Chapter Text
Arthur ran.
His jacket whipped around behind him in the wind, pulling him back. As he ran full-speed ahead, the would-be docile rain droplets stabbed painfully into his skin, the chill of the early morning only adding to their sting.
His vision blurred, and he rubbed at his eyes without slowing down. His whole body ached, a familiar feeling, like that of a boa constrictor crushing every muscle in his body was starting to settle, and he felt the sharp burn of where he had fallen and scraped his knee only adding to his pain.
“Not now, not now,” he thought desperately, cursing his body, fighting to keep his focus.
The figure in front of him kept moving forward, black hair trailing behind him, arms outstretched like he was going to take off and fly.
There was a rumble of thunder, then lightning struck. It lit up the sky, electrifying the world around them. The boy in front of Arthur let out peals of laughter as he vaulted his body over a rock. For a moment, Arthur believed he would never touch the ground.
“John!” He reached out, and almost fell to the ground again as his foot caught the root of a tree. When he regained his footing, he looked up desperately, but the black-haired boy seemed not to have noticed.
Thunder rumbled again.
“John, John— wait!”
The stumble had slowed him down, and also allowed Athur to fully notice the fatigue in his body. His small frame heaved, heart racing in his chest, legs burning. He forced himself into a run, willing his leaden legs to obey him.
Lightning struck, and the boy in the distance was framed in perfect, white light.
Laughter carried on the wind, reaching his ears.
“C’mon Arthur, hurry up! Catch me if you can!”
So Arthur did the only thing he could do. Arthur ran.
—
“I’m… sorry, Arthur.”
John sat cross-legged on the floor in Arthur’s room, fidgeting with a small copper bracelet he wore around his wrist.
Arthur smiled weakly. “That’s okay, how were you supposed to know I was going to get sick?”
John didn’t look up from his fiddling. His shoulder-length hair fell in curtains around his face, obscuring his eyes and any expression he might be making. “Still,” he mumbled, “now you’ve gotta stay in bed. Which sucks.”
Arthur shrugged. “That’s okay. We can go out to the clearing another time.”
The two of them had found the clearing three years ago, and quite by accident. It was after the divorce, when Arthur’s mother Alice had gathered all their things and moved back to her hometown, taking Arthur along with her. About a month after the move, Arthur was surprised to find himself invited to a classmate’s birthday party — despite not having made friends with any of them. When he arrived, he realised it wasn’t all that special, his entire class was invited. Though it was probably not that odd. It was a pretty small town, and there were only 20 kids in his class.
After he spent thirty minutes stood by himself in a corner, wishing desperately he was anywhere but there, he was surprised to see another boy approach him. He had seen the boy before, of course, but never gave him much thought. He always got into trouble for wearing his hair too long, and having his shirts untucked during assembly. But other than scoldings for his appearance, he never got in trouble for much else. He was quiet, like Arthur.
“Hey.”
Arthur stared at the boy in silence.
“Hullo? You blind or something?” The boy waved his hand in front of Arthur’s face.
“No.”
“Hm,” a smile curled at the edges of the boy’s face, “I’m John,” he stuck out a hand.
Arthur returned the gesture warily. “My name’s Arthur.”
“Yeah I know.”
“Oh, how—”
“D’you wanna go somewhere else? This party is boring, and I want to go exploring.”
“Exploring?”
“Yeah,” John’s face had lit up, and he leaned forward conspiratorially, “have you ever been into the woods?”
Arthur shook his head. His mother had cautioned him not to stray too far, and he had never seen any reason to do so.
“Well then, do you want to? Or are you a baby?”
“No,” Arthur huffed, “I just never had anyone to go with, that’s all.”
“Oh, so you can speak more than two words?”
“Maybe if you ever shut up, you’d have known that,” Arthur retorted.
At this, a full grin spread across John’s face. “Well, c’mon then.”
They snuck away from the hoard of other 11-year-olds and their mothers with ease. Soon, they were meandering through tall grasses and into the green shade of the woods. There was something inviting about that shade, as if the trees were extending their branches to welcome them into their covering. The conversation never once ceased between the two of them, and Arthur felt at peace with John like he had never quite been with most people. Despite his aloof attitude, he was easy to talk to, and asked a lot of questions.
“How old are you?”
“Eleven.”
“When’d you turn eleven?”
“30th of March. You?”
John kicked a rock, and it went tumbling into the pine needle covering of the forest floor.
“I turn twelve this year.”
“No way!” Arthur gaped at him, “you’re a year older?”
“Yeah.” Another rock went tumbling behind a tree. Arthur stopped to pick up a stick from the ground and let it drag behind him, leaving a small trail of pine needles and loose dirt in its wake.
“How come you're in our grade then?”
“Spent a year out of school because of foster care stuff. They kept moving me around.” John didn’t look at Arthur when he said this, instead opting to keep his eyes trained resolutely forward.
Arthur tried to read his face, but it was a blank mask. He decided that he should probably not ask any more questions. He lifted the stick he was dragging behind him and held it out in front of him, the end of it dangling just so that he could kick it up in the air, letting it swing back down and kick it again.
He had managed to kick the stick about four times, when John broke the silence with a: “Race you.”
Without any further warning, John shot off like an arrow, his legs carrying him deeper into the woods.
Arthur froze, the meditative kicking of the stick having been disrupted. Ahead of him, John’s figure receded in the distance.
“Hey, wait! No fair, I wasn’t ready!”
So they ran, the two boys. Jumping over fallen branches, weaving through the trees. John’s arms were thrown wide, and he laughed as he ran. He always laughed when he ran, Arthur would soon come to learn. He never asked John why, but he could guess. Whenever John ran, well. He became something different. Something larger than life. His strong body would carry him over difficult terrain with ease, it seemed to ignore the resistance of the wind, the very laws of physics. When John was running, his face would be open, free of the locks that always fell over his eyes, shrouding his countenance. His queer yellow eyes would shine with unbridled joy, and Arthur would be left staring at his friend in awe. In those moments, John felt more real than anything or anyone he had ever encountered in his young life.
But that would come later. On that first day, their running had led them to the clearing, that place which would become their secret playground for the next three years. Whether it really was all that secret, they never knew, or bothered to think about it. All they knew is that they hadn’t heard of it before, and never chanced upon anyone else while there. So, it was theirs, as far as they were concerned. It was nothing much, simply a break in the woods. A field of grass, utterly empty of the trees that surrounded its perimeter. In the middle of the clearing there was a large boulder, sitting there as if dropped from the sky by some passing god. Whatever it was, it became something different each time John and Arthur came to play their games.
It was a pirate ship, a meteor, a giant, a plane, a formidable foe, shelter from attack. There was no end to the stories they would tell themselves as they spent hours and hours together in their own personal haven.
In this way, three years passed in relative bliss. Arthur never needed for anyone other than John, and John never seemed to be interested in spending time with anyone but Arthur. They knew each other as well as two young boys could. Which isn’t to say they didn’t have secrets from one another. There were days when John would show up to school with bruises Arthur knew he didn’t get from their time together. They were always hand-waved away, minimised, but John never met Arthur’s eyes when he did so. Arthur also never met John’s foster father, an elusive Mr. Crawford. John never cared to mention him, and he never invited Arthur over to his home. The only time Arthur ever saw Mr. Crawford was at one parent-teacher meeting. He never attended a single one after that first time. When Arthur had tried to approach John that day, the boy had shook his head near imperceptibly, signalling that Arthur should stay away. Arthur never asked why, and neither did he ever ask if he could come over to John’s place to visit. He remembered the blank mask from the day they met, the unwillingness to elaborate about his life in foster care, and left it at that. But Arthur had a secret of his own too. Such as the fact his body was often wracked with pain in a way that he couldn’t easily describe, and that he didn’t want to disclose to John. Or anyone. He’d wake up some mornings feeling unable to move, his joints achey and muscles lethargic. Some days he’d go about life completely pain free, until he had to climb the flight of stairs to the school’s second level and that familiar, hateful boa constrictor wrapped itself around his limbs. Other days, he’d spend all his time chasing after John, the pain staying blissfully far from him.
The day after they ran in the rain was not such a day. Everything hurt. Even when his mother gave him a gentle squeeze on the arm that morning to try and wake him up, it only served to worsen the pain. It was a bad day. That was why, when John clambered through his bedroom window after school let out, Arthur had given him the sick excuse.
Despite being reassured that they could visit the clearing another day, John still looked markedly upset. Arthur didn’t quite know what to say to fix it though, so he didn’t say anything, and the room was silent except for the rustle of bedclothes as he tried to move himself into a position that hurt slightly less than the one he was in before.
“You don’t look sick.” John didn’t look up from his fiddling.
Arthur honestly had no idea what to do with that. So he opted with not doing anything. “Are you saying I’m lying? Or something?”
John finally looked up, though it was more of a glare through strands of hair. “No.”
“Okay, so then what is it?”
“I dunno. You look fine. But when you move, you wince a whole lot. Did you break a bone, or something? From when you tripped? And then did you just not tell me?” The look in John’s eyes was accusatory, searching Arthur for an answer.
He thought back to the pain settling over his body, the cold only amplifying it, the way he had forced himself to push through it. He had hidden it from John as best he could on the way back home, his entire body betraying him. Did John see? Did he notice? Did John secretly know, and this was his way of testing him?
“Arthur?”
“Sorry, um. Hm. Well, no. Obviously I didn’t break anything. You would have seen the cast by now, idiot.” He mustered what he hoped was a convincing smile.
John cocked his head to the side, and then dropped his gaze. “I guess.”
“C’mon John, we’ll go on Monday. It’s fine. It wasn’t your fault,” Arthur tried.
“Yeah, we’ll go,” John picked himself up from the floor, and slung his bag over his shoulder and gave Arthur a pointed look that he couldn’t read, “I’ll see you around.”
“See you.”
And then John was out of the window, walking on the lawn to where his bike lay on its side before pedalling down the street. Arthur watched him leave, and then lay back into his bed with a heavy sigh. He never knew what to do when John was like this. He had weird bouts of melancholy, stretches of time where he became easily angered, or frustrated, when he would blame himself for things he hadn’t done.
There was a knock on Arthur’s door.
“Honey, you okay? I thought I heard John’s voice?”
“Yeah, he was here.”
Arthur’s mother opened the door. “Did he go already? He didn’t want to stay for lunch?”
“No, I think he just wanted to check on me.”
His mother raised her eyebrows. “Well, alright then,” she said with a sigh. Then, as an afterthought, “that poor boy.”
“What? John?”
She nodded. “He doesn’t have it easy…” she trailed off. “You make sure to let him know we’re always here if he needs us. He’s welcome to stay for dinner, or over nights if he feels like it, hear?”
“Okay, I’ll tell him.”
“Good. Now, is there anything you need?”
“I’m all fine. Probably going to sleep for a bit.”
His mother gave him a smile as she left the room, softly closing the door behind her.
Arthur sighed and started the process of getting out of bed. He knew his mother didn’t like him moving about when his pain was bad, but he had often found that movement tended to work a small bit of relief into his muscles. Besides, the early morning intensity of the pain had dulled enough that he had started to feel bored. As he started to move his body, his mind fell back onto what his mom had said. “That poor boy.”
Arthur had certainly never thought that way about John. Sure, he had noticed the way people looked at the two of them when they were wandering around town, and the old women were really quite bad at whispering, but still. It had never occurred to him to pity John in any way. The older boy simply seemed untouchable. But then Arthur inevitably recalled those unexplained bruises, the anger, silence and fear that surrounded John’s father, and Arthur’s stomach started to feel like an empty pit.
—
“Why’d your mum not want you to come out?” John pulled his leg back and kicked, sending a cluster of mushrooms flying through the air.
“Oh, she gets like that after I’m ill. All worried and stuff,” said Arthur, his hands clasped behind his back as they walked through the woods.
John peered at him from through his hair. “But you’re okay now? All good?” He lightly poked Arthur on the upper arm, “no pain?”
“S’fine. She was overreacting anyways. Doctor says kids get healthier quicker so she should stop making such a fuss.”
John’s eyes kept a steady watch on Arthur’s face for a little too long, and Arthur felt his cheeks grow hot.
“Oh come off it,” he said, and shoved John to the side, forcing him to break his focus.
John stumbled, and when he regained his balance there was a familiar grin on his lips, his face wiped clean of any kind of worry that might have been there before.
“O’course you are. Race you to the rock?” He asked, and before Arthur could answer, John was already bounding off.
“John!”
Arthur watched his friend’s back grow smaller in the distance. With a sigh, he quickened his pace and started to run.
When he finally broke into the clearing, John was already standing at the rock. But instead of clambering on top of it, like he usually did, he seemed to be inspecting the ground around it. He must have heard Arthur’s footsteps through the grass, because he looked up as Arthur approached.
“Come check this out,” he called, pointing down.
“What is it?” Arthur asked when he was close enough, peering over John’s shoulder to where he was pointing.
There, on the ground, were tracks in the dirt.
“I think someone’s tried to move our boulder,” said John.
“Why would they want to do that?”
“I dunno,” John’s eyes glittered with curiosity, “maybe there’s something beneath it!”
Arthur rolled his eyes. “We’ve never once seen someone come here though.”
John lowered his voice to a whisper, “Maybe they’ve been coming here in the dead of night, for secret meetings.”
Arthur looked at John — who was busy wiggling his fingers in what was probably supposed to be an eerie way — with not an insignificant amount of amusement.
“Alright then. D’you want to move it?”
“Fantastic idea!” John proclaimed, and pulled back his hand as if to give Arthur a slap on the back.
Arthur readied himself for the impact, but John had dropped his arm to his side, and gently bumped Arthur with his shoulder instead.
The two of them took what they thought were the most optimal positions, and on a 3 count they pushed with all their might. It took them 10 minutes of considerable effort, but in the end, they were handsomely rewarded. With the stone rolled away, both of them panting for air, there it was. Beyond all possibility, a trap door was laid, seemingly right in the ground. While Arthur sat down, still catching his breath, John was already keenly inspecting the door.
“This is insane, how cool?”
The last time Arthur had heard John sound that fascinated was when they had first found the clearing. After he had sufficiently investigated every inch of the visible door, John started fishing around in his pocket.
“What is it?”
“There is,” John started rummaging around in another pocket, “a lock on this door. Ah!” From out of his pocket, John presented an old candy wrapper, a toothpick, a perfectly round pebble that Arthur had given him once, two bobby pins bent into weird triangle shapes, a zippo lighter, and what seemed to be three pen clips which had been broken off from their pens.
“What— are you going to try and pick the lock? Are you having me on?”
John had put everything back in his pocket, save for one of the pen clips and one of the bent bobby pins.
“The lock they have on here shouldn’t be that hard to…” John trailed off, biting his tongue between his teeth as he focused on the lock in front of him, sticking the pen cap in the base of the slot, and twiddling with the bobby pin, twisting it this way and that in the rest of the open slot. They sat like that for 2 minutes, with nothing but a light breeze and the metallic sounds of John’s lockpicking attempts. Arthur was just about to remark that they should leave it be, when there was a clicking noise, and the lock popped open. Immediately John pulled at the ring on the door, yanking the trap door open. Arthur half expected the creak of unoiled hinges, but to his astonishment, it swung open with silent ease. John looked up with a smug expression on his face.
“Yeah alright,” Arthur conceded, trying his best to hide his awe, “so what now?”
They both looked down into the darkness below. It seemed like an unending nothingness, with no visible ladder they could see to get them down. John glanced about until he found what he was looking for, a small rock. He promptly dropped it into the hole, and almost instantly they heard it clatter.
“We go in,” John said assuredly, as if there was no question about the matter.
“Are you mad? We have no light,” Arthur countered, though it was a weak attempt at dissuading John, and he knew it.
“We do though,” John fished the zippo lighter out of his pocket again, flipped open the cap and lit the flame with a wicked looking smile.
“John—”
“—Arthur, I’m going in. Are you a coward?”
Arthur gnawed at his lip. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go down, it was just this nagging feeling, the feeling that something was… wrong. He peered down the open hole, into the blackness. Despite the sun sitting right overhead, the light of the day didn’t seem to illuminate any of what was down past the border of the trap door. The longer he looked, the more his unease grew. He had never been afraid of the dark, but for the first time he knew why people could be. There was something hidden, something they might not want to encounter. Arthur looked up at John, trying to gauge if any of his own trepidation was shared, but when his eyes fell on the face of his friend, his heart sank. John looked into the darkness like it was calling to him, the eagerness open and unashamed. Could John not sense the danger in the same way he did? Clearly not. But as the pit in Arthur’s stomach grew, he knew also that he would never leave John to do something like this by himself.
“Alright then,” he conceded.
Without waiting for another word, John dropped down into the dark.
What else could he do? Arthur followed.
—
Arthur did not care for this at all. His initial trepidation had multiplied tenfold. The flame from John’s lighter cast a golden glow before them, but visibility was still incredibly poor. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t curious, but that curiosity was dampened by every other aspect of this excursion. He couldn’t place it, but the way that John moved incessantly forward, his step never faltering, did not sit well with him. It felt as if there must be some rope connected to the inside of his friend, tugging him, leading him somewhere. Not to mention that despite the fact that there was only one visible passageway from where they had entered, Arthur was certain that he had heard footsteps behind him. He had managed to get John to stop once, but when they stopped walking, the footsteps quieted as well. John had rolled his eyes, and told Arthur that he was being paranoid. When they started up walking again, Arthur listened attentively. No footsteps followed. Until, not two minutes later, he heard them again.
“John,” he whispered, “don’t you think—”
“Shut up Arthur. There’s nothing in these tunnels but us, it’s fine. Why are you being such a wet rag today?”
Arthur stared into John’s back. John hadn’t even bothered to turn around. A fist clenched around his heart.
“Why are you being such a fucking knob,” he mumbled under his breath.
They walked some more. When they had started out, the tunnel seemed to be carved out of the ground, manmade. It was large enough for both boys to walk through comfortably side by side. As they advanced, the tunnel had changed. Its sides became rocky, and felt more like a natural pathway that, according to John, probably led to an underground cave system. Their path became more difficult to follow, but it wasn’t too much effort for the lithe young boys. Nevertheless, it wasn’t a trek that came without bumping into walls, or having to crawl on hands and knees for long stretches of time, and before long Arthur felt his joints start to protest. Not only that, but the footsteps were still doggedly following them, and Arthur felt anxiety start to rise in the back of his throat. He pressed it down, and strengthened his resolve. Whatever was going on, he needed to stay with John, and he couldn’t do that if he was going to be jumping at every shadow, or footstep. No matter how real it felt.
Then, blessedly, the path started to widen gradually, until, to their amazement, both boys found themselves standing in a cave. It was cavernous, the ceiling looming above them, and Arthur could see a few other tunnels leading off from it. But they wouldn’t be going anywhere, because the cave was not empty. Lit by flickering torches, the interior was bathed in the warm glow of firelight. Somewhere in his periphery, Arthur heard the click as John extinguished his lighter. It felt unreal. Arthur had to shake his head twice and pinch his arm to make sure he wasn’t in some kind of dream. Theatrically, in the centre of the room, there was a long, stone table, remnants of burnt out candles stuck on its four corners. Weird symbols he didn’t recognise were carved all along it, in the base and on its top. Arthur didn’t even want to begin to start thinking about how it got there. Not far from this table, off to its right, there stood a wrought iron cage, large enough for an animal. Or, Arthur couldn’t dismiss the thought, a human. Off in one of the corners there was a chest, currently closed, though by the way John was eyeing it, not for long. The only other object in the cave was what looked like a camping cot, clearly slept in, as evidenced by a zipped open sleeping bag, and what looked like a backpack leaned against its side. The moment Arthur marked this, alarm bells went off in his mind.
“John,” he turned to his friend, who was in the process of opening the large crate, “John, I think someone’s here. We need to leave.”
He was soundly ignored.
Arthur strode over to where John was pulling out books from the crate.
“Please, we have to—”
“Look at this,” John jabbed a finger at the cover of the book in his hand, “ The Prophets’ Paradise, ” he pointed to another on the ground, “ The Yellow Sign ,” he discarded the book in his hand, pulling another from the crate, “The King in Yellow, Arthur, I think these are cultist books!”
John’s hair was tucked behind his ears, his yellow eyes stared into Arthur’s unobscured, and once more Arthur found that the light inside them frightened him, for no reason that he could discern.
“I, I mean. I dunno. Those just sound like storybooks to me.”
“Oh come on Arthur, don’t be dense. Creepy cave, secret passage, that —” John waved his hand in the direction of the stone table, “—this is all some creepy cult shit. Listen, I know it sounds crazy but—”
“—Yeah okay, cult shit. Let’s leave.”
John regarded Arthur quizzically. “Why?”
“Because someone’s been here, and not long ago. What if they come back? Y’know, cult shit ?”
“Why are you being such a bore today Ar—”
“—I’m not! And I’m tired of you being a righteous asshole just because I am trying to be careful.”
“Well—”
Whatever John had planned as a retort was silenced as Arthur clapped a hand over John’s mouth. Despite his frustration, he had not stopped keeping an ear out, and now without a shadow of a doubt he could make out the sound of voices coming from one of the other tunnels. By the way John’s eyes widened, Arthur knew he had heard it too.
“C’mon,” Arthur hissed, and grabbed John’s hand, tugging him back to the tunnel they had come from.
Whether because of the fact that John had finally seen sense, or because he wasn’t expecting it, he let Arthur pull him until they were both hidden by the tunnel.
They stood there at the entrance, pressed against the wall, still as statues, trying to breathe as softly as they could. Arthur kept his grip on John’s hand, holding his fingers as tightly as he dared. The voices grew louder, and soon enough two men stepped through the wider tunnel and into the cave, their faces cast fully in the light. Arthur felt John stifle a gasp, and when he dared to peer around the corner into the cave, he knew why.
One of the men was completely foreign to Arthur. His head was clean shaven, and he had a long beard that reached his collarbone. He was dressed in simple clothing, and clearly deferred to the other man with him.
Arthur knew this other man, despite the fact that he had only seen him once. It was not something you’d forget. A man with a cold glare. Chin set in a perpetual hardness. His skin was sallow, his frame thin and wiry in a way that did not seem healthy. It was John’s foster father. Mr. Crawford. The anxiety that had risen in Arthur’s throat now gripped at his body, and he felt the boa constrictor of pain circle around and around his muscles.
“—shard of the King is yet too immature to try anything drastic,” Crawford said to the strange man.
“Well, you must know that they are becoming restless, they want to see his return to full power.”
“And you think I don’t?” Crawford replied harshly.
The bearded man grimaced.
“No matter the time it takes, I will not act prematurely,” Crawford continued, “we have to succeed where we failed with the human incarnation a century ago. I will not settle for anything less.”
“So the boy remains unaware of what he carries within him?”
“Completely. And it will stay that way. The balance is delicate. The reason we failed a hundred years ago is because he had developed too much… heart. Affected by some human nobody. I am going to great lengths to ensure that it does not happen again.”
The blood in Arthur’s body ran cold. There was no doubt in his mind that somehow, for some reason, Mr Crawford was talking about John. Arthur shifted his gaze away from the two men, and looked at John. There was no expression on his face. It was a blank mask. Arthur swallowed, his throat dry. They needed to get out. Immediately. He tugged on John’s hand, and wonder above wonder, he followed without much resistance. Slowly, they made their way out the tunnels, wary of the slightest noise that might be sent echoing down the tunnels. Arthur tried not to think about it, but as with their entry, he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that they were being followed, and that an extra pair of footsteps dogged them all the way out of the tunnel.
“I need to go back in.”
Arthur looked at John in disbelief. They had exited the tunnel in silence, pushed the stone over the trapdoor, and walked back to where they had left their bikes without a single word spoken between them. John’s eyes never left the ground, never so much as glanced upon Arthur. He wasn’t looking at him even now.
“Go back in — John, what the hell for?”
“Well, it’s all got something to do with me, hasn’t it?”
“Yeah, and you should get away. ”
The silence between them grew like a chasm Arthur felt he might never be able to cross, and he had no idea how to stop it from growing. The boa constrictor had his body in a vice grip, and it took everything Arthur had to not show it, gritting his teeth in the hope that he could bear it just a while longer.
John did not seem to notice Arthur’s pain, nor his concern. Instead, he slung his leg over his bike.
“I’ll see you at school.”
Without so much as a glance, or another word, he was off, and Arthur was watching his back grow small in the distance. He felt like it was his perpetual state of being, to watch as John moved away from him, growing ever smaller. In that moment, he was gripped by the fear that where John was going was somewhere he could never follow. If he was stronger, he might have followed. He might have run, like John. Maybe he could even fly. But at that moment Arthur was just a boy, and his body was tired. So Arthur went home, fear gnawing at the parts of him the pain did not reach.
—
What was left of the day passed as though it were happening to someone else entirely. He arrived home to the fretful attention of his mother who bombarded him with questions of where, with whom, and a never-ending barrage of: “Are you okay?”
If he answered here in any satisfactory way, Arthur could not recall doing so. He was exhausted, everything hurt, and he felt like if he stopped focusing on his breathing for even a moment, his lungs would run out of air. He went through the motions of taking a bath, getting into pyjamas, eating his dinner, getting into bed — or at least he must have, because when he came back to himself it was dark outside, the pain had dulled and he was lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling. The wind howled outside, though he could not remember it picking up at all. His mind was unpleasantly black, and he wished to go back to wherever he had been beforehand. That was until he realised what had brought him out of his reverie.
There were two smart raps at his window, and when he made no move to investigate, another two followed. This time he dragged himself out of bed and opened his curtains. What he saw immediately made him open the window, taking care to hold tight in case a strong gust of wind yanked it from his grasp.
“John,” he said, becoming at once conscious of the weight he had been carrying in his heart, though he had no way to voice it.
Unlike earlier, John was no longer avoiding Arthur’s eyes, but somehow Arthur felt that his friend was miles away, more so than before. The desire to cry overcame him then, but he grit his teeth and bore it. He gave way from the window, allowing John the space to climb into his room, but the other boy simply stayed in the windowpane.
John took a breath, and said with slow, methodical certainty: “I’m going back down into the cave tonight.”
Arthur could do nothing but stand there, petrified.
“And don’t try to stop me, I’m going. I’d just thought I’d tell you.”
“John,” Arthur’s voice cracked, and he hated himself for it, but he kept going, “you can’t. Please, you can’t go, they’ll… they’ll…”
Maybe that was the worst of it. Arthur didn’t know what they would do, John’s dad and the strange man. They never said what their plans were, or what would happen if the plans were interrupted. Hell, they never even said John’s name out right, but there was a grim surety of the situation that he simply could not shake, and it terrified him.
“They’ll what, Arthur? We didn’t find out anything. If it’s me that dad was talking about then, well. Then I need to go find out what all the fuss is about, shouldn’t I?”
The wind tugged at John’s hair, making him seem fierce, and more grown, somehow. It did nothing to assure Arthur that anything would be alright.
“And what if you die? John? What if they kill you?”
“So what.”
He hadn’t even tried to argue with Arthur, and that was the worst of it.
“So what,” Arthur repeated, dully. “So you know something you aren’t telling me? About this cult thing?”
John shrugged. “I have a hunch.”
“You never told me.”
“Yeah, as if you don’t hide stuff from me ever.”
Arthur stared at John. For a moment, John held his gaze.
“Don’t go,” Arthur pleaded.
John looked away. He took his hands off the windowsill.
“Don’t come looking, yeah? I’ll be fine. You shouldn’t hurt yourself on my account.”
For the second time that day, Arthur found himself powerless in the face of John walking away from him. He stared into the night, staring as hard as he could until no glimpse of the boy remained. When the darkness had fully swallowed John, Arthur decided he would allow himself to cry. He waited for a while, but no tears would fall.
—
By morning, the wind had not let up.
“A storm’s brewing,” remarked his mother as Arthur sat down for breakfast.
The previous night’s happenings felt utterly unreal to him, something that happened to some other Arthur, and some other John. He would show up at school to see John lounging by the bike racks, shirt untucked and hair in his face, grinning like the world never once treated them unkindly.
But when Arthur arrived at school there was no John, only the empty seat in every class where he should have been.
He wasn’t there the next day either, or the day after. All the while the wind kept picking up, blowing so hard the trees bent sideways and it was impossible to ride a bike to school without almost getting blown to the side multiple times.
On the third day, Arthur started to formulate a plan. As soon as school let out, he made his way to the library. He asked the first librarian he saw if they had any books on a King in Yellow, and wonder upon wonder, he lucked upon what seemed to be an old short story collection. Despite the stories all being rather useless to inform his current situation, they did give him a starting point. A few internet searches on the library computer later, and the implications of what Mr Crawford had mentioned started to formulate into a dreadful idea that took root in Arthur’s mind.
On the fourth day, Arthur made up his mind. He woke up early, worked his stiff body till his muscles relaxed and his joints stopped aching. It took some digging around his room, but he found the Swiss army knife his dad gave him when he was ten. Taking care not to wake his mother, Arthur hastily made and ate a peanut butter sandwich, retrieved his bike from the garage, and started down the road to the woods. The wind that had raged for the past few days had lessened in intensity, but as Arthur made his way to where he and John usually entered the woods, he heard the far-off rumble of thunder, and a glance to the sky confirmed his mother’s prediction. Storm clouds gathered, dark and menacing as they crept over the horizon, ever closer.
When Arthur reached the woods, he saw the familiar form of John’s bike, partly buried beneath the pine needles, a fresh layer of them covering the ground. Swallowing his own anxiety, he left his bike next to John’s, and resolutely made his way into the woods.
The trapdoor was uncovered when he got there, the lock removed. Despite all the time John had been gone, Arthur had not really given himself any time to think on what could have possibly happened to him. Some small, hopeful part of him had simply refused to admit that anything could possibly harm John. John, who handwaved any pain or wound to his person. John, who smiled in the face of an oncoming storm. John, who grew wings when he ran and held the winds from a gale in his lungs. John, who had walked into the caves of a dark and malevolent power, and who had not come out again. Arthur dropped down into the waiting darkness below.
Without John’s zippo to light his way, the tunnel was even darker than before, and not five minutes had passed before those wretched, wretched footsteps started echoing in Arthur’s ears. He stopped, and sure enough, the footsteps stopped as well. He started to walk. A minute later, the extra set of footsteps resumed. Alone in the tunnels, more so than before, Arthur felt the extra presence like a looming threat. He felt it like standing at a precipice, toes over the edge, and eyes staring at the depths below, a plummet he didn’t know he could survive.
“It’s nothing. I’m imagining things,” he thought, trying his best to ignore the way in which his throat closed and heart tightened in his chest. He was no good to John as a coward, and he would not let anything stop him. Not now. He closed his eyes, and took a breath.
“I’m not scared of you,” he said aloud, and spun around abruptly.
He stared into the darkness, and the darkness stared back into him.
Then the darkness started to chuckle. It was a gritty, awful thing that didn’t echo in the walls of the tunnel but instead reverberated in Arthur’s skull. He was determined to not show any fear, however, and simply continued to look into the dark, trying fruitlessly to find the source of the sound.
Two eyes appeared in the darkness right in front of his face, opening in a slow, lazy manner, revealing blood red irises. Involuntarily, Arthur took a step back, but he managed to keep his gaze steady and true.
“Not scared, ey?” the formless voice sounded highly amused, and the eyes squinted in what Arthur could only assume was curiosity.
“No.” Arthur’s voice came out steady and clear.
The same gritty chuckle came once more, filling the space between Arthur’s ears and disorientating him. He closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to rid it of the sound without much success. In the end, he opted just to glare at the disembodied eyes in front of him.
“Oho, the twerp is brave, is he?” the eyes widened slightly and then disappeared, only to reappear right next to Arthur’s shoulder. The voice lowered to a whisper, “trying to summon the cold, calculated demeanour of someone not to fuck with, are we now, Arthur? Are you going to glare all the scary men away to save ol’ Johnny boy?”
Icicles of terror slid down Arthur’s back, and he felt his entire body freeze up.
“Leave me alone,” he grit out the words through his teeth.
“Pffft,” the eyes disappeared again, reappearing in their original spot, “of course, of course. Tell you what, even as a twerp you’re interesting. Your soul has quite the tenacity, let me tell you that much.”
Whatever that was supposed to mean, Arthur hadn’t the faintest idea. This… entity—
“Are you the King in Yellow?” he managed.
That laughter again. Now no longer a chuckle, but a full-bellied cackle that made the hair on the back of Arthur’s neck stand upright.
“The—theeehahahaha the King? Oh Arthur, Arthur, oh I’m glad you haven’t died, I’d be so dreadfully bored without you. The King? ” The voice descended into that cackle again, the eyes stretched open so wide Arthur wondered if they could pop from whatever head they were lodged in.
Arthur found himself backing away, if only to distance himself from that voice, and those eyes that never lost their focus.
“Ah ah, where are you going little human?” The eyes moved forward with immense speed until they were mere centimetres away from Arthur’s face.
Defensively, without giving it a second thought, Arthur reached out and tried to bat the eyes away. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, his hand collided with nothing, and instead, the eyes were even closer.
“Oh no,” the voice tutted, “you don’t want to be doing that.”
“Go away.”
“Hm yes yes, I’ve got the message. I suppose there’s no stopping fate.”
Fate? Despite his fear, Arthur’s curiosity overcame it in one moment. He needed to save John, but he also needed to know why all this had happened.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Well…” the eyes rolled themselves, “I mean. Who’s to say?”
So not only did he reek of obvious bloodlust, but the entity was unhelpful too.
“If you’re not the king, who are you?”
“Ah, this old question. I have a vested interest, Arthur. Now, it seems you’ve stopped being oh so terrified by me, tragically. It’ll pass, but until then — go ahead. Go save your little shard of a king. Oh, but to rescue a king from a cage, you need a key. Check your pockets,” The eyes moved back, winked, and out of nothing, a grin formed. Rows upon rows of too many sharp teeth glinted in a light that was not there. “Tata now, better hurry before someone shows up because they were fortuitously warned… or something.” A cackle sounded, this time reverberating in the tunnel, its echoes travelling far down it. The eyes and grin disappeared, and Arthur was left alone in the dark. He took a shuddering breath, a moment to collect his thoughts. He put his hands into his pockets, and his left fingers closed over cold iron.
“Cheshire cat-looking motherfucker,” was the last coherent thought he allowed himself to have before he moved down the tunnel with a renewed urgency.
When the glow of the cave grew warm in front of him, Arthur didn’t think twice, and simply rushed into it. Before he could curse his carelessness, he saw a sight that chilled him more than the mysterious entity in the tunnel ever could. John was sitting in a corner of that wrought iron cage, curled up in the foetal position. When he heard the sound of Arthur entering, his head shot up, and his eyes widened.
“Arthur?”
“John,” Arthur ran towards the cage, and started to look for the lock, “I’m gonna get you out.”
“Arthur, Arthur you idiot,” there was a choked sound to John’s voice, and Arthur stopped what he was doing to look at his friend.
All thoughts fled from his mind. Questions of the entity, the cult, the King in Yellow — whatever he had to do with John — nothing of that mattered in the face of this.
John’s face was dirty. His clothing too, and it was ripped in parts, like he’d been in a fight. There was dried blood from cuts on his legs, and his knuckles were different shades of sickly blue and yellow. His ankles and wrists were bound with a thick rope, and Arthur could spy the raw redness peeking out above them. Arthur’s heart contracted, the strong hand of grief reaching into his chest and wrenching at the organ with an intensity that made his entire body feel weak. He rapidly blinked away tears. He needed to focus, they needed to hurry.
“Arthur,” John’s voice sounded panicked, “Arthur please, you need to leave. You need to get out, if they catch you— where did you get that key?”
Arthur placed the iron key into the slot of the cage. He turned it, and with a klunk, it unlocked. There was no time to wonder why, or how. Arthur swung open the door, dropping on his knees to the floor in front of John.
“Arthur,” John’s voice was a breathy whisper, “how did you—”
“Shut up,” Arthur grunted as he worked his knife against the rope. It was tough, his knuckles chafing against it as he sawed at it with desperate abandon.
“You have to get out of here, Crawford and that man they—”
“—did they do this to you?” Arthur asked, not slowing down his work, keeping his eyes focused on the knife.
John fell silent. Finally, the knife cut through the rope. It fell in limp coils around John’s feet. Arthur closed his eyes against the harsh redness of the burns, then opened them again, and started work on the bonds around John’s wrists.
“Yeah,” John finally spoke.
“D’you know why?”
“...I think so.”
Arthur said nothing, but raised his eyes to John’s. He found uncertainty there, and fear. Whether it was fear of his foster father, for his life, or what Arthur would say when he found out, he didn’t know.
“They said that—”
“—I don’t care, John. Honest, I don’t.”
“You should, Arthur. You should care, because they’ll kill to keep me here, they’ll kill you if they find you.” The urgency in John’s voice grew the more he spoke, but as he finished the sentence, the ropes snapped.
Arthur stood up, dusted off his pants, and stretched out the hand not holding his knife. John looked up at him, and grasped it without hesitation.
“Too late,” Arthur said, “I’ve got you.”
In the other boy’s queer eyes glimmered something like hope. Arthur pulled him up, and no sooner had they stepped out of the cage than did they realise they were no longer alone. From out one of the tunnels stepped none other than Mr Crawford.
Despite the fact that Arthur knew for certain he was only a man of flesh and blood, the wiry man in front of him appeared as all his fear manifested. John sucked in a sharp breath. As soon as Crawford spotted the two boys, his eyes narrowed.
“What have we here?” His voice was dry, mocking.
John stepped in front of Arthur, his one arm stretched out in a protective stance.
“Leave him alone, he’s got nothing to do with this.”
Arthur looked at John with amazement. To summon courage, against all odds? But it was no longer John’s fight alone. Before he could say anything though, Crawford advanced.
“You clearly have much growing up to do. If you knew anything about the greatness you are destined to achieve, you would ward against growing close to any human. I will not repeat our previous mistakes.”
Crawford lunged forward, clearly aiming to grab at John. John jumped out of the way, grabbed Arthur’s arm, pulling him in the direction of the cave exit Crawford had just come from. Arthur tried to follow, but John had moved too suddenly, and he stumbled over his own feet, slipping out of John’s grip.
“Arthur!”
“Run! I’m right behind you!”
Thin, cold fingers closed around Arthur’s upper arm, hard enough to bruise. The muscles in his entire body lit up in pain as Crawford yanked him back, holding him close to his body. Arthur couldn’t help it, he cried out in pain.
John spun around, eyes wide. “No, no— Arthur!” He moved to run and help, but Arthur shook his head vehemently.
“I’m fine, run, go get help!”
Crawford’s other hand grasped his chin, twisting his head to the side. He lowered his own face so it was level with Arthur’s. Arthur gagged at the smell of sulphur that lingered on his breath when he spoke.
“Yes John, run, run quickly. I am sure Arthur here will be absolutely fine.”
John faltered. His face was contorted in anguish, body trapped, caught between running towards or away from Arthur.
With a breath, Arthur summoned every ounce of strength in his body.
“John,” he discreetly shifted his grip on the Swiss army knife that had gone unnoticed in his hand, “ run. ”
With a movement that was more fluid than he could have ever hoped for, he brought his arm up and struck with all his might. The knife found purchase, and sank into Crawford’s flesh more easily than Arthur had anticipated. The roar that came from Crawford sounded not unlike that of a wounded bear, wild and horrible. Immediately, his grip on Arthur loosened. When Arthur stepped away and turned around, he saw why. The handle of his knife was sticking out of the area where Crawford’s left eye should be. As the man clutched at his wound, sinking to his knees, Arthur did not pause a second longer to consider what he had done. He started to run.
John led the escape. Instead of using the tunnel that led back to the clearing, John headed through the one Crawford had come from. Unlike the clearing tunnel, it never narrowed in size, or became smaller. Instead, it slanted upwards, with various twists and turns that forced the two boys to slow down at certain junctures. Despite this, they kept moving as fast as they could. The trek was a far longer one than the journey through the tunnel, but soon enough light appeared up ahead. The path out of the caverns started to level out, and relief lifted the weight of fear from Arthur’s shoulders. Looking behind him, Arthur was certain Crawford was not able, or did not see it fit to follow them. They were okay, they were going to make it. In front of him, John exited the passage. Despite his fatigue, and even though he knew the fight was not yet over, a smile started to grow on Arthur’s face.
Until he stepped outside. Rain was pelting down in big, fat droplets, drenching everything. But Arthur barely noticed this.
The bald, bearded man had John in a chokehold. The relief he had allowed himself to feel evaporated, and fear roiled in Arthur’s gut. He felt rooted to the spot. He willed his legs to move, but they were like stone. Just like in the cave, except their positions were reversed. John’s eyes were wild, and he struggled in the man’s grip.
“No you don’t you little brat,” the man grunted. Then, he made a fatal mistake. He moved his arm up, and John promptly bit down on the man’s arm. Hard.
With a yelp, the man’s grip loosened, and that was all John needed. He wrenched himself from the man’s arms, but instead of running away like Arthur anticipated, he bent down to pick up a rock from the ground. Arthur could do nothing but watch as John lifted the rock and hit the man in the side of the head as hard as he could, sending the man stumbling to the ground. As soon as the man was fully vulnerable, John descended. The rock made contact with the man’s skull again, a wet, heavy thunking sound on impact. Thunk. Again. Thunk. Thunk.
“John.”
Thunk.
“John, stop.”
Thunk.
“ John. ”
John looked at Arthur, his hand on John’s arm. John’s chest heaved. There was blood on his hands, dripping from the rock, splatters on his face. His hair was plastered against the side of his face, hanging into his eyes. Arthur never once glanced down at the man, whose blood was flowing down into the entrance to the cave in bright red rivulets. He kept his eyes on John alone. He took the sleeve of his jacket and carefully, gingerly, wiped the blood and tears from John’s face. Then he brushed the wet strands from his forehead, and pushed them behind his ears.
“Let’s go.”
—
Battered, beaten and bloodied they stumbled their way out of the forest. The main road hadn’t been far from the secondary cave entrance they had come from, and upon finding it, it was simply a matter of following the way back home. Adrenaline coursed through Arthur’s body, and he dully registered that as soon as it left him, his body would crash. But that was for later.
The rain came down in sheets that drenched the two boys to the bone, but they walked steadily forward. John had taken Arthur’s hand, and so they walked along the road. Arthur was sure then that nothing in the world could have made John let go.
As they drew nearer to the town, it became clear that something was at odds. A police blockade was set up by the road, with cars that flashed blue and red lights, and people in uniforms standing ready despite the rain. Perhaps they should have snuck around. Perhaps it wouldn’t have changed what happened next at all. Either way, they were spotted, and before they had any real time to react, they were surrounded by police, questions flung at them from all angles as they were herded into one of the cars. Arthur started to feel dizzy, his steps becoming unsteady. The only real thing in the world was John’s hand, so he clutched onto it as the world around him started to spin.
“Arthur?” It was the first thing John had said since they escaped the caves, “Arthur? Arthur!”
He wanted to stay awake, he did. But they were okay now, weren’t they? He could rest.
“I’m okay,” he thought. Or did he say it? He squeezed John’s hand.
The world faded to black.