guess. Sometimes. I’ve got this thing with some other guys. It helps blow off steam. I don’t know.”

“It’d be a good distraction, yeah,” Gerard agrees. He’s quiet again, but it’s a loaded silence and Frank is pretty sure what he’s leading up to. Intuition is a bitch. 

“Gerard,” Frank sighs, but apparently not in time.

“I want to see again,” Gerard says earnestly. He doesn’t turn around. “I left him all alone. I want to see what he saw.”

Well, Frank can’t say he wasn’t expecting it. He feels abruptly sad, or like he wants to curse at Gerard for being so stupid. Instead he just quirks the corner of his mouth and exhales more smoke. “Come back in a few days. Think about it, and come back.”


***


The band has a show the next night, in some shitty bar that’s located on a street full of other shitty bars and bowling alleys that closed their doors years ago. They’re nice guys, all part of the same construction crew or drilling crew or something like that, but Frank doesn’t really hang out with them or even practice with them that often. They’ve threatened to kick him out multiple times, but they keep him around because he knows all the songs and they’re too lazy to teach someone else how to play them.

Frank mostly stays in the back of the stage, where the spotlight doesn’t reach, and just thrashes around by himself while the amps blast in his ears. He’s not that great a player, but it feels good to have the sound surround him, pressing in tight in his head.

This time, though, he can’t get the image of Gerard out of his mind. How he’d looked from Frank’s view; the hunch of his shoulders and how his hair had looked peaky in the back. 

Afterwards, Frank sticks around to have a few drinks and speak even fewer words, and hops onto the subway as soon as he can. He sees a couple halfies on the train-car and ignores them when they blink and glare with black eyes. The train departs from underground, but speeds onto the surface at the next stop. Frank watches the buildings whip by in blurs of faded brick and graffiti swirling over the walls, and thinks about nothing. 

He doesn’t know if he falls asleep or what, but he sits up and realizes the train is stopped. A voice comes over the intercom: “This is the end of the line. Please make sure you have all your belongings and exit the train. Once again, this is the end of the line.”

Frank blinks. He checks his reflection in the window, then walks off the car and goes to the pay phone to call Brendon and ask him to pick him up. 


*


After finishing half a can of beer, Brendon had left, hinting that he was going to try to stop by Bob’s again. Frank had wished him luck in even getting into the place. Normal clubs had cover charges; Bob’s club had an entrance exam. Bob took all kinds, but he seemed to have a prejudice against people who weren’t sketchy as fuck. He was a weird guy.

Frank is punching out the last of a new batch of bullets for his shotgun when there’s a loud bang and a rattle and suddenly the street noises are coming in a lot louder than usual. Frank’s heart almost leaps out of his chest. 

“Christ, Bert, use the front door every once in a while,” he grumbles. 

“Please. I didn’t actually scare you, did I?” Bert grins wide and the corners of his eyes twitch, helplessly submitting to the facial tics he’s had for years. There are tiny scabs on his forearms and red islands of rashes splotched on his neck, creeping all the way up over his collar. 

“I’m just saying. People see a priest breaking into a second story apartment with no problem, they get a little weirded out, you know?” 

“As long as you act like what you’re doing isn’t wrong or out of the ordinary, most people don’t give a shit.” Bert shrugs with only one shoulder, then closes the window and ambles over to the dining table, dragging out a chair opposite Frank’s and sitting down.

Frank snorts. “So what’s up?” 

“Eh. You know.” Bert shrugs again, but with both shoulders this time. 

The only clock in the apartment is under the bed, but Frank knows it’s past dinnertime because he feels a little lightheaded and he’s actually managed to work up something of an appetite, despite the fact that eating seems like a chore nowadays. 

He gets up and shuffles all five steps into the kitchen and reaches over the toaster to grab a bag of bread that smells of ripe yeast but shouldn’t be all moldy yet. While Frank is visiting underground bars and demonic hangouts, Brendon braves all the normal places like Safeway and 7/11 and occasionally stocks up Frank’s cabinets for him. Sometimes he even buys a bouquet of flowers and sticks them into the empty milk cartons that Frank keeps lying around, cutting off the top to make a makeshift vase. Brendon’s a weird kid.

Frank opens the bread bag and sniffs cautiously. It smells okay. 

“The Spear of Destiny,” Bert says suddenly, loud and projecting like he’s giving a sermon to a filled church. The place is too small for that kind of volume, though, and suddenly everything feels stifling, bulging at the imaginary seams.

Frank’s ears are still buzzing from the show. He doesn’t know how long he stands there, unmoving, but he can feel Bert’s eyes boring into the back of his neck the entire time. There’s really nothing to say. The gouges in the wall from that possessed girl a while ago had initially clued him in; he’d been hoping that it would go away without fanfare, though. The fact that Bert even brought it up pretty much tells Frank that that hasn’t happened. 

Eventually, he gets back to why he originally stepped into the kitchen. “Sandwich?” he asks, turning and holding up the bread. 

Bert accepts this non sequitur with ease, sitting back in his seat and asking, “Whaddya got?” 

“Peanut butter.” Frank opens the fridge and lifts himself up on his tiptoes for a second. “And eggs.”

Bert makes a face. He appears to contemplate this choice with dedication. Frank waits until he figures Bert won’t be answering anytime soon, then turns around and lays out four slices before firing up the frying pan. 

“Peanut butter,” Bert finally says. 

Frank is already toasting the bread and turning off the gas as he flips them. He smears a glob of peanut butter over all four slices, mashes them together, and walks them over to the table. The last napkin gets used as a makeshift plate for Bert; Frank just holds his sandwich in his hands and takes a huge bite. 

The only audible sounds for a while are crunching and Frank’s own tongue smacking against the roof of his mouth, trying to dislodge the peanut butter. 

“So who has it?” he finally asks. 

A puff of crumbs sprays from Bert’s mouth. He coughs and tries again. “Don’t know. Just know that it’s here.”

“In the city?”

“By now, yeah, probably. Explains all the hooplah these days.”

Frank swallows hard in annoyance at both the peanut butter and the situation at hand. “It’s always something. I thought they buried that thing.”

“You bury something that’s not ready to be dead, it’ll crawl back up sooner or later.” Bert lets out a burp, then without so much as an ‘excuse me’, says, “You should know. You’re the kid that crawled back up from hell itself.”

Frank casually licks the crumbs off his fingers. “Sometimes I feel like that’s the only reason you like me,” he says with his mouth still full. 

“Who says I even like you? You understand me, is all.” 

“Right,” Frank says with a half-smile. Bert grins back. 

They’re both done with their food. Frank takes in Bert’s appearance. There’s more than a day’s worth of facial hair growing on the backdrop of sallow skin. 

He asks, “Are the voices behaving?”

“I keep them whipped in shape.” Bert’s smile wavers; he looks down quickly as he rubs at the amulet around his neck in a seemingly unconscious gesture. “Sometimes, though.”

“Yeah,” Frank says. Bert rubs his eyes with his knuckles, digging deep and jerky, always with the twitching. Frank wonders what it’s like to hear and not see. Probably worse, in some ways. “Yeah, I know.”