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Summary:

Hermit’s Hollow was a quiet town where you learned to ignore whisperings of nonsense and the dull, persistent feeling of being watched before you learned to ride a bike. To call it pedestrian would be a great disservice to all the terrible oddities occupying it— folks and legends alike.

Not that Grian believed any of them, of course.

Or; There's something wrong in Hermit's Hollow. There's something wrong with Grian. Neither of these are a surprise to him.

Notes:

Happy Halloween! (:

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: I. fold down your hands

Chapter Text

... --- -- .

I.

 

Hermit’s Hollow was a quiet town where you learned to ignore whisperings of nonsense and the dull, persistent feeling of being watched before you learned to ride a bike. It was a quiet town, especially when you knew which neighbors to avoid— the ones who believed the Silent Sentinels were responsible for their disappearing newspapers— and which ones were still sane and had the brain to keep to themselves.

It was quiet. But to call it pedestrian would be a great disservice to all the terrible oddities occupying it— folks and legends alike.

Not that Grian believed any of them, of course.

Hermit’s Hollow was a far cry from any place you might call home, but it was the only place Grian could call such a thing, so it would have to do. It was a home he generally disliked on the most neutral days and detested on the worst of them. In all, it was entirely up to the day’s weirdness level and the fullness of his coffee mug which side of the coin he landed on.

Between the news of the third disappearance in a three-month span and the empty coffee tin in the station’s breakroom, the coin landed in favor of hatred.

Chamomile tea wasn’t cutting it. But it was all he could find rummaging through the cabinets beneath the coffee maker, much to his dismay. He stabbed the soggy tea bag with the wooden stirrer as if bullying it would convince it to turn into coffee instead. Stranger things were rumored to happen in Hermit’s Hollow— a new Christ reborn with the ability to turn hot leaf water to hot bean water certainly wouldn’t top any charts. On a slow week, he’d be lucky to make the footnote of the newspaper.

Still, it was worth a try. Over and over he stabbed the tea bag, willing the lukewarm water to taste better as he pored over the mess of documents across his desk. He worked only by the light from his desk lamp. The station was empty and still, which was usual for the ungodly hour. And Grian was exhausted, which was usual considering he got a solid thirty minutes of sleep between his relentless tossing and turning.

Grian leapt out of his skin when the overhead lights flicked on, buzzing like a swarm of cicadas. Impulse leaned against the doorframe, arms over his chest and mouth sideways with amusement.

“Late night or early morning?” he asked.

“Neither!” Grian quickly flipped as many papers over as he could without appearing too suspicious. Then he dragged over a large stack of folders to sit on top of the mess, hunching over them and not having to feign a yawn. Tears pricked in the corners of his eyes. “Erm, both? Can you ask me something easier?”

Impulse laughed, strolling across the room and peering over Grian’s shoulder. The chief was about as wide as he was tall, and he probably could’ve lifted one of the fishing boats directly out of the dock if he wanted. Despite this, he had the kindest face Hermit’s Hollow had to offer. So kind that Grian nearly felt guilty when Impulse regarded the mess. He tried to look anything but the part of an irritated boss, but couldn’t quite manage to get his smile to reach his eyes.

“Alright. Tell me this.” Impulse rapped his knuckles on Grian’s desk. “How do you get anything done when it looks like a bomb went off on your desk?”

“I like the chaos,” he argued. He spread his hands out over the stack of this month’s minor disturbance reports he was meant to be sorting through. “My brain works better that way. It makes sense.” 

“Right, of course.” Impulse nodded. Then before Grian could intercept he snatched one of the papers and held it up above his head, out of Grian’s reach. “Let’s see. I bet there’s all kinds of chaos in noise complaints and Weeping Lady sightings.”

Impulse turned the paper around. Staring right back at him was the face of Iskall, the captain of the Flying Fish. The third and most recent person to disappear into thin air from the streets of Hermit’s Hollow. His hair was graying at the edges, the lines in his face telling a tale of a man brimming with dozens of other stories to share. Grian didn’t know if he had kids to share them with, but he privately hoped he did. 

 

If you have any details regarding his whereabouts, 

please mail or call in a tip to the Hermit’s Hollow Police Department. 

 

Grian slouched in his chair. Defeat tasted bitter, a spoonful of grape cough syrup— the worst flavor easily.

“I didn’t assign you to this case for a reason,” Impulse said, the firmest he sounded in the last few months. “We talked about this. I want you to ease back into things. Ease, Grian. Not swan-dive.”

“Come on. It’s hardly a swan dive,” he argued, pushing away the stack of ignored noise complaints and turning over the other two missing persons posters.

The first was a young woman. Grian recognized her from class, but until her face went out plastered on milk cartons and telephone poles, he wouldn’t have remembered her name. The second was a tourist, of all things. With an unfamiliar face it was difficult for Grian to feel any sort of way about him. Truly anything could’ve happened to a man willing to travel to the edges of nowhere to chase ghosts. It was an ugly piece of Grian that thought he might have had it coming.

But it didn’t matter. The three of them were gone, and most folks here believed it to be the work of a hellmouth ready to open up beneath Hermit’s Hollow and swallow everyone down in one big gulp. A Ragnorok of village proportions.

“It’s only been two months.”

“It’s already been two months,” Grian retorted, glancing at the calendar. “Three now, technically.”

“I’m your boss, right?” Impulse kindly reminded him, confiscating the missing persons files and tapping the pile of complaints and lesser caliber police reports. Like Grian was a dog struggling to find a treat in its blindspot. “You’ll stick with what I give you. It’s for the best.”

Grian lifted his glasses and rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. There was no good way to argue with Impulse, at least not one that didn’t end up with him on suspension or worse— parking duty. So he decided to take the high road. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just… I was bored and tired and they were all just right there. Anyone could’ve gotten in and seen them. You really should lock up those files a bit better, Chief—“

The chief raised a hand to stop him. “It’s Impulse before six AM. That being said.” Glancing at the wall clock, he rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a crumpled wad of cash and a few pieces of loose change. “Do me a favor and run for some coffee. We’re fresh out.”

- .... .. -. --.

 

Very little about Hermit’s Hollow made sense. The streets bent in strange and random directions, as if a child had scratched his crayon through the city’s blueprints and the builders took things a bit too literally. There were streets that came to abrupt dead-ends, an alley that dipped down into a pit with a dead bolted door behind police tape and rusted signs that read, Do Not Enter Void.

With each bend and little slope, the town breathed. The chilled wind a sharp inhale, then the sudden downward slope of the sidewalk the fall of its chest. Something slumbered just between the earth and the cement below his feet. Like it could hear you whispering terrible things about it and made sure to only give you even more terrible things in return. Eye for an eye, and then some.

As Grian walked down the hill towards the Grab n’ Go store in the heart of Main Street, the sun began making itself known. With the fog and thick canopy of clouds it did little else than cast a dreary bluish haze over everything. Street signs, store fronts, the withered white oak tree in the center of the square.

The fog filled Hermit’s Hollow to the brim. A bottomless bottle that kept on filling and filling, and just when Grian would think it couldn’t possibly get any more miserable, it did just that. Today the fog wasn’t too unusual, which was to say every street light and neon shop sign haunted the air. With the fog came the cold and wet misery of a perpetual rain cloud that sat overhead, the cork of the bottle.

The town was always crying. That was how his mother always put it. Even years older, Grian still wasn’t confident he truly understood what she meant by that.  He hoped she meant the rain.

His police-commissioned windbreaker did little to shield him from the wind that came careening in from the docks, carrying with it the stench of rusting metal and fish. He bundled his scarf up to cover his mouth and nose. It wasn’t enough to keep his nose and eyes from watering, but at least the heat of his own breath kept his lips from going numb.

He was going to get coffee. Even if he froze to death doing it.

It was only after staring at the four different brands of coffee stacked in uniform rows on uniform shelves in uniform tins for ten minutes that Grian questioned why he was here and what the difference was between dark roast and light. The same somber, guitar-plucked tune blared over and over again from a set of old speakers by the doors. If Grian had to listen to the static voice lamenting of country roads one more time, he feared he might snap.

“Dark is tastier.”

Grian jerked. A man stood right beside him, eyes carefully studying the coffee selections. Grian hadn’t noticed his approach. Which was odd, considering he was a good few heads taller than Grian and possessed a face that belonged on the cover of a fashion editorial more than it did beneath the fluorescent insult of the Grab n’ Go.

“Come again?”

The stranger turned to Grian and smiled. “The dark roast,” he said, snagging the can with the green label on the top shelf. “This is the one you want, trust me.”

Grian waited for the discomfort to creep in that always came with meeting someone new, with finding the rarity of an unfamiliar face hidden in Hermit’s Hollow. Maybe he wasn’t even new— maybe it was Grian that was too old. It’d been years. Grian felt more a stranger to his own hometown than anything, as if the town purposefully tried to forget him. But now that he was within its orbit again, it can’t help but try to breathe him in.

He waited and he waited and it never came. Instead all he could notice was that the man smelled of peppermint. He was clear, sharp. Even the air around him felt fresh and crisp as a spring Hermit’s Hollow would never see.  And his smile, for all intents and purposes, was rather nice.

Still, a nice smile only did so much. Grian accepted the can, albeit hesitantly. “Thanks,” he mumbled.

“I haven’t seen you around,” the man said, head tilted not too unlike the way Grian’s childhood dog would when he wanted a piece of his pizza crust. “Just came into town?”

Grian couldn’t decide if he found it refreshing or irritating that the man had no clue who he was. But between the lack of pity in those green eyes and the idea that he was talking to Grian for any reason other than morbid curiosity, his scales were tipped in favor of refreshing.

“Something like that,” Grian said. “Just came back.”

The man’s gaze lingered on him; Grian could feel it as well as he could feel the humming of the ancient AC thrumming overhead, as well as he could smell the peppermint on the man’s mouth standing a foot away. Grian wasn’t even sure why he was still standing there, cradling an overpriced coffee tin and making small talk with an absolute stranger. An ever so slightly creepy one, at that. But his feet were firmly, if not stubbornly, planted in place. Even if he wanted to move,  he wasn’t sure those green eyes would allow it.

“Well, welcome back!” The man spotted the patch sewn to Grian’s jacket. “You’re a cop?”   

Stifling the sudden, incredible urge to give up on his coffee endeavors altogether, he flashed a weak smile. “Detective, actually.” It sounded coarse, but in reality it was hard not to be a little prideful.

“Must be pretty excitin’.”

“In a place like this?” Grian scoffed. “Hardly."

The stranger shifted his weight and hid his hands in the pockets of his oversized coat. Grian spared a glance at him in time to see the suspicious downturn of his lips. “What about all those missing people? It’s a fisherman that’s poofed now, right?”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be asking me about that,” Grian said, blinking at him.

“Bummer.” The stranger had the audacity to pout of all things. “You got a gun?”

“You’re not supposed to ask me that either,” he said, turning his gaze down.

Grian had seen and heard plenty of strange, impossible, and downright ridiculous things in his time in Hermit’s Hollow. So much so that he feared he was developing a blindspot for it. But for a moment he entertained the idea that this whole moment could make the top ten if Grian bothered ranking them all. At the very least, it earned its place as an honorable mention. And there was no proper reason for it. Rather, it was a knee-jerk feeling. The same, sinking stone that dropped in his stomach when he knew someone was guilty.

“What can I ask you about, then?” The man tilted his head to catch Grian’s gaze once again. Grian had no choice but to respond, drawn like a magnet. His smile was powerful in that way.

Grian decided rather quickly that he hated it. And he wanted nothing else to do with it for the rest of the day; it was far too early and there was far too little caffeine in his bloodstream. “Nothing,” he said, tapping his fingers on the tin and turning on his heel. “Thanks for the help, but I should go—”

“Wait!”

If he was smart he wouldn’t have stopped. He liked to have blamed it on sleepless hours and worn nerves, but something else, something stronger, made Grian stop in his tracks. His shoes squeaked against the tile.  With a sigh, he said, “What is it?”

“Don’t you wanna ask me a question?” The man beamed at him, shoulders and arms relaxed and weight shifted to his right hip. Every atom of his screamed casual and cool, like he’d walked right off the screen of a coming-of-age movie. But the kind where the characters were played by actors a tad too old to fully pull off the pubescent sixteen-year-old look.

The angry, caffeine-less part of Grian (the heads of the coin that screamed ‘I hate this place!’ instead of ‘In God We Trust), wanted nothing less than to ask the man a question and prolong this personal sort of purgatory he’d found inside the Grab n’ Go. But the other part (the tails that never actually fell, because the coin, impossibly, landed sideways on its paper-thin edge) kept him still. It made him turn the coffee tin over in his hands.

“Fine, then.” His brow creased. “Why’d you say the dark roast?”

The stranger nodded as if he’d been eagerly awaiting the question. Expecting it, even. “One of my hunches,” he said, a glint in his eyes. “I could sense it. And I’m never wrong.”

“Oh,” Grian groaned outwardly, his hopes deflating and trying not to feel too foolish for letting them puff up in the first place. “You’re one of those.”

Where most in Hermit’s Hollow would have been entirely fooled by a charming smile and emerald eyes that claimed a greater kind of sight, Grian saw straight through him. All it took was a little nudge.

That was the thing about pretty gemstones: they were transparent. Kaleidoscoping— trying to distract you with mirrors and what should be impossibilities— but transparent all the same. He’d seen the type. Again and again and again. In Hermit’s Hollow, self-proclaimed ‘psychics’ and other scholars of the unknown were a dime-a-dozen.

“One of those?” The man’s face flickered like a faulty lightbulb, but the charm never faded in full. He was very good at what he did, Grian would give him that.

Grian choked on a cynical laugh, hugging the coffee tin to his chest. “Are you gonna charge me for a coffee reading or can I be on my way?”

“A skeptic, are you?” The stranger laughed, a darker tinge to his smile that made the back of Grian’s neck prickle.

“Skeptical implies I only doubt. I have no doubts,” he corrected, then a cruel smile split his face in two. He tapped two fingers to his temple. “You’re a fraud. I can sense it. And I’m never wrong.”

The man’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. He visibly wrestled with his expression, perhaps unnoticeable to any other person. But it was Grian’s job to notice the often unnoticed. And he liked to think he was rather good at it.

“If you’ll excuse me.” Grian sidestepped the stranger. He didn’t look back once at him, half fearful that if he did he wouldn’t be able to make it out of the aisle.

It wasn’t until he pocketed Impulse’s change and stepped back outside into the cold, foggy morning that he took a closer look at the coffee tin. Goddamn decaf

 

.. ...

 

“I’m home,” Grian called into the silent house. The tempestuous wind and rain roared overhead. It beat across the roof like a frantic heartbeat. He shed his jacket and tried to shake out the water but to no avail. He shook out his hair and arms like a dog after a bath. A puddle grew at his feet, and when he stepped out of his shoes the water spilled out of them too.

Abandoning his bag, jacket, and shoes in a heap by the door, Grian ventured further inside. Not much of it changed since Grian had left home. Empty picture frames hung along the staircase in the foyer. The smell of sea salt. A couch that was so old that Grian couldn’t venture to guess which decade it was from sat in front of a small box television. Everything was the same. Except the living room, where the carpet had been torn out, revealing the cold cement flooring underneath.

“Hello?”

The house only groaned in response. A chill prickled his skin. It was best to not make eye-contact with the walls when he felt as if they were watching him. A superstitious habit courtesy of his mother. One he indulged not because he believed in it, but rather only because she did.

Something soft brushed the outside of his leg. Maui purred at his feet, her tail curling around his calf as she nuzzled against him. The angry, irritated parts of him dissolved at the sight of her. He knelt down and petted her a while, scratching her belly and behind her ears until she was satisfied and scampered toward the kitchen.

Grian dipped into the half-bath in the hall and toweled the rest of the dripping water from his hair. There wasn’t a mirror in there, only the blank wall with a square painted in a different shade where it had once hung. So Grian could only stare at that faded paint until he figured his hair was dry enough to not give him a cold.

He tried to keep busy. He moved the laundry over, fished for something to eat in the fridge only to find it empty aside from a box of Danish Go-Rounds in the freezer. He toasted, iced, and ate one while sitting on the couch, flipping through the only three TV stations Hermit’s Hollow had to offer. The news channel, a talk-show with a man (his name started with an X, but Grian could never pronounce it) dedicated to discussing and reporting all supernatural phenomena in Hermit’s Hollow, and a sitcom station.

None of them were particularly riveting.

It was only when he stood in the kitchen for a long while, petting Maui and debating whether or not it was worth losing a few more hours of sleep for a fresh, caffeinated cup of coffee, that the front door finally opened.

Maui’s spine bristled and she darted across the room, disappearing up the stairs.

Grian met him in the foyer, leaning against the bannister. “You’re home late.”

“Sorry,” Jimmy said, wrestling with his umbrella and losing at a distressingly fast rate. “It’s not my fault—” The latch wouldn’t click so the umbrella popped right back open, drenching the both of them. “This stupid thing— Joel’s ship—” Another snap. Jimmy groaned and tried folding it back in again. “They got turned around so I had to wait for them to come back before I could lock up—”

It was the perfect amusement Grian needed after his tortuous day, but before Jimmy snapped his fingers off Grian took the umbrella from him and closed it, hooking it on one of the coat hangers.

Jimmy pouted, shrugging off his raincoat. “I almost had it.”

“Mhm, sure you did, Tim.”

“You’re the worst,” he argued with no real heat. If anything it was more of a whining complaint, a kid who was angry at having his toy taken away but not so angry as to do anything to stop it.

“And you didn’t go grocery shopping. So who’s the real bad guy here?” Grian tossed the last frozen pastry at Jimmy. He fumbled for it, nearly dropping it to the ground. Grian turned his back to Jimmy and returned to his post by the coffee pot.

Jimmy trailed sheepishly after him, his feet lighter than the rain beating against the roof. He came up behind Grian and popped his Danish Go-Round into the toaster, bracing his arms against the counter. The silence was tense. Almost as tense as the silence that belonged to the house, but there were few things dark enough to rival the blackness of night itself. It was better to ignore it, to try to let your eyes and ears adjust.

Grian brewed himself a mug. It wasn’t like he was going to sleep anyway. The last three months gave him no reason to believe otherwise. If he had to be sleepless and miserable, he would do it in the least painful way possible.

“I forgot,” Jimmy said as the coffee maker hissed, hot water trickling into a discolored ceramic mug. He stared at the hot orange coils inside the toaster. “The groceries, I mean. I was supposed to go this morning, but then I—” He cut himself off, head hung. “I just forgot. I’m sorry.”

No matter what he wouldn’t look at Grian directly. Even after three months, it was still difficult for him to get used to.  Grian didn’t look at him either, though it was for a much more selfish reason. He couldn’t stay mad for long, not when it came to his younger brother. Not when Jimmy looked at everything in his inexplicable Jimmy way.

“We’ll live,” Grian said. The toaster chimed and Jimmy’s Go-Round popped out. “That’s the last one, though. Tomorrow we’ll have to crack open the couch finally. Maybe there’ll be some old pretzels between the cushions, what do you think?”

“Gross,” Jimmy chuckled, plucking his pastry out of the toaster and plopping it down on a bed of paper towels. He scribbled the icing all over it and licked the excess off his fingers. He hummed around a bite of it.

You’re too similar for your own good. His mother used to say it all the time. But whenever she did,  the warmth faded from her voice. As if it was terminal.  In Grian’s memory her face was always sad, sunken in the middle and wilted like the white oak near Main Street. Though most days Grian wasn’t sure he could trust most of his memories that were at some point touched by Hermit’s Hollow. It was as if the town itself was a blight that spread not over crops or over landscape, but throughout Grian’s head, poisoning every little happy thought and memory until it was black and withered and othered.

Anger stirred low in his chest. Grian gripped his mug and took a sip of coffee, letting it burn his tongue. Jimmy was talking to him again, but he couldn’t hear it. His ears rang and he couldn’t tell when the beat of rainfall ended and the thunder of his heart began. A familiar ache bled through his temples, tightening his jaw as if he’d been screwed taut with a wind-up key.

Grian groaned and rubbed at his forehead.

“Is it hurting again?” A gentle hand rested on Grian’s shoulder, as if unsure it was more helpful or harmful.

“I’m fine, Timmy. Really,” Grian insisted, pushing his glasses up his nose and offering Jimmy a half-measured smile. It was as much as he could muster, bone-tired and aching in more ways than one.

“Seriously, Grian…” Wide,  doe brown eyes darted between Grian and his coffee cup, the pinch in his brow clear that Jimmy took Grian’s word with less than a pinch of salt. “Maybe you should back off on the caffeine for a bit?”

Grian stared into the blackness of the mug. It was so dark and bitter that if Grian fell into it he wouldn’t have minded one bit. At least it was warm. He cupped it tighter in his hands, willing the last of the heat to seep into his tired fingers.

Then, he inhaled sharply. “I don’t want you working past dark anymore,” he said.

“What? Why?” Jimmy pulled his hand off of Grian like he’d been burned, stared at him as if he’d just been insulted.

He knew that look. Despite being an adult by law, Jimmy was still far too young. In every way that mattered. The space of only a handful of years felt endless between them. It felt like decades, like lifetimes. It was one of the only things he wasn’t sure he could blame on Hermit’s Hollow and every crooked thing inside of it. For they, too, were crooked things, having nothing to do with geography and everything to do with blood.

Grian set his mug down. His heartbeat pulsed in his temples. “Don’t tell me I really have to explain this to you,” he said, exasperated. “A fisherman just went missing off that dock, and you’re out there goofing off with Joel, not a care in the world!”

“I’m not goofing off.” Jimmy’s ears flushed bright red. “I’m working, I’m making money. It’s good work.”

“And you can keep doing that work so long as you’re home by eight.”

“You’re worried, I get that,” Jimmy said, somehow both angry and placating. Just like his brother to never decide which side of the fence to sit on. “But who even are you right now? The Grian I knew would’ve gagged had someone told him he had to stay in. Let alone had a curfew. You used to beg me to sneak out with you. And now you’re telling me to stay put?”

He clenched his jaw until the pain between his grit teeth distracted him from the ache in his forehead. “A lot has changed in the last few months, Tim.”

“That doesn’t mean that you—” Jimmy caught himself, his knuckles blanched and dug into the kitchen counter. “You— Grian, you’re not my mom.”

“No, I’m not,” Grian agreed. “But obviously someone has to be.”

Hurt flashed across Jimmy’s boyish face. “I can take care of myself—”

“No, Jimmy, you can’t.” Grian’s voice struck the air like a gavel. His brother’s name on his tongue felt terrible and forbidden, and the entire house tensed. It knew the history, just as the two brothers did. Just as Grian did, just as his guilt did.

Because he wasn’t there when they needed him.

“This place isn’t safe. It hasn’t been safe since—” He faltered. “I’m asking you for the first time. Please. Next time I won’t be so courteous. I’ll take that really ugly picture from your fifth grade orchestra performance and paste it all around town on missing persons posters. I’ll do it, Timmy. Don’t test me.”

“Okay. Okay.” All the color drained from Jimmy’s face. Whether it was because of the venom in Grian’s tone or the very real threat of public humiliation, he wasn’t sure. Either way it was effective and that was all he cared about.

He downed the rest of his coffee and left the mug in the sink. It was tomorrow-Grian’s problem. 

 

.-- .-. --- -. --.

 

DON’T LISTEN TO THE MOON. 

(SHE’S LYING TO YOU.) 

Simple black text overlaying a giant crescent moon, the sign hung over the to-go counter by two pieces of yarn that looked about ready to fray and come apart. Looking away from it proved difficult. Something about the text demanded it to be looked at, even though it was about as plain and visually boring as a book page. All new things in Hermit’s Hollow carried the same sort of alluring charm. The same way the strange peppermint man had been in the Grab n’ Go. New things were hard to come by, and Hermits loved to pry into things they had yet to understand. It was nurture and nature for them.

A few years of land-locked life did not spare Grian from this.

The Double ‘O Diner was the newest thing in town. That was to say, it was nearing three years old and Grian was vastly behind the times. In what used to be the town’s archival building, the diner sat close to the port, meaning it was full to the brim with fishermen and deckhands most hours of the day.  Neon signs hung in the windows, the exterior was painted a deep green, and the entire interior looked the part of an old movie set. The red upholstered booths and barstools popped against white tiling.

All evidence of the old archives was erased. Less like the diner had moved into the building’s remains and more like it’d replaced it all together. As if the archives never existed to begin with.

He would’ve found that (and the ominous lunar warning) far more unsettling if it weren’t for his growling stomach. He stepped up to the counter and busied his eyes and hands with digging his wallet from his pocket.

“I’ll be damned. Am I seein’ what I think I’m seein’?”

Grian snapped his head up. A few spare pennies fell from his pocket and clattered to the floor. He forced an uneasy smile and tried to sound as cheery as possible. “Hey, Bdubs.”

Of course it was Bdubs. Double O’— Grian should’ve recognized it immediately. It wasn’t that he was strictly unhappy to see an old classmate. But with any familiar face in Hermit’s Hollow these days came a terrible dread that crawled through his veins. The agony of it was the only thing that rivaled the pain of being back in Hermit’s Hollow itself, the threat of running into old faces hanging over him like the storm that just wouldn’t leave the town’s sky.

It didn’t matter who it was, how much Grian once liked them. They all looked at him the same. As if they were drowning in their pity and had the audacity to look to Grian for rescue.

“Just great, this is my lucky day! I heard you were back in town!” Bdubs smirked at him and slung a handrag over his shoulder. He tapped a few keys on the register and the little analog screen in front of Grian’s nose sparked to life.

He looked the same as he had in high school, still the only one short enough to rival Grian; with Bdubs now standing under it, Grian couldn’t help but fret over the size of the giant moon sign. It’d crush him if it fell. His beard had grown in more, and there was a gold band on his left hand.

But on top of everything, the surface level things, there was something else that was different about Bdubs. It was impossible for Grian to place his finger on it. Hermit’s Hollow tended to do that to the folks who stayed inside of it too long. Grian suspected it had little to do with the Weeping Lady or the Hollows, or any of the other tales people liked to use to excuse their paranoia and bad behavior, and everything to do with laying stagnant too long. Water that sits grows bacteria. A wound left unattended gets infected. Bodies that lay still rot. Bdubs was in no way rotting, at least not yet. But there was a little less of him there.

Grian had no proof of it. But he could feel it. His head throbbed.

“Couple months now, yeah,” Grian muttered, fussing with the cup of toothpicks in front of him.

“Of course, of course.” Bdubs huffed. “If I didn’t know any better I’d say you’ve been avoidin’ me.”

“No, no, absolutely not.” It was a knee-jerk denial, but still Grian found himself cringing away from it. “Been a bit busy with… everything, really. To be completely honest I didn’t know this was here until ten minutes ago when I was walking by. This whole thing is yours?”

“She’s a beaut, isn’t she?” Bdubs spread his arms wide and spun in a circle. The rag on his neck flung off somewhere behind a stovetop. “My pride and joy, really. I’ll tell you, G, it’s been a real hit since we’ve opened up. Fishermen love milkshakes and burgers. Who knew!”

Grian glanced over. The diner was busy, but not crowded. A large group of men— a fishing crew by the looks of them, all low-brimmed hats, large biceps, and dirty shirts— occupied two of the larger tables on the far right side. A couple sat at the bar, their noses buried into the newspaper. A few stragglers sat in some of the booths throughout, but most of them had their backs to Grian so he couldn’t make out any faces.

“Glad it’s been going well.” When he said it, he was surprised to find he meant it. Bdubs had always been a good friend. A bit of a loose cannon and possibly the only kid more reckless than Grian back in the day, the two of them got along swimmingly. Still, Grian couldn’t bring himself to regret leaving. To regret not telling anyone he had left until he was already halfway across the country in a studio apartment and a new kitten in his lap.

“Hey, uh—” Bdubs leaned over the register and gestured for Grian to meet him halfway. There was the pity, a flash of it, sinking in the dip of Bdubs’ brow. “Hope you don’t mind me askin’, but how’re your brother and sister doin’? Jimmy comes in for lunch sometimes, but is your sister still—”

“They’re fine.” Grian said curtly. “We’re dealing well enough.” The sign above Bdubs’ head drifted slightly as the door behind Grian chimed and swung open, the crowd of fishermen scurrying out.

He couldn’t ignore it any longer. “What’s this all about?”

“What's whadda?” Bdubs craned his neck back as if he had no idea what Grian was gesturing to. “Oh! The instructions are pretty clear on the sign, G. Don’t believe a damn thing that silver witch says. If she tells you how you die, do not listen. It will only ensure what she says comes true.”

It sounded like it should be a joke. But Bdubs didn’t falter, his face giddy but flat, like it was painted on. Dread furled in Grian’s stomach. Every hair on the back of his neck stood on end, as if his body knew something he didn’t. A bright neon sign screaming DANGER but without an arrow pointing him in the right direction. The sky was probably a good place to start… but Grian would jump in traffic before he’d consider seriously starting up a debate with the moon.

Luckily, Bdubs’ smile cracked. Laughter bubbled out of him. “Oh, G. You should’ve seen your face just now. You’re too funny!” He slapped the countertop and made a show of wiping tears from his eyes. Grian forced a laugh, the sound tense and humorless like a whistle without the ball inside of it.

“Relax, the only one lyin’ to you here is anyone that says my coffee isn’t the best damn thing they ever tasted,” Bdubs chimed, shoulders and head raised, his pride ready to lift him from the ground. “It’s to die for. I’m the best in town, easy. Pick your poison, what can I get you?”

Grian swallowed the impulse to tell Bdubs he was the only one in town. But he knew that wasn’t likely the best way to rekindle with an old friend. Instead he ordered a simple black cup of coffee and a parfait. He fumbled for a few bills in his wallet and handed them over to Bdubs.

When Bdubs placed three quarters of change in Grian’s hand, his skin felt like ice. He looked at Grian as if there was more he wanted to say, but couldn’t quite pick the right words to do so. Before he could find them, Grian pocketed his change and stepped off to the side to wait for his order. He tucked himself into the empty space between the back of a booth and the jukebox.

He idly tapped on one of the front buttons. It didn’t seem to be working. His reflection in the blank, dark screen stared back at him, distorted.

“... a new search party, for starters. People are getting less and less interested.” The familiar voice reached Grian as nothing more than a murmur through the idle bustling of the diner and the hissing of brewing coffee pots. “Three people are gone, sir.”

Grian’s head turned on a swivel. Quickly he found the back of Chief Impulse’s head. Grian couldn’t see what he had on the table in front of him, but he heard the rustling of papers. The man across from him, however, Grian did not recognize right away. Until he did, and suddenly the sound of the two men was the only thing Grian’s ears could find.

“Oh, dear… That is a bit unfortunate, isn’t it?”

The mayor was a man he’d only seen in newspapers and yet had the honor to meet. In print he looked a thousand years old, yet timeless, and somehow he was equally (if not more) troubling in person. He was tall and thin, though not as tall as Impulse. He looked more like a tree than a man, long twisting limbs and an ancient air about him. The severe, dark lines of his suit jacket and the thin, blood red tie made him look twice as long. He wore a face as pale as the white of his creaseless shirt. His eyes were dark, small marbles, and if he had a mouth, it was hidden somewhere beneath his dark mustache.

Eavesdropping on the mayor wasn’t on Grian’s list of proudest accomplishments. But sometimes the best police work started out as questionable guesswork. And some boundary redrawing.

“Unfortunate is one way to put it,” Impulse said. Grian could tell his patience was already thin. They’d been sitting here a good while, no doubt, the chief pleading his case. “People are… afraid. They need answers.”

Mayor Jumbo’s face twitched, which must’ve been his way of showing displeasure. “I’m not sure I understand,” he said. “Do they need answers to be not afraid or do they simply need to feel better?”

“I’m not sure how you’d suggest that, sir,” the chief said. “Every lead so far has been a dead end. We’re getting tips in the mail or on the phone-line, but half of them are pranks and the other half are duds.” The defeat in Impulse’s voice made Grian’s stomach churn.

“It’s October,” he continued. “Once tourist season amps up, my men will be too busy crowd-handling. They’re already swamped in disturbance calls and old ladies saying their paintings are smiling at them. If we’re going to find the answers we need… maybe we need help.

Grian abandoned his jukebox alcove. He’d loved to have claimed it was the pull of Hermit’s Hollow finally gaining control over him, seizing him by the neck of his free will. But it was something far more disappointingly human that carried his feet across the floor until he stood before the mayor and the chief.

“Help has arrived,” he said, disappointingly, yet not unsurprisingly, selfish. “Put me on the case.”

Impulse stared at Grian, jaw tight and by the far the angriest he’d ever seen him.  “What are you doing.

“Oh, hello.” Mayor Jumbo scratched at his mustache. “Who are you?”

Impulse interjected before Grian could gather his wits enough to respond. “This is Grian. Fresh meat. He’s only been back a few months now.” Then he turned to glare at him. “And he should be working instead of interrupting a private conversation. Forgive him—”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be having private conversations in public diners, then.” Grian smirked. “Well would you look at that, we’ve both learned something today!”

The mayor shifted in his seat, moving like a branch caught in a breeze. Those marble eyes lit up. Little about him seemed human, aside from shape and intent. A poor imitation.

Grian,” he said. “Of course. I remember you. How silly of me to forget.” He extended a hand out to the seat next to Impulse. “Please. I insist.”

Grian sunk into the booth next to Impulse. He looked everywhere but the chief, because the weight  of his stare alone was enough to shift mountains. If he stood a chance at making his case with the mayor, he could not risk losing his nerve. Unfortunately that meant he had somehow both ignore the seething rolling off of Impulse in waves as well as look at the mayor. He wasn’t sure which task was more monumental. It was impossible to look Mayor Jumbo directly in the eye. The same way your brain refused to let you look into the sun for more than a few seconds at a time for fear of burning your retinas up. A safety mechanism, an automatic override.

Remember me, sir?” Grian asked. The mayor’d been elected almost a whole year prior. It was possible that he was on his second term, Grian couldn’t remember exactly, but even then there was no time they could have crossed paths. “Maybe you’ve got me confused with someone else.”

“Grian’s only came back into town recently,” Impulse hedged, shutting the open folders on the table to keep them from Grian’s prying eyes, no doubt. “Again, I am so sorry. I didn’t think it was appropriate for him to—”

“No, no, there’s no mistake to be had,” said the mayor, his mustache curling in such a way that implied he might’ve been smiling. “I remember you clear as day. I remember all my constituents. Votes are important.”

“I’m sorry but I don’t—”

“It was a terrible tragedy what happened to your family, wasn’t it?” the mayor mused. ‘Truly a sad day for all of Hermit’s Hollow. It hasn’t been the same since. Tragedy breeds tragedy. It only makes sense one would follow the other.”

Grian’s body rebelled, like he’d eaten something bad. A chill raced along his spine, nausea stabbed his stomach, vengeful and nasty. It was all he could do not to double over with it right at the table, arms crossed over his chest as it could somehow spare him from the worst of the pain yet to come. He didn’t dare speak or argue further than that. He didn’t trust what would or wouldn’t come out of his mouth.

Thankfully, a waitress wearing a checkered apron with the Double O’ logo embroidered on the front rescued him. She stopped by the table and handed him his coffee and parfait. Although brief, Grian was immensely grateful for the brief distraction. He took the extra seconds to scramble for the pieces of his composure like he’d lost his glasses in the darkness, having to feel for the edges of them.

But for the first time in his life he looked at his fresh cup of coffee and his yogurt parfait and felt nothing but sick to his stomach. His appetite escaped him entirely. The layers of the parfait and the silver spoon stabbed through them taunted him. Begging him to enjoy it and not waste the six dollars.

Grian shielded his warm mug with his hands. If he couldn’t drink it, he could use it to chase away the worst of his chill. He settled himself with a breath made of iron. This was his chance.

“You’re right, Mr. Mayor,” Grian said. “Tragedy does breed tragedy. But that doesn’t mean it cannot be helped. That’s why I need to get in on the case—”

Ooh!” The mayor reached over and tapped his spindly fingers on Grian’s parfait glass. “May I?”

His spiel died on his tongue. Wordlessly, Grian nodded and slid the glass to him. Even though he wasn’t going to eat it, part of him twinged with anger at having to give it up. He hoped to take it home and pick at it when his meager appetite returned. Or maybe Maui would’ve liked to lick at it.

The mayor took a spoonful of cream and it disappeared beneath his mustache. “Delicious. No strawberries?”

“No, sir,” Grian muttered. “I’m allergic.”

This saddened the mayor greatly. “How tragic.”

Impulse hid whatever expression he made behind a sip of coffee, turning his face towards the foggy windows. His other hand sat protectively atop his files.

Mayor Jumbo snacked on Grian’s parfait for another moment before it seemed some kind of clarity came over him. He licked the spoon clean and dropped it in the empty glass. The way it clinked in the cup, he might as well have dropped a needle in an empty lecture hall. In a way, he had. Grian turned to find there wasn’t a soul left in the diner aside from the waitress who’d brought him his coffee, Bdubs who washed coffee mugs and sang under his breath behind the counter, and the three of them at the table.

“You’ve always had my interest, Grian,” the mayor said, then he turned his attention to Impulse. “I’ll be pleased to see Grian added to the investigative efforts. People need to feel safe, you say? Well, here you are. A gift. Fresh eyes, fresh mind, there’s a saying that goes something like that, I’m sure.”

Impulse nearly choked on a mouthful of coffee. “... If you insist, sir.”

“I do.” A beat passed. “I’ve given these cases a bit of thought too, you know. Perhaps the problem lies elsewhere.”

Impulse’s shoulders tensed. “Elsewhere, sir?”

The mayor looked at Grian, as if Impulse hadn’t spoken. The eye contact was so sudden that Grian sat upright, a pin wedged between his shoulder blades. “Do you ever wonder why we have the Fog, Grian?”

Grian shielded his warm mug with his hands. If he couldn’t drink it, he could use it to chase away the worst of his chill. “It’s always rainy,” he said, unsure. It’d been a long while since seventh-grade science. “Fog’s only natural when it’s wet, isn’t it?”

The mayor shook his head, the only visible display of his disagreement. He pressed his palms together in a praying gesture over the table. It wasn’t until then that Grian realized he had a plate in front of him with nothing on it. Not a single crumb. His napkin sat next to it, undisturbed.

“Not fog, you spoon. The Fog. Hollow’s Fog.”

“I’m…” Grian shared a nervous glance with Impulse. He’d spent far more years of his life in Hermit’s Hollow than he ever wanted to, and he’d spent over half that time being force fed story after story, legend after legend. He’d heard them again and again until he was full of them, no room left in his brain for anything that might’ve actually been of use.

But in all that time he’d never once heard anything of the fog aside from its percentage in morning news reports. Based on Impulse’s expression, he hadn’t either.

“I’m afraid I don’t,” he admitted.

“It’s a talented thing. It hides things from us, makes them more silent, even if it means hiding the truth. It’s possible it’s hiding the truth from you all as well,” the mayor said.

Outside the fog sat heavy around the windows. Cold mornings like this always bred the thickest of the fog, but once the sun hit its mindpoint in the sky it would start to dissolve. He would sooner believe the mayor had a fried egg for a brain than to give into the idea that the fog inside of Hermit’s Hollow was anything bordering sentient. But the mayor’s words sat uncomfortably on his shoulders. Suddenly, Grian found it impossible to look out into the fog without feeling it staring right back at him.

“It helps us believe we are safe,” the mayor continued. “Although of course we all know the real truth, deep down.” His mustache twitched, another ghost of a smile. “We never are.”

 

.... . .-. .

 

Despite the tongue-lashing he got from Impulse in the Double ‘O Diner parking lot, Grian might as well have been floating. His first stroke of luck in three months— scratch that, in twenty-five years. Watching the department sluggishly circle the drain for months on end had been nothing short of painful. The ‘he’d rather slam his head in a car door’ kind of painful.

Three months was far too long— each precious second mattered.

The first 72 hours in any missing persons investigation were the most critical. It was a fact beaten into him in the Academy, and for good reason. Evidence expired. Bread crumbs went stale, and eventually the crows would come and swallow them down. And then, you began to walk the fine line where you stopped looking for the person and started looking for their corpse.

Hermit’s Hollow PD lost their chance. If Grian hadn’t been wearing blinders throughout the end of the summer, he might’ve been able to see it sooner. Days turned into weeks, which turned into more missing people, which turned into months. Dwindling day by day without a shred of evidence, without a whiff of a bread crumb, without so much as a theory.

A workable theory, that is. Small town officers weren’t prepared for these kinds of things. They took their notes in the Academy and tucked that notebook on the top shelf. Rather, their concerns lay with matters strange but easy: ghosts haunting the shores, a teenager snatched by whatever lived in the void, the Hollow trees on the edge of town and what they liked to whisper to people who walked too close. It was easier to deal with scary things when you dressed them up in scarier, inexplicable costumes. Not the destruction of fear so much as the displacement of it.

Captain Iskall wasn’t a ghost pirate yet, but he would be, given enough time. That tourist wasn’t eaten whole by the entity that lived and breathed beneath the streets of Hermit’s Hollow, but he could have been. His old classmate wasn’t a sprite who’d revealed her true form and became the trees instead of disappearing into them. But she might as well have been.

Such was one of many things about this town that never and would never change. There were no stories to hide the horror behind the three disappearances, but there would be. Grian counted on it. Just as there was a tale around every awful tragedy that had the misfortune of occurring within the city limits.

He hoped to find them and the truth long before the rumors settled and cemented. Before the truth was hidden not only by the mayor’s elusive Fog but by word-of-mouth as well.

He always had a keen eye, one that helped him soar through school and achieve this position as fast as he did. No one was prepared to take this on more so than Grian, aside from perhaps the chief himself. But he wouldn’t be able to take it on alone. Even if he never wanted to admit it, he needed Grian’s help. And he wouldn't let Impulse forget it.

The sleepless night, this time, was a choice. He stayed late, waiting patiently for each coworker to wrap up their reports and chit-chat and shamble out for the evening. The sounds of their shuffling feet and jackets faded to white noise in Grian’s ears as he focused on appearing busy sorting through the stack of disturbance reports he’d been initially assigned.

He’d need to paw them off on someone else to properly pour his focus into the investigation. Maybe his desk neighbor, Ren. That prick was always stealing his nice pens.

Once the last officer left for the night, Grian breathed in the stillness of the station. It was comforting, with the sole light of his desk lamp and the rare silence these walls so rarely saw. It filled the whole space the same way the flickering bulb did. And for once, he allowed that silence to seep into his skull and drown out every crazy thing that happened that day: Bdubs, the mayor, his lifeless eyes, the Fog.

The only thing he allowed to remain was the investigation. So with his newfound authorization (AKA, a key he’d stolen off of Impulse’s keyring while he was too busy yelling to notice), he searched the chief’s filing cabinet for the official reports and folders for each missing person. Three in total.

He sprawled them out on his desk. A sort of chaos that made sense only to his brain. Like this, words jumped out of him without any of the useless filler to distract him. Three faces stared back at him, their gazes empty on the glossy picture paper.

He reached for the third file first. Captain Iskall. That same photo, his friendly face. Stapled to the front of the manila folder was the original report form, scribbled in Impulse's chicken scratch. 



MISSING PERSONS / RUNAWAY REPORT

Hermit’s Hollow Police Department & Department of Public Safety

Missing Person Information:

Name: Is Gall [AKA “Iskall”]

DOB: December 31, 1945

Report filed by: Anonymous, alleged coworker

Disappeared under mysterious/unknown circumstances. 

Captain of the cod fishing boat, Flying Fish. Last seen at the Boatem Dock on the night of September 30th, at approx. 2200 hours. Last seen wearing a bright yellow jacket and fishermen’s boots, wool-knitted cap, and an eyepatch over his left eye. 5 '10, broad stature. Has a pale complexion, brown hair and a beard. Tribal tattoo to left forearm. No piercings or other identifying marks reported. Dental records obtained and on file. 

 

A polaroid was paperclipped to the bottom of the sheet. It was of a couple, their hair tucked away in knitted caps and their arms wrapped around one another. The hazy water and dock was at their back. And over their shoulder, back to the camera was a tall man wearing a yellow jacket. Likely the last image of Iskall to be taken, and it was entirely by accident. Behind him was a blurry black smudge, like a shadow in the wrong place. Likely a defect in the developing paper.

Grian shuffled the papers over and sorted through the papers in the middle folder. 

 

MISSING PERSONS / RUNAWAY REPORT

Hermit’s Hollow Police Department & Department of Public Safety

Missing Person Information:

Name: Pix Riffs 

DOB: May 17, 1949

Report filed by: Partner (unnamed) Details provided by: B. Double ‘O (witness) 

Disappeared under mysterious/unknown circumstances. 

Last seen by town square in the early morning of August 31st, at approx. 0700 hours. Last seen wearing a blue button-down and a brown hat. 6 '0 , tall and lean stature. Brown hair and facial hair. Wears glasses. No piercings or other identifying marks reported. Unable to procure dental records. Similar report filed to his hometown. 

 

The only photo was the one attached to the front, a copy of his driver’s license. In the back of the file were stacks of papers detailing the paper trail he had left on his way to visit Hermit’s Hollow: plane ticket receipts, receipts from gas stations, a confirmation slip of his hotel reservation. Grian combed through all of the details, the times, the prices, trying to find any strange discrepancies but to no avail. Pix was clean, his only crime being curious enough about the occult to come out here in the first place.

Most of this, Grian had heard in faint whispers. For appearances, he could only nod and move along and pretend he hadn’t heard. But gossip spread through Hermit’s Hollow like wildfire, and every inch of it was kindling. Words were gasoline, speculation the match dropped into it. There were no such things as secrets here, because the smoke was all anyone could see for miles. Secrets (though not well-kept ones) were the heart of the town, the foundation upon which all else was built. They bartered in stories and settled for myth, the only thing of value to be found on the indifferent corner of the map.

The bulb on Grian’s desk lamp flickered.

He reached for the last file, which was also the first. It was the thinnest of the three, very little to show for their investigation aside from the initial report, a few copies of her medical and dental records, and a series of polaroids of her and her friends. She was pretty; Grian remembered that about her. They were the same age, and while she was always kind, Grian always found her rather intimidating. The type of girl you never wanted to cross.



MISSING PERSONS / RUNAWAY REPORT

Hermit’s Hollow Police Department & Department of Public Safety

Missing Person Information:

Name : Gemini Tay [AKA “Gem”]

DOB: May 22, 1954

Report filed by: Jimmy Solidarity 

Disappeared under mysterious/unknown circumstances. 

Last seen at Hermit’s Hollow High on the night of July 31st at approx. 1800 hours. Last seen wearing a knitted green and white cardigan, brown boots, and a white skirt. 5 '4, petite stature. Has a pale complexion and ginger hair last reported to be worn in two braids. Three piercings to her left ear, two to the right ear. A small tattoo of a key on her inner left wrist. No other identifying marks reported. Dental records obtained and on file. 

 

If there was anything else of use in her file, Grian would’ve been blind to it. His fingers traced over his brother’s name over and over, heart stuck in his throat. The beating of it made him sick to his stomach. Jimmy always clung to Grian’s heels like a puppy from the moment he started high school, so it was possible they’d met that way. But that didn’t change the irrefutable truth in front of him: Jimmy hadn’t mentioned a word of her. And he’d been the one to report her missing.

Glass shattered somewhere down the hall. A loud crash thundered through the floorboards and walls, causing them to groan. Every muscle in Grian’s body froze.

All the buildings here were old; therefore they often had to settle the way old houses do. They groaned, they cracked their knuckles, they stretched out weary muscles and let out a deep sigh. It breathed, not because of anything extraordinary but because that was what happened when you mixed aging wood with salty air, cold temperatures, and old plumbing.

But this wasn’t the house settling. Glass crunched. Floorboards whined. The dull thunk of a heel.  Once, twice, then a third time. A limping pace.

His lamp flickered again, but this time it burned out, the glass popping with a hiss. The office plunged into a darkness as thick and bottomless as the ocean.

Step.

Slowly, Grian rose from his chair. It creaked under the shifting weight as he stood. Every breath, every twitch of his fingers too loud. His hand rested atop his weapon, a small pistol kept in a holster at his hip.

Step.

Stepping toe to heel with bent knees so as to not make a sound, Grian hid in the darkness along the opposite wall. He knelt against it. The floor and wall vibrated with the sound of each step. He pulled his gun free.

Step.

He turned the safety off.

Step.

Sweat clung to his temples and forehead, gathered at his nape. His fingers trembled on the cool metal of his gun. The beat of his heart was impossible to swallow; it was all he could hear aside from each approaching footstep and the sharp ringing somewhere in the back of his head. It was difficult to breathe.

Step.

He forced himself to steady in the only way he knew how.

Fill your lungs up. He breathed in deep. His chest expanded and ached with each second but he wouldn’t let up. He breathed in and in until he felt it at the very bottom of his diaphragm.

And let them pour out. He exhaled. Measured, steady, and slow. Like filling a measuring cup.

His hand steadied.

Another step. The knob jostled. It was at the door now. The hinges groaned as it inched open. All Grian could make out was a weft of shadow, like smoke, with no defined beginning or end. Just a mass of darkness.

Grian leapt to his feet. “Freeze! Hands where I can see them!” He pointed his pistol like a snitch pointed a finger: without hesitation.

“Ooh!” Another crash. A cup of pens spilled across the floor as the shadow stumbled into one of the desks. The edges of the shadow, at once, hardened into a discernible shape— sharp shoulders, long legs, hands suspended and flailing in the air above its head. Most definitely a person— an incredibly stupid one at that.

“Ooooh it’s all over! Ok, I surrender, I surrender!” Grian knew that voice from somewhere. “But if this is about those stolen amethyst shards, I have absolutely nothin’ to do with it!”

Grian’s pulse fluttered violently in his chest. Adrenaline leaked from him, too slowly for comfort. It made his head spin and his fingers buzz. It was far too dark to make out any specific features aside from the softest glint of white sclera and the outline of a jaw. But he didn’t need to see. He could smell the peppermint just fine.

He fumbled for the nearest lamp. A soft orange light poured in.

The stranger stared at Grian with wide, terrified eyes. His hands remained stuck in the air in surrender. Recognition crossed his features, but before he could get a word in, Grian stormed up to him. He grabbed a fistful of his shirt and trapped him against the desk.

“Are you absolutely insane?! I could’ve shot you, you buffoon! You must have some kind of death wish, breaking into a police station.”

"That is a false accusation if I have ever heard one!” The man stuck his nose up in the air, dismayed. “How can I break in if the door is left unlocked? Gotta say, that’s pretty irresponsible for an officer of the law.”

“Hold on.” Grian sighed. “If you didn’t break in, then what was that crash?”

“Someone left a stupid box in the hallway and I tripped. But if you ask me, the display case actually looks a lot better without the glass. The glare really gets in the way of seein’ all the awards— totally defeats the purpose! You earned those awards with bravery and hard work, and I think—“

“Stop talking,” Grian begged, untangling his shaky fingers from his shirt. “Stop talking immediately.”

He backed away until he hit his desk. The more distance between them, the better, because the man’s peppermint breath made Grian’s head spin and he was already carefully punching this guy right in his handsome face. Would that be considered a simple code violation, or straight-up assault? Could he argue self defense if he’d already diffused the situation? He’d have to clear the dust off his copy of the Code of Conduct and find out.

As soon as he had the space to the man bent at the waist. With one hand he braced himself onto a chair for support, knuckles white, and with the other he cradled his chest. His breathing was heavy, his eyes white around the edges. He looked as frazzled as Grian felt.

After a tense moment of silence and wrangling his heart back into place, Grian asked, “What are you doing here?”

The man stared back at him with those green eyes that seemed unnaturally bright in the low light. Lips pressed tight, as if closed by a zipper, he didn’t make so much as a sound.

“You can talk now,” Grian groaned, making no effort to shadow his agitation. It was more than the intruder deserved.

When he was a kid, he had this little toy— it was a mechanical dog that sat with its head bowed. When you twisted the key on its rear where a tail would normally be, the gears inside it clicked and coiled. Until eventually it would pop and the metal creature would skitter across the table. On the rainiest days Grian would wind it up again and again on the windowsill, and watch it race droplets down the glass.

The man came to life the same way that little metal dog had. Clumsy, like a few gears were loose or rusted. He staggered to stand straight, shoulders hunched as if he were in pain. But he smiled all the same,  that same brilliant smile made of charm and pearls. It was no less effective in the dingy light of the station.

He closed the distance between them. Grian tried stepping back, but his desk stood in his way.

“You rushed off so fast the other day, I didn’t get a chance to properly introduce myself.” The man extended a hand towards Grian. “Scar GoodTimes, at your service. I come for business, not pleasure, I assure you. Chief Impulse told me I might be able to find you here.”

Erm—”

“It’s Grian, right? Or would you rather I call you Coffee Boy?” 

Grian bristled. “Call me Coffee Boy and you won’t be able to talk for a week.”

“Heh, noted.” Scar’s hand did not waver. Neither did his small, all bright teeth and clear edges. If the atrocious Grab n’ Go lighting wasn’t enough to ruin his face, neither was the soft orange glow of his lamp.

Hesitantly, he accepted the offered hand and shook it. His skin was coarse with the surface of several little silver scars peppering his hands and knuckles. “Okay, Scar,” he sighed. “Why on earth did Impulse send you to my door? Or, erm… desk.”

Scar held onto Grian’s hand for what he felt was a moment too long. But once he dropped it he tucked his arms behind his back and walked in leisurely circles around the desks in the office.

“I’ve been in cahoots with the mayor since I got to town. He and I are like this.” Scar crossed his fingers with a lopsided smirk. “He’s a big fan of my work, y’know. Unlike some people…”

On Ren’s desk sat a little golden paperweight in the shape of a crow. Scar wasted no time plucking it up and turning it over in his hands.

“Is he now?” Grian droned half-heartedly. He didn’t need to ask what kind of work that entailed, nor did he particularly care to, because all of these penny-fishing psychics were the same. It was no surprise he and the mayor got along so well; he was always far too eager to fan the flames of superstition that threatened to burn Hermit’s Hollow to the ground.

He had no reason to expect Scar to be any different than the rest. The unfortunate captive conversation in the Grab n’ Go coffee aisle had been enough to not only nail in the coffin’s lid but seal it tight and bury it six feet deep. Where he was irritating, Grian was stubborn twice over. Scar was doomed if he thought he was convincing Grian of anything.

Scar made him comfortable sitting atop Ren’s desk, ignoring the way the wood croaked in protest and his cup of pens (which were mostly Grian’s spilled all across the floor). “I’m very good at unveiling the truth in places where it likes to stay hidden,” he said, his grin not containing his grin but showcasing it, like an exhibit. “I’ve heard you might need help in that department.”

There was that stone again. It sank deep in Grian’s stomach. His body knew before his brain had a moment to catch up. “No,” he whispered, sinking to sit in his chair. It didn’t matter how much space he put between them; he was drowning in the taste and smell of peppermint. He was breathing in inevitability. “Not you—”

“Try not to sound so excited,” Scar said with a chuckle that was as much deflected as it was dejected. “Don’t fret, Grian. I wouldn’t dream of stealin’ your spotlight or anything. When we find all these missing people, I’ll make sure you get to say something in the interview.”

Grian had imagined a thousand other scenarios that he would have filed under the label: DOOMSDAY. Getting thrown out on his ass on the curb. His belongings packed neat in a cardboard box. Impulse with that disappointed little frown. The world splitting open and swallowing Hermit’s Hollow whole, or the dead emerging from their graves and eating everyone and their grandmother for dinner weren’t accounted for in his contingency plans. Neither was getting a conman as an investigation partner. He preferred the zombies.

“I don’t believe Impulse authorized this,” Grian scowled. “You’re a civilian!”

Scar winced and guarded his heart with his hand. “Ouch, well, consider this civilian’s feelings hurt,” he said. “I’m a parapsychologist, actually! I got off to a bad start there, breaking the trophy case. I’m sorry. It really does look better without the glass, but I digress. No funny business here, I promise. As of today I’m an official Hermit’s Hollow PD employee! ”

Grian wasn’t entirely convinced that was a real thing. Scar was a fake psychic in a fake town appealing to fake stories. Everything authentic about him could be stored on a paper airplane.

“I think we’ll make a great team,” Scar continued. “My gifts and my colorful knowledge of the paranormal, supernatural, and everything in between combined with your impressive resume, we’d be unstoppable! What, you became a detective at 25 years old? Not just anyone can pull that off.”

A prickle crawled over Grian’s skin. A familiar itch he couldn’t reach deep enough to scratch. “You know about me?”

“I know a lot about you. Call them hunches, if you prefer.” Scar held two fingers to his temples and titled his head, leaning into the smile in a way that made it impossible not to stare at him. Then, he walked up to Grian, winking. “I’m looking forward to working with you, partner.

Chapter 2: II. give me a sign

Summary:

The investigation begins.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

.-- .

II .

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

He descended upon the chief the second he climbed out of his silver Trans Am. After spending the better part of an hour camped on the station’s front steps and working himself into an angered frenzy, he could only imagine how he looked. It certainly wasn’t the most dignified approach, but he blew past the ‘saving face’ marker miles ago. Impulse and the mayor took the first swing the moment they stuck Grian with some road-show clown.

Talk about professional. He might have pulled a stunt like this, but that was different. He was the new, reckless, barely-hinged rookie. It was in the fine print of his job description to push the envelope. Impulse, however? He expected more from the respectable chief.

“Is this some kind of punishment?” he demanded.

“I don’t have time for this right now, Grian,” the chief said, not unkindly, as he brushed past him toward the station. The early morning fog muddied the sunrise, but the lamp posts revealed the dark circles hanging beneath his eyes and yesterday’s forgotten 5 o-clock shadow. His voice was made of gravel. He walked like a man shackled at the ankle.

Still, Grian had little room left for pity. He missed the turn about ten miles back and was instead hurtling towards vexation at 110 mph, pedal to the floor. The nagging itch for caffeine didn’t help anything either (the price he paid by forgoing his morning cup in favor of getting to the station before the sun rose).

Grian rushed up the stairs and blocked the door. “Nuh-uh! Nope! Not until you answer me.” He stuck his arms and legs out in front of the frame wide like was about to start making door-angels. 

Scrubbing a hand over his face, Impulse sighed. “Maybe next time you’ll think twice before nosing in on sensitive conversations that don’t involve you.” 

Grian scoffed, chest puffed up and body blockade unwavering. “Well maybe next time you’ll think before having a very precious and sensitive conversation in a public diner, then!” 

“Grian, please,” Impulse whined. He tucked his gloved hands under his armpits and squeezed himself tight. His breath rose like smoke from between his lips and out his nostrils. “Can I go inside now?” 

The cold was no less miserable to Grian but it meant little when he was feeling particularly brash. Anger was powerful in that way; it boiled you up from the inside. He hadn’t stopped spilling over the pot lid since the previous night when he’d sent the psychic on his way. 

“Tell me you’ll take him off the case,” he insisted. In case Impulse got any funny ideas, he spread his arms out wider and planted his feet at shoulder-length. He pretended it would’ve accomplished anything, but he knew the truth; Impulse could’ve thrown Grian into the water by now if he wanted to. 

“I can’t do that—”

“Whatever it is you think you’re trying to prove, I don’t care! Just don’t make me work with him.” 

“It’s out of my hands, Grian,” Impulse said. “Mayor Mumbo Jumbo himself invited Scar to join the investigation. The mayor is my boss, so I follow his orders. And I’m your boss. Ergo, we both gotta do whatever he says. See how that works?”

“But he’s got to work with me? You can’t stick him with Ren or—”

“Whatever. He. Says.” Impulse raised an eyebrow at him, though he seemed no more aggravated by Grian’s childish antics than he usually was. For which Grian was grateful. The day he lost Impulse’s favor entirely was the day he was truly adrift. “You wanted to be on the case, right? Nothing in life comes free, buddy. This is the price.”

Grian lets his arms flop back down to his sides. A defeated sigh deflated his shoulders, dragged his heart to the soles of his feet.

“Why are you so opposed to it?” Impulse asked.

The answer felt obvious, but the moment Grian scrambled for the words to express it, he fumbled. What came from his mouth instead was a messy string of half-aborted syllables and incoherent, disgusted scoffs. It was like breathing, you did it every day, you never had to think about it. But the moment you do it’s like you’ve never inhaled in your life. Impulse didn’t need to be an iron-willed skeptic to be smart. To know better. Because Impulse knew better, and Grian knew he did. He’d bet everything he had on it. Impulse never fell for the secrets, for the gossip, the tales, the scary stories. He was skeptical but fair. Kind but not wide-eyed.

It all made sense to Grian, but Impulse’s narrowed eyes made it clear things (most likely everything, judging by his deepening frown) were getting lost in translation.

As far as Hermits went, he was the only man in this town Grian unequivocally respected. But now that he was on the other end of that doubt, he had to admit it was a terrible feeling.

“Listen,” Grian said, grappling for whatever remained of his composure and dignity to try to papier-mache himself into something resembling a person deserving of Impulse’s respect. “After Gem disappeared, the phones were ringing like crazy, right? Tip after tip after tip, but everything was a dead-end. Nothing worked. Remember why?”

What little anger remained at the edges of Impulse’s mouth faded. The dark, hard angles were still there, but his face was softer. More like himself.

Grian breathed with relief. “People were excited. Something new after—” Grian fumbled. “How were all these people suddenly rolling in with all these tips? How did they ‘know’ all these things they shouldn’t know?” He held an invisible phone to his ear. “Oh, how? I can’t really explain it. I simply know! The gift of Sight, y’know.”

He pretended to hang the phone up. “It’s nonsense. And of course, it was always for a price, wasn’t it, Impulse? Can’t forget about that. What was it that Gem’s family offered, $10,000?”

“I understand that you’re angry—”

“I’m not angry, I’m just—” Grian snapped his jaw shut. “I don’t know what kind of smoke this guy blew up Mayor Jumbo’s butt to get authorized here, but he’s just like the rest of them. I know it. All he’s gonna do is get in my way. Please, Impulse. You  know I’m right.”

“It doesn’t change anything,” Impulse argued, lip worried between his teeth. He flashed his palms in the way a suspect would to show he wasn’t armed. “I can’t help you. Not with this.”

A human white flag, Grian had no choice but to step aside and let Impulse through.

But before he dipped inside, Impulse paused at the door. His hand   clenched the knob but he couldn’t bring himself to open it just yet. “You got what you wanted. You’re on the hot-shot case like you always dreamed,” he said over his shoulder. It sounded less like something to be celebrated and more like a warning. “And for whatever reason, the mayor has his eyes on you and Scar. But I do not think that is a good thing. Don’t mistake it for one. Be careful.”

The door clattered shut. Grian stood alone in the cold, scarf pulled up over his nose. There it was again— the bitter sting of defeat on his tongue. Only this time it reeked of peppermint toothpaste. 

... . .

The town cried. He didn’t know why it cried. He wished it would stop.

Sometimes, it felt like it cried for him.

The cellar smelled of salt. Rainwater trickled down the stairs after him. Drip, drip, drip . The walls glistened with it. It oozed out from the little gaps in the cobblestone wall. He traced the cold, wet stones with his hands on his way down the narrow steps. 

It was dark. But the moon was awake. She shone bright and laced the small puddles of rainwater with silver threads. He was underground. He felt her eyes on him. Fog licked at his heels, warm breath curled around his ankles. 

Ahead of him, a door. Made of metal with a steel handle. The padlock had been shut too long, rain and time rusting it shut. Yellow tape and a warning sign peeling at the corners.

DO NOT ENTER VOID

He wasn’t supposed to go in there. Why was it asking him to? 

He licked his lips. They tasted of salt. Salty and metallic. Tears or rain? The door was closer, now. He was walking toward it; he didn’t realize he had moved at all. With each step the closer the door reached out for him and the weaker his knees grew. The thinner the air went. He didn’t want to go in there. He shouldn’t go in there. His mother would be beside herself if she knew what he was doing. But he didn’t know where she was; that meant she couldn’t find him either. 

Hide-and-seek. They played it all the time. The three of them. The seeker covered her eyes; she couldn’t find him until she finished counting down from ten. Tucked in a proper hiding place, they wouldn’t know the seeker was there until it was too late. Until he was already found. 

Ten. He stepped toward the doors. He was pulled. Rainwater splattered on the back of his hand. 

Nine. The water droplet was dark. It smelled of rust. It rolled off his skin, a thin thread of red in its wake. 

Eight. Where was Jimmy? Did he not want to play with them?

Seven. He needed to find a place to hide. Another step towards the door. She wouldn’t have looked for him here, would she? 

Six. Maybe Jimmy was already hiding. Maybe that was why he couldn’t find him. Maybe he was waiting. Was he waiting for Grian? 

Five. Grian reached for the padlock. 

Four. Was Pearl hiding with Jimmy too? He missed her.

Three. His heart bucked, protested. But his knees persisted. The door called him closer.

Two. But it wasn’t fair. They were meant to hide with him, not from him.

One. He grasped the handle. He pulled it open.

“Grian?”

Popcorn ceiling stared back at him. No bloody rain. No wet cobblestone and nor a door reaching for him. He opened his eyes. He was awake, undeniably. The shy sun kissed the curtained windows, rays slipping through the gap between them and shining in his eye. Breathing was easy. Easier than it had been. He didn’t have to think about it. His hand on his chest rose and fell slowly. Feeling started to return to his limbs. A slow crawl of static over every inch of skin.

A tuft of blond hair appeared above him. Brown eyes. “Hellooo? Grian!”

Warmth rivaling that of the sun.

“Hm?” Grian blinked sleep from his eyes. By the time he returned to his body he hadn’t realized he’d left it in the first place. He pulled everything back into place like an old, worn t-shirt.

Jimmy peered down at him.

“You fell asleep on the couch again,” he said. “Breakfast is ready. I made pancakes.” His footsteps disappeared toward the kitchen.

He sat up, a dull ache persistent behind his eyes. The world as he saw it was nothing but blurs of colors without any real borders. He fumbled for his glasses on the coffee table. Every muscle in his neck ached. He pushed his glasses up his nose and detail flooded in, sharp and lively. He heard the soft buzz of a radio inside the kitchen. Jimmy sang beneath it, low like a whisper. A pan sizzled.

Grian stared at his palms. They were smooth and pale, as they always were. When he held both hands side by side, the heavy creases cutting his palm in two met in the middle to form a pair of wings. They were still there. His hands were warm. He searched for the cool touch of metal, for the dingy wetness along the cavern wall. For the smell of blood. But there was nothing besides the faint dryness of his skin and the faintest tremble to his fingers. 

- .... .. -. --. ...

Creatures weren’t the only things with blood-lust in Hermit’s Hollow. The morning water was murderous, thrashing the wooden pillars of the dock and spraying the air with salt. The waves struck the sides of ships with the intent to cut them in two. Wood groaned and the wind screamed distantly off the shore. Hermit’s Hollow’s storm was due to make its return. Right on schedule.

A violent wave swept  him in a salty spray. Temperamental thing, the sea was on mornings like those, when the storm was past-due. Grian could empathize with it, despite the dampness to his socks. It was far too early to be this annoyed. 

Even at the early hour, the Boatem Harbor bustled. If anything, today proved a late start for many boats. Grian didn’t pretend to know the intricacies of the fishing industry (despite his father’s incessant bordering self-destructive persistence), but even he knew the boats that left first came back with the heaviest purses; the early bird caught the worm and then some.

Fishermen clambered to their boats, rods and nets and barrels slung over their shoulders. Dockboys, two at a time, hauled massively thick bundles of rope and untied their ships from the iron hooks bolted into the wooden planks. Grian stood near the mouth of the dock to stay out of the way. From his vantage, the ships stood only as shadows through the fog. As unnerving as the Silent Sentinels, their masks were nothing but dark pillars rising from nothing and cutting the dusky gray morning.

Several of the fishermen wore yellow. It seemed the only thing they could wear that would allow them to stand out in the mess of gray water, gray wood, and gray sky. Grian had hoped Iskall wearing it would’ve helped him stand out, but it seemed he was a dime-a-dozen.

Much to his chagrin, even the cold boggy air couldn’t thwart Scar’s ability to play the role of the overly enthusiastic rookie. If he hadn’t looked like a pampered actor strolling off a Hollywood set in the Grab ‘n Go, he certainly had it nailed now. He came scurrying up the deck with a smile brilliant enough to frighten the chill in a five-foot radius. Though it wasn’t until Grian saw him from afar that he realized he walked with a limp. And it wasn’t until Scar approached him and tried to to wave that he realized his hands were otherwise occupied with two coffee cups.

Maybe he was good for something afterall.

“Mornin’, Grian!” he beamed, all green eyes and smiles. Grian wondered if his face muscles ever got tired, or if he did this kinda thing so much they were rock solid.

“You’re late.”

“Yes, but…” Scar extended one of two coffee cups toward him. “I come bearing gifts.”

Grian took it, his cold fingers brushing Scar’s warm ones. He sipped before he said anything else particularly grouchy that he meant but shouldn’t say. Warm, bitter black coffee soothed the cold dryness of his tongue. It chased away the agitation brewing deep in his stomach. The coin stood on its edge.

Comme ci, comme ça.

“Is this a bribe?”

“I was thinking more like an apology. Had a whole speech planned and everything,” Scar said, the cheeriness of his grin chipping away to reveal something sheepish underneath. “But bribes work! Cops do like bribes, don’t they? Yes, yes… Is it working?”

Despite himself, Grian laughed. “It’s a start,” he said. His chest clenched and he, suddenly, felt an inexplicable need to hit something hard.

“What’s the game plan?” Scar asked, rolling up one of his sleeves to show off the lean strength of his forearm. “We gonna knock some heads together? Should we go good cop, bad cop? Can I be the bad cop?”

What? No,” Grian admonished. How was this guy real? “We’re just gonna talk. Proper police work. These guys might look… like that, but they aren’t suspects. Yet.”

“Oh.” Disappointment crossed Scar’s face, but only for a moment before he perked right back up again. A slow turn of the key in his back, the little mechanical puppy leaping across the desk. “Talking, then! You’re in luck, I happen to be one of the best talkers on the east coast. Leave it to me!”

“I’m sure you are. Don’t get ahead of yourself, cowboy,” he said, stiff-arming Scar’s chest. “I’ll do the talking. Fishermen are paranoid. Last thing I need is for you to scare them off.”

“Why would I scare them?” Scar asked, playing dumb. Still, he grinned from ear to ear in a way he probably hoped made him look dopey and handsome. He was only half successful. Grian knew that Scar knew exactly what he was doing.

And really, didn’t his face ever tire from holding that stupid mask on all the time? Grian could only handle staring at his pearly teeth for so long without starting to listen to that itch to hit something. If he was lucky, Scar would end up the one in the line of fire.

Opening your “third-eye” or talking to nonexistent paranormal entities in front of a bunch of superstitious fishermen would end up with their investigation dead in the water and the both of them sunk to the bottom of the ocean. He didn’t need to explain that to Scar. Scar knew well; he was enjoying pressing Grian’s buttons and Grian failed at trying to hide where they were.

He tried washing down his irritation with a swig of bitter coffee. It didn’t work.

By the time they found the Flying Fish, half the boats had already left for the morning. The final ship bobbed idly at the furthest end of the dock. A small crane by the mast held up a large mesh tent over the almost-black water. Across the hull was a faded painting of an Atlantic cod leaping from sunny waters, a hook caught in its cheek.

Grian came up to the ramp and stood on his toes to try to catch sight of anyone loitering on the deck. “Hello?” He called over the low roar of the water. “Helloooo? Anyone home?”

Silence crept across the deck. Something about it startled Grian— the suddenness of it. The port was a noisy place. If you lived here as long as Grian had, your ears eventually went to deaf to it. But that never meant the noise stopped, it was never silent. Your brain simply acclimated, it made room for it so it sounded less like nails on a chalkboard and more like the gentle buzz of TV in the background as you washed dishes.

But it was as if the TV had been clicked off. Unplugged. Not even a buzz of static, not so much a creak of old, wet wood with the tides. The wind was no more than a whisper; a breath he felt on the back of his neck rather than a sound.

Pins and needles stung at his nape. He bristled and scratched at it.

“You okay?” Scar asked from behind him.

“Fine. Just a chill.” Grian spared one more glance to make sure they were properly alone before strolling up the ramp. “Guess no one’s home.”

Woah, Nelly!” Grian’s scarf clenched around his throat; Scar had snagged the edge of it and pulled Grian back with it. “You’re a police officer, isn’t this breaking and entering? Or… trespassing? Something!”

“I thought you wanted to be the bad cop,” he snarled, snatching his scarf back. “What happened to knocking heads together? Muscling our way through it?”

“That was a hypothetical,” Scar argued weakly, but he followed Grian the rest of the way up the ramp anyways. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a hypocrite, Grian! A total rapscallion, you are.”

Grian threw him an impish grin that was sharp enough to cut. “You must not know me very well then,” he said.

“I’ve got a real bad feelin’ about this.”

“A bad moral feeling or a bad psychic feeling?” Grian teased without any particular care for the answer.

He wandered the deck and committed what he could to memory. Hooks and grapples hung on the exterior cabin wall. A railing surrounded the deck, sturdy despite the usual wear and tear for a ship this old and this size. The entrance to the cabin was closed off; he didn’t dare test the handle. The mast hung overhead, cables and rope hanging down in streams.

A large black net hung over the side of the ship. It shivered, a sharp lick of wind sweeping over the port. Grian turned to protect his face from it.

“Make fun of me all you want.” Scar’s footsteps hesitantly followed behind, an echo. “But what if we get attacked by the vengeful ghost pirate captain and his undead crew?”

“Then you can say you told me so. That’s a very valuable offer, I wouldn’t pass that up.” Grian peered over the lip of a few drums near the front of the boat. They were empty but reeked of oil and fish. His nose scrunched. “Seriously, Scar. The only dangerous thing here is the state of this dump. What a mess.”

“Still don’t feel good about it,” Scar grumbled under his breath, arms crossed.

“Did I say you could come aboard?”

The only thing keeping Grian from topping over into an unceremonious heap of the deck was Scar; he had whirled at the voice and stumbled straight into his chest. Scar held onto him. Whether it was simply for Grian’s sake or out of his own fear, he didn’t know. Nor did he care.

The fisherman’s left eye was odd. It was red, sclera and all, as if the entire thing had bled through like a piece of gauze. It lacked a pupil or iris, and yet Grian still felt its stare locked onto him. The man was closer to Scar’s height, and where most of the fishermen and deckhands wore the same shade of yellow so as not to get lost in the early hours’ fog and water, he wore a white coat that hung past his kneecaps.

Proper police work, he had said. Right. He fished his badge out of his pocket and flashed it. “Sorry for the disturbance,” he said. “I’m Detective Grian Solidarity. This is my colleague, Scar. We were hoping to speak with you.”

The fisherman stared between the badge and him blankly. Nothing about his expression betrayed an inch of whatever he was thinking. All Grian had to work on was the robotic flatness of his face; it was likely a safe guess that he seemed rather unimpressed by the whole thing. Which wasn’t unusual, considering Hermit’s Hollow fishermen see more than their average share of oddities.

The only indication of his displeasure was the way he crossed his arms and tilted his head back.

“I already talked to you pigs,” the fisherman said skeptically. “I told them everything I knew.”

Grian chuckled nervously. “Right— Yes. Well,” he scrambled for an adequate excuse, but all wind had been knocked from his sails. Maybe it was the red eye, maybe it was the fact that this fisherman looked like he could throw Grian over-handed into the bay when he inevitably decided he wasn’t worth the trouble. 

But before he found himself at the bottom of the bay, Scar beat him to it.

“You’ll have to forgive my friend here,” he said easily with an extended hand and a brilliant smile. Then, in a poorly executed whisper he said, “First day on the job— lots of nerves. You know how it is, I’m sure.”

The fisherman stared back, arms crossed and unmoving.

Scar chuckled nervously and pulled his hand away, pretending he was simply trying to brush the nonexistent dust from his sleeves.

“It’s Doc, right?” Scrambling for the pieces of his composure that he’d dropped, Grian pulled out a small notebook and stepped in front of Scar. This was his investigation, and he’d be damned if he let a penny-hungry psychic sweep the rug out from under him.  “You’re Captain Iskall’s first-mate?”

“Was,” Doc said, his lips curled into a sneer that Grian couldn’t tell was vindictive or amused. Either way, it chilled him. “Now that he’s gone, I’m the captain now.”

Grian jotted that single word down in his notebook: gone.

“Right,” he hummed. “What was Iskall’s behavior like leading up to his disappearance? Did he say or do anything unusual in the last—let’s say—two weeks or so?”

“Did he say he was going on a trip?” Scar chimed in from behind.

“I already told all of this to a guy that looked like a dog.” He raised an eyebrow. “Barked like one too.”

“Ren, I’m guessing.” Grian tried not to let his distaste show. Ren was at best a lazy cop, and a botched investigation waiting to happen. He wasn’t optimistic that his coworker did a good job of vetting Doc. A true interrogation took a broad arrangement of tactics that Grian didn’t think they’d bother teaching to a bunch of small town coastal cops, who’s worst worries were of the invisible poltergeist territory.

“Is this Ren a lycanthro-pist?” Scar hooked his chin over Grian’s shoulder; he didn’t need to see him to hear the crooked grin stretching out his face. “That would explain that sort of behavior.”

“Scar,” Grian hissed under his breath. “I specifically told you not to—“

“You mean to say a lycanthrope?” Doc asked. “What would someone like you know about that kind of thing?” His mouth tilted into the vague gesture of a frown. Even though his red eye wasn’t locked onto Grian anymore, he still felt his skin crawling, far deeper than where the wind’s chill could reach.

It felt like a trap. One that Scar was all too gleeful to walk into. 

“Quite a bit, actually,” he gloated, chest full and chin high with the buoyancy of his pride. “I’ve got many names and collected a fair share of titles. Occultist, Expert of All Things Supernatural, Parapsychologist, Private Paranormal Investigator. Some may even claim I’m an ambassador between this world and the next, a bridge of sorts. But that’s neither here nor there.”

The lead of Grian’s pencil snapped against his pad of paper.

If the fisherman was in any way impressed, he did little to show it. Nor did he say a word, fingers digging into his crossed arms and jaw tight and tense at the joint.

Scar took this as an invitation to carry on. He hooked an arm around Grian’s neck and held on tight, leaning his weight onto him casually. Too dumbfounded to intervene, Grian was helpless but to stand there and let it happen.

“Lots of people claim to be what you claim to be,” Doc said. “You don’t look like the real deal.”

“An easy mistake to make, so no worries— no offense taken. I’m not the kinda person you’d expect. I left all my crystals at home, so you’ll have to take my word for it. But believe me.” He gestured over Doc from head to toe with the careless ease of a man in complete control. “I can See plenty.” 

A dark, troubled look crossed Doc’s face much like the perpetual storm clouds rolling over Hermit’s Hollow. “And what is it that you See, Mr. GoodTimes?” 

A slow, confident grin crawled over Scar’s face. It was unlike the grins he’d flashed to Grian time and time again. This one was far darker. The wind picked up and Grian’s mouth was flooded with the taste of peppermint. He let Grian go and strolled towards Doc, hands tucked away in his pockets and shoulders relaxed. 

“Well, the first thing I can tell you is that your boat’s safety inspection records are over two years expired,” he said, then put a hand to his temple. “Your nets, too, they’re in pretty bad shape. All that fishin’, all those long hours out on the water. If you ask me, the next time you reel that bad boy in, the ropes’ll snap and you’ll lose the day’s entire catch.” 

Scar winced and wrung his hands in front of him. “That can’t be good for the wallet, can it?”

Doc bristled, lowering his fists to his sides and clenching his teeth.  

“And the milk, oh boy, don’t even get me started on the milk,” Scar said, face twisted with disgust. He braced a hand against his belly. “Better throw that out before you make yourself sick, friend.”

Then, as if possessed by one of his many other personas, he chuckled and waved his hands dismissively in the air. “But no, no, that’s not what we’re here for! You want the real deal, don’t you?” 

Scar turned to face Doc fully. In three strides he was in front of the fisherman with a hand on his shoulder. He breathed in, quick and sharp, a hand flying to his head in a grand display. Trying to grasp hold of a memory, thin and tangible as smoke. It was of minor comfort to Grian that Doc looked as numbly astonished at Scar’s gall as Grian felt. 

Then, Scar regarded Doc with a small, sad smile. “You’re in trouble,” he said. “You’ve got a little issue, you don’t know what to do with it. Iskall promised he’d help you, but now that he’s—”

“Enough,” Doc snapped. If Grian didn’t already think it impossible, he would’ve said he looked shocked. Afraid, even. 

And suddenly, like a cord giving out, the tension in the air snapped and dissipated. Grian drew in a sharp breath. The air felt colder and clearer in his lungs. Scar leaned forward and sighed as if the effort of his showmanship had winded him. 

Grian wished his pencil hadn’t broken. He wasn’t sure who he wanted to take more notes on, but anything would’ve been better than standing there, stupid, slack jawed, and breathless at Scar’s display. 

“Forgive me,” Scar said graciously, chuckling and running a hand through his hair. “It’s hard not to get swept up in it all.”

Doc’s hands fumbled at his sides. “How… How did you—”

“I told you. I can See just fine. To see things for what they are, we gotta see them as we are. I’m sure you’re as innocent as Grian or I. ''' He interlinked his fingers in front of himself. “But we have to be sure and check, right? For Iskall. You seem like a reasonable guy. I’m sure you get it.”  

Grian’s heart lodged somewhere between his chest and his throat. Slowly, it suffocated him. 

Doc tilted his head in what only could be considered a tense nod. His hands twitched restlessly at his sides. He wouldn’t look Scar in the eye anymore, as if he feared the vagrant psychic would read every terrible thought in his head if he did. 

“Tell my friend here whatever he wants,” Scar said. “And I’d be more than happy to help you with your little problem.” 

.- ...

While the gentle ambiance of the Double ‘O Diner worked wonders numbing the incessant droning in Grian’s head, it did disappointingly little to drown out Scar. 

He didn’t need to say anything for Grian to feel his presence like nails on a chalkboard. It was impossible to forget he was there: the restless tap of his fingers on the table, the sharp clink of his spoon against his glass, the soft humming under his breath as he flipped through the pages in front of him. 

Grian kept his eyes and chin down, tucking himself away in the stack of open files and a thick, green binder— the yield of Scar’s strangely dressed threats. 

"Show me the cabin?” Grian had asked, to which Doc begrudgingly obliged. Inside, he spotted a framed safety inspection receipt hung to the wall with a single nail. Dated two years ago to the day. 

He flipped through the final report written by his colleague, Ren. The file was sparse, only a few key phrases typed out fading ink. The story of Iskall’s disappearance was similar enough to what Doc had told him aboard the Flying Fish: no abnormal behavior leading up to what appeared to be a normal day. He’d been late to the dock that morning, but Doc didn’t think anything of it until they came back from their first round to find he still hadn’t shown up. 

But rather, it was the rest of Ren’s report that Grian found unsatisfactory. ‘Hardworking’, was one of his astute observations, paired with ‘distraught regarding the disappearance’

“I was eating in the diner,” Doc said when Grian asked where he’d been the night of Iskall’s disappearance. “After that, I went to bed.” 

It checked out with Ren’s reports. Including a statement from Bdubs placing Doc at the diner around eight that night.

“What’s that face for?” Scar asked, words muffled.

Grian looked up to see him shoveling a spoonful of chocolate milkshake into his mouth. “What face?” 

“You’re making a face,” Scar mumbled. He jabbed his spoon in Grian’s direction and tied his face into a perturbed knot. “This kinda face. Your this-is-stupid face.” 

“I don’t have a this-is-stupid face.”

“Then why are you making that face?” Scar asked. 

“Because this is stupid,” Grian said. “Ren’s report is riddled with inconsistencies. He only wrote this a week ago and it’s like he talked to a completely different guy. Distraught? Seriously? Did Doc seem the slightest bit distraught to you?”

Scar thoughtfully tapped his chin with the spoon, smearing whipped cream on it. “About Iskall? Not really,” he said. “But about his spoiled milk? Definitely.” 

Grian shook his head and brushed the file aside. Ren’s police work was shoddy at best, but there was still time to retrace his steps. He cracked open the green binder: a log of clock punchings and employee attendance. If anyone worked on or around the Flying Fish in the last six months, it was written here in this book. 

“Why’d you need this?” Scar asked, leaning over the table on his elbows to get a better look.

“Anyone aboard that ship is a suspect,” Grian said, flipping through the first several months and seeing the same names over and over again. “It’s better than starting with nothing— you work your way through a suspect list and eliminate as you go.” 

“Why didn’t the cops just look at this before?” Scar asked. 

“Why would they?” he sighed. “The thought probably didn’t cross their minds once. That’s the problem with places like this.”

Scar’s smile flickered. His head tilted with a puppyish curiosity. “Places like this?” 

“The chief and the other guys— they mean well enough.” Grian busied his hands by flipping through the logs for the month of July as he spoke. “But here, there’s this— there’s a giant blind spot right in front of them. They never consider the obvious. They trust each other too much. They never think of the answer that’s right under their nose, that's living next door to them.” 

Grian hadn’t seen the truth of Hermit’s Hollow until he’d gotten far from it, until he’d enrolled in the Academy and found out how truly twisted and complicated the world was— the real word, not whatever world Hermit’s Hollow masqueraded as. 

“Because it’s easier to blame the things that go bump in the night?” Scar guesses, swallowing down another spoonful of his shake. Then, he hums. “But you’re different.” 

Grian’s shoulders tensed. “If you mean sane, then yes.” 

“Sanity is relative.” 

Scoffing, Grian undid slid the binder over to him. “If you have to be here, at least make yourself useful.” 

At the very least, Scar could take a hint. He swallowed whatever witty retort he had saved and turned his attention to the logs dutifully. The silence Grian got in return was tense but blissful. 

Grian idly scanned some pages of other reports he’d had Impulse run. He tried to cross-reference with any of the names he remembered from the employee logs: Doc’s and Iskall’s, of course, as well as a few other fishermen that worked aboard the ship throughout the end of the summer months. A few randoms as well. Lots of kids, too old for wasted summer breaks but too young and too immature to fly the coop, took up summer jobs on the port when the cold wasn’t so brutal. 

It wasn’t the most ground-breaking police work. But Grian wasn’t here for the same reasons Scar was; he wasn’t here for fame or glory or a feather in his cap. He was here to find missing people. At the very least, it was a place to start, a tactic other than blindly pointing a finger and hoping you hit something. 

The background check he’d run on Doc yielded next to nothing. Born and raised in Hermit’s Hollow, an unimpressive record save for minor vandalism and trespassing in his teenage years. Aside from that, there was nothing else of note on file. As eager as Grian was to nail a suspect for these disappearances, he couldn’t draw any assumptions off of some juvenile misconduct. If people were accused of kidnapping or murder based on whatever stupid things they did in high school, Grian would have to put himself in handcuffs. 

Grian groaned and scrubbed his hands over his face. He wasn’t foolish enough to believe taking on this case would be any sort of easy, but he’d be lying if he said there wasn’t a deep, childish part that hoped something shiny would stick out at him. Something the others missed. But, of course, nothing could ever be that simple. As if limited time and resources weren’t enough of a hindrance, he now had a partner that he couldn’t decide was more a hindrance or an asset. He’d made a massive headway with Doc, he had to give him that. But only by directly disobeying the single thing Grian told him not to do.

No matter how much he tried, Grian could not forget everything Scar had said and done on that deck. The faraway look in his eyes, the words on his tongue, the framed report tucked away in the cabin. The awful chill that prickled over Grian’s entire body. Like a frenzy of ants skittering across his skin. 

Grian pursed his lips, then glanced up at Scar. “What was his problem?”

Scar didn’t even glance up from the papers. “What was what?” 

“Stop playing dumb. It looks bad on you.” Grian’s heart kicked up a furious pace in his chest. “You said Doc had a problem. That you’d help him. What was it?”

Scar pursed his lips and cast a forlorn look at the empty milkshake glass. “Hm. Not sure I can say. Psychic-client confidentiality, and all that.”

A vessel in Grian’s temple pulsed. “And what’s that compared to being charged with obstruction of justice?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “Pick your poison.” 

“Jeez,” Scar whined, slumping in the booth. His chin touched his chest, the look of a properly chastised puppy. “What happened to the loose-cannon, off-the-books police rookie I was hangin’ out with this morning? He was a lot more fun.”

“He’s clocked out for the day,” Grian deadpanned. “Spill.

Scar sighed, as if exhausted from the whole ordeal. “It’s got nothing to do with the case, if that’s what you’re so keyed up about,” he said. “Doc has himself a little haunting problem. The whole ship was riddled ‘em. But there’s one in particular that’s been bugging him the most.”

Grian didn’t know why he bothered expecting any different. It took everything in him not to flop over in defeat, the house of cards inside him ready to collapse. 

“The safety reports. The nets. How did you know?” Grian grasped for straws. Listening to the little reasonable voice inside of his head grew more and more difficult by the day. This town wore endlessly at him. He could feel his self-control fraying. It was better to hand himself over to it before it could pull the rug out from under him. 

Scar signaled the waitress for a second chocolate milkshake and then gave her a big thumbs-up. “It’s like I told you at the Grab n’ Go,” he said, pulling out his wallet. “It’s a hunch. I was right, wasn’t I? You saw it on the wall.” 

“Lucky guess,” Grian argued— anything to wipe that smug grin from Scar’s face—but even to his own ears it sounded weak. “What about the milk, then?” 

That was a lucky guess. Or a lucky bluff.” He chuckled to himself and turned over to a new page in the punch-card records. “Fishermen love milk. Needed to sprinkle something in there to make him extra paranoid. You're very welcome.”

A brand new chocolate milkshake thunked down on the table between them. Scar gasped with glee, handing the waitress a bill as he dug into it. He didn’t waste time with a spoon or straw this time; he simply tilted his head back and sipped half of it down in one go.  A whipped cream mustache clung to his upper lip.

Grian stared at him.

“What?” he asked, wiping it away with his thumb and licking it off. He tilted the glass in Grian's direction. “Want some?”

“No.” A reflex answer. Then, he craned his neck to peer inside the glass. “Gimme the cherry.”

“Your wish is my command,” Scar said as he plucked the cherry out and plopped it in Grian’s hand. 

Swallowing it down and gnawing on the stem, Grian thought carefully about his next question. He had about a million more to ask, none of them he expected to have meaningful, satisfying answers. Every curiosity he had opened the floor up into a void, plummeting him down to an endless rabbit hole of things Grian couldn’t hope to try to understand. 

“One more question,” he said after a careful moment of deliberation. 

“The floor is yours,” Scar said with a smile, as he said most things. Grian wondered if it was ever real. 

Grian flipped the files shut and leaned across the table to speak softly and still be heard. What he really wanted to ask, he was too afraid to say. So instead, he asked,  “Why did the mayor want you to work here, with me of all people?” 

Scar met him halfway, leaning low enough that his chin rested on his crossed arms. He tilted his head in thought. “I could ask you the same thing,” he said. “We see things not for what they are, but for what we are. So… Tell me. Why would the mayor want me to work here? With you of all people?”

.-- .

The rain started halfway through his walk home. 

It was well past midnight, the ache behind his temples incessant and his frustration a bitter lump in his throat. Every joint in his body ached, but when Scar had offered him a ride home, he declined. The last thing he needed was to spend any more time around his cryptic partner than he needed to. So, that left him with walking.

Alone. In the dark. In the rain.

Rainwater smudged his glasses and doused his hair, the storm beating down on him as if it had a personal vendetta. The files he carried were too precious, even if they hadn’t been of much use yet. Hair could be dried. Paper and ink, not so much. He wrapped them up inside his windbreaker to protect them. 

Between the fog and curtains of rain, he couldn’t see far ahead of him, nor did the streetlamps do much more than decorate the sky like burning too-close stars. But a few years away wasn’t enough to decode muscle memory. He knew exactly where the little house on the hill stood; getting there was a tiring but robotic affair. And after the day he had, Grian could use some time to be brainless. 

He passed an old barber shop that’d been boarded up since Grian was a kid. The sign still hung from the awning, the words long faded but the painted black scissors stark as anything. The chains holding the sign up creaked as the wind rattled it back and forth. He ducked under it and crossed the street. 

It was when he passed the white oak tree that he realized he was being followed. 

The footsteps were difficult to hear under the drumming of the rain against the pavement, but not impossible. He felt eyes on him in a way he couldn’t explain, but sometimes his gut was an incredibly difficult thing to ignore. Every hair on his neck stood on end. A frantic buzz overtook him, causing his fingertips to tremble. There it was again— that blinking light that screamed he was in danger.

He kept his pace casual but quick, head ducked as he took random turns in the opposite direction of his home.

He could go to the station. Lead this stalker directly into the jaws of the shark. But this town was small; everyone and their mother would know where the police station was. Or hell, even where Grian lived. It wasn’t as if his house was a complete mystery to local gossip, and it wouldn’t be long until it was immortalized into legend, if it hadn’t already. 

There was no good place to go. Not if he wanted more than to just scare the perp off. Grian wouldn’t let him get away that easily. He needed answers. 

His gun sat heavily on his hip. But he didn’t want to use it if he didn’t have to. 

At the end of the main street, he passed the ice cream shop and took a sharp right at the intersection. Back against the brick wall, Grian pressed himself deep into the shadows and waited. It didn’t take long for the shuffling footsteps to follow, puddles splashing beneath the weight of heavy boots. A dark silhouette holding an umbrella turned a corner. 

Grian grabbed the man by the front of his shirt and pinned him against the brick. The black umbrella clattered to the sidewalk. 

“Woah, woah! What’s the deal, man?!” 

The rain whipped against the side of Grian’s face. He had to squint to see the man’s face clearly. But the moon was big in the sky that night and he caught the barest sliver of his face in the silver light. He backed away, scrubbing away the water from his face. 

“That’s how you greet an old friend, huh? You’ve changed, G, you’ve changed for real!” Bdubs brushed himself off. He shielded his face from the worst of the rain as he bent to scramble for his umbrella before the wind carried it down the hill, grumbling to himself. “Last time I do somethin’ good. What gives…” 

What gives?” Grian snapped. “Bdubs, you were following me! What were you thinking?” 

Bdubs flicked his umbrella and held it back over his head, the moonlight catching the teeth of his scowl. “I was thinkin’ I had to talk to you,” he said. “Y’know, give you some information. Like detectives do. But I don’t wanna be interrogated or nothin’. Just a chat between buds.”

“A friendly chat. You stalked me for over a block because you wanted a chat?” Grian parroted. Here he stood soaked to the bone, adrenaline rising his heart rate to likely unhealthy levels, and Bdubs wanted friendly conversation.

Bdubs glanced above Grian’s head, the moon reflected in his dark eyes. He knew them to be brown, but they seemed black in this light. Not just the iris, but all of it, sclera and all. He knew it to be a trick of the light, but that didn’t settle Grian’s nerves any. 

“Do you want my information or not, G?” Bdubs asked, the apprehension in his voice visibly. 

“Fine.” Grian grit his teeth and grabbed Bdubs by his front collar, hauling him forward. “You’re coming with me.” 

.- .-. .

The wall didn’t have eyes. But it certainly felt like it did.

It did nothing but stare at Grian the same way he did to it. Where a reflection should be, had the mirror still been hung there. But it wasn’t, and the faded, chipped olive paint was its chalk outline. 

It had bothered Grian, at first. How easy it was to form new habits in such little time, yet so difficult to break them. He’d learned to be content without his reflection within the better part of three months, but he still poked his head out of his bedroom door before stepping into the hall. He still walked on the balls of his heels so as not to aggravate the creaky floorboard on the second landing. 

The warm water thawed him. Grian toweled off his hair and let it hang, uncaring how it dried. All that mattered to him then was the rumble in his stomach. 

The green wall taunted him. So he shut the bathroom door and locked it inside. 

Luckily, the rest of the house slept soundly. Jimmy slept soundly. Even with his ear pressed against the door, Grian couldn’t hear him so much as stir. He padded downstairs, careful to avoid that creaky landing. A solitary lamp stood in the corner of the living room, casting severe shadows across the floor. They were long and spindly, and — if Grian looked at them from his periphery — swaying. 

He took extra care to either look at them directly or not at all. Another habit forced by the house, unchanging by time and distance. 

The exposed cement froze his feet, even through his socks, as he crept to the kitchen. 

Maui sat on the countertop and meowed at him. She arched her back into his hand as he scratched the length of her spine and behind her ears. She purred and coiled her tail around the coffee pot.

Coffee was tempting. As was eating the first thing he laid eyes on and crawling straight into bed. The ticking of his watch made his decision no easier. Sleep came about as easy to him as pulling teeth, and Grian was nowhere near qualified to be a dentist. Best case case scenario, he’d fall asleep with thirty minutes to spare before his alarm went off. Worst case scenario was his current living hell. Might as well make things more bearable with a warm—  and totally not bitter— cup of dark roast. After the night he had, he certainly deserved it.

Even in the city, Grian couldn’t often say he had the privilege of interviewing a potential murderer, picking the brain of a self-proclaimed Professor of the Paranormal, and getting stalked in the rain by an informant all in one twenty-four hour span. He should’ve stuck that on a resume. Maybe it’d land him a job when he finally got the nerve to lift anchor and ran screaming from Hermit’s Hollow for a second time. 

Still, his brain buzzed, filled to the brim. Static and the dull pulse of a growing migraine grew behind his temples. When he tried to fantasize of sunnier shores and warm summers, all he could see was the moon in Bdubs’ eyes, the silver reflection of his teeth. His mouth had moved. He had told Grian something, hadn’t he? But he couldn’t remember what he’d said. Maybe he hadn’t said anything at all.

Or did he just say something Grian didn’t want to hear?

A flash of distant lightning poured into the room, drowning everything in an impossibly bright white light. And as quickly as it did, it vanished. Thunder cracked overhead. Maui jumped off ehr place on the counter and disappeared into the darkness of the house. Grian blinked spots out of his vision. Rain fell heavily against the window over the sink, the moonlight catching the shadows of droplets racing across the floor. 

Coffee it was, then. 

He stood by the counter, hands pressed into the chilly tile as he waited for the beans to grind and the hot water to pour. On the kitchen table beside him sat his briefcase and his tape recorder, the cassette still loaded in like a bullet in a chamber. He wasn’t convinced he knew what he was going to do with it. He wasn’t convinced it had even happened. 

His stomach growled at him again, fiercer this time. Heeding its call, he went to the fridge. 

Empty. The refrigerator light taunted him with far more cruelty than the mirrorless wall ever did. A single can of soda sat on the inner shelf of the door, already cracked open and long flat. Grian shut the door and thunked his forehead against it. Jimmy was so dead. No, he would wish he was dead by the time Grian was done with him.

It didn’t matter that it was nearing four in the morning, nor did it matter that Jimmy would need to be up in an hour to head to the docks for work. Grian was starving and peeved and sleep was only for good boys who did what they’d been asked to do. How difficult was it to stop by the store? It was impossible to go anywhere in Hermit’s Hollow without passing the Grab n’ Go. 

He didn’t even need anything fancy. Another box of Danish Go-Rounds would’ve been perfectly acceptable.

“Timmy!” Grian jeered, pounding on his door with the flat side of his fist. It was the knock police officers used when they wanted to show that they meant business, that they were coming in whether you wanted them to or not. Knocking was only a formality. “Timmy, rise ‘n shine!

If Jimmy managed to weasel his way out of his responsibilities one more time, Grian was going to come properly undone. Most days he felt he was halfway there anyway; it wouldn’t take much to rip his fraying seams.

Grian knocked again, in quick succession. Each time he did, the little shoddy wooden block sign nailed to his door trembled and shook. The poorly painted letters (the handiwork of a seven year old, so Grian really shouldn’t judge) spelled Jimmy’s name, and it was the ugliest thing Grian ever saw. But little Jimmy, always the baby, was adamant on never taking it down.

Grian stared at it. The J was painted green, the same color as the wall.

“Tim!” Grian’s patience wore thin. His knuckles ached. Ear pressed to the door he didn’t hear so much as the slightest stir inside.

His heart sunk through him like a stone, dragging the heat from his chest along with it. Like he’d been carelessly thrown to the bottom of a murky lake to see if it’d skip, for good fun.

“Jimmy. I’m coming in.”

His bedroom was the smallest. He always complained about it when he was little: the cramped walls, the twin bed their dad found at a yard sale shoved in the corner of the room, the dark eyes that peered in on him from under the gap of his closet door.

His covers were a mess. Clearly slept in at some point, but otherwise unoccupied.

Grian fumbled for the light switch.

Lightning struck far away over the water outside.  The flash crept into the empty, empty room.

“Jimmy?”

Notes:

hope you've enjoyed this update! things are still just starting to simmer, i'm really excited to share when things really heat up! if you are reading this, pls consider leaving a comment or kudos, it means a lot! thank you!

Chapter 3: III. put down your lies

Summary:

Grian searches for his brother and for answers.

Chapter Text

-.-- --- ..-

III.

 

Grian swept the cover off the old Chrysler Imperial collecting dust in the garage. He hated to drive it, the interior smelled of mothballs, and gas always cost more than a kidney, but he kept the keys in his bedside table. Just in case. The engine roared to life. Grian peeled out of the garage and into the street.

When Grian was in the Academy, a guest speaker from Quantico came to talk with his class about a new guideline for missing person investigations. The man had a neat haircut and a voice of iron; Grian couldn’t even take notes, he couldn’t tear his eyes away for long enough to even consider it. But he’d never forgotten what that agent taught him.

A systematic search. Broad to specific. Leave no stone unturned. The earlier things start, the better. You have 72 hours before you start looking for a body, so the places you look at have to matter. Start with home, start with what you know. Then branch out.

Grian wasn’t known to half-ass most things. Even in the storm he picked through the first three blocks, flashing his headlights at anything that so much as breathed in the shadows. When the rain grew too heavy against his windshield, when the houses grew too close together to drive through,  he pulled his flashlight from his trunk and took the search on foot. With nothing but his sweater, boxers, and socks.

An older lady with a neck full of beaded strings and strung-up crystals caught him trying to peek in under her raised porch and chased him away with her cane and a bottle of holy water. It was pointless explaining he was police; people believed what they wanted to believe. And showing a badge would’ve been just useless. Mainly because he forgot it at home with his gun and the rest of his clothes.

Search where they have last been seen, any local haunts. Remember, when people go missing it is almost never associated with criminal activity. So you must approach each missing person’s report with a healthy dose of composure.

The cemetery. The high school. The little shed on the abandoned plot of land near the treeline. Kids liked to go there to smoke and partake in general deadbeat activities (and Grian did not know that from experience, of course). Street by street he combed through. No Jimmy.

Grian was about as far from composed as he could get.

He drove through Main Street. The stores were empty. He walked the street up and down twice, jostling every door and testing every lock he could. Aside from the Grab n’ Go, nothing was open. And Grian had little hope that Jimmy had decided to make good on his grocery promises at four in the morning in the middle of a rainstorm.

His resolve cracked then, drenched and shivering on Main Street. He cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted his brother’s name over and over again. The storm wailed to try to drown him out, thunder rolling and rain screaming down the street. But again and again he shouted, even when the wind picked his voice up and carried it into the nothing sky.

He shouted until his voice was hoarse and he ended up back at the idling car. The fear that took him over as he climbed back in was the furious kind that not even Grian was capable of talking himself out of. Not even the memory of that FBI agent, embodiment of cool composure, was able to settle the incessant, violent hammering in Grian’s chest. It was a kind of fear that quickly soured into desperation; the kind that had him considering driving to Chief Impulse’s house in his boxers and demanding a launch of a full-blown manhunt.


Fill your lungs up. Grian’s fingers fumbled on the steering wheel. He took a ragged breath, as if it was being forced into him. He let it fill him to the brim, until he felt his lungs would burst.

And let them pour out. So he did.

There was only one other place to look.

The rain stopped by the time Grian got to the docks, his first glimpse of luck. The fog settled heavy over the water, the storm stealing all of the warmth from the air and surface of the water for itself. It wasn’t gone; it would be back, surely. But a break was all Grian needed.

Usually the water churned as if something lived and breathed beneath it, ripples gliding across the surface. But tonight, it was pure dark. The kind you couldn’t comprehend until you reached out and tried to touch it. If he let his hand dangle over the dock’s edge, his hand would’ve disappeared into it. It would’ve swallowed and pulled him down, not knowing where the shadowy water began and he ended.

The yellow glow from his flashlight was meager and did little to guide his path across the docks. Each step he feared he’d take one step too far and disappear into the void underneath. The further he went the more the light faded, the bulb sputtering and struggling to stay lit. He whacked it against his hand time and time again to spring it back to life, but once he reached the Flying Fish, it died entirely.

The water whispered. The ships floating in it creaked and groaned, hushed confessions not meant for Grian’s ears. Then, he heard a bundle of stifled, impish laughter. He followed it up the shallow ramp onto the deck.

There, alive and fleshy and perfectly intact, sat Jimmy on top of one of the crates stacked on board. His yellow fisherman's jacket shone through the dark like a lighthouse. Knelt on the deck beside him was Joel, trying his very hardest to spark a firework wick despite the fact they were both soaked through, dripping like dogs.

“You are joking.”

Jimmy startled and fell backwards off the crate and into a heap of limbs on the deck. Joel knocked his handful of fireworks away and leapt to his feet.

“Woah, hey!” Jimmy scrambled to his feet, rubbing at his scuffed knees. “Grian! Buddy! It’s not what it— why are you— hold on, where have your shoes gone?”

“And your pants,” Joel snickered, hands in his pockets.

Guided by the heat in his belly Grian stormed towards Jimmy. “You absolute—“ He chucked his car keys at Jimmy’s head, uncaring when they missed and clattered to the deck. “Ungrateful—“ He tossed his dead flashlight too. “Thoughtless—“ Jimmy leapt back, tripping over his own two feet. “Stupid brat!”

“Stop it, Grian!” Jimmy hit the cabin wall, hands over his head. His blond hair hung in his face in wet clumps. He had the audacity to look insulted. But all the while, for as afraid as he was, he didn’t look Grian in the face. Not once.

“You scared the shit of me, and you’re telling me to stop?” Grian mocked, burning himself with the venom of it. His teeth and jaw ached, each muscle and bone in his body grating against each other.

Jimmy shrunk into the wall, but that stupid yellow jacket kept him from disappearing into the shadows like he so desperately wished. An embarrassing orchestra portrait would be the absolute least of Jimmy’s concerns by the end of the night.

“Grian,” he pleaded, an immediate hostage as he slowly lowered his hands. “Calm down, it’s— it’s not that big of a deal.”

The ugly feeling in his chest festered— a withering blight that ventured too far from anger and too near to fear— and filled him to his brim. And there was nowhere to put the rest of it. It had no choice but to spill out. It had no choice but to drown him and reclaim him as its own, because from rot he was born and to rot he shall return.

“This is your way of getting back at me,” he accused, a finger jabbed into Jimmy’s sternum. “Is that it? This is a whole new level of stupid, Timmy, even for you.”

“Quit calling me Timmy!” Jimmy’s temper spiked, nostrils flared and a humiliated heat flooded his cheeks. “And I’m not stupid!”

You’re too similar for your own good, their mother taunted in the back of Grian’s mind.

Joel stepped to Jimmy’s defense, a hand on Grian’s shoulder from behind. “Oi! Chill out, mate. You’re being a psycho—“

They touch self-defense at the academy. It was a basic requirement, actually, if you wanted to come anywhere within a ten mile radius of law enforcement. So it was an incredibly stupid thing for Joel to do. In a second Grian had Joel’s wrist in a death grip and twisted it at a severe angle, the bones groaning under the sudden force. Joel cursed and whimpered, his echo carrying on for what sounded like miles across the black water. 

“Don’t even think about finishing that sentence.” Joel’s pulse fluttered under Grian’s hand, a wild and frantic pace. The thumping of a rabbit caught in a trap. “I don’t wanna see you around my brother again, you got that? Not for work, not for dicking around with fireworks, nothing.”

Joel, forced to his knees by the pain and unnatural angle of his wrist, pleaded, “I didn’t even bloody do anything, you’re insane—“

Grian twisted Joel’s wrist further back. A joint popped.

“Okay, okay, okay!” He gasped, shaking his head as he hung it in defeat. “Got it, I got it! Let go!”

When he released his grip on Joel’s hand, it was like his head had been dunked under ice water. Suddenly he was all too aware of the chill of his skin, the rainwater clung to his neck and forehead. He felt every inch of the cold October night, from the burning in his eyes to his wet socks. Sobering was too light a word for it. Breathing came with great difficulty.

Prick,” Joel muttered under his breath. He picked himself off the ground and cradled his aching hand to his chest. With a single glance at Jimmy he shouldered past Grian and scurried down the ramp.

Grian waited until his silhouette disappeared into the night before he turned to face Jimmy again, before he felt calm and awake enough to keep from saying or doing something he regretted.

“That’s not fair,” Jimmy protested weakly, a pitiful display when he was crumpled against the cabin wall. But Jimmy was always like that: making himself smaller, hardier, like condensing into a little stone would protect him from all terrible things, or would trick people like Grian that he was tougher than he looked.

No matter how many times he tried, he would never be able to trick Grian.

“It’s perfectly fair,” Grian said with finality.

“He’s my friend, you can’t just—“ Jimmy shook his head and climbed to his feet.

“I was worried sick about you! People are going missing, Jimmy, you know that? Or have you not listened to a single word I’ve said to you?” He tightened his fists at his sides. “I asked you to stay put, how stupid do you have to be?”

“I’m not stupid!” Jimmy shouted, the redness of his cheeks branching down through the bulging veins in his neck.

Yes, you are—“

“Am not! You— you’re acting completely—“

“What? I’m acting completely, what?” Grian challenged. “Crazy? If you want to call me crazy, Jimmy, then grow up and just fucking say it—”

“You’re acting like mom!”

Grian saw Jimmy’s mouth move, but all he could hear was thunder. When his brother was angry like this, when his eyes were the darkest brown Grian had ever seen, he looked so much like her.

His jaw snapped shut.

Fighting with Jimmy was an art form. A song they danced to year after year, beat by beat. They always knew what came next, and that kind of muscle memory was to be depended on. It was how they knew that they’d be okay. That they still had each other, even when things turned ugly. Everything had a dress rehearsal.

But this— Jimmy’s venom, the hardened anger to his eyes that refuses to yield into the usual hurt— Grian didn't recognize. A deep scratch on the vinyl. And like the stylus of a record player, he tripped over it.

“That’s not—“ he faltered.

“I know you didn’t want to come back home. I know that you’re miserable here, and that you’re just counting the days until you can run away and leave us behind again,” Jimmy said. “But that’s not my fault. You decided to come back, I didn’t make you! So stop taking it out on me!”

“I’m not miserable—“ Grian shook his head. Shivers wracked his body; he hugged himself tight, unsure whether it was to keep himself warm or to keep himself held together. At the end of the day he guessed they were one in the same.

He didn’t want to come back. He would’ve given anything not to. But would he have given up Jimmy? Would he have given up what little he had left of his broken little family?

If you had asked Grian a few weeks ago, he would’ve said no. In a heartbeat. Jimmy needed him. But standing there in the cold, under Jimmy’s storm clouds, he wasn’t sure anymore.

“What other choice did I have?” he asked weakly.

“If you’re here out of obligation, then you can leave!” Jimmy threw his arm out over the shore, across the black horizon. He didn’t look at Grian. “I don’t need you. Pearl doesn’t need you. We were fine without you. You ran away. Maybe you should’ve stayed away.”

It should’ve hurt. Perhaps it did, deep down beneath where his sweater felt frozen to his chest. If his fingers weren’t so numb, his head so full of static and a growing headache, perhaps he could’ve turned around and left Jimmy on that dock. He could’ve turned the keys over in the ignition and take up Jimmy on his offer.

Stay away.

But at five in the morning, soaked to his core and holding what was left of his life together with feeble stitches and shaky fingers, all Grian felt was numb. 

.- .-. .

RECORDED INTERVIEW

Property of Hermit’s Hollow Police Department & Department of Public Safety

Interviewer: Grian Solidarity

Interviewee: B. Double O



[Begin Recording 00:00:10]

 

[Clicks]

[Door shuts]

[GRIAN]

Go ahead.

[B.D.]

(taps) The heck is this for? Told you I didn’t wanna be interrogated or nothing.

[GRIAN]

…Have you committed a crime?

[B.D.]

Nope.

[GRIAN]

Are you intending on confessing to committing a crime?

[B.D.]

Are you stupid? (laughs) Of course not!

[GRIAN]

Exactly. It’s not an interrogation if there’s no crime.

(Sighs) Ugh. Okay. Let’s try this again—

[Click]

[Static]

[Begin Recording 00:01:45]

 

[GRIAN]

This is Grian Solidarity on the night of October the 9th or… (mumbles). On the morning of October the 10th of 1979. With me is one B. Double O sharing his testimony regarding the disappearance of Pix Riffs.

Bdubs, do you consent to this interview being recorded? (papers shuffle)

[B.D]

Pfft. Not like you’re giving me much of a choice.

[GRIAN]

For goodness sake—

[Click]


[Begin Recording 00:09:15]



[B.D.]

I really risked my ass coming to talk to you tonight, y’know. (grumbles, inaudible)

[GRIAN] 

(chuckles) That’s what you get for stalking me.

 

[B.D.]

Don’t flatter yourself, I ain’t afraid of you.

It’s a full moon tonight. Whaddaya stupid?

[GRIAN]

What does the full moon have to do with anything?

[B.D.] 

Did you hear nothin’ I said to you the other day?

The moon , G. You can’t believe a word she says. On the nights when she’s full like this, that’s when she’s the most convincing.

[GRIAN]

I… You said you were joking.

(deep breath) Okay, let’s get back on track, shall we?

[Click]

 

[Begin Recording 00:20:31]

 

[GRIAN]

What about Pix? That’s why you wanted to talk to me, isn’t it?

[B.D.]

That’s right.

[GRIAN]  

How do you know him?

[B.D.]

I don’t. I didn’t— not really, anyway. He was new and shiny and eager. Y’know the touristy types. He came in to eat at least three nights a week. He’d order his food and curl up in this one booth in the back and write like a maniac in a little book.

Always ordered the same thing every time too— a double cheeseburger with no cheese. (Laughs). What kinda idiot gets a cheeseburger without cheese?

[GRIAN]

Back on track, Bdubs. (taps pencil) When was the last time you saw him?

[B.D.] 

Uh, the morning he went missing, probably. What was it— the 30th?

I went to the diner early. Got a shipment overnight, can’t let the frozen stuff go bad, y’know? Saw him walking the other way, buncha papers in his hand. Seemed pretty stressed. Never saw him in the diner after that.

(huffs) But I already told the cops alla that! They said I was clear—

[GRIAN]

If I thought you were a suspect we’d be having a very different conversation.

(sighs) Did you ever talk to him? When he came into the diner?

[B.D.]

A coupla times. He always had a lot of questions (groans). Would talk my ear off for hours if I didn’t tell him to shut it. He had a little tape recorder (taps). Just like this one, but it was a lot smaller.

[GRIAN]

Hm. (pencil scratches) What kinda stuff did he ask you about?

[B.D.] 

Why you shouldn’t go through the Gap in the Wall. Where the Weeping Lady likes to linger. What the Sentinels are protecting… Anything. Everything.

Like I said, touristy shit.

[GRIAN] 

So he was here for the folklore—

[B.D.]

Why the hell would anyone else come here?

[GRIAN]

You said he had a recorder? Did he ever tape your conversations?

[B.D.] 

All the damn time. (groans) Guy was relentless, I’ll tell you. But he was good for business— couldn’t exactly tell him and his wallet to beat it.

[GRIAN]

Did he seem interested in anything specific? Was he looking for something in particular?

[B.D.]

A whole lotta trouble is what he was looking for. Came in like a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed baby looking to get his hands on the archives.


[Pause.]

[GRIAN]

But the archives are gone? (clears throat) After the fire. The diner, it—

[B.D.]

You think I don’t know that? (laughs boisterously) Man, you don’t know jack . You’re gone a few years and come riding back in like some gunslingin’ cowboy ready to save the town.

[GRIAN]

(sneers) What exactly are you implying?

[B.D]

(laughs darkly)

[Click]

[Audio distortion, sharp whining]

 

[Begin Recording 00:49:20]

 

[GRIAN]

If you’re not going to say anything useful then you should go—

[B.D.] 

Y’know, I heard you talking a whole lot about the missing folks earlier. That fisherman, the Captain. I saw him in the diner a whole lot too. Always ordered tuna.

[GRIAN]

…  You’re telling me this, why ?

[B.D.] 

You need information, right? I’ve got a plethora . Might as well call me a wishing well.

[GRIAN] 

Do I have to give you a penny?

[B.D.] 

If you’re offering—

[GRIAN]

I’m not. (shuffles papers)

Did Pix and Captain Iskall ever talk to one another?

[B.D.]

It’s a small town. People talk.

Saw them with that other guy, Doc, a lot too. He’s the captain’s right hand or something, right? Is he a suspect?

[GRIAN]

I can’t discuss details about an ongoing investigation.

[B.D.]

Then what the hell have we been doin’ the last half hour?

[GRIAN]

That’s different. I’m interviewing you. You’re telling me things, not the other way around.

[Pause]

[GRIAN]

Why are you asking about Doc? Do you think he’s suspicious?

[B.D.] 

Everybody’s suspicious ‘round here. Guy with a red eye is about as obvious as they get. He was real buddy-buddy with that Iskall guy too. Before, they’d always eat at the counter together before they went back out on the water.

[GRIAN]

Before?

[B.D.]  

The captain guy started actin’ all crazy a week or so before he poofed. He was wicked paranoid.

Well, more paranoid than usual. Fishermen . Only son-of-bitches more crazy than me.

[GRIAN]

Doc said everything was normal with Iskall leading up to his disappearance.

[B.D.] 

Doc should have his good eye checked.

[GRIAN] 

… Did you see Doc in the diner on the night of Iskall’s disappearance? Last Thursday, September 30th?

[B.D.] 

Maybe. Maybe not.

[GRIAN]

(growls) I’m gonna need a more concise answer, Bdubs.

[B.D.] 

Damn, G, I don’t remember stuff like that! He came in all the damn time with the rest of his crew. I don’t keep tabs on every damn person!

[GRIAN]

Tabs… (scratches pencil)

Do you keep your receipts? Carbon copies?

[B.D.] 

Got ‘em from the past month or so.

[GRIAN]

Good. Have them ready for me tomorrow morning. I’ll send someone by tomorrow to pick them up.

[B.D.]

Aye, aye, captain. (hums)

Okay. I’m bored. It’s my turn. Who’s the new fella? That handsome guy you were sittin’ with? Or is that sensitive investigation bull crap too?

[Mug thumps on table]

[GRIAN] 

He’s a… colleague, I guess.

[B.D.]

Hermit PD hiring psychics now? You guys really have sunk to a whole new low.

[GRIAN]

Says the guy who’s talking to the moon.

[B.D.] 

The key is to not listen. Talking’s a different story. It’s an art, really. Wouldn’t expect you to understand.

[Pause]

[B.D.] 

But she has told me about you, y’know.

[GRIAN]

That’s it. I’m not entertaining this. We’re done here.

[B.D]

You don’t wanna know how you’re meant to die? (laughs) It’s pretty damn tragic.

[GRIAN]

I’ve had enough tragedy for one year, thanks.

[B.D.]

That’s the thing. The darndest thing. It’s not something that’s gonna happen. It’s already happened.

You’re doomed.

[Click]

 

[End Recording 01:00:15]

 

Impulse clicked the tape recorder open. The machine whirred before the spools inside slowed to a stop.

“Think you got a defective tape there” he said, popping the cassette tape out and turning it over in his hands.

“It’s just some distortion,” Grian argued, frustrated that a little glitching was the most important thing Impulse gleaned from the whole thing. “It happens.”

“Even so…” Impulse slid it across the desk toward Grian, as if he was glad to be rid of it. “This doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.”

“Are you crazy?” Grian balked, snatching the tape. He waved it overhead. Maybe that would somehow beat the point into Impulse’s thick skull. “I’ve got the first real connection between the cases. Pix and Captain Iskall talked at the diner—”

“Between two of the cases. It makes no reference to the first victim, Gemini Tay,” Impulse interjected. Then, he sighed and leaned back in his chair, messing with the wrinkled fabric of his tie. “It’s a small town, Grian. If I brought in every Hermit that knew or talked to Captain Iskall for questioning, I’d have the whole town lined up out the door.”

It was like Impulse hadn’t heard a single thing Bdubs (or Grian, more importantly) had said. Hermit’s Hollow was no stranger to its fair share of nosy tourists, but Pix’s questioning seemed far more severe than what Grian had seen from most coming here for a little autumn thrill trip. A check off a bucket list. As if him going missing wasn’t enough to set off the appropriate amount of alarm bells.

Just like Hermit’s Hollow and the people inside it have a much different threshold for what they found alarming. When human-eating trees lurked on the border, what concern was a missing person or two? God, he could’ve hurled right then.

He had to take a new approach. And quickly, if he had any hope of keeping the hook in Impulse’s cheek. The chief was shiftier than the cod themselves. “What was found during the search on Pix’s rental? Bdubs mentioned—“

“A tape recorder?” Impulse guessed, a tired yet amused quirk pulling at the edge of his lip. “Nothing like that was found. Some books, a small suitcase of personal belongings and clothes. Nothing suspicious, I promise you.”

Desperation crawled up the back of Grian’s throat. He was quickly losing threads to pull on. “What did you dig up on Doc?”

Impulse raised an eyebrow at him. “Nothing we didn’t already know. He got in some trouble as a teen, but who hasn’t?”

“The receipts from the diner?”

“Ren combed through them. Doc’s card was used the night of the 30th at the Double O’ Diner around 8PM. His alibi checks out.”

It was a lousy alibi, as far as Grian was concerned. A  quick pit stop for a burger and a milkshake hardly exonerated someone from kidnapping. But the evidence was stacked against him now. Impulse might’ve been willing to stick his neck out for Grian on more than one occasion, but like any good detective, Impulse lived by evidence. He breathed the book and followed the rules. Even if it meant overlooking his gut. 

Grian, however, liked to think he was a healthy mix of both. Best of both worlds. Only it didn’t mean anything if nobody listened to him.

“Did anybody search his—“

“Grian,” Impulse interjected firmly. “We have no reason to believe Doc is a person of interest.”

“How about proximity to the victim? Lying about his behavior right before he disappeared?” Grian challenged, fists flat on the table. “That’s not enough? Motive, then. The Flying Fish is easily the most successful boat this town’s seen in the last ten years. Who stands to gain if they suddenly become Captain?”

“Motive. Victim,” Impulse echoed. “Those words imply a crime, a pretty specific one too. Do you have probable cause to suspect Doc murdered Iskall?”

“Well—“ Heat flared in Grian’s face. Suspicion, yes. But probable cause? “Not exactly. I don’t have enough evidence yet.”

“Because there isn’t any evidence. This is a missing person’s case.” Impulse jabbed his finger into the wooden desktop. “There’s no body, there’s no murder weapon, no fingerprints, no suspect. Maybe in your big city things like this might be true. But that doesn’t happen here.”

“But you don’t know that,” Grian pleaded, steepling his hands in front of his face. “Three people in three months. You seriously can’t sit there and tell me you think it’s all a coincidence. That they all just decided to pack up and fly under the radar. Or worse, that you think the boogeyman took them. Please, Impulse—“

“It’s Chief during working hours.”

From anyone else it would’ve sounded like a firm-handed chiding, but it was difficult for the chief to sound firm even in the most dire circumstances. If anything, he sounded more the part of a disappointed parent. Which in many ways, was arguably worse.

“Maybe it’d be worth bringing Bdubs in for questioning again,” Grian pushed gently. “He seemed to know a lot more than he was letting on. Maybe he’s got more to say.”

Impulse pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned his elbows on his desk. He was tired to his bone, and it pained Grian to see him this way. But it pained him far more to feel so utterly useless in the investigation. To have some kind of testimony, some evidence not already detailed out in previous police reports and transcripts.

 “Look, Grian, I appreciate that you’re taking this seriously,” he said. “But Bdubs is not what I would call a reliable source. He means well, he does. But like a lot of other people in this town, he… lets his imagination get ahead of him. We’ve vetted Doc. We’ve exhausted all these avenues. You’ve got to let this go.”

Feeling properly reamed, Grian slumped back in his chair and licked at his wounds. To think, in a town full of clairvoyant moons, sentient statues, voids, and ghosts, that it was still next to impossible to get the chief to take a leap of faith for him— the person sitting in front of him. He’d never felt so invisible. It was maddening.  It was a bitter defeat to accept, but he had to know when to cut his losses. He wouldn’t get anywhere with Impulse on this. Not without proper evidence. If he was going to do this, he had to do it Impulse’s way.

“How are things going with Scar?” Impulse asked.

“As well as you’d expect. You stuck me with a kook.” It was the polite version of events, to say the least.

“An efficient kook. He got the details you needed from Doc, didn’t he?” Impulse reached for the other files Grian delivered to him that morning along with the tape. With it was Grian’s typed report of their conversation with the interim captain and his impressions from the employee logs, which was a fat, resounding and disappointing: nothing.

“If you ask me, I think you should give him a fair chance.”

Grian scowled. “Good thing I didn’t ask you, then.”

“Now you’re just being cranky,” Impulse chided, straightening his tie and standing from his chair. He turned off his lamp and rounded the desk. “Mayor Jumbo will be glad to know his addition is helping your investigation. For now— go home. You look like absolute crap. You’re taking the day off. Chief’s orders.” 


-. --- -

 

OPEN THE DOOR.

No. He didn’t want to.

 

OPEN IT. 

 

The metal handle was cold to the touch. Rust coated his palms, the orange so dark he couldn’t tell if it was rust or if it was blood. The warm tackiness of it slathered the surface of his palms. It was difficult to get a good grip on the handle.

He didn’t want to open it. But his hand moved of its own accord. The cobblestone walls crawled around him, oozing from between the cracks in the stones. They, like the town, cried around him. Cried for him.

How odd it was to be alive as you were mourned. 

 

OPEN.

 

A hand rested atop his. Her skin was rough but warm, warm like the blood. He felt her breath on the back of his neck. Long black hair crept over his shoulders, tickling the underside of his chin.

Those long pale fingers pushed his hand down. Forced his fingers around the handle. He fought, but her hand was hard and steady as stone, pushing him closer to the door, prying it open like he was a key in a lock.  He fought, but it was hard when she sang against the shell of his ear. Her voice sounded as if it were many. Each word belonged to someone else, someone he knew.

 

OPEN THE DOOR.

 

OPEN, said his mom.

THE, said Pearl.

DOOR, said another, her voice low and made of gravel.

He reached for it. 

 

I DON’T WANT TO.

 

YES, YOU DO. 

 

Grian stood with his hand on the knob of the basement door. He couldn’t remember how he got there. Or why.

Heart beating fast and hard, he waited. He rolled his shoulders, took a deep breath. There was no weight clinging to his back, no hand over his own to guide it forward. He stretched his fingers and splayed out against the door, counting each one. Five fingers. He could move each one. He was in control. He was fine.

He was awake.

Measuring his breathing as he was taught, Grian tried to use that control to turn away from the door. It should’ve been easy. It was his brain that was connected to his spine, to his bones, to the nerves innervating them. This was his body, this was his house. Nothing else could tell him what to do. But no matter how hard he tried, his feet remained firm in place, as if paved in with the bare cement beneath them.

His head hurt terribly. The house was dark and slumbering, and he wanted nothing more than to sleep alongside it. Anything to soothe the searing ache behind his eyes. But, still, he couldn’t pry his hand from the doorknob.

The door creaked as it opened. The stairs whispered under his weight as he crept down into the darkness beneath.

A small chain tickled his palm as he reached into the darkness for it. He pulled it and the basement warmed with the light from a single bulb hanging from the exposed, unfinished ceiling.

For years the basement went untouched, a graveyard of promises made to this house and their family. Old pieces of furniture that were meant to be refurbished instead lay here to rot. An old, ornate wooden armoire with a large chip in the carving. A rocking chair in need of new upholstery. Jimmy’s old crib, which started off as his old crib. Boxes upon boxes of his parents’ clothes that he couldn’t bring himself to burn, bury, or give away.

One of the boxes had the word KIDS scrawled across the side in faded marker. Grian reached for it. He hadn’t gone through it in years. It’d been the night of his high school graduation. A cruel spat in the car and a tear-blinded march home in the rain later, Grian had found himself curled up on the basement floor picking through what little mementos their parents had saved from the shreds of his childhood.

He remembered so little of it. Half of it felt like a dream. As if he had never been a child. He’d always been twenty-five and angry, and no matter how hard he tried he’d never understand how he ended up here. This little box was the only proof he had of the contrary; the only solid proof that he’d been six and seven and still colored with crayons that broke in half when he pressed on them too hard.

Jimmy’s drawings too. Grian pulled out a small book held together by yarn sewn through three holes punched through the paper. Jimmy’s name was scrawled in red crayon in the bottom corner. And across the front: ME AND MY FAMILY.

There was Mama and Dada. Her hair was dark and long, like Big Sister’s. His was short and light like Jimmy’s. She had pretty eyes and long arms that were good for hugs. He had a warm chest and big arms good for hauling in fish. The two of them stood in a crude drawing of their home: four walls and a roof, and windows that made the front of the house look like a smiling face.

Then there was Big Sister. She was always giggling. She liked to tease Jimmy, but she always gave him extra desserts when Mama and Dada weren’t looking. And there was Big Brother. His hair was muddy and he sometimes said mean things, but Jimmy loved him very much, and he knew Big Brother loved him too.

Grian’s vision swam with tears he refused to let fall. He risked ripping the paper as he curled his fingers into fists and pressed the little hand-drawn booklet to his head. If the house had eyes and insisted on watching every moment, he wouldn’t let it have this. This moment of weakness was for him and him alone. If Jimmy couldn’t see it, no one (and nothing) else ever could.

But as he cried, a blur in the corner of his eye caught his attention.

Leaned against the wall was a tall, bulky shape draped in old bed sheets. Dust snowed when he yanked the sheets off; he coughed and turned his face away as the fabric pooled at his feet.

Three mirrors were stacked together against the wall like nesting dolls. This must’ve been where Jimmy stashed them. It was as good a hiding place as any. Grian never came down here.

The smallest was a little black-framed mirror that used to hang in the stairwell. The middle used to hang on the wall in the half-bath off the foyer.  The largest was one with a golden frame that used to sit over Grian’s sink. He’s grown up with it there, but seeing his reflection in it after three months made him feel as if he’d never seen it before.

Three copies of Grian stood back at him, all slightly different. All slightly wrong. All had the same red-rimmed eyes and miserable frown, but there was something else that was missing. But the more he tried to look at them to find the glitch, the harder it became to distinguish the specific features of his face. Until eventually it turned into something that Grian couldn’t decipher at all.


-.-- --- ..-

 

On days like today, Hermit’s Hollow almost seemed like any other town.

The weather was nice, which was to say the fog wasn’t so thick that he couldn’t see the shoreline from here and he could feel the shy warmth of the October sun peering through thin clouds overhead. With the warmth and the clarity came a crispness to the air, the bright colors of the trees and their falling leaves, even the buildings stood out proud. The streets buzzed with activity. Busy, but not overwhelmingly so. Luckily tourist season wouldn’t reach its height until right before Halloween, so for the time being ogling was kept at a minimum.

Peaceful, he might have called it if he didn’t know any better. Beautiful, even. A Venus flytrap looked like a flower when it spread its jaws wide. That beauty didn’t make it any less dangerous for a brave, curious fly.

In all, it was as good of a start to a day Grian could get. A flip of a coin that landed on the elusive indifferent side. He didn’t know it knew to do that— a pleasant surprise.

So, like any functional member of society, he seized the moment. He sat on a bench overlooking Main Street and the white oak tree, attention torn in three ways between the cluster of local kids careening through the streets ringing the bells on their bike handles, the hot to-go cup of coffee in his hands, and the hefty file on his lap. 

As it turned out, Scar wasn't lying about his impressive history. His words, specifically, though flipping through what he managed to dig up on his partner, he felt more inclined to call it well-decorated than anything else. Where most had a resume outlining their education, job experience, and soft skills, Scar had a list of accomplishments that were odd at best and completely insane at worst.

Thirty-seven. That was how many newspapers Scar had appeared in in the last five years. At least two dozen microfilms sat in a manila folder on his lap. From what he read, Scar kept busy traveling up and down the coasts, even venturing overseas, to do… whatever it was he did. From the papers, it wasn’t any one thing.

Across dozens of papers, countless interviews, and a few too many photo-ops, Scar boasted as if he was getting paid by the word. Parapsychologist, Professor of the Paranormal, Paranormal Investigator, Aura Auditor (Grian’s personal favorite)— Scar wore names from town to town like a hatter dragged a suitcase of hats; he was never seen wearing the same one twice.

He was accomplished. Or as accomplished as any occultist could get. The northeast was riddled with so-called haunted houses and monster-dwelling lakes, and he visited nearly every one. He solved mysteries, gave psychic readings on the side of the road, and spoke at events. He shook hands with anyone that so much as breathed in his direction and, unsurprisingly, managed to charm everyone on the eastern seaboard.

A mother who’d drowned trying to save her child in a lake a few towns north, expunged and finally put to rest by Scar’s gentle hand. An evil entity that took on the skin of another town’s mayor and unleashed its terror on the poor townsfolk, vanquished and banished. A little girl, a spirit in need of helping to cross. No matter the story, Scar basked in each chilling, terrifying, heartbreaking detail.

He’d looked into parapsychology. To Grian it was a bunch of baloney. An umbrella term for anything that couldn't be explained with a snap of a finger. It was a convenient junk-drawer for Scar to throw all of his nonsense into. Wrapped up nicely in a fancy name and an official diploma, it was exactly the sort of baloney people in Hermit’s Hollow gobbled up.

Grian rubbed his eyes. He wasn’t sure how much more of these he could read without feeling nauseated. He was only halfway through the stack.

Scar was completely constructed from stories. A house of cards, the foundations holding him upright were paper-thin and carefully placed. The old papers revealed everything about his paranormal endeavors and little about Scar himself. He was trying to hide in plain sight, as were all things here. But what from? That was the most interesting question.

His background check yielded next to nothing. The name of a university in a larger town across the state line. A parking ticket paid on time at city hall. Paperclipped to the back of it was the earliest microfilm, dated long before Scar was doing any active parapsychology work. It was only a small section of the paper, no more than a footnote that couldn’t have cost more than a couple of dollars to have printed.

THE GHOST IN BLACKRIDGE: A HOAX?

LOCAL BOY SAYS NO.

Feb. 9. — A boy of 13 years of age is being recognized by the city for his “heroic” efforts in recovering a body. Scar Good Times, a student at Blackridge Middle School, tells a story of an “apparition” informing him of the location of his missing friend, Cub, a 14-year-old boy who was reported missing three days ago. 

 

The rest was either torn away or blacked out; like the printer had been faulty and the ink smeared all across the borders. Grian pursed his lips. Scar decided on his ambitions early on in life, it seemed.

A breath brushed the back of his ear. “Some light morning reading?”

Grian jumped out of his skin, slamming the file shut and hunching over it protectively. The skin of his nape crawled.

Scar’s laugh thundered out of him, a hand braced against his stomach. He came around and plopped onto the bench beside Grian. “Ooooh boy,” he sighed as he visibly fought to compose himself. “You totally shrieked just then, oh my god! Didn’t think you could make that kind of noise.”

Grian flushed red to the tips of his ears. “I did not.”

“Did too!” Scar dabbed at the tears caught in the corner of his eyes. “I think you broke the sound barrier.”

Although every bone in Grian’s body wanted to double down and argue with Scar until they were both blue in the face, he didn’t miss the way a few pedestrians cast a not-so-subtle glance his way. A woman pulled her daughter in closer by the shoulders. Shame tickled the length of his spine, a rare kind that shackled him to silence.

“Spectacular,” Grian moaned, hiding his face in his hands.

“Aw, don’t look so sour, G.” Scar clapped him on the back. “That’s what you get for letting a man with a limp sneak up on you.”

Scar always found ways to surprise him. He’d noticed it, of course, but it wasn’t the sort of thing Grian wondered openly about people. Grian cared about Scar’s life story about as much as he cared about his professional and psychic endeavors alike— which was to say he cared extraordinarily little. He would’ve been a hypocrite otherwise. There was little he tolerated less than the nosy prodding of curious eyes, the crass probing of inconsiderate mouths. People searching for the freshest piece of gossip like bears for prey. As far as they were concerned, Grian and his family were their open season.

So, no, Grian didn’t want to ask about the limp. Besides it was not the limp that intrigued him but rather the entire mosaic of nonsense that made him up. It was but a footnote lost to the rest of the nonsense.

He must’ve been staring, anyway. Because Scar leaned back on the bench and stuck his leg out to let him get a good look at it. Though it looked no different than any other leg. “You’re curious,” he said light-heartedly. “Everyone is. Go ahead, ask me.”

“Are you going to tell me the truth?”

“I always tell the truth.” Scar lied through his toothy grin.

In Grian’s lap sat about fifty sheets of paper that argued the opposite. Scar lied for a living. He was unnaturally good at it. But this was different. Because Scar wasn’t the only one lying this time. Grian wasn’t eager to reveal his prodding about Scar's history for the sake of making a point. Not yet, at least. Some things were better held close to the chest, sometimes it was better to play ignorance and take the bait.

“Fine. What happened to your leg?” Grian asked, wincing at how flat and obtrusively the words came out.

“It was a rainy summer day. I was but a young grasshopper— “

“Nope.” Grian shook his hand in Scar’s face. “Without the theatrics, please.”

Come on,” he pouted, throwing his head back with all the composure of a toddler throwing a tantrum. He thrashed his legs out and slumped until he nearly slid completely off the bench. “You’re no fun, G. Like, negative fun. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“I’m plenty fun,” Grian argued. “Just a better kind.”

“And what kinda fun would that be?” Scar leaned his arm across the back of the bench and rested his chin in his hand. He looked at Grian with half-lidded eyes, a mischievous quirk to his lip. It was a look that screamed trouble. He leaned in the closest inch.

A pleasant cool breeze rolled down the street, carrying a flurry of colorful leaves along with it. It was a sight not even Scar’s shenanigans could sour. He closed his eyes and let it hit his face, pushing his hair back. His nose tickled with the gentle scent of peppermint, as if it’d been infused in his coffee, into the air. He couldn’t help the pleased curl of his own mouth, a betrayal of his body, a knee-jerk reflex.

“Eyes forward, cowboy,” Grian teased without opening his eyes. “I asked you about your leg.”

Scar clicked his tongue, a playful, exaggerated sound that screamed ‘you caught me!’ rather than any actual annoyance. “I fell off a cliff,” he said. Not like ripping off a bandaid, when you knew the hurt would come, the shocked stares, the intrusive questions. Rather Scar said it the same way you’d say something you’ve said a million-and-one times, like he told Grian what he had for breakfast that morning. Or when his birthday was.

Grian wasn’t confident he heard correctly. “Sorry, what?” he said. “A cliff?”

“How’s that for cowboy?” Scar chuckled. He bent his leg at the knee, a brief wince crossing his features before he straightened it back out. “Yeah, well… Not that cowboy. I was young and stupid and thought I was invincible, like all twelve-year-olds. The beaches back home— actually, you can’t really call them beaches…”

Scar held his hands side-by-side and slanted them at a sharp incline. “They’re more like cliffs. All rock and no sand. Sharp, jagged rocks too. Not very nice to land on. There was this cliff-face right by my house that went up fifteen or twenty feet high. Nothing but rocky shallows underneath,” he said. “I climbed it all the time. I was gettin’ pretty darn good at it too.” He winked at Grian.  “But it was rainy and foggy and the rocks were all slippery—”

He suddenly stopped. His hands hovered mid-air, fingers twitching. He was sure Scar thought he concealed everything so easily, but Grian, again, was trained to notice what other people didn’t want him to. The subtle crease between his brows, his cheek pulled in between his teeth in a moment of hesitation, the unsure tilt of the corners of his mouth. A cloudiness to those green eyes, like the darkening of a sky before a storm.

And as suddenly as it appeared, the evidence of Scar’s humanity vanished. His smile, gleaming and crooked as the first day Grian saw him, his green eyes startlingly bright against the crisp autumn air. “Broke my leg in four different places,” Scar said, scratching at the back of his head with a practiced level of sheepishness. “Doctors did everythin’ they could, but it never healed exactly right. Guess they must’ve waited too long to set it.” 

Feeling more stupid than he had in years, Grian asked, “Does it hurt?”

“Sometimes,” Scar admitted softly. “But don’t worry about lil’ ole me, G. Been walkin’ on it for years and it hasn’t failed me yet!”

It took Grian great effort to look away from Scar’s green eyes. Like he was a moth and Scar was a flame and every instinct in his body was trying to force him into doing something he knew would kill him. Scar would kill him— he would burn up his paper wings and resort him to nothing but ash and smoke. And the worst part of it all was that he wanted to do it. God, he needed to be slapped silly.

Grian hadn’t seen anything pertaining to a near-deadly fall off a cliffside in Scar’s files. Though maybe he hadn’t gotten far enough in the microfilms. That was, of course, if Scar was even telling the truth. Which Grian had no choice but to doubt.

Then, something occurred to him. “Twenty feet?” he echoed. “If you hit the rocks, I— If it was rocks underneath—  how did you even survive that?”

He regretted asking. He regretted it the moment the words escaped him, because he knew that glint in Scar’s eye. It told him that he’d just walked straight into a trap, that he’d handed Scar exactly what he wanted. A captive audience. Or, in other words: Grian’s own personal hell.

“Observant lil’ thing, aren’t you?” he said. “That was the question indeed. How does a twelve-year-old boy fall twenty feet onto rocks with nothing more than a broken leg and some bumps and bruises?”

He tapped his chin wondrously. “Hm… I wonder…”

Grian groaned. “I’m guessing I won’t like the answer.”

“You’d probably be right.”

He turned to face Scar properly this time, setting the file on the seat beside him. “Humor me, then,” he said. “How does the supernatural keep a twelve-year-old from dying after a twenty-foot drop? I’d love to know.”

“The short answer: I don’t know,” Scar said, a rare shred of honesty, then he laughed. “That’s the part you won’t like. But personally I’ve never been fond of short answers. It leaves too much to the imagination. I like imagination, don’t get me wrong, but it’s all about balance. Details are important in any story, Grian. Live too little to the imagination and you’ve planned it out. Leave too much out and people stray too far from the truth.”

Grian rested his arm beside Scar’s on the back of the bench and closed some of the distance between them. Their words were saved for them and them alone; not even the fall chill came between them. “What is the truth, then?” he asked under his breath.

Scar didn’t pull away. He looked Grian in the eye as a trouble pinch rolled across his face like impending thunder clouds. “The long answer: something was looking after me that night. I believe the unexplainable-ness that knocked me over the edge came from the same thing that saved me. I heard it. I felt it. I survived because something wanted me to. My work wasn’t done here.”

“I didn’t take you for a man of God,” Grian said, his voice only partially condescending because it was too nice of a day to muster the full thing. The smell of peppermint and his proximity to sweet green eyes didn’t help any, either.

“I didn’t say it was God. Maybe ‘work’ is the wrong word,” Scar mused. “Purpose? Reason? I hadn’t realized my full potential yet. So I got a second chance.”

“A second chance,” Grian echoed quietly, tucking his chin to his chest with an amused, broken little chuckle.

“What’s so funny about that?” Scar tilted his head to catch Grian’s eye again. His thumb and forefinger guided Grian’s head up again. The touch was so jarring that every nerve-ending in his body froze, every hair follicle standing on end. “You don’t believe in second chances?”

Grian’s lips struggled to catch up with his short-circuiting brain. “I—”

Then, as if nothing had happened, Scar sat straight upright. He leaned out of Grian’s space and returned to his normal posture on the bench, legs crossed and gaze casual across the idle life of Main Street. “I feel like I’ve been talkin’ a lot,” he said. “I never thought I’d say this, G, but I’m a bit sick of it. It’s your turn, I think.”

Too wrapped up in his grief (and his disgust at said grief) of Scar’s closeness, Grian’s mouth turned to putty. “My turn for what?”

“What’s your truth?”

He stood up and nearly left at that moment, ready to take his file and flee far away from Scar, as far as he could get. He wondered if the lighthouse island would be open on a Saturday. Maybe a ferry could take him a few miles upstate. Or he could hire someone to hurl him as far into the ocean as they can. The bottom of the sea would’ve been better than standing here another second, surely.

“Hey, hey, stop it,” Scar pleaded, grappling for the sleeve of Grian’s windbreaker. “Don’t be so jumpy, I’m only teasing. I’ll ask for something easier, yeah? Like… hm…” His eyes fell to the file tucked against Grian’s chest. “What’re you pokin’ through?”

Grian looked down at the files and tightened his hold on them. “Nothing,” he said too quickly. “Just… trying to find a couple of leads on that Doc guy. But there’s nothing against him, not even a civil complaint.”

Scar raised an eyebrow at him. “I thought the chief told you to take a break,” he said, lips pursed.

Grian frowned. “You talked to Impulse?”

“We chit-chat from time to time,” he said casually. “Did you know he just got a new kitten? Oh, and she’s so cute too. He found her stuck in a storm drain. That poor thing was shakin’ for hours, Impulse said.”

“Did he…” Grian faltered. “Has he said anything about me?”

Scar hesitated. For the first time since they’d met Grian felt as if Scar truthfully could tell something was off with Grian. His eyes were too clear, too concerned. “Well… Nothing major,” he said.  “He wanted to know how you were doing, how the investigation was going. Stuff like that— Oh! That reminds me. I found something you should see…”

Grian appreciated it very little that Chief Impulse felt the need to check up on him, but that was hardly Scar’s fault. His thinning mental stability was a problem long before Scar came into the picture. It was bad enough that Jimmy doubted him, that he hadn’t spoken to Grian in three days. That the only reason Grian came out to enjoy the ‘fresh air’ was to avoid the chance of running into him at home. He could handle Jimmy’s doubt, albeit with difficulty. But to be doubted by Impulse was an entirely different kind of strain.

“G?” Scar snapped his fingers in front of his face. “You good?”

Grian blinked. “What’d you say? Sorry.”

Scar opened his messenger bag and pulled out the green binder from the Flying Fish. “I finished going through the attendance book thingy you gave me,” he said. “Most of the names were pretty standard. The same crew, same deck hands. But there were a few random ones. Here—”

He cracked the binder open and flipped until he found a page he’d tabbed with a blue sticker. Wordlessly he turned it around and handed it to Grian, tapping at a set of names with his finger. “This was the only one that showed up only one time. Oh and get this! Look at the date!”

Grian eagerly took the book. The page belonged to the log for the morning of September the 30th. The day Captain Iskall disappeared. Underneath was a list of names hand-written in a small ledger with in and out times. The name was highlighted yellow. Grian tasted iron on his tongue.

FLYING FISH™ PUNCH CARD

09/30/1979

JOEL B. SMALLS

IN @ 1200, OUT @ 2130

 

-.--

Chapter 4: IV. lay down next to me

Summary:

Grian slips.

Chapter Text

-.-- 

IV.

 

“Are you not gonna eat?” 

Grian chased a chicken dumpling around the styrofoam container heating his lap. It was all he could do not to stab little holes over and over through the lid with his chopsticks. Anything to keep his hands busy, anything to stop himself from looking at his brother. He feared if he did, a bit of torn styrofoam would be the least of their problems.

“Not very hungry,” he admitted.

Jimmy hummed, but said nothing else. As if he was asking out of formality instead of any true curiosity or concern. Grian supposed he deserved only that much; but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow.

Here Grian was, holding a wilting olive branch as  Jimmy just ate in silence, shoveling forkful and forkful of fried rice into his mouth. At least he seemed able to enjoy himself, despite the circumstances.

The TV buzzed with static. Hermit’s Hollow’s storm came home for the night and tucked itself up to its chin above the little house on the hill. The familiarity of it brought some comfort, but it made enjoying evening television infinitely more difficult. He’d have to climb to the roof once the rain stopped to fix the satellite dish, but that was another problem best suited for tomorrow-Grian. Perhaps even next-week-Grian. Anyone that wasn’t him.

It wasn’t like he was watching, anyway. There was enough static trapped in his brain as it was— he didn’t need it outsourced.

A single couch cushion separated Grian from his little brother. He didn’t know how many years he spent wanting nothing more than to get away— from Hermit’s Hollow, from his parents, from himself. He lost count a long time ago. Grian was beginning to believe he was born with a suitcase in his hand.

But in that moment he wished for nothing more than the strength to reach across that single cushion. The strength to want to stay. It was only two feet. A stretch of fingers. All the distance in the world. They might as well have been divided by the earth’s hemispheres.

That was how he always felt sitting next to Jimmy— upside down. Like God messed up the first go around, the DNA all jumbled and mixed. But with Jimmy, he’d finally been able to make up for past mistakes. He wondered if Jimmy felt it, too.

He stabbed a dumpling with his chopstick and held it out to him. “Want one?”

Your bribery won’t work,” Jimmy said as he ate it directly from Grian’s chopstick.

Grian smiled weakly. He hoped it didn’t look as forced as it felt. Jimmy wouldn’t know either way— he still wouldn’t look him in the eye.

“You’re talking to me now, at least,” he said. “It had to have worked at least a little.”

“It’s a start,” Jimmy relented. He wiped crumbs from his mouth, uncaring where they fell. “You’re gonna have to try a lot harder than take-out.”

A start.

Grian could work with a start. It was better than days of silence, of a cold shoulder so unlike Jimmy that Grian couldn’t help but question if his brother was replaced by an imposter. The Jimmy from their childhood was made of clumsy grins, and the general amiability of a lapdog. But like a dog, Jimmy angered easily. He got mean when backed into a corner, and he held onto grudges like a golden retriever with a duck in its teeth. A strange sort of gift left on Grian’s doorstep to deal with.

His forced smile wobbled. “You remember the cod?”

Jimmy glanced at the side of his face. “The what now?”

“When we were kids,’’ Grian said. “When Mom and Dad used to take the three of us out to the shallow part of the bay.” They’d get hauled out of bed before the sun even rose and shuttled down to the shallowest part of the shoreline. It was funny; on those mornings Grian never remembered there being any fog. He didn’t remember much at all aside from the three of them and their father’s smile. It seemed something precious, something to be rationed. He saw less and less of it the older he got.

Stealing another dumpling from Grian’s plate, Jimmy shook his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell, sorry.”

Grian frowned. He wasn’t sure if it was a lie or not, and usually when it came to Jimmy he always knew. His eyes were always a far more effective polygraph than anything the station had.

Jimmy shrieked in laughter as Grian splashed him with cold, salty water. Their hands were slimy from the scales of the little fishes that scurried close to the shore.

The real trick, their father told them, his pants rolled up around  his ankles, is to sit still. Let the fish come to you.

But each time they tried, the fish scurried out of their hands, harder than holding onto than darkness, than smoke. They tried. Again and again. Grian sabotaged Jimmy at every turn, stomping hard in the water to scare all the fish away. Jimmy lashed out in return, shoving Grian over every time he got close to catching one.

Jimmy was in near tears by the end of the day, and so was Grian.

“We’d fish for them with our bare hands,” he said anyway. “Dad was always really good at it. Pearl, too, she was always better at that stuff. You and I, though? We sucked… Guess you might’ve been too young to remember.”

“Are you insulting me right now or?” Jimmy bristled, shoulders rising to his ears. A coiled spring ready to jump.

“No!” Grian said honestly. “It’s just—“

What could he say that Jimmy would listen to? His little brother made it startlingly clear that the door was shut, and not even a boot wedged in the threshold would be enough to shimmy it open. If Grian wanted in, he had to try a lot harder than Chinese food and dug up nostalgia Jimmy didn’t even have.

“…Ah, forget it. It’s not that important.”

Jimmy scarfed down the last of his foot and dumped his takeout container onto the ottoman. Grian had barely made a dent in his, but he forced a few bites to keep Jimmy from fretting too much. Bite after bite the dull ache behind his forehead grew and grew.

The silence was less violent, this time around. Jimmy’s mouth was twisted in displeasure, but that was better than his stone-cold silence. He was far from the border of Jimmy’s good graces, but at least now he felt like he stepped a few feet in the right direction. Though he doubted he’d still be there by the end of the night. One step forward, three steps back. Good things tended not to last when you shared blood with Grian.

“When are you gonna replace the carpet?” he asked suddenly.

Grian stared down at the floor. The unforgiving slate gray glared right back at him. “When are you going to hang the mirrors back up?”

“That’s different,” Jimmy snapped. The house grew still, stiller than it ever had before, stiller than Grian thought possible. How can a house that bred so much death feel even deader?

“Is it?” They both wanted to hide. They both wanted to run. Grian just wished he knew what Jimmy was trying to escape. Maybe that way he could’ve helped. For once in his life.

When,” Jimmy pushed. “When, Grian? You said you’d do it ages ago. I can’t— I can’t keep looking at it.” His voice was stuck halfway between getting angry and pleading. The pitched whine of ‘are we there yet?’ from the back seat of the car, unsure if he wanted to throw a tantrum or use crocodile tears to get his way.

Grian licked his dry lips. “Eventually, Tim. I promise.”

“You promise?” Jimmy chuckled. The sound was darker than the stormy ink sky. “Yeah. Okay. Because a promise means loads from you, Grian.”

The urge to defend himself sprung up inside of him with all the sharp teeth and ferocity of a rabid animal. He’d froth at the mouth if he let it sink his claws in his belly and climb up his throat. He forced it down, a deep swallow that made him shudder.

“You’re angry,” Grian said instead. “That’s fine.” Compared to coming back home, leashing and muzzling his anger was the easiest thing in the world. Selfishly, Grian couldn’t help but think how different (how easy) things would be if he hadn’t decided to come back. If he’d left Jimmy and Pearl to fend for themselves.

There it was again— the ugly, upside down part of himself. 

 

--- ..-

 

HAVE YOU BEEN HAVING STRANGE DREAMS?

…YOU MAY BE ON THE RIGHT TRACK!



A poster with a large, singular eye crudely drawn in purple marker was stapled into the wooden telephone pole. Tear-away tabs at the bottom listed the same phone number, written in the same ink. Grian didn’t recognize the print.

He tore a number off. Most in Hermit’s Hollow knew better than to spare the posters more than a passing glance; tourist traps more than anything, they were nothing but kindling to spark the fire of curiosity in the belly of outsiders, the urging to open their wallets. 

The town was not only lusty for blood (as so many claimed), but she was green with greed too. The latter, Grian could have actually believed. 

But he held that little paper between his fingers and that familiar prickle crawled over his skin. A whisper against the shell of his ear, except he couldn't hear the words themselves. There wasn’t much he believed in, especially not ghosts or any sight greater than what he saw through the thick lenses of his glasses. But his gut rarely lied to him. When the rest of the world failed to make sense, the only person he had left was himself. He convinced himself he still had it. 

So, he tucked the number away in his vest pocket and waited.

The streets were busy, the rain a weak drizzle that brought a twinge of freshness to the air. The wind carried heavy off the bay, nearly ripping Grian’s scarf clean off his neck. Neither rain or wind seemed to bother the tourists. It was almost creepy how little they cared; Hermit’s Hollow wasn’t worth bearing the weather even on the best of days. Why anyone would spend the time and money and energy coming here when they weren’t tied to it by blood still confounded him.

The closer time crept toward Halloween, the more and more full the streets would get— rain, shine, and everything in between. They walked in small tour clusters, window-shopping the nonsensical as their tour guide (a dangerously energetic young man Grian recognized from his class, Zedaph) excitedly told them the harrowing histories of every brick of every shop on Main Street.

He watched them as he waited. And waited. The chill started to get to him and sting his fingertips until they felt fuzzy. He waited. He knew he needed to wait… But for the life of him he couldn’t remember why. Why did he need to wait? What was he waiting for? Who was he waiting for?

He shuffled his feet. His nose tickled with the scent of peppermint, but Scar was nowhere to be seen. The crowd wasn’t thick enough to hide someone like that, not from Grian at least. Was he meant to meet Scar? There was something for the investigation, wasn’t there? Something important.

The tourist group passed him, all hushed, excited whispers and curious eyes. He tucked himself out of sight against the telephone pole. As if Zedaph would pull his tour group aside and parade around Grian like he was a little bite-sized piece of history trapped in a clear display case.

“Gather round, gather round! Here we have the brood of the craziest lot Hermit’s Hollow has to offer! Don’t get too close or he might chomp off your fingers!”

He wouldn’t have been entirely wrong. Grian pressed closer to the pole with a grimace. The posters glaring down at them like they had eyes. Like they had mouths, their block letters screaming at him through glass. Hermit’s Hollow’s personal branding, it’s own version of ‘Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here’.

IF YOU SEE A MAN IN THE TREELINE, NO YOU DIDN’T.

A drawing of a dark silhouette of a man, too long and too thin to be human, peering out from between a set of trees. No eyes, no mouth. Just a short top-hat for a head.   

ARE YOU SURE THE ONLY YOU

 IS YOU?

A phone number listed below. The efforts of an amateur research project looking for willing subjects.  

OH GOD, I

REMEMBER THIS PLACE.

Panicked, thin, red lined on a single torn piece of printer paper.

YOU SHOULD OPEN THE DOOR, GRIAN.

Black paper, purple pen. An eye staring out from the drawing of an open door. 

Movement from his periphery snagged Grian’s attention. A rambunctious voice caught in the wind and tumbled down the street toward him as Joel passed by, his arm slung across the shoulders of a pretty girl with pink hair. He boasted his cheeks pink, likely over something brashly stupid. The ‘trying to illegally light fireworks off the wet deck of a fishing boat’ kind of stupid. 

He didn’t notice Grian. He meandered on by in his high school letterman, chatting his girlfriend’s ear off. He didn’t notice when Grian moved to follow them, either. 

Stalking Jimmy’s friend was a bit out of Grian’s jurisdiction, he had to admit. Though he wasn’t sure he’d classify it as stalking— a long-winded mobile stakeout seemed much more appropriate. If he was to find anything of significance he’d need to document how and where he came across it. And it had to be within the realm of legal to be accepted as submittable evidence. 

It was arguably the worst part of policing: the paperwork. Part of Grian always hoped doing the detective route would help him avoid the menial desk-riding. Grian hated nothing more than writing up reports when things were all said and done; it was all in the words you picked, in the details you left out. An unavoidable lesson in the art of cherry-picking. 

He hoped he didn’t have to climb far up the cherry tree to uncover the truth behind Joel B. Smalls— innocent or guilty alike.  He hoped for his sake, for the sake of those missing. But most of all, for Jimmy.

It’d be just his brother’s luck to befriend the only serial killer in Hermit’s Hollow. Grian would’ve preferred the Weeping Lady as a house guest. 

He kept a casual distance. One he could blame on those ‘oh, small town, small world’ coincidences that were a dime a dozen in places like this. It was a slow, agonizing game of cat and mouse. Joel paused, Grian stalled. They turned a corner, Grian counted to ten and then followed.

Even so, something didn’t feel right. Somehow Grian’s gut told him he wasn’t the cat in this chase. Neither was Joel. They were both mice, scurrying away in blissful ignorance from a storm they didn’t know about but could feel brewing.

He didn’t know which would’ve frightened him more: not knowing he was being chased to begin with, or knowing he was, but not knowing by what.

Still, he tailed the pair for the better part of twenty minutes. They had no real destination in mind, stopping by shops to peer in the windows or tugging his girlfriend by the hand into an ice cream shop and emerging with sweet treats a minute later. He followed Joel long enough that sinking suspicion in his stomach started to ferment into something sour— embarrassment. 

What was he thinking, tailing a guy not much younger than him as he shopped and ate ice cream with his girlfriend on one of the rare nice days of the season? How much of a fool was he?

The two turned a corner at the bottom of the hill leading to the diner and the docks. Grian turned that same corner not but a minute later.

Joel punched him right in the soft part of his belly.  His stomach spasmed. The impact punched the air straight out of his chest. He wheezed and collapsed to his knees, throat closing and eyes watering.

It wasn’t that Grian was a stranger to getting punched. In fact, he’d gotten well-acquainted with his fair share of fights in high school (it was dark times). But the power in Joel’s arm was enough that it probably would’ve shattered his ribcage if he aimed just a few inches higher.

“Quit following us, you bloody freak!” Joel yelled above his head, shielding his girlfriend with his arms and legs outstretched. “You had to come stalk me too? Nearly breaking my blummin’ wrist wasn’t enough for you?”

Grian tried to speak, but the muscles in his gut spasmed and spasmed. He curled in on himself, hunched at the shoulders. Maybe if he made himself bite-sized he could’ve slipped in the cracks of the pavement and disappeared.

“They’ve got the wrong twin locked up, if you ask me,” Joel laughed cruelly. He slung his arm around his girlfriend’s shoulders, turning her away. “Let’s go, Lizzie.”

Grian had a teacher in third grade that sent him home with a little pink slip saying he had an anger problem after pushing one of his classmates over during recess. Of course she didn’t listen when he insisted that he started it, going around poking everyone with thumbtacks. Even at twenty-five, Grian agreed with his eight-year-old self: the kid had it coming.

Just because you were right and not afraid to show it didn’t mean you had an anger problem. But the cold that washed through him the moment Joel opened his mouth was more frigid than anything he ever felt. Not the fearful kind, the sort that spikes through you with a shot of adrenaline.

This was the kind of cold that made you numb. The calm in the eye of a storm. He was too cold to feel the anger, though he felt it bubbling up through the curtain of pins and needles. He was too numb to feel himself scraping his hands against the asphalt, dragging himself to his feet.

It was just him and Joel’s back. It was him and the ringing of his voice trapped in Grian’s head. The wrong twin. The wrong twin. The wrong twin.

Grian didn’t have an anger problem. Maybe it was everyone else that had a pissing-Grian-off problem.

So, when he stepped forward, fists white and clenched at his sides, he didn’t feel one damn thing. 

 

-.- -.

 

ARE YOU SURE THAT

THE ONLY YOU

IS YOU?

 

He sat bolt upright.

A shrill ring rattled in his skull. Sharp and mechanical. Over and over again. It shook his bones down to the marrow. He drowned in the sound the same way he drowned being awake, breathless, chest tight, and hair plastered to his head with sweat. 

Grian blinked the fog from his eyes. His bedsheets tangled in knots between his legs. Fading gray light slipped through the slats of the blinds; he had no way of knowing if it was early or late. His heart beat like it was trying to kill him from the inside, painfully fast and temperamental. 

Head hung and eyes shut, Grian splayed his hands against his chest and applied pressure. Fill your lungs. A shaky breath tore through his throat. Now empty them out. An even weaker exhale. 

It was a dream. But the numbness spilled out of it, it clung to him. He could hardly feel the weight of his hand against his chest. It was a dream, he reminded himself. A strange one, though by far not the strangest he ever had. His mind has certainly taunted him with far worse, far more twisted things. 

Another ring. It stabbed through his temples like an arrow. He couldn’t remember a time his head hurt this badly. And that godforsaken ringing wouldn’t stop. Grian groaned and dragged himself from bed. He didn’t need to open his eyes to feel the world spinning under his feet. Grappling along the wall he dragged himself into the bathroom, splashing his face with a handful of cold water.

It did little to ease the burning in his head, the incessant pulsing above his throat. The fog was still there, the daze of having one foot in the door of a dream he’d already woken up from. Maybe that was why there was this dull ache to his hands, buried somewhere under the static. 

More ringing. This time he felt it through the floor. It wasn’t in Grian’s head, like he thought. It grew louder when he threw open the door to his room and stuck his head out into the hall. 

The phone. Grian groaned, forehead pressed against the door. “Timmy!” he shouted, sounding every bit as miserable as he felt. “Can you pick that up?” 

Nothing called back to him. The house stirred with each ear-piercing ring of the phone, the walls and floor shaking with it. A hammer beating against the house as if it was the brass bell itself. 

As he staggered downstairs, blind without his glasses and dazed after waking up from what felt like a decade-long coma, Grian seriously considered ripping the phone out of the wall and tossing it into the harbor. 

Said devil’s machine sat on a little wooden table in the foyer. Grian’s keys lay beside it, along with his wallet. He didn’t remember putting them there. 

With each ring, the black receiver shuddered violently. 

He picked it up. “…Hello?” 

Where are you?”

A crack of static. He didn’t recognize the voice right away. “…Huh? What—?”

“You’re late,” Chief Impulse said, his voice tinny through the phone. “It’s half past noon. Are you alright?” 

Impulse? Oh. Grian’s heart plummeted into his stomach. He immediately sobered. He fumbled for his watch to check the time, only to find it missing. 

“I’m a complete moron,” he whined, holding his head, curling his fingers against his calm. “I am beyond sorry, chief. I’m so sorry. I’m on my way right now, I promise.”

“Just be careful,” Impulse said, voice oddly grim. “Come to my office when you get here.”

Grian dropped the phone with a clatter. His heart skipped and sputtered in his gut, a faulty firework ready to explode. He scrubbed his face with his hands.

Shit!” 

 

--- .--

 

He flew into the station like a hurricane, jacket slung on one shoulder, a piece of toast in his mouth, and a coffee stain on the front of his white button-down. 

He’d gotten so accustomed to seeing the station dead quiet at the latest or earliest hours that it nearly felt like a new place entirely when he stumbled in. His coworkers gathered around their desks, some excitedly chattering about the plans for the Hollow’s Eve parade and others exchanging grim whispers and glances in Grian's direction. 

Walking to Impulse’s door felt all too similar to a funeral procession. 

He scarfed down the last of his toast before he went inside. If he was going to get murdered, at least he wouldn’t die hungry. It was best to rip things like this off like a bandaid, anyway. 

Grian could count the number of times Impulse looked genuinely disappointed, let alone angry, on one hand. Most of those few times were Grian’s fault, so he had no hope that this wouldn’t shake out the very same way. The second he stepped in, Impulse gestured for him to sit with his lips pressed into a firm line. He sat upright in his chair, his back an iron rod. He folded his hands in what was supposed to be a casual display, but Grian saw the way his fingers twitched and blanched. 

He sank into the chair. It was better not to speak, but stupidly, he said, “Did you get a haircut? Looks really good on you. Really fresh.” 

A vein in Impulse’s temple twitched. “I did, thank you. But you can’t swindle your way out of this with flattery, mister. This is important.” 

“I know you’re mad. You have every right to be.” Grian tried not to deflate. Impulse was tough, but he was also made of stuffing deep down, no more hardy than a well-made teddy bear. If he groveled, he might have been able to get off with a lighter punishment. Hell, he would’ve even taken traffic duty at this point.

“It’s just— I haven’t been sleeping very well lately. I don’t exactly remember coming home last night but it must’ve been way later than usual,” Grian spoke quickly, the words piling atop one another.
“I did say I was sorry—“

“Grian.”

“But it’s not for no good reason either!” Grian grinned triumphantly. “I’ve been making a lot of progress actually, you might be impressed. If you take a minute just to hear me out, I would—“

“I’m taking you off the case.”

The rest of his spiel died on his tongue. “What.”

“Grian…” The composure of Impulse’s face began to chip, but had yet to falter. “I know this is important to you, but I cannot allow you to—“

“Seriously, Impulse? Come on!” Grian protested, standing so abruptly he nearly knocked the chair back. He didn’t care if every person on the street heard him, or if all of his coworkers had their nosy ears pressed against the door.

“It’s not that—“

“I’ve been putting in overtime and then some working on this.” Grian flailed his hands over his head. “You can’t just take it away from me. I have a real suspect now, which is more than I could say about anything the other guys did. And you’re taking me off? I was late one time! I didn’t realize sleeping was a crime.”

Impulse raised a hand to stop his tirade. “You think I’m taking you off just because you were late?” he asked, his eyes wandering over the coffee stain on Grian’s shirt.

“You… that’s not why?”

“Did you seriously think I wouldn’t find out?” It’s a small town, Grian. And you’re an officer. I expected better from you.”

Grian faltered. A blistering heat crawled across his nape, millions of fire ants skittering and chewing the skin raw. He lowered himself gently back into the chair; he feared he would topple over otherwise. As if he hasn’t made enough of a fool of myself already.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said slowly. “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

Impulse stared at him like he just sprouted a second head. “Let me see your hands.”

“What? My—“ Grian clenched his fists on instinct and found that the skin stung. Terribly. The pain shot up the nerves of his wrists.

His knuckles were a mess of red and purple, the skin peppered with fresh, swollen bruises. The skin there  was split, scabs pulling and blood sluggishly beading to the surface when he tightened his fingers into a sorry excuse of a fist.

How hasn’t he noticed it before? The pain was enough to make Grian want to shut his hands in a freezer for days on end. He turned them over, though his palms stared back at him, unblemished. The same pale skin, the same wings hidden in the fold of his palms.

“I— I don’t—“ Panic caught in his throat, threatening to come back up in the least pleasant way imaginable. Everything was bad enough without a bill for Impulse’s dry cleaning tacked on.

“I’ve received two reports about you in the last week alone.” Impulse crossed his arms and leaned them on the desk. “First, the Old Witch on Mycelium Drive said you were digging with your bare hands in her yard in the middle of the night. She said you were possessed by a demon, that you had the devil’s blood in you.” 

Grian could only stare back at him in dull horror, his trembling hands hovering above his lap.

“Then,” Impulse sighed. “A kid came to me yesterday and reported that you beat him down by the docks.”

“What? No!” Grian gripped his own wrist, wincing as scabs pulled and bruises ached. “No. I did no such thing! Impulse, you know me. I wouldn’t do that.”

“I thought I knew you,” Impulse said, gesturing to the mess of Grian’s hands. “But you can’t exactly argue with the evidence, Grian, now can you?”

“I—“ With every passing second the panic threatened to lurch up the back of his throat. Anxiety buzzed like a hornet’s nest in his gut.

“In broad daylight, Grian? You’re lucky he didn’t press charges. What on earth possessed you to do that?”

It wasn’t possible. Grian had been in bed. It had been a dream. But it felt so real, at the time. It had been a nightmare— he’d woken up with numb hands, but that was because he was afraid. He didn’t do it. But that didn’t change the fact that his hands were split and aching. Where had he been before? He was… There was a giant black gap in his memory where the day’s events should’ve sat. He couldn’t remember how many cups of coffee he had that morning, or if he had even left the house.

There was nothing.

“Well? It’s not a rhetorical question, Grian, I’m waiting for an explanation.” Impulse knocked on the desk.

Grian licked his lips, staring at the clock on the wall instead of Impulse’s inevitable disappointment. “What… day is it?”

“What?” Impulse snapped his fingers in Grian’s face. “What is the matter with you? Is this some kind of joke?” 

What day is it?” Grian spit out from grit teeth this time.

Impulse’s eyes widened. “Tuesday.”

Tuesday. It was Tuesday? Grian sat back in his chair, vision blurring. He remembered eating take-out with Jimmy. That had been Sunday night. But what came after that? The longer he struggled to come up with an answer, the tighter the swelling in his throat grew.

“Grian, will you tell me what is going on?” the chief pushed.

“I… thought it was a dream,” Grian said honestly. “Joel. He’s the one who— His name was in the log books for the Flying Fish the same day Captain Iskall disappeared. Just an hour before he was last sighted. I’ve seen him messing around the dock, and I just wanted to keep an eye on him.“

“So you beat him black and blue because you thought he might be a suspect?”

Grian shook his head desperately. “No, it— I was following him and he hit me and —“

Joel’s words buzzed in Grian’s head like a rewound cassette.

HAVE YOU BEEN HAVING STRANGE DREAMS? 

He’d been waiting. Hadn’t he? He’d been looking for something. Waiting for someone?

The poster said his name. He took a number. Grian stuck his hands into his pants pockets— the pair of slacks he found crumpled on the floor beside the bed. Sure enough, tucked deep in his front pocket, covered in lint, was a small piece of paper with a phone number printed onto it.

It was a dream. It wasn’t a dream. He needed it to be a dream. If there was one person Grian could trust it was himself and himself alone. But what if he couldn’t trust himself anymore? What did that leave him?

“Grian? Are you listening?”

He lifted his head. “No. Sorry.”

“Your behavior is nothing short of concerning,” Impulse said. Then, his voice and face softened around the edges. “I mean… Come on, Grian. Look at yourself. You’re a mess. You haven’t been sleeping or eating. Pretty sure you’re running on straight caffeine at this point.”

“I had toast this morning,” Grian argued, wiping the crumbs from his mouth.

Impulse’s lips twitched into the most pitiful smile Grian had ever seen. “You’re not helping your case, buddy.”

Then, he sighed and stood from his desk, strolling over to the glass windows in the wall that showed the rest of the station. The blinds were shut, but he pried apart the slats with his fingers to peer through. 

“I knew it was too soon,” he grumbled to himself. “You’re driven, I’ll give you that, but that’s just about all you are. A racehorse is no good to anyone if it runs itself to death for the sake of winning.”

Grian scrunched his traitorous, watering eyes shut.  “I’m not trying to win anything, I’m trying to help people. I’m trying to save them.” 

“Maybe there isn’t anyone needing saving,” Impulse said.

Nothing could’ve prepared him for that. Ragnarok could’ve come knocking. Hermit’s Hollow could’ve split in two, a giant mouth that dumped everyone and everything into the void— he would’ve accepted that sooner than he accepted Impulse’s resignation. 

“I admire your dedication, Grian, I do,” Impulse hedged. “But… we’ve searched this thing top to bottom. There’s no connection to make. There are no bodies to autopsy. Maybe they just left.” 

“You can’t actually believe that,” Grian said. 

“It doesn’t really matter what I believe. That’s what the facts say.” Impulse came back to the desk and flattened his palms on the table. 

The pieces clicked. “You want to mark it as closed.”

Grian stared at the chief. He didn’t spare him his disgust, open and unguarded. 

Impulse hesitated, fingers tapping. Like he had the right to be nervous after dropping a bombshell. “It’s not what I want. It was the mayor’s suggestion.” 

Grian shook his head. “That’s insane. Just the other week you were telling him we needed help with the investigation. What the hell changed?”

“Mayor Jumbo was right, Grian. People need to feel better. I was going to give it until the end of October, but—”

“Screw better!” Grian snapped. “It doesn’t matter how people feel if they’re disappearing from our streets. Y’know, the streets we’re supposed to protect? Has your little mayor ever thought of that?” 

Impulse straightened his back, mouth and shoulders alike set in a firm, stony line. Everything about the chief in that moment was unfamiliar— he’d all but shifted into a stranger right in front of his eyes. 

“The decision is final,” he said, folding his hands in front of him. “Our resources are spread thin. And now with you out of commission until further notice, I need to focus my remaining efforts on the tourism surge.” 

“Your decision is final,” Grian mocked. “Sure.”

“It is.” If Grian didn’t know any better, he’d have said Impulse’s eyes looked sad beneath layers of duty. “I’ve made excuses for you for too long, for obvious reasons. This time it’s out of my hands. I really am sorry, Grian.” 

 

- .... .

 

OPEN T HE DOOR.

He stood in front of it again. He hated being here.

The walls were slick and wet. With rain? With tears? With blood? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t want to find out.

They wanted him to reach for the handle— it wanted him too.

YOU SHOULD OPEN THE DOOR, GRIAN.

When he woke up, he found himself sitting in the cold basement in front of the pile of mirrors. His nothing-reflection stared back at him. Grian didn’t recognize it. 


- .-. ..-

 

Impulse would’ve burst an aneurysm if he saw the web of nonsense Grian had constructed on his bedroom floor. Luckily for him and his arteries, he wasn’t. Madness, in moderation, was Grian’s element. There wasn’t any sensical way to explain the way Grian arranged evidence on the floor: missing person’s reports, transcripts of Ren’s interviews with all the fishermen and deckhands, ripped shreds of paper with Grian’s red chicken-scratch. But it made sense to Grian, the kind of sense that you felt in your gut like an instinct.

Maybe the chief and the mayor wanted to throw in the towel and wash their hands of this burden, but Grian wouldn’t allow it. He was more stupid and stubborn than that. The chief could only stop him in the professional, legal sense. What else did Grian have to lose? He’d already been pulled off the case and put on probation. There were still answers to be found, somewhere buried in the half-baked nonsense. People to be found. He wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty to find them. 

Impulse would just have to understand. Mayor Jumbo, however, could stay peeved. Grian didn’t particularly care what he thought. 

Everything was laid out atop a foldable paper map of Hermit’s Hollow and the surrounding area. In the margins he scrawled the dates of each person’s disappearance: July 31st, August 31st, September 30th. The last day of each month, which initially struck Grian as odd, but there was no use in fretting over it. It could’ve been something as innocent as mere coincidence or something as sinister as a serial killer’s signature. There was no way to know for sure, not without concrete evidence to point him  in the right direction. 

The first 72 hours were crucial, yes. But after that, the timeline was no longer the most important mystery. It mattered less the when and more the how, the why. The question to ask wasn’t, ‘When did they disappear?’ but rather ‘Why this person? And why now?’. It mattered what mysterious variable connected all of them: common threads, degrees of separation, shared interests. But even with his complex web of victims, suspects, and locations, the answer didn’t leap out at him. 

He drew a X in three locations on the map: Iskall by the docks, Pix by the strip of shops and lofts on Main Street, and Gem by the school. Iskall and Pix were potentially connected by Doc, who allegedly talked to the two of them from time to time at the diner, swapping horror stories. Another newspaper clipping from last year piled somewhere in the nonsense. FLYING FISH BREAKS HERMIT’S HOLLOW RECORD FOR SUMMER OF ‘78. Money was always an easy motivator; the answer was right there in front of you, and sometimes the easier answer was, unfortunately, the right one. Doc had plenty to gain with Iskall gone, but why Pix? Why Gem? 

Such questions only mattered if one person was responsible for all three disappearances…

Grian scrubbed a hand over his face. He could feel his eyebags growing, pulling heavy on his eyelids. 

There was also Bdubs, who Grian hadn’t considered a person of interest until that very moment. He had proximity, sure, and who in their right mind would suspect the goofy little diner owner? But who else had the information he had, eavesdropping on every Hermits’ conversations. But the motive wasn’t as clear. Grian grew up with Bdubs; at worst he was a little bit odd, but not a threat. Bdubs talked a big game, but Grian wasn’t sure he could muster the courage to punch a flower if he was asked to. 

His only other lead led to Joel. Grian couldn’t think of him without wincing, cradling his bandaged fingers to his chest. He didn’t want to consider it. He’d known Joel for years. He and Jimmy were practically raised together, fumbling around since they were both in diapers. He was no more put-together than Jimmy, which was to say Grian’d be more than impressed if he managed to pull off an elusive three-victim manhunt. 

No matter who he considered, one thing remained nauseatingly, irritatingly clear: it wasn’t enough. Grian had his convictions, but even he knew there wasn’t enough to prove anything. Scar might’ve had the gall to think of his hunches as anything more than speculative guesswork, but Grian played (mostly) by the book. It wouldn’t hold in court, and it certainly wouldn’t catch Impulse’s attention in any positive way. 

Grian tapped his finger over a blurry photo of Doc he’d cut out of a newspaper article. He scowled at the camera, and Grian scowled back. There was something he was missing, he was sure of it. Next to it was a copy of the photo filed away with Iskall’s initial missing person report. Him standing on the dock behind a happy couple, his bright yellow coat impossible to miss. Behind him, a distorted mess of shadow. The vague outline of a person. 

In the corner the date read, September 29th.  One day before his disappearance. 

Grian brought the photo close to his face, squinting. He could make out shoulders, broad and tall, long arms. But the rest of the silhouette was a messy, blurred mess of black and the hazy blue of the sky behind it. If it was an error in the developing paper, did that mean there was someone standing behind Iskall when the photo was taken?

Could it have been Doc? 

Grian set it aside with a sigh. There was no solid connection between Doc and the other two victims, Pix and Gem. Gem was particularly difficult; she’d been the first to go missing and the one with the least evidence left behind. There was no family to talk to; and even if there was, he lost the ability to talk to them the second Impulse pulled him off the case.

There wasn’t much to go off of on Pix, either. Poking around for secrets in Hermit’s Hollow was about as recreational as bird watching; it wasn’t the sort of thing you were murdered or silenced over. At least, not to Grian’s knowledge. It was hard to dismiss it so quickly. Hermit’s Hollow has surprised him with greater things before. 

But that didn’t mean a connection didn’t exist. It simply meant he hadn’t found it just yet. He hadn’t looked hard enough. 

Grian traces his finger over Main Street, where an X sat marking Pix’s residence and disappearance. Bdubs had mentioned tapes, hadn’t he? He’d been recording his conversations with Iskall and Bdubs. Was it so outlandish to think he might’ve caught Doc on there too? Pix wasn’t some casual tourist; it had been researched. No researcher in their right mind would misplace those tapes, not if they cared enough about them. The police hadn’t found any tapes; they had no proof they even existed.

But Grian wasn’t so convinced. 


- ....

 

If you knew anything about Hermit’s Hollow, you knew that the lofts above the shops of Main Street were haunted. Which was why most Hermits didn’t dare live there. However, the ghostly occupants didn’t stop them from renting the rooms out to adrenaline-hungry tourists willing to pay too much money for whatever true authenticity Hermit’s Hollow had to offer.

In short— it wasn’t much of a stretch it would appear to a person such as Pix. 

Hung on the brick wall was a black placard with fading gold lettering:

SILENT SENTINELS

In early 1864, a team of soldiers was hired to defend Hermit’s Hollow from enemy militias from the south. In these eleven lofts lived eleven soldiers and their families. Day and night they watched over the town, defending attacks from sea and land alike. On the night of October 30th, 1864, one of the eleven soldiers slipped into each loft and quietly slit the throats of his comrades and their wives and children. That same night, enemies from the south struck the town, resulting in 35 civilian casualties.

The traitor was never seen again after that night. 

What remains of them are the Silent Sentinels. They’re unobtrusive, observant, and keep most of us safe. No one knows how they got there. No one knows why they stay or what they are waiting for. 

You can only be grateful that they are. 

 

To rank any one aspect of Hermit’s Hollow as Grian’s least favorite was probably the most impossible question there was. Too many things vied for the number one spot, so much so that maybe it would’ve been easier to ask what he did like. And even that was a short list that might’ve already ended.

Still, nothing in Hermit’s Hollow unnerved him like the Silent Sentinels did. 

They pretended to look human— with round featureless heads and vague suggestions of limbs. The little black statues peered down from the strip’s roof. They sat hunched low to the wall, over the ledger, like sprinters at a starting line. What were they running to? Or from? 

Protectors, they were meant to be. But even as a child, Grian always thought they looked more predacious. Every time he looked at them he felt like he was being hunted. 

“I’m pretty well versed in the science of creepy,” Scar said as he stepped in line with Grian. He wore a long beige coat cinched at the waist. It made him look an extra foot taller, made his shoulders twice as casual and loose. “But wow. These little things are awful.” 

I never thought I’d agree with you on anything,” Grian admitted, attention half torn between the statue directly overhead, a small black hand outstretched to him over the ledge of the roof. 

He asked, “Does that mean you’re picking up on some witchy vibes or something? Have we struck gold?”

More like we hit a gas line.” Scar’s face scrunched up as if whatever presence was allegedly feeling was something he could smell. All Grian could smell was peppermint, but that wasn’t unusual these days — Scar always smelled like peppermint. It was the one thing he couldn’t hide. 

“Must be in the right place then. Let’s go.” Grian tried not to let Scar’s palpable unease get to him, but it was pretty damn difficult. He approached most things with an attitude so blasé that it frightened Grian at times, but there was something far more serious about him now, hidden in that single twisted expression. 

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Grian felt a little part of himself caved in at that moment. He didn’t believe in Scar, not in the things he said he could do— he couldn’t. But for a millisecond, he wanted to be wrong. 

What if he’d met Grian fifteen years earlier, before he’d accepted everything he saw, felt, and heard in this town was nothing more than an abused child’s overactive imagination? If Scar talked to ten-year-old Grian, teary eyed and still naive enough to reach to his mother for comfort, he might’ve wanted to hear that it wasn’t all in his head. That something without eyes was watching him. 

The staircase was mostly hidden by an iron gate and a low brick arch that led into the recession between the barber shop and the bookstore. Grian led the way up the thin, uneven staircase. It emptied into a long corridor with eleven doors, five on one wall and six on the other. Eleven white doors. Eleven white brass numbers fixed under peepholes. 

“Witchy,” Scar mused aloud behind Grian. Then, he laughed, a sudden thunderclap. “Oh-ho, why haven’t I thought of that before? You’re a genius, G. G-the-Genius. Can I use that for my next interview?”

“So long as you don’t quote me.” Grian huffed through his nose. He stopped in front of the sixth room. It was the only room with missing brass numbers, leaving torn paint in their wake. 

Scar fished for something in his pockets. “We really doin’ this?” 

Getting nervous, cowboy?” Grian teased, testing the knob. Locked, of course. 

I don’t know the meaning of the word,” Scar chuckled, the sound low and gravely in the back of his throat. Something about it made it incredibly difficult for Grian to look back at him. But he did anyway; he needed to see that grin, sharp and wicked. 

Go big or go home,” Scar said. Between his fingers he held up two thin metal rods. 

Grian snickered and offered his arm to Scar, who used it to leverage himself to the floor. He kneeled before the doorknob, sticking one lock-pick between his teeth and sticking the other in the keyhole. He squinted one eye and got to work. Like this, he might as well have leapt from the pages of those Sherlock Holmes stories— coat and all. 

“Tell me,” Grian said, crossing his arms and watching the top of Scar’s head. “Where does a renowned parapsychologist like yourself find the time to add lockpicking to your studded resume?” 

Yeah, go on, poke fun! I’ve got a perfectly good chocolate milkshake at Double O’s with my name on it,” Scar sighed heavily, making a show of stowing his lockpicks away. “You can take things from here, can’t you, G?”

Heat raced up Grian’s neck and into his cheeks. Before Scar could fumble back to his feet, Grian put a hand on his head and gently nudged it down. “Okay, fine,” he relented. “I need your help. There, I said it. Happy?” 

“Not nearly. But it’s a start.” Scar pouted, his tongue stuck in his cheek. “Don’t you have something else to do? I can’t work when you’re breathin’ down my neck like that!”

Didn’t know you were capable of stage fright,” Grian scoffed. “That might be the worst lie you’ve told me so far. Or are you just nervous to commit a crime in front of a cop?”

“I thought you were a detective,” Scar smirked.

Grian worried his lip between his teeth. “You can be all cheeky after you get us inside.” 

It wasn’t entirely lost on Grian the irony of an officer illegally trespassing on what could still be considered a crime scene, even if there was no crime. Sometimes, a rule book was nothing but a bunch of obstacles dressed in a suit and tie. If you wanted the truth, you had to break through the red tape. You had to look where no one wanted you to look. He’d already bought himself a one-way ticket out of Impulse’s good graces, and he was partially convinced he’d all but lost his mind, too, somewhere along the way. 

What did he have to lose? What else was there for this town to take from him? 

His eyes went to Scar. 

“One more to the left aaaand—” The lock clicked. “Ta-da!” Scar stumbled to his feet and twirled one of the picks between his fingers. He winked and swept his arms down in a grand bow. “No need to hold your applause.” 

“Bravo,” Grian said as he clapped. Scar was already doing him a massive favor, putting himself in the line of fire doing so. The least he could do was try to indulge. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as he convinced himself it was.

Scar opened the door. 

The simple studio was vacant and still. The door opened directly into a small kitchen with a breakfast bar that led into the rest of the living space. A single bed was tucked against the wall. Above it, a window overlooked Main Street. Thin streams of sunlight crept in through the slats of the blinds. Chipping paint and warped glass-panes only proved the loft’s age. 

Aside from a large patch of creaky floorboards in front of the bed, everything was quiet. Grian tested the wood under his boot. The sound grated his ears, but the boards themselves were sturdy enough to hold his weight at least. 

Disappointment festered in Grian’s chest, a low simmering heat. It wasn’t like he expected much, like a perfectly convenient stash of evidence and large bulletin boards with red string and all, or even Pix himself sat on the bed, raising his hands over his head with a sheepish, Whoops!  

No, it was far from realistic. Preferred? Undoubtedly. The less time Grian spent on this stupid probation, the better.

Scar opened a small coat closet by the door. Nothing but a few wire hangers hung on the small metal rod. The slats of the closet door erupted with dust when Scar shut it again. He coughed and covered his mouth. 

Grian poked his nose wherever else he could: between the wall and the bookshelf, in the kitchen cabinets, under the bed. Pix’s belongings went into police custody to be processed as potential evidence, and what was deemed innocuous was sent eventually back to his partner back home. Thus, the loft was relatively spotless. Aside from the dust.

But Grian wasn’t resigned to believing that meant there was nothing to be found. Most things hid in plain sight. It was a matter of looking hard enough.

They searched the room like a machine. At first, they were neat and orderly. Sterile in the way they set back things they picked up. Careful not to disturb the slightest speck of dust. But as time dragged on, their patience thinned. It felt like hours they were trapped inside that loft, retracing their steps once, twice, three times. Grian pulled out the bookshelf twice. Scar tore all the books down, mostly random memoirs or cheap thrillers bought from the bookstore below. Grian caught glimpses of random titles and crude cover art: How to Speak to the Dead: A Practical Guide, We Never Sleep, God Less America. Scar shook them by the spines to see if anything fell out from between the pages. 

He stopped keeping track after the tenth book.

Scar dropped a book into the large pile surrounding him, like a strange sort of summoning circle meant to conjure only the weirdest nerds of the bunch. “You got anythin’ over there, G?” 

Besides my bruised ego?” Grian sighed and flopped face-first onto the bed. At this point, a few wrinkled sheets were the last of his worries.

“What a waste of time,” Scar whined. 

Face buried in the mattress, Grian said, “I thought you were a psychic. Can’t you just use your…  sight or whatever the hell it is to find out where he’s hidden it?” 

“Hold on. A bit busy.” Grian could only hear the sound of pages rustling, of Scar’s humming and hawing. “Huh. Hey, do you think we could stop by the Hollows when we’re done here?” 

“What?” Grian sat up. 

Scar sat in the middle of his book ring with a little history of Hermit’s Hollow pamphlet split open in his hand. He licked his finger and turned the page. “It’s been on my bucket list, but I haven't had the chance yet. How old are those logs anyway?” Scar squints at the small lettering. “Two-hundred years—“ 

Grian flung a pillow across the room and whacked him across the face.

“Ow, hey! What was that for?” 

Scar, please,” Grian whined. “Focus.”

That was all it took to get Scar’s full attention— whether it was the full-fledged pillow assault or Grian simply asking nicely that did most of the heavy lifting, Grian didn’t know. But he’d be sure to keep a pillow handy whenever it came to working with Scar from now on. 

Scar turned his body towards Grian. He put a hand over his mouth and tilted his head, green eyes raking over Grian in a slow sweep. His skin prickled; Grian couldn’t help but wonder if this is how Scar looked at his clients. Like he was trying to see through them. He could practically feel Scar’s hand on him, even though he was halfway across the room. 

I thought you thought I was a fraud?” Between his fingers, Scar grinned. “Had a change of heart?” 

“More like a thinning of patience.”

“Maybe if you listened to me more, you wouldn’t be flounderin’ around town like a lost puppy,” Scar said, and while his tone was sharp as a blade, that dopey smile was still stretching his face wide. Like he leapt right out of a newspaper comic strip. Was any part of Scar real? Grian could only wonder; there was no part of his pride that allowed room for him to ask that question. 

“Listen to what, exactly?” Grian leaned back on his elbows. “I’m not interested in how you think Mothman took all these people.”

“Don’t be silly, Grian,” Scar chuckled, waving his hand in dismissal. “Mothman isn’t real. But there’s all sorts of spooky things that like midnight snacks of the people variety. Vampires, for one. Or ogres. Though, those probably aren’t native to this region, are they? The Wendigo? The Changeling? So many possibilities, Grian. And you’re just looking right over them.”

“If anyone in this goddamn town is a vampire, it’s our creepshow of a mayor. When he sprouts fangs and pokes a straw in my neck, you can say you told me so,” Grian scoffed, rolling onto his back and staring at the exposed ceiling. Old wooden beams and industrial fixtures arched overhead, bolted into the wall. Cobwebs hung low between the wooden rafters, the silky threads catching in the sun like threads of gold. 

“Tell you what. If you find these tapes, color me impressed,” he said to the ceiling, hands folded over his stomach where he could feel the steady beating of his pulse. “Well? Consider this your chance to prove me wrong. I’m waiting.” 

Wish I could,” Scar sighed, yawning so loudly and obnoxiously that it had to have been fake. “But that’s not how my gift works.” 

How convenient,” Grian snickered to himself. 

Just what he thought. It was all the validation he needed, really. Scar had pushed the envelope at the Boatem Dock with his little display with the fisherman. But it wasn’t entirely inexcusable. For all Grian knew Scar could have come by the docks before Grian even got there and gathered all his intel beforehand. It might’ve explained why he was so late.

Does it ever get tiring?” Scar picked himself up off the ground and hobbled over to the bed. He bent his head down over Grian, his hair hanging in his forehead. “Being so skeptical?” 

“It flares up in the presence of fraudulent wizards.”

The bed dipped. Scar sat on the edge of the bed with his back turned to Grian, but even at the angle, the curve of his cheek was unmistakable. Not for the first time did Grian marvel at the strength of Scar’s buccal muscles. If Grian smiled that often, he was sure his lips would atrophy and fall off. 

“There is one thing I could try,” Scar said, tilting his head the slightest bit to glance at Grian. 

Grian raised an eyebrow at him expectantly. He supposed it was usual for a con-man to be uniquely skilled at building suspicion. Consider Grian suspended. 

He sighed, slapping a hand over his face in dismay. “Oh, but I’m just a fraud. Silly me. What would I know?”

Scar was anything but the innocent, charming, slightly thick-headed, pretty face he pretended to be. He pretended well, Grian wasn’t so prideful as not be able to admit that. But more now than ever it was clear what he was— a wolf hiding in sheep skin. Grian could feel the smug grin in Scar’s voice, could feel it in the careless tilt of his head. He carried himself with the ease of a man who knew, beyond any reasonable doubt, that he was in complete and total control. Such confidence clashed with Grian’s fair certainty that he was impervious to Scar’s games. That Scar only pretended he could see through people, and Grian was the real thing. The reasonable thing.  

But the way Scar tugged him around like a marionette on a fishing line, Grian’s resolve wavered. He was going to regret this. He was going to regret this very badly. He already regretted it, and the admission of defeat hadn’t even left his lips yet.

“Fine. What’ve you got?” 

“I thought you’d never ask,” Scar sang. He spun himself around and extended his hands toward Grian. There he went again, sparking to life like that little metal wind-up toy. He wondered if Scar had a tail if it’d be constantly wagging. “Let me see your hands.”

Green eyes glittered at him expectantly. Grian felt compelled to listen to them. He sat upright, a sharp tug on the strings of his puppet. He felt the pull of it on the back of his neck, the tension drawn in his shoulders. 

Breath caught in his teeth, Grian placed his hands in Scar’s. The first touch felt like an electric shock, too much kinetic energy stored up either in Scar’s eagerness or the bundle of nerves in Grian’s stomach. Either way it was a disaster waiting to happen, all that energy building up in one place. A circuit breaker on the verge of overload. A live wire top to bottom, the tiniest spark setting him alight. 

Despite the roughness of Scar’s palms, his touch was careful and gentle. He didn’t prod the healing bruises and cuts, nor did he question why they were there in the first place. He didn’t so much as bat an eye. Grian was silently grateful for his discretion; Scar wasn’t entirely as dense as he seemed.

He simply turned Grian’s hands this way and that, studying the creases of his palms, the curve of his fingers. “Close your eyes,” he said.

Scar,” Grian admonished, but tried to steel his expression from revealing too much. He’d already lost too many inches of leverage in a single evening. “I am not doing that.”

Why so jumpy, Grian?” Scar’s tone was teasing, but the hold on his hands was still gentle. Scar squeezed his palms where it wouldn’t hurt the knuckles. Warmth sept into his skin where hurt tended to take up residence. Grian couldn’t remember the last time someone touched him like that. 

“It’s stupid. I’m not one of your clients,” he grumbled, staring at the scar-studded skin of Scar’s fingers and knuckles. His hands were larger than Grian’s, broader at the base and fingers long and thin. Aside from the scars he had a plethora of calluses that proved some kind of physical labor. Grian wasn’t so sure library books and tarot decks were responsible for that kind of wear-and-tear. 

“You said this was my chance. No take backs!” Scar ducked his head to catch Grian’s eyeline, a shy smile tilting his mouth to one side. “C’mon. Just for a minute, okay?”  He pulled one hand away to make an ‘x’ motion over the left side of his chest. “Cross my heart.”

Grian’s scowl wobbled beyond his control. He wasn’t sure if he was closer to bursting out laughing or breaking down in tears. No part of him particularly cared to find out. “You get forty-five seconds.”

“I can work with that.” Scar’s smile reached his eyes. It was strikingly genuine— the most truthful he’d been since they met.

Grian closed his eyes.

Old wood and Scar’s peppermint breath stung his nose. It was all he could smell, and with his eyes closed it might as well have been the only thing trapped in that room with him. Except for Scar’s hands, warm against his, and a gentle tug in the back of his mind. Like someone trying to open an old, warped door. Trying to keep himself still and calm was about as easy as it was wrapping Maui up in a towel to trim her nails. If this was how she felt each time, Grian could hardly blame her for scratching him to hell. 

Before he lost his nerve and pulled away, Scar beat him to it. He dropped Grian’s hands like they were hot coals; like it hurt to touch him. Grian opened his eyes and found he looked as much too. A deep pinch darkened his brow, all traces of his smile vanished. The green of his eyes washed out to an almost-gray nothing. It was, without a doubt, his least favorite of Scar’s masks. If that was what it even was. 

You—” Grian cleared his throat. “You alright, pal?” He wasn’t afraid. And he sure as hell wasn’t worried. Scar was a weirdo through and through, the only thing more evident from his DNA than green eyes and annoying smile. Everything was fine; there was more reason to be worried if Scar was acting like a normal person.  

Scar’s eyelids fluttered. Hollowly, he stared at Grian. And realization struck him like he'd been flattened on the pavement by Impulse’s Chrysler. Staring back at him wasn’t the face of ignorance he’d come to appreciate. It wasn’t the way Scar looked at him, like he was all too happy to push Grian’s buttons until he was red-faced. Rather, all of Hermit’s Hollow stared back at him. Impulse. Ren. His neighbors. Bdubs. The checkout clerk at the Grab n’ Go. They all had that same, infuriating look on their face.

Pity. The type of pity and horror that hollowed their brains out and resorted them into nothing but mindless zombies hungry for a piece of him. Grian’s tongue stung with the taste of ash.

Scar—” Grian said in warning. He wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t. No, he was pissed off. That was a far easier thing to manage. 

Scar’s one novelty (aside from the objective fact of his odd career choices) was the fact that he seemed to have not a clue who Grian was, nor did he care what dirt he’d crawled out of. Too preoccupied with his own performance to pay much attention to whatever went on beneath Grian’s surface, Scar easily (though not as easy to admit) became the best company he could find in this god forsaken town. Not that that meant much— it was Hermit’s Hollow. The bar was practically on the floor. 

But in a single second it was shattered, and Grian felt bare— he felt dug out. Hollowed. An empty hole six-feet-deep.

Scar inhaled. The color returned to his cheeks briskly. The green of his eyes sparkled, his cheeks filled out. Like coming back to life, he changed completely right in front of Grian’s eyes. And when he looked at him, he had to gall to blink with feigned confusion and innocence.

“Don’t mind alla that.” Scar knocked his knuckles against his temple, wincing. “The wires get all jumbled and mixed up from time to time, is all. Sorry if I scared you.”

“I wasn’t afraid.” God, he didn’t want it to be a lie. “Are you gonna tell me if you saw something useful or were you planning on busting out some Shakespeare too?”

“I do a mean To Be or Not to Be if I do say so myself. But maybe another time.” Scar turned his head towards the open loft, his eyes falling to the floorboards. “I’ve got something, alright.”

It took the two of them to wedge their fingers in the gap in the thin gap between the floorboards. But once the first came off the others slid in tandem. Like old puzzle pieces, worn at the edges from being locked together and pulled apart over and over again. They come apart to reveal a small dark pocket beneath the floor and a dusty cardboard box tucked within.  

It wasn’t possible. 

Scar whooped in victory and pulled the box out, brushing off the dust. 

It wasn’t possible. 

When he cracked open the lid the dust got into Grian’s eyes. He tossed it aside. Cassettes filled the little box to the top. Little black boxes. Grian wanted to be excited, he wanted to feel accomplished. He wanted to feel the flare of victory that he longed to rub right in Impulse’s face.

Scar couldn’t have known.

There were more tapes in that box than there were stories in Hermit’s Hollow; something he wasn’t sure he’d ever thought possible until then. Pix hadn’t been in town long. Whatever this was long crossed the border of curiosity and ventured far behind enemy lines into obsession.

Scar shouldn’t have known. But he did.  It was right in front of him.

Jackpot,” Scar whispered as he picked up a tape and held it up like a grifter would hold a cigarette. It, just like all the other tapes, was labeled with a strip of tape and black marker. 

THE HOLLOWS

“I think we should start with this one, what do you think, G?”

I…” Grian swallowed whatever he couldn’t manage to say. “How did you—“ 

The metal gate outside shrieked. A sharp sound struck the air as it slammed shut. The suddenness of it swept Grian and Scar from their shock and glee, respectively. The two of them looked to the door. The outside hall stirred. Floorboards groaned and whispered. The sound of footsteps. Quick and heavy.  

Scar and Grian locked eyes. Grian’s hands hovered over the loose floorboards. 

It was October. Easily the height of the renting season. Another set of feet wouldn’t have meant a thing most days. But that was before three Hermits went missing and the department put a stop to renting out the lofts for the season.

The stairs creaked, a slow tortuous sound. The steps drew closer. 

Hide.” The shape of the word fell from Grian’s mouth more than any sound did. 

Hands clumsy, they scrambled over one another to rush and fit the pieces of the floor back together. It was all they’d have time to do— the bookshelves were torn to pieces, the sheets were wrinkled, the cabinets left open. It was better to let whoever it was think the intruders hadn’t found what they were looking for.

The door handle jostled. 

Grian dragged Scar and the box of tapes underneath the bed with him. Scar hissed. A jagged piece of metal beneath the bed frame caught him on the arm, breaking skin. Blood beaded up from the cut, but Scar didn’t make another noise. They lay silently on their stomachs, packed in close, side by side like sardines in a can.

Old hinges whined as the door dragged against the floor. A pair of heavy-duty fishermen’s boots crossed into the room, slow but anything but hesitant. They paused before the mess of books in front of the shelves. All he could see from underneath the bed were those boots, all he could hear was the roar of his own pulse in his ears, Scar’s quiet breathing, and the creaking of wooden floorboards under the stranger’s weight. Every sound sounded like a firecracker tossed against his skull. 

Whoever was standing in this apartment was their guy. It had to be. No one was meant to be in here. Who else would break in, let alone wearing fishermen’s boots? Were they looking for the same thing Grian and Scar had come for? 

They could catch the bastard right now. They could end this. Grian didn’t care if he was arrested; he didn’t care if Impulse completely fired him for acquiring evidence illegally. This was their chance. Maybe their only one. Grian planted his hands on the cool flooring. Dust tickled his throat with each wrestled breath. He shifted as little as he could to poke his head out from under the bed, to catch a glimpse—

Scar clamped a hand around Grian’s mouth. A shackle, fingers made of terror and iron. He pulled him back,  He stared at Grian with those wide emerald eyes. A shove towards ‘are you crazy?’ and a desperate dive into, ‘Don’t even think about it.’

For once in his life, Grian couldn’t argue. He couldn’t move. Torn in two by his desperation to prove himself right and his fear of facing… something. He didn’t know what. It snuck up on him, whatever it was. Like a panic attack: zero to one-hundred in an instant. No fear, then suddenly washed cold with it. His head ached terribly, a sharp arrow of pain piercing behind his eye. 

He groaned in Scar’s hand, the noise breathy and muffled. 

The creaking of floorboards drowned the sound out. The boots repeatedly stepped over the hastily-puzzled floorboards. Over and over they creaked, the echo of an old rocking chair sat in Grian’s basement. 

Over and over. Forward and back. 

Creak. 

Forward and back. 

A hand brushed through Grian’s hair. He rocked with the chair. Arms tightly held his chest. Her voice, a gentle discordant hum in his ear. Fear stabbed through him. 

“You have to protect him. You know it has to be you, right?”

Creak. 

The door shut with a thud. The fear disappeared. Scar let him go in that same moment. Grian flinched, the relief of it so sudden and desperate that he choked on a ragged gasp in the back of his throat. 

He stared at the gap under the door. The boots were gone. He waited for the footsteps to return. The groan of the floor. The breath against the back of his neck. His forehead pulsed, the pain enough to spring tears to his eyes. Groaning, face buried in his hands, Grian tried to catch his breath. Scar didn’t move, one hand on Grian’s wrist and the other resting between his shoulder blades.

“Grian,” Scar whispered harshly. There was no playful edge to it, only frantic lines and the steady hand on his pulse point. “Grian.” 

“He’s gone?” he whispered, unable to lift his head to check. “Is he gone?”

“We’re fine,” Scar assured quietly. But he made no effort to move. Those hands kept Grian locked in place. “Everything’s fine.”

He didn’t move an inch, didn’t utter another word, until Grian threw together the pieces of his composure into some semblance of functionality. He steadied his breathing and lifted his head. He even managed to chase the worst of the chills away; though he wasn’t sure if he could take the credit for that. 

The warmth of Scar’s hand slipped from his back before they climbed out. Weak at the knees, Grian held onto the wall until the black edges of his vision cleared. 

“Are you okay?” 

Scar blinked at him owlishly.  He glanced at his arm. The cut was shallow, though it bled enough to ruin his sleeve. “Yeah. Just peachy,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll ever get the stain out, but I think I’ll survive otherwise.”

“Did you—” Grian tried to catch his breath, gripping the front collar of his shirt and tugging at it. “Did you see him? Could you see anything?” 

No…” Scar hesitated. “Just… boots. Maybe the edge of a yellow coat.”

The urge to punch him was suddenly irresistible. He gave into it, a selfish indulgence that he didn’t feel that guilty about. At least it wasn’t very powerful, more like an annoyed push of his knuckles into the meat of Scar’s shoulder. “We almost had him,” he huffed.  “Why did you stop me?”

“It—” That serious twist of Scar’s features wouldn’t go away and it was starting to annoy the hell out of Grian. “I felt like it wasn’t safe. I know you don’t believe my hunches a lot, Grian, but… believe me on this one, okay? Please.”

He was right. Grian knew he was right, but knowing something and being able to swallow it were two different tasks. Monumentally different it felt in that moment, his pride a fist around his windpipe. He sighed and hung his head, moving his glasses up so he could pinch his nose bridge. 

“Okay,” he whispered. “Yeah. Okay.” 

Scar didn’t touch, but he hovered. “Are you okay?” 

The truth was that Grian didn’t know. He didn’t know what happened or why; he lost the border between what was real, what was memory, and what was a dream. He had no idea how long they actually spent hiding under that bed but it was long enough that every joint in Grian’s body felt stiff like the petrified wood of the Hollows. To Grian, it hadn’t felt like more than a minute. But it, somehow, had been long enough that there was no longer any light streaming in through the windows. The quiet, buzzing night waited for them outside. Grian didn’t want to greet it. 

But he couldn’t tell Scar that. He couldn’t take any more prodding and talk of the unknown than he’d already tolerated. His quota had been met, and there was nothing Grian wanted more than to crawl into bed and pretend none of this ever happened. 

So, taking the box of tapes from Scar’s arms, the terrible lie he told was, “Never been better.”

Chapter 5: V. don't listen when i scream

Summary:

Grian and Scar dive deep. Grian reveals more than he intended.

Notes:

warnings: violence, familial violence
this chapter in general is the darkest by far, so please heed the tags and read responsibly!

Chapter Text

.. -

V.

 

THE HOLLOWS
Property of P. Riffs
06/11/1979

 

[Clicks]

[Begin Recording 00:00:33]

[Soft restaurant chatter]

[PIX]

(mumbles) Should be all set, then.

Hello, my name is Pixl Riffs. The date is June the 11th, and I’m currently sitting in the Double O’ Diner with one, Captain Is Gall of the Flying Fish . …Have I said that correctly?

[ISKALL]

Just Iskall is fine, buddy.

[PIX]

Right. (pencil scratches) You’re a difficult man to track down, Iskall.

[ISKALL]

(chuckles) You can’t have been trying hard. My ass is practically glued to this stool. 

[PIX]

More than one finger has pointed me in the direction of the docks, to the catch-boats. One little bird pointed you out specifically. Tell me, are fishermen particularly… eager when it comes to local folklore? 

[ISKALL]

Not sure I’d call it folklore . (scoffs) The only folk in our folklore is that folks love to poke fun at us. Fishermen are ‘superstitious’. ‘Paranoid’. Most think we bring stories back to shore to make up for the fact we’ve got no yield. Pretty ridiculous, if you ask me. They’re the mad ones. Their heads are full of Fog.

Eager is one hell of a word for it (huffs). It’s not much of a choice, to be frank. More so an… occupational hazard. 

[PIX]

Could you elaborate?

[ISKALL]

You ever been out on a boat early in the morning? Too early for the sun to come up totally, but you can still see it’s trying? Water all still?

[PIX]

I can’t say that I have.

[ISKALL]

Not many distractions out there. Floating. Drifting. Waiting for something to swim in your net. Gives you a whole lotta time to see things most folks are too busy to notice. When you’re that far off the shore, the Fog isn’t quite so thick. It’s a lot harder for things to hide. 

You know what they say, an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. 

[PIX]

(page turns) What do you mean by ‘hide’? What sorts of things hide in this Fog ?

[ISKALL]

How much space have you got left on that tape? (chuckles). 

[UNKNOWN]

Excuse me. I have… a burger, no cheese? 

[PIX]

That’s mine—”

[Click]

[Begin Recording 00:15:29]

[ISKALL]

The Hollows? (chewing) That’s what you wanna know? 

[PIX]

I’ve found the best place to start is usually the beginning. From my research, the Hollows were the oldest to come out of this town. I mean, I’m assuming that’s where the name comes from, Hermit’s Hollow. Is that true?

[ISKALL]

Mhm. (clears throat) You’ve seen that big ol’ white oak on the square, haven’t you?

[PIX]

It’s hard to miss. It’s beautiful.

[ISKALL]

It’s old . The last of its kind. Back in the day there was a whole forest of ‘em that surrounded the whole town. Between that and the ocean, this place was completely isolated. When settlers arrived from the west, they claimed it was a favor from God. A shield to protect them, their families, and their new colony from the unknown lands. 

(laughs) Poor bastards couldn’t have been more wrong. 

[PIX]

What happened? 

[ISKALL]

Winter came. The colonists got hungry, cold, and desperate. It was constantly storming, snowing, or both, so they couldn’t keep any fires burning. So they did what any cold,  scared man would do: they took what wasn’t theirs and claimed it was a gift . After a couple nights with their axes, it was like the forest had never been there. 

[PIX]

(audibly inhales) If they thought the forest was a favor from God, why destroy it?

[ISKALL]

Why does a snared fox gnaw off its own paw?

[PIX]

(hesitates) …Survival. They needed firewood, shelter.

[ISKALL]

Now you’re getting it. Lots of good it did them, in the end. The trees they chopped, all of them were hollow from root to branch. Like a bad egg without any of the tasty stuff in it. 

As odd as it was, it must’ve seemed harmless enough. The settlers didn’t have much other choice. The storms raged on, their homes were washed into the bay. So they huddled inside these massive, hollow logs. It protected them night after night.

Why would they ever want to leave? They were safe. They were warm. 

(slurps coffee) So they never did.

[PIX]

They died there?

[ISKALL]

In a way. The Hollows were, and still are, a great place of refuge. But you don’t want to overstay your welcome, or you will change.

[PIX]

Change how, exactly?

[ISKALL]

In a way you don’t come back from. 

I’ve seen the Hollows exactly once, and once was enough. A blend of faces stared right at me from the bark. Withering branches reached for me like arms, lichen growing like a beard, rotting knots for eyes. It takes a real psycho to go out there with a camera and pose in front of them like it’s the Eiffel Tower. 

[PIX]

They’re still out there today? When trees are living they can grow for years and years, but chopped logs? Over a century later, unchanged by time or elements? It’s almost impossible to believe.

[ISKALL]

I don’t care whether or not you believe it. And neither do the Hollows. They never forgot. The forest never forgets.

[PIX]

The white oak on Main Street— is that hollow on the inside, too?

[ISKALL]

You want to go take an axe to it right now? (huffs) Some questions are best left unanswered. Remember that. 

[Click]

[Begin Recording 03:12:00]

[PIX]

Pix here, again, with about… (hums) seven minutes until it is July 12th. So I better make this quick.

(shuffles papers) I’ve spent a lot of time researching towns all over the eastern seaboard. I’ll admit, when I first caught wind of Hermit’s Hollow I was skeptical, at best. But this town’s a bit more interesting than I initially anticipated. Most tourist traps rely on the gimmicks. Sasquatch, vampires, spirits of the dead. But this…? 

The more I learn about this little corner of the map, the more obscure and complicated its history reveals itself to be. It’s fascinating stuff, truly. I’ve certainly never seen anything like it. Though I’ll admit it’s difficult not to be skeptical. So much history packed in such a tiny place. 

(chuckles quietly) Suppose that makes it all the more exciting. I’ve got my work cut out for me. Maybe I’m due to visit the Hollows to see for myself what we’re dealing with here.

[Click.]

[End Recording 03:13:10]

With a soft click , the tape-deck popped open and Grian plucked out the cassette. The plastic was still warm. He held it between his steepled hands, like it was an extremely uncomfortable hand-warmer. 

Grian had heard the story of the Hollows enough times to make his ears bleed. If there was a test for becoming a Hermit’s Hollow citizen, that story would make up fifty-percent of the questions, and if you so much as got one wrong, they wouldn’t just not grant you citizenship— they’d tie you to a boat and drag you through the bay. 

Okay, they might not do exactly that, but it was the principle of the thing: if religion was anything sacred to those in Hermit’s Hollow, the story of the Hollows was the Bible. Like a priest taught to love thy neighbor , word-of-mouth taught you not to go crawling into any overturned logs. In place of hymns and psalms was the ‘Hermit’s Howl’, a song you learned before any other nursery rhyme.

Go tell Mama, Go tell Dad

Go tell them everybody’s dead.

The Hollows lay them to bed.

Go tell Mama, Go tell Dad

Their bodies rot just up ahead

You should have chopped yourself up instead.

Go tell Mama, Go tell Dad

Go tell them everybody’s dead.

 

“Funny,” Scar muttered from his place on the kitchen floor, feet propped up on the wall as he pretended to consider the newspaper he held upside down.

Grian couldn’t begin to pretend how he found that position comfortable. “What is?”

“I heard this story before, when I first moved here,” Scar said. “Except in the version I heard, the settlers were digested down to their bones. And the guy even said the bones had teeth marks on ‘em. Big ol’ tree teeth marks. Who woulda thought trees have teeth?”

“I would’ve preferred that story, I think,” Grian said, because as much as he hated to admit it he’d been tormented more than a few times in his childhood by nightmares of his hands turning to wood, of his left eye growing solid and sprouting moss. Of lichen crawling the lengths of his arms until his joints were rigid as the old rocking chair in the basement. 

“How far out are they?” Scar asked, turning the page of his newspaper. 

“You sure you still wanna go see them, Scar? If you’re not careful you’ll turn into a wooden statue and I'll happily leave you there.”

“Aw, come on! What a waste to sit and rot in the woods all day long,” Scar pouted. “At least bring me back with you. Stick me in a nice little museum. I’d have a lot less qualms about being made of wood if I went into one of those cool exhibits. People could marvel at my wonder all day long.”

Grian shook his head. “No way I’m dragging you all the way back. You’d be too heavy.”

“Think of the people, Grian!” Scar dropped the newspaper onto his face and let his arms flop unceremoniously to the ground. “Hiding a face like this, even if it was made of wood, would be doing the nation a great disservice.”

“A true tragedy,” Grian laughed, a sound he found lacked more sarcasm than he cared to admit. “Best to stay away then. We wouldn’t want you succumbing to temptation.” 

“You’d be surprised to know I’m particularly talented at not succumbing. I’ve got the seal of appeal from the Catholic Church itself to prove it. They don’t ordain just anyone, y’know.” 

“You? Ordained? Like weddings?” Grian huffed through his nose. He squinted at Scar, sprawled on the ground with that dopey smile. He imagined him dressed in a priest’s garb, sleeves dragging along the ground everywhere he went. Because the world was particularly cruel and Grian never got anything he wanted, he was sure Scar would somehow still look good, even drowning in all that stupid fabric. 

“Oh no, no, no,” Scar chuckled. “Exorcisms!” 

Just when he thought the pseudo psychic couldn’t surprise him any more than he already had. 

“Exorcisms,” Grian echoed, staring at Scar’s upside-down smirk and trying to decipher where the truth ended and his pretty lies began. Those eyes were effective— they made it hard for Grian to see him wholly. 

“Summer of ‘77 was wild,” Scar said, eyes on the popcorn ceiling. “Don’t remember a lot of it. But the Vatican's really neat inside, you should give it a visit if you’re ever in the area.” 

Grian hummed in a way that said, ‘Oh of course! I’m sure the Vatican is an excellent vacation spot I can just get into anytime I please’, as if he understood a single thing that came out of Scar’s mouth. 

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” Scar said, waving his hands in the air. “Common misconception.” 

“I’m not sure how to respond to that, to be honest.” Grian’s hands hovered uselessly over the table, as if Scar had reached in and ripped out all the wires that made him a quasi-functional person. Out of all of his troublesome habits, that was the most annoying: his frightening ability to clog the gears in Grian’s brain.

If Scar noticed (or cared), he didn’t mention it. He simply tapped his heels on the wall in a steady, distracted beat, like a human metronome. If metronomes were tall, lanky, and had no rhythm. On second thought, he was less a metronome and more a ticking time bomb with an untrustworthy counter. 

“Do you think I could talk to them? The people in the Hollows?” he mused aloud. “That’d be pretty cool, don’t you think? I could find out the truth of what really happened to those poor souls: if they turned into little wooden guys or if they got gnawed on by some trees with teeth.”

“Think of the headlines,” Grian said sarcastically. “The Lost Souls of the Hollows: Mystery Stumped or Debunked? I’ll need to make sure they get my good side for my glamor shot.”

Scar stared upside-down at Grian, feet idle and hands planted on the floor beside him. “Are you mimicking me?”

“Yes, Grian,” Grian said in his deepest, most convincingly annoying Scar voice. It wasn’t difficult. As far as Grian was concerned, it could’ve won awards. “I’m brimming with hubris— Once I solve two cases in one fell swoop, I’ll be titled the savior of Hermit’s Hollow. You think they’ll erect a monument in my honor?”

Scar wrangled his long, gangly mess of limbs until he was back upright on his feet. He walked with his hand on his hip, like he was carrying around a pistol. “And while you do that, Scar, I’ll be sure to work on my sighing and my coffee drinking and my forehead brooding.” His brows knitted together, but a wry smile snuck out from under the distinct Grian mask. “This is fun, I like this.”

All Grian wanted to do was break character and insist that he did not stand like that, all sway-backed with a hip out to the side. But it’d only give Scar more satisfaction. 

“And once all is said and done,” Grian said, rising to his feet and meeting Scar halfway. No more than a few inches separated them; from this close he could make out every speck of green in his eyes, practically taste the peppermint on his tongue. “I’ll finally reveal the secret behind my silly little magic tricks.” 

Scar’s brow quirked. He’d dropped his Grian-hat and was trying to figure out how not to let it show. “Hm.” His lips pulled into what could’ve been considered a smirk by most, but Grian knew better. It was something far less pleasing. “I think I’m done playin’ now.” 

“Pity.” The swell of triumph in Grian’s cheeks nearly made his head pop like an overfilled balloon. 

Neither of them moved. He wasn’t sure who was in control. He wasn’t sure either of them were. Maybe he was alright with that. 

“Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, y’know” Scar said.

“Is it?” Stepping away broke whatever spell bewitched the pair of them. Scar wasn’t the only one who knew a thing or two about resisting temptation.

The coffee-maker on the counter was his refuge. Grian retreated to it under the guise of making himself another cup. So what if it was his third in one night? It certainly wasn’t out of character, and if he dreamed of getting through the rest of the night or the box of tapes (whichever ended first), he needed a drink. Preferably something stronger, but he wasn’t desperate enough for that. Not yet, at least. 

He rummaged under the cabinets for a coffee tin. Jimmy always moved things around that he had no business touching. The kid didn’t even drink coffee. Every time Grian made him try his face would scrunch up and tears immediately sprang into his eyes. It’s so bitter, he’d cry out. Seriously, Grian had seen Jimmy down a shot of vodka with more grit than a simple sip of black coffee. It was embarrassing.

 Scar hovered somewhere behind him. His entire childhood, Grian had eyes on himmillions of them. They belonged to the walls, to the distorted reflections in the mirror, to his mother who sat and stared at him emptily across the dinner table. He didn’t know what to do with himself now that there were only two. It should’ve felt like a relief, like he could finally hide. But it was anything but. 

“How about it, detective?” Scar leaned his weight on the counter. “Did you get anythin’ outta that tape?” 

The answer was a disappointing, yet not unsurprising, “No... Not yet. We’ve only just started.”

It was the first tape of dozens. It would be irresponsible to try to draw a conclusion from a  single piece of evidence. It was damn near impossible to deduce something with both hands tied behind your back, and until Grian knew more information about the victims and his suspects, he might as well have been hog-tied and roasting on a spit.

“What is it you’re expectin’ to hear, anyway?” Scar’s warmth crowded closer to Grian’s turned back. A hand rested on his shoulder, stilling him in his efforts of searching madly through the cupboards. He reached above Grian’s head to an over-head cabinet and immediately pulled out his coffee tin. 

Turning it over in his hands, he frowned. “You’re not drinking the dark roast I recommended?”

“It was decaf,” Grian said, snatching it from his hand. “I’m looking for any sort of clue as to why someone would want Pix out of the picture. He’s no more dangerous than any of the other tourists that roll through here. Dedicated, I’ll give him that, but not dangerous.”

“You thinkin’ he poked his nose somewhere it doesn't belong? Pissed off the wrong guy?” Scar guessed, leaning his weight on the kitchen island. “Or maybe he saw something that scared him, so he ran off.”

Grian shrugged, watching the coffee trickle into his mug. “It’s possible. Doc is my biggest suspect right now, and if I can find a tape with him on it, it might reveal something big.”

Or you could find out Pix ran into something he shouldn’t have,” Scar all but taunted. 

Grian whirled on his heel. To think he ended up partnered with possibly the only person on this planet (other than Jimmy) that was more stubborn than he was. “How many times do I have to tell you, Scar, I—”

Scar raised a hand to stop him. “We had a deal. I found the tapes, didn’t I? That means you have to hear me out.” 

Part of him would’ve rather cut his own tongue out than admit it, but Scar was right. The past few weeks were filled with so much general strangeness that Grian was quickly running out of space to put it all; still, Scar locating those tapes within seconds easily took the cake. If he’d known, if he could’ve seen it, why hadn’t he just went for them immediately? It wasn’t like Scar to pass up on the opportunity to show-off, especially to Grian. 

So, it was with a reluctant sigh that he said, “Okay. What’ve you got then, cowboy? I’m all ears.” 

Scar hummed. “We’ve only just started, G,” he parroted back at him like it was cute. The reddened anger that crept up Grian’s neck insisted it was anything but. “I need more evidence as well. As cool as those Hollow-thingies are, I think it’d be silly if three people all went crawling into them back-to-back.” 

The coffee- maker chimed, an annoying little tune that sounded like morning birds chirping. 

“Which would you like to listen to next?” Scar asked as he sauntered over to the cardboard box on the table. Like he was flipping through a crate of vinyls instead of the last words of a presumed-dead-man. “Let’s see. Hm… We’ve got the Silent Sentinels— oh, but we already know all about them— The Storm, The Gap in the Wall. These all sound so bor ooh! What about this?”

He flashed the tape in Grian’s direction.

THE MOON (AND HER LIES?)

Grian choked on a mouthful of coffee. He sputtered and rushed to put the mug down before he destroyed his last unstained work-shirt. “ No ,” he dismissed quickly, tongue fuzzy and burned. “No, we’re not listening to that one.”

“I thought you wanted to be thorough,” Scar pushed.

“I’ve already gotten enough weirdness from Bdubs,” Grian groaned, wiping the coffee dribbling from his chin. “I don’t need any more nonsense tonight. Please.”

Scar chuckled. “Has he told you how you die yet?” 

Unease brewed heavily in Grian’s stomach. He should’ve been used to the sensation by now, but no amount of drinking water prepared you for drowning in it. “Why? Has he told you ?”

“He doesn’t need to,” Scar said automatically. Then, as if he had only just remembered to, added, “I already know how I go."

“Not that tape,” Grian doubled-down. “What else have we got?”

With little argument Scar turned back to the selection, reading titles aloud and tossing aside any he immediately deemed too boring. Which didn’t make any sense, considering they’d need to go through all of them at some point. But Grian could save the proper investigative work when he didn’t have Scar as a distraction. For now, he could have his fun. It wasn’t like Grian was going to get any sleep anyway. He retrieved his mug from the counter.

“How ‘bout this?” Scar held up another tape for Grian to see, the black marker reading:

DO NOT ENTER VOID
Property of P. Riffs
08/02/1979

 

[Clicks]

[Begin Recording 00:00:15]

[Soft talking, dishes clacking]

[B.D.]

You look like shit. 

[PIX]

Sleep’s hard to come by these days.

[B.D.] 

You’re stayin’ at the Sentinel Lofts, aren’t you? (chuckles) No wonder you look miserable. Most people never last there more than a couple of weeks before their brains start turning to puddy. Being watched all the time does that to you.

(shudders) Those Sentinel freaks gimme the heebie-jeebies. 

[PIX]

I was warned, but… (sighs) 

[B.D.]

How ‘bout a story to cheer you up?

[PIX]

(hesitates) Are you messing with me? Everytime I asked you to—

[B.D.]

Yeah, yeah, well maybe I’m just sick of lookin’ at your sorry face. Do you want a story or not? 

[PIX]

(papers turn) I’m listening. 

[B.D.]

I had a friend. 

[PIX, overlapping] 

(mumbles) Riveting.

[B.D]

My best friend. We were in diapers together, attached at the hip, soulmates, whatever the hell you wanna call it. Hell, I spent half my childhood followin’ him around like a lost puppy. Couldn’t split us up for nothin’. 

He was always quiet like a rabbit, but he used that to get away with a lot of stupid shit. You’d be surprised what that heathen could stick his nose into. He was making fireworks and selling ‘em illegally out of his back shed before his voice even dropped. 

(hesitates) We were seventeen when it happened. You’ve heard about the old archives, right? 

[PIX]

You don’t mean—

[B.D.]

Crazy, isn’t it? (dryly chuckles) This town. All the stupid stories people swap. It’s all eons away. Years and years, no one left alive to tell you what’s true and what’s bullcrap. But then there’s me. Friends with a local legend. That’s the closest you get to bein’ a celebrity around here, I’ll tell you.

[PIX]

(hesitates) Were you there? Do you know what happened?

[B.D.]

Sure I do (scoffs). Curiosity. Stupidity. Whatever you want to call it. That’s what happened. 

[PIX]

Please, I… If you could tell me more. 

[B.D]

The town’s built on top of a buncha old tunnels. We’d seen the signs. They ain’t hard to miss— a big ole ugly yellow sign with ‘DO NOT ENTER VOID’ on it. What a load of crap. 

(laughs) Etho was always scared of the place. We used to dare each other to see who would get closest to the door. Whoever lost had to carry the other’s backpack to school for a week. Let’s just say he got used to carrying my bag around. He was always so freaked out. Ain’t nothing scary down there but some rats and dirty water, I told him. 

So, naturally, we broke in. 

[Click]

[Stuttering audio]

[Static]

[Begin Recording 00:15:24]

[B.D.]

It was stupid. It was the stupidest thing we coulda done. But I was young and stupid and wanted to impress him. We were supposed to graduate college in a few months. This was gonna be our last hurrah

(sharply inhales) Whatever it is, you can’t make a sound. It’s how it finds you down there.

[PIX]

How… (pencil scratches) How what finds you? 

[B.D.]

Hell if I know. Whatever lives beneath. I never saw the damn thing outside a dark shadow. I was too busy runnin’ for my damn life.

[PIX]

(clears throat) Pardon the crass question, but… Is this thing what took Etho? 

[B.D.]

(hesitates) We nearly got away too. We were so close. Made it back up to the surface, up through the door. I’ve never been more happy to smell that shitty harbor air in my entire life. We thought we were home free. We were about ready to laugh the whole damn thing off. 

But it followed us out. 

(pauses)

By the time we realized it, it was too late. We were walking by the docks, and we heard it again. This awful chittering noise. Like a car was breaking down down the street and all the metal gears were grindin’ against one another. I’ll tell you I ain’t heard another sound like that in my life. I’ve seen a lot of messed up stuff in this town, but nothin’ ever made me feel the way that sound made me feel. 

[PIX]

What did you do?

[B.D.]

We ran like hell. Back then there wasn’t much out by the docks except for the big parking lot and a pier that was always taped off for unstable support beams. So that left the only place on that block— the archives. Right where we’re sittin’ right now. 

It chased us in. We smashed a window to get through and holed up in an office in the back. I never got a chance to see the damn thing, but Etho had that wild look in his eye. He saw somethin’ I didn’t, and no matter how hard I pushed, he wouldn’t tell me a damn thing. 

[PIX]

What do you think it was that he saw?

[B.D.]

Whatever the hell this thing looked like. Etho was always a scaredy-cat. But I ain’t never seen him look like that. Not really like he saw something freaky out of a horror movie, but more like it was something he recognized. I dunno. 

Whatever it was, we were trapped. We set the whole place ablaze. It went up (snaps) like that. Even if the fire killed us , we were damn sure it would take that thing down with us. Which was goddamn stupid. It might’ve hurt it, but it wasn’t enough. One second Etho was next to me, and the next he wasn’t. Like he vanished into thin air. Barely got myself, my eyebrows were singed off and I was burned to hell. But hey, I was alive.

(chuckles) 

Everybody thinks he’s the one who lit the fire, y’know. He was a real pyrotechnic. Could make a cherry-bomb with a bobby pin and a wet string, I tell you. Guess it’s easy to blame the missin’ kid for delinquency. His dad was a real piece of work, smacked him around all the time. It was easy for people to think one day he’d snap, commit some tasteful arson, and high-tail it outta there.

[PIX]

You said he was a ‘local legend’ . How is that if that was the story the cops spun? That he was a runaway?

[B.D.]

Just because that’s what the fuzz wanted to believe doesn’t mean shit. You can’t tell a damn soul in Hermit’s Hollow what to think. Anything’s a ghost story if you tell it long enough. Just so happened in this case that it was true.

[PIX]

If what you’re saying is true, (stammers) then that means there is some kind of monster living underneath Hermit’s Hollow 

[B.D.]

Why do you sound so shocked? This is the kinda shit you came lookin’ for, isn’t it? The real, gritty details? (taps) You’ve got a real exclusive interview right here. Half the shit people say about Etho’s disappearance is just that— shit. They talk about his skin bursting into flames, or him being controlled by an old, vengeful spirit. They don’t talk about Etho . They don’t talk about the victim. 

[PIX]

I’m not sure I know what to believe anymore. 

[B.D.]

This is the truth. Take it or leave it. (scoffs) Some advice for you. 

Whatever bad shit happens up here, it happens down there too. But it’s worse. And what’s trapped underground always finds a way to escape up here. Heat rises right before a storm’s about to break, right? Let’s say there’s a whole shitstorm brewing right under this town’s feet. Has been for years. But not a damn person can see it. Where does it go when all the pressure builds up? 

[PIX]

(hesitates) As above, so below. 

[B.D.]
What goes up, must come down. (hums) Best thing you can do is buckle down and get ready before it hits you. Because it will. Either that, or get out of here while you’ve still got the chance. 

[Click]

[Begin Recording 02:55:00]

[Chair drags, Door shuts]

[PIX]

I don’t know what to make of this. 

I didn’t— (hysterically chuckles) This isn’t what I came here for. This place isn’t what I thought. I'm far above my head. But it’s kind of magnificent, isn’t it? It’s exciting

[Click]

[Begin Recording 03:10:13]

[Papers shuffle]

[PIX]

I did some digging into the underground tunnels Bdubs mentioned. Turns out the whole town’s built upon an old mine shaft system that allegedly branches out for miles. Before Hermit’s Hollow’s days of relying on fish as their primary export, the coal mines offered the town the largest economic boom in its entire history. But also one of its largest tragedies. 

Years and years ago, several miners went missing. It was as if they simply disappeared where they were working. Ever since the mines have been sealed off and left to rot, deemed too dangerous to enter. The cave systems are weak and likely to collapse, and not to mention the firedamp. It’s basically a huge store of methane that builds up when you mine a bunch of coal. If this place’s just been sitting frozen in time like that, it’s basically a ticking time bomb. All it would take is a spark.

Having said all of this, it would be positively idiotic for anyone, including myself, to willingly go down into those mines. (sighs) Perhaps I am not so willing , but I’ve come this far. If there’s the slightest chance for an answer, I have to try. 

[Static]

[Audio distorts]

[Click]

[End Recording 03:11:10]

 

The tape ended, but neither of them moved right away. Slowly the cassette continued to turn and turn, the floppy end of the tape thumping against the tape-deck over and over and over again. With fumbling fingers, Grian yanked the tape out and immediately tossed it back in the box as it might’ve burned him otherwise. 

“Jesus,” Scar breathed. The two of them sat at the kitchen table, at one point both entranced by the staticy voices filtering through the tape-deck and compelled to sit around it. 

Grian’s hands cradled a now-cold cup of coffee. Numbly, he asked, “What about now? Any leads from that? Can you… I dunno, bust out your monster manual?” 

Scar didn’t laugh. If Grian was less terrified, he would’ve had the space to be offended. “It…” A troubled expression crossed his features, no more than a brief ripple of a fish darting beneath a calm water’s surface. “I’ll have to think on it.” 

That was fine. Grian wasn’t expecting much of an answer anyway. All he could do was stare down at the flat, dark contents of his mug. 

He’d known Etho. Not well , by any means, but the three of them were in the same class. You knew anyone in Hermit’s Hollow, let alone kids your age. Bdubs and Etho were always two peas in a pod. Almost intimidatingly so; the thought never once crossed Grian’s mind to try to befriend them. And, of course, he remembered when Etho left town. 

That was what he was stuck on: left . Not vanished, not killed, not taken . Left. As if it had been his choice. As if his family was glad to be rid of him, and not one person in town blinked twice at the fact that he was gone. There was an empty seat in the incredibly thin graduation line-up. And all anyone could talk about was how he burned down the town’s archival building and was probably making deals with Satan. And no one cared. Grian   hadn’t cared. He’d believed what the police had told everyone in the newspaper the next morning:

DELINQUENT BOY SETS FIRE TO ARCHIVAL BUILDING AND FLEES TOWN.

It was the same narrative Mumbo and Impulse were trying to write for Gem, for Pix, for Iskall. Grian’s anger burned hot as coals, the casing of his stomach an iron furnace that funneled the heat up the back of his throat, stream practically leaking from his ears. It wasn’t fair. Etho didn’t deserve to be swept under the rug no more than any of the three of them did. That was, if Bdubs was even telling the truth. As much as Grian wanted him not to be, not even he could deny the nagging suspicion gnawing away at his burning stomach. 

Bdubs loved Etho. They were best friends. Anyone with a pair of eyes growing up in Hermit’s Hollow a decade ago could’ve told you that. So it begged the question— why would Bdubs use whatever happened to Etho as tourist bait?

The real answer, Grian already well knew: he wouldn’t. 

Thus, he issued his first real decree of the night, one not even Scar could say no to. “I need a drink.”

Scar’s eyes followed him as he abruptly stood from the table and went digging in the cupboard beneath the sink. In a house with a million eyes, you had to learn to get creative with hiding places. Behind all the rusted piping and piles of cleaning supplies, the back wall was a thin plywood wooden panel that you could push back to reveal a thin crawl space in between, only wide enough for squirrels, rats, and booze.

Wisps of cobwebs tickled his fingers. He grasped blindly until his fingers met the cool, skinny neck of a bottle. He pulled it out and untangled himself from the sink plumbing. “Ta-da!” 

Scar plucked it from his hand, turning it over and inspecting the label. The way Scar studied it, you’d think he cared far more about what brand of bourbon Grian stole as a teenager than where the three missing people they were searching for had gone. 

“This is expensive stuff! You didn’t tell me you fit the drunken cop stereotype, G!” He teased with a tsk. “Drinking on the job, I can’t believe it.”

“Oh, please,” Grian scoffed, sweeping the cobwebs from his hands on his pants. “I was a delinquent, not a deadbeat cop. I stole it from my dad’s car and hid it behind the sink whenever I wanted to sneak out. What are you waiting for? Open it.”

Scar didn’t need to be told twice. He screwed the cap off and popped it open, pouring himself and Grian a glass of bourbon, neat. He handed one to Grian, a playful quirk in his brow. 

“Don’t give me that look,” Grian chided as he accepted the glass and took a sip. It burned going down, a reciprocal shiver racing up his spine. “It’s not like I’m doing any actual police work right now.”

“As opposed to the breaking and entering,” Scar teased. “ That was the real police work.”

“Shut up and drink yours before I do.” 

Scar laughed and wandered back to the kitchen table where he buried his nose in the box of tapes. By the time he sat back in a chair and set his glass down, it was already empty. 

Grian cradled his close to his chest, running his fingers over the bulky crystal glass. Another thing borrowed from his dad. While Grian had never been much of a drinker, being a teenager in Hermit’s Hollow essentially had ‘become an alcoholic’ in their job description. Whatever Grian stole and stashed away in that crawl space had always been more a matter of principle than anything else— he stole the most expensive bottles his dad had. Just to piss him off. Just to get back at him.

Get back at him for what, exactly, Grian wasn’t entirely sure anymore. All he seemed to be able to remember from being a teenager was all of the anger he didn’t have any place to put. He stood by the counter and turned the bottle round and round, watching the amber liquid inside slosh from side to side. With each turn and each sip of his drink, he felt his stomach grow warmer, his head grow fuzzier.

And, despite himself, he allowed his head to wander.

DO NOT ENTER VOID

Grian could see it, clear as day, each time he blinked. A dark, glossy cellar. The rusted handle. The bite of the cold on his skin, the yellow tape, the signs. Each inch of those dreams were branded into the backs of his eyes, into the deepest corners of his brain. It felt like the only part of him that was more terminal than his blood. But it was a dream. 

He glanced at his hands. Bruises healing and cuts bandaged. The soreness hid beneath the warming buzz in his belly.

He’d thought that had been a dream too.  

Nothing lived beneath Hermit’s Hollow. No matter how much it seemed like it did. Nothing lived beneath, because Grian couldn’t believe anything lived beneath— couldn’t believe his mother had been right about anything. Because if she was right about this town, she was right about him. 

He didn’t know which was worse— that she was right, that there was something wrong with him, or if she really was just insane, and Grian’s turning out the same way. 

Tragedy breeds tragedy. 

“You okay?” 

Grian blinked. Scar was suddenly right next to him, leaning against the counter and assessing him with the same pinched look he did the bottle. Standing idle in the kitchen, eyes glazed over, and knuckles around a glass of bourbon wasn’t the best look, but he’d certainly been caught doing worse. 

“Fine,” he breathed. He couldn’t bring himself to mean it. “I… We should get back to the tapes.”

Scar raised an eyebrow, it was his turn to be skeptical. “They aren’t going anywhere. We can take a break!”

Grian shook his head. “The faster we get through these, the closer we get to finding a potential connection between Pix and the other victims.”

There was more Scar wanted to say, it was obvious: his lips pursed, his fingers drumming on the countertop. But he quickly decided saying his piece wasn’t worth it. “Your call, partner,” he relented, a slow smirk crawling across his face. “But if we’re gonna sit here all night listening to spooky stories, we’re gonna have some fun”

He straightened up and plucked up Grian’s glass. Grian tried to admonish him, but Scar was having none of it. He hushed Grian as he filled both of their glasses a bit over half-way, which seemed incredibly overkill but if he was being completely honest, he felt a bit sick with the nerves and anticipation all brewing together in his stomach. The idea of drowning it out with some liquid courage was more than tempting. 

But then, he glanced at the clock on the wall. It was late, not necessarily by Grian’s all-nighter-pulling standards, but by societal colleague-staying-over standards. 

“You didn’t have to stay, y’know,” Grian said, an open door.

Scar titled his head questioningly at Grian. “Not like I’m gonna get much sleep after all these spooky stories,” he teased. And then took a sip of his drink, as if proving a point— he was here to stay. “Maybe I like good company.”

Grian couldn’t help but wonder if Scar was another twisted little present sent to him by Hermit’s Hollow. Not out of love, but as a way of torturing him. Gift wrapped and with a note pinned to his back reading, Can’t wait to see how you mess this one up! 

Grian looked away, his heart throbbing in his chest. Everything ached, from his head to his joints, to the spaces between his ribs. The kind of pain that wouldn’t kill you, but made you wish it would. Because how much better it was to live in ignorance than to want and mourn something before you ever even had it. 

His childhood, his siblings, Scar. 

So, with a new glass of bourbon and Scar’s surprisingly ideal company, the two of them returned to their places at the table and started going through the tapes in earnest. Grian still insisted they avoid the moon tapes— he wasn’t nearly drunk enough for those yet— but otherwise they listened through tape after tape. The Silent Sentinels and the soldiers they allegedly came from, the Gap in the Wall and the way everyone who passed through it always seemed to come back through changed, the Man at the Edge of the Woods, who never did anything to harm anyone, but more than a coincidental number of Hermits reported seeing in their dreams. 

Tape after tape, drink after drink, nothing changed in terms of the investigation. They learned a whole lot about the myths and legends of Hermit’s Hollow, but next to nothing about Pix as a person. He always talked to Iskall or Bdubs, or some random person he managed to pull aside on the street. Not one mention of Doc or Gem.

By the end of the night (or the beginning of the next morning, depending how you looked at it), they’d made a considerable dent in not only the tapes but also the bottle of bourbon. They were down to the final drops, and after a long-winded argument and a tense, riveting game of rock-paper-scissors (best of three), Scar got the last swig.

He nearly choked on it, rushing to flick the cap off and swallow it down. Half of it ended up sliding down his chin rather than his throat. 

“Charming,” Grian said dryly, sprawling across the couch cushions with his empty glass abandoned on the coffee table. He just barely fit, his feet sticking over the arm. It wasn’t the most comfortable, but it sure beat climbing up a flight of stairs or sleeping on the cement floor. 

Except Scar also considered it the lesser of sleepy evils, because he crawled in right after him. He wedged himself between the back cushions and Grian, nearly shoving him off.

Scar ,” Grian groaned without any bite. “You’re too tall. Get off.”

“That’s quitter talk,” Scar admonished. Somehow, he managed to make himself fit, though he was far too tall and almost hung off the ends in both directions. He made himself comfortable, his chest against Grian’s ear. Scar’s heartbeat throbbed and bounced around his head like his own personal disco party. 

Peppermint drowned him. Denser the fog, deeper than the bay, Grian sunk into it. It flooded his nose, slathered his tongue. It was so bright, so crisp that it hurt to breathe in. Swallowing a mouthful of raw toothpaste would’ve been less painful.

They lay for a moment, Grian’s heart beating as if it was trying to kill him and Scar breathing as if he had never been more comfortable. Grian should’ve yelled at him— they were partners in an investigation. And in all meanings of the word technicality , they weren’t even that either. Their ‘partnership’ dissolved the moment Grian was taken off the case. A weed pulled from a garden. There was no replanting it once the roots were already shredded. 

He was drunk. Bourbon sloshed in his stomach and numbed his brain. It smothered the parts of him that screamed this was wrong and leaned more heavily towards the kinder ones that told him he just might enjoy this. That he might even be allowed to have it. 

Scar, all pretty in gift wrap. Grian, too afraid to pull the ribbon. 

“It’s just a thought,” Scar said in a tone that insinuated it was anything but. He stretched an arm over his head, splayed his fingers wide. “But what if you’re looking in the wrong place?”

“There’s not many other places to look,” Grian said, praying to anything he could that the mayor hadn’t somehow managed to brainwash Scar. It was bad enough he was surrounded by kooks on all sides; it would’ve sucked to lose the one kook he learned to somewhat tolerate. “It’s not like we can interview the guy.”

“Do you read?” Scar tilted his head to look at him as best he could lying so close. “You look like you read.”

“I…” Grian cleared his throat. “Is that a compliment or an insult?”

Scar ignored the question. “Have you ever tried to read a book by reading only between the lines? The little blank spaces between each paragraph, each letter?” 

“No.” Grian frowned. “That’d be stupid.”

“Exactly. Stupid .” Scar reached for Grian’s hand; before instinct could grip the wheel and steer him clear, Scar pulled it up and forced Grian to splay his fingers as well. “Spaces don’t tell the story. The story tells the story. You’re trying to solve this thing by listening to everything except for what Pix is tellin’ you to your face.”

As he spoke, Scar turned Grian’s palm towards them and brushed his fingers over the smooth parts of skin. Around a single wing. 

“That’s…” Grian stammered, scrabbling for the pieces of his skepticism as if they were a part of a puzzle Scar swept off the table and sent scattering. His arm buzzed. “You don’t think some one took Pix, you think some thing took him.” 

“The right solution doesn’t always have to be the most complicated one,” Scar said. “Sometimes it’s sitting right there in front of you.”

“People hurting people, that’s not complicated,” Grian said, pulling his hand away. A trance broken. “It’s a given, Scar. They study that kinda thing. You’re kind of a psychologist, you should know that. People hurt people, and they always will. But… ghosts? Vampires? Monsters? That’s—”

“Do you know why you’re skeptical?”

The question struck Grian as odd. It was a very different question than, Why are you so skeptical? Which was the question Scar should’ve been asking. But instead he asked Grian ‘do you know’. Which meant Scar already knew the answer.

“I…” He didn’t know how to answer. The truth was he didn’t.

“You just want to believe it’s not real,” Scar said. “Because you’ve been running from something.”

Grian knew his face betrayed him. “Another hunch of yours?”

It was the first time Scar looked at him with bare-faced pity. That look he hated . The look everyone in this godforsaken town tossed his way like it made anything better. No, all it did was put a spotlight on every crooked, upside-down part of Grian’s family. And to see it on Scar of all people— this wasn’t any sort of mask. If it was, it was seamless. 

“There’s a lot of sadness in this house. I can see why you left,” Scar said, never once taking his eyes off Grian. “Why stay?”

“I don’t know…” Grian tensed from head to toe. What was Scar doing?

“What happened to you?” 

Grian’s bottom lip wavered. He bit it. “I'm afraid you’ll find out I’m not the good company you think I am.” 

“Try me.” 

“Why are you torturing me? If you can do what you say you can, haven’t you—” Grian made a vague yet desperate gesture around his head. “Don’t you already know?” 

“Yes, I know exactly.” Scar shrugged. “But I’d rather hear it from you.” 

He hesitated. 

This was it: Hermit’s Hollows’ magnum opus. The carrot dangling from the stick, the carpet swept out from under him. Only it wasn’t being swept, it suddenly plummeted thousands of feet into nothing. Nothing and nothing and nothing until he was flattened against the cold, hard pavement. 

“I left,” Grian said simply, because that was where he had to begin, wasn’t it? “I ran. I hated it here, so the first chance I got to split, I took it. Five years. It felt like a lifetime, but now that I’m back here I’m realizing— nothing changed. I didn’t change.” He licked his lips. There was nothing he wanted less than to talk about this, to let himself delve into the memories yet again.

But his tongue was loosened by bourbon and maybe the scent of peppermint was more intoxicating than Grian thought. He wanted to tell Scar as much as he wanted to sew his own jaw shut. 

Scar’s hand rested in Grian’s hair. “Why did you come back?”

“I got a feeling,” he said, then broke up in hoarse bouts of laughter. How stupid it sounded aloud— dropping everything, breaking his lease, selling whatever he could just to afford a plane ticket— all because of a feeling . A gut instinct. 

 

.. ...

THREE MONTHS EARLIER 

 

Grian always loved the color red. 

There were a lot of different shades of red. Each had their own purpose. When he was little, it was the firetruck one he loved the best. If the sirens didn’t catch your attention, the shiny perfect coat of red did. Red shirts, red shoes, red pens. Anything Grian could get his hands on— if it wasn’t already red, it would’ve been by the end of the day. A simple fix with a red permanent marker, really.

It only made sense the carpet fell to a similar fate. 

Only Grian hated this type of red. Lifeless, dull, deep. It repelled your eyes instead of drawing them the kind of red you knew only belonged in your veins, so to see it outside made your stomach roll. Grian’s stomach didn’t roll. There it was, dyeing the carpet. Houses didn’t bleed, did they?

“Grian?”

The carpet was ruined. It’d cost more money than he had left to hire someone to tear it all up, let alone replace it. He felt nothing, staring at that red, red, red, except for a pang of jealousy. What did he have to do to get a cushy job like that— how easy it would be paid to destroy things and tear them to bits. Maybe, then, Grian’d have enough to get new carpet. 

“Buddy. I know this is a lot, but I need you to—”

He wondered if the red sunk in deep. If it stained every fiber that made up the carpet at its base. If each strand itself was changed, was it the same thing it started as? He wondered if it stained the cement underneath. If it sunk into the soil underneath the house and fed the roots. 

At one point did it stop being a brown carpet and start becoming a red one? If the fibers were only stained red, were they then considered red ? Red. Blood. It wasn’t his blood. Whose was it then? A white sheet ghost, sprawled on the ground. Little yellow tents with numbers. Blood. His mom’s blood. She would be furious.

She always hated the color red. 

A clamor of voices gathered above his head like a distant stormcloud.

“Stop. Hey, back off. Give him space. I’ll talk to him.”

Maybe she did it for him, as she always claimed. It’s because I love my children, she said against his ear. I love my children so much that it scares me. I love your siblings so much. A hand resting against his nape. The gentle creak of an old rocking chair. I love him. You love him too, right? We have to protect him. Black eyes and teeth. 

“Grian.” 

Bright lights flashed outside. Each strobe poured in through the open windows with the summer night’s crisp air. Blue, then red. Blinding, all the same. Blue, then red. Red, like the way the carpet bled. Red, like the splatter on the wallpaper. Red, like the white sheet on the ground. The house looked like it was made to be draped in crimson curtains. Blue, then red. 

A hand touched his shoulder. 

His head was disconnected from the rest of his body. A balloon anchored by a flimsy string. He tilted his chin to look at the man. Eyes stricken with grief but lips screwed tight in a comforting smile. He wore an officer’s uniform. His badge flashed, reflecting blue, then red, then blue again. 

The chief. 

“Hey,” he said, knelt down on one-knee. “ Hey. Are you hurt anywhere? I need you to answer me, buddy.”

Grian blinked at him. “You’re kneeling in it,” he said, unable to feel his own mouth moving. But he felt the buzz in his throat and the hoarseness left over from screaming. “Did you know?”

Concern pinched the chief’s face, locked his eyebrows together. He looked down at himself. The blood stains threatened to lick at the knee of his pants where he knelt. 

“That’s okay,” he said gently, pasting his smile back on. “Nothing my washer can’t fix. Why don’t you come down with me to the station, yeah? We can both get cleaned up and chat.”

“I’m hungry,” Grian said numbly. He hadn’t eaten before getting on the flight. He licked at his chapped lips. They tasted like metal.

The chief’s face softened. “We can get you some food, too,” he promised, rising slowly to his feet and offering a hand to Grian. “Come on. I’ll get you anything you want.”

Grian stared at that hand from where he sat, cemented to the couch. Was that okay? Could he leave? It was as if his feet had grown roots and planted him there, stubborn and old as the white oak on Main Street. It buried him deep, in the red, in the dirt, in the house’s foundations. 

In the very blackness beneath that made Hermit’s Hollow what it was, in the blood that made him the way he was. 

 

-.-- --- ..- .-.

 

The station’s carpet had a little coffee stain. It was small and brown, and all Grian could do was stare at it, tracing the outline over and over again. Waiting for it to change, waiting for it to spread. Waiting for the color to deepen to crimson and start to stink of metal. But it never did. It was just spilt coffee. It was just an old, tattered carpet. 

Most stormy nights Grian spent knelt in front of the living room TV. When the antennas broke and the signal broke, a harsh white noise would flood the screen and Grian’s ears. He loved to reach out to touch it; it was tangible, the loudness and the nothingness all at once. Fuzzy needles prickled the skin of first his fingertips, then his palms and his wrists, then all the way up to his shoulders. The longer he sat, the more numb he grew, like his shoulders and his fingers no longer belonged to him. They were extra pieces. They didn’t feel like anything at all.

There wasn’t a TV in the station. It wasn’t storming. But Grian felt the white noise filling him to the brim. Everything tingled: his arms, his feet, his head, his chest. Clumsily, he laid a hand over his chest. Just to check if his heart was still beating. But he couldn’t feel a thing through all the white noise at his fingertips. 

It should hurt more, he thought. He should hurt more.

“Here.” Across the table from him sat the police chief, who had introduced himself as Impulse. He pushed a small, steaming paper cup toward him. “You’re in shock. Drink this. It’ll help.” 

Grian’s nose scrunched as he fumbled for it and gave it an experimental sniff. “What is it?”

“It’s tea,” the chief said, sipping his own cup as if that was all it would take to convince Grian to give it a try. “Chamomile. It helps settle the nerves.” 

“I prefer coffee,” he said, setting it back down. “Black.”

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.” 

Grian went back to staring at the carpet. It was easier than anything; it was easier than feeling, than wondering what the hell had just happened, than wondering what he was supposed to be doing. The endless ‘what now?’ in his head less a grounding gravity and more like quicksand. An anvil tied around his ankle. Anything to sink him deeper and faster. Anything it took to kill him.

He tapped his feet. The stain wasn’t getting any larger. The pins and needles weren’t spreading any more. They were receding; he could feel the lingering heat from the steaming cup of tea on his fingertips. He could feel the incessant hammering in his chest and ears. He could feel the gnaw and growl of his stomach. The less space the numbness occupied, the more room there was for fear to creep in. 

There was a warm burger wrapped in paper sitting in front of him. It smelled of rotting meat. He was starving. He wanted nothing less than to take a bite. 

His breath came shaky, curling his arms around himself. There was a blanket over his shoulders. He fumbled for the edges, pulling it in tight. “Where are they?” 

“They’re safe. They’re at the hospital.” Impulse folded his hands in front of him on the table. “Just to get checked out. Your sister sustained a small cut to her face, but otherwise they are unharmed.” 

Grian nodded. “Good.”

“You should really let me take you to go get checked out, too,” Impulse said, the words soft and forceless as if they’d bruise Grian like a peach one day short of going rotten. 

“I want to go home,” Grian said, possibly for the first time in his life. 

“I know, Grian. I know. But now isn’t a good time,” Impulse hedged, and when Grian closed his eyes he saw the flashing red and blue lights all over again. With each word from the police chief they pulsed and strobed. “It’s an active—” The chief stumbled over his own words. 

Grian felt blood on his hands that didn’t belong to him. “It’s an active crime scene,” he said tersley. “You can say it. That’s what it is. I’m not stupid.”

He rubbed his palms raw on the pants Impulse had leant him from the lost and found. They were a size too big and hung heavy around the ankles like shackles. Shackles. Blood.

“I didn’t think you were,” Impulse said. “There are just a few things that need to happen first.”

Cold realization drenched him head to toe. “Am I under arrest?” he asked. 

The chief’s eyes widened and he shook his head and hands. “No, no , Grian it’s— Your brother’s already given his statement to one of my deputies. We know you didn’t do anything wrong. But we need to talk more about what happened tonight.”

“I don’t know what happened,” Grian said quickly, eyes threatening to burn themselves to tears. “They’re dead. They’re dead for good, aren’t they?”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Impulse said, and something about his voice said his heart was heavier with its grief than Grian’s was. “I’m sorry, I just— I need to ask you some questions, Grian. It’s about your sister.”

 

..-. .-

 

In all 200 years of Hermit’s Hollow history, there were a total of ten documented kidnappings, nine cases of arson (all within the last fifteen years), 572 disappearances, 103 (alleged) mysterious deaths, and a, now, a singular murder-suicide. 

The official statement detailed the story of a disturbed woman driven by her psychosis to kill her husband and then take her own life. The two parents were survived by their three equally-as-disturbed children. This, at least, was the conclusion drawn by the statement Jimmy gave the deputy at the hospital. He’d seen it, the crazed look in his mother’s eye, the way she stabbed their father several times in the gut. 

Grian spent so much time daydreaming about the day that he’d leave Hermit’s Hollow behind that he never once anticipated becoming embedded in its history. Losing a piece of himself to it. Because the moment tragedy struck on this soil, that grief was no longer yours. Not in the ways that mattered; the vultures took it and twisted it into whatever gruesome little story they wanted and left you to pick at the most bitter, painful bits. 

They whispered about it, about his sister, about his brother, about him . They whispered in each other’s ears and cupped their hands over their mouths as if Grian hadn’t been able to hear them clear as a whistle. 

On Main Street.

The Solidarity House. Bad soil, bad house, bad blood.

At the Grab n’ Go, a bottle of brandy the sole prize in his basket.

Folks had it coming I bet. Lady of the house was a real witch, the Salem kind. She was poking around in all kinds of places she didn’t belong. It was only a matter of time before she snapped.

At the bank, making a devastating withdrawal on his savings to pay for a pair of caskets and for a man to dig a six-foot hole in the ground. 

I heard that the boy’s got the devil in him. The youngest one. 

Did you hear all that yelling out on Main Street? The girl was screaming her head off outside the station last night. She says it’s the boy who killed ‘em. You ask me, it’s only a matter of time before they haul her upstate. 

At the funeral. Jimmy his solemn shadow, drowning in their father's old suit. Pearl didn’t show.

I reckon she’s right. Always something fishy with those Solidarity kids. 

Don’t be silly. The Weeping Lady’s driving her mad, that’s all. 

Maybe she’s the one who did it. Like mother, like daughter. Stabbed the father and made it seem like the mother slit her own throat. 

Grian left the funeral in hand-cuffs, his nose bloody and his eyes blinded with tears. The bastard deserved it. It was difficult to spread rumors with a broken jaw. He was hauled into the back seat. The chief was anything but rough when it came to Grian, but he felt properly chastised with his aching hands wrenched behind his back and a little black grate locking him in the back like a bad dog with sharp teeth.

But Impulse didn’t drive away with the sirens on. He didn’t read Grian his rights or threaten to throw him in the holding cell. Instead he sat silent and still in the driver’s seat, his breath no more than a disappointed whisper as he clenched and unclenched his fingers around the steering wheel. 

“You have to stop,” he eventually said, a glimpse of pained eyes in the rearview mirror.

“They’re the ones that need to stop,” Grian said. “You don’t know what they’re saying about me. About my family .”

“People gossip, Grian. It sucks, but it’s not illegal. It doesn’t give you the right to assault—”

“They’re calling my sister crazy and my brother a murderer , Impulse!” Grian snapped, pressing his face as close to the grate as he could without biting them. “They’re autopsying my mom and dad’s body and using it for their own fucking entertainment.”

Impulse said nothing.

He slumped in the backseat, pressed his forehead to the glass. Outside Jimmy’s face was red-splotched and teary, arguing with a deputy and trying to get to the police cruiser. If he wasn’t careful he’d end up in the back seat with Grian. Which was probably what he intended. But Grian needed Jimmy to be better. One of them had to be. 

“I can’t do it, Impulse,” he whispered, his voice betraying him by cracking in two. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. Jimmy’s a mess. Pearl can’t stand to be in the same room as him. I’ve spent every penny I have left on stupid pieces of rock with my parent’s names engraved into them, and I’m not even sad that they’re dead… What is wrong with me?” 

“Nothing,” Impulse insisted. He could barely hear his voice over the dull rumble of the engine. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You suffered a tragedy. There’s nothing wrong with letting yourself feel it. It just takes time. Everyone does it at their own pace.”

“Time?” he chuckled weakly. “Time heals all wounds, does it?”

The chief surprised him and shook his head. “No, nothing can heal something like that. But time does help it scar over. Eventually, the pain subsides and it gets a little easier to deal with.”

Grian didn’t think he was capable of easier. It was a class he flunked, if he’d taken it at all, a report card with a gap or a glaring red F scrawled in ink. Some hurts are too deep, and sometimes they never heal because you keep picking at the scabs trying to form over them. You picked and picked and you bled and bled. Because you didn’t know how it felt not to be in pain and you were too scared to find out. 

“How about this? I’ll take you home,” Impulse said. “You’ll get yourself cleaned up, get a change of clothes, and then we’ll go back to the station and see about starting to get you back on your feet.”

Grian stared at the back of Impulse’s head. “How?”

“I’m the chief. I’m good at pulling some strings when I see fit.” He turned to look at Grian through the little grate, his face as kind and soft as ever. “You graduated from the academy last year, didn’t you?”

Mute with shock, all Grian could do was nod. Impulse didn’t say anything else. He turned his key in the engine. 

Grian rested his head against the window. He stared outside at the foggy, overcast morning. The green grass. Unfilled holes in the ground. Jimmy’s tears and defeated slouch as he watched the police car drive away, and the deputy that steered him back towards the service by the shoulders. The tombstones stood like candles stuck in a birthday cake. 

Happy Birthday, Grian.

..- .-.. -

The lights were on when Impulse dropped him off in the driveway, after all was said and done. 

The house on the hill never truly felt like a home. He often found home in the little, less permanent things. The cold water up to his ankles on the beach. The slimy scales of Atlantic Cod slipping through his fingers. His father’s smile and Jimmy’s laughter. The posters in his and Pearl’s shared bedroom. None of those things lived or breathed in the house anymore.

But the light was on. The carpet was pulled up. The wallpaper had been painted over. Someone waited inside for him. It wasn’t home. But maybe he could pretend it was, just for tonight, when things seemed marginally lighter now that his parents were buried and he had something to work for. 

The door shut behind him. The house groaned in its greeting. He turned to hang up his coat. The peace hadn’t even actualized yet, but it was a potential thing. Grian should’ve known better than to think it could’ve lasted, even for one blissful second. 

Glass shattered somewhere deeper within the house’s maw. The single sound alone was enough to freeze Grian to the floor, but the next shattered the surface of the ice. A strangled cry, pained and desperate— “STOP!”

Jimmy.

Grian tore through the foyer, the runner carpet folding up and tangling underneath his feet. Like the house was reaching out and trying to pull him down, to slow him down. He fought tooth and nail against it, like clawing himself out of abyssal waters. He sprinted into the living room, the momentum of his desperation crashing him into the bookshelf. His heartbeat swept up in the violent current. He didn’t understand what he was seeing. Not at first. 

He stood in the doorway. His hands hung uselessly. Jimmy lay splayed on the cold, cement floor. His face was beet red but his lips were colorless. His legs kicked and flailed, his hands clawed. A body was on top of him. Long brown hair, a red jacket, their father’s eyes. Except they were no longer their fathers— they were wild and white at the edges. They drowned in hate. 

She sat atop Jimmy’s chest. Her hands wrapped around his neck and squeezed the life out of him, all the blood drained from her hands. White fingers around a red, swollen throat.

Pearl!

She didn’t turn. She didn’t stop. Jimmy continued to flail and kick, each jerk of his leg weaker than the last. Grian didn’t think. He didn’t breathe. He simply moved. 

Instinct subverted every other panicked instinct in his body. He was across the room and on Pearl in seconds, trapping her head in the crook of his arm. He yanked her back by her neck. She screamed as much as she could with her throat compressed, clawing at Grian’s bare arms. Her nails dig in deep, leaving red scratches along the entire length of his arms, but he does not budge. Not when Pearl kicks and screams and begs to be let go. 

His father put his hands over Grian’s. “You gotta hold onto them tight if you want to keep ‘em in your grip. Or else the fish’ll get away. You wanna impress your brother and sister, don’t you?”

“Grian!” she choked out, twisting her entire body side to side violently, the same way the Atlantic Cod thrashed in his hands when he plucked them out of the water with his bare hands. Her jacket slid off as she clawed her way out of Grian’s grasp and crawled back towards Jimmy. 

“He did it! It was him!”

Grian grabbed her ankle and dragged her back. She lashed out. One strike hit flat against his bruised, bandaged nose. Tears and pain blinded him.

“I have to,” Pearl gasped. She continued her crawl towards Jimmy’s stirring body like someone dying of thirst in a desert. As if she didn’t do what she intended, she’d be struck down where she stood. 

Tears burned fiercely in Grian’s eyes as he picked himself back up and crawled after her. How unfair it was, to have to pick between the two people he loved more than anything. His mother always made it seem so easy. Maybe he was more like her than he cared to admit, because as difficult as it was, he knew what choice he had to make. 

So he made it.

“Stop! Pearl!” Grian all but sobbed, wrestling her until she was on her stomach on the cement. She tried climbing to her hands and knees but Grian threw his entire body weight on top of her. He craned her arms behind her back and pinned them there, keeping her in place with his hands on her wrists and his knee in the small of her back. 

“Let me go!” Pearl gasped for air. “Grian, please, listen to me !”

“Stay down,” Grian snapped, breathless and shaking to the bone. “I swear to God, Pearl—”

Jimmy coughed. He sat bolt upright, gasping and choking on the air as he hunched over and grasped at his swollen throat. Only when he caught his breath did he raise his gaze to look at Pearl and Grian. He didn’t cry. His face betrayed nothing but numbness, his eyes dark and disconnected.

“Jimmy,” Grian gasped. “Tim, you alright?” What he wouldn’t have given to be able to r each for him across the room, to hold him close and press a kiss to the center of his forehead, if only just to feel the heat of his skin and seek comfort in the fact that he was alive. Hurt , but breathing. 

But Pearl kept thrashing beneath him. Grian couldn’t move. Because he knew if he did, Pearl would kill him. Grian knew it better than he knew anything else in his life, more assuredly, and the finality of it terrified him. The longer he sat atop her back, feeling the desperation seep out of her skin and into his, the less steady he could hold his breath. 

And Jimmy still wouldn’t look at him. He only stared at Pearl with those empty eyes, so dark that Grian thought they almost looked angry. Wordlessly Jimmy picked himself up off the ground and to the phone in the foyer. 

Everything ended with that one phone call. For the second time that week the house was flooded with police lights, and yet again Grian found himself sitting on that couch, staring at the cold, gray cement as Pearl was hauled away in handcuffs and Jimmy swept up by paramedics. He hadn’t reached out for Grian, and Grian hadn’t thought to reach first. 

He simply sat. He waited until the worst of the commotion died and the rest of the house emptied out. Until he could stand and walk without feeling like the most vital organs hadn’t been punched clean out of his ribcage. He wandered into the kitchen. A cake sat in the center of the kitchen table. White, fluffy frosting with strawberries lining the upper rim and base. The candles, all twenty-five of them, had all burned up already, blobs of red wax dripping down the sides of the cake and drowning what was left of the words written across the face of the cake in red, looped icing. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

--. .-. .. .- -.

Chapter 6: VI. bury your doubts

Summary:

Grian looks for more answers, for better or for worse.

Chapter Text

.. -

VI.

 

How plain the cement floor looked now, compared to a carpet so saturated with blood it bubbled up through the fibers when you stepped on it. It was by miracle alone the foundation underneath hadn’t been stained. The only mercy spared for the Solidarity family.

Only it might not have been his only mercy— because of how wonderful Scar looked in front of him. Even with his face pinched in worry, in pity . An expression he couldn’t stomach on anyone else’s face, but on Scar’s it was something he could actually have felt. Everyone else wore it like a stiff Halloween mask, the plastic fresh and foul-smelling. It clung to your tongue every time so much as breathed. They wore it, because it earned them the ‘ good-person-points’ they so desperately wanted to earn, as if the tragedy of Grian’s family was an arcade game and they hoped to exchange their points for a decent piece of gossip.

He could see the victory screen when he closed his eyes:

CONGRATULATIONS!

YOU’VE WON: (1) GRISLY MURDER-SUICIDE FACT! 

CASH IN NOW!

But for a man of many masks, the phony Halloween one didn’t seem to be in his repertoire. Scar looked at him like he was a person first and a story second, his pity bare-faced. A glimpse of truth flashing from beneath the brim of his hat. It was all he wanted for weeks: a shred of truth, no matter how small. But now that he had it, Grian didn’t know what to do with it. 

“What happened to her?” Scar asked, head propped on an arm braced against the back couch cushion. Sometime in the story they’d returned to sitting, the story too sobering. 

“It was obvious to anyone that something inside her was broken.” Grian picked at the frilly tassel bits that hung off the corners of the pillow in his lap. With a sigh he closed his eyes and said, “They had her committed. Big fancy boarding place upstate. That’s where most of my parents’ life insurance is going.”

“And here I was thinking you were just in the middle of renovating.” Scar turned his face to the side, eyes sweeping the living room and fingers tapping on his chin. 

If Grian wasn’t so focused on not bursting into tears he might’ve appreciated how nonchalant Scar was about the entire ordeal. He sat there, lounging and chatting as if Grian hadn’t torn open the deepest, least healed wounds right in front of him. As if Grian wasn’t here beside him on the couch, bleeding all over his open palms.

Grian chuckled, a sound wrought from him. “If only I could afford to put some new carpet down.”

“Let me guess, he doesn’t know?”

“Who, Jimmy?” Grian met Scar’s eye. He huffed. “What’d be the point? What, dead parents and a sister who tried to kill him isn’t enough for one kid to worry about? He thinks I’m just slacking off. I guess he’s not entirely wrong. I’ve been a bit preoccupied.”

He looked down at his hands. He imagined them slick with blood— his mother’s, his father’s. He imagined what things would have been if they were different, if he had been here when they needed him? Just like Grian to come in once the mess has already been made.

“You asked me why I stay?” He returned his gaze to Scar’s, startled to find him staring right back at Grian with that same bare-face vulnerability. “I stayed for him. He lost his entire family in one week. What was I supposed to do? Disappear and leave him on his own? Sure, he’s an adult now, but Jimmy’s always been the baby. A couple of years doesn’t change that.”

Scar turned to face Grian completely, tentatively reaching out and resting a hand on top of his kneecap. It didn’t linger, it didn’t venture. It was a simple, steady pressure that Grian didn’t realize he appreciated until it was there.

“I’m a terrible brother,” Grian admitted quietly. “Maybe Jimmy would’ve been better off if I stayed away.”

“That’s not true,” Scar said immediately. “You’re a great brother—”

“You don’t even know me.” 

“Don’t I?” 

Grian faltered. Scar was raising one of his eyebrows at him in that typical, I know more than you, fashion. But this was worse than anything any of his highbrow classmates managed through their gazes down their noses. His ventured dangerously across the thin border separating smug and psychic territory. The kind of look that made Grian want to acquaint Scar’s perfect teeth with his battered knuckles. What was one more bruise? 

Then, Scar said, “You lost your family too.” 

Oh, he really wanted to punch him now. 

Grian stared back at him, a beat trapped in his throat so thunderous that he feared it was his heart that he was about to throw up. 

Working his cheek between his teeth, he said, “Yeah, well, that’s just it. My parents died, my sister cracked, my brother hates me, and I can’t feel one inch of it. What kind of monster does that make me?” 

Finally Scar’s pity-mask cracked, revealing a small smile underneath. “Not a very menacing one,” he said.

Grian scoffed. “You sound really full of yourself right now.”

“What’s there not to feel full of?” With the bravado of a peacock showing off his ridiculous feathers, Scar puffed out his chest. 

“You’re drunk,” Grian argued. 

“And you’re running away.” 

“No, I’m not.” He grit his teeth. “Not this time.”

“It’s all gonna catch up with you eventually, y’know.”

He seriously doubted that. All he’d ever been good at was running away. It was impossible for things to hurt you if you could simply outlast them in a sprint. He might’ve settled down in an apartment, attended school, adopted a cat, but that didn’t mean the running ever stopped. It was constant motion, constant white-noise to fill the glaring gaps in his brain that demanded his attention. Gaps that sucked everything down like gaping black holes. 

He couldn’t stop moving for a second. Not if he didn’t want it to catch up.

“And what if I just don’t let it in?” he challenged. Because no matter how good of a point Scar was trying to make, there was no way Grian wouldn’t give him hell all the while. “What then?”

“If you were drowning, you would be able to just not let the water in?” 

“Good thing I’m not drowning.” A smirk traitorously tugged at the corners of Grian’s lips.

“Yet.” 

With a single word, it was as if the tides had changed. The moon no longer pulled the waves further from shore and instead pushed it closer, the strongest kind of magnetism. The anger ended somewhere and something else far more irritating began, the urge to punch him simply to have the excuse to touch him at all. 

And as if he already knew— because he somehow always knew— Scar closed the distance. He shifted and leaned, a stretch of an arm, a craning of his neck, until he was inches from Grian, until their knees touched, until he was dangerously close. The stench of peppermint was so overwhelming that spraying glass cleaner directly on his tongue would’ve been less painful.

Though, what would’ve hurt worse? The suffocation of proximity or whatever emptiness losing it would leave behind? A hole punched straight through a piece of paper. Grian didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. He chose the third option, whatever it was, wherever it was hiding.

Grian clenched and unclenched his jaw, fingers tight and colorless around the pillow. “Sounds like you’re talking from experience,” he said. 

Scar shrugged. “I’ve been around. I learned you can only pretend for so long.”

“When does your timer run out, then?” Grian cocked his head to the side, a suspicious quirk to his brow. “How long is so long in make-believe-psychic years?”

“Unlike dogs, it’s actually much longer than you might think,” Scar chuckled. This close, Grian practically felt the sound in the back of his own throat. “Long enough.”

He couldn’t take it anymore. “I really do hate you,” he said. 

He meant it and he didn’t mean it all at the same time. Just like the way Scar was too close and Grian was too desperate, too afraid. Two halves torn down the middle by what he wanted to believe and what he knew, instinctually, to be true. He wanted to hand himself over to the humiliation that burned hot through him in the wake of his secrets being stabbed and left to bleed for Scar’s prying eyes. Because that way, his anger would’ve been justified. He could’ve said he hated Scar and meant it through-and-through. 

If he did, he could’ve punched him like he wanted the moment he curled his fist in the front of Scar’s shirt. As if tearing it and him apart would reveal the cards he kept so expertly tucked away against his chest. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. He needed something else far more. That was always his problem, wasn’t it? Wanting.

“You sure about that?” Scar whispered, his breath fanning over the bridge of Grian’s nose. He moved in an inch. 

This was dangerous— wanting. But maybe he liked it. Maybe he could take it for himself, just for a night. 

“Definitely.” 

If anyone was going to be responsible for his downfall— he’d rather it be himself. So he yanked Scar forward by the front of his shirt. Scar’s sharp intake of breath ghosted over Grian’s lips before they met. He melted into the kiss, peppermint flooding his eyes, nose, and mouth, so strong it burned. But the burn was a candle compared to Scar’s hands, warmth rivaling only the sun against the side of his neck and jaw and holding him firmly in place. 

They were drunk. Grian was broken. Scar didn’t know what he was getting into. It was a terrible mistake. Maybe the worst he’d made in the last three months, worse than beating Joel to a pulp, more than making Jimmy angry at every turn. 

If given the chance, Grian couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t make it again. 

 

.. ...

 

Grian was fully prepared to get arrested. It was the worst possible outcome of what he was about to do, but with his luck, that meant it was also the most likely. So in preparation, he prepared a little speech for when he inevitably faced Impulse at one of the station’s holding cells. Said speech involved an intense amount of groveling (a necessity), hands steepled in prayer, and a truckload of promises to do better in the future. Not to mention some light-handed pity-mongering. It wouldn’t be a truly pathetic ploy for undeserved forgiveness without it.

Armed with this contingency plan, he had followed Joel inside the library. There was no pretty girl with him; he was alone fishing out a textbook and notepad from his backpack. Grian watched from a distance at first, stationed at a table across the room with his nose buried deep in a newspaper dated three days prior.

Even from this vantage, it was difficult not to take a dim view of his handiwork. The purple bruising extended from the underside of Joel’s left eye across the bridge of his nose. A sickly, green-yellow splotched the edges, a bit of leftover swelling tacked on as a treat. He would’ve looked better off if a kindergartener had taken a box of permanent markers to his face. 

Grian’s fingers twinged with sympathy. The worst of the cuts were starting to heal and the dull ache began to fade, but it never fully went away. 

It was not lost on Grian how awful an idea it was to confront the kid you beat to a pulp while sleep-walking. No amount of speeches would fully spare him from Impulse’s judgment. He’d come down on Grian like a hammer if Joel so much as whiffed Grian near him. But what was Grian if not a paragon of a bad idea, bundled up into one person?

Besides, some things were worth risking. Some things were too important.

He folded up the paper and tucked it under his arm. And before Joel could notice, let alone protest, he slid out the chair across from him, sank into it, and snatched the notebook from him. 

“Oi! What the—” The color drained from Joel’s face at once. His face dropped like a curtain at the end of a play, except no one came out on stage to bow and wave their goodbyes because the audience was throwing tomatoes and jeering very loudly. “Bloody bastard. Give that back!”

Shhh! You’re in a library,” Grian shout-whispered, holding the notebook up and away from Joel’s reach. “I can’t,” he said, drenching his voice in remorse and hoping it came across somewhat authentically. “I just want to talk.”

“You’re holding my homework ransom? You’ve got to be joking,” Joel scoffed, pointing at the swelling of his shiner as if Grian somehow missing it was anywhere within the realm of possibility. “The nerve you’ve got coming up to me after what you did. Let me guess, you’re here to finish the job? You didn’t get enough hits in?”

“What? No, absolutely not,” Grian sighed, hiding the notebook in his lap and pinching the bridge of his nose. “I shouldn’t have done that to you, Joel. I’m sorry. There’s no excuse.”

“Great,” Joel said scornfully, stabbing his pen in Grian’s direction. “Now that you’ve taken care of your own guilt, you can give me my shit back and leave me the hell alone.”

“This isn’t about any of that,” Grian insisted, standing his ground. Joel was mostly bark and only partially bite. “I could really use your help. I know I don’t deserve it, but it’s important. It’s about Jimmy.” 

A satisfied little smirk flickered across Joel’s lips. “My help?” he echoed. “Like hell I’m helping you with anything. Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you tried to kick my bloody teeth in!” 

“I said I was sorry!” It took a total of sixty seconds for Joel to wear Grian’s patience to the breadth of a single hair, which on paper could’ve been categorized as nothing other than an incredibly sensitive trigger-finger, but as far as Joel was concerned, Grian considered this a record. 

He wasn’t fantastic at the apologizing thing; now more than ever he wished he’d gotten more practice. Scar might’ve been a good person to consult for this kind of thing. He would’ve practiced with him if Grian had the courage to ask. But it was more than just courage he was lacking these days. 

Joel crossed his arms over his chest, the angry flatness of his mouth revealing he was nothing if not displeased.

Grian brought his hands up onto the table, baring his palms. “I get you’re angry. You have every right to be,” he said, digging deep for the conflict de-escalation courses he knew he had to have taken in the Academy, but likely slept through too many to take anything home from them. “But this is bigger than you and me. A lot of people could be in trouble, so I really need you to just suck it up—”

“Let me punch you in the face.”

Grian blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Let me,” Joel pressed a hand to his chest. “Punch you.” He used the same hand to point at Grian. “In your stupid face.” 

“That’s wildly inappropriate,” Grian muttered.

“Says the guy who nearly broke my nose,” Joel scowled, sitting back with his arms crossed and chin raised. A display Grian recognized because he’d seen Jimmy do the exact same. A vain attempt of appearing tougher than he actually was, his shoulders puffed up and chin jutted out. It did little but remind Grian of how different they all were, despite only five years of separation between them. 

Another sigh. He seemed to be sighing all the time these days. He rubbed a hand over his face, eyeing Joel dubiously. “You’re serious?”

Unfortunately for Grian, Joel was deadly serious. “That’s my price,” he said. 

“Fine.” It was a contract signed by grit teeth and pure reluctance, but a contract nonetheless. They shook hands across the table. As much as Grian hated to admit when he’d been beaten, he didn’t like to go directly against his word. Whatever information he could glean from Joel was worth a potential shiner, he decided. It was the least he could do, considering the state of Joel’s face. An eye for an eye. 

With that handshake, it was like talking to a completely different person. All contempt drained from Joel’s face. Instead he beamed, full to the brim with his elation. He cracked his knuckles once, twice, as if they just couldn’t wait another second to get to know Grian’s jaw. 

“Can I ask my questions first?” Grian asked wearily.

Joel lifted an eyebrow. “Hit me with your best shot.”

Grian cleared his throat. If he was going to get punched in the face over it, he might as well have dug straight to the point. “You worked the night of September 30th. According to the punch-cards you were there later than usual,” he said. “What were you doing?”

“You’re not doing yourself any favors disproving your stalker status, you know that?” Joel huffed. 

“I’ll have you know I got those records perfectly legally.” 

“What, it’s illegal now to work at my job?”

“No, but you happened to be working for the Flying Fish the night its captain had last been seen. Not even to mention the fact that you were never hired for that crew to begin with. Forgive me for having my suspicions,” he said. “I’ll ask again. Why were you there that late?”

Joel shifted in his chair, much of the smugness subdued. He tapped his pen back and forth like a seesaw against the table top. “I was covering for Jimmy,” he said, as if it was obvious and he didn’t understand why Grian was asking. 

It was most certainly not obvious, and Grian didn’t have so much as a clue to what he meant. “If you’re going to punch me, Joel, I really need you to not lie to me.” 

“I’m not lying!” Joel stood straight out of his chair, uncaring of where it clattered to the ground behind him. A few disgruntled faces turned their way, but Joel preemptively shut them up with a rude gesture.

Grian cringed and shielded his face with his hands. The last thing he needed was another reason to have his name making the rounds in Hermit’s Hollow’s gossip rings. “Calm down,” he hissed, patting the desk. “Sit. Please.

Reluctantly, Joel grabbed his chair and righted it before sinking into it. “Fine,” he huffed. “But I’m not lying.”

“Jimmy doesn’t work for the Flying Fish,” Grian argued. 

“How do you know?”

Grian scoffed. “I think I know where my little brother works. Besides, his name wasn’t anywhere on the punch-card records.” 

Joel’s face suddenly shifted. Like the bay’s waters he could fluctuate rapidly between deathly stillness and thrashing storminess. This look leaned far closer to the former, eyebrows raised, mouth fallen open to a silent gap. “You’ve not got a clue, do you?” he mumbled.

“About what?”

“Jimmy’s been picking up extra shifts with the Flying’s crew for months now. That red-eyed guy, Doc, kept scaring off the high school kids that worked tying knots and running mail back and forth. They were short-handed. Offered a good amount of cash to anyone willing to help them out during the graveyard shift. Under the table, so probably not in any of your fancy books. But you didn’t hear that from me!”

Grian frowned. 

Jimmy hadn't told him any of that. Though he supposed there was no reason for him to; Grian had left. Not so much as a check in the mail or a phone call. Just because he was here now didn’t mean Jimmy would or needed to divulge every corner of his life to Grian. He’d abandoned Jimmy and Pearl the first second they could, but in his defense, they were always so much better than he was. He never doubted for a second that they would be okay without him. 

“Why would he do that?” he asked quietly, lips numb and hands going fuzzy from the wrists down. 

“What’re you asking me for?”

“Where was Jimmy, then? The night of the 30th.”

Joel just shrugged. “Dunno. He’s been pretty flaky after everything with Pearl and your mom. He said he had stuff he needed to take care of and offered me twenty bucks to cover for him. I took the deal. Wasn’t like I had anything else going on, and I’m saving up for a Walkman.”

“Right.” Grian tried to remember how to breathe, though with every passing moment it was starting to grow difficult. As much space as his younger brother occupied unwillingly in Grian’s mind, he couldn’t trap himself by worrying about him now. He could deal with Jimmy later. He needed to milk Joel for all the information he was worth before he decided he was getting bored and just punched Grian to get the whole ordeal over with. 

“Did you see anything strange that night? Did you see Captain Iskall at all?”

“I didn’t do anything to him, if that’s what you’re trying to ask me.” Joel’s face twisted up, like he was about to either start screaming again or, more horrifying, burst into tears. He figured with Joel the two were more or less the same; he’d been barking at Jimmy’s heels since they were kids, rambunctious enough to have bloodied knees and holey jeans for the both of them. 

Still, Grian only had so much room for one Jimmy in his life. He wasn’t looking to take on a second. 

“That’s not what I’m insinuating,” he said. “But something did happen. The more information I have about what happened around the time of his disappearance, the better chance I have at finding out whoever is responsible.”

For the first time, the shift in Joel’s turbulent expressions steered close to fear. “You don’t think he just up and left?” His voice wobbled, the tapping of his pen stalled. “You think someone killed him?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Grian said. “Like I said, the more information I have, the faster I can figure it out. So tell me what you say. Even if it was something small, even if you think it’s not important.”

Whatever Joel was going to say next,  he worried between his teeth as if fishing something from between them with a toothpick. It wasn’t the face of guilt so much as it was the face of fear. Of realizing you’d made a huge mistake. 

“You’re not recording this or nothing, are you?” he asked, only resuming when Grian shook his head. “I didn’t see the captain. Not once. I only saw one other person that night. Red-Eye-Dude. The first mate. What’s his name…”

Grian’s brow furrowed, an attempt to conceal the spike of excitement that punched through his stomach. The first inkling of something worthwhile. “You mean Doc?”

Joel nodded. “He was there around eight I wanna say. He didn’t do anything really, I’m not trying to say he had anything to do with it,” he hedged. “He just went into the cabin. I dunno, I assumed he had papers or something to sort through. First-mate stuff. I just man the ropes, man, I don’t deal with any of that other stuff.”

“Did you see him come out?” Grian pressed.

“No. He was still in there when I left…” With the shake of his head, Joel shook his hands out like a chill had overcome him. The pen dropped on the wooden table, slowly rolling down the warped surface until it caught against the edge of Joel’s textbook. “Can we quit talking about this now?"

There was still so much Grian needed to know, but there was little else Joel would be able to give him. Finally, the first solid pieces of evidence Grian had started piecing together, albeit loosely at best. There was only motive for one, potentially two of the cases. Pix and Doc could at least be connected in some way, but Gem was still a particularly irritating outlier. 

Regardless, it was the first sense of direction Grian had had in months. Ren’s reports and Doc’s personality testimony place him at the Double O’ Diner the night of Iskall’s disappearance, around eight PM. Also according to both, after a quick meal he promptly returned home for the night and wasn’t seen until the next morning, where he discovered Iskall hadn’t reported to work for morning weigh-ins.

That meant someone was lying. And for as little as Grian seemed to be able to trust himself lately, he didn’t think it was Joel. He’d known him since he was a little kid. Joel was a lot of things— temperamental, argumentative, hot-headed, arrogant, the list could go on— but with certainty Grian could say he wasn’t a liar. At the very least, not a talented one. 

Joel was telling the truth. Doc had been at the docks that night. Grian knew it as well as he knew anything he was willing to bet money on. 

“No… No, we’re good,” Grian said absent-mindendly, clambering to his feet. “I appreciate your cooperation.” He turned towards the door without as much as a second thought.

“Hold on a bloody second!”

He staggered to a stop. He still had Joel’s notebook tucked under his arm. “Oh,” he chuckled, tossing it back onto the table. “My bad. Returned unharmed, as promised.”

When he tried to turn on his heel again, Joel slapped his hand on the table and rose to his feet. “Oi! Don’t try to scam me! A deal’s a deal!” 

He cracked his knuckles. 

Right. How could Grian have forgotten? 

 

.. -.

 

THE WEEPING LADY

Property of P. Riffs

07/21/1979

 

[Clicks]

[Begin Recording 00:00:15]

[PIX]

I’ve been in Hermit’s Hollow for just over a month now. To say the town is drowning in history and folklore alike would be doing it a great disservice. I’ve never met this many people so tight-lipped yet so starved for gossip. Gathering statements is somehow the easiest and the most difficult thing to do. (hesitates) …I may have gotten in over my head here. 

[Cassettes clatter against the table]

[PIX]

I’ve recorded twelve tapes already. And I’ve only spoken to a handful of people. I have no way of knowing which ones have the most merit and which ones were total fabrications, but my current method is to try to find commonalities between the Hermits’ stories. And there are quite a few. 

The one I hear of the most often, without a doubt, is that of the Weeping Lady. The name’s certainly simple and concise enough. But due to a rather (clears throat) impressive amount of eye-witness accounts throughout Hermit’s Hollow, I’ve decided getting my hands dirty is the best option to finding a consistent story. I didn’t expect to find much. Most towns don’t keep records or testimonies of ghost sightings. But I should’ve expected this town would surprise me—

[Cup falls over]

[PIX]

Oh, no, no, no!

[Click]

[Begin Recording 00:10:30]

[PIX]

(sighs) A perfectly good cup of tea wasted. 

[Papers shuffle hastily]

[PIX]

(clears throat) As I said, reports of the Weeping Lady are impressive to say the least.

Without a proper archival building it can be tough to get my hands on old newspapers and microfilms, but I’ve found myself in connection with the Mayor recently. Mayor Mumbo Jumbo— an apt name, considering the nonsense he always seems to be spouting— was kind enough to allow me access to the small number of files that were preserved from the fire that took down the archival building a few years ago. He had told me: “This town has a rich history just waiting to be showcased. Who am I to keep that hidden?” Then he said something about the Fog already having that department covered. Not sure what he meant by that. 

According to old papers extending back to the 1950s and available police records, the Weeping Lady sightings have been reported approximately 60 times in the last ten years. More sightings predate this, but for the sake of consistency in the reports and simplicity of numbers, I’ve chosen to focus my attention on eye-witness accounts in that time frame. The history, we’ll get into later.

By my count, the Weeping Lady is one of the oldest and most commonly reported apparitions in town. Most citizens, if the reports are anything to go by, are afraid of her. Terrified, even. 

[Pages turn]

[PIX]

Aha! Here we go. I am not at liberty to disclose (coughs) exactly how I acquired this report, but in my hands is a transcribed copy of a statement made by a Hermit’s Hollow citizen just two months ago. For the sake of anonymity, I will not share their name. But for my own records, the statement is as follows:

TRANSCRIPTION OF INTERVIEW

Property of Hermit’s Hollow Police Department & Department of Public Safety

Interviewer: Impulse V

Interviewee: [REDACTED]

 

[REDACTED]

I know it sounds crazy. I sound crazy. I’ve never seen a ghost before— not in the way a lotta people around here like to say they have— I had no idea what to do. Most of it’s a load of crap anyway, they teach you to be scared of it happening, of the monsters under the bed coming for you, but they don’t teach you what to do when it actually does. Most of it’s a load of crap. At least, I thought it was. 

[IMPULSE]

Where were you when you first spotted her?

[REDACTED]

I didn’t see her exactly. Not at first. I heard her… You know when you hear crying in the woods they tell you to turn around and run? Because if it’s not some kind of bobcat or mountain lion, it’s something a whole lot worse. I don’t live near a forest, but my house overlooks the water. That’s where everyone says they see her, right?

I thought an animal was hurt. Maybe it got washed up by the shore. Thinking back on it, I don’t think any living thing, no matter how hurt, could make a sound like that. It was this awful wailing. I heard it out over the water, but it sounded like it might as well have been in the room with me. Hell, she might as well have been screaming in my ear. 

[IMPULSE]

You live on the water? Could the sound you heard be some kind of horn or siren from a fishing boat?

[REDACTED]

I’ve lived there my whole life. You get used to hearing that kinda stuff. I’ve never heard anything like this. It wasn’t human, but it wasn’t man-made either. I can’t describe it. 

[IMPULSE]

Did you tell anyone else about what you heard?

[REDACTED]

… No. I still live with my parents. I wanted to tell them, but it’s complicated. My mom has a history with this kinda thing, and I didn’t want to upset her or trigger one of her episodes. Or even worse, I didn’t want to prove that she was right about it the whole damn time.

[IMPULSE]

Your mom has heard it before?

[REDACTED]

For years, it feels like. All she talks about is the Weeping Lady and how she’s coming to take her family away. So I kept it to myself and tried to ignore it. But night after night for about  two months now she would start crying outside my window. Then, I saw her. 

I heard the crying. I was fed up so I threw open my window and looked out at the shoreline. But it was so dark and foggy I could hardly tell where the water began and my own backyard ended. But even then I could see her. Fog clung to her, trailing after her, like she was made of it and it was leaking away with each step she took. She was wearing this tattered white dress with a long train. Her skin was pale too. It was impossible not to see her, how much she stuck out. Like a lighthouse. She was the only thing I could see.

[IMPULSE]

What was she doing?

[REDACTED]

Well… nothing , really. She just stumbled down the shoreline, crying to herself. It was softer now that I was looking at her, but I could still hear it. Like she was crying on my shoulder instead of shouting at me. 

I watched her for what felt like hours. She paced back and forth for a while. I tried to look at her face, I worried for a moment maybe she was real and she was hurt and looking for help. But no matter how hard I looked I couldn’t make out a single feature of her face. It was just a sheet of white blanketed by dark, tangled hair.

And eventually, when the sky started to lighten, she turned her back to me and walked straight into the sea. I watched her wade out until the black water closed over her head, swallowing her up. 

[IMPULSE]

You said the crying was keeping you up at night. Is it possible this was some kind of stress-related dream?

[REDACTED]

I still feel her. All the time. Ever since I saw her, it’s like she’s constantly watching me, no matter where I am. It’s not like my mom says, she’s not— she’s not trying to hurt me or my family. She’s trying to warn me. But I don’t know what she’s warning me of.

END TRANSCRIPT

[Clicks]

[Begin Recording 00:30:11]

[PIX]

(whistles) As disturbing as it is, this anonymous reporter is not alone. No matter the report, they all share the same similarities: a woman dressed in white, long and thin with dark hair that obscures her face, hearing her for days prior to seeing the apparition, all seen pacing the shoreline.

Having said that, I’ve done some digging. As exhilarating as eye-witness testimonies are, I’m a sucker for history. And boy , is there plenty of it to go through. 

Using what limited information I could glean from the few surviving records in the city hall, I’m able to piece together some semblance of a story. The oldest document I could find suggested the apparition was sighted as early as the early 1800s, predating the civil war. It’s important to note a lot of these paranormal stories prop up during times of war, famine, or plague. It’s the real, tangible things people fear most. In times of helplessness, it’s easy to start making up bigger, more mystical evils to be afraid of instead.  

But once the sightings started, they seemingly never stopped. A few years, at most, would go by before another person reported seeing her spirit. In 1962, a local paranormal researcher overtook office as the city’s archival head and discovered records from the mid 1600s, around the same time Hermit’s Hollow was founded as a new European colony. There is no evidence of this, however, as all the original documents were lost in the fire. All I do have is this researcher’s personal reports. 

According to her report, these earliest documents were letters written by the colonial governor to be sent back to the King and assembly, detailing the successes and tribulations faced in the new land. In one of these letters, the governor wrote of an unnamed woman who cracked under the pressures of the struggles the settlers faced in the brutal winters. She wailed in the streets that her child had been stolen by “fairies” in the dead of night. Several other settlers followed her to her home, only to discover her child was safe in bed, sleeping soundly. She tried to insist that the child in the crib did not belong to her, but they dismissed her. Not too long afterward, she drowned the “fake” child in the bay and threw herself in after it. Both bodies were discovered the next morning.

Like any other story here, it became commonplace conversation quickly. It turned into an old wives’ tale; That those mothers visited by the Lady are driven to the brink of insanity and influenced to harm their own children. Others, however, claim her to be an omen. A warning. Those who saw her— their children had been replaced by something else. She sought to warn those doomed to befall a similar fate, hopefully before it was too late.

[Papers hit the desk]

[PIX]

(groans) Whatever the case may be, the story is a tragic one. Whether or not this woman truly existed, we’ll never know for certain. There’s no way to verify the story. All the primary sources are, unfortunately, lost. But the people of Hermit’s Hollow believe in her. They have for, allegedly, hundreds of years. From what I can gather they fear this one little ghost more than any other story, monster, creature, or curse I’ve dug up. I’ve asked plenty of people; most won’t let me get a word past Weeping Lady without fleeing. Even the fishing captain, Iskall, seems tight-lipped about—

[Stopped Recording 01:03:44]


Grian nearly cracked his head open like a rotten egg on the sidewalk. A small puddle beneath his feet nearly killed him, his foot skidding across it and sending him into a heap of limbs on the ground. He caught himself with his hands, scraping them and his knees raw, which was better than concussing himself beyond belief. But even a concussion would’ve been better than this: the portable tape deck cracked down the middle where he’d been holding it, the tape inside busted and black film hanging out like entrails. 

Clicking desperately at the buttons on the side didn’t seem to be doing anything to fix it. No sign of life, not so much as a click. Grian huffed and tossed aside his headphones. To gather himself and let the worst of his angry-embarrassment pass, he sat on the pavement and focused on catching his breath. His shirt stuck to his chest and armpits with sweat; his hair the same to his forehead. It was early morning, which meant the cold was harsh at first but a treat after an hour’s worth of running. His legs burned, a satisfying kind of pain. 

He sat and picked at small pieces of loose gravel and rock from his palms. There used to be a time where he could do this, promptly burst into tears, and it would be somewhat socially acceptable. Not even that, his dad would pick him up and peppered his face with an assault of little butterfly kisses until the crying turned to frantic giggling. He didn’t need the kisses necessarily, but what Grian wouldn’t give to be able to just burst into tears and have no one bat an eye. 

He’d ruined the cassette and his tape deck in one fell swoop, just as Pix mentioned a person of interest. Like everything else in this goddamn town, Grian wasn’t a stranger to the Weeping Lady. She was the end-all-be-all for Hermit’s Hollow— knowing about her was more important than knowing the national anthem or which war broke out first. 

But they only ever taught her present. The form in which you had to fear her, the apparition, the crying, the omen. The past was never even in question. Grian had never once heard the story of a living, breathing woman pushed to the edge by something she couldn’t understand: whether that be supernatural or psychological.

And the report Pix had read? It left a sour taste at the back of Grian’s tongue, like he had mistaken a mug of brackish water for coffee this morning and downed the entire thing in one go. He knew what it meant. 

He sat on a curve of road overlooking the cliffs, which sloped sharply down to meet the water where it licked at the black shore that was made up more of rock than it was sand. Not a wisp of fog in the air, he could see everything unobstructed. In his coin-flipping between hatred and indifference, Grian forgot how pretty Hermit’s Hollow could be. As dreary and dull as it often was, it had a charm to it that on more than one occasion left Grian’s stomach twisting. He hadn’t realized he’d missed the smell of salty spray and the feel of the wind carrying over the bay through his hair until he’d moved far away from it all. Where the closest he’d get to a beach was a page in a magazine. 

He wasn’t far from home, either. His house sat atop the hill, a Silent Sentinel of its own right.  From here, even on the ground, the house looked so small and insignificant. It looked like any other house on the block, any other house Grian had passed on his way out of Hermit’s Hollow for the first (and what he had hoped to be the last) time. It was just a house. It had only four walls and a roof.

The wrongness was hidden inside of it, deep down where no one but he could see.

Breathing it in deep, in case he forgot how to, Grian turned to watch the push and pull of the water below. The rocks that stood there were likely as old as the Hollows, if not older. They’d been shaped and altered by the town the same way everyone else in it had been. The oddest sort of baptism, where you lost pieces of yourself instead of reclaiming them. For Hermit’s Hollow was hungry, and its waves ate whatever they could catch.

Which was why his hair stood on end the moment he spotted a girl down by the rocks, ankle-deep in rough waters. 

Grian scrambled to his feet. He stood as close to the edge of the cliff as he could without risking the damp soil giving out from underneath his feet. What was this girl thinking?

“Hey! Get out of there!” he shouted with his hands cupped around his mouth. His voice carried over the sound of crashing waves and rolled down the cliffside. “Hello?!”

She did not turn around. She simply meandered along the water’s edge, and then, Grian heard it. 

Crying. 

Of course. How could he have been so stupid?

She wept as she crawled along the shoreline. She hugged her too-long arms to her skinny body. She cried, as if it was punched out of her, with every staggering step. The water lashed against her, but she persisted. Even over the roaring of the waves, Grian heard her. Her voice slipped into his ears, seeped into the crevices of his brain. 

A hard pinch on his arm revealed nothing to him. There was no Fog to hide what walked right before his eyes; no nightmare to wake up from. 

He was seeing things. He was so stressed he was bound to crack, and hearing Pix read his sister’s words was the hammer and chisel to the broken pieces. He was bound to fall apart. He was bound to follow in his family’s footsteps. No matter how far he ran, he would’ve never been able to outrun that very simple fact.

It will catch up to you eventually.

It took every ounce of willpower to so much as lift a foot. He wanted to run, but he couldn’t. A compromise: he took a step back. 

As if she’d heard him, she stopped in her tracks. She turned her head up toward the sky, toward Grian. Between the matted locks of black hair her face was a sheet of pale skin. No eyes, no mouth, no nose. A white stone made smooth by centuries of tumbling around in moving waters. 

 

-.-- --- ..- .-.

 

“Jeez, did someone die?” Scar said as he sank into the booth across from Grian. “What did I miss?”

Grian peered up at him through his fingers. It was warm and safe behind the shield of his hands; he didn’t need to worry about anyone gawking or staring. But he had no choice but to lay down his arms when Scar reached across to grab his wrists. 

“Yikes,” Scar winced. “How’d you earn yourself a shiner? I only left you alone for a day!”

“An eventful day,” Grian grumbled, tugging his hands free and burying them into his pockets. He slumped forward, head hung over the diner table. 

“Do I need to invest in some bubble wrap?” 

“No.”

“What about packing peanuts?” 

“Scar. I think I’ve officially cracked,” he said, his words falling into the empty void of his coffee cup. 

He hadn’t been to church since he was little, nor had he ever gone into one of those claustrophobic booths for a confessional, but if he had, he imagined it’d feel quite like this. Less reluctant honesty and more an awful admission. One so awful you had to hide behind a mesh grate so you wouldn’t have to see the priest’s face twist up with distaste. 

Grian had been on the other side of that booth, except the booth was a table, and a sniveling sinners were reckless youths or mindless criminals. At the end of the day, they weren’t too different from one another. Grian had seen many-a-perp break down in tears after a few hours in a little windowless room. All it took were the right conditions. The right balance of comfort and stressors. To extract the right confession you had to know what kind of environment to create. You could dress it up pretty too, offering food or coffee or a box of tissues. Like a worm tacked onto the end of a fishing hook. 

Thankfully Scar wasn’t a priest. Though he was ordained by the Vatican, apparently, so maybe that counted. Thankfully he wasn’t a cop, then. Grian would be completely screwed.

The conditions were there: Hermit’s Hollow was about as isolating as towns came. Jimmy avoided him at every turn, he’d been exiled by Impulse, and now the only company he hoped to keep was a box of glorified fairy tales and a masquerading con-man whom he, against his better instincts, was starting to enjoy. 

Said con-man propped his chin on his hands and watched Grian carefully across the table. “Yeah, I don’t think so. I’ve seen crazy. Hate to break it to you, but you aren’t it,” Scar said with a gentle, lopsided grin; it was the most earnest one in his arsenal. 

It was a bit much, really. All that effortless charm piled onto the looming realization that Grian had officially lost his last marble. Maybe he’d lost it the other night, when he tasted peppermint instead of smelled it. 

Which brought him to the second stressor: discomfort. The room was cozy, but it was unfamiliar. You offered coffee, but it was stone cold and bitter. The world gave you a man with pretty eyes and a sharp smile, but made him into everything you hated and sat back to watch you squirm. Nothing to knock Grian off his uneasy stilts of normalcy by tying an energetic, eccentric psychic to his hip.  

He idly stirred his coffee. For the first time in his life he felt too queasy to take a drink. 

Scar chuckled, head cocked to the side. “What, you don’t believe me? We’re keepin’ up this little skeptic act?”

Grian only curled his lip.

“Fine. How can we prove that you’re not nuts? Should we break out some Worcestershire tests to be safe?” 

Grian clamped both hands over his mouth, scrunching his eyes shut. For a moment he feared it was because he was going to throw up. But, curse him, it was a burst of laughter threatening to bubble out of him with all the violence of retching. 

“What?!” The flush of Scar’s cheeks deepened about five shades. “Heh, I— What’re you laughin’ at? What’d I do?” 

A few heads turned, but Grian couldn’t worry about them when he felt like his sides were about to split with laughter. Maybe he really was losing it. This was about all the confirmation he needed— laughing at Scar’s non-joke like it was the funniest thing he’d heard in years.

Dabbing at the tears in the corners of his eyes, he said, “I think you mean a Rorschach test, Scar.” 

“What? No.” The corners of Scar’s lips turned down. “No, I’m talkin’ about the funky ink blotty tests. It looks like little black butterflies. They’re supposed to tell you about your brain or something.”

Grian snickered. “Exactly. They’re called Rorschach tests. They’re named after the guy who came up with them.”   

“But, no, I—“ Scar shrunk a bit in his seat, nervously scratching at his jawline. “And what did I call it?” 

“Worcestershire,” Grian said. “Completely different thing.”

As if someone tugged on his chain, Scar’s face sprung to life like a lightbulb. “Oh! Like the sauce?” 

“Or the English county, but—“ he hesitated at the sight of Scar looking at him expectantly, his teeth showcased in a sheepish grin. He sighed. “Yes, Scar, like the sauce.” 

Scar did what Grian could only classify as some kind of victory dance in his seat. As ridiculous as it was, Grian’s cheeks hurt with how wide he was grinning. Even when he tried scrubbing the expression off, it clung to him. Scar’s jovial uncanniness was infectious; he’d almost forgotten why he came here in the first place. 

“See? You’re fine,” Scar said at the tail end of another burst of laughter. “I don’t think a crazy person knows how to laugh like that.” 

“... Like what?” He feared the answer. 

Scar’s smile wobbled. Not like he was struggling to keep it from dropping, but like he was fighting  to rein it in. Grian didn’t need to be psychic to know the direction his mind was headed. 

“Are we gonna talk about the other night?” he asked in lieu of a proper answer. Or maybe it was an answer, just not the one Grian expected or wanted. Regardless, as quickly as the cloudburst of laughter had swept him off his feet, Scar dropped him back onto cold, solid earth again. But he didn’t land on his feet. He landed on his back, hard. It knocked the wind right out of him. 

“Scar,” Grian sighed, rubbing his unswollen eye. He struggled for anything else. That was all he was left with— Scar’s name— because what else were they meant to talk about? It happened. Neither of them could do anything to change that fact. So he decided on a particularly tactful, “We were drunk, Scar.” 

“You kissed me because you were drunk?” There was no accusation in Scar’s voice. 

Grian stared at him helplessly. It wasn’t fair. He had a moment of weakness. Maybe for once in his life he wanted something to go right, wanted something to be done on his terms. He wanted to forget. He wanted to drown. He wanted Scar. 

But he knew he couldn’t have him— he shouldn’t.

Grian couldn’t bear to look at Scar, so he turned his head out the window instead, watching the Fog start to roll in from somewhere far out on the water. “What do you want me to say?” he asked. “That I liked it? That I like you?”

“I certainly wouldn’t turn that down,” Scar said.

Beads of rain clung to the window. He traced one of them with a finger, tapping it until it started to roll down again. “I don’t know why I kissed you,” he lied. “...I was being selfish.” Less a lie.

“Aren’t you gonna ask me how I felt about it?” 

Grian curled his fingers into a fist, pressing into it until it smudged the glass. “No. I can’t,” he said. “It’s like I told you the other night. I’m not good company. If you haven’t figured that out by now, you’re not half the psychic you think you are.” 

“Or maybe you’re not half the liability you think you are.” 

Scar rapped his knuckles on the table, forcing Grian’s gaze to move to him. His face was firm, stone-like. It was an odd look on a guy who sprouted enough titles to rival a children’s birthday party clown. Grian nearly burst into tears on the spot— why did Scar have to like him? Why did Grian have to like him back?

Anything else he could’ve said was swept up in those few little words. The acknowledgement that Scar could’ve seen every broken little piece inside of Grian and deem him worthy of something anyway. He curled his hands around the coffee cup, just to have something to squeeze, to have something to burn him. To remind him he was awake. Even if he was losing his mind. 

“Tell me what happened,” Scar insisted instead, gesturing to Grian’s bruised cheek. A gentle tilt of his hand across the table that was halfway between an invitation and a cop-out. 

There was nothing Grian wanted less. Seeing what Grian spent years convincing himself was only the product of attention-seeking and a few loose screws was enough of a shock; he wasn’t sure he could handle reliving it. Whether it be emotional shock or public humiliation — Grian was a deadman either way. 

But he sat here for a reason. Of all people, he sat in a booth across from Scar. He sought his company, which truly should’ve been the first red flag that Grian had long blown his top. Maybe because he was a desperate loner with nowhere else to turn, but maybe it was because Scar had told him to stop trying to read between the lines. Look for the answer that sat directly in front of him. 

Grian raised his eyes to look at Scar. And he told him everything. 

His pragmatic scuffle in the library. Joel’s fear, Doc’s double alibi. Then, Pix’s tape. The woman on the beach, the quiet wailing that somehow reached his ears over the sound of roaring waves. Reliving the memory alone made his ears ring, the skin of his arms rise with goosebumps. If he closed his eyes long enough, the memory would slip out into something far more tangible. He swore he could still hear her, somewhere far off, crying through the Fog. 

What he couldn’t tell Scar, however, was that he’d heard this story before. Not from his school teachers or the local paper, nor from chatty cashiers who liked to gossip more than they liked to do their job. He’d learned it much younger. After all, it had destroyed his family. It was the Solidarity way to make your first enemy before your first friend. 

His mother’s enemy became their enemy. A demon no one but her could see, let alone fight. The Weeping Lady turned into a simple ‘her’ over the dinner table, a name that shouldn’t be said around. Just for everyone else’s peace of mind.

It was her fear that haunted the house. There was never any one ghost. Not to them, at least. There were never any demons or monsters hiding under the bed. There was only her. 

A hand brushed his hair from his face. It was supposed to be gentle. Grian didn’t move. He didn’t want to upset her more than he already had. His cheek throbbed. 

The rocking chair groaned quietly. He felt her heartbeat erratically thumping against his back as she rocked the two of them back and forth. She hummed into his ear. It was supposed to be comforting. He wanted it to be comforting. 

“Mom,” he croaked. 

“I’m sorry, baby,” she lied. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s okay, it’s okay.” 

“Grian.” 

He blinked. Scar’s hand sat over his, the touch uncertain. A troubled expression flickered across his face.

Grian wanted to pull away. Why couldn’t he pull away? 

“Scar,” he echoed. 

“Yes?” 

You’re acting like Mom. All he could see was Jimmy’s angry face, filled with hatred in a way that couldn’t have belonged to his brother. All he could hear was Pix’s voice reading his sister’s words back at him through the tinny crackling of a cassette player. 

“Your gift. It’s a gift of sight, right? You can See things or whatever.”

Scar nodded slowly. Scar’s face was careful; it struck Grian as odd. He would’ve thought he’d be overjoyed to hear Grian humoring him for once. 

“I don’t always pick what I get to see,” he said. “Think of it like this— I’ve got 20/20 vision, and the rest of you are legally blind. I can see what hides in plain sight. I simply See things you can’t, or rather, don’t want to. Impressions, feelings, what things are made up of— hunches. They filter in and out, I don’t always get the one I’m lookin’ for. But one thing never changes: they’re always right.”

“So what do you see when you look at me?” Grian twitched his fingers against Scar’s palm, daring himself to hold it. But he couldn’t move past that single raise of his finger. “What do you See?”

It was time for Scar to put his money where his mouth was.

“Hm.” Scar cocked his head to one side, his lips curled up in a thoughtful slant. He made a display of stroking his chin, leaning out of his seat to catch a proper head-to-toe glance of Grian. He struck Grian as some kind of posh tailor, eager to get all the seams and sharp edges of his silhouette just right. 

“You’re a tough read, but…” He reached across the table with both hands, holding his palms up in a silent invitation. Hesitantly, Grian offered his own. Then, Scar took his hands, lifting them up and placing them side by side, palms facing the ceiling. The crease of angel wings met in the middle and Scar traced it perfectly. He didn’t know if it was part of Scar’s psychic process or if he was just looking for an excuse to touch him.

“I see a lot of courage, a lot of love. The angel wings mean strength, protection. You think you’ve failed as an older brother, but the proof is right here carved into you,” he said carefully. “But something’s stuck to you. I don’t know what, but it’s dark and heavy, and you carry it everywhere. I also see a lot of anger. You’re angry it’s there, you’re angry you can feel it, you’re angry you can’t ignore it. But most of all, you’re afraid of it. There’s nothing you’ve been more afraid of than this thing.”

Grian stared at him, eyes wide and mouth dry. You’re doomed, Bdubs had said. The moon foretold a death that's already happened. Which meant Grian was either a dead-man walking or he died alongside his parents that night and nothing worthwhile was left in the aftermath. A fate signed in his blood, shackled to his ankle by this big awful thing he could feel but couldn’t see. 

There was something wrong with him. Grian knew it. It wasn’t the town, it was his own flesh and bone. Finally all those sensations of DANGER made sense. There was never any clear direction because it was coming from inside of him the whole time; a faulty bomb doomed for self-detonation. All it took was a nudge, was the snipping of the wrong colored wire. 

He looked to Scar in the closest show of begging he’d ever give. He didn’t believe Scar was real, but he wanted to. He wanted to, because if Scar told him that he could see something good in him,  then maybe Grian would have believed it too. Maybe if Scar said it,  it’d become true. Like the spoiled milk or the tapes trapped beneath creaky floorboards. 

“Will it ever let me go?” He asked, afraid of the answer. 

Scar shrugged. “That’s up to you, isn’t it?”

 

.... --- ..-

 

Just as he always did, he found Jimmy on the roof. 

Outside Jimmy’s bedroom window was a flat landing on the roof. One step too far, you’d go plummeting to the cold hard ground beneath, but if you kept yourself tucked against the wall enough, you could sprawl out and stare at the starless sky for hours with the sound of the shores to lull you to sleep. It’d been easier when all three of them were little; they could fit side by side on the roof with no issues. 

But they were bigger now, and even with one less body Grian precariously balanced on the edge as he moved to make room for himself. All the years they spent in this house, it was the one place Jimmy could ever think to hide where mom and dad wouldn’t find him. It was the one place the house wouldn’t look in on him. But Grian managed to find him every time. It had been his favorite hiding spot first, after all. 

He wedged himself next to Jimmy, letting his head rest against his shoulder and dangling one leg off the ledge. Jimmy didn’t say a word to him, but for now that was fine. Grian had too little and too much to say all at one time. Simply lying out here for the first time in years was enough to seize his chest in something he might’ve called homesickness if he were anywhere else. 

Neither acknowledged the faint drizzle and the unending silence that separated the two of them more than the nonexistent inches. As painful as the distance was, it gave them breathing room. It made it okay for Grian to come lay beside him, even after everything they’d been through, even after the awful words they’ve hurled at one another throughout the years. Because they were brothers. They always would be. 

How had he messed things up so badly? The question churned and grew like a tumbleweed in his brain the longer he lay there, listening to the all-too-conscious rise and fall of Jimmy’s chest. He was tortured by it, the realization: they lived in a house haunted by things both living and dead, by themselves, by what they were and what they could have been. 

Grian would never be a big brother. Scar said he already was one, but how could he believe that when the evidence to the contrary was sat directly next to him? Evidence was everything, and all Grian had from Scar was his word. His frivolous, pitying words. 

The most he’d ever done for Jimmy was take a hit. It wasn’t enough. He wasn’t enough. Not in the way Jimmy wanted him to be. Just as their mother was never going to be Grian’s mom. No matter how much he wanted her to be. 

“I have to ask you something.” 

Jimmy didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. Grian felt every muscle in his body tense. Waiting for a blow that wouldn’t come. 

“How did you know Gemini Tay? I saw your name on her report.” 

A quiet sigh escaped his little brother, a sound so subtle and quiet Grian would’ve missed it if he hadn’t been holding his breath. “I thought you weren’t gonna find out,” he admitted quietly. “It’s not what you think. She was a friend of Pearl’s. The three of us would go to the school to toss a ball around. We knew something was wrong when she didn’t turn up one day.” 

“You never told me about her,” Grian said, trying his hardest to not make it sound like an accusation. The last thing he needed was for Jimmy to get defensive and shut down. Because once he did he was more secure than any vault on the eastern seaboard. 

Jimmy huffed. “Maybe if you were around more I’d have the time to tell you stuff.” 

“Like how you’ve been picking up shifts for the Flying Fish? Did you really think I wasn’t going to find out about that one?” 

“We need the money, don’t we?” Jimmy fired back, folding his hands behind his head and using them as a pillow, elbowing Grian in the bruised cheek in the process. “But I’m the only one keeping secrets. Okay.”

Grian sighed, worrying about his lower lip between his teeth. Maybe if there were actual stars overhead he could focus on counting those instead of Jimmy’s breaths, waiting for the moment he finally gave into the anger no doubt simmering underneath the surface. In the stars, at least, he’d have lightyears to shield him from everything. Or to shield everything from him. When he eventually exploded, nothing else would get hurt in the blast. 

“I didn’t want to worry you,” he said. “We’re fine, we’ll be fine. I don’t need you working yourself to death to pick up slack on bills.”

“I’m not a kid anymore.” Jimmy still didn’t look at him, but he felt the pointedness of the words alone. 

“No, you’re not,” Grian agreed. 

Then, he surprised Grian. “Have you visited her at all?”

He stared at the side of Jimmy’s flat face for a moment. “No,” he muttered. 

“You’ll have to forgive her eventually,” Jimmy said. 

Grian licked his lips. “It’s not her that I can’t forgive.”

He wished Pearl were here. When he shared a room with her, things were far simpler. He never needed to go crawling in his parents’ bed when he had her. She held him tight when he was scared, bravely threw open the closet door when he swore up and down he heard it whispering to him, or mouthed back to it if it made Grian cry.

On the worst nights, the nights where it was less ghosts haunting the house and more the house haunting them, she’d tuck him under her chin and clamp her hands over his ears. Fill your lungs up, she said. His breath would shake and tremble in his chest. The world would feel like it was ending. And let it pour out. She ran a hand through his hair. She would protect him.

A house without her was just that: a house. He thought perhaps the slow decay of a home to a house had begun not with his parents’ death, but with Pearl’s betrayal. Those hands around Jimmy’s neck, the desperation in her eyes. All of it had been brewing, and he was somewhere else. Somewhere ignorant and safe. 

Without her to supply his courage like a needle directly to his vein, he needed Jimmy. The only pair of eyes more fearful than Grian’s. The only set of arms that ever reached out to Grian for comfort.

And even that was hurtling away from him at lightning speeds.

Tragedy breeds tragedy. That was what Mayor Jumbo had told him in the Double O’ Diner, wasn’t it? Grian understood it now; he hadn’t meant circumstance. He’d meant blood. He’d meant Grian’s blood. 

He sat up then, crossing his legs and staring out toward the foggy shoreline. He didn’t look at Jimmy, because when he said what he wanted to say, he didn’t want to see the way Jimmy’s face changed. 

“You know I love you, right?” Grian asked the horizon, hoping the dark sea would wrap up his words in the waves and tuck them out of sight. Like hiding from prying eyes under Pearl’s blanket.

Jimmy continued to breathe, steady and forced. “I know,” he whispered, though he sounded far from believing it. 

 

... .

 

The rocking chair moved, slowly, back and forth. The rhythm would’ve been comforting if it weren’t for her nails digging into the soft skin of his upper arm. No matter how hard he cried she wouldn’t let go, so he learned to keep quiet. He learned to bite the pain into his lower lip, the impressions of teeth in chapped skin a secret plea. 

“I’m so sorry, baby,” his mother said. She didn’t mean it. She never did. If she meant it she wouldn’t have made him do it in the first place. She wouldn’t keep saying it. 

But still she kissed the top of his head. Grian hated it. He hated it but he leaned into it, like a plant starved of the sun too long it learned how to bloom in the moonlight. Her hurting him was better than her not touching him at all. 

“I don’t want to,” Grian whispered into her bosom, hoping this time she’d listen to him. 

“Yes you do, baby,” she cooed the words into the crown of his head. The chair creaked as she rocked forward and back. “It’s scary, but that’s okay. It’ll be okay.” 

Tears sprang in his eyes. Maybe it was fear he felt, burrowing a hole deep inside of his stomach. Maybe it was fear that made his vision spin, made his ears ring. Maybe it was fear— maybe they were both cursed with it. 

“Mom—“ 

She shushed him, petting his hair. Her nails graze against the skin behind his ear. “You’re going to do this for Jimmy. We have to protect him.” 

The door stared back at him. Blank. Taunting. 

Grian’s fingers twitched. He stood in the cellar. The walls bled saltwater. The cold made a new home in his skin. Scratches on his upper arm sluggishly bled to his fingertips. He’s been here before. Deja vu a sharp blade buried to the hilt between his ribs. Each breath, each rise and fall of his shoulders a painful reminder of the familiarity of it. Whatever it was, it sunk its teeth deep in Grian’s flesh. 

He wanted it to let go. He wanted to let go.

THEN DO IT. 

The door stared. He stared back. The voice in his head belonged to himself, but it also belonged to his mother. It belonged to Scar, but it also belonged to Impulse. It belonged to Pearl, but it also belonged to Jimmy. The voices of everyone he knew and would meet overlapped into one large thunderclap that yanked him toward the door handle. 

He reached for it. Maybe it’d take away the pain. Maybe it’d subdue the fear. Anything to make this hurt less. Maybe this was what his mother wanted from him all this time; maybe he just had to wait for it. 

OPEN IT.

Chapter 7: VII. and fall asleep

Summary:

The last time Grian hurt this badly—

Well, that was just it. He wasn’t sure there ever was a time. Not like this, not so deeply.

Notes:

Content warnings: violence, blood, discussions of death/murder, horror elements

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

.. -

VII.

 

The last time Grian hurt this badly— 

Well, that was just it. He wasn’t sure there ever was a time. Not like this, not so deeply.

Glass bit into his thighs. With each agonizing pulse of his heart, his left arm throbbed; the bone was likely broken. Every inch of him ached and buzzed, the adrenaline unsure if it wanted to subdue him into numb nothingness or turn him into a live wire. Either way, he was a ticking time bomb. He felt it building. A metal band around his throat, hot and tight and more painful than any other aching scratch and bruise on his body. 

But it wasn’t any of this that hurt the most.  This pain was more visceral, like a piece of his lung had been ripped right out of his chest. What was there left to do after the world had ended? After your world ended? It was a pain not even the smell of peppermint could curb, though he was beyond grateful it was there at all. 

Scar sat shoulder-to-shoulder with him. The cracked bookshelves dug into the ridges of their backs. 

“What do we do now?” Scar asked under his breath, tilting his chin up to stare at the ceiling. He wouldn’t find anything there; Grian stopped looking to God for answers a long time ago. He wasn’t sure he ever started. 

Grian breathed in. It begged the question, again, what did you do after your world ended? It was as good an answer as any: breathing. What was there left to do?

It hurt when he did. His ribs creaked, a pinch caught between them every time his chest so much as shifted. The stretch of his lungs to the bottom of his chest was near too painful to bear. Which was exactly why he breathed deeper and deeper each time, testing the limits of the pain. It kept him awake, it kept him alive. It kept him real.

All the while, he wrangled the weakest part of himself that wanted to lean ever-so-slightly into Scar’s body heat. It wasn’t a comfort he thought he was afforded. Everything was too raw and fresh. He hurt too badly— inside and out— and he feared it’d somehow rub off on Scar if they touched more than the innocent press of shoulders.

So, all he could do was breathe. Breathe, and admit quietly, “I don’t know.”

Grian wasn’t particularly a skilled or practiced liar. Yet somehow this truth felt as if it was the first time he ever said such a thing. 

 

.. ...

12 HOURS EARLIER

 

Grian knew what he had to do. Though, if he was being selfish and honest, he would’ve given anything to get out of it. 

Though he wasn’t sure this would’ve counted as ‘anything’. 

The last time he saw crowds so thick was when he was fifteen at the town’s 100th Hallow’s Eve festival. The 110th seemed to merit an equally eager celebration. Black and orange streamers hung overhead alleyways and wrapped around lamp posts. Scarecrows propped up in front of each shop. As long as Grian could remember it had been a Hermit’s Hollow tradition to host a not-so-friendly competition on who could create the most hair-rising, spine-chilling, unsettling display. The Main Street shop owners and their families participated every year. Throughout the day Hermits would pass through and deposit their votes in the little drop boxes on each corner. 

If the old couple that ran the bed and breakfast down the street won for what some people claimed to be the 11th year in a row, Grian would’ve cried rigged. Though that was pure speculation.

The town’s engagement committee worked on lining tents and small parade floats down the length of Main Street, a few police cruisers parked at each end of the road to block any traffic. There never was any. Children ducked and ran under legs with their faces hidden behind pale, expressionless masks. Tourists crawled the streets, obvious with cameras slung around their necks and their noses buried in maps and pamphlet guides. They ogled above Grian’s head at the sleek black statues hunched over the rooftops.

The Silent Sentinels would watch over Hollow’s Eve as they watched over every other night in Hermit’s Hollow: diligently and dutifully. For all intents and purposes, everything was as it should’ve been. He should’ve been content. 

But even with the winter chill, Grian’s uniform clung to him uncomfortably. Sweat gathered in his armpits, on his head beneath his cap. It was less heat and more nerves, a fierce restlessness starting to brew as he had no choice but to observe diligence and duty of his own right. 

Scar, however, made this quite difficult. 

He buzzed next to him, rocking his body weight back and forth on his heels like a human cradle. As usually he’d been impossible to shake off, let alone ditch. Though if he were being honest, his nerves were growing numb to Scar’s often grating presence. It dulled into nothing more than a light tickle; he couldn’t exactly mind that it was there. It helped that he started to feel like he was going nose-blind to the stench of peppermint that followed him everywhere he went. But that could’ve been the caramel apple carriage a couple storefronts over.

Really, Grian should’ve been far more distressed over it than he was. It wasn’t everyday someone like Scar made himself at home under Grian’s skin. But he supposed there were far larger fish to fry. 

Grian side-eyed him. “Excited?”

“Is it noticeable?” Scar kept rocking. 

“Not really.” 

“You guys really go all out, huh?” Scar craned his neck back to read a large banner that rippled in the wind. HAPPY HALLOW’S EVE it read in black, drippy lettering.  “And not even for the actual thing.”

“Halloween isn’t a day for celebrating,” Grian recited dutifully. A spiel he’d been given and had to rehearse time and time again each time a confused tourist had wandered up to him seeking direction. “It’s the day of reckoning. Everything that lives here comes alive and hunts. So on Hollow’s Eve, if you celebrate them and throw a massive party past midnight, then you’ll be spared. Allegedly.”  

“Right, allegedly, of course.” Scar winks. “I have to party to ensure my survival? I think I can manage that.”

Grian rolled his eyes. “You don’t have to haunt me here,” he said, gesturing to the festivities starting to brew all around them. It wouldn’t properly ramp up until late afternoon and well into the night, but there was still plenty for Scar to enjoy. Perhaps it was better now, before things got strange. 

“Knock yourself out,” he said. “Get some cider. A caramel apple, if you’re feeling crazy.”

It was tempting; Grian could tell by the way Scar leaned his weight forward, ready to take a step. Only to plant himself back on two feet and look back at Grian. “You’re not coming?”

“Nope.” Grian pinched his well-ironed shirt where his badge was pinned. “On duty.”

“A man in uniform.” Scar’s eyes ignited. “Does that mean I can see your gun now?” 

“Still no.” 

“Darn it!” Scar stamped his foot. 

“Grian?” A new voice called out from the street. 

He turned to spot Impulse coming toward him. In civilian clothes, a light-weight jacket, and his hair flat against his forehead, he looked unassuming— all teddy-bear and no hardened police chief. Where Grian expected to see displeasure, he was surprised to find a small, fond smile. Beside him the mayor stood, long and spider-like, with his dark suit and pale face. His clutched a small black umbrella in his hand, shielding him from the foggy sun.

“Chief,” Grian greeted with a tilt of his hat. The formality of it fit about as well as a toddler’s shoe, but he’d be damned if he didn’t suck up to Impulse after the rough couple of weeks they’ve had. It was bad enough to be stripped of the case officially; the last thing he needed was for Impulse to catch a whiff of any of Grian’s extracurricular activities. 

He wouldn’t be so lucky to get a second warning. He had a feeling Impulse’s kindness wouldn’t extend so far. 

“It’s good to see you where I’ve asked you to be for once,” he chuckled, glancing at his watch. “Fifteen minutes early, even.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Grian sighed. “Don’t get used to it.” 

He tugged at the collar of his shirt. He hardly ever wore this uniform; he’d figured it was given to him as a formality. He’d never anticipated actually having to wear it like some kind of patrol monkey. It was suffocating. 

“It’s good to see you again, Grian,” Mayor Jumbo said, extending a skeletal hand. Then he nodded in his partner’s direction. “Scar.”

“You too, sir.” He accepted it, trying to hide his jolt at the startling coldness of the mayor’s skin. He’d hoped the mayor would be something, like Scar’s presence, that he'd get used to being around. Your eyes could adjust to the sun after long enough spent out in the lawn. But looking at Mayor Jumbo was no easier than it had been that initial morning in the Double O’ Diner. Like every inch of Grian wanted him to look away. 

“I’m sorry to hear you’ve been removed from the investigation,” the mayor said. The edge of his mustache quirked, as if he was pleased. Or amused. It was difficult to tell when not a single other muscle in the man’s face moved. “The way I see it, it’s for the greater good! Tonight the town can rest and celebrate!”

Grian hesitated. One glance at Impulse told him that if he so much as opened his mouth he’d live to regret it until the day he died— and likely even beyond that (he knew better than to underestimate Impulse). So he stood still, dumbfounded and face flushed red in humiliation. 

Scar, however, lacked such self preservation. “Greater good, sir?” he echoed, his smile threateningly tight and agitation thinly-veiled. “I’m not sure I know what you mean. We’ve made some great headway in the investigation. I can sense the answer is right under our noses—”

“Scar,” Grian hissed under his breath. 

“Perhaps this is a conversation suited for a better time,” Impulse interjected, patting the mayor on the back and flashing a warning look to Grian and Scar. He might’ve been the kindest person born out of Hermit’s Hollow, but that only meant so much in comparison. Impulse was terrifying when he had to be, and he could hold a grudge that Grian feared far more than any hollow log or Silent Sentinel. 

“You’re right,” the mayor agreed, clapping his thin hands together. “Today’s a great celebration! What a fine Hallow’s Eve! Everyone out on the streets, unsuspecting.” 

Grian’s eyebrows furrowed. “Right,” he muttered, unsure if the mayor simply didn’t understand how ominous he sounded or if he was doing it on purpose. 

“Chief, why don’t you show Scar around? This is his first Hollow’s Eve, he’d be glad to see all the ins-and-outs.” 

Impulse smiled at Scar, friendly and warm as if he hadn’t been threatening bodily harm with his eyes just a second prior. “Oh, of course! The caramel apples are the best, I think.”

Scar’s smile twitched at that, but he held himself back, as if tied to the lamppost beside Grian like a leashed dog. He turned to look back at him, eyebrows furrowed. “But Grian—”

“He can hold down the fort just fine on his own,” Impulse insisted, motioning for Scar to follow him and the mayor as they turned to continue down Main Street. “He’ll join us when his shift’s done. Won’t you, Grian?” 

“Of course.” Grian forced a smile. It wasn’t convincing; he knew it wasn’t. Because Scar didn’t mirror it back. His lips tightened into a thin, anxious line. Those green eyes stared back at him, untrusting and reluctant. For whatever reason, Scar did not want to leave him behind.

But Grian needed him to. “I’ll be fine,” he promised, only able to hope that he could keep it. “Go, enjoy the festivities. We’ll talk later.”

Like yanking a tooth from its root, Scar moved from his place beside Grian and followed the mayor and the chief out onto the street. The crowd’s were still thin; Grian managed to watch the backs of their heads until they reached the end of the street near the docks and rounded the corner. He let out a breath, both relieved and exhausted, as he shook the jitters out of his hands. 

He stood on duty, masquerading as the kind, helpful face of a Hermit’s Hollow’s local to any who approached him with questions. Where is the diner? One block south and to your right. When does the parade start? Eight PM. Don’t miss it! Do you have any extra flyers? Of course, here you go. How do I protect myself from the spirits? Hold some crushed verbena in your hand. There’s a little shop right down the street. Yes, the one with the decapitated pumpkin head out front. 

By the time the sun was higher in the sky and Grian was thoroughly fried to the bone, the streets were busier with tourists and Hermits alike. Small tents sprouted further along the streets, children sitting and cheering as their faces were painted and as a man with long stilts and fake spider legs crawled down Main Street. The crowd was thick enough to disappear into. 

Sucking up to Impulse only counted if Impulse was around to be sucked-up to.

So disappear Grian did.

....

 

“You can’t take that in with you,” said the blank, empty face scowling at him from between the gaps in the glass barrier. 

Grian glanced down at his hip, where his hand rested protectively over his holstered pistol. He’d already stripped himself of everything else: his coat, his scarf, the loose change in his pockets, everything bunched up and shoved into the black plastic bin on the counter. 

He dug for the badge in his back pocket and flashed it to the clerk. “I’m with Hermit’s Hollow PD—“ 

“I know exactly who you are,” she said, a middle aged woman with a nurse’s cap who smacked on a wad of bubblegum with every other word. “Rules are rules. Everything in the bin.” 

“Great.” Grimacing, he fumbled to undo his belt. He unclipped the magazine and emptied the rounds out into the bin.  Still, he clutched onto the piece itself, pained to part with it. “What, are you gonna make me take off my shoes next?” he grumbled under his breath. 

She simply tapped the glass with a manicured finger. A big pink bubble cracked against her cherry-red lipstick. “In the bin. That badge too, while you’re at it.”

“Jeez, alright,” Grian sighed and dumped the rest of what he had, badge included, into the little black bin. It hurt him to watch her pull it back behind the desk through the gap in the glass and tuck it away out of sight. 

He wasn’t stupid, he knew there were rules for a reason. But that didn’t change the fact that he felt undeniably naked standing in that checking area, nothing but (most of) the clothes on his back and the goosebumps on his arms. 

“Right this way.” The nurse stepped to a side-door that opened up into the depths of the hospital. She held it open for him and waited for him to pass under her arms before guiding him down a long, narrow hallway. 

Grian had a lot of time and distance to wonder and fret over what kind of place the White Oak Asylum was. He’d heard the horror stories: frenzied children and hysterical wives shipped off to their death in over-crowded halls, all to be subjected to inhumane testing and treatment methods. He’d tossed and turned with nightmares riddled with guilt and images he’d never be able to forget: her strapped to a table with a strip of leather wedged between her teeth, her eyes hollow and sunken, not a sign of life left, her confined to a dark, dingy room with nothing but a water bowl to lick out of. 

He was pleasantly surprised to find he couldn’t have been more wrong. The halls were bright, made up of sterile tiles and fluorescent white lights. Whenever Grian thought of the word Asylum , halloween decorations or knock-off Van Gough never came to mind. But there were paintings and bulletin boards posted along the walls, several pamphlets and flyers detailing events in the upcoming months. A few paper cut-out ghosts were pinned up for good measure. 

“You’ll maintain six feet of space between the two of you at all times,” the nurse reiterated as she led Grian further into the hospital. Her shoes clicked on the tile. “If you violate that, that paper you signed at the front clears White Oak of any liability if you are assaulted, battered, or threatened by any inpatient during visiting hours.” 

“I wasn’t planning on getting assaulted, battered, or threatened anyway,” Grian muttered. 

She tutted with a shrug, like Grian had no idea what he was walking into but she had no qualms throwing him in head-first. “Suit yourself.”

After navigating what felt like a labyrinth— with so many turns, corners, and twists that Grian wondered if they just went in one big, convoluted circle— they came upon a door leading into a sunroom. It was a large, circular room tacked onto the edge of the building, with large windows wrapping the entire length of the walls that revealed the rusty rolling hills outside. 

This far upstate, there wasn’t a single trace of Hermit’s Hollow. There wasn’t any fog, there wasn’t any of the cold bogginess that swept in over the bay— it couldn’t reach this far from the shore. Here, with the sun streaming in bare windows in thin golden threads, Grian could have pretended he was somewhere (and someone) else entirely.  It was the furthest he’d been from town in three months. Despite what he was here to do, he’d never found breathing so easy. 

Aside from a few stray tables and chairs (and a chessboard without any pieces), the room was largely empty. In a chair by one of the windows, sat a girl. Her long, brown hair swept down the length of her back. She sat hunched with her knees to her chest, the curve of her cheek turned towards the sun-rays creeping in through the distorted glass. 

Grian hesitated by the door. Suddenly he wasn’t standing in the welcoming warmth of White Oak’s sunroom, but by the cold, unforgiving shoreline behind his house. The water was frigid against his bare ankles, the rocks sharp but smooth under his feet. He was two feet shorter and his heart three sizes larger. He had yet to grow into his ears, and his sister beamed at him from a few feet further in the waves. The water licked her bare thighs, the fabric of her pants hiked all the way up like a pair of shorts. It looked like she was wearing a ridiculous diaper as she putzed through the water; Grian couldn't help but topple over backwards in laughter.

Water splashed all around him, cold and salty and harsh, but it felt like nothing when she laughed along with him, her eyes scrunched and mouth agape in delight. The cold bay water receded and the soft sunlight of upstate rolled in to take its place. It was slow but that didn't make it any less jarring; the sudden discomfort of knowing that one day Grian had climbed out of the water after being called in for dinner, without realizing it would be the last time.

“Go on.” The nurse urged him forward with a firm shove to his shoulder. 

He was too stunned and nervous to be irritated, a rarity. His legs, numb and aching, carried him towards the window like the wind had carried the Weeping Lady over water. Like he was weightless; he felt like nothing. As if he’d disappear if he so much as stepped too close to the sunlight. 

She turned to face him. Her eyes were darker, her cheeks were fuller. It was startling how alike she looked to their mother, as if he’d somehow leapt back through time and got a chance to meet her before the last bits of her mind crumbled to dust. Before she ruined their lives for good. She stared at him the same way Mom always had— like she would’ve rather been looking at anyone else. 

He was able to take it from their mom. He’d gotten used to it over the years. But it was different from Pearl, because it was easier to believe she was right.

Grian licked his lips. “Hey, Pearl."

She tilted her head at him. Her eyes were vacant and tired, puffy around the edges the way their mother's was when she'd spent night after night waiting on the porch, her ear turned toward the sea. Keep quiet, she's trying to tell me something, she always said.

"Grian,” she sighed. “What a surprise."

It didn’t sound like it— if she was surprised, pleased, or angry to see him, neither her face nor voice did anything to reveal as such. She was as flat and blank as a sheet of copy paper. Grian, somehow, understood it. Sometimes there was too much to write and too little space left on the paper; the better thing to do was to toss your pen down in defeat. There wasn't any use in writing anything at all.

“Mind if I sit with you?” Grian moved to pull a chair closer to her. Closer than six feet but far enough away that if she got any funny ideas Grian at least stood a shot at defending himself. 

Pearl gestured to the open chair, shoulders and posture all blase. “Do what you want.” 

Gingerly he sunk into the seat. He wished he still had his coat or scarf, anything to tangle his hands into and pick apart his nerves like a crumpled straw wrapper. He didn’t know what to say— he didn’t know where to start. How could you begin to apologize to someone you lived your whole life with only to lock them away at the first sign of trouble and toss the key? 

"You were supposed to be gone when you left. Why are you still here?" Pearl said, her lips curled into a curious frown. The same way she did her math homework when she couldn't figure it out but was too proud to ask Grian for help (not that he was any better at it than her, though he always liked to pretend to be).

Every instinct had begged him to reach across the narrow distance— to grab Pearl’s hand, to feel the old calluses left on her fingers from years of illicit tree climbing. Anything to anchor himself to one of the last bits of family he had left. If he could even still call them that.

"I had to stay," he said, unsure whether or not she was more irked by his return or having left in the first place. He hoped it was the latter. "I know it’s been a couple of months. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long… I just— I couldn’t—”

He couldn't do what, exactly? Abandon them again? His heart said he couldn’t— not after everything that's happened— but if Grian knew anything about himself it was that he always had one foot out the door. By the time he realized what he was doing, he’d have Maui packed away in a carrier and an extra 200 miles added to his odometer in a heartbeat.

If it wasn’t for Jimmy. If it wasn’t for Pearl. If it wasn’t for the promises he can never seem to keep.

“You look tired, Grian.” Pearl’s blank mask cracked with the crease of her brow. She folded her arms over the chair and leaned toward him. Then, her lips wobbled in what might’ve been a smile if it had reached her eyes. “Your hair’s getting shaggy.” 

“Is it?” Despite himself Grian reached up to prod at his fringe. “It’s been a rough couple of weeks,” he muttered quietly.

She raised an eyebrow at him. Aside from the weariness around her eyes, she looked no different than she had when they were kids. The Pearl sitting across from him was the same as the one he played in the water with, the Pearl that held him close under the covers and sang with her hands over his ears when he was afraid.

He was afraid now. Terrified, even. It was terror that punctured him to his core, the deepest parts of himself he couldn’t hope to reach and sew up. Selfishly, he wanted to be six again, tucked in Pearl’s arms in the warmth of her bed. He wanted her to tell him that it was okay. He wanted her to be the big sister (even though she was only a minute older) she always boasted to be.

But she wasn’t anymore. Grian knew that. He just had to accept it. It was his turn to be the big brother.

“I’m so sorry,” he croaked. “I wasn’t ready. I was scared.”

“You just weren’t ready to see the truth,” Pearl guessed, a clarity to her tone that surprised Grian. She didn’t belong here, locked up like some dangerous animal. She wasn’t like their mother, no matter how many tried to convince the both of them otherwise. “Don’t kid. You still aren’t.”

“I’m ready now,” Grian urged, but it sounded more like a plea.

“You’ve always been the best at lying to yourself,” Pearl said matter-of-factly. “That’s why you were the only one who could leave."

Grian frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“No, I guess you don’t,” Pearl sighed with disappointment. She stretched her legs out slowly in front of her like Maui always did when trying to get comfortable in Grian’s lap. “Why are you actually here, Grian?”

Here it was. It was everything yet the last thing Grian wanted. “I was hoping you could tell me more about what happened that night.” The words tasted like bile on his tongue. They burned each second they sat there. “Our birthday. What the hell happened, Pearl?”

She didn’t answer right away. She stared down at her socked feet, rolling her feet side to side on the heels, a clock’s pendulum swinging back and forth with the passing of each agonizing second.

“I saw it, too, y’know,” she said.

“Saw what?”

“I never understood why mom was so scared all the time,” she said. “But then I saw it. I heard it— the crying.”

Fear froze Grian through, as if shot through his vein directly. Pix’s voice rang like static in his head.

I don’t live near a forest, but my house overlooks the water. That’s where everyone says they see her, right?

Pearl leaned toward him, her fingers white where they clenched around the arm of her chair. The gold of the setting sun emphasized the tight desperation of her features. “I always wanted to think she was crazy,” she said. “After everything she was doing to you, all the scary things she said. I wanted her to be crazy.”

My mom has a history with this kinda thing, and I didn’t want to upset her or trigger one of her episodes. Or even worse, I didn’t want to prove that she was right about it the whole damn time.

Grian had no hope to speak. It was all he could do to keep his jaw sewn shut, his knuckles white around his death grip on his pants.

“Did you believe them?” She asked it quietly, as if afraid of his answer. “They said Mom hurt Dad. She killed him, they said. Do you believe it?"

The Grian of two weeks ago would’ve said yes in a heartbeat. He wouldn’t have been sitting here in front of Pearl in the first place, his own fear and pride a blindfold tied around his eyes. Their mom was ill, there were no such things as possessions or demons or ghosts or monsters. These were the easiest things to convince himself of, the simpler truths he could swallow.

But that was before three people vanished into thin air without a trace, before a nosey psychic with a propensity for knowing what was going on in Grian’s head slipped in under his skin, before he saw the very same apparition ghosting across the beach.

Now, Grian wasn’t sure what he believed anymore.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Everything in the past three months had been one strain after another, a string tied to his limp marionette tugging him in every different direction. There was only so much his unyielding skepticism could handle. There was only so much anger and hatred he could house at one time. There was nothing lurking beneath the abandoned coal mines of Hermit’s Hollow, waiting to swallow everything down in one big gulp. Rather it was Hermit’s Hollow itself that took everything down its gullet— his family, his energy, himself.

“You do know,” Pearl pressed. “Or why else would you have come? Why come all the way here if you still don’t believe me? If you don’t wanna hear what I have to say?"

“I believe Mom was sick,” he said carefully. It was like putting on his detective hat, he could feel the mask slowly crystallizing over his features. If he could convince Pearl he believed it, maybe his own brain would get the memo. He wondered, idly, if Scar felt this way every time he put on his little everyday performances. “She was sick, Pearl. She needed help…"

“So you believe she murdered our father?” Pearl challenged, her tone suddenly sharp to the touch. “You think she picked up that knife and cut out his throat?”

“As opposed to what?” Grian snapped. “ Jimmy did it? Jesus Christ, Pearl, you have to stop."

Pearl sat back in her chair, as if the words were a physical blow that knocked her back. Her fingernails dug ridges in the peeling paint of the chair arms, revealing pale worn wood beneath. “You think I’d have been fixed by now. That’s why you waited to see me, isn’t it?”

Grian took off his glasses to rub tiredly at his eyes. “No, Pearl, that’s— I told you, it’s been complicated."

“Too complicated to hear the truth?” Pearl taunted. “Sounds like an excuse to me—“

“You ruined what little we had left of our lives with that bullshit ! You nearly killed Jimmy for God’s sake, what more evidence do you need?”

Pearl stared back at him blankly. She worked her tongue between her teeth and in her cheeks, deciding whether what she wanted to say next was worth it. Or whether or not he deserved to hear it.

“It’s not Jimmy. Not anymore,” she said.

Grian’s heart sunk deep beneath his ribcage, deep down where he couldn’t feel it skipping anymore. Instead all he had was an unsettling emptiness, hollowed out like an apple with a rotten core.

“Pearl. Stop,” he begged. There was only so much he could take. He was already near splinters, the slightest weight ready to snap him clean in half. “Just stop. Haven’t they been working with you on this?”

“Haven’t you been paying attention?” Pearl snapped. “She’s a warning, Grian. The lady on the water. She’s been warning mom for years that this was gonna happen, and then she warned me.”

Grian thought back to the tape. A woman whose child was stolen in the night, replaced by an impostor. It was hysteria. It was the effects of a burdened mind— that was all. That was if it even happened at all. For all he knew the woman could’ve been nothing more than a narrative cooked up by some kook with far too much time on their hands.

But that didn’t change the fact that he’d seen her too. He’d heard her cry, and even now the faint howling of the wind outside the window sounded a lot like the splintering crack of her voice. Lamenting. Searching. Grieving . That didn’t change the fact that sometimes Grian looked at the side of Jimmy’s face (not his eyes, never his eyes) and felt like he was staring at a complete stranger.

He shook his head. It wasn’t possible. The weeks had worn him thin; he was nearing defeat when it came to Scar. He could admit there was something strange, something beyond about him that Grian might’ve never been able to fully understand. But what Pearl was suggesting was so much. Too much. Jimmy was fine, because he had to be. He was gone, safe, or even disobeying Grian’s wishes and goofing off with Joel somewhere. Jimmy was Jimmy. There was no need to grieve what he still had.

“It was supposed to be you, y’know,” Pearl said suddenly.

He stared at her. “What?” 

Tears brimmed in Pearl’s eyes. “It likes sons better,” she said. “Mom knew it was coming, and she loved Jimmy too much. So that left you.”

Hands in his hair, a gentle voice against his ear. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I have to. I have to.”

Grian’s mouth stung with dryness. He didn’t remember much from those years. He only remembered being afraid, he remembered her voice, he remembered the way she held him too tight, the way she’d strike him. But everything in between was a vat of quicksand, sucking everything down deep where he couldn’t hope to dig it back up.

He couldn’t do this. He decided it quickly, gathering himself by whatever shredded pieces remained. He pushed the chair as far away as he could, his breath rapid and quick in his chest. Everything hurt— his head, his chest, his knees. As if everything would burst with the slightest bit of pressure.

Fill your lungs up. Pearl blinked up at him, counting his breaths silently.  Pour them out. He exhaled shakily. 

“You’re doing that again?” She asked.

“I never stopped,” he admitted, folding his hands between his knees and warming them there. The air felt cleared, but nothing was different. Pearl was still here, and Grian was still there. Jimmy was something in between, and as much as Grian knew that what she said couldn’t be true, his mind slithered dangerously toward the possibility that it was.

Pearl was his sister. She never lied to him before. Would she have started now, so suddenly?

“I’ll ask one more time,” he said shakily, giving himself an out more so than Pearl. “What happened the night our parents died?”

“That thing picked up a knife and cut Dad’s throat open like a Thanksgiving turkey. Then he gutted Mom. I watched it happen.” Pearl leaned closer to him, reaching for his hand and managing to reach only a finger. She interlocked their pinkies. Her skin was warm, human.

“It killed our parents, Grian. And it’s going to kill you too. So you have to kill it first. Kill it dead ,” she all but pleaded. “That thing is not Jimmy.” 

..

Home sweet home.

That was what you were supposed to say as you pulled into your driveway after a long day of work, wasn’t it? As if the familiar bend of pavement and a front-door with chipping paint was the solace one needed at the end of the night. Countless Hermits feared the end of days would come when the ground split in half and the void beneath swallowed everything down. Standing in his driveway, frozen to his core, staring at the familiar peaks of the roof, Grian wished it would. He’d pay anything to see this place get swallowed whole.

How had he ever seen this place as quiet? There was nothing but the wind and the faint whisper of the water on the other side of the hill, but Grian heard every bit of it and everything that lurked in between. He felt the city breathe, he heard its heartbeat under his feet, under the cracked pavement of his driveway. How could there be anything quiet about a town with so much restless dead buried beneath it. How could there be anything calm about the house his parents bled out in?

It pretended to be, sitting atop the hill silhouetted by the setting sun. It faked its serenity, the same way it faked it his entire life. But now there was no one to tell him it was all in his head, and he felt like he was seeing it for what it truly was for the first time.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, despite it all he was starting to understand what people meant when they said they felt homesick. His stomach ached at the idea of going back inside. He wanted to turn and run. But he also felt like he’d die if he did.

Home wasn’t a place. It wasn’t the house on the hill, or the bright array of shops on Main Street. It wasn’t his childhood bedroom studded with band posters he’d never even heard of. But rather his spot between Pearl’s arms, or Jimmy’s hesitant hands tugging on his sleeve, pleading, ‘ Wait for me!

Pearl’s tired eyes— It’s not Jimmy. Not anymore.

The front door slammed shut behind him. Each step into the foyer was an effort of deaf limbs. The world tilted under him, and the only thing that kept him from meeting the runner carpet face-to-face was a hand steadying against the wall, steadying each uneasy step. Everything felt finely tuned to a single point, as if he was staring at the world through the eye of a sewing needle. Everything too large to fit in such a tiny space.

He hadn’t even noticed he wasn’t alone until the pulse in his ears subsided enough for him to hear the gentle hum of a radio and a clamber of pots and pans trickle in down the hall.

“Jimmy?” 

“Grian? Is that you?”

He followed the voice down the hall until he turned the corner into the kitchen. Something sizzled in a skillet on the stove-top, and it smelled wonderful. The aroma filled the house like heat from the old furnace in the basement. The scent numbed whatever remained of his rationality mechanisms, his entire brain a car dashboard with every light pinging. All he could think was: Jimmy didn’t know how to cook.  So, who—?

Of all people, Scar stood at the kitchen island, washing his hands in the sink with his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. A pin-stripe apron cinched at his waist and a hand-towel hung from his shoulder. He sang along with whatever guitar-plucking ballad crackled through the little old radio on the counter. 

Jacket half-shrugged from his shoulders, he froze in the doorway. “Scar?”

Scar flashed a grin at him, waving his wet hands and splashing the counter. “Welcome back!” he all but sang. 

Vaguely, Grian tried to scrounge up enough brain power to decide which was more concerning— the fact Scar somehow got inside of his house despite not having a key or the fact that he was here at all. Both were equally distressing on paper, as they had the same outcome: his reality. Scar stood in his kitchen with his stupid, handsome smile and Grian’s heart of fractured glass. All it took now was a nudge. And Scar was an excellent nudger. 

With the sharp edges of his heart threatening to cut his throat, all Grian could do was force a smile in return. 

“You okay?” Scar asked with a laugh, drying his hands off and gesturing to Grian’s feet. “You forgot something.”

Grian looked down at his own feet, dumbfounded. He only had gotten one boot off in his scramble to the kitchen. Heat flooded his face and threatened to drown him. He could feel the red creeping into the tips of his ears as he kicked off the other boot and tossed it aside. 

“Rough day?” Scar lined up a handful of freshly washed vegetables along the cutting board. 

Grian hummed.  “I thought you wanted to watch the parade,” he said, glancing down at his watch. Half past eight. “You’re missing it.” 

“Eh, it’s not really my scene,” Scar dismissed, floating between the cutting board and the stove-top with the ease of a carhop on skates. His head bobbed along to the music. It wasn’t a very happy song. “This is much more fun.” 

“Really?” Grian frowned and risked a few steps toward Scar. He kept the kitchen island between them, bracing his arms against the edge of the counter and leaning his weight into them. “You were pretty excited about it this morning.” 

“Was I?” Scar plucked a knife from the knife-block, turning it over in his hands. He traced the sharp edge with his thumb, as if testing the strength of his skin or the grit of the blade. “Had a change of heart, I guess.” 

Grian didn’t believe him. It shouldn’t have been shocking. He’d spent most of whatever partnership they had going on between them doubting Scar. It’d become second nature to hang on every word, to flip it on its head and search for the escape hatch hidden in it. Because Scar spoke in exit-strategies. He was a liar, and although he was a talented one, talents only got him so far. There were more important things— his face, the heart on his sleeve— that told a different story. The other side of the half-truths Scar kept hidden so close to his chest. 

It left Grian with a newfound uncertainty: the fact there were still secrets important enough to lie to his face about. 

It didn’t matter. He’d only known Scar for a month. Even less. What right did he have demanding his secrets, decoding his ridiculous game of fact or fiction? If Scar wanted to lie to him, then fine. His head started to ache: a dull throb growing just beneath his temples where he tended to clench his jaw. He glanced at the coffee maker behind Scar’s shoulder. When was the last time he had a good cup? 

“Come on, then,” Scar urged, waving the knife in the air. “Cooking’s no fun when you do it alone!”

Grian scowled. “Yeah, no—”

“Aw, come on!”

“Seriously, I don’t think you want me anywhere near anything sharp or flammable,” Grian tried to laugh, but it came out soundless and sharp. “I just might get someone killed.”

Scar winked at him. “That’s a risk I’m willing to take.” 

And he took no further arguments. His foot was firmly planted, his mind decidedly made. He even rounded the island and dragged Grian behind the counter with two hands on his shoulders. His skin went fuzzy at the touch, almost so much so that it hurt. 

Grian went for the cutting board, but Scar stopped him by putting a wooden spoon in his hands. “I’ll take care of these, and you man the skillet,” he said. “Less room for error. Don’t want you cutting yourself.” 

Grian wasn’t sure if the heat in his face was the remnants of his earlier humiliation or a new wave of something he’d rather not pick apart. But what he did know was that he was in no position to argue. Not with Scar. Not now. He was far too weak-hearted for that, far too fuzzy around the eyes and weak in the knees. So, dutifully, he clutched the wooden spoon in his hands like a priest did a crosier and stationed himself at the stove. 

Some kind of ground meat sizzled in the pan, grease bubbling up in the gaps. It was still a bit pink around the edges. 

“All you gotta do is stir,” Scar said over his shoulder. So close that Grian had to consciously keep himself from jumping out of his skin. “Keep stirring until it’s all brown.” 

Grian craned his head back to look at Scar. He was standing close, but Grian didn’t feel an inch of warmth from him. “Scar… How did you get in?”

“Oh, your brother let me in.” Then, he nudged Grian’s chin away with his hand. “Eyes on the meat, Grian. We can’t let it burn after all the work I put in.” 

Grian stared at the beef, scraping the spoon along the bottom of the skillet. “Jimmy was here?” he mumbled dumbly. That’s not Jimmy. Not anymore. “You talked to him?”

“Briefly,” Scar said, his voice growing distant as he went back to his post by the cutting board. “He was on his way out, something about going to see the parade with a friend. But he said I could wait for you here. Seems like a nice kid!”

Right. Jimmy, his scaredy-cat younger brother who somehow still found a way to love the spooky makeup and army of scarecrows manning Main Street. Despite the fact that for five years in a row he burst into tears the second he spotted one. But whenever Mom and Dad tried to make him leave, he cried even louder, feet stomping and tantrum properly thrown. 

Of course he was going. Hallow’s Eve was the most fun anyone under twenty-five could find in Hermit’s Hollow that didn’t border on something illegal. Jimmy was going because he was Jimmy— he was still Grian’s little brother, through and through. He’d just been through a lot. All of them have. Pearl, included. She was sick. Pearl was sick, just like their mother was sick. 

It wasn’t fair. He’d already lost his parents. Did he have to lose Pearl too? But then again, since when was Grian’s life ever really fair?

“Why’d you come here, Scar?” Grian pressed. The stench of cooking meat and grease stung his nostrils. The aching in his temples only grew, like an iron band tightened around his skull. “Not that I’m not happy to see you, but…”

The knife thumped against the cutting board as Scar split what sounded like an onion in two. “What, friends can’t check up on friends, now?” he chuckled darkly. “Besides, I figured you could use some TLC after your adventures upstate. How’d it go, by the way?”

Grian stopped stirring for a moment. He flexed his fingers, just to make sure he still could. “How did you know I went upstate?”

Scar only chuckled. “How do I know anything?”

Grian glanced over his shoulder to see Scar still with his back to him, but two fingers pressed to one of his temples. He didn’t need to see Scar’s face to know he was smirking himself silly, and as aggravating as it was, it was also so incredibly familiar and comforting that Grian could have cried. 

“Right,” he said, voice cracking though he tried to play it off as a scoff. “Of course, my mistake.” 

He hesitated, staring down at the skillet. Part of him would’ve preferred pressing his face right into one of the burners than regurgitating what he hardly handled hearing the first time. He didn’t know what to make of his conversation with Pearl, if he could even call it that. Her words had left him feeling numb and sick all over, like he hadn’t slept in ten days and his body was ready to kick the bucket. 

What were you supposed to do when your sister insisted that your little brother brutally butchered the rest of your family? That something else was walking around in his skin? He must’ve missed that unit in Hermit’s Hollow Residency Training, because for the first time he was fairly certain 99 percent of the town’s population were more prepared for this bullshit than he was. If he wasn’t so exhausted, he would’ve had it in him to be impressed. 

“It wasn’t… as productive as I hoped,” he said weakly.

“What’d she say?” 

Grian stared at the cooking meat. And suddenly it was the carpet fibers soaked in his mother’s blood. It bubbled when Grian stood over the creaky spot for too long. He’d torn it all up, but was it too late? Had the soil sucked up all the blood and badness that breathed in that house only to just spit it back out into the grass that grew in the front yard, or the water that came from their faucet? 

“She thinks Jimmy killed my parents.” His fingers trembled around the wooden spoon. He wasn’t stirring blood. 

Scar hummed as if Grian had just told him that there was a fifty-percent chance of rain tomorrow. “And what do you think?”

“How can you ask that?” Grian hissed, eyes glassy. He couldn’t handle someone else asking him questions he didn’t know the answers to. “It’s ridiculous. She’s— She’s not thinking straight. Jimmy can be reckless, but there’s not a bad bone in that kid’s body. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone—” he swallowed his next words like a mouthful of bile. “He didn’t do that. He wouldn’t.”

“Oh, of course he wouldn’t,” Scar agreed quickly. Without the cocky tilt to his voice, he didn’t sound like himself. He felt like a stranger against his back. Grian’s stomach flipped.

The meat was thoroughly brown. Grian turned off the stovetop and let the dread sink slowly into his limbs. He tapped his fingers on the counter. He didn’t turn around. 

Between the smell of cooking vegetables and browning meat, Grian realized he hadn’t caught a familiar hint of peppermint since the moment he walked in the door. 

Grian couldn’t explain why he jumped to the side. His nape stung, and then at once he was moving. His feet tangled, one over the other, before the thought to move had even crossed his mind. This was an instinct that went beyond police-training, that ran deeper than blood and the fear of creaky floorboards outside his mother’s bedroom. Muscle memory— only this was a bike he never learned to ride. Only by a frantic hand grasping the countertop did he manage to stay on his feet, the momentum of his own panic ready to knock him on his ass. He didn’t know why he moved. 

Until he saw the knife.

Scar froze mid-motion. His shoulders were low and hunched the same way Maui’s were when stalking a bug on the windowsill. Only he wasn’t ready to lurch with claws. His fingers were white and steady around the cleaver, the sharp, silver blade hung in the empty space Grian once occupied.

“Scar?” 

Slowly, he turned his head to meet Grian’s eye. There was a dark emptiness to his eyes, not a fleck of kaleidoscoping green to be found. “What’s wrong, Grian?” he asked, though his voice sounded as if it was playing on warped vinyl, the pitch too deep, the pace too slow. 

They taught you about fight-or-flight in school— the sympathetic nervous system. It was a monster network of impulses meant to keep you alive when shit hit the fan. Your heart kicks up, your veins dilate, and your brain swells with a concoction of hormones to make it all happen. Grian wasn’t a stranger to being afraid. He knew a racing heart, sweaty palms, locked-up joints. He knew the helplessness of a kid too scared to run away but too weak to fight back. 

But this? Grian’s heart stilled in his chest. Every inch of him ran ice-cold. This wasn’t just fear. 

Scar smiled at him, then. It split his face in two, one far too unpracticed for his face. He didn’t move normally. His weight swayed, less like he was unsteady on his legs but rather like he was carelessly throwing himself side-to-side, lost in the throws of the radio still playing on the island. All the while, the knife dangled aimlessly in his hand. 

Scar , stop it.” Grian took a single step back, one hand blindly grappling along the counter. “This isn’t funny.” 

Grian wanted to hope that this was just one of Scar’s hidden quirk’s coming out to play— a wicked man with a twisted sense of humor went along like a matching pajama set— but he knew better. His body knew something that he didn’t; the physical repellant that pushed him away from whatever this thing was that felt so different from every other time he was around Scar. Instead of opposite ends of the magnet, they were of the same pole; Grian felt sick to his stomach with each inch Scar moved closer. 

Scar’s smile only continued to grow as he advanced toward Grian with torturously slow steps. His lips twitched. A mockery of his handsome face. Had he always had so many teeth? 

No, this wasn’t fear. This was survival. 

He was being hunted. 

Scar lunged, and Grian leapt back. A perfectly timed dance, one Grian didn’t know how he knew the steps too. He scrambled backwards into the kitchen table and kicked a chair in Scar’s path. But just as easily he kicked it apart, wood splintering and scattering across the kitchen floor. They stumbled back all the way into the living room, where Grian desperately scanned for anything to get his hands on. 

You couldn’t pass the academy without a few self-defense classes, but no amount of classes changed the fact that Scar had half a foot and fifty pounds on him. The last thing he wanted was to hurt Scar. But with each second Scar was advancing on him with a knife, a whistle cutting the air in two a dodged swing inches from the top of Grian’s head. There wasn’t much of a choice left. 

The fireplace. The rack of wrought-iron pieces. Grian lunged for it, tripping over himself as he grasped the poker and yanked it free. But before he could turn Scar seized him by a fistful of his hair. Grian gasped and fell back, managing to keep one hand on the poker while the other clawed at Scar’s wrist. But to no avail. Scar pulled him flush up against his chest. 

“You should’ve let it be,” he said in his ear. The knife rested just beneath his chin. 

Grian’s stomach tied itself into knots. He twisted his arm around and blindly stabbed at Scar’s ribcage. He caught flesh. Scar howled and pushed him forward. The blade caught Grian across the chin, beads of blood dribbling sluggishly down his neck. Grian crashed into the bookshelf. Books clattered as some shelves caved and snapped from the impact. A pair of vases toppled and shattered at his feet. 

He spun around. Scar stood in the center of the living room, a hand cradling his middle where the front of his white-shirt rapidly soaked through red. A flash of satisfaction flared through Grian that only lasted as long as it took for Scar to notice him again and lunge. This time, he moved fast. Too fast, faster than any person Grian had ever met. Though it was becoming increasingly, and unavoidably aware that whatever this thing was, it wasn’t human. 

He grabbed Grian by the collar and shoved him hard against the shelves, smacking his head hard. Grian’s vision blistered. In the same motion he seized Grian’s wrist and twisted it too far backwards. Pain laced up the nerves of his arm. He gasped and the iron-poker clattered to the ground. 

“Please,” Grian gasped. Scar leaned in close now, teeth bared. No longer a smile and something far more predacious. “ Scar , this isn’t—”

A glint of metal. He only caught a glimpse of it in his periphery. It was inches from his neck by the time Grian grabbed it by the blade. His palm split, blood starting to leak like a faulty tap down Grian’s wrist and forearm, then staining the cement underneath. Better than the soft flesh of his neck.

It didn’t hurt. He knew it should have hurt.  His veins were cold as ice, a single plunge in an icy lake that killed him the moment his head went under. It wasn’t pain or comfort. It was survival or death. It was a bloody palm or his throat torn open. With each ounce of pressure Scar forced, Grian had no choice but to push back, the knife cutting deeper and deeper into the meat of his palm. 

Scar’s hand shook with effort. He curled his other hand on top of his right, pushing down. Grian braced his forearms against Scar’s chest and pushed back with every last ounce of strength he had left. 

“Let go, Grian.” Scar stared into his eyes with those lifeless, black coals. “You don’t have to fight anymore.”

“Like hell I don’t.” Grian coiled one of his legs up and kicked Scar right in the bloody tearing of his torso. He made a wounded sound as he collapsed into a heap of limbs. The knife clattered out of his hands.

There wasn’t any time. Grian clutched his bloodied hand to his chest and stumbled into the foyer. 

The hall couldn’t have been more than a few paces long. Grian, Jimmy, and Pearl had always elbowed one-another fighting for space when pulling on their rainboots and jackets, rushing to get outside before the best of the puddles dried up. How was it that seemed so endless now? A single step, and Grian felt like he was moving backwards, the walls twisting and growing longer, the floor stretching like taffy under his feet. 

His vision tilted. He careened into the wall. Blood streaked along the wallpaper. Shit — Jimmy would be pissed. He loved this wallpaper; each time he looked at it he swore he saw another funny little face hiding in the patterns. But Grian never knew what he was talking about. All he ever saw were a bunch of pointless lines. 

The door was so close. It was right there, all he had to do was reach for it. He had to make it a few more steps, and then—

An arm coiled around his throat. It yanked him backwards, nearly clean off his feet. He felt the broad expanse of Scar’s chest against his back, pinning him there. One of Scar’s arms wedged under Grian’s chin, trapping him in a chokehold. His throat closed. Grian grappled for his arms, but the blood only smeared, making a firm grip impossible. 

Scar dragged him back into the living room by his neck. Grian caught a glimpse of the knife on the floor by the basement door where Scar must’ve dropped it. 

Before the panic could set in, muscle memory took its place at the steering wheel. This time, Grian knew where it came from. He’d done this before. He’d been slammed over and over again into a padded mat, his shoulders burning and his hair damp with sweat. He’d wrenched arms off of him a million-and-one times. He’d been taught and drilled so fervently he probably could’ve done it in his sleep. 

Grian tilted his head up as much as he could. This was the first step, opening the airway even the slightest bit would buy you more time. He pulled Scar’s arm down as much as he could to rest it against his collarbone. The second step. It was easier than trying to pry his whole arm away, and it’d give him the right opening he needed. Then, the final step.

He grabbed Scar’s bicep with one hand and his forearm with the other. In one strong movement he stepped and swung his body like his arm was the hinge to a door. Scar’s arm had no choice but to give out, exposing his head, neck, and chest. 

He went for the neck. A solid punch that could bring Scar to his knees. But Scar caught his fist halfway through the motion. He was strong— impossibly so. With no effort whatsoever he craned Grian’s arm back and hauled him back. It was too late by the time Grian realized what was behind him, by the time there was open air under his heels and he was toppling backwards through an open doorway and down the basement stairs.

Agony laced up his left arm. There was a resound crack as he hit the last tread. He rolled to the cold cement floor in a heap, the electric aftershocks of pain wracking his body and resorting him to nothing but a useless, twitching mess. He couldn’t think. Not for a moment. Not for several. His arms were covered in his own blood and now he could taste it too; blood dripped off his chin and gathered in his bottom lip. Every breath stretched sore ribs and so much as twitching a finger sent his entire left arm into a ceaseless spasm of pain. 

He couldn't help it. His eyes welled up. The tears made it impossible to tell which was up and which was down. The basement was dark, but the blurry streams of light from the top of the stairs eclipsed a silhouette sauntering down the steps. The stairs creaked with Scar’s weight as he took each step carefully. Whether it was because he was hurt or because he was looking pleased with Grian’s predicament, he didn’t know nor did he care to. 

Fight-or-flight was a hell of a fail-safe, and adrenaline was a miracle drug. Yet there was only so much it could do. The faster his heart beat, the more blood he lost and the more his arm ached. The more he struggled, the harder his vision swarmed, the more difficult it became to breathe.

He couldn’t even climb to his feet. So with all the dignity of roadkill, Grian crawled away from the bottom of the stairs. It wasn’t so much of a crawl as it was a debilitating drag, hauling his own deadweight as far as he could with one functioning arm and half a mind. 

The dark of the basement loomed around him. Compressed him. Flattened him into nothing. There was nowhere to run. Scar, if Grian could even still call him that, dragged the edge of the kitchen knife along the brick. 

Grian rolled over onto his back as Scar stood over him. With the dim light at his back, his entire face was concealed in shadow. He couldn’t make out anything aside from the sickly glint of his sclera, like a cat’s eyes under a flashlight. 

There was nowhere to run. He was cornered like a mouse in a spring-trap. But like hell Grian’d give up now; he couldn’t die unless he said he died trying. Grian reached out for the nearest thing he could touch: the small black-framed mirror that once hung in the stairwell. All he could do was use it as a shield, pressing the wooden back to his chest and waiting for the final hit. 

Only it never came. Anticipation hung idly in the air, much like the cleaver poised over Scar’s head. His entire body was frozen, a moment of time cut out and pasted right in front of him. Scar’s gaze, the foggy whites of his eyes, were captivated by the mirror. Slowly he backed away, bristled along the spine like a spooked cat. He cringed away, a low, gurgling sound erupting from deep in his chest. A sound that wasn’t human, not even close to it.  

All Grian could do was stare. His arm screamed in pain, but he refused to let the mirror go. It was the only thing protecting him from whatever the hell had occupied Scar’s skin. It could’ve been a trick of the non-light, or the blood loss starting to make him go dizzy, but it looked like his skin started to ripple. A restless lake. The choppy, violent waves out by the harbor. 

The stairs creaked and Scar fled up them, all too alike to an animal fleeing to lick its wounds. 

Fingers trembling around his painful grip on the mirror, the pain started to feel fuzzy. Grian didn’t dare move. Not for a minute. Not for ten. Not until the pain in his awkwardly bent arm started to fade to nothing more than a persistent tingle. Not until the shock started to settle in truly. It wasn’t good for him. If he had felt less like a balloon tied to a Get Well Soon card and more like a human being with a proper brain, he’d recognize how dangerous that was. But for now, he was full of helium, and he couldn’t find an inch of himself that cared. 

So Grian didn’t move. Not until the house was completely still; not until he was sure he was alone.

--

An endless dial tone. Then the relief of a click.

“Hello?”

White-knuckled fingers clutching the phone like a lifeline. “Where’s Scar?” 

“Grian?” A tinny voice. “What’s going on? Are you alright?” 

“Scar. Where is he? Please, just— just check, okay?  Is he with you?”

Grian waited in the foyer. What he was waiting for exactly, he didn’t know. Adrenaline was all he had left— it was the only thing fueling the slow, agonizing trek up the basement stairs, blood dripping along the bare steps in his wake. It was all that allowed him to keep his composure about as sturdy as a roll of duct tape securing a torn-away bumper. But it was just that: a bandage, a temporary fix. 

It didn’t take long for the adrenaline to bleed from him, faster than the blood from the slice in his hand or his split lip. This kind of bleed made his knees wobbly; all he could do was prop himself against the wall, smearing blood along the walls in an attempt to stay upright. 

If it came back for him, he was pretty much dead already. Nothing but a knife held in shaky, bloody fingers, and a swelling arm cradled close to his chest as weapons.  He’d be easy pickings. Monster chow. He chuckled privately at the thought, but his ribs pinched in a way that felt no different than slaps on the back of his hand when he reached into the contraband cookie jar. 

Impulse’s voice crackled. “He’s with us… What do you mean?” 

“Do you have eyes on him? Do you see him right now?” 

“Let me look. He—” The voice cut out. 

Desperate, bloody fingers clutched the phone. “Impulse?”

No response. 

Maui meowed at his feet. She threaded between his legs and arched her back against him. He didn’t dare touch her, not while fearing so much as a breath would split the fibers of the duct tape holding him together. Plus, blood was probably a nasty thing to clean out of fur. 

“Sorry, girl,” he whispered quietly. Tears blurred his vision, washing the rest of the world away in a blur of pain and red-stained wallpaper. 

A blip of static. “I see him, I’m looking at him right now. He’s watching the parade with the mayor. What’s this all about?”

Scar. At the parade. A smile on his face, most likely. The stupidest kind. 

He felt nothing. Nothing at all, where panic or fear should’ve taken root. Barren chest, barren heart. The house mocked him for it. He should’ve known it was going to end this way. 

“...Grian?” 

A thump of the handpiece back on the receiver. The wounded chirp of a bell. Dial tone. 

He was comforted by a single fact. Whatever the hell that thing was, it was not Scar. Scar was a mile away on Main Street, tucked away in a lively crowd with candy and treats warm in his belly. 

Pearl’s words haunted him, a cruel echo of what he couldn’t comprehend. That thing isn’t Jimmy, she said. Her eyes were cold yet desperate. Not anymore.

It wasn’t Jimmy just like this hadn’t been Scar. It couldn’t have been him. There was no peppermint, there was no trace of anything human behind those charcoal eyes. Grian’d never given much thought to the possible. But when it came to Scar, impossible seemed less and  less like a certainty and more like a personal challenge. Like a curse— he couldn’t get away from it even if he tried. Just like he couldn’t escape Scar, he couldn’t escape his own flesh and blood, he couldn’t escape this town. 

He was tainted by it. 

It wasn’t Scar.  A weak impression, maybe, but that’s all it was— an impression, the vague shape of him. The hollow skin with nothing substantial underneath. What kind of thing could wear someone’s skin like that? Could it change between forms? Could Pearl have been—

A shiver wracked Grian’s body.  Blood dripped down his arm, tracing the length of his elbow and dribbling into a little puddle on the floor. Each second was torture. 

Then, he heard them: footsteps. In a rushed, clumsy flurry they approached the screen door. Fear stabbed Grian’s chest as he grappled for a solid grip on the knife. It was a weak one at best, hand pained and slippery with blood. But it was all he had; he had to make it work.

And, like something out of a nightmarish dream, Scar stood in the doorway. Green eyes, so clearly and vividly green, and a terrified twist of fine features. Things that hurt like taking the brunt of a freight-train to the stomach. All the color was drained from Scar’s face, and Grian could do nothing but watch him take in every awful little detail: the bloodied state of him and the wallpaper, broken glass and wooden splinters, and the knife angled right at him.

Grian took a shaky breath and braced himself against the wall, tightening his grip. If Scar (whoever this was) was smart, he’d be most worried about the knife. 

Scar pushed the screen door open slowly. The wooden frames creaked as he did, a slow wail that set Grian’s nerves on edge. He had the audacity to breathe, “Grian” — like it was a relief to finally be saying his name. He had the gall to step inside, carefully stepping over the threshold so as not to trip. 

Grian raised the knife as quickly as he could. The only warning he could muster with what felt like an iron band wrapped tight around his throat. Scar’s hands immediately shot up in the air, palms out. 

“Woah, woah, woah, okay! Okay. It’s okay,” Scar soothed. “...Are you alright?” 

Scar threw the mask on as if it was nothing. A practiced ease Grian had watched time and time again, yet somehow never got quite used to. There was something uncanny about it, or if Grian was more of the sort, he might’ve called it magical in a way. The quickness, the efficiency— it was practiced. Just like Grian had practiced loading and unloading a magazine, Scar learned to masquerade as whatever people needed to be. This soft-spoken, soothing persona was one Grian had only caught brief glimpses of; he didn’t know it well enough to seek any sort of comfort in it. 

Not even the most skilled marksman hit their target with each shot. He learned in the Academy that being the best shot didn’t mean a damn thing if you lost control of your emotions, if your temper flared, if your hands so much as trembled. Scar might’ve been the most accurate, deadly sniper Grian had ever met, but even his hands shook. 

His expression was a weak mockery of calm, his hands outstretched like he was placating a wild animal rather than someone he’d met in a grocery aisle three weeks ago. “You’re bleeding. Can I take a look? Please?”

Or maybe Grian did recognize this— the overly sincere eyes and whispered, perpetual sweet-nothings. Always the right thing to say, always the worst-delivery. The charm dialed up to eleven, the weakened smile, the empty promises. But still, Grian couldn’t bring himself to bring the knife down. It was all he had left between himself and the hellish thing that tried to stick him like a pig. How good were it’s tricks? Grian hadn’t noticed the first time. 

Fool him once, shame on it. Fool him twice? Grian wasn’t going to let it happen twice. 

When Scar didn’t get an answer, he stepped toward Grian. 

Grian held the knife higher. “Don’t.” 

“Okay, I’m not. I won’t.” Scar immediately backed away, palms out and on display. Those little scars littered his palm, little streaks of silver across tanned skin. Grian couldn’t help but remember how they’d felt against his cheek. 

“Why don’t we put down the knife?” Scar asked nicely, managing a weak, tight-lipped smile. 

“What are you doing here?” Grian asked, voice hoarse. “Why did you come?”

“Impulse told me you called. You had him really freaked out, G. He said you sounded rough. I— I just wanted to check on you. I needed to see if you were alright.” 

Grian laughed, an awful sound like metal scraping against metal. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Obviously I’m not alright,” he said. 

Then, shaking head to toe, he said. “It looked like you.”

“It’s me,” Scar hedged, risking another slow step towards Grian. “It’s okay now. I’m not going to hurt you. Let me help. It’s just me.” 

Suddenly Scar’s face blurred at the edges. Grian’s eyes burned, tears hot and vengeful. But he refused to let them fall. Something broke in his chest and he couldn’t think to be angry anymore. He was scared. He’d always been scared, and he was tired of pretending like he wasn’t. The tremble snuck into his hand. 

There was nothing that rivaled the urge to leap for Scar. He wanted it so badly his chest ached beneath the thin layer of scattered bruises, but— “I can’t trust that,” he croaked, the words raw like it’d dragged its claws along Grian’s throat to keep from coming out. 

“Yes, you can. It’s me, same ole’ annoying Scar,” he said, steady in his unsteadiness that only could come naturally to someone like Scar. Not the thing pretending to be him. ““Grian, look at me.” 

He did. No longer were his eyes made of charcoal and midnight. His grin wasn’t too wide, his laughter too cruel. His eyes were green and they looked tired, the lines of his face heavy. When he looked at this Scar, there was nothing hollow about him. He was practically brimming with his sincerity, threatening to pour over.

But it wasn’t enough. “Prove it,” he said, his chin wavering. The tears were falling now, but he didn’t have the pride left to try to wipe them away. 

“Okay, okay.” Scar wore his pain like an open head wound, letting it breed freely. Just to show Grian that he could bleed at all, that this was real. He hesitated, hands hanging in the air. The longer he waited, the faster Grian’s patience and resolve slipped out from between the gaps of his fingers. Not that he had much of a grip on either to begin with. It was like holding water in crooked, broken fingers.

Before Grian lost them both completely, Scar said, like ripping off a bandage. “I’m a fraud.”

And all Grian could do was stare at him. Between the lines of panic and fear, he’d completely lost his place on the page. He didn’t know what that meant, because Scar lied about so many things that it was impossible to trace them all back to one single point. But it only took a second of staring for it to catch up to him. 

He could only manage a splintered, “What?”

“You were right. About everything,” Scar said. “I don’t speak with the dead. I don’t see anyone’s futures. I don’t believe in the Silent Sentinels or sea monsters or half of the other bullcrap I spit out. And I don’t See, not in the way I said I could. It’s a sham— all of it.”

It shouldn’t have shaken him. If Scar thought this was some world-altering revelation, he would’ve been mistaken. Because Grian had known all along that Scar was nothing but a paper-mache of all his half-assed hats and personas. He was only as large as newspaper article titles allowed him to feel, the boundaries of him confined to the three inch margins of the print and the inelastic stretch of Grian’s imagination. It shouldn’t have shaken him, because compared to something non-human wearing Scar’s skin coming at him with a knife, learning Grian’s instincts had been right meant nothing. 

Scar was persuasive, and Grian was only so tough. He’d only been halfway convinced. Scar knew things no other living person could have possibly known. On the Flying Fish’s deck, eyes gleaming with something wicked as he stared Doc down and plucked information straight from the air. Tapes hidden in a box under rickety floorboards, a place Grian wouldn’t have thought to look even if he had all day to tear the apartment apart brick by brick. 

Scar had a special talent for morphing the impossible into the possible, right before Grian’s eyes. And foolishly, he had started to allow himself to believe it.

“You lied to me,” Grian said, and it shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did. He knew better. But he’d also given Scar his palm and asked him to look deeper; he’d practically begged Scar to tell him that things would be alright. Because if at least Scar had told him, then maybe it could’ve come true like everything else miraculously seemed to do. 

But what did it mean now that Grian knew it was just another lie?

“I did. I’m sorry.” Scar slowly lowered his hands to his sides. He shifted his weight between his feet. Standing still was killing him and it showed, but the knife clutched in Grian’s bloody hand would kill him even faster. “But not about everything.”

“I’m just supposed to believe that?”

“You don’t have to. But this is the truth: I fell off a cliff. I was young and stupid and thought I was invincible, like all other twelve-year-olds.” 

Grian’s eyes widened. 

“You’ve heard this story before,” Scar said, wrestling with a saddened smile. “This one wasn’t a lie. Not entirely.  I fell, I was twelve, I was stupid, but I also wasn’t alone. My friend, Cub, was with me that day. We went to the cliffside together."

Grian remembered a slightly-blurred newspaper clipping, a small piece of a DIY file meant to exonerate or convict Scar of his fraudulence. The black print had the answer in front of him the whole time. Local boy recognized for his “heroic” efforts in recovering a body.

“Cub was my best friend,” Scar said. “We weren’t supposed to be there, but I insisted we sneak out anyway. He fell first, cracked his head open on the rocks in the shallow water. The current took his body after that.” 

His tongue suddenly tasted of metal. “You told the police you found the body by talking to a ghost.”

“In a way, it felt like I had.” A darkness passed over Scar’s eyes. “Everything on that side of the beach washed up at the same spot, this little outcropping of sand and rocks that caught everything that came through. Cub and I tried sending messages in a bottle more times than I could count. Every single one of them got stuck. I could only guess he’d end up in the same place.

“I guess karma caught up to me,” he continued. “I got dragged down right along with him. Except I was just lucky enough to land feet-first.” 

The deniable urge to hug Scar rapidly soured into wanting to punch him before switching back into hugging territory again. Grian had spent so much time being on the receiving end of pity that it was a strange, yet uncomfortably relieving feeling to feel it for someone else. Part of him didn’t want the honesty; not if this is what it cost, the pain in Scar’s expression. The guilt.

The monster that attacked him hadn’t had a shred of remorse. It was happy to see Grian suffer. It wanted him dead. Scar only wanted him safe. Both of them had lost enough already. 

“Scar, I—”

“It’s okay,” he soothed, lifting a hand to reach for Grian’s blood-slicked wrist. He was inches away—how had he gotten so close? His words had been the swinging of a pendulum. A hypnotic thing Grian could help but get folded up in. He hadn’t noticed Scar moving an inch. Maybe it was the blood loss. The wallpaper was stained with it, and where it streaked down his arm started to feel more cold than warm. 

Grian flinched away. Scar held his hands out. “Grian,” he said. “Look at me.”

He did. Green eyes stared straight back. They were always green. Not even an ugly liar’s tongue could ruin the beauty of them. The tension in Grian’s shoulders, despite his reservations, began to unravel. Stitches snipped and undone. 

“That’s it…”

Inch by inch, Scar moved. A foot stepping in the small puddle of Grian’s blood. A scarred, dry hand around Grian’s forearm. The other resting over Grian’s cold, trembling fingers, prying the handle out from his death-grip. When people died, rigor mortis set in and locked up all of their joints. Was that why they called it a death-grip? Because not even death could stop you from letting go of it? If that was the case, Grian felt like he’d somehow died and the rest of this was white noise— a cruel taunt from an afterlife he didn’t believe in. 

Except he wasn’t dead. Shaking head to toe like the storm of Hermit’s Hollow had blown directly into the narrow foyer, he surrendered the butcher knife. Scar took it and tossed it to the ground behind him. The sound was so sharp it stabbed Grian through the temples. And all at once, the strings of adrenaline pulling him along severed. He sagged, leaning heavily into Scar’s chest and feeling every inch of agony his battered body had to offer.

It was in Scar’s arms that he found true relief. Through the copper clogged in his nose and throat, Grian finally smelled it — peppermint. The taste rolled through him like a breath of fresh air. His knees wanted to give out then as he tipped forward the rest of the way. He hid his bruised face in the warm junction of Scar’s neck.

Scar’s arms carefully wrapped around him, one hand holding the back of his head and the other braced around his shoulders. His grip was the only thing keeping Grian from breaking apart into pieces. Every stitch of him was already undone; it felt like all it would take was the slightest breeze to tilt him over. 

“I got you.” Scar’s hand pet the back of Grian’s hair, simultaneously soothing and searching for any bumps or welts from his tumble. His fingers passed over a sensitive spot, what Grian could tell was a goose-egg already starting to swell on the back of his head. 

The search only grew from there. He held Grian’s at arm’s length, ran his hands over his shoulders, ghosting over his left arm. Grian could feel each throb of his heart through the appendage. He’d broken the same arm when he was fourteen after trying to scale the side of one of the buildings in Main Street on a Bdubs-issued dare. It felt a lot like that, the pain sharp and all consuming.

“What the hell happened to you?” Scar asked. 

“Stairs,” Grian answered; it was all he could properly manage. His head started to spin. “I need to sit down.” 

“You need to go to a hospital,” Scar balked. 

Grian pushed away from him as best he could with one semi-functional hand and unsteady feet. He wandered into the living room. The couch was too far and his legs were too untrustworthy. He stumbled to the side and barely caught himself on the bookshelf before his knees gave out. In a painful but controlled fall he folded himself up on the floor. 

“I just need a minute,” he wheezed. 

No amount of convincing would get him back on his feet again, at least not yet. Scar understood this, because he simply sat next to Grian without further complaint, pressing up against his right side. Silently he pulled Grian’s right arm into his lap. 

“The blood,” Grian croaked. It had already stained the cuffs of his jacket sleeves. Now it was across Scar’s lap. 

“I don’t care,” Scar said gently. 

The broken shelves dug into the bony protrusions of his spine. Shards of glass bit underneath his thighs. Scar’s bruising grip on his wrist— partly to staunch the bleeding and partly because he was afraid something would happen to him if he didn’t hold on tight. 

He welcomed all the new pain, despite already having an abundance of it. Masochistic as it was, it reminded him of what was real. 

Scar, with his lies, his scars, his emerald eyes, and worried circles rubbed into Grian’s wrist: real. Grian, with every inch of him either bleeding, bruised, hurting: real. The house around the two of them, with its quiet but endless stares, the broken chair in the kitchen, and the glass scattered across the cement flooring: real.

Reality was comfort. Reality was something Grian can kneel down and touch. He reminded himself that he was right-side-up, that what Jimmy, Joel, and everyone else in this goddamn town said isn’t true: he isn’t his mother, he isn’t crazy, his DNA isn’t blighted. But what comfort was reality, really, when it told Grian something he didn’t want to believe to be true?

He didn’t know which was worse: a reality in which his mother was right and something deep and unfixable was wrong with him, or the one in which every member of his family was destined for an early, depressing death or a long-winded stay at White Oak Asylum. Both two fates were equally as bleak.

Grian’s ribs creaked as he breathed in. So he breathed in deeper. Each time his lungs reached deep until the stretch burned too painful to bear. He wrestled with the weakest part of himself that wanted to lean ever-so-slightly to the right, into Scar’s body heat. But he hurt too badly— inside and out.

“What do we do now?” Scar asked under his breath, tilting his chin up to stare at the ceiling. He wouldn’t find anything there; Grian stopped looking to God for answers a long time ago. He wasn’t sure he ever started. 

Grian breathed in. It begged the question, again, what did you do after your world ended? It was as good an answer as any: breathing. What was there left to do?

All he could do was breathe. Breathe, and admit quietly, “I don’t know.”

Grian wasn’t particularly a skilled or practiced liar. Yet somehow this truth felt as if it was the first time he ever said such a thing.  

He licked at his lips, surprised to find them turning numb. In fact, his entire body felt that way: fuzzy. Like he was a television antenna with an awful connection. “Can I ask you something?” he asked quietly. 

Scar squeezed his wrist once. “Hm?”

“Do you ever get tired of it? The pretending?” 

For a long while, Scar hesitated. It was so unlike him. The Scar Grian met in the Grab n’ Go was nothing but a shamble of rushed words and charismatic quips. To see him disarmed… in all honesty it disturbed Grian just as much as the skin-thieving imposter had. 

“I’ve been doin’ it for a long time. Guess I got used to it.” Then, he added quietly. “I think you already know that pretty well, though.”

Disappointingly, a lack of clairvoyance didn’t seem to strip Scar of his ability to read through Grian like he was a sheet of glass. Grian leaned his head back against a shelf. “How’d you do it? The ship, the tapes at the lofts? How’d you trick me?”

Scar’s somber facade splits to reveal a more genuine smile, albeit a tired one. “A magician never reveals his secrets,” he said. 

“More like a conman.”

“But if you let me get you to a hospital, I will tell you,” Scar said firmly. He held Grian’s hand as much as he could with the skin split open. It should’ve made the pain torturous, but in reality he could only be glad someone was touching him in a way that wasn’t meant to harm. 

“Promise?”

Scar interlocked their pinkies as gently as he could. “Scout’s honor.”

Notes:

this whole climax between Grian and Scar, fun fact, was the first ever scene I came up with for this AU; basically the scene I built the rest of the story around haha. Hope you enjoyed it!

Chapter 8: VIII. find out

Summary:

Time to regroup.

Chapter Text

..- -.

VIII.

A busted chin, a few bruised ribs, and sixteen stitches later, Grian fell back into his body.

He didn’t know when he’d left it in the first place. One moment he had been sitting with Scar among the wreckage of his living room, and the next he was covered with little stickers and tucked in a private cubicle behind a curtain. The gaudy fabric was checkered, this awful shade of green and blue that was pale and lifeless. His nose stung with the sharpness of antiseptic. 

Part of him wished he could’ve left it again, like clocking out at the end of a rough day at work. Leave the night shift to deal with the scraps. He’d already dipped into over-time and was well overdue for a raise; though he knew he wouldn’t be so lucky. His reality returned to him with a sharp, crystal clarity he despised. 

Training kicked in; Grian assessed what he could, took inventory of his body and what hurt. As far as he was concerned his head was stacked full of cinder blocks, all armed to drag him to the bottom of the bay and drown him. ‘Tired’ didn’t begin to cover the dull burning that coated him head to toe. Anger didn’t quite fit the bill either. It was some odd third space between the two, one that left him raw and exposed. 

The only bearable piece, the only constant, was Scar. Sat beside him on the thin gurney, his thigh and shoulder pressed against his own. His presence was silent. He hadn’t said a word in… however long it’d been since they walked through those sliding glass doors, however long they’d been sitting here. It wasn’t that Grian minded the silence, necessarily, but it was odd. Disconcerting. Like Scar was lost deep in thought where Grian could no longer reach him. 

But then, Scar perked up and said, “An hour and forty-five minutes,” like he couldn’t help himself.

Grian scrunched his eyes shut. “What happened to you being a fraud?” 

Scar only chuckled. 

Peeling his heavy eyes open, Grian looked back down at his palms. One of his arms was done up in a sling, a splint and bandages wrapped heavily around his wrist and forearm. The other was bandaged thickly. He tested and flexed his fingers. Whatever it was they’d injected around the cut, he needed another generous dose directly to his vein. It numbed his hand from skin to bone, the pain of split skin reduced to mere memory. A nightmare, if Grian convinced himself of it. That single spot of reprieve among a blistering map of sore spots and pain topography— he couldn’t help but fantasize how wonderful it’d feel flooding the rest of him.

Scar followed his eyeline. “On the bright side, you’ll have a pretty cool scar.” He raised one of his hands and spread his fingers with a cheeky little smile. “We’ll be matching.” 

Grian offered a crooked, wobbly smile in return. He hoped it was enough. It wasn’t the thank you Scar deserved, but it was all he had left to give. 

“We’ll get out of here soon enough,” Scar promised, his voice quiet, the sound nearly drowned out by the low hustling of the emergency room beyond the curtain. Monitors beeping. A baby crying. “Once we get your x-rays back we can—”

“You don’t have to be here, Scar,” Grian interrupted. “You can go. If you want.”

“How else am I supposed to look after you?” 

Scar looked at him with a worried little frown, a crease in his browline, and God, it wasn’t fair. Something in Grian’s chest threatened to cave; his abused ribs were weak to start with, already cracked and mottled and bruised, so it was far too easy for Scar to break through. And it was frighteningly easy for Grian to let him. 

He was tired of fighting— his own head, this town, Scar. Everything. 

“What if I don’t need you to look after me?” Grian asked, numb fingers clenched. The thick bandages kept him from making a full fist. 

Scar hesitated. As quiet and still as Grian had ever seen him. “...What if I want to?” 

Grian stared back at him. It was stupid, but all he wanted in that single moment was to reach for Scar’s hand. To be held in the same fierce, protective way he had been in the foyer of his home. But this was something more distant, more nervous. Scar’s hand rested casually at his knee, his thumb rubbing lazy circles into the bunched fabric. The touch was innocent, mindless, a point of connection meant to ground Scar as much as it was to comfort Grian. A subtle reminder that they were okay. 

He wanted to take that hand in his own, interlock their fingers, and press those scarred knuckles to his lips. He wanted to indulge himself in all the little things he’d spent twenty years depriving himself of. Because he never wanted it before. He never deserved it before. 

Hell, he didn’t deserve it now. But he almost died and he was overwhelmed with how grateful he was that Scar was still sitting beside him, after everything.

“I’m sorry,” Grian mumbled, gaze focused on the little monitor that sat above Grian’s head, a small beeping keeping track of his racing heart rate. His eyes followed the sharp spike each beat gave. “I should’ve listened to you sooner.”

“It isn’t your fault,” Scar said, wrapping a gentle arm around Grian’s shoulders. He moved with hesitance that fit him clumsily, but Grian’s throat and heart ached at the thought that such small considerations were reserved for someone like him. That Scar thought he still was worth those kinds of things. 

Grian licked his bottom lip, the split already covered in a scab. “Nothing is making any sense ,” he said, trying to make it sound like a simple observation, yet another fact about Hermit’s Hollow that bothered him no more than the weather forecast. But instead it came out tense, a terrified whine. The tense pitch his voice would take whenever he woke from a nightmare and climbed to Pearl for comfort. 

He didn’t understand. He was afraid. There was something wrong with Hermit’s Hollow. Deeply, irreparably. Far more dangerous and horrifying than Grian (or his five-year-old self could’ve ever imagined). There wasn’t anyone to tell him it was all in his head anymore. Even if his mother’s voice was still fresh and crisp against his ear, he wouldn’t have listened. He knew what he saw. 

The grounds on which Grian had grown the seedlings of his skepticism — a childhood that was unfairly short yet torturously long, a house with eyes for keyholes, a mother who looked at him like he was something rotten, as if he hadn’t been her own flesh and blood— fractured like the soil threatened to when doomsday came. A fault-line splintering his resolve and the town itself. 

Most folks claimed something dark was brewing beneath the town, underneath sidewalks and house plots. But it was always something different. One lady’s zombie epidemic was another fella’s religious rapture. Grian’s was now this gross look-alike that lurked in every corner, that hid behind every face that passed them through the gap in the curtain. It could be anywhere.

“We’ll figure it out,” Scar promised. “I might not be psychic , but I’ve spent my entire life researching this kind of stuff.”

“Monsters that walk around wearing your skin and try to kill your friends?”

“You’d be surprised.”

Before Grian could say anything else, the curtain swept open with a large ripple, the small metal rings screeching against the rod mounted to the ceiling. Impulse panted heavily, knuckles white around his deathgrip on the curtain. His chest heaved with each breath, his hair stuck to his forehead with what was either rainwater or a copious amount of sweat. 

Grian, ” he sighed in relief. Like the oversized teddy bear he was, he rushed forward like he meant to crush Grian in a hug. But at the last second he stopped himself, thinking better of it. His dark gaze lingered on the sling around his neck. 

“Hey, Chief,” Grian said, his voice starting to go hoarse around the edges.

“I rushed here as soon as I could,” Impulse said, frantically directing all of his nervous, flustered. mother hen energy onto Scar. “How is he? Is he good? What did the doctor say?"

He can hear you.” Grian struggled not to let his irritation bleed too much into his voice. He hoped a near death experience was enough to clean the slate with Impulse, but he couldn’t be too certain. It was better to play things safe. “I’m fine. A little banged up.”

“A little?” Impulse scoffed. He stared at Grian with a kind of pity he wasn’t used to. He hadn’t yet had the opportunity to look at himself in a mirror, but he could only imagine he looked less than the pinnacle of health.

“His arm’s definitely broken. Bruised a few ribs,” Scar chimed in. “Waiting for the x-rays to see the extent of the damage and then get a cast put on.” 

“Jesus.” It was the closest Grian had ever heard Impulse come to swearing; had it been any other situation maybe he would’ve thought to be shocked. 

“Impulse, I’m okay,” Grian insisted. “ Physically , at least.”

“Mentally is a whole other issue,” Scar sighed quietly at his side. “You guys get mandated employee therapy through the department, right? We could use some of that right now.”

“Scar, please,” Impulse begged. “What happened, guys? Who did this to you?” 

Grian glanced at Scar out of the corner of his eye. He felt him go rigid as a board beside him, but he kept that arm firm and steady around Grian’s shoulders. It was only then that it occurred to him that maybe the gesture was more for Scar’s comfort than it was for Grian’s. 

“I…” Grian scrambled for an answer that sounded real. Because if anyone could go toe-to-toe with Grian in terms of bold-faced skepticism, it was the chief of the Hermit’s Hollow PD. He tolerated stories far better, with that kind smile and teddy bear disposition. But he never believed a word of it. He simply tolerated letting people believe whatever they wanted to believe. 

Grian, however, couldn’t tolerate the idea of Impulse humoring him. He couldn’t be another misguided Hermit seeking comfort from the chief against the things that went bump in the night. He wouldn’t. He had far more pride than that. 

“I don’t know,” he eventually said, circling the inevitable truth like blood down the sink drain. “Whatever it was, it wasn’t human .”

Impulse stared blankly at him. “Grian…”

“No, no, I know. I know, okay? It sounds mental,” he hedged. “It… It looked like Scar. I thought it was him at first. It looked like him, it talked like him, it knew things only Scar would’ve known—“ Grian rushed to get out, the panicked pace of his heart kicking into overdrive the second Impulse’s worried-turned-scornful gaze turned onto Scar. 

“—But it’s not him! It’s not .” Grian pressed his weight into Scar protectively. “Whatever this thing is, I think it can pretend to be other people… And… And maybe that’s how we’ve never been able to find any evidence of anything—"

“Look, you…” Impulse sighed. “You’ve been through something traumatic. I can’t even begin to imagine how you must be feeling right now—”

“If you’d shut up and listen to me for five seconds, you’d hear loud-and-clear how I’m feeling ,” Grian spat. Caught in the throes of his plight, he tried reaching for Impulse. Anything to get his attention, to get him to listen before he swatted Grian aside like nothing more than a pesky gnat. Maybe Grian had deserved it before, but this was bigger than his fragile ego now. But his splinted arm protested with a wave of hot, vengeful pain that shot up the length of his arm like lightning. 

“Jeez, Grian. Careful—“ Scar admonished, grabbing both of Grian’s shoulders to keep him still. 

“No! No, he does not get to call me crazy!” He wasn’t some old lady with a ghost in his attic. This was too important. He had the bruises and broken bones to prove it; Grian could reach out and touch the very thing tormenting him. He wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t his mother. 

Scar didn’t budge. It wasn’t like him to be so quiet, but then again it wasn’t like Grian to grovel. He hadn’t begged anyone for anything since he packed his bags and left for what he dreamed to be for good. 

Impulse stood in mute shock, his arms limp at his sides as he stared between Scar and Grian like he wasn’t sure who he was more disappointed with. 

“I believe him, Impulse,” Scar eventually said. His thumb rubbed mindless circles on Grian’s upper arm. “This is what you and Mumbo hired me for, isn’t it? To aid the investigation? Allow me to offer you my assistance— listen to him.”

“You know me,” Grian added. “Impulse, you know me . I know I’ve been reckless and annoying and abrasive—”

“True,” Impulse muttered.

“—But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m the best detective in this precinct. It doesn’t change the fact that I don’t believe any of the crap this town has to spit out. Hell, I can’t even believe what I saw, but I saw it. It tried to kill me. Look at me.” 

Impulse’s jaw visibly clenched. As long as Grian had known him, he had the weakest poker face known to mankind. Nonexistent. His heart was stitched right alongside the Hermit’s Hollow PD patch on his shoulder. Grian could see that he was winning. Impulse wanted to believe him. 

“This is a bit out of my job description,” Impulse admitted, hugging himself tightly. He let out a shaky sigh and shivered, a dog shaking the cold water off its coat. “Let’s say, hypothetically, this thing exists and attacked you: where is it now?”

“I hurt it,” Grian said. “I— I got it in the stomach with a fire-poker thing.”

“Excellent work, partner,” Scar praised, all too glad to hear Grian maimed something with a piece of wrought iron. 

“It kept coming for me, but then I…” Grian lay sprawled on his back, the weight of the mirror crushing his aching chest. He didn’t have the courage to look into the glass. 

He shook his head. It wouldn’t do any good to wonder why a mirror of all things scared it off. Not until they found it

“It fled. It’s still out there, somewhere,” Grian said. “Hell, it could be someone else by now, walking out there with the parade and we would be none the wiser.”

“It could look like anyone?” The color faded from Impulse’s face. 

“We don’t know.”

This time, Scar spoke up, “You know the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers ?”

“So, it’s an alien?” Impulse asked. Grian didn’t think it possible for him to look even more wary than he already had, but low and behold… The chief looked positively defeated.

“No, no,” Scar said, then hesitated. “Probably. There’s a… I dunno, seventy-percent chance it’s not an alien. This sorta stuff roots from old folklore, like no-white-people-in-America old. I know a few of these stories. I have my hunches.”

“But until we know more, we have to assume it can become anyone, any place, any time,” Grian said. “We need to take to the streets. Set up checkpoints, have every officer out on foot keeping an eye out on anything that might be out of the ordinary.

His brain was a storm of half-baked plans and the image of his chaotic evidence board. Red spools of thread— useless connections and dates between useless suspicions. Had it been this thing the entire time? Were Iskall, Pix, and Gem dead? It was as if the world had been hurtling around him like he was in the Chrysler, pedal to the metal, the wind whipping through his hair. Only for someone to slam on the brakes all at once. Everything came to a halt, his heart lurching in his ribcage. It hit him so hard it felt like he was gonna throw it up. He shuddered and dipped forward.

The arm around his shoulders kept him from face-planting on the tile. “Grian?”

Grian grappled for Scar’s wrist with his bandaged hand.  He stared at Impulse helplessly. 

That thing isn’t Jimmy. Not anymore.

“Wait—” A frantic, strained sound escaped his throat. “Hold on, Jimmy is— Jimmy’s out there—"

His baby brother. Not Jimmy, Pearl taunted in the back of his mind. Not anymore. Just like Scar hadn’t been Scar? Pearl might not have been lying, but Scar was fine now, so that meant Jimmy had to be fine now too, right? It could’ve stolen his face before, but… 

If that was true, where was he? How did  he only just now remember? His baby brother could be dead or dying in a ditch somewhere, buried in a shallow grave with loose dirt. He could be hurt, scared and alone and wondering why his brother hadn’t come to save him yet. Jimmy was always waiting for Grian; where Grian’s curse was to always leave, Jimmy’s was to always be left behind.

He felt sick. What if it killed him? What if it wore Scar’s skin when it did it? Or what if it wore Grian’s ? What if it fooled Jimmy by pretending to be Grian? It would’ve worked. No matter how angry Jimmy was at him, he always came crawling back. 

“Grian, you’re hyperventilating,” Impulse eased, stepping into his space and moving his head up to get a better look at him. 

“I have to find him.” Grian writhed out of Scar’s grip and hopped down from the gurney. Even the soft impact of his feet on the hard floor sent ripples of lightning through his body, like falling down the stairs all over again. His knees nearly buckled, pain and exhaustion the most unfortunate cocktail. Scar caught him around the waist.

“Are you trying to break your nose too?” Scar demanded. “You’re in no condition!”

“I’m not just gonna sit here,” Grian snapped, whirling on him. “Jimmy’s out there, Scar. He could be scared, or hurt, and dead and it would be my fault .”

Those green eyes stared at him owlishly, hurt bleeding out of the deep emerald. Grian looked away. 

“You’re right, Grian,” Impulse said. “You’re right— I do know you. I know you’d happily get yourself killed trying to do what’s important to you. I know you’d probably turn up dead on the side of the road before you find him. So I’ll go. I’ll search for Jimmy myself, and I won’t stop until I find him.”

He knew half of that was an insult, but he’d heard far worse and it meant nothing compared to the relief that flooded him. It was a cold wash to his too hot, too desperate veins. Finally he felt he could breathe through the pain; everything dulled. “Thank you,” he whispered. 

Impulse only nodded. Suddenly he looked much more like himself, the chiseled chief that made you feel safe the moment he walked into the room. When he turned to leave, he gripped the curtain in hesitation.

“Goddamnit, Impulse, go! ” Grian snapped. “What are you waiting for?”

Impulse didn’t flinch. The muscles around his jaw clenched. His gaze, blatantly untrusting of Grian’s decision making, went to Scar 

“Go,” Scar said, the single word uncoiling the spool of dread in Grian’s chest. He squeezed Grian’s shoulders lightly. “I’ve got him.” 

It was only then that Impulse left. And again, if Grian had the capacity for any emotion other than fear, he’d have been pissed that Impulse needed Scar’s verification at all. 

Grian felt himself slipping. His head began to float, up and up, like a balloon. But the bay was only so large, the ceiling so tall. It kept him trapped inside. Scar’s warmth, the touch across his shoulders and the back of his neck, kept him planted firm. 


-.. . .-.

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GRIAN!

The red icing mocked him. Sliced strawberries crested the rim of the cake like a crown, a regal, preemptive eulogy. The lights were low. Four bright candles burned, the clear wax slowly slid down.  Grian sat alone at death’s kitchen table with four empty chairs. He looked at each one, pulled out and expectantly waiting its guest. Yet no one came. 

One. Dad, who used to take them fishing and never got angry when they tracked mud in the house. Who never deserved anything that happened to him. 

Two. Mom, who was the thing haunting the house and the thing being haunted all at once. Who Grian wanted to hate but could only ever manage to pretend. 

Three. Pearl, who only ever held him up, protected him. Who stayed behind when all Grian could do was run away.

Four. Jimmy, who…

Grian inhaled sharply. He felt the eyes on him. He always felt them. But these eyes felt worse. He felt like they were turning him inside out. They were inside him, they were inside the cake, they were his own eyes. All he had to do was take a bite. His fingers clenched around a fork.

Where was Jimmy?

He looked to the doorway to the living room. A dark, dark puddle of red icing crept over the threshold and onto the kitchen tile. It grew and spread out in red tendrils, a slow and steady pace. The red was a deep, deep shade, so much so that it was almost black. 

He looked back at his cake. If he waited much longer the wax would completely melt away. 

MAKE A WISH.

With his eyes closed, he leaned in and blew them out.

“Grian.” 

Something touched his shoulder. Grian sat bolt upright quickly, choking on a sudden intake of air and the strap of the sling against his neck. His tongue buzzed with the faraway taste of blood and sugar. But when he looked down there was no cake, no strawberries, no burning candles, no blood. It had all been washed away. Scar’s jacket was  draped across his front and pooled in his lap like he’d been using it as a blanket. He remembered now, yet the sugary coating in his mouth lingered.

Leaning across the dashboard, Scar nudged him with a finger against his cheek. “Time to get up, sleepyhead.”

“I’m up,” Grian mumbled, looking around. They were in Scar’s car, a modest sedan Grian didn’t remember climbing into with a hand-made sign taped into the rear windshield that read: PSYCHIC ON WHEELS. IT’S ALWAYS A GOODTIME FOR A READING.

Grian squinted at the little red numbers on the display above the radio. It was half-past midnight. 

“Good. ‘Cause we’re here,” Scar said, reaching across to unbuckle Grian’s seatbelt. “Let’s roll.”

Blinking the sleep from his eyes, Grian finally started to gather his bearings. They sat parked along the curb outside of a wide two-story Georgian house with white-painted brick and a little courtyard garden. He knew this place. 

The Hollow Bed and Breakfast was run by this old married couple that most of the town’s kids theorized were vampires, since they never seemed to age. Whenever they walked past to get to school, the kids could plug their ears and scrunch their eyes shut out of fear of getting hypnotized into becoming their next meal. 

“What? No,” Grian said. “Why are we here? I thought you were taking me home.”

“After that thing almost killed you in it?” Scar scoffed. He climbed out and rounded the car to open the passenger door. He braced his arm against the hood and leaned over to fit in a good, long look of condescension.  “What, you wanna go for a second round with that thing? You’re not Rocky . Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

Grian didn’t mention that he never saw the film, because he had an inkling Scar would treat that as more of a shock to his universe than the knowledge that some kind of monster was out loose on the town. And Grian really only had the capacity for one world-ending revelation for tonight.

“If it… If Jimmy comes home, I need to be there,” he said. He needed to know. He needed to see the truth for himself, once and for all. 

“You look like you’re about to keel over. The only thing you need to be is in bed,” Scar snapped back. “Impulse will call us when he finds Jimmy like he promised. He’ll make sure he’s safe. He’s the Chief of Police, he's great at that kinda thing.” 

It wasn’t nearly as much of a comfort as Scar thought it was, but he bit his tongue. If Scar was right about one thing, it was that he was about as useful as soggy cardboard with one concussion and two hindered arms. A difficult pill for him to swallow, but Grian wouldn’t be able to protect Jimmy (or fight anything) if he got himself killed walking the streets trying to look for him. So when Scar offered him an arm to lean on, he took it. 

For as many times as he walked past the B&B as a kid, he’d never seen the inside. It was quaint and decorated like an antique story straight out of the 1800s. An old mahogany table split the dining room down the middle, decorated with lace doilies. Old sepia photographs hung all over in golden frames. 

Some of the photographs were of normal men donning military uniforms and what appeared to be their wives and children. But several others, if not most, were different . Shoulders and necks without heads. Dogs with two heads. A child with nothing but white spaces for eyes. Grian tried not to look at them all, but it was hard when they covered practically every inch of wall space, even lining the staircase up to the second story. 

On the landing, a frail little voice behind them stopped them in their tracks. “Have a guest, Scar?” 

An old lady stood at the bottom of the stairs. Her pink and white nightgown hung from her like she didn’t have a body underneath it. She tilted her head and smiled at them. Grian knew her face from a mere blur through a window, his head always tilted down whenever he walked passed. 

He vaguely recalled her being in her eightest at least back in 1960. She hadn’t aged a day. 

“Oh, good evening!” Scar leaned against the bannister. “So terribly sorry if we woke you, ma’am! My friend just needs a place to crash tonight. That won’t be a problem, will it?”

“For you, not at all,” she said, flashing pearly teeth. “Just make sure not to leave a mess. I hate messes.”

Scar saluted her with two fingers to his forehead. “Not a speck of dust will move out of place if I have anything to say about it,” he promised before putting a hand to the small of Grian’s back and guiding him back up the stairs. 

“Nice to see you back home, Grian!” she called before they climbed out of earshot. “The town always feels emptier without you.”

Scar ushered him into a bedroom and shut the door behind them. 

Grian stood in the doorway, his mouth made of sandpaper. As if the mayor hadn’t been a strange enough encounter of people he didn’t know that knew him. Hermit’s Hollow must’ve been really pulling out its big guns trying to impress him today. He could only wonder why it took twenty-five years for it to completely show off. 

The room was a disaster, and that was the kindest way of putting it. Folders, papers, and cardboard boxes occupied every horizontal surface and then some, a wide array of strange kick-knacks and what seemed like personal keepsakes scattered across the room: a Walkman with headphones wrapped around it resting on the foot of the bed, a thick book that was about as tall and wide as Grian’s torso with gold-lined pages and gold lettering written in a language Grian didn’t even recognize, a bowl with purple gemstones stashed on the bedside table.

“Not a speck of dust, huh?” Grian mumbled. 

“It’ll be right as rain before I leave! Until then, she doesn’t have to know.”

Scar toed his shoes off. He stripped out of his shirt, the sleeves still bloody at the cuffs. He let it fall into a heap on the floor and went digging in an old mahogany armoire for another set of clothes. With his back to him, Grian had an uninhibited view of  the jagged scars, both traumatic and surgical, that traced shapes along his back like a coastline along a map. Boundaries and borders and histories Grian had yet to be privy to. 

Scar pulled a fresh shirt over his head and turned around. Grian snapped his head the other way and Grian wandered over to the bowl of stones. They glittered, even though there was only moon-light coming in from the single window above the bed. He reached out to touch one. 

Don’t !” Scar shrieked and intercepted him, snatching the bowl up and holding it high above his head like Grian was a dog snapping for a bone. He made a show of wiping pantomimed sweat from his brow. “ Whew , that was close!” 

“What the hell are they?”

“Amethyst shards,” Scar says, out of breath. “Harmless to look at, but to touch…?” A shudder raced through his body. “You nearly bought yourself a one-way ticket into eternal misfortune.”

“Do you even realize how much of a hypocrite you are?” Grian snapped. In the last twelve hours he’d been forced to swallow truth after truth— none of which he’d been willing nor ready to accept. It was cruel that he couldn’t take more joy out of this, knowing he’d been right the entire time. He wanted to puff out his chest and lift his chin high the way he did best and claim victory for himself. He was right all along. Scar was a fraud and finally had the decency to admit it. 

But it cost Grian nearly dying to get it. And even now that he had it, it didn’t feel right. There was something missing. Scar wasn’t telling him something. 

Scar held the bowl in front of him like it could shield him from Grian’s questions. He stared down at the shards. “It’s hard to study this kinda stuff all the time and not pick up some of it,” Scar said. “Everyone believes in something.  Santa. The Easter Bunny. God…

Everyone believed in something. Scar apparently didn’t believe in monsters, or ghosts, or the supernatural, but he did believe in cursed rocks that would bind you forever in your misfortune. Grian willingly kissed a man who believed in cursed rocks. That surely checked out. That was fine. 

Honestly, he would’ve preferred Scar stayed a psychic. If he had to pick one, that was the least mortifying of the two options. 

Scar set the bowl aside and steered Grian by the shoulders. “But don’t worry, I don’t think anybody on this planet’s got you beat for Biggest Skeptic of the Year Award,” he said, sitting him down on the foot of the bed before struggling to kneel in front of him to start untying his shoelaces. 

Grian watched the top of Scar’s head as he dutifully untied Grian’s shoes and pried them off, tossing them to the side. He cleared his throat. “How are you doing it?” he asked again. 

Scar peered up at him, feigning innocence. “You should really get some rest,” he insisted. “This can wait until tomorrow, I promise. You’ve already been through a lot, I don’t want to—”

“You promised me,” Grian said. “Everybody believes in something? I want to believe in you , Scar. But I can’t do that if you just keep lying to me and keeping secrets.” 

Scar froze. He didn’t want to. It was obvious: his jaw tightened, his fingers picked at the eyelets of Grian’s boots, he didn’t look Grian in the eye. But eventually, he breathed in defeat, pulling Grian’s boots off. “A promise is a promise,” he relented. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” 

He’d nearly been killed by a Scar-look-alike, and said look-alike was not only now on the loose, but also potentially the very thing Grian had been chasing down this entire time. It was a much of a victory as it was the most crippling of defeats. For every time he raised his nose up at someone in this town, Hermit’s Hollow delivered it straight back at him with this in one, iron-knuckle punch. How could things get worse?

A foolish thought, in hindsight. 

Scar sat on the edge of the bed, his bad leg stretched out and the other folded underneath him. He leaned his weight to the side, facing Grian. He didn’t start talking. He wrung his hands in his lap. Patiently they sat in silence, nothing but the faintest creak of the old bed frame beneath their weight, the distant thump of a shutting door somewhere further in the house, and the gentle pace of Scar’s breath. It rose and fell with his shoulders. Where the city breathed, harsh storms, feverish rain, hyperventilating hills, Scar’s was gentle. It was human, it was fragile. Grian could feel the warmth of it right there in the air beside him, just as tangible and steady as the smell of peppermint. 

Scar picked at peeling skin around his fingernails. Grian watched with an uncomfortable pinch around his heart, and soon enough he’d had enough. He reached across with his bandaged hand. It was awkward— his fingers were still numb, the bandages were too thick to properly move them— but he intertwined their fingers and squeezed his hand as firmly as he could manage.

It was a problem how much comfort it brought him. How, in that colonial bedroom, it felt as if the world could be ending and he wouldn’t care. That it didn’t matter how angry Grian was with him, because sometimes it felt like they were all they had. As long as it was them, in this safe little room, hand in unlovable hand. With these things, Grian felt, for the first time in his life, that maybe things could be okay. 

“I told the police a ghost told me where Cub’s body was because I was scared,” Scar finally said, his eyes distant and pale. “I felt like it was my fault. I was afraid they’d think the same. So I told ‘em a ghost told me. I saw a show with a character who could do that— it was all I could think of to say. From there, things spiraled out of control."

“You couldn’t tell the truth?” Grian guessed.

Scar shook his head. “I was too deep in the lie. You know what they say, one little white lie is never just one lie. If you let it sit long enough, it turns into a million. And I had woven myself a web of ‘em.” Then, he straightened his shoulders a tad and lifted his eyes to meet Grian’s for the first time since he started talking. “I couldn’t actually do what I said I could, but there are more than one ways to see things. I don’t need to talk to the dead or sense the supernatural to get the information I need to keep up the lie.”

He was beating around the bush now, and the numbing medicine was starting to fade from Grian’s palm. “ What , Scar?” he pushed. “You’re killing me here.”

Scar worried at his lower lip. And it was then that it struck Grian: he was afraid. But of what? Of Grian? Of the truth?

“We See things not as what they are, but for what we are,” Scar said, quoting himself from that day in the diner after their bleary morning on the docks. “I can’t see things for what they are. But you can.” 

Grian blinked. He’d been fortifying himself during Scar’s preamble, but it hadn’t been prepared for confusion. “Huh?”

“To me, it’s like everyone has a little window in their head.” Scar made a square with his thumbs and forefingers and held them up in front of Grian, like placing him in the center of a photograph. “A lot of stuff can leak out. Fears, desires, wishes, hopes, frustrations. Whether they prefer dark roast or light.” 

Grian’s heart sank into his belly. “What are you saying?” 

“The only reason I knew the things I did on the ship, or at Pix’s apartment, were because you knew them first,” he said. “And if you know them, then I can know them.” 

“How could I possibly have known those things?” 

“Things like the Fog don’t affect you. You’re so perceptive, like everything is see-through. It’s a gift. I’m jealous of it.” Then, Scar’s ease faltered. “You can’t tell me you’ve never noticed?"

There were about a million-and-one times Grian noticed , but they could all be tied back to growing up in a house where knowing every little facial expression and sound of feet on the staircase was the difference between a decent night’s sleep and being subjected to one of his mothers’ crazed rants. When the Academy practically beat deduction and memorization and observation into him. These were skills he perfected, and could utilize better than he could any weapon. It wasn’t anything more. He wasn’t… like that

He wanted to tell Scar as much, but he only shook his head. 

“What about when you were young?” Scar pressed. “Like, really little. Think hard, Grian.”

A house with eyes. They watched him everywhere. They never stopped watching him, and there was a point where he understood most of them didn’t belong to his mother. The Silent Sentinels peered over his shoulder each time he passed under them, but Grian never felt protected. Nights crying outside his mom’s bedroom door, begging her to make the shadows go away. 

Childish imagination, everyone called it. Paranoia . Grian knew its real name when he was five-years-old. But it was lost now, buried deep. 

Grian’s throat went dry. “You’ve said a lot of crazy shit, Scar,” he forced out. “But this takes the cake.” 

“In Pix’s apartment, you knew where the tapes were because you walked over the hollow piece of floor. Some part of you knew, deep down, that something was under there. Even if you didn’t know.” 

“But you knew,” Grian fired back. 

Scar nodded. 

“So, what, you can read my mind? You realize how crazy that sounds?” Grian scrambled for something to protect himself with, but with his skepticism splintered he found he had nothing left to carry.

“You wanted the truth,” Scar said. “That’s the truth.” 

Grian had wanted the truth, didn’t he? Was this it? Was it worth it?

Suddenly, a terrifying realization crawled over him, slow and nauseating. He stared down at the splints and bandages keeping his left arm steady, heat rushing up through his cheeks to the tips of his ears. “If that’s— Do you do that all the time, then? Look inside my head?” 

“No,” Scar instantly shook his head. Not an ounce of hesitation. “It’s more complicated than that. Kinda like… Y’know those police scanners you guys use? It’s kinda like that. It’s a lot of static. Sometimes I can catch something from across a room. The less people, the easier it is. But usually I have to go lookin’ for it, tuning in to the right station at the right time. I have to focus hard on what’s being said, like it’s all filtered through static. From afar, it can be really tricky.

“But when I take their hands…” Scar reached for Grian’s right wrist, pulling it toward him. A flicker crossed his face, and Grian felt a vaguely familiar sensation— a gentle prodding at the back of his head. “It all tunes in. I can see through the window just fine.” 

“It’s easy to fool people when you already know what’s going on in their heads,” Grian muttered, tasting metal once again. 

Scar smiled sadly. “Most people goin’ to psychics— that’s all they want. Someone to tell them whatever they want to hear.” 

As much as Grian wanted not to believe how tempting it was to dig his heels into the ground and fight tooth and  nail what was right in front of him, there was only so much he was capable of denying. 

He’d been nearly killed by a monster— why shouldn’t he be some kind of psychic on top of that? It explained things that went unexplained most of Grian’s life: how no one seemed to feel quite as terrified as he did, a fear that ran far deeper than spooky bedtime stories and creepy scarecrows, how sometimes it felt like Scar knew exactly Grian was thinking, how he’d answer his questions before Grian even had the chance to ask them. How he looked at Grian and held his hands and Grian felt every single one of his fears pinned up like a piece of evidence on a corkboard. 

Don’t you already know? Grian had asked. 

Yes, I know exactly, Scar had replied. It hadn’t been a lie. 

How humiliating, he thought, that Scar saw him so vividly this whole time.

--. .-.

Grian couldn’t remember the last time coffee tasted this good.

The steam rising from the paper coffee cup warmed his nose, which hung uselessly from his face like an icicle clung to the underside of a gutter. Even through the mitten of bandages the warmth reached his skin, though his hold was clumsy at best and he was one wrong move from a lapful of coffee. 

He sipped it and held it in his mouth to savor the feeling. The flavor was sweet, an unnatural mixture of caramel and cinnamon that Grian wouldn’t be caught dead ordering in public. But it was all this ancient B&B had. Grian woke up to the cup practically being pressed in his hands. Scar sat on the edge of the bed, insisting “Just try it— it’ll be the tastiest goddamn coffee you’ve ever had.” 

Between his apologetic smile and sleep-tousled hair, it was hard to turn him down. 

Grian was now on his second cup. And he was not above admitting that it was, in fact, the tastiest goddamn cup he’s had in months. Maybe his entire life. 

Jimmy used to always argue that things always tasted better when someone else made them for you— his usual tactic when he wanted Grian to make him a sandwich. It’s the love, he declared, flaunting the most irresistibly puppy-dog eyes you’ve seen in your life. Love makes everything sweeter. 

Grian took another sip,  watching Scar sort through one of the large cardboard boxes he had lined up against the wall. Each one of them was filled to the brim of papers, memorabilia, and research he’d collected throughout the years. None of the boxes were labeled nor seemed to have any sort of consistency to them; Scar was probably the only person on the planet who operated at a higher caliber of chaos than Grian. He wished he could show this to Impulse— just to show that it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could be and he should stop complaining about Grian’s messes. 

But all he could do was sit on the bed and struggle to wake up as he watched Scar sort through his third box. He’d been at it for twenty minutes, all the while muttering to himself as he searched for… whatever it was he was searching for. Grian held the mug and balanced it on his knee.

Last night’s numbness had fully worn away, leaving a dull, persistent ache in its wake. But he could still mostly use his right hand. The left was still tied up uselessly in a sling. It was one thing being metaphorically side-lined by Impulse and his trigger-happy red tape. It was another to be physically tied down, a dog left outside the store. There was little Grian could do with a few cracked ribs and a broken arm. It was a nauseating feeling: sitting stagnant. 

“Impulse called,” Scar said suddenly. “Only a little bit after you fell asleep.”

Grian nearly knocked the mug over. “What? What did he say? Why didn’t you wake me up?”

Scar hid behind his turned back. “You needed rest,” he said, as if it was more obvious than an elephant standing in the middle of the room. “Jimmy’s fine. Impulse said he was going to spend the night with a friend. Joel, I think?” 

While in any other circumstances there was no one Grian wanted Jimmy around less, he far preferred this over the news that his little brother was dead or gone. With Joel he’d at least be safe. He could only have hoped Impulse told him what happened, that it was too dangerous to leave the house and he and Joel needed to lock themselves inside with the doors sealed tight. It was Halloween morning, and Joel’s family were no less superstitious than any other Hermit’s Hollow resident. He counted on them to keep the boys under lock-and-key. 

Scar let out a loud, tired sigh as he pushed the third box away. A sound that was unlike him, not because it was theatrical but because it seemed genuinely agitated. 

“What are you doing?” 

Scar let out a loud, tired sigh as he pushed the third box away. “I don’t know. Something. Anything.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, the shadows under his eyes garish and deep. 

Grian cringed. “Did you get any sleep last night?” 

“It’s kinda hard to sleep with a creepy shadow-double-guy of me wanderin’ around,” Scar admitted. 

For once Grian could agree with Scar easily. Half of the reason he managed to get any shut-eye exhaustion catching up to him. Turned out fighting for your life against said creepy shadow-double-guy took a lot out of you, especially if he dealt some hefty damage. Grian would be lying if he said he hadn’t seen it over and over again. If those black eyes, the cruel blade’s edge, and not-Scar’s face hadn’t haunted him each time he closed his eyes. 

But wallowing in his own fear accomplished nothing. Sitting in this B&B, sipping caramel-cinnamon coffee didn’t change the fact that something was out in the town. Someone else could be missing by now. Someone could be dead

“You told Impulse you had a hunch about what was going on,” Grian began. “Was any of that true or was that you saving fake-psychic-face?”

“I said I wasn’t a psychic, not that my entire reputation’s a ruse. My career as a parapsychologist was and is quite real, thank you very much.” Scar pulled another box close to him and set his hands on either side of it, as if simply by touching it he could tell what nonsense was tossed inside. “I didn’t believe in it really, but when you study it for years…” He pulled something out of the top of the box and held it up for Grian to see. “It’s hard to come out without something stickin’.”

It was some kind of little black box. Grian squinted and leaned in close to see it in full. It was a cassette tape, but there wasn’t any kind of label or date written on it. Just black plastic and black reels. 

“Is that one of Pix’s?”

“We had at least one thing in common,” Scar said, climbing to his feet, albeit clumsily. He handed the tape to Grian. “We’re both heavily over-researched.”

“You little thief.” Grian scoffed and examined both sides of the cassette. There was hardly anything special about it. It was just like any of the other tapes in the box sitting on Grian’s desk. 

“I take that as a compliment,” Scar said, digging through the drawer of his nightstand until he held up his Walkman. “I think he’ll explain things a lot better than I can.” 

Scar sat beside Grian once again and took the cassette from him. He popped it in and let the plastic cover click back into place. With one look at Grian he clicked the large button on the side and the tape began to spin.

UNTITLED TAPE

Property of P. Riffs

Unknown Date

 

[Clicks]

[Begin Recording 00:00:04]

[Static]

[Muffled shuffling]

[???]

(sound muffled) You come alone, like I asked?

[PIX]

Yes. Though I’ll be honest I’m not sure why all the secrecy.

[???]

This isn’t the sort of thing you talk about in the open. (clears throat) People talk.

[PIX]

I suppose not. (hesitates) Are you alright?

[???]

I’m perfectly fine.

[PIX]

You’re bleeding. Your arm, it—

[???]

(shuffles) It’s a scratch. Don’t even remember how I got it.

[PIX]

If I may, I will get straight to the point, then. Iskall pointed you my way, correct? Why did he suggest you talk to me?

[???]

… I’ve got a problem. (sighs) It’s stupid, is what it is. But he insisted I talk to somebody about it.

[PIX]

So why come to me of all people— some stranger you don’t know?

[???]

Like hell am I going to the police, they’re about as useful as a bag of hookless lures.  They think us fishermen are superstitious. Maybe we are. But there’s no mistaking what I saw. 

[PIX]

And what was that?

[???]

A woman. I was alone on the boat one morning. I heard this awful sound, like an animal was dying. I thought something was wrong with the engine, but—

[PIX]

You saw the Weeping Lady?

[???]

So you know of her. 

[PIX]

She seems to be the most famous story in Hermit’s Hollow. Though most who report seeing her are women with or expecting children.

[???]

Which is why it’s ridiculous. (sighs) But I know what I saw. It was like she was staring right at me. And every day after that I saw her on the same spot on the shore, standing there in the water. The water is ice-cold, she should be freezing to death, let alone shivering. But she just stands there with her bare feet in the water and looks at me and cries.

[PIX]

Do you think she’s some kind of an omen? Why do you think you’re seeing her?

[???]

Hell if I know. All I know is… I’ve got a bad feeling about it. Iskall said she’s harmless. If anything she just wants to get a scare out of people, but it’s more than that. I feel like something bad’s about to happen.

[Clicks]

[Begin Recording 00:25:22]

[Clicks]

 

[PIX]

(sighs) I’ve been giving the Weeping Lady a great deal of thought. I have yet to see her apparition or hear her cries in the middle of the night, so I’m tentatively sure I am not cursed. Yet. But still, I can’t get her out of my head. 

How terrible must that be? Your baby is gone, but no one believes you. Not only has your baby been taken, but he or she’s been replaced by an imposter. No one but you knows it. You murder the fake and drown yourself after. Grief is a powerful thing. Who is to say it was an overreaction? What else was she meant to do?

[PIX]

I’ve done some light reading (a heavy book hits the table). I was surprised to find nearly identical stories scattered throughout Europe during the 17th century. It has many names. 

Irish mythology is some of the richest I’ve seen in all my time doing research on the topic. I’ve come across the tale of the Changeling before. I think that’s why the Weeping Lady has been haunting me so much, especially after reading those statements. After talking with Doc. It felt familiar, like a story I’ve heard many times before. Babies were stolen from their cribs and replaced by these Changelings. The reasons for this vary depending on the story you read. Sometimes it’s vengeance. Sometimes it’s vanity: human children are simply prettier, more prized. Other times, it’s hunger. Even Changelings need to eat. But no matter the justification , they are all described to enjoy causing pain and mischief to local villagers. 

In Cornwall, the Mên-an-Tol, also known as the ‘Crick Stones’ is a strange little assortment of hollowed-out granite stones. They’re rumored to be guarded by some kind of fairy that can cure any ailment, heal any injury, mend any curse. In one case, a woman who claimed a Changeling had swapped her baby stepped through them. The fake child revealed its true form and the mother Changeling returned the human child safely. 

In Germany, they were known as Wechselbalg. In Poland, Mamuna. This same creature even appears in tales outside of Europe, spreading into eastern Nigeria. Or Japan, with the shapeshifting Yokai spirits. It doesn’t matter the language, the cultures, the different weaknesses and wives tales, it is all the same story, and thus they all have the same ending. 

Someone is taken. Something else is put in its place. (sighs) 

I’ve studied these stories before. They all stemmed from this fear of the unfamiliar. A terrible scapegoat for perfectly natural, if not tragic, things that happen to babies. It was a coping strategy. Parents would convince themselves that the child in front of them simply wasn’t theirs. To them, it had to be some mysterious monster, sitting in their child’s place with some kind of malintent. 

We study myths as exactly what they are: myths . They are often symbols hiding greater meanings, harsh truths humankind doesn't like to face head-on. But what happens when they are no longer myth, but instead history ? What if there’s a precedent? What if the Weeping Lady— I wish I could find records of her real name, that I can make her suffering more human— knew exactly what it was that stole her child from her?

What if it’s not limited to only infants and newborns? What if it can take teenagers? Bdubs’ friend Etho vanished in thin air after being chased down by some unidentified creature, only to never be seen again. What if it can take adults? That young woman went missing. Her name was Gem, wasn’t it? (papers shuffle) She disappeared without so much of a trace. 

So.. what then? 

[Clicks]

[End Recording 00:45:00]

 

The tape ended, but Grian could hardly notice. He wasn’t there anymore, sitting in that bedroom beside Scar. There was no longer the sweet scent of peppermint, but instead the salty ocean spray through an open window. There was no clicking of a tape in a Walkman, but the rhythmic squeaking of the old rocking chair, the whisper of the wind sneaking in. There was no hand on his shoulder, or thigh pressed against his own. He was in her lap, and she touched him like a bruise, her hand tight around his bicep. 

The Weeping Lady. Grian licked his lips. It always came back to the stupid Weeping Lady. The opposite of a bedtime story. A scare tactic. An icon for a quick-selling postcard. The sole thread that unraveled whatever was left of his mother’s mind and the severing of the final tie between him and Pearl. She was always there. She was always in that house, whether or not Grian could see or hear her. 

And Doc had also seen her? It made even less sense the more clues he seemed to have. 

He stared at the Walkman like he could set it on fire if he simply stared at it long and hard enough. Scar’d be beside himself, but Grian would’ve rather set the entire B&B alight rather than acknowledge that it was possible everything his sister and mother said was true. Because if he believed what they said, then…

“You think what attacked me was this— this Changeling thing?” Grian managed to stammer out. 

“Considering what we know, we gotta consider it a possibility, don’t we?” Scar leaned his elbows on his knees, and if it was possible he looked about every inch as stressed and confused as Grian felt. It felt nice to be on the same page for once. “The profile doesn’t exactly fit. No babies went missing, but there’s nothing really in any of the mythology that suggests that it preys exclusively on babies.”

“Even so, it doesn’t make any sense. It replaces whoever it takes, right?” Grian waited for Scar to nod. “It didn’t take you. You’re sitting right here in front of me. How can it look like you if it needs to take you first?”

“Every myth has its own variations. Across times, across countries, across cultures.” Scar set aside the Walkman. He steepled his hands and held them to his lips in thought. “But if you think about what all these stories have in common?” 

In a flurry he returned to his place on the floor with all of the cardboard boxes he was sorting through. Grian’s brain shifted as if puzzle pieces were clicking into place, and he finally understood what Scar was doing. He was possibly the only other person on this planet that could operate in a level of chaos that rivaled Grian’s. Each box was a conglomerate of research he’d done throughout his career. Grian couldn’t help but be impressed. 

“How long were you planning on keeping the fact that you’re smart from me?”

“I was never hiding it.” Scar paused his frantic searching and raised an eyebrow at him. Then, he ducked his head back down, picking through a few papers tucked away in a three-pronged folder. “Ever heard of a Doublegonger?” 

“Uh—” 

Scar held up a loose piece of paper for him to read. It was a copy of what looked to be an old book written in German. The ink bled and blotted in multiple places on the page, like the author couldn’t make up their mind half-way through writing and rested the nub of their fountain pen in the wrong spot. A crude drawing of identical faces staring back at one another took up most of the space in the center of the page. At the top was the title, a single word that Scar completely butchered.

DOPPELGÄNGER

Grian cleared his throat and snatched the paper from his hand. “A look-alike,” he muttered to himself, squinting at the drawing of the faces. “For argument’s sake, let’s say this thing— this Copycat — can shift into anyone at any time. Wouldn’t someone notice if there was a double of someone walking around? How could it—"

He trailed off, realization creeping in the more vivid Scar at his feet became and the more faraway the sound of his mother’s voice grew. “Unless they did notice,” he muttered to himself. 

“What’s that?”

“Joel.” Grian swallowed around a rapidly tightening lump in his throat. “He said he saw Doc at the docks the night Iskall disappeared. But Bdubs verified his alibi that he was at the diner at that same time. He was there for hours.”

Scar’s eyes widened. “So… what if that wasn’t him? Just like whatever attacked you wasn’t me.”

Grian hated feeling afraid. He hated it more than he hated this god forsaken town, which really should’ve granted him some sort of medal, because now that he knew there was some kind of god-defying shapeshifting monster loose on the streets and had tried to kill him personally, his personal brand of hate skyrocketed into something without a proper a label. Hatred wasn’t a true word for it anymore. It was something far more visceral. 

But he was afraid now. He was beyond afraid, and there was nothing he could do about it. He took a shaky breath. “The fishermen boots in Pix’s apartment. It could’ve been Doc then, too.” Grian remembered the splitting headache, the visceral fear that flooded his mouth. The memory of his mother forcing its way to the driver’s seat. It couldn’t have been a coincidence. But he couldn’t tell Scar about it. Not yet. 

“What about Etho and Bdubs? Unless there’s another mean-eating monster we should be worried about, how likely is it that he was telling the truth about that too?”

“After we listened to the tape about the archives, I had a suspicion,” Scar said. “Pix was right, the Irish have a ton of stuff on Changelings and similar monsters. Almost every single one lists fire as a weakness. In Ireland if you threw a Changeling in a burning fireplace, it had no choice but to run and return the child to its original family.” 

“But it took Etho,” Grian argued. “If Bdubs set it on fire, shouldn’t it have… I dunno, put him back? Not taken him at all?”

“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe all he did was scare it off,” Scar said. “You mentioned a mirror. When it attacked you, you used it to protect yourself, right?"

Grian nodded slowly. “It was all I had. Once it saw its reflection it high-tailed it out of there.”

“Also an Irish superstition. Mirrors were said to show the creature’s true form,” Scar said with a snap of his fingers. “People used to hang them up all over the house to ward off evil spirits and keep themselves safe. Not only would the mirror expose the Changeling for what it really is, they said something about it hatin’ their own reflection. Super self-conscious little freaks, I guess.” 

“I don’t know,” Grian said. “None of it lines up exactly right. It feels like a reach.”

Scar could only shrug, his face pinched in a rare display of bare-faced frustration that Grian deeply understood. “It’s hard to think anything is really a coincidence these days,” he said. “It’s all we have to go on.”

“It’s a leap of faith,” Grian corrected (or agreed, he couldn’t exactly tell).

“Are you willing to take it?”

His heart kicked up a furious pace in his chest. As much as he wanted to shirk it off and run, like he always did, he had a responsibility. He didn’t want to run away anymore. He could only hope he wasn’t too late to stay. 

--- ..-

With the rise of the Halloween morning’s sun also came the thickest Fog Grian’d seen in the past three months. It was only fitting, considering the occasion. It was like driving through a thick mist, and even sitting still in the parking lot outside the station, the sea of fog rolled in and overtook the shores. All Grian could make out of the station through Scar’s car window was the edge of the building haloed by a floodlight mounted to the gutter. If he looked straight out, it was nothing but gray, gray, gray for miles.

The Fog hid Hermit’s Hollow’s secrets, protecting them from what they weren’t ready to believe. That was what Mayor Jumbo had said, wasn’t it? Today, the Fog had plenty to hide, as if every street sign and corner was drenched in curses and lies.He wondered if the town bled the Fog through an open wound somewhere, a tear in the secrets that wasn’t yet meant to be discovered. 

Grian squinted through it all, pressing his head hard enough against the glass to leave a mark. If anything Scar had said about him was true— if anyone would’ve been able to outsmart the all-knowing, all-concealing Fog— it should’ve been him. 

Scar’s car radio buzzed with the tinny voice of a radio host warning the citizens of Hermit’s Hollow to stay off the streets, to keep warm in their homes. If not out of fear of wandering ghouls or spirits, then out of the risks of low visibility and general deadly dreariness. 

They sat outside the police station, Scar’s car idling, listening but not listening to the man’s voice. Neither of them were ready to climb out of the car. Neither of them wanted to face the cold, bleak morning, the impenetrable Fog, and every other crooked thing that came along with it. Not because of what they feared was waiting for them beyond it. No, they already missed that exit several miles back. Rather, it was because to step out of the car and walk into that station was to take a bite out of reality and swallow it down. Cough syrup— bitter and painful. 

The car was warm. Safe. Here, they would have continued to pretend as they had for months. As Scar had taught him to pretend, with a nose raised and a chest guarded by bravado. Even if it was only for a couple more minutes. 

Staring out the window, as if trying to will the floodlights to short-circuit, Grian asked, “Are we going through with this?” 

Scar’s fingers danced across the steering wheel. They thrummed at an anxious, uneven pace, like the skittering of a panicked squirrel caught in the middle of traffic. “What other choice do we have?” he asked. 

Grian clenched his jaw. “None.” 

Scar turned the car off, the heat from the vents vanishing and the cold already starting to seep through the car. “Impulse is a good guy,” he said. “He’ll have our backs.” 

Grian dragged his eyes over to Scar, who was working out his nerves by dragging his finger along the ridges of his car key over and over again. 

“It’s not Impulse I’m really worried about,” he admitted. 

Sure, the chief had proper authority over the rest of the precinct. But it would be a monstrous, if not impossible, task to convince the other officers of something so outlandish. A very real threat prowling in their own backyard. Cops didn’t come to Hermit’s Hollow for work, which meant everyone who worked here, like Grian, was raised here. And they decided to go into this job, because they knew the worst thing they’d have to deal with were occasional disappearances that were so easily blamed on very unreal things. 

That is all to say, none of them are the most courageous of the batch. 

Ren and some of his other colleagues would go crawling under the desk at the slightest mention of a ghost, let alone some awful, unknown thing like the Copycat they were up against. It’d be most difficult convincing them to stay . That they needed all hands on deck if they stood a chance of finding this thing before anyone else got hurt. 

Whatever the outcome, they had to try. Grian would stick to his word, even if it wasn’t for Jimmy. He was going to solve his case one way or another. So they, eyes locked, nodded and climbed from the car and into the dangerously cold morning. 

Considering the hour (not to mention the fact that it was officially Halloween and most Hermits knew better than to leave their homes), the station should have been relatively abandoned. The only poor bastards to occupy it should’ve been whoever had pulled the short straw and ended up with the graveyard shift. Or, on any other day, it would’ve been Grian. But lately he’d otherwise been too occupied lately to pull his usual over-nighters at his desk. 

So, when they walked into a commotion, Grian knew something was wrong. 

He knew it when he heard them before he saw them: hushed, frantic whispers and arguing deeper in the station. Flashes of cameras. Grian chased the sounds down the hall, passing the broken trophy case, and taking a sharp left into the office area. In the middle of it all, around one of his colleagues desks was a small crowd of officers, all already in uniform. Several of them chewed on their nails or fidgeted, their nerves evident in the way they shifted their weight. Another stood by the wall-mounted phone across the room, talking frantically with someone on the other line and jotting notes down in a notebook. 

He knew it, because he knew this feeling. He’d felt it the moment he fell backwards down those stairs, the floor disappearing from beneath him and plunging him into the deep, dark basement. He’d felt it when he frantically arrived home the night of his birthday to find Pearl’s hands wringing Jimmy’s neck like a damp rag. 

“What happened?” were the first words— or rather, demand— out of his mouth before he even made it across the room to them. 

Several of his colleagues turned to face him. Near the front of the small crowd was Ren, a bearded officer wearing tinted glasses that attempted to hide the red-rimmed puffiness of his eyes. “Grian, you’re—” His brows shot up to his hairline, the color washing from his face. “Dude, what happened to you? You look like hell.”

“What happened .” Grian wasn’t asking this time. It was a warning, a ticking time bomb. With each tick the hole in his stomach grew. Part of him already knew from what he’d caught in his periphery. Yellow police tape. Shredded blinds. Flashes of a camera from the shadows behind the window. 

Ren’s mouth flapped uselessly like a fish on the deck. He brought his (Grian’s) pen to his mouth and chewed nervously at the cap. It was already crumpled and chipping; he’d been abusing it for a long time. “You really shouldn’t be here, dude, it’s a circus over here—” He cleared his throat. 

A female officer with long blonde hair, False, pulled back into a tight bun stepped in. “We tried calling your house. No one picked up.”

“I wasn’t home.” Grian felt Scar step up behind him, but he didn’t touch him. He was grateful for it, if only because he feared the slightest nudge would make him forgo the countdown altogether and simply detonate. “Stop beating around the bush and tell me . Is Impulse here?”

Turned out they didn’t need to tell him a thing. Both Ren and False’s gazes skirted over his shoulder to the door across the room. The door to the chief’s office. Chief Impulse’s door. Grian’s heart sank, a brick wedged in his stomach. He side-stepped the officers that reached for his shoulders the moment he made a bee-line for his worst nightmare, into the disastrous remains of what used to be Impulse’s orderly office. 

Yellow tape blocked off the entrance. Grian swatted through it, tearing it down. The blinds were ripped apart, hanging in tatters from the thin string that held it together. The glass face of his computer had been smashed in, his keyboard overturned onto the floor. Little yellow tents stood all over the floor, by a shard of stray glass, by wooden splinterings from where the desk had a large gouge torn out of the center of it. One officer wearing a white zip-up suit collected things from the ground with tweezers and stuffed it in a bag:  a torn piece of checkered yellow and blue fabric from the tie Impulse wore last night, a bloodied tissue, and his police badge, the golden surface smeared with dark blood. 

“You can’t be here,” said the officer by the door, someone Grian hardly recognized. He had a camera clutched in his hands and a serious, hard-set expression. 

“Where’s Impulse?” Grian demanded, his throat tight and burning. 

“He’s gone?” Scar asked. 

False came up behind them.  “Ren found the place a wreck when he came in around three this morning,” she said. “No one’s been able to get in contact with the chief since. I’m guessing you haven’t either, if you came looking for him here.”

Grian took in the torn-up office one more time. Nausea stirred low in his gut; he felt like he was going to be sick. Whatever had come for Impulse came quickly, it had come sometime right after he’d left Scar and Grian at the hospital last night. Had it been their fault? Had Grian sent him out toward his death? If that was the case, then that meant…

Grian reached blindly behind him until his fingers grappled onto Scar’s arm. He curled his grip into his sleeve, anything to keep him upright. 

It was never going to be enough, was it? This town, this thing that was haunting him wouldn’t rest until it tore apart everything he cared about, until his entire life was up in smoke and ashes. It wouldn’t stop. So that meant Grian couldn’t either. It’d already gotten Impulse, it wouldn’t take anything else.

He knew what he had to do. 

-. -..

Chapter 9: IX. i was just

Summary:

There's only one thing left to do.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

.--- ..

IX.

“Think six will be enough?” Scar asked, one hand on the open trunk and the other on his hip. Packed like sardines, six red gasoline canisters sat in the trunk of his car. Had circumstances been different, Grian would’ve wept over the newfound lightness of his wallet, but he figured it didn’t matter how many pennies he hoarded if he died by the end of the day. A true crescendo for the end of Hermit’s Hollow Halloween celebrations.

Six canisters, fourteen gallons. “It’s going to have to be,” Grian said. 

Scar only hummed his agreement, sharing a brief glance with Grian before he shut the trunk with a thump. Grian stared at Scar’s brake lights. He didn’t just hope this worked, he needed it to work. He needed the same way he needed a lot of things growing up: desperately, already knowing somewhere in the back of his mind that it was hopeless to hope.

And they weren’t done yet. There was one other thing they needed. 

Grian turned to face his house. Somehow it felt like weeks had gone by since last night, since the copycat tried to kill him in his own home. But it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours. He was still hurting, the pulsing of broken bones and split skin too fresh. He was still afraid. He shouldn’t have been here, he knew that, but he ran out of options like scraping a measuring cup along the bottom of an empty coffee tin. 

Stepping over the threshold, he tried to approach it the way he would a crime-scene. Even in a short time Grian had seen a fair-share of grisly crime scenes, if not only by photos in his dingy apartment’s lamplight, studying patterns, testing himself on deduction. With an objective mind, what would he have found here? What would an unafraid, rational person think happened? A tear in the screen-door: signs of forced entry. Glass and splinters littered across the floor: clear signs of a struggle, an extended one. Red-turned-copper stains on the wallpaper: the victim was injured. The knife abandoned on the floor, Grian’s blood clotted along the blade—

The sight dropped him right back into it: the terror. The feeling of his own warm blood on his hands, the sound of his arm crunching on the stairs, the pain that bit through him as something bearing Scar’s features brought that knife through his palm. Glass digging in his thighs. Fear so strong it smothered him, like murky water filling his eyes, nose, and mouth. 

Growing up, the thought occurred to him more than once that this house would end up killing him. It wasn’t so much a true suspicion as it was an instinctual knowledge, like a rabbit was born knowing it probably wouldn’t die of old age. Yet somehow he never, as an adult, expected such an instinct to be right . All of his childish musings and fears had been just that— childish. But if he was right about this, his fate at the hands of this house, how many other things could he have been right about?

At the very least, he was glad he didn’t have to face it alone. Scar followed him inside, scowling at the grisly sight. He carefully stepped over where the knife lay in the heart of the foyer, staining the runner carpet with streaks of copper. 

“It looks like a horror movie in here,” he muttered to himself. “Have I told you yet how proud of you I am for kicking that thing’s ass last night?”

“Save it for when we actually kick its ass. Permanently,” Grian said, unable to look at Scar fully. He was too nervous. Every little anxious cell in his body bubbled up into the back of his throat and threatened to spew out if he so much as breathed the wrong way. 

He approached the staircase, resting his right hand on the bannister. “Jimmy?” he called up the stairs, his voice dragging an empty, hollow echo alongside it. “Jimmy! Are you home?”

Nothing but the house’s empty stare responded to him. Not even the gentlest groan or shift, wood settling in the way old houses settle and breathe, or even the whisper of creaky floorboards. Grian wasn’t fooled by it, the stillness. He felt it, the house actively hiding something from him. An opossum playing dead. It knew he could finally see it, know that he knew the truth. 

Scar ventured towards the living room door, peering anxiously into the room. For all they knew, they couldn’t be alone. For some reason it had come to attack Grian in his home, who was to say it didn’t come back to finish the job? 

“Maybe he’s still at Joel’s?” Scar suggested. 

If only it was something so mundane. “Maybe,” he said, which really meant, I hope so . “Why don’t you head downstairs? They’re in the basement.”

Scar frowned at him. “And leave you alone up here?”

“I’m pretty sure we’re alone here,” Grian said, jerking his chin in the direction of the open door in the living room. If Grian got any closer to it, he feared he might actually vomit. “I’ll be fine. Go.”

“Say no more, partner! I’ll be right back.” Scar saluted him, an uneasy but nonetheless comforting smile plastered onto his face. 

He admired Scar’s fearlessness, although at times he wondered if it was less bravery and more ignorance. Whatever it was, Scar flaunted it with ease and Grian could’ve used a little bit of it. All he could do was watch Scar’s back in awe as he disappeared down the basement steps. After this was all over, Grian would have to ask him how he managed to pull it off. But for now he tacked it on the bulletin board of a million unanswered questions. 

Grian turned back to the foyer, to the light fixture hanging overhead. The paint around the base was chipping, the paint discolored like there was some kind of leak hidden in the foundation. Grian clenched his jaw. 

“I’m not afraid of you,” he whispered, only so it could hear. “I’m not afraid of you anymore.”

The house only creaked in response, a slow, hollow, lonely sound.

Jimmy

Grian searched the first floor, the kitchen, the living room, the half-bath in the hallway. Everything was as Grian had left it the night before. It didn’t look like even the police had come through to collect evidence. There wasn’t any tape, no evidence markers, no trace of anyone having been here at all, let alone Jimmy. 

Calling Jimmy’s name, he searched the second floor. The bathroom. Grian’s bedroom, his evidence board abandoned on the floor, pushpins and red yarn and all. His bedroom, bed unmade and window cracked a few inches. Outside there was nothing but the cool, gray haze of the Fog. He couldn’t see the rocky waves, nor where the water met the land. A frigid breeze cooled the room, the salty air wafting in from the shoreline. The smell was so painfully familiar. It was the smell of coming home after a long day of school, of settling into bed at night when he finally felt he could close his eyes and feel safe. Though he never did, not for long, anyway. 

His mom and dad’s room. The door was shut. It was always shut. He hesitated outside of it, a hand hovering over the knob. “Jimmy?” he called through the thick wood. And suddenly he felt he was ten years old again in a miserable game of hide-and-seek. “Jimmy, are you in there?”

He pushed open the door. Their bed was made. It had been for three months. Dust collected heavily on the bedside tables and the dresser at the foot of their bed. Untouched for months. Sterile, but not in a clean way. In a lifeless way. The same way a morgue was sterile. 

A small golden glint drew his eye to the dresser. On it sat a small compact mirror in a golden case. Where a pallet of powder had once been was cleaned out, all used up, nothing but white dust left in its wake. Grian took it in his hands and turned it over. His face stared back at him in the small mirror, an impression of him close enough to the actual thing that it looked unassuming to the casual eye. But Grian had spent far too much time hunched in front of mirrors, confused why he never looked the way he should. 

How much of his confusing childhood could be pinned on this— this part of himself he couldn’t understand, like an extra set of eyes he couldn’t see. Nauseated, he clicked it shut and tucked it away in his pocket.

Grian took a steadying breath. Fill your lungs up. Pour them out.

Maybe Jimmy wasn’t here. Maybe he never left Joel’s house. Selfishly, Grian wished it to be the case. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to face it.

He came back down the stairs. Scar was halfway through the foyer with the biggest of the three mirrors, precariously balancing it in his arms, knuckles white. 

Grian grimaced. “Are you sure you got it?”

“Are you kidding?” Scar chuckled, but it sounded more like he was in pain than he was delighted. “I could do this in my sleep. I’m big, I’m strong.” Then, the bravado wavered. “What’d you find, detective?”

Grian shook his head, holding the screen door open for Scar to slip out into the driveway. “No sign of him. Not since we were here, at least.”

Scar panted as he struggled to readjust his hold on the mirror. The second he stepped outside his breath fogged and hovered in front of his mouth like white steam before disappearing over his head. “Can’t you call that friend of his? Joel? See if he’s still there?”

Grian nodded. “Good idea,” he said. 

He let the screen door clatter shut behind Scar. He stared at the phone on the little table by the door. The black plastic hid the worst of it, but even from here Grian could see the bloody fingerprints on the receiver, smudging the rotary dial. Grian used the edge of his scarf to pick it up again and press it to his ear. A dull tone met his ears.

Grian dialed Joel’s family’s phone number and waited. Then, a click.

A sleepy voice. “Hello?”

Grian cleared his throat. “Joel, that you? It’s Grian.”

The phone shuffled on the other side. “The bloody hell are you calling me for?”

“I know, I’m sorry, but I need to talk to Jimmy,” Grian said. “He hasn’t left yet, has he?”

Silence on the other end. Grian’s heart squeezed in his chest. 

“Joel?”

“This some kinda joke?” he said. “Jimmy isn’t here.”

Grian’s fingers tightened around the receiver. “Well maybe he’s not now , but do you know where he went? Is he on his way home?”

“I haven’t seen him since before the parade yesterday,” Joel said. “He was acting like a freak, so I ditched him.

“Wh— But Impulse said you two were—”

Grian swallowed his own words. Impulse said he had seen Jimmy. And now Impulse was gone. 

“Haven’t seen him, sorry. I’ll keep an eye out, but I’m not bloody going out on Halloween. You’re a cop, I’m sure you get it.”

The line clicked. Grian kept the receiver to his ear, the long low tone taunting him.

“Grian?”

He turned on his heel, dropping the receiver. Jimmy stood in the doorway, his shirt dirty, his hair a greasy mess. His face was turned away from Grian, his eyes averted to the ground in the way they always were. The way that always made Grian almost rabid with his desperation to change it, to undo what's been done and protect his brother the way he had failed to do. 

It has to be you, don’t you understand? You’re the older brother. It’s your job to protect him.

“Jimmy,” he whispered, but he didn’t move. 

Grian’s feet wouldn’t allow him to move, that primal switch somewhere in the back of his mind that screamed DANGER ! The beeping now was constant, the ache returning to his forehead in seconds of looking at his little brother. As if every nerve in his body was telling him to turn and run.  He’d felt the pain before. He’d felt it almost always at the same time, in the same place, with the same person. He tasted rot on his tongue, and with the phone receiver clutched in his colorless fingers, he finally understood. 

A rotten taste filled his mouth. As if the truth crawled up the back of his throat and died there. 

Jimmy looked around the foyer, his face blank and eyes dark. “What happened here?” 

Grian didn’t answer. He simply stared at Jimmy, trying to will away the pain behind his eyes, trying to see the warmth of his brown eyes. The longer it took the find it, the more tight his chest grew, the more desperate he grew. 

“Hey, Tim,” he said quietly, trying to sound like himself. “You’re home late.”

Jimmy didn’t respond. He simply kept assessing the foyer, a disconnected look of shock. The same emptiness that took over his face when Pearl lunged at him and wrapped her hands around his throat. The same empty stare when he called the police and told them everything. He studied the shattered glass, the leak in the ceiling, the blood on the wallpaper. “I always liked the wallpaper, didn’t I?”

“Jimmy.” Grian’s voice tightened, and he was appalled at his own desperation. It would’ve only taken him a nudge to bring him to his knees, to make him beg. How willing he was to accept any lie, so long as it ended this nightmare. “Jimmy, please. Will you look at me?”

He needed to know. Without any doubts. He needed the proof. 

“What is it?” Finally, he raised his eyes. For the first time in three months, they locked onto Grian’s. And he understood. He finally saw what the house had been hiding from him. They were dark. A deep shade of black, darker than coal, darker than midnight. The darkest of anything Grian had ever seen, dark enough to fall into and never hit the bottom. Bile crept up the back of his throat.

“What’s wrong, Grian?” it asked again, in that same distorted voice. 

The phone clattered to the ground. Dial tone pierced the tense, thick quiet. If Grian tried he could have reached out and touched it. 

Everything made sense. In a terrible, awful, twisted way. The same sort of sick satisfaction that came with solving a grisly crime— the rush of victory, of finally having an answer, immediately chased down by the horror of what had happened. The fact that it happened at all. 

Pearl was right. 

Jimmy tilted his head at Grian, curious through stolen eyes. 

The lashing out—

A slow, predacious step toward Grian. He’d seen this posture before. The casual grace donned only by the most practiced predators.

The constant headaches around him. Jimmy disappearing in the dead of night—

Another step in the slow crawl toward Grian. When Jimmy took one, Grian took a reflexive one back, his back hitting the bannister. 

The frantic desperation with which Jimmy had torn down every mirror—

Another step.

It never was able to look Grian in the eye, because it knew . It knew that he’d know—

“That’s close enough,” Grian whispered, holding his right hand out to keep distance between them. As if that would do anything to stop it. Grian already met this strength. He’d survived it once. He wasn’t sure he’d survive it again. 

It was there in front of him the entire time. And Grian had done nothing but dismiss and convince himself otherwise at every possible turn. Pearl had all but begged until her fingernails scraped raw on the cement flooring. His twin sister, who loved as fiercely as she hated, who wouldn’t hurt a hair on their little brother’s head, no matter what. She would’ve rather died. 

He had excused it on what? Their mother? On the ghost that haunted her all those years they lived in this house? The words she’d say against the shell of Grian’s ear? Protect him. Protect him. It needs to be you. It can’t be him. Protect him. Protect him

She’d known it the whole time. In a way Grian had too. He was never alone in that house. None of them were. It was the curse of being a Solidarity. 

It didn’t matter if Hermit’s Hollow broke in half at the faultline and descended into a void-like pit. It didn’t matter if corpses crawled from their graves and ate Hermits in their beds like turkeys on Thanksgiving plates. Nothing mattered. Because Grian’s world was ending, and it was big enough to fit in the palm of his hands. 

He shuddered a breath, slow and painful in his chest. “Where’s my brother?”

The copycat’s grin split, unnaturally wide and straight. “Grian, what do you mean?” it said, mocking the sad, distraught tone it used to sound the most like Jimmy. “You’re acting like mom all over again.”

That night on the docks. Grian’s hysteria, Jimmy’s cruel words. Only it wasn’t Jimmy’s words. For how long has it not been him? How long had his brother been gone? 

Movement over Not-Jimmy’s shoulder caught Grian’s eye. Scar stood in the doorway. He didn’t look shocked. If anything he was the calmest and most resolved as he’d ever seen him. The moment their eyes locked, he nodded and flexed his fingers around his hold on the mirror. He turned it so the reflective side turned towards the copycat’s unsuspecting back. Over its shoulder, he saw it. 

It didn’t have much of a body. It looked as if it was made up of smoke, wispy edges and impossibly large lines. It flickered like smoke rising from a burning candle, swaying back and forth. He’d seen it before. The last photo taken of Captain Iskall. A black shadow hunched over his shoulder, waiting. Its false reflection couldn’t catch in the mirrors. Nor in cameras. Like an optical illusion, the only thing it could fool was the human eye. 

Grian wrestled his expression into something neutral. He looked this thing back in the eye. “Tell me where my brother is,” he said. He’d only give it one more chance. All other questions didn’t matter: the ‘what are you?’ the ‘why are you doing this?’. Because in reality not a fraction of it mattered if Grian couldn’t find his little brother, if his little brother’s been dead and gone for three months and Grian had no idea. If Grian had let it happen.

But the copycat wouldn’t give him a goddamn thing. It only stared emptily back at Grian, lacking all the malice it had when it had attacked him in Scar’s skin. All that was left was intrigue, fascination. Like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to eat Grian or toy with him instead. 

Grian looked to Scar over his shoulder once again. This time, he made it obvious.

The copycat’s face flickered. It turned, just as Grian hoped it would. It all happened in an instant: the thing meeting its own reflection, the high-pitched, hollowing shriek that erupted from it, like three voices stacked upon one another. It writhed and jerked in Jimmy’s body, the skin rippling the surface of a stormy morning’s sea, steam rising from the surface. The sight of itself brought the creature to its knees, losing all impressions of anything human and becoming a complete animal.

Grian wasted no time. He moved around it and raced to meet Scar outside. He rushed past and bolted straight for the car, expecting Scar at his heels. But when he reached the passenger door and turned he saw Scar still standing by the front door, the mirror angled in the doorway. The shrieking carried out of the house and poured down the hill and into the street. The type of horrific sound all of Hermit’s Hollow would stir about the next day when they gathered the courage to leave their homes and resume their gossip.  

“Scar!” Grian yelled, running back to his side. “Come on, we have to go!” 

“Wait!" Scar kept his ground, stood it as if he was defending it with his last breath. Like a kid with a  magnifying glass over an anthill, he watched with wide-eyed fascination as the creature writhed and shrieked. 

It’s skin boiled, rippling between an insubstantial mass of shadow and Jimmy’s tanned skin. Empty, black eyes and Jimmy’s too-dark ones. Finally, it had enough of its torture and scrambled backwards, towards the shelter of the house. It scrambled, slowly and with a pained sound, towards the stairs where it tucked itself away and out of view of the mirror. 

It was their chance. Grian grabbed Scar’s arm. “ Scar , move it!” 

Grian didn’t remember getting to the car. He didn’t remember throwing the mirror in the back seat or climbing into the passenger seat as Scar peeled out of the driveway. All he knew was the numbness of his hands, the painful buzzing all over his skin, and the feeling of his heart trapped beneath his ribcage like a cave-in as he turned in his seat to watch a familiar head peeking from the upstairs window. It watched him just as he watched it, with the knowledge that this wasn’t the last time.

XXX

Her fingers felt like metal prongs running along his scalp. She pulled unkindly through the knots from a day of rough-housing on the beach. She rocked him back and forth on the old, rickety chair, holding him tight by the arms. She muttered against his ear. She, she, she.

The chair quietly groaned beneath their shared weight as she tilted them forward, backward, then forward again. It was meant to be comforting, it was meant to make him feel safe. The soft push and pull of gentle waves, of a cradle he had no memory of. He wanted that to be true. But he didn’t feel safe. Her arms tightly held him to her chest. Painfully so. Her voice was a gentle yet discordant hum in his ear, each note of her voice stabbing fear directly through his gut.

"We have to protect him,” she said. “ You have to protect him.”

Grian’s eyes water, but he didn’t let the tears fall. Not around her, never around her. He didn’t want to upset her more than he already had. His cheek was already throbbing, bright red and hot with more than just shame. The sharp shape of her hand bit into him.

“Jimmy?” Grian asked, staring past her arms straight to the floor, at where his own legs dangled from his place in her lap. He wanted to run. He wanted to run far away. 

“Exactly, baby.” She pressed a kiss to the side of his head where she’d just hit him. The skin stung under her lips. “ She wants him, but she can’t have him.”

He knew what it meant, but he also didn’t. He knew that he was scared, and that by protecting Jimmy he was agreeing to something far scarier, far beyond him to understand. “But… Mom,” he croaked. 

“I’m sorry, baby,” she lied. Her heart erratically thumped against his back.  It felt like a squirrel trying to find its way out of her chest. Another kiss pressed to his swelling cheek. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s okay, it’s okay.” 

“I don’t want to,” he protested louder. 

She simply shook her head. “Yes you do, baby.” She cooed the words into the crown of his head, as if dressing the fear up in pretty words and tender kisses made it any less scary. The chair continued to creak and groan and beg in the way Grian was never able to. 

“I know it’s scary,” she said. “But that’s okay. You two are too similar for your own good. She won’t know the difference.” 

“I don’t want to go,” he cried, this time unable to withhold the tears. He wanted Pearl. He wanted her arms around her instead, crushing the fear out of him. “I want to stay.” 

“It’ll be okay.” Fingers scraped the back of his neck. “Mommy’s got you.” 

Grian blinked. The rumbling of a car engine replaced the rocking of an old wooden chair. A seatbelt firmly strapped across his lap held him rather than uncaring arms. 

The memory slipped in unannounced, in the full clarity with which he’d never been able to see prior. Whatever this gift was (Grian was more inclined to call it a curse, a burden) it fractured under the slightest stress. Once one little thing slipped through the hairline cracks, another followed, then another and another. There was no control, nothing to be done about it, no way to clog the leak. It allowed everything in, and with it came memories that eluded Grian and returned to him in only feverish glimpses of dreams, once mistaken for feverish dreams. All of it flooded him to the brim.

Now that he knew where the hole in his head was, it was far easier to look through it. As if all of the Hermit’s Hollow Fog dissipated at once, everything crystalizing until its barest, most ugliest truthful forms glared back at him. 

Grian angled his head out the window. Endless Fog, still, shielding the sun and the passage of time.  But not even the Fog could guard him from the truth this time. He hardly had enough space within himself to breathe, let alone take in the reality that his brother was gone. To stare it dead in the face. 

He’d known. Of course he’d known, somewhere deep and buried. Six feet deep along with his parents, where he could turn a blind eye and never dream to dig it back up. 

That being said, Grian felt himself near snapping. It wasn’t a matter of if, but a matter of when. And the passenger seat of a sedan wasn’t an ideal place for a nervous breakdown. 

He couldn’t sit still if he had a gun to his head. He reached to turn on the radio. Three channels were nothing but dead air, and the fourth was a deep-voiced narrator reading the same spooky stories that have run every year for the last ten years. Just when he started telling the tale of the Gap In The Wall , Grian clicked the radio off again.

He folded himself up as much as his sore body would allow, then unfolded himself seconds after. And then did it again as he wrestled his legs to rest atop the dashboard. Only to put them back down again. It was a constant push and pull of movement, anything to let out this immense pressure building up inside of him. 

He rested his forehead against the window. The glass was freezing; maybe it could freeze his thoughts in time and offer him some kind of relief. Stop everything from pouring in too fast. He bent in half to rest his head against the glove department. He sat back up and opened it, rifling through Scar’s old registration and emission papers, and then closed it again. 

Nothing was comfortable. Nothing came easy. It was as if his skin was suddenly three times smaller and every inch of it chafed against him. He felt no less volatile than an exposed, active wire. Bomb-diffusing was not an elective he had the privilege of taking— it was for far more qualified and mature officers— but damn, he wished he had. He needed someone to cut the red wire out of him without setting him off.  

Scar reached in with a pair of cutters and a steady hand. He rested a hand on Grian’s knee without taking his eyes off the road. 

Neither of them said a word. He stared at the scarred hand on his knee. He wanted to touch it. He didn’t. He simply traced each scar with his eyes, wondering how long and painful the fall must’ve been to cut him so badly. 

It was supposed to be you, y’know.

Through numb lips he mumbled, “She wanted it to be me. She wanted it to take me instead.”

She?” Scar asked. 

“My mom.”

Scar hesitated. “You think she knew?”

He didn’t just think; he already knew. He had known for years, but the memory had been tucked away from him, deep enough so that it wouldn’t hurt him. But coming back home only brought it closer to the surface, within striking distance. 

He remembered every second of it. Her anger, her fear. The strikes she’d dole when Grian pushed back too hard, when he paraded the name of the Weeping Lady around just to mess with her. His anger had come from her, afterall. If she wanted anyone to blame, she should’ve started with herself. 

And worst of all, he remembered what she wanted from him. What she demanded. 

“It haunted her my whole life,” Grian said, staring outside the windshield at the passing street-lights, no more than meager starts through the fog. “It likes sons, Pearl said. And it chose Jimmy. But my mom said I could protect him. If I… If they took me instead—

God, I—” Grian pressed his bandaged hand to his face, a frustrated groan torn from him. “The whole time I knew and I just— How did I not notice? He was acting weird. Hell, he tore all the mirrors down and hid them from me in the basement. I thought he was just messed up. That's all I thought it was. I thought it’d go away. I mean, how much shit can someone go through in a three-month span without knocking a few screws loose?” 

“How could you have? You lost your parents that night too,” Scar challenged. If Grian’s inner voice of reason came from Scar of all people, he had some serious issues. Though he supposed he already knew that. 

“I’m twenty-five years old.” Grian clenched his jaw and stared daggers at the side of Scar’s face. Even though he was heavily focused on the road, Grian hoped that he could feel every inch of those angry little blades. Not that he deserved it any. Grian just needed a place to put them. “I’m an officer . I have a job, I have—”

“Responsibilities?” Scar raised an eyebrow, sparing a glance to him from the corner of his eye. 

Grian sat back in his seat, feeling chided. “I already failed Pearl. I’ve been failing Jimmy ever since he was born. Every second I sit in this car feeling sorry for myself, I only fail them even more.”

“Okay.”

The car jostled as Scar took a hard right-turn towards Main Street. His mind was made up, his fists tight around the wheel, his chin set tight and proud. 

“Wait! Hey, what are you doing?” Grian looked out the window, at the passing lights and vague outlines of homes reduced to no more than faint blurs through the Fog. “Where are we going?”

As if he wasn’t enough of a madman, Scar answered by pressing his foot heavily onto the gas, blowing through a red light. The car sputtered as the engine roared to life. Grian immediately braced himself against the door. 

“Every second, right?” Scar said, pressing his foot heavily on the gas pedal, blowing through a red light. Grian immediately braced himself against the door. “Then let’s quit fuckin’ around. If we’re doing this, we’re going to the source.”

-- --

DON’T LISTEN TO THE MOON. 

(SHE’S LYING TO YOU.) 

The sign hung above the vacant counter. Grian stared at it, at the way it swung from a draft that came from seemingly nowhere. At the shaky, hand-drawn line through the bottom sentence. Now that Grian knew what it meant, the sign felt less like teasing tourism pandering and more like a genuine warning. The sharp, ringing sense of DANGER the day he’d stepped foot in here for the first time, since he overheard Impulse and the Mayor talking. It had only been a few weeks, but it felt like a lifetime away. 

The Double O’ Diner was mostly abandoned despite the neon OPEN sign hung above the door. Every booth and table was empty. It made sense, Grian supposed. It was Halloween; only the truly stupid dared to go outside this morning. But even then, a song faintly played somewhere deeper within the diner, behind a set of double doors that led into the kitchen.

The only other sign of life was the three of them sat at the booth closest to the jukeboxes. Grian sat where Impulse had once sat, his hand protectively curled over a file and his head pointed out the window. What would’ve happened if Grian had turned his own head, and had minded his own business that day? Would Impulse still be here? Them, a far more selfish thought: would he have still met Scar? 

Scar headed this particular meeting, thumping one of the gasoline canisters on the table in front of Bdubs. 

“Not even a Happy Halloween , first? Or how about a ‘good morning’?” Bdubs whirled his head around to stare accusingly at the clock above the countertop. “It’s not even noon ! I was busy jamming.” 

“Impulse is missing,” Grian said, wishing so badly he could cross his arms over his chest to complete the bad-cop-bad-cop thing the two of them were going for. The sling was less than convenient and even less intimidating. 

Bdubs stared between the two of them, unimpressed. “What’s all that gotta do with me? It’s Halloween, everyone goes missin’ on Halloween,” he said, a dismissive hand cutting through the air. “Why don’t ya look for him tomorrow? I’m sure he’ll turn up.”

Scar leaned forward, bracing his arms against the table with his chin jutted and shoulders raised. It was the most authoritative Grian had seen him since that morning on the docks. He was particularly good at playing the bad cop, though that shouldn’t have surprised Grian in the least. He was good at lying. 

“We’re asking you the questions here!” he demanded, slapping his hand on the table. “You told Pix that you and Etho broke into the old mines. You said something chased you out and took him. What was it?”

“Since when is this an interrogation?” Bdubs barked a laugh, an excited spark caught in his eye. He was surprised, though he concealed it well behind his mask of arrogance. One that he paraded around like a Hollow’s Eve parade float.

“Answer the question,” Scar said. 

“You’re asking me ?!” He hid the brunt of his grin into a curled fist against his mouth. “I was runnin’ for my damn life. Didn’t think to stop and ID the damn thing. Ain’t that your guys’ job?” 

Scar shared a glance with Grian, his facade cracking the slightest bit to reveal the weariness beneath. It seemed Scar finally met his match.

Without waiting for a response, Bdubs chuckled. “Wait, wait, wait! I see what you’re gettin’ at.” He laced his fingers and leaned in over the table on his elbows, like he was exchanging a devious secret between friends. “You think this thing, whatever it is, took Impulse or something? Those missin’ people too? I’m right, aren’t I?” 

“And my brother,” Grian said through grit teeth. 

The prideful glimmer in Bdubs’ cheeks dimmed. “Jimmy?”

“Not to mention it tried to kill me,” he tacked on, gesturing to the bruised, tattered state of himself. The sling, the bandages, the bruises, the scabbed-over lip. “I thought you were full of shit, but maybe you were onto something.”

Bdubs leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. “Well, it’s a damn shame, G. But again, what the hell’s this gotta do with me?” 

“You know how to get into the mineshaft,” Grian said without leaving any room for argument. Not even an inch, because Bdubs wouldn’t only take a mile, if given the opportunity. He’d run the whole marathon. 

“And?” Bdubs challenged.

“You’re going to get us inside.”

Bdubs barked a near hysterical laugh, tears beading in his eyes. “You guys have some kinda death wish? You’re nuts. Absolutely not .”

“It’s pretty simple actually,” Scar said. “ We’ve never been inside, so we need a guide. You have been inside. Supply and demand. In the business we call that out-sourcing! See how that works?”

“If you guys go down there with two fucked-up arms and a limp between you, the only thing you’ll be out-sourcing is your own funeral.” Bdubs moved like a whirlwind, even though he didn’t actually go anywhere. His hands flailed, his temper raged, and when he sank back in his chair he was winded. 

“So you’ll come with us!” Scar said, somehow making a potential death-march sound like a cheery field-trip. He counted on his fingers, until he held up five on each hand. “Consider that five working arms and legs total.”

“Congratulations, you can do basic math,” Bdubs deadpanned. “Is that a psychic-business thingy too?”

“Bdubs,” Grian interjected, reaching across the table with his right hand and pressing his bandaged palm against the cool table top. “ Please. I know it’s asking a lot of you, but I’m out of options. We have a plan. A good one, but the more hands we have the better. We can end this. Tonight.” 

He needed this to work. Because Bdubs was right. The two of them were nothing if not underprepared, under-armed, and out of time. Maybe the outcome would end up the same either way, but Grian wouldn’t die easily until he knew he did every damn thing he could to get his brother back in one piece. To fix what he’d destroyed. 

Bdubs watched him carefully, as still and silent as Bdubs could get. He still hummed with thought, still tapped his fingers, still worked his jaw back and forth as if chewing on the words he wanted to say would make them go down easier. 

“Sorry, guys!” He shook his head, throwing his hands up in defeat. “I really like the whole gun-slingin’ cowboy energy you’ve both got goin’ on here. But it’s a hard pass from me.”

“Is this how you die?” 

Bdubs blinked owlishly at Grian. “Hah?” 

He looked pointedly to the hanging lunar crescent over the counter. “You can’t tell me you haven’t listened to her at least once,” he said. “You know how the moon says you will die, right?” 

“I see what you’re doin’ and it isn’t gonna work,“ Bdubs scoffed. “Just because it won't kill me doesn’t mean it’s any less stupid .” 

He climbed out of his seat, yawning and stretching his arms high above his head. “Thanks for the little Halloween excitement, but if you guys aren’t gonna buy anything, you can beat it.” 

Grian didn’t know why he had partially expected Bdubs to jump at the opportunity to take an unnatural creature that lived underneath the town head-on. In theory, it seemed a very Bdubs-friendly activity. Maybe if he asked when they were still in high-school, when he was a tad more reckless and the pain of losing Etho was fresh enough to warrant vengeance.  

Etho. 

He perked up and shared a glance with Scar, resting his right hand on his thigh under the table. He didn’t have to say anything; he already felt the gentle prod of Scar peeking into his head, plucking the thoughts straight from them. 

The corner of Scar’s mouth twitched. 

“Wait!” he cried, holding one hand up to Bdubs and using the other to dramatically clutch his head. “Wait. Wait, oh! Oh, I’m— I’m getting something real big here.” 

Bdubs gawked at him. Subtly pointing at Scar from his waist, he yell-whispered to Grian, “What’s his problem?” 

Grian hushed him, plastering on his best face of twisted confusion and concern. Scar was much better at this part than he was, but he’d watch him do it enough times to mimic it, even if it was just a crude impersonation. 

“Etho.” It was the only word Scar said, and it was the only one he needed to say. It hung in the air like a knife suspended overhead. No one dared to move out of fear of disturbing it, of knocking it down. Lest it cut each of them in two. 

Bdubs froze where he stood, half in retreat and half in intrigue. His fists curled and uncurled at his sides, color blanching and refilling his knuckles each time. 

“What did you just say?” he said, dangerously quiet. 

“Forgive me, I don’t know if I ever properly introduced myself to you,” Scar grinned his most charming grin. How out of place it was in such a tense room. “My name is Scar.” 

“He’s a psychic, remember?” Grian said. “A damn good one, too.” 

Bdubs huffed, trying to sound scornful but it only managed the tiniest nudge toward weary. “You’re one of those, huh?” Then he cocked his head at Grian. “So this is the fool you’ve been prancin’ around with? Didn’t take you for a total sucker, G.” 

“You never really know what happened to him— Etho.” Scar plowed through. “And that kills you, doesn’t it? Everyone else said he ran away, but you knew something else happened to him. You saw it with your own two eyes and not a soul believed you. Not where it counted. Isn’t that right?”

Bdubs snarled. “The hell is this?” 

“Don’t you want to know?” Scar taunted, pressing his two fingers harshly into his temple. “I  have a talent for hunches. And I have a strong feeling that whatever it is you’re looking for, you’ll find it down there.”

Grian stared down at his slung arm, feet tapping. He wasn’t exactly proud of this, but it was Jimmy on the line. And not just Jimmy, but all the people who’d already gone missing and all those at risk of falling victim to this thing in the future. What would stop it from taking another, then another, then another? There was no other option. Bdubs would have to understand or get over it. 

When Bdubs didn’t immediately protest, throw his arms up, or kick them out, Grian knew they’d gotten him. A fishhook directly in his cheek. 

Grian leaned forward. Scar mirrored him. “You in?” 

Bdubs’s mouth flattened into a scowl. He stood beside the table and placed a hand atop the red gasoline canister, fiddling with the cap until it was loose before screwing it tight again. 

“You think this one little thing will really work?” he mumbled, the closest he’d come to admitting defeat. Bdubs was too proud to say anything that sounded remotely like I give up. 

“There’s plenty where that came from!” Scar sprung to his feet, twirling his keys around his pointer finger. He snatched the gasoline canister and turned on his heel. But before he made it more than a foot away from the table, he double-backed. 

“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said. “Do the mirrors in the bathroom come off the wall?” 

-.--

OPEN THE DOOR.

The right answer was, annoyingly (more often than not) the simplest one. The most obvious. It’d been right here under his nose the entire time, just like everything else had been. And just like every other time he’d been entirely too blind to see it for what it was. He didn’t see things as they were. He only saw them as he was, and what he had been a little twisted, terrified thing. The poster-child of skepticism. 

Every moment, every dream, every memory. Each shred of misery. They all led him to this moment: the bite of a cold metal handle against his fingers, a familiar tombstone of a door and it’s rusting yellow sign it’s epitaph:

DO NOT ENTER VOID

According to Bdubs, the moon thought him to be cursed. You’re doomed, he had said, the tinny distorted voice over the tape a constant mockery in Grian’s brain. He hadn’t understood it then.  How could he already be dead when he was still breathing? But he thought he could wrap his head around it now. 

He was a deadman walking. A hand on a metal door was the spade in the dirt, six-feet deep. Because this was the same as digging his own grave. Because at the end of this, it was either going to be Grian or this creature that came out of that mineshaft alive. And Grian already knew which one he chose. 

All he had to do was do it. He had to reach out and—

OPEN THE DOOR.

And so he did.

Whatever locks remained in the door had been busted by Bdubs’ pair of bolt cutters and a crowbar wedged in the crooked door frame. It took all three of them to break the seal, fortifications put up by the town’s safety department time and time again. Because bored teenagers had nothing better to do in this town than going exploring abandoned coal mines and nearly getting themselves killed in the process.

Grian told himself this was a far more noble cause. He wasn’t some teenager anymore stashing his father’s alcohol under his kitchen sink and blowing off steam by smashing empty bottles on the rocky shores. What he was doing now mattered. Maybe it was what he was always supposed to do. 

All it took was a simple push. 

Rather than light flooding in, the darkness sept out. Like a black hole it reached out from the doorway and sucked them in. His boots kicked up scummy, stagnant water as he braved the first few steps into the abandoned mines. Immediately he tasted grit, dust caked in his teeth and a stench of metal coating his tongue. It was all he could taste when he breathed. Like he was buried alive and the dirt filled every part of him.

Scar and Bdubs were not far behind. 

Even with the peaty moisture in the air, Grian could still smell the familiar draw of peppermint. He clung to it, a piece of driftwood lost in an open sea. 

Thanks to the small lights clipped to the fronts of their shirts, also courtesy of Bdubs and his teenage misadventures, Grian could make out the long tunnel that loomed ahead of them. Graffiti and other scrawled messages painted the walls on either side of the tunnel. TURN AROUND, one screamed in red. THE CANARY CALLS, read the other, the last letter smeared with what looked uncomfortably like a handprint. Wooden beams, most cracked or decaying from the middle, supported the wet, muddy walls and roof. Over and over they ribbed and repeated into the upcoming darkness, so deep and endless that the flashlights could only do so much to penetrate it. It was like walking blind into the jaw of some slumbering beast. 

Grian held a hand over his mouth to block the musty taste and said, “Here.”

Scar and Bdubs each carried a mirror. Scar’s was the large one from Grian’s basement, and he set it up on one side of the tunnel. Bdubs, with a mirror they’d pried off of the Double ‘O Diner’s bathroom wall, did the same on the opposite side. Both mirrors pointed down the center of the tunnel. Grian flashed his light against the glass, as if he didn’t entirely trust the reflection to be doing its job. But if he was going to be leaving his life in the hands of inanimate glass, he’d be damn sure that it was working. 

It was a failsafe. If all else failed and they had to run for it, the copycat wouldn’t be able to follow them out. It’d be so repelled by the sight of itself that it’d buy them precious seconds to get out of the door and shut it behind them. 

In the dusty glass, his own reflection stared back at him, silhouetted by Scar’s light behind him. He didn’t need to see his own features to know that they’d come out wrong. They always did. 

The second step of the plan: they armed themselves with the gasoline. Scar and Bdubs carried two each, leaving the rest by the door, propping it in the doorway so as to keep it from trapping them inside. Grian had ditched his sling, but the only thing he could manage to carry was his pistol. And even then his grip was clumsy and weak at best. It was still entirely roo early; his body was sore and tired to the bone. A single night wasn’t enough to recoup. But it was all he had, and Grian had lots of practice in working with what he had, in making things up by the seat of his pants. 

You could argue it was how he got into this mess in the first place. 

If only he’d just stuck to the goddamn ghost complaints. 

“Lead the way,” Grian said as he returned his gaze to the tunnel before them. 

Bdubs stepped in line with him, scowling. “Have I mentioned this is a wicked stupid plan?”

“Have you got a better one?” It would’ve been foolish to disagree with him staring into the dark maw. But time was against them and, again, desperation was one hell of a motivator.

In lieu of an answer, Bdubs just shuddered and walked ahead. Grian kept close to his right, his pistol drawn, his eyes on the rocky, uneven floors beneath them. Most of it was obscured by a thin layer of ruddy water, the moisture already starting to creep in through his boots and soak his socks. Scar kept on Bdubs’ other side, his nerves far more reserved, but no less obvious to Grian. 

The weight of his pistol was a comforting one. He couldn’t be caught off-guard again. Now only if had his badge on him too. With that little piece of metal he could’ve pretended it was just another day at work: another perp, another dollar, another cup of coffee. Hell, he’d even take the paperwork, too. So long as it meant he wasn’t here, unable to feel a single one of his twenty-five years. He might as well have been ten all over again, crying as his mom whispered in his ear and rocked him back and forth in that chair. 

Memories were harder to keep out down here. It was like the hole in his mind had been torn open, shattering the window that filtered the worst of things out. He felt raw, exposed. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as if he were being watched. For all he knew, he probably was. The echo of their footsteps stalked them down the tunnel.

His toe caught on something hard and nearly sent him face-first into the murky pool beneath him. He stumbled and caught himself against the narrow walls, metal groaning beneath his feet as he regained purchase. It was an old rail track with rotting wooden ties. It started here next to a large lever sticking up from the ground and extended far up ahead, disappearing into the darkness and around a bend at the end of the tunnel. 

Grian looked at Bdubs. “Where did you and Etho find it?” he asked. 

“There’s some kinda collapsed cave around here,” Bdubs said, rolling one of his shoulders and readjusting his grip on the gasoline canister. Every inch of him screamed FLIGHT RISK, down to the unsteady shifting of his feet and the constant, antsy fidgeting of his fingers. 

“You don’t seem confident,” Grian said.

Bdubs’ bitter laugh snapped out of him. “Okay, G, if you’re gonna be all nit-picky about the directions you asked me to give, I might as well just leave right now and let your sorry asses deal with it yourselves.”

Grian turned around to raise an eyebrow at him. “And walk back through the dark tunnels alone?” he asked, fanning his arm out to the endless black behind them. “Be my guest.”

Bdubs spared a glance over his shoulder, hunched over as if he feared the darkness would leap out and bite him. He groaned. “You’re the worst.”

“I know.”

“What exactly are we looking for?” Scar asked, walking close enough to Grian’s back that he occasionally stepped on the heels of his shoes. “How do we know it’s the right thing?”

Grian wished he knew, exactly. “I’m banking on the fact that we'll know when we see it,” he said with only the capacity to hope that that would be true. Despite all the research Scar and Pix had to pick through, they didn’t have one single ‘How to Hunt Changelings’ guide between them. It would’ve been far more helpful than trying to write the books themselves for the first time. 

His dad rolled up his pant legs, cuffing them once and then twice. He tapped Grian’s knee when he was done, rising to his full height and wading out into the water until it lapped at his knees. 

To catch an animal, you have to go into its own territory, his father had said that evening and several other identical ones to follow. 

Fishing with your bare hands wasn’t entirely synonymous with cave plundering in hopes of finding some ancient monster, but it still felt like it had to be true. Whatever this copycat was, it had to be some kind of animal, just like the three of them were, in a sense, animals. It needed to eat and heal like them.  It could bleed like them; Grian had proved as much with his fine handiwork with the wrought iron. It had attacked Etho and Bdubs when they wandered into these mines. He could only assume it had something to protect here. Some kind of nest.

The deeper the dove, the less graffiti splattered the walls, the thinner the air became. Spray-painted GOD, SAVE OUR SOULS turned into nothing but the coarse edges of rock and the water that crept in from the earthy ceiling. With it came a silence most unsettling, one that not even Bdubs’ complaining could penetrate. For once, he wished for Scar’s nonsensical rambling. He didn’t care what he talked about, so long as it was loud and annoying enough to drown out the anxious pandering that sank in during silences like this. So long as it kept his thoughts from steering dangerously close into Jimmy territory. 

He shook his head. Fill your lungs up, Pearl told him. He drew in a sharp breath and held it there. Now let them pour out. So he did, tilting the cup over and letting the tension and nerves spill from him in one go. The pistol steadied in his hand. 

They followed the rails around the bend, and eventually the narrow tunnel opened up into a larger cavern, the roof half-collapsed with large piles of rubble and wooden debris scattered everywhere. Scar ducked his head as he followed Grian and Bdubs instead, bracing one arm against the rubble to his side, testing its stability. 

“This is it,” Bdubs said, fanning his arms out on both sides and spinning in a careless circle. “This is as far as we got. 

“Before you got chased out?” Scar asked. 

Bdubs could only nod, the edge of his face nothing more than a dim outline from the reach of Scar’s flashlight. 

Grian hadn’t known quite what he expected. Part of him hoped that the lair of a monster would’ve been everything you saw in movies, with gross, weeping eggs or sentient vines. Anything that yielded the supernatural, something extravagant and beyond belief. Something not even Grian could deny. 

But the cavern was just that— a cavern. Grian felt its horror in the absences. The distinct human-shaped hole torn through the darkness, their flashlights glimpsing the things left behind: the last impressions of anything living, past or present. The rail continued on, the metal warped and rusted all over, covered in dirt and fallen rocks. To their right a large cart was turned over onto its side, spilling out massive piles of rocks and a black, chalky substance embedded into those rocks. Grian shone his light to the opposite wall where several pickaxes, both broken and in-tact, sat leaning against a sheer rock face. The metal of the picks were so old and rusted that they looked like some decoration in a museum, like they belonged on the wall of the Hollow Bed and Breakfast. 

Glass crunched underneath his feet, shards leftover from smashed lanterns that sprawled across the cavern floor and suspended overhead by a few heavy links of chain. Bits of blasting wire, braided together, trailed along the edge of the wall and followed the path of the rail deeper into the half-collapsed cavern. Roots and shreds of tarp hung overhead, strung like the banners and streamers above the Hollow’s Eve parade. 

It was a ghost town; a graveyard of everything that existed only to be suspended all at once. He remembered the stories. The miners disappearance, seemingly out of thin air. The searches that followed, the folklore that sprouted up: the origins of the belief that something evil lurked beneath the town’s grounds. That the overeager coal miners dug up something they shouldn’t have. Monsters or ghost stories aside, Grian never heard anything but gnarly horror stories about mines like these. They were typically abandoned for a good reason.

“Y’know, when I first moved here I didn’t expect to be illegally cave diving with a cop and a diner owner. This feels like the start of a joke,” Scar mumbled as he crept along the edge of the rockpile, keeping his head ducked and his eyes on the uneven ground beneath them. The way he stepped, stiffly and with his face pinched, betrayed the fact that he was in pain. 

“Detective,” Grian corrected, a knee-jerk retort. Then, he frowned at him, trying to ignore the guilt that threatened to eat away at him. “Your leg, Scar.”

“All good, partner!” Scar smiled at him and flashed a thumbs up. Which was fucking crazy, the fact that he was still able to conjure a smile like that when they were trapped underground, several miles into a miserable mineshaft. Despite this fact, something about it was contagious. It was a type of warmth he couldn’t help but be touched by, even in the cold, dank air. He offered Scar a wry smile in return. It was the least he could do for getting him into this mess. 

An apology— a proper one— was long overdue. 

“Holy shit! Guys, come take a look at this!” It was hard to pinpoint Bdubs’ voice where it ricocheted throughout the cramped space. But a flash of light up ahead gave away his position up ahead. 

Grian and Scar followed it. Ducking beneath a low, bowed part of the cave’s ceiling, the path continued on into that direction until it met a sheer rock face that extended for what felt like miles upward into the dark. It didn’t feel possible. They couldn’t have been so far underground. 

Bdubs stood facing it, the gas canisters resting at his feet. The crag looked less like the jagged surface of worn-away rock and more like strips of tree bark: thick, jagged ridges cut through the stone. And in the center of it was a deep, burrowed hole. Like it was a great big white oak drawn by Jimmy when he was a kid, a large hole in the center for the family of owls who lived inside.

Grian wasn’t anywhere near an expert in minding. Hell, he wasn’t even a novice. But the hole was smooth around the edges in a way no amount of dynamite or pickaxes could recreate. Nothing about it seemed natural, but it couldn’t have been man made either. It felt old. 

“Behold!” Bdubs shouted, his voice carrying roughly through the cave. Dust snowed down from the ceiling somewhere above. “You said we’d know it when we saw it, didn’t you? Pretty sure I’m seein’ and knowin’ this bad boy.” 

Grian stepped closer to it. His headache flared, each beat of his heart a hammer against his bare skull. A sharp prickle crawled all over him, nipping at every bit of exposed skin. DANGER, DANGER, DANGER, it wailed. The sensations, the aches, the shivers— all this time they’d been warning him. 

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” he muttered. 

Scar held up one of the canisters, unscrewing the cap. “It’s now or never,” he said. And he was right. 

The plan was to exterminate it. They lacked some wonderful chemical compound, some Copycat Repellant, that would make their work here easy. Instead, they had gasoline. An entire wallet’s worth of it. If they struck it where it lived, hunted it in its own territory, they had twice the chance of catching it off guard. It had to come back here eventually, and when it did, they’d be ready. 

They made steady work coating the place in gasoline. Bdubs focused on coating the area in front of the rock face while Scar made a trail leading back the way they came. Numbly, Grian considered that he needed to help them. There was no telling how much time they had to get it done. But he was caught, entranced by the dark hollow opening. It felt like a perfect mirror of the great white oak tree that stood in Main Street, hanging upside down with the roots raised juts of stone running into the cavern floor. 

Grian’s heart pounded, a furious pace in his ears. He needed to know. He needed to see it for himself. As if tied to a string, he was pulled forward into the empty, dark hole. 

One hand traced the smooth inner stone as he ventured into the darkness. He groped for any ridge, any shred of evidence of something living inside it. Something hard crunched beneath Grian’s foot. Shards of what looked like white porcelain, chipped and streaked with soot. It crunched and turned to dust under his weight. 

Bones. No larger than those belonging to bats or some kind of rodent. But there were a lot of them, all left and scattered across the floor the way Jimmy used to leave food wrappers in his bedroom at the height of his teenage years. Grian held his breath and stepped over as many as he could as he crept deeper inside. 

His flashlight flickered. He was plunged into darkness as it sputtered off, a terrified chill spiking through him. “No, no, no, no,” he hissed, swatting at it until the light weakly came back to life. 

He turned to the side, made to leave before his light gave up on him again and he got lost inside. But something caught his eye. There was something directly in front of him. Grian tilted his head at it. It didn’t make sense. He couldn’t make sense of what he was looking at. This part of the rock suddenly jagged and sharp as if it’d been roughly carved away. There was something embedded into it, pale and stark against the dark stone. It was only when he, hesitantly, reached out to touch it that he realized what it was. 

His fingers brushed cold, clammy skin. Freezing skin. 

A hand. 

It was a hand, reaching out from the stone’s surface. 

Grian cried out and scrambled backwards until he collapsed against the opposite side wall. The shout was about as quiet as a bullet leaving the chamber, ricocheting throughout the nest and piercing his own ears. 

“Grian?!” Scar called out to him, and with the sound came a frantic flurry of footsteps. 

Flashlights blinded him as Scar and Bdubs ran in after him, their faces wide and white around the edges with panic. “Are you okay?” Scar asked. 

Grian shielded his eyes and fought to regain control of his breathing. He stared at the pale protrusion from the stone. Shakily, he stepped up to it, ghosting his own fingers over there. “They’re— it’s—” Grian’s throat was clogged by dust and fear; his voice was made up of ash in taste and sound alike.

“Jesus!” Bdubs hissed, shining his light where Grian was focused. They crowded around the hand. 

“They’re encased in the stone,” Scar said, voice distant and unnerved. Then, he inhaled sharply. “But the gasoline—”

“We can’t do it,” Grian said breathlessly. His plan was destroyed. He reached out and touched the hand again, the fingers thick and calloused, the skin tough and ice-cold. He searched the hand for any sign of life. And when he ghosted his touch over the index finger, he could’ve sworn he felt it: the gentle, weak throb of a pulse. 

“They’re alive,” he choked out. The hand was too dense to be Jimmy’s, the fingers not nimble enough, the surface not smooth enough. Jimmy hadn’t been doing dock work long enough to earn the rough calluses that went along with it. Grian didn’t know if he found that discovery reassuring or harrowing. This living piece of a thing in the wall wasn’t Jimmy. But it also wasn’t Jimmy. Where the hell was he, then?

“We gotta get them out,” Scar said, stepping forward and splaying his hands out on the stone, searching for anything: a weak point, some secret crevice. 

We’re in a coal mine,” Bdubs said, clearing his throat. “Let’s take pickaxes to the damn thing and bust them out of there.” 

Between Bdubs and Scar, Grian wasn’t sure they would be enough to break through the thickness of the stone. But there was no other option. If there was the tiniest, most miniscule chance that they were alive, that there were others buried in this stone somewhere, he had to take it. 

They hurried for the pickaxes, gathering them from where they were resting against the cavern wall. Scar made the first strike, hauling the rusted  pick over his head before slamming it into the stone above the hand. A large chunk broke off and fell in pieces at their feet. It wasn’t much. It wasn’t fast enough. They were working on borrowed time; any second they could be discovered and they’d be nothing more than an extra embellishment studded in the wall. A deer head stuffed and mounted over a mantlepiece. 

“I’ll keep watch,” Grian said, double checking his pistol was loaded before slinking out towards the entrance of the nest. 

“Yeah, very convenient for you,” Bdubs snarled. “Don’t have to do all the hard labor.”

“Quit complainin’ and start digging,” Scar snapped. 

He paced back and forth, eyes on the dark wreckage surrounding him. The cave was still and silent aside from the heavy breathing and hauling of Scar and Bdubs’ pickaxes against the wall. He examined the patterns carved into the rock face, each curve and edge so similar to that of a tree that Grian felt he could reach out and touch it and expect to feel the fragile coarseness of bark. 

Then, his flashlight flickered. Once. Twice. A familiar pain began to creep into Grian’s temples. His heart dropped into his stomach. Every inch of his body stood on end, a rush of adrenaline turning the rest of him ice-cold as the heat flared in his chest. 

Grian barely managed to pry his mouth open.

“Guys, I think something’s—”

All the lights vanished at once. They were plunged into complete darkness. Grian suddenly remembered climbing up to the roof at night, when the house felt too heavy, when he was too afraid. When he’d crane his neck up and stare at the sky for some means of escape. Only for the empty, cold, starless dome to stare back down at him. The crushing, painful feeling of being utterly alone. Not even a shred of light to keep him company in that empty house. 

Metal striking the ground reverberated through the cave. Bdubs cried out, Scar cursed. Grian didn’t dare move. There was something with them. He felt it in every direction, a slow painful crawl toward him, pressing closer and closer with each second. 

Soft shuffling came from somewhere behind him. Quiet, rapid breathing. Warm breath against the back of his neck. 

“Grian?” Scar whispered against him. 

A discordant rattling noise snuck into the cave. Something that wasn’t human nor natural. It wasn’t a draft whistling through the narrow tunnels or rocks shifting and settling. It was sharp and shrill. A wounded sound. The wail he’d heard the moment he angled a mirror at the copycat. 

They’d run out of time. 

“Quiet.” 

Grian kept still, stayed quiet. He only hoped Bdubs and Scar had the sense to do the same. He strained his ears to listen for the sounds of the creature approaching, soft pattering against the stone walls, floors, and ceiling. The shifting of water, as if something was drifting right over it, no more than water against the surface of a pond. A faint, eerie trill tickled the back of Grian’s ear. A puff of cold air struck his nape. Not Scar. Not anymore. 

He lost his nerve. He spun on his heel, fired a single bullet blindly into the dark and bound forward into the darkness. 

The tense silence of the cave snapped in two. An animalistic, shrill screech split the air like a lightning strike over a still sea. Still not because it was calm, but rather because it was at the eye of the storm. The briefest glimpse of stillness before the worst of it rolled through. Grian grappled through the darkness, tripping over rails and rocks and lumps of coal as he frantically scrambled to get away from the sounds of the air shifting all around him. Grian grappled for the wall, anything to tether him in the infinite blackness. His heart thundered in his ears, adrenaline numbed his fingertips and tightened a band around his chest. It was here— he could feel it, he could feel it in the splitting of his head, as if his skull were the grounds of Hermit’s Hollow themselves, ready to swallow him whole. 

Ahead of him, the shadows rippled, a break in the darkness that could only be made by an even deeper black. Grian ran his hands over the stone. If the nest was here and he was facing out, then the exit had to be on his left, right? He pushed off the wall and ran that direction, navigated by blind hope. Immediately he crashed into who could only have been either Scar or Bdubs.

“Grian?” A hand grasped his wrist through the darkness. Warm, fleshy, alive. Peppermint and relief alike flooded Grian’s nose and mouth. 

“Scar,” he gasped. “Where is it?”

“I don’t know.” Scar pulled him close until they were back to back. He could feel Scar’s heart beating furiously through his chest. 

“Bdubs?” Grian whispered. 

Scar’s fingers tightened around Grian’s wrist. “I don’t know,” he echoed, quieter this time. More afraid. 

He could only hope he was okay. He was only down here because Grian had lied to him. Grian didn’t want to believe one goddamn thing the moon said, or what Bdubs said the moon said, but this time he granted it permission to comfort him. This wasn’t how Bdubs died. He never said it wasn’t how Grian died, but he’d known that going in. Grian signed his death certificate the second he opened that door, and he was okay with that. So long as Scar, Bdubs, and the others would end up being okay. 

They idly turned in circles, back-to-back, neither willing to fully let the other go. They wandered blindly through the dark. No matter how desperately Grian slapped his flashlight the bulb wouldn’t spark back to life. And no matter how long they lingered down there, his eyes wouldn’t adjust. Cold, impenetrable black encroached upon him in all directions.

It wasn’t the kind of emptiness you could hold. It wasn’t the absence of something where there once was, like a hole dug from the dirt, it only is because of what was. Rather, this cavern’s emptiness stemmed from never having existed at all. A black-hole, no dirt to be dug, only space to be consumed. As if instead of being excavated out of the ground itself, it was the earth that formed around this single, blackened space. A void, for lack of a better word. 

And lost in it was the sound of being hunted. Grian’s skin had crawled with the sensation of being watched too often to not recognize it the second it returned. Ants skittering across his skin, eyes raking over every inch of him, even in the darkness. The air howled and split with low trilling as the creature surrounded them. Circled. Like vultures ready to pick at a not-yet-dead body. 

A few blind steps through the dark, back to back. “We need to try to get back to the— woah!” 

Grian’s heart plummeted as the ground disappeared from beneath his feet. The rocks and dirt gave way, the earth crumbling apart with a sound that rivaled thunder. He lost his grip on Scar when they fell, sliding straight into a dark nothing below him. Scar’s startled cry echoed along the shaft’s walls. Rocks scraped the expanse of Grian’s back raw and bloody, every bump sending a sharp pain shooting up his tailbone. He tumbled head-over-heel until he eventually rolled to a stop at the end of a steep slope, colliding hard against another body. 

“Ow!” 

Grian untangled his limbs and sat up, coughing the dust from his lungs and shaking the dirt from his hair. “Scar?” he rubbed the dirt from his eyes, clambering over his body. He grabbed onto what he could only hope were Scar’s shoulders and jostled him. “You okay?”

“I feel like a bowling ball,” he whined. 

Grian huffed. “Think we’re more like the pins.”

“What the hell was that?” Scar sat up, using Grian’s arms as guidance for which way was up and which was down. He steadied himself against Grian’s shoulders and together they managed to shakily climb to their feet. 

“It collapsed right out from under us,” Grian whispered, letting Scar go for a second to pat himself over for injuries. His back stung terribly and his casted arm ached. Maybe he had a few scratches to his face from stray rocks, but nothing new was broken, and he could stand on two feet.

He steadied himself with a breath, craning his neck back to try to get any kind of sense of bearings. The darkness was no less impenetrable several feet deeper. He could no longer hear the trilling and rushing of a shadow ripping through the caverns. But the silence was no more comforting. He still felt like he was being watched. 

“Scar?” Grian waited. He reached blindly around him in all directions, shuffling his feet, but he felt nothing but the black suffocating him.  “Scar. C’mon, now is not the time to play a prank.”

Nothing. The silence faced him, more terrifying and ugly than anything else. Panic wedged in his throat. Either the air was considerably thinner down here or Grian was one tiny nudge from completely losing his mind. Or both— both could also be true and Grian was just double screwed. 

He was just here. Grian had just had hands on him. Where could he have gone?

Desperation snuck in, tasting all too similar to terror. “Scar!”

“I’m here.” 

Grian whipped around to where the sound came from. A light flickered, the flashlight pinned to Scar’s chest. It was angled up toward his face, illuminating the sharp edge of his jaw and casting deep shadows under his eyes. That way, Grian couldn’t make out the exact color of his eyes. But there was no mistaking the blank expression he wore, the most disturbing mask of them all. 

“Scar?” Grian hesitantly stepped toward him. His head throbbed the closer he got. 

Coldness seeped into Grian’s bones. He froze, pulling his arms back in toward himself. 

Scar stepped toward him, his head cocked to the side. 

Grian took a blind step back. 

Grian grit his teeth. He clutched his pistol at his side, but he couldn’t raise it. He knew he couldn’t shoot it. Not when it looked like him. Grian’s nerve was only so strong, and it didn’t allow him so much as to ghost his finger over the trigger. 

“I like you,” it said in Scar’s voice, a deep, hollow mockery of the real sweetness of the thing. “You’re so miserable.”

The light flickered, then reappeared only to reveal the Copycat standing inches in front of him. The false warmth of Scar’s hand touched the underside of his chin, angling his face up. A cruel smile spread across Scar’s face. “I forgot how much fun this was,” it said. “You really like him, don’t you?” 

Grian couldn’t back away anymore. His back was against the wall. His heart threatened to kill him where it was stuck in his throat. “What the hell are you?” he managed through grit teeth. 

The light died again, plunging him back into the cold darkness. The fingers under his chin disappeared. The air moved around him, as if the cave walls were shifting side to side like the hull of a ship. Grian stumbled to the side, a desperate scramble to escape through the dark. 

“Grian?” 

There was no mistaking Jimmy’s voice, even if it was nothing more than an awful, hollow replica. He knew it couldn’t be the real thing. He’d been fooled too many times. Shame on him. He wouldn’t let it fool him again. Grian scrunched his eyes shut and focused on the pain pulsating through his temples, grasped onto that deep-seated aversion coiling in his body each time the creature came close to him. 

He felt its body— Jimmy’s body— all around him. Tall shoulders, long arms, reaching for him in the dark. “Grian, where’d you go?” Jimmy’s voice echoed all around him, seeping into his ears, crawling across the surface of his brain. No matter how much he tried to shut it out, it collapsed in around him, deadlier than any cave-in. “Why didn’t you come home? Why did you run away?”

“Stop,” Grian clenched his gun and lifted it blindly in the dark. “Stop it. What do you want?”

“I just want us to be a family again, Grian.” Arms wrapped around his neck and yanked him backwards, crushing him against a copy of his brother’s chest. They wrestled back until the two crashed into the cavern wall, the Copycat twisting Grian’s wrist sharply and making him drop his pistol. It disappeared into the darkness at his feet. Jimmy’s chin dug sharply into his skull, his arms tight and unrelenting around his throat. Grian grappled for its wrists, but it was far stronger than he was.

“You got away from me last time,” it said into his ear, pressing hard on his windpipe. “It’s been fun. But I think I’m done playing now.” 

Pressed this close to it, Grian felt it: this dark hunger that chewed at him. It wasn’t his hunger. This thing was starving, and every miserable second Grian spent around it, that hunger was curbed more and more. As if suffering was its sole meal. 

Grian made a pained noise and thrashed his body as much as he could to the side but to no avail. If he could see much of anything, his vision would’ve started to go all splotchy. Grian could feel the weightlessness feeling starting to creep into his head and rush in his ears. 

Think, he begged his brain before it lost the last of its wits. Think!

It felt all too familiar. Held onto too tightly, so tightly that he’d bruise if it didn’t kill him first. The fear, so deeply rooted like it was coded in his DNA, but so childish that he was a fool for feeling it in the first place. The rush of blood in his ears by the second sounded less like the furious pace of his heart and more like the harsh rocking of an old, rickety chair. 

Mom.

He let go of Jimmy’s arms, fumbling instead for his pocket. Trembling fingers clasped around something small. His mother’s compact mirror. Just as the light on Grian’s chest flickered once again he thrust the mirror over his shoulder, directly in the Copycat’s face. 

An ear-piercing howl rattled through his bones, ricocheted along the precarious cave ceiling and floor. Rocky faces and dripping stones shook, dust raining down and stinging Grian’s eyes. The arms let him go, shoving him forward until he caught himself on an opposite wall. The mirror clattered from his hands and disappeared somewhere in the darkness, but he wasted no time fumbling for it. He picked himself up and sprinted down a tunnel he glimpsed through the barest flickers of light. 

It chased him through a long, tortuous labyrinth of wrong-turns and barred-off vertical shafts. All the while he felt it right at his heels, the dark twisting and splitting as the monster of shadow clawed after him. Rather than something hiding inside of the darkness, the Copycat was an extension of it. He remembered the form of it in the mirror, in the photograph. A shapeless form, a black mass that reeked of hunger and misery. Where darkness was, it followed. A flow of water. Grian had no hope of outrunning it. 

He slapped a hand against the flashlight to his chest and it flickered back to life. It revealed the opening of the tunnel up ahead, where it poured out into a large cylindrical cavern with huge layers of scaffolding extending the entire height of the sheer rock faces. Pockets of coal stuck out from the rock, piles of it spread everywhere along the ground. Black blast marks coated every inch of the walls, several piles and cart-fulls of coal loaded up. Frozen in time. Never to be loaded into the lifts to be brought in at the end of the day. 

Grian sprinted toward the scaffolding. His feet splashed in something as thick as it was dark. No longer was it stagnant, brackish water, but rather oil. It clung to his shoes and threatened to drag him down to his knees.

He grasped the cold, rusting metal framework and hauled himself up onto the first level. Like a precarious staircase it spiraled up and up to a larger landing, the head of the cliff face near the ceiling of the cave. He threw himself up layer after layer, the entire foundation shuddering beneath his weight as the Copycat latched onto the first platform.

Grian’s heart hammered, his breath stung in his lungs. It didn’t matter how dangerous this was, it didn’t matter if he was cornering himself. All that mattered was getting away. He risked a glance over his shoulder. It was no longer Scar or Jimmy. But Impulse. Cropped hair, wide shoulders, unkind eyes. It crawled with superhuman speed and strength up the scaffolding. It gained on him quickly, Impulse’s large, thick hands reaching out for Grian’s dangling ankles. He struggled to lift himself up on the next platform. It grasped onto him, yanking him down. Grian struck the scaffolding with a gasp, the wind knocked from his chest. 

Gasping, he craned his neck up. The creature had a firm hold on his leg, dragging him closer to it. The manic smile looked painful on Impulse’s usually calm face. It looked elated. It looked starved , like the freshest meal had been plopped onto its plate. Grian cried out and blindly reached above his head, grasping a piece of the scaffolding’s railing. 

“Grian!” cried a voice overhead. 

He could hardly see in the dark, but above him was a face. Pale and sharp through the otherwise impenetrable dark. Standing at the top ledge of the cliff was Scar, his eyes wide, his chest heaving with each desperate gasp for air. A small golden light flickered in his hand. He dangled it over the edge of the scaffolding. A small flame. A lighter. 

Scar stared at him expectantly. 

The mines. Oil. Coal—

What was it Pix had said about firedamp? 

All it takes is a spark.

Grian’s eyes widened. The Copycat tugged on Grian’s leg with every ounce of strength it had. Grian’s hand, pained and bandaged, slipped from his grip on the scaffolding. It licked its lips and dragged him dangerously close to the edge of the scaffolding. 

Grian steadied himself. Fill your lungs up. He drew in a sharp breath, slow and painful in a way that stretched his chest to its limit. Pearl might not have been there with him to tuck her in bed and clamp her hands over his ears, to scare off the monsters hidden in his closet. But she didn’t need to be. 

Now pour them out. With a slow, purposeful exhale, Grian coiled his free leg up and, with every last piece of strength he had left, kicked the Copycat directly in the chin. It stunned it, the grip on Grian’s ankle releasing. It scrambled backwards, tipping over the rail and off the scaffolding entirely, collapsing in a painful heap to the cavern floor beneath. 

At the same time, Scar dropped the lighter. Grian didn’t see it fall, but he didn’t need to. As soon as it struck the ground, the entire cave erupted. 

Heat. It was the only real thing Grian could put his finger on as the darkness seemed to collapse in on itself and the air set alight. Heat licked at Grian’s face and hands as the flames burst across the cavern floor, catching on the stagnant oil pools and exploding through the open air and across the coal deposits. At the center of it all, the creature. It was built of shadow again, its hollow eyes staring up at Grian as it shrieked and writhed in the flames, trapped in a vat of its own creation.

The explosion had rattled the scaffolding’s foundation, the rocks at its base starting to slide and crack into pieces. Grian fumbled to his feet and clambered the rest of the way up. The metal groaned as it began to bend in and crack at the base, the first few flights collapsing inward. Scar reached over for Grian’s hand, grabbing onto him tightly as he jumped the small gap between the final landing and the cliff-face where Scar stood. The rocks nearly gave out beneath him where he landed on the closest ledge, but Scar held onto him tightly. He all but trapped Grian in a headlock to keep him from falling backward. 

His skin burned. His lungs were full of smoke. Each breath seared a new kind of pain through his chest. The creature’s wails echoed so loudly through the cavern that the ceiling started to tremble, rocks and dust raining from above. Grian poked his head over to the edge to watch it writhe and disintegrate in the mass of flames. 

Scar grabbed him by the bicep. “We need to go!” 

He knew it was true. It wouldn’t take long for the flames to spread; there was no way of knowing how much firedamp lingered in these caves. For all he knew it was no more than a ticking time bomb right under everyone's feet. It was insane not one person feared this instead of the Weeping Lady or the Hollows. 

It was difficult to tear his eyes away. He wanted to watch. Like it seemed to glean so much satisfaction from Grian’s suffering, he wanted to do the same to it. He wanted to watch it writhe and melt away into nothing but smoke and ash, the shadows torn apart by the bright, furious flames lashing at it. No, it was less wanting to watch it disappear and more of a visceral need. He needed to know it was done; he needed to know it wouldn’t return. 

But he wasn’t prepared for its final stand. For the crying of several familiar voices overlapping, the constant shifting of skin as it bubbled and melted away. Impulse’s cry of pain, Scar’s twisted mouth, Jimmy crying Grian’s name, Doc’s desperate gasping for air. 

Grian grit his teeth and climbed to his feet, pushing through the pain. He allowed Scar to pull him away, despite the way bile crawled up the back of his throat, despite the way all tears that threatened to burn in his eyes were evaporated by the intense heat blistering from the cavern floor. 

They ran. Through tunnels and slow, half-collapsed caves, they ran until Scar found what he was looking for. A small light ahead streaming from the ceiling. Here, the walls were less stone and more dirt, water and sewage pooling at their ankles. Three small holes of light shone down on their faces. The slightest draft wafted over Grian’s skin.

A man-hole cover. 

Between the two of them they managed to pry it open and shove the heavy lid to the side. Scar boosted Grian up with interlaced fingers before climbing up himself. Grian did what he could to help with one broken arm, grabbing Scar by the scruff of his shirt and pulling with every bit of strength he had left, which wasn’t much and left him a trembling, useless puddle of limbs on the damp asphalt. 

Main Street loomed around them. Cold, empty, and dark, old abandoned decorations from the previous night’s festivities hung overhead. A banner that read: CELEBRATE TO SPARE YOUR SOULS hung listlessly in the wind. It was all Grian could stare at as he sprawled to the ground. The wind was cold, the air even more cruel. The night’s air bit at Grian’s exposed arms, but soothed the flash burns to his face and hands.

The sky was starless tonight. The moon conquered the night sky, her gaze hollow and focused on Grian. He stared up at it, a silent challenge. Was he meant to die down there? Or was it true that the worst of the damage had already been done? Had it all been for nothing? The questions nauseated him. His head spun.

If he closed his eyes and ignored the burning of his face, hands, and lungs he could’ve pretended he was up on the roof. Things always felt simpler up there, when Jimmy or Pearl lay beside him and he could count the stars, draw their own constellations out of them. But the body beside him didn’t belong to Jimmy or Pearl. It was Scar, through and through, sitting with his breath shuddering and heavy, one hand on Grian’s chest as if he feared he’d disappear into the moon-lit darkness. 

For three months all he felt was a constant pang of pain, reminding him of what he failed to run away from and warning him of the mess he was walking straight into. He should’ve been relieved, now that it was gone. Breathing should’ve come easier, his chest unburdened with the darkness that lived beneath his feet for two decades. 

But instead of relief, there was just numbness. They had shot that medicine into his hand to numb it for the stitches, and it felt like someone took a hundred of those needles to his chest, his heart, his brain. All he could hear was the ghost of crackling flame and that thing’s screech of pain as its face flickered between each one Grian knew and loved. 

He draped an arm across his eyes, shoulders trembling. 

A shadow draped over him. Peppermint stung his singed nostrils. “Grian?” 

“Is it done?” he mumbled. 

“I don’t know,” Scar answered honestly, kneeling clumsily beside him. “Do you feel any different?” 

“No.” Grian pulled his arm down to look at Scar through furrowed eyebrows. “I don’t feel much of anything.” 

“I think that’s okay, too.”

Green eyes flickered. Chapped lips pulled at the corners to a wry smile. There was a cut on his head, soot staining his cheeks and neck, scorch marks and grime coating his shirt. Grian mustered what energy he could to lift a pained hand to wipe at some of the dried blood clinging to Scar’s temple. Scar tilted his head into the touch and reached up to take Grian’s hand into his own. 

“I’m okay,” he assured. “We made it. You did it.” 

“Where’s Bdubs?” he croaked instead of giving into the incredibly irritating urge to burst into tears. 

“Hopefully he’s already at the door. You led the Copycat away from us and we went back to the nest to try to get them out. He should’ve had a straight shot out,” Scar said, offering a hand to him. The two held tightly onto one another as they slowly climbed to their feet. Grian grabbed Scar’s biceps; Scar held Grian with one arm around his waist. He didn’t know who was supporting who more. 

Grian held tightly onto Scar, afraid he’d be taken away the second he let go. “You didn’t go with him.” 

The real question could be left unsaid: why? 

Because Scar always knew how to hear what Grian couldn’t— or didn’t want to— say. His fingers twitched against Grian’s hipbone. “I had to make sure you were okay,” he said. 

“What you did in there,” he wheezed. “That was genius—“ A stumbling step. “And brave—“ another step. “And stupid.”

Scar’s chuckle vibrated through Grian’s shoulder and chest. “I try.” 

Together they made a broken machine of tired limbs and heavy hearts that limped down the street. Not a soul was out, not a light glared from the shop windows. It was as if the town was sleeping, as if the greater power slumbered in the wake of the battle underground. Even the Fog had thinned, nothing to obstruct their view straight ahead along Main Street. 

They supported one another down the street and around the bend. Guided by only the moonlight they came upon the sidestreet where the alley dipped into the alcove that housed the door. Grian licked his lips. They tasted of metal.

“Thank you,” he said through a wince as they came down the stairs. 

Scar didn’t say anything, and Grian didn’t have to look at him to tell he was smiling. 

Sure enough, as they staggered down the steps into the alleyway, the first thing he saw was Bdubs. With his back to them, he obstructed most of the view, but even in the dark Grian could make out the shapes of several bodies tangled and stacked together. Legs, arms, pale cheeks. 

Scar didn’t seem as shocked as Grian felt. He left Grian to hold himself up against the wall as he bounded toward Bdubs, fluttering frantically over the bodies with uncertain hands. “Are they okay?” he demanded from Bdubs, who only sat in numb silence. 

Grian’s jaw fell open. “You got them?”

Part of him was too scared to step forward, to let his eyes adjust to the dark and glimpse the faces of the bodies clumped in that narrow alleyway. Everything led to this moment. The answer. He wasn’t sure if he was ready for it.

He dragged one foot forward, his heart throbbing nauseatingly in his throat. “Are— Are they alive?”

Bdubs turned toward him. There was a head cradled in his lap. Grimy fingers sorting through tangled, silvery hair.  The man’s skin was near the same lifeless shade, his eyes peacefully shut as if he were asleep. He lay in Bdubs’ lap, arms limp over his middle. Grian knew that face. He’d seen it in glimpses in the halls of high school, tucked near Bdubs in whatever shenanigans they dove into. 

Etho.

With Bdubs’ shoulders turned, Grian could finally see the faces of the others, all piled together like it was something as harmless as a slumber party than the real, ugly truth. Grian scanned each face with bated breath, more afraid than he’d felt in that tunnel, more afraid than he’d been with the Copycat latching onto his ankles. This was real. This was final. He’d already survived. He wouldn’t outlive his little brother. 

To Bdubs’ right were broad shoulders, a torn wind-breaker, and the slow rise and fall of a wide chest. Short hair and sharp stubble. A kind face.

“Impulse?” Grian’s breath caught in his throat, voice breaking. 

A girl with a splay of freckles and  ginger hair tied messily in tangled pleats. Her white-and-green cardigan and white skirt stained and torn. Gemini Tay. 

Her sleeping head rested on another’s chest. A thin man with a tumble of brown hair and a beard, wearing a blue button-down. Pix?

Folded next to him, another man with a wider stature, a bright yellow fisherman's jacket pulled over broad shoulders. A wool-knitted cap coated in something that looked like oil. A flat expanse of skin where his left eye should have been. Captain Iskall.

All three missing people. They were here. They were here, all their chests rising and falling in shallow breaths. But they were breathing. They were breathing, they were alive, and Grian had found them.

That could’ve only meant that— 

He saw it. A shock of blond hair. Grian’s knees nearly buckled. Scar reached for him on instinct, but he stepped out of reach. He couldn’t think to breathe, he couldn’t think to speak. It was all he could to carefully step over the bodies towards the one closest to the door, propped up against it with his chin resting against his chest. 

It wasn’t until he was right there, those sooty blond locks in reach, that Grian fell to his knees. 

“Jimmy?” he mumbled. 

He reached out. Jimmy looked so fragile, like an old battered doll left in the basement too long to collect dust. Like the old papers of his childhood workbooks where all he did was write about how great of a big brother Grian was. Where he wrote of a Grian he wished existed instead of the one he got. He looked as frail and see-through as paper, his skin pale, the shadows heavy under his eyes. But when Grian splayed a hand out over his cold chest— Jimmy’s chest, he felt the slow rise and fall. He felt the gentle throbbing of a heart. 

The damn inside of him shattered. Whatever numbness encompassed him broke apart, no better than the glass bottled he used to shatter against the rocks along the shoreline. Every inch of grief, fear, and relief permeated him all at once, a flood of water and flames alike filling him to the complete brim. Grian grabbed a hold of Jimmy and tightly bundled him up in his arms. He was nothing but a heavy deadweight, and every inch of Grian screamed with pain at the force of it, but it didn’t matter. He needed to hold him. 

“You idiot,” Grian muttered, smothering his face into  Jimmy’s dirty hair. “You idiot , you’re so—” his voice broke into pieces. “You’re so stupid, how did you— how did you get—” 

The body in his hold twitched. Grian pulled back to see Jimmy’s forehead creased, his eyes rolling beneath their lids. “Jimmy?” he whispered, tapping his cheek. “ Jimmy !”

In the dark those eyes slit open. Brown eyes. Kind, scared eyes that stared up at Grian like they couldn’t process what they were seeing. Jimmy’s brow furrowed slowly, as if relearning how to use the muscles again. “Grian,” he whisper-croaked, his voice terrible and made of gravel. He looked Grian dead in the eye, and Grian knew. “You’re here?”

“I’m here,” Grian whispered, tears immediately springing to his eyes. He cursed them; he wanted to see Jimmy— the real Jimmy— unobstructed, he wanted to stare his fill until Jimmy got embarrassed and shoved him away as he always did when he was being overbearing.  He wanted Jimmy to lash out at him, to bare those teeth and flaunt the attitude Grian knew he could. He wanted every part of Jimmy,  he wanted to be sure those pieces were still all there. 

“Why—” Jimmy coughed and licked at his chapped lips. “Why’re you cryin’?” A shaky hand reached up to hold Grian at the shoulder— it was as much of a hug as he was going to get. 

“I’m just really happy to see you,” Grian laughed, tears beading from his cheeks and peppering Jimmy’s sooty face. They carved little clean paths through the dirt coating the crests of his cheeks. 

Jimmy stared up at him, confused and exhausted. But he held onto him in return as tight as his weak muscles could manage. 

It was all Grian could do not to lose himself completely. He broke down in tears, clutching Jimmy like a lifeline, cradling the back of his head. “I’m so sorry,” he blubbered, pressing a kiss into the side of Jimmy’s head. “It’s okay. You’re okay. I’m here.” 

Notes:

ahhhhhh! here it is :O just one more to the end! some things to wrap up... hope you guys are still enjoying the story!

Chapter 10: X. a bad dream

Summary:

The door slammed, a gunshot to the otherwise empty, quiet house.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The door slammed, a gunshot in the otherwise sleeping house. Tears burned heavily in Grian’s eyes. He tore through his own bedroom, books flung across the floor, posters half-torn from the wall, the hollowing ache growing as if he’d been the one shot. Anger festering and blossoming across his chest like blood from a torn-open wound. It seeped out of him; it coated the walls and the floors of this place. It filled the room up to his nose. He couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t breathe.

A suitcase. It collected dust under his bed. Where would he ever go? Where was there for someone like him? Anywhere , he decided. Anywhere was better than here. Anything was better than this: suffocating. He wrenched it out and flipped it open, tearing shirts, pants, socks from their drawers and stuffing whatever he could fit in the small piece of luggage. It wouldn’t be enough, but when would it ever be? There was too much to carry, too much shit to drag with him from one place to the next. Grian would dump it all if he could. Leave it all here in this stupid house to rot. 

He stared down at it all, chest heaving, fingers so tightly wound into fists that they grew painful, that the edges of his nail bit into his palm. 

In the center of the disaster he stood, the bullet instead of the wounded. He held onto himself tightly, his breath a tight coil trapped deep inside of him that refused to unravel no matter how much he tried to force it apart. He could pry at it all he wanted, he could pick and pull until the pads of his fingers were bloody. It wouldn’t budge. 

“Grian?”

His back was to the door. He heard the voice only as a whisper over the roaring in his ears. Everything hurt; for years he polished his anger. But now it was a knife and he cut himself on the edges of it, sank it right into the meat of his own belly.

“Grian.” A hand touched his shoulder. Big brown eyes, round cheeks. Chipped nail polish. 

“Pearl,” he choked out, the single word cut straight from his throat. 

She moved in front of him, eclipsing the rest of the room until there was her and only her to look at it. Grian stared at her through the blurry haze of his own tears, angry that they were there, angry that she had to see them. He was better than this. He was grown up now; he shouldn’t be crying like a child

It was his mother’s voice that spat that last word at him. 

“Listen to me,” she said, her voice firm and fair. Her hands held the sides of his face; he felt her touch as a cool brush against his too-hot cheeks. “Fill your lungs up,” she said, taking a long, exaggerated breath in through the ‘o’ shape of her mouth. 

Grian followed her lead, letting the coil trapped in his chest pull and groan under the strain. He pushed it to its furthest limit, until it risked snapping back on him like a vengeful rubberband. He let his chest fill up as if he was trying to swallow down the entire bay itself. As if the cool ocean spray could wash away the hot coals of his anger.

Warm eyes softened. A thumb brushed over the crest of his cheek. “Good,” she whispered. “Now pour them out. Steady.” 

She did, so Grian followed. Water flowing from a spigot, steady and smooth. Grian felt the coolness spreading through him with each time she guided him through it, filling their chests to the brim and letting them empty back out. Each time the tightness grew less and less, and the trembling of his fingertips, the shaking fists, settled at his sides. 

Eventually, Pearl let him go. She stepped away, arms crossed over her chest and watching him with those careful, calculating eyes.

Her gaze swept over the open suitcase. Her face hardened into something familiar. Something Grian glimpsed in the mirror whenever he was brave enough to look. “You’re being ridiculous,” she said.

More like he was thinking clearly for the first time in his life. He didn’t look it; he didn’t feel it, sweat clung to his temples, his hand rubbing mindlessly at the tightness around his throat. But he knew it. He knew it right down to his bones: he needed to leave. In a way maybe he was always meant to leave.

“I have to,” he said breathlessly. But no matter how sure he was, he couldn’t risk meeting Pearl’s eyes. She knew too much. She knew more than he ever could. If she poked the hull of his hailing ship full of holes, he wouldn’t make it past the shore. 

“You don’t have to do anything,” Pearl argued. “This is stupid.”

Grian shook his head. She didn’t understand.

He was ten years old. His cheek throbbed from being hit. His heart hurt from not knowing why. He was thirteen. He’d just taken his first swig of alcohol and made himself sick. He was sixteen, staying out past midnight and sneaking in over the old creaky floorboards that always gave him away on the second landing. He was twenty, red-faced and spitting a mindless, childish argument to his mother and father from where they sat across the table over Jimmy’s graduation dinner.

“I ruined it. I always ruin it,” Grian croaked, marching right over to his bed where he’d packed his luggage and finished shoving whatever he could inside: his winter coat, a second pair of shoes. When he tried to shut it, it wouldn't go all the way. He heaved the entire weight of his left elbow into it until he could yank the zipper shut. 

Even so, with his back turned to her, he could feel Pearl’s anger. Funny how she was always the calmest, yet her anger was always the most dangerous. The sharpest, deadliest blade of the three of them. It was a byproduct of their mother’s anger; the worst type to be on the receiving end of. 

“So you’re just going to run away?” she asked, voice dangerously cool. “That’s it. You’re just done?”

“We’re adults now, Pearl. What are we even still doing here?” He flung his arms out at the walls, as if he could blame the prying eyes, the endless space pressing down on him, on any of his stupid decisions. As if anyone else would believe him for a second. “I should’ve left right when I graduated high school like I planned.”

“And leave us all behind?” Pearl scoffed.

“Nothing’s keeping you here,” he said. “You could leave too, if you really wanted. You’re just scared.”

“Maybe I care about my family. Maybe I’m not ready to run as soon as something gets hard .”

“Don’t try to stop me,” Grian snapped.

He yanked his suitcase off the bed and let it thump to the ground. The walls shook. A framed award trembled from where it hung on a single nail above his bed. A certificate from his seventh grade science fair: a volcano he’d built from paper-mache and copious amounts of vinegar. The most explosive of them all, he remembered. All it took was a little baking soda. He’d bubble up and pour over, an explosion of heat and gas. An eruption. 

He spun on his heel, ready to drag that suitcase down each turbulent step, each loud thump the period at the end of his sentences. He was done here. He wasn’t coming home. 

But in the doorway stood Jimmy. Blond hair and those same big, brown eyes red-rimmed and shiny with poorly concealed tears. A black graduation cap clutched in front of him as if it were some kind of shield. The faintest tremble to his fingers.

“Where are you going?” he asked, voice so small he hadn’t sounded like he was eighteen years old, like he was six again, always looking to Grian for guidance. It’s cool if my brother does it. I have to ask my brother, Grian. My brother is so cool. Big brother. 

Knuckles rapped on the door. 

Grian woke with a sharp inhale. His neck caught when he tried to straighten his shoulders, stiff and sore all the way across his back. He rubbed at it, groaning. 

“Sorry, did I wake you?”

He blinked blearily at the door where Impulse stood, a bit pale around the edges and with a bandage across the bridge of his nose, but otherwise healthy and alive. He held a basket full of fruits, tinsel, and tissue paper in his arms. He stared at Grian expectantly.

Right. He’d forgotten. Grian opened his mouth to breathe in, to taste the antiseptic in the stale, recycled air. He was twenty-five. He was back in Hermit’s Hollow. He was home.

“No, no, it’s fine.” Grian rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He sat up and stretched his legs out. Every inch of him ached and throbbed like he was one giant bruise and the universe was all too keen on pressing its thumb into him cruelly. It was easy to pinpoint the culprit of his aching: the small plastic chair he’d curled himself up in to sleep, the chair he’d been bound to for the last twenty-four hours. 

But in the spirit of accepting the truth beyond himself, to Grian it felt like one massive punishment. For that night. For the fight over something he couldn’t even remember. For walking out that door and loading his things in the car even as Jimmy begged him not to.

Jimmy.

He lay in the bed, sleeping soundly. The hospital suited him so poorly: his already too-pale skin faded by the white linens, plain walls, and blinding fluorescent lights. He looked too frail, buried in the blankets around his waist and a hospital gown that showcased the protrusion of his starved collarbones. A needle and tubing taped in the back of his hand led to a bag of saline that hung overhead, each little droplet Grian’s only sense of passing time. A cannula under his nose, the oxygen fogging up the thin green tubing. The wires stuck to his chest and fingers. The monitors overhead, full of numbers that Grian couldn’t make sense of. Not when he was this tired— this worried. 

“How’s he doing?” Impulse crept further into the room, resting the wicker basket on a table that stood at the foot of Jimmy’s bed. A few flowers stood up from the tissue paper, a folded paper card tucked atop that read, Get Well Soon! He absent-mindedly pinched at the edges of a piece of tissue paper. A piece broke off and he rolled it into a small ball between his fingers. 

Dehydrated, hypothermic, and undernourished, the doctors had all assured him, like it was some miracle news he should’ve been grateful to hear. A few days of fluids and observation, and he should be right as rain.

“They say he should wake up any time now,” Grian said, returning his eyes to Jimmy and staring at him with such intensity that he thought it certainly should’ve been enough to raise him from his sleep completely. But to no avail. Jimmy always liked to keep him waiting; he continued to slumber, dark eyelashes fanned across pale, gaunt cheeks. 

It looked as much like Jimmy as it looked nothing like him. For not the first time that hour, Grian reached across to touch the inner aspect of Jimmy’s wrist. He felt the pulse there, the warmth of his skin. It was still Jimmy. Jimmy .

“And you?” Impulse asked, hiding his hands away in his jacket pockets. “How’re you holding up?”

“I’m here,” Grian said. It was about all he could manage. Since climbing out of that manhole cover it was a whirlwind of change that he couldn’t exactly keep up with. All he knew was that he was at Jimmy’s bedside and he wouldn’t leave it. Not for a second. Not even a band of irritated nurses and belligerent doctors were enough to peel him away. Visiting hours be damned, Grian wasn’t taking his eyes off of Jimmy one more time. He’d give the Silent Sentinels a run for their money; he wasn’t moving an inch. Not when he’d already lost him once. 

“Have you gotten any sleep?” Impulse asked. 

“Of course I have.” Grian squinted at the clock hung on the wall and pretended to know what time he’d dozed off. “An… hour? Give or take.”

Impulse huffed a weak laugh, the sound pried from him as if with great reluctance. He rounded Jimmy’s bed and moved toward the empty chair next to Grian. He eyed him quietly and waited until Grian nodded to take a seat. 

The silence that occupied the space between them was comfortable, interrupted only by the low droning of a TV mounted to the wall. It played one of the few stations that reached Hermit’s Hollow, a laugh-track stuck on a near constant loop. Grian had long tuned it out, as he had the bustling in the halls, the whispering outside the cracked door. The whats , the whos , the hows . Another living, breathing legend being born right before Grian’s eyes. It all blended together, an endless loop that made it hard to tell how much time he really spent here, watching the monitors at Jimmy’s bedside like a hawk, listening to the same jokes being told over and over again, the same droves of laughter. 

Without taking his eyes off of Jimmy, Grian asked, “How are the others?” 

“Getting better by the minute. Iskall, Pix, and Gemini are already up and talking. Just got done talking to them,” Impulse said. “Bdubs is no better than you. He won’t leave Etho’s bedside for a second.”

Grian frowned. “He still hasn’t woken up?”

“If what Bdubs said is true, he’d been down in those caves for a long time. Years. ” Impulse shuddered, remembering something he most likely would’ve rather forgotten. “It’ll probably take some time to get him back on his feet.”

What had it been like, Grian wondered, to fossilize under the ground for years as this thing did whatever the hell it did? But he remembered how it looked at him. It was fascinated by him, drawn to him in a way that Grian had been drawn to it; by some awful, dark invisible tether that tied them. On the scaffolding, its sharp nails dug into his ankle, it had looked at Grian like he was a meal. 

It made sense, in a way. Maybe that was the whole point: the copycat captured people one at a time and stored them away, some kind of energy reserve. And over a long period of time it siphoned from them, feeding on whatever dark energy it needed to survive. But it had kept them alive, it had kept Etho alive, because  if it killed all of its meals what would it have left to eat? 

Grian cringed at the thought. All of them had been rotting away underground while Grian messed around on the surface, angry and bitter and unbelieving of what had been right under his nose the entire time. If only he’d listened to Scar from the start; maybe none of this would’ve happened.

“Do you—” Grian spared a nervous glance at the side of Impulse’s neutral face. “Do you remember any of it?”

Impulse lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “Not much,” he admitted. “After I left the hospital, I went out looking for Jimmy like you asked. Eventually I found him out by the parade. I brought him back to the station, and I was about to call you, but—” 

“It attacked you,” Grian said. 

“You were right. It wasn’t human.” Impulse nodded, his jaw visibility clenched. He wrung his hands in his lap. “Everything after that is a blur. I remember feeling cold… and a little bit miserable. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in the alleyway. And there you were.” 

“I’m sorry. If it weren’t for me that wouldn’t have happened.” Grian said it so quietly he wasn’t entirely confident the words had made it out of him. Of all people, he was most terrified of disappointing Impulse; after everything Impulse had done for him, to get him back on his feet after his parents died, Grian felt like all he had done was give him plate after plate of bullshit. 

Tragedy breeds tragedy. What was Grian if not the living, breathing evidence of that? 

Impulse draped an arm across the back of Grian’s chair to squeeze his shoulder. “No, no, I’m the one who should be apologizing,” he said, because he was far too kind for his own good, and it made Grian kind of want to cry. “I should’ve listened to you. But you saved us. You cracked the case.”

“I couldn’t have done it without Scar.”

“Stuck you with some kook, huh? I knew you two would get along eventually,” Impulse teased, then flicked his gaze to Jimmy. “You should really try to get some rest. You’re still hurt.”

“I can’t leave him.” Grian shook his head. The idea of abandoning him alone was enough to have bile creeping up the back of his throat. He wouldn’t leave. Not even if Impulse tried to handcuff him and drag him out of there, which sounded ridiculous but he knew the chief had it in him. He was stubborn when he wanted to be.

“I could watch him,” Impulse said, his voice gentle. Grian recognized it; it was his placating voice, the same sweet tone he had dipped into the night Grian’s parents were killed. The voice reserved for victims, for scared children. If he wasn’t so tired he would’ve found the strength to be angry that he was on the receiving end of it yet again. But now he could only feel comforted by it. 

Disgusting. 

Grian licked his lips. “I never thanked you,” he said. 

Impulse frowned at him. “For what?”

“For everything. This job, your lenience. Even when I kept fucking things up, you always looked out for me.” He didn’t understand why; he couldn’t comprehend someone as kind as Impulse, let alone in Hermit’s Hollow, let alone extending it to someone like Grian. The combination alone seemed an impossible concoction. Yet here the chief sat, at Grian’s brother’s bedside with nothing but support and kindness in those tired eyes. Even after the mess Grian’d dragged him into. 

“You don’t need to thank me for that,” Impulse said, another gentle squeeze to Grian’s shoulder. “I always knew you meant well.” 

Grian could’ve cried at that, which was incredibly infuriating considering Grian seemed to be doing a whole lot of crying these days and not much of anything else. He’d blubbered like a baby at Jimmy’s bedside the entire first night, not letting anyone come so much as a foot towards them as he clutched him. As if one night in his older brother’s arms could make up for five years of neglect.

He leaned forward, bracing his arms against his knees, as he took in the sight of Jimmy for the millionth time. He didn’t look to be in any pain. His chest rose and fell softly with each breath. His hair was still damp from where the nurse had let Grian rake through it with a basin of water mixed with shampoo and a brush. The soot and grime had been scrubbed from his cheeks and neck. He looked like a boy. He looked like Grian’s younger brother. 

Those wide brown eyes, staring him down from the doorway of his bedroom. Don’t go, they pleaded. 

Grian took Jimmy’s hand and pressed his limp fingers to his lips, kissing his knuckles. He wasn’t going anywhere. Never again.

--. ---

FIVE WEEKS LATER

“When you said you had a top-secret mission—” Breathless, Scar shuffled in through the propped screen door, his arms shaking with the effort of hauling the large roll of carpet past the threshold. His hair was stuck to his forehead from the freezing rain, droplets dripping off his chin. “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

Grian hauled the front end into the foyer and dropped it unceremoniously onto the floor. It was huge, stretching the entire length of the foyer. It was criminal that the carpet was so expensive. Sure, he saved a buck forging professional installation, but not even the deal prevented him from regretting it deeply. He’d nearly burst two blood vessels in the distance it took to get from Scar's truck to the front door. 

“What were you expecting?” Grian asked, wiping the rainwater from his glasses with the hem of his shirt. For a moment, Scar was no more than vague, blurry shapes of color. 

“I don’t know. Guns? Lasers?” Scar set down his own end of the carpet with an exaggerated sigh. “You know, Pink Panther stuff.”

Grian’s lips traitorously curled. “Sorry to disappoint.”

They were both soaked, rainwater and sweat alike. His coat hung off his shoulders like a wet rag. The grayness outside clung to the windows, mist heavy on the ground that crept across the driveway and front yard. It was the same sort of misery only Hollowshore weather could provide, but Grian couldn’t pay it much mind. Not when Scar was here with him, too busy wringing out his own coat and shaking the water off him like an overeager dog on the front porch to notice Grian's staring. 

“Come on.” Grian knelt back down to pick up the roll. “Put your back into it, this time.”

“You’re supposed to lift with your legs, you know,” Scar said, returning to his side of the roll, now somewhat dry. “You’re gonna have a bad back by the time you’re thirty.”

“You would know all about that, wouldn’t you?” 

Scar whined and complained about that, but he dutifully helped Grian carry the roll into the living room. Most of the furniture had been either moved into other rooms or pushed to the very corners, leaving open a large, cold stretch of cement. The room was empty, lifeless, reminding Grian of the still sterility of Jimmy’s hospital room. When Grian stared at it, he still saw the blood. He still felt it on his hands. But the room wasn’t empty. Not in the ways that mattered. Music poured in from the kitchen. Grian followed it, tracking in water with his boots. A small radio sat on the counter where Jimmy stood around the kitchen island with Joel, the two arguing over a box of Danish Go-Rounds.

“I bought the box!” Jimmy whined as Joel held the final packet up over his head, out of his reach. He swiped his arms at it fruitlessly. “That means that I get the last one. It’s basic etiquette!” 

“You wouldn’t know etiquette if it beat you with a broom,” Joel said with a lopsided smirk. “I’m the guest, aren’t I?” 

Somehow, Jimmy found that funny. He laughed, surrendering the Go-Round to Joel and leaning back against the counter with his hair swept out of his face. It was a wonderful sound. Grian would have recorded and pressed it into vinyl if he could.

Joel took a victorious bite and turned around. He paused when he spotted Grian hovering in the doorway. “See you made it back in one piece,” he said.

“See you’re still stealing my food.” Grian nodded his head to him. It’d been tense confronting him after everything. But Jimmy was home safe and sound. The both of them found common ground in that comfort. 

“You know it,” Joel said, his mouth full. 

Jimmy turned around and braced his arms on the island, looking at Grian with a subdued smile. Staring at him felt a lot like drowning. A few weeks hadn’t been enough for Grian to forget what it’d looked like when Jimmy’s face was not his own. Grian didn’t know if any amount of time could free him from that memory. He had no choice but to savor every moment he could: Jimmy’s soft brown eyes, crinkled at the edges as he smiled in the wide, toothy way he always had when they were kids. In so many ways Jimmy had grown up so much and not at all. 

“You guys get it done, then?” Jimmy asked.

“We put that worker’s comp to good use!” Scar’s sudden voice behind Grian startled him. He slung an arm around Grian's shoulder and pulled him in close to his side. “Come, Jimmy, come take a look!” 

With a chuckle, Jimmy relented and came into the living room. His eyebrows shot up to his hairline. Scar had stripped off the plastic protective covering to reveal the circle-patterned carpet he had picked after a tortuous few hours spent standing in the aisle of a hardware store two towns over. This one Scar had picked after pressing a hand to his temple and claiming a spirit told him that this particular carpet would come into style in the next five years, upping the house’s resale value if Grian ever decided to lift his roots and sell the thing. 

“It’s… something,” Jimmy said, his mouth twisted in a forced smile that reassured no one. Despite his efforts, he had always been a terrible liar. As a child he always had to turn his face away to even get one off his lips without some kind of grimace or nervous smile, a nonexistent poker face. 

He hadn’t turned fast enough.

Scar's jaw dropped, clutching his chest as if Jimmy's hesitance wounded him. “First Grian and now you? You really are brothers.”

“You don’t need to be brothers to see that carpet’s ugly as hell,” Joel said, peeking his head out of the kitchen to take a glimpse.

Scar crossed his arms over his chest. “God forbid someone has style in this place!" H e clamped his hands down on either side of Grian’s head, closing his eyes and starting to hum. “Hmm… The beyond is telling me my choice is impeccable!

“Says the guy who likes dark roast.” Grian swatted his hands away with a reluctant bubble of laughter. “I’m not your crystal ball.”

His anti-Scar safeguarding had been worn bit by bit, so thin now that it was practically nonexistent. Green eyes and a pretty smile were all it took really, and Scar knew it. And abused it. Frequently. In all honesty, Grian hadn’t even properly looked at the carpet Scar picked out until they were checking out, the carpet already cut. It didn’t matter what filled in the hole in his living room, so long as it was filled. 

They got to work. Meaning, Grian and Scar knelt down and rolled up their sleeves while Jimmy and Joel sat in the entry of the kitchen, sipping glass-bottled sodas and watching them suffer. Scar's dark hair was pushed back off his face by one of Pearl's old headbands. It was studded with sunflowers and looked absolutely ridiculous on him, but somehow Scar made it work. He was loading a staple gun (why did Grian think it was a good idea to let him work that?) with his tongue stuck out between his teeth in concentration while Grian knelt on the opposite end of the carpet to keep it pinned flat in the corner. 

It was grueling. But Grian found himself enjoying it. 

“Are you planning on helping anytime soon or are you just going to watch?” He shot a glare at Jimmy and Joel over his shoulder.

“We’re a little busy right now,” Joel said, taking a swig of his soda. 

“Couldn’t we have just paid someone to put it all in?” Jimmy asked. 

Grian rolled his eyes. “You ready to start coughing up some cash?”

That shut him up. Jimmy's eyes went wide as he turned his face away as if he could’ve pretended like he hadn’t heard Grian. Grian could only smile wryly.

“Brat,” he said, fondly, under his breath as he returned his attention to holding the carpet steady for Scar to staple into place. 

“The only brat around here is you.” 

Grian sat up abruptly. Pearl stood in the doorway, her hair sleep-tousled and eyes weary around the edges. But there was a bright freshness to her face that lightened the room as she stepped into it. Her bare feet touched the patch of cement on the ground, uncaring of the cold. The sight of her was as foreign as it was relieving. Strange how much four months can change eighteen years of history. It’d felt like lifetimes since all three of them were under one roof. 

“You sleep okay?” he asked.

Pearl smiled. “Hard to get much sleep with the ruckus you guys are making.” 

Grian smiled back. They were okay. They were together. He listened to Jimmy and Joel argue over baseball players, nodded along as Scar told him about old clients he’d taken on when he was in his early twenties and traveling along the east coast, letting his idle hands work on cutting, pinning, and fitting the carpet into place. 

Part of him feared the house would always haunt him. There was no escaping something that gripping. There were things he couldn’t run away from. His blood, his DNA, the roots he’d grown here, despite himself. But with them, he thought he might just be able to stand it.

-. .

Somehow, the office was exactly how Grian had imagined it. Creepy. Unsettling. Ancient. Like he was standing in the cave’s mouth all over again, the empty dark hollow in the middle of a stone tree beckoning him. Grian didn’t want to go inside. But he didn’t particularly have the free will to blow off the mayor of all people. 

Everything the mayor was and more was folded neatly in a long mahogany desk, crooked bookshelves stuffed with books facing the wrong way around, underneath vaulted ceilings ribbed with olden beams. A sort of Victorian style that clashed with the modest colonial lines of the rest of Hermit’s Hollow. 

A thin layer of dust coated everything like snow. The light streaming in through the windows caught silver threads of cobwebs hung from the wooden beams and the long, metal chandelier hanging over the mayor’s desk. Grian stared up at it all, all the while reminding himself over and over again to  keep his mouth shut. Not necessarily out of fear of coming across as rude, but rather protecting himself from inhaling dust or something worse, like spiders. 

Behind the desk sat Mayor Jumbo, tall and pale, with his fingers laced together atop the dusty desk. He regarded Grian with what might’ve been a smile, but really it couldn’t have been more than the faintest twitch of his mustache. Grian wondered, idly, if he even knew how to smile. Or if everything looked like this strange half-grimace. 

He wouldn’t put it past him. 

“You aren’t going to open it?” the mayor asked. 

Grian narrowed his eyes at the box that sat in the middle of the desk and bit back the urge to tell the mayor he would have rathered a juicy bonus check instead of whatever trinket the mayor has wrapped up. But the image of Impulse flashed through his mind, his stern, disappointed eyes and slanted mouth. Instead, he said “I don’t need to be rewarded, sir. I was just doing my job.”

“Don’t be a spoon,” the mayor admonished. His hand crawled along the table as he stood. His face looked extra gaunt now that the light was directly above him. “I insist. Open it.” 

With a sigh, Grian reached for the small box and pulled it into his lap. The only part of him that wanted to unwrap it was the stupid, teenage one that had a propensity for sticking his nose in all the nooks and crannies it didn’t belong— the same one that’d gotten him in the entire mess in the first place. But the mayor wasn’t someone who Grian wanted to piss off; he’d had enough of testing his limits with Impulse. 

Instead of ribbon and festive wrapping it was patched up in brown paper with burlap twine looped around it. Grian picked the twine apart and peeled the paper back, revealing a small shoe-box. He didn’t think the mayor would go as far as to purchase Grian a new pair of work boots, but it would’ve been nice (his had been destroyed by the tarry oil and sewage in the mines and he didn’t exactly have any room in his budget for another pair).

Inside the box sat a long, curved piece of what looked like ivory. It was curved and pointed at the top, like some kind of giant tusk or horn. And along the surface was a deep etching of something with a formless shape, only the suggestion of a man with a round head and squared shoulders. The rest trailed away like a wisp of smoke. 

“What is this?” Grian stared down at it. It was heavy in his hands, smooth like bone. 

“It’s called a scrimshaw. This is from my private collection, one of the few pieces saved from the archival fire several years back.” The mayor’s eyes brightened— or, at least, as much as they could, being colorless lumps of coal. “Do you like it?”

Liked was an overstatement, and was about two doors down from the right one. Grian would’ve dubbed it something adjacent to ‘horror’. Staring back something old yet familiar in the face, something the mayor shouldn’t have been able to know. The shape of the Copycat, constructed of shadow, lurking beneath the etchings of a cavern. Grian clutched it until his knuckles went white. 

“It’s…” He cleared his throat. “Why are you giving this to me?” 

“The service you’ve done for Hermit’s Hollow is not one to be taken lightly. Not only your work on the missing persons investigations, but with these new fissures sprouting up, we’ll be sure to have another tourist boom. Two in one year! It’s a Christmas miracle.”

The fissures. Split earth, cracked asphalt, crooked houses. Newborn fault lines that tore through the center of Hermit’s Hollow, splitting Main Street down the middle, as if what everyone said was true and a deep evil tried to erupt from the ground and swallow everything whole. Grian never thought he’d live to admit it and mean it, but in a sense, they were right. 

In reality it’d been a build up of all the pressures of noxious gasses and the flames beneath. When Grian set off the firedamp like a bomb, he’d almost completely destroyed the foundation the very town sat on. An underground explosion strong enough to send a shockwave through Hermit’s Hollow and crack it open like a rotten egg. It confuddled everyone, especially the police— even Impulse was keeping his mouth shut about the whole thing. I don’t remember anything, he insisted anytime a microphone or prying eye so much as glimpsed in his direction. 

“What, you gotta charge twenty bucks a head to cover the costs you think?” Grian asked, failing to hide the way his tone soured. 

The last thing this place needed was another reckoning, another mysterious and dangerous foe that lingered in the dark to fear. But at the end of the day, the more allure and fanfare brought out by the mysterious fissures, the faster they’d pay themselves off. One of the upsides of the tourist season. By the end of the year it’d be easy to pay to fix everything up. That is, if the mayor decided he wanted to fix everything up. If Grian had to guess, the mayor would fashion it into a living museum if he could. Everyone who lived here was already as trapped as they were, why not throw a little glass box over them and seal the deal? 

The mayor simply stared back at him with blank, black eyes. Grian wondered where his pupils ended and his irises began. “The collateral will be unavoidable, but such is the price of success! Certain sacrifices must be made.” 

Sacrifices. Grian scowled. “Right,” he said. “You would know all about that.” 

The mayor’s dead, beady eyes flickered. He cocked his head to the side, but not in the cute puppyish way Scar often did it. Rather he looked like a spider gauging where to leap to strike its prey, deciphering where in his expansive web he’d caught his next meal. Everything about him was so unnatural that the strangeness made Grian’s temples sting. The same sort of unsettled sensation that crept in his veins every time he encountered something that bordered the unexplainable. 

“Why do you think that?”

“What was it you said? People need to feel better? ” Grian snapped. “You seemed about ready to sacrifice Captain Iskall, Gem, and Pix for the sake of your fucked up little Halloween celebration. Or were they also just collateral? ” 

“Water under the bridge, Grian,” Mayor Jumbo said, blinking at him as if he couldn’t understand why Grian was so angry— which only made him angrier. “You found them, afterall! Wonderful work, might I say again.” 

“And somehow you convinced Impulse of it too,” Grian said, curling his fingers into the arms of the chair. “When he came to you asking for help.” 

“I think you will find I can be quite persuasive,” the mayor said, another amused twitch of his mouthless mustache. “I’ve been in office for quite a while now. That doesn’t happen by accident.” 

Grian grit his teeth. “Why?”

“Pardon?” 

“I’m just trying to understand how you were able to write them off so easily? Cases aren’t cold until at least a year, yet you threw in the towel after three months— not even.” Grian dumped the scrimshaw back in its box and slid it across the table. It was the closest he could get to throwing something without possibly getting escorted out of here in handcuffs. “You’d give up so easily on your precious constituents? That’s three votes you nearly flushed down the drain.”

Mayor Jumbo stared back at him with those flat, unblinking eyes. He stood unnaturally still, an eyebrow raised, as if he were pleasantly surprised. It was by an instinctual kind of fear that Grian sank an inch in his chair. Anything to get a shred of distance between him and the mayor. 

“Do you squash a spider because it eats a fly?” The mayor asked, slowly rounding the desk. “Do you punish the cat who brings the dead bird to your doorstep?” 

A chill prickled the back of Grian’s neck. RUN, it begged him. RUN LIKE HELL. But he stood (or sat, rather) his ground as Mayor Jumbo came to face him. His cheeks were too hollow, his eyes too small, his skin too pale. 

“Well?” He stood over Grian, his fingers steepled in front of him. With the fine lines of his long, black suit he looked a strange mockery of a priest without a collar. Stripped of anything holy and left with the bare bones of a fearsome kind of age and knowledge. 

He didn’t understand. Grian swiped his tongue over his teeth. Every inch of his mouth tasted of ash. “What are you saying?”

“Some things are natural. ” The mayor walked around his chair, dragging his fingers along Grian’s shoulders as he went. A painful shudder shook Grian’s body down to the bone. He felt it rattling in his spine, jarring his teeth. Then, a cold hand reached the underside of Grian’s chin and tilted his head toward the single window looking out at Main Street. 

“Take a look around. Think of the sea. Think of us. The algae is eaten by the fish, the fish is caught and eaten by us. And then?”

He stood completely behind Grian now, dragging his hands back until they both clamped down on his shoulders like claws of iron. The coldness of his fingers seeped through Grian’s jacket, froze him to his core. Every inch of his skin and hair stood on end. 

DANGER, DANGER, DANGER.

He’d never been entirely fooled by the mayor, by his strangeness poorly masqueraded. But Impulse had trusted him, and it was hard not to follow Impulse’s lead on anything. But this? Grian’s world slowed and dimmed down to a single point. His heart was a stone that sunk deep in his chest, down to his stomach.

“You knew .”

The chilling hands squeezed Grian’s shoulders once. They trailed dangerously close to his neck, long fingers threatening to wrap around them, to press the pulsepoint under his jaw. Grian didn’t dare breathe. 

“I’ve been the mayor a long, long time, Grian,” he said simply, his voice hushed and tangible as if it was right up against Grian’s ear. “I’d be a pretty poor one if I didn’t know what was going on in my own town. Don’t you think?” 

“Hate to break it to you,” Grian rasped, afraid to speak louder than a mumble out of fear those sharp fingers sunk in the fleshy part of his throat. “That’s not what makes you a terrible mayor.” 

Of course he’d known. Those shallowly concerned eyes, his pandering, he’d been appealing to Impulse’s plight out of— what? Boredom? Intrigue? He never intended on finding those missing people because he already knew they were gone. The same way he knew Grian was getting too close, the same way he knew to change Impulse’s mind when it was time to turn the attention away from the truth. The same way he knew the Fog and what it did— 

Mayor Jumbo let go of his shoulders. Like a spell breaking, air rushed into Grian’s lungs, the terrible ache of his temples receded the further the mayor walked from him. He retraced his steps back to the large red-upholstered chair behind his desk. There was no mistaking the pleased tilt to his eyebrows and mustache this time. It was the most expression he’d ever seen the mayor wear, the grin lifted so much that Grian glimpsed what looked like a tooth, sharp and white, beneath the mustache. 

Grian stared at him with wide eyes. The mayor had known what lived underneath Hermit’s Hollow and he let it happen. He and the dog were the same, actively hiding what they didn’t want the citizens to see. The folklore, the stories, the ghosts— they were all decoys. Little breadcrumbs leading to nowhere. Just so they wouldn’t poke their heads where they didn’t belong. Like Pix. Like Grian. 

He rose to his feet, seriously considering making good use of the scrimshaw and acquainting it with the mayor’s skull. 

“As I said,” the mayor continued, sinking back down in his chair, oblivious to Grian’s near-murderous intent. He spoke as if his words were fact, as if he’d written them into law himself. “Some things are simply natural . I find it best to let them run their course.”

..--..

Grian wandered out of the mayor’s office in a daze. He wasn’t sure which to find more confusing— the fact that he’d come out of the ordeal alive or that he still had that stupid scrimshaw clutched in his colorless fingers. The cold air bit him in the face as he stepped out from City Hall, the crispness of it flooding his lungs and immediately making his nose burn. His eyes watered. He buried what he could of his face in his scarf. 

At the bottom of the steps, a familiar figure in a beige trench coat waited for him. Scar wore a big pair of fluffy earmuffs that stuck out of his head like those giant headphones pilots wear. His own scarf was bunched up around his neck and when he opened his mouth to greet Grian, the cold washed his whispered greeting away in a white wisp of smoke. Above the scarf his cheeks were flushed. Green eyes glimmered at him. 

They dimmed only a fraction when they got a proper look at Grian. “You okay?” Scar chuckled nervously. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Grian chewed at the inside of his cheek, sniffling. “I’m not entirely sure what just happened.” 

“What is that?” Scar reached for the scrimshaw. Grian let himself take it without much of a fight. It was probably safer in Scar’s hands anyway, which said a lot , but Grian could only be so rational when his anger yanked the reins from him. 

Scar tested the weight of it in his hands. “It’s heavy. Is this bone?”

“Scrimshaw?” Grian muttered. 

Scar squinted at the inscription. Grian watched a hollow realization crawl over Scar; the same one that had sunk Grian’s heart to his stomach like a ship with a cannonball through its hull. A black, foggy figure. A body that rivaled the shape of smoke rising from a flame. Stark, empty eyes.

Then, Scar looked at Grian. And he didn’t even need to feel the prod at the back of his head to know that he was seeing something beyond Grian’s eyes. What little color was left in his cold face drained. Not even the flush of his cheeks warmed him.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Grian admitted the moment Scar opened his mouth. “I’m kinda one realization away from a total breakdown.”

“Right, we want to avoid that,” Scar said with an uneasy smile. Then, he looked back down at the scrimshaw. “Wanna go throw this in the ocean?”

This thing was a priceless piece of history, the last surviving piece of a collection that’d long burned and could never be replaced. It was probably priceless— not to mention it was undeniable proof that the mayor could be charged with criminal negligence at the very least— and Grian would be an idiot to agree to such an idea.

“Let’s go,” he said. 

Scar’s smile brightened a fraction.

The two of them walked along the fissures, Grian on one side and Scar on the other. The mayor wasn’t lying; there were already tourists left over from the Halloween celebrations crowding the streets, muttering and whispering to one another as they stood several feet away, staring at the gaps in the asphalt through their viewfinders.  The largest of these fissures split Main Street right down the middle. 

With the uneven plates, Grian was nearly Scar’s height. He teetered dangerously close to the edge as they walked, arms out at his sides like a kid balancing on a curb. 

“You know how to make an impression,” Scar said, kicking aside a small piece of rubble.

Grian looked away from him. “It was your idea,” he argued. 

“But you executed it. Flawlessly, might I add,” Scar grinned. “Maybe we really do make a good team.” 

It was no use hiding his embarrassed flush. Grian sniffed and stepped away from the edge to tuck his hands back inside his pockets, looking at Scar head-on this time. “You’re getting ahead of yourself, cowboy.” 

“Am I?” Scar raised an eyebrow at him, stepping closer to the fissure so that he and Grian were eye-to-eye. 

“Definitely,” Grian said, pulling Scar in by the scarf to kiss him curtly on the lips. He parted before Scar got any funny ideas, leaving a few inches of space between them. Grian could smell the peppermint on Scar’s breath, in his chair, wafting from his skin. 

“I have to ask,” Grian mumbled, licking his numb lips. “Why do you constantly smell like you just finished eating a tube of toothpaste? It’s maddening.” 

Scar raised an eyebrow at him, a dopey smile on his face. “What?”  

“Please don’t tell me you’re eating toothpaste.” 

“Scout’s honor, I am not eating tubes of toothpaste.” Scar chuckled and reached for Grian’s hand. The stitches were covered by a single bandage now, freshly bound and fixed up after the events of Halloween night. It covered half of the angel’s wings, but Grian knew Scar was ghosting over them anyway with his fingertips. 

“Maybe it’s got to do with all your—” Scar hesitated to gesture vaguely over Grian’s person. “Youness.” 

Youness ,” Grian parroted. What a technical term, probably pulled directly from Scar’s handbook on the psychic and metaphysical. He would be sure to jot that one down. 

“Don’t say it so grimly. I like it. Do you know why I smell like toothpaste?” 

If Grian admitted it was his favorite scent, he’d simply collapse and die. So he didn’t. He only shoved Scar by the shoulder and continued down along the fissure towards the docks.

 

FIN.

Notes:

aaand there we have it ((:
i've been procrastinating posting this final chapter asdfig but finally i am releasing it to you all. HUGE thanks to everyone that's followed the story from the beginning and for all the kind comments! You made sharing this story sooo much fun!

And now that this is fully released, I'm excited to start sharing more of the stories I've been working on the past few months. Consider checking me out on tumblr @birrdies for more!

Notes:

Been working on this for a bit, I hope you guys enjoy it! I hope to be updating regularly, maybe once a week or once every two weeks! Hope you enjoyed. Consider following me on tumblr for more or to send me a message @birrdies