Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Eternity could be spent sleeping without a nightmare as hellish as this

A rattling cacophony of wood and rusted metal echoes down the corridor, drowning out Wyatt’s own pounding steps. He comes to a hard stop, shoes squeaking harshly on tile. Left, right, forward- it’s all the same, exits locked in blackish-gray rock. More doors to nowhere. 

Fuck- Shit- no, no, no-

The creaking behind him grows louder. The statue speeds up as Wyatt turns to face it, unyielding in its chase. He doesn’t want to find out what it’ll do when it gets to him. He can’t think about that now. The statue seamlessly switches paths, creeping to Wyatt’s side of the hall without turning. 

The cornered animal in his mind screams, there has to be another way.

He bolts for the nearest door, pitch black frame matching the darkness of the shop interior. There’s no give when he pushes, nor when he pulls, the handle jolting. Locked. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck- 

It’s getting close now, rattling as loudly as his heart beats in his chest. 

To his side, a plywood sheet stands in place of a shop window. He darts, twisting, ramming his shoulder into it as hard as he can. Wood cracks and nails loosen, but the statue’s wheels turn faster. Again he rams, shoulder hot with pain, but the board won’t give. 

Come ON-

Wyatt takes a breath, quick and deep. He moves to ram again, steeling himself for pain that never comes. 

Instead, his other shoulder is violently tugged, the rest of him pulled away with it. Wyatt’s phone clatters to the ground. 

Wyatt screams. 

A hundred daggers dig into his skin, foliage wrapping around his arm like a hungry python, digging in deeper as he tries to pull away. Briar hands drag Wyatt to the floor, bringing him down with little to no effort. The statue looms, expression unchanging, holding Wyatt down with arms that aren’t supposed to fucking move in a place that shouldn’t exist.

This can’t be real. It can’t. Wyatt kicks away desperately, scrambling for a foothold, crawling for the dead end. In a game of cat and mouse, predators know full well not to give their prey a real chance. Claw-thorns dig deeper and Wyatt cries out in pain. 

In what feels like retaliation, the statue pulls up violently, throwing Wyatt onto his back. The thorns tear away from his arm and shoulder. Before any solace can be found in the relief, the statue comes down again, hand pushing down hard on Wyatt’s chest. He wheezes, breath lost to the blow. 

Thorny fingers dig under Wyatt’s arms. The statue pulls him up like a child would a ragdoll, grip so tight he can barely breathe. Pressure grows sharper as it lifts him from the tile. 

So this is it. 

The fucking thing doesn’t even look down at him. It stares forward like the moment Wyatt made the mistake of first looking at it. He fights like a rabid animal, kicking, hands clawing at the statue’s own, but the effort gets nowhere. Thorns scrape his fingers. There’s nothing under the sleeve that Wyatt kicks, black fabric swinging like drapes in the wind. 

“LET ME GO! ” he kicks ferociously, forward this time. Something plastic falls to the ground in the chaos, skimmed by his shoe. 

In one swift motion, the statue slams Wyatt into the shop’s plexiglass window. The blow is numb until it resonates down to his bones, a deep thud reverberating deep in the back of his head. Lights are suddenly far too bright, vision blurring into splotches of color and darkness. His own heart is too loud. 

He fights for breath, squeezing his eyes shut. 

For some fucking reason, that just pisses off the statue more. It slams him again, seemingly just to make a point, and Wyatt’s eyes shoot back open. The pain in his head takes a sharp turn.

The statue holds him at eye level. One hand against Wyatt’s chest, pushing against the store window, the other extended at the statue’s side. It’s different. Where there were once flowers, there are now thistles, just like the hand that grabbed him. Long, sharp spines protrude from the mass of flora, a thicket of oversized brambles ready to tear away at flesh. 

A raging river of blood pounds in Wyatt’s ears as the statue creaks closer. Its eyes meet his. 

They twitch in their paper sockets, looking him up and down. Gleaming white pupils that weren’t there before seem to narrow, drinking in every detail, alive in a way they shouldn’t be, can’t be. 

This can’t be happening. This can’t be real. I can’t die like this-

The statue squeezes Wyatt. Its thistle-coated hand flexes, ready for use. 

Dad- Someone- please please- 

“Please…” He forces the plea from battered lungs. Breathing feels impossible with the weight on his chest, gasping raggedly. “ Please. ”

Blackened, gleaming eyes fixate on Wyatt’s again, burning with emotion indeterminable. 

Thorns pull back for a killing blow. 

No one will find his body, not in a place that shouldn’t exist. This is how he’s going to die; alone, terrified, a failure, a fucking idiot. 

The words that may be his last come as little more than a whisper. One last plea, selfish and terrified. Wyatt squeezes his eyes shut, hiding from the pain of flickering lights and the fear of the monster that has him in its grip. 

“Please let me go home. ” 

Leaves rustle. The killing blow is stopped halfway through its path. 

Wyatt peeks an eye open. 

Thistle thorns are gone, reduced to dark green foliage and colorful flowers. Thorns still dig into his chest, but the monster’s sharper claws are gone. The hand that holds him trembles. 

Dark eyes twitch again, staring, harsh whites boring into his soul. Wyatt stares back into what should be a void. The gaze is not empty.

Lights in the hallway flicker more and more rapidly, The closest bulb bursting in an array of sparks- just as it does, Wyatt feels himself falling. The statue releases him, throwing him to the ground in the process, knocking away what little breath Wyatt had left as he lands on his back. His shoulders throb in pain, growing sharper on the left side as the statue pulls him along the floor by his arm. He weakly kicks back, doing little more than squeaking the rubber of his shoes on tile. 

Overhead, the intercom system blares with distorted song. 

The Mall spins around him. No, no, that’s just his head, burning and aching, eyes shutting on instinct as he’s pulled into a brighter area. One by one, lights burst into sparks behind them, showering down a rain of embers. He wills his head to stay up even as black splotches form in the corners of his vision, desperate, hopeless. 

I just wanna go home I just wanna go home- 

The ground moves out of reach. Once again the statue lifts Wyatt, holding him up like a broken toy. He struggles to breathe, body burning. There’s no time to gather his bearings when up and down look the same, blurry vision melting the mall into a nightmarish slurry. 

It throws Wyatt before he can even think to steel himself. The mall is long gone, replaced with color and light and agony. 

He hits the ground fast and hard, chest first, but the rest of him is lucky enough to break what’s left of the fall as he rolls onto his side. Breathing is twice as painful, chest burning. He kicks and twists, looking for a foothold, down and up merged into one again. In a moment’s time, the ground makes itself clear. He forces himself up, half-tripping, stumbling into a pillar and gripping it for dear life. 

Behind him, the racket of squeaky wheels and rickety scaffolding rings out through the intercom’s glitched howling. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck, where am I now-

Lights flicker light dying stars in the dark. His eyes burn. 

A wall to his left, the escalator to his right, a pillar right here- that means- 

Wyatt looks up. The empty entrance shop is right there, darkness beckoning. The stairs may be gone, but at least this fucking thing can’t follow him through the old gate. 

He makes the mistake of glancing back. The statue looms, slowly rolling towards him. 

One shot. Wyatt bolts forward, fighting for balance on shaking legs. The darkness through the main gate is welcome compared to whatever the fuck is going on out there. He half-stumbles on the carpet, falling into it and scrambling under the rusty door grate. Broken bars dig into his back, but he doesn’t care. 

The rustling behind him grows louder. Something wooden smacks against the top of the shop entrance.

Adrenaline pumping, he’s back at the old door without a second thought. Wyatt swings it open as he stands up, ready to shelter in the darkness of a dead end, for just one moment’s mercy until he can find- 

His heart stops. 

Debris is gone. The concrete stairs shoot upward, lights visible further up the tunnel. The stairs are there again, like nothing ever happened. 

No time to thank God. No time to think. 

JUST FUCKING RUN. 

He bolts forward fast enough to trip again , catching himself on the second step. No time for correction. Wyatt scampers up the stairs on all fours like the desperate animal he is, hands coming away coated in a thick layer of old dust and refuse. He doesn’t care. 

Whatever will get him out of this faster. His ragged breathing echoes up the stairwell.

The desperate crawl ends only when the real exit is in sight. A sunny day peers down through the hole, like nothing was ever wrong in the world, ignorant to the horrors far beneath the earth. 

Holding a vape has never been this challenging. 

Wyatt’s fingers tremble with the rest of him, terror unwavering between his escape from the tunnel and now . Breathing is as difficult, just as shaky, and Wyatt finds himself having to focus to take a full hit of his juul. The shaking is so bad he’s almost dropped it twice already. 

His chest burns. His head throbs. Everything fucking hurts and the nicotine isn’t helping .

Wyatt leans back against the tree trunk, closing his eyes and craning his neck as he takes another hit. The burn in his throat fades as he breathes out, white clouds fading into the wind, but the sting in his chest burns like flame.  

Juul still held to his lips, Wyatt gently presses his chest. He stifles a cough, pain sharp enough for him to hiss, puffs of white escaping his mouth and nose, tears forming in the corners of his eyes. 

Fuck. 

Absently, stray tears of raw pain fall down his cheeks.

There’s no way his ribs aren’t broken. Hospital bills are gonna fuck up his budget for this whole summer. 

The sun is too bright, the wind too noisy in the branches overhead. Wyatt’s head throbs. Splotches of blood soak into his shirt, some drops smeared over his arms, hard to miss. 

He must look like a wreck right now. 

A simple thought occurs to him, as plain as clouds drifting overhead: 

You’re a fucking idiot who should be dead. 

The staircase shouldn’t have been opened up again. That mall shouldn’t have existed. Statues aren’t supposed to fucking move, let alone grab him. None of it was possible, it shouldn’t have been fucking real, yet he’s here, bleeding and broken.

There’s too much to think about. The thoughts are best given to the wind for now, blowing away in twisting white curls as he waits for the nicotine to take effect. It takes too long. 

He almost died. 

Don’t think about it. 

He almost fucking died. And for what? Clout? A fucking video- 

A video. The video. 

HIS PHONE. 

Instinctively, he checks his pockets; left, right, back. Nothing. 

Burning knots tighten in Wyatt’s chest. He looks to the side. The stairwell hole remains, a gaping void that stares back, somehow darker than before. 

No phone. Of all times, of all places, he lost his fucking phone. Down there, where old lights gleam like feral eyes in the dark. 

The lights were on because somebody was home. 

It can’t be real. It can’t be real. It can’t- 

The shaking still won’t stop. Part of him wants to just sleep here, but he doesn’t need a phone to know there isn’t enough time. The sun sinks closer to the horizon, precious moments ticking away. Shit, he really shouldn’t after his head was hit like that. There was something about that he saw some time ago, on a poster in the middle school nurse’s office or something. 

Come to think of it, getting hit like that is probably why he’s so tired. He’s gotta get home. Get home and do whatever to fix it, or sleep it off. 

Maybe that way he’ll wake up to find that this was just some fucked up nightmare. Or not. 

Dad’s gonna be worried if he doesn’t get a call soon. No, he’s gonna be pissed if Wyatt comes home like this, no call, no warning. Pissed off in that infuriating ‘worried parent’ way, the one that makes Wyatt feel like an indignant adult and guilty child all at once. Fuck, he hates that. 

…Better than not coming home at all. That could have been the case here. 

In another time, Dad could have been waiting for hours. Days. Years, wondering why- 

Fuck off, don’t think about that. Focus. Focus. 

He just needs to get to his car. It’s only a forty-five minute walk. If he isn’t limping.  

Wyatt pulls himself up by one of the oak’s lower branches, still trembling. He flinches, every part of him either aching or burning, but he has enough pride left to stifle a whimper in his throat into a sharper grunt. 

It still sounds more like a whimper, but it’s the thought that counts. Right? 

Wyatt takes a half-step as he lets go of the branch. His knee immediately gives out. He collapses with it, managing to catch himself, falling to his knees and bracing for pain to wrack his chest again. 

He’s less prepared for the wave of nausea that follows. He falls forward, heaving without warning and retching his lunch into the dirt. Each cough rattles his ribs, vision blurring and flickering with patches of light. After two or three more hollow gags, it’s over as quickly as it began. 

Wyatt waits for the next wave to come, Breathing raggedly while digging his fingers into mulch and dirt. It never does. 

In seconds that pass too slowly, he sits back up on his knees. Breath comes heavily, agonizingly, only marginally more painful than the pounding in his skull. Blood continues to soak into his shirt from the thorn wounds. His stomach twists, now as empty as his mind amidst the pain. 

It’s a start. 

Wyatt can’t remember half of the drive home. He squints as he slips from the driver’s seat, sun too bright. Must have dropped his sunglasses back there, too. No going back for those. 

He’s home, at least. The white-tiled Hell is far behind him where it belongs. 

The most he can remember are his own swirling thoughts, questioning if any of this could have been real . It had to be . The hands that grabbed him were real, the force that slammed him into the glass was as real as the wind in the trees, he filmed and walked down those stairs, those eyes twitched in paper sockets like a person’s- 

I almost died I almost fucking died- shut up. 

It had to be real. 

Thankfully, walking is easier now. Breathing is misery, but at least his head doesn’t hurt as much. It would have been nicer to have that when he started driving, but that doesn’t matter now. 

Wyatt pushes open the front door, taking two shaky steps in and leaning against part of the entryway. He wants nothing more than to crawl into bed and forget this ever happened, but wounds won’t allow that. Dad won’t allow that. 

It was real, but Dad can’t know that. He wouldn’t believe that.

Wyatt hasn’t said anything and his Dad is already bolting up from his work desk. 

“Dad… I fucked up.” 

The words are raucous, more so than Wyatt guessed they’d be. The last thing he spoke to was the… no. No, he’s not going to think about that now. 

“Wyatt!” Dad practically scoops him up, steadying him, panickedly studying his face down to his bloodied shirt. “Oh my God- What happened? ” 

Other cover stories of his have been better, but this one will have to work. Not much room for thinking when his head is filled with pain, fog and fading terror. A lot of things from today could use some explaining away, something to chase off the haunting shadow of the mall, but this comes first. 

“I was hiking.” He lies, trying not to lean into Dad’s support. “I fell. Hit my head on a rock or something, landed in some thorns. Just… I’m- I’ll be fi-” 

Another coughing fit wracks its way through his chest. Wyatt doubles over, giving up the fight not to let Dad hold him up. No nausea comes this time, thank God, but Dad catches every flinch of Wyatt’s like one of the cats tracking a moth. He presses his hand to Wyatt’s chest, gently pushing him back up. 

The next pained whimper comes too quickly to be stifled.

“No, you’re not. Come here.” No matter how stern his voice gets, Dad’s grip stays gentle as he walks him to the couch. “We gotta get you to the hospital- God, Wyatt, how’d you even get home?” 

Wyatt half-shrugs as Dad sits him down. There’s no good way to fib his way around this one when the car is right outside. “I drove.” 

“You… Drove?” Dad stills, staring in disbelief. 

Fuck. Wyatt knows that look. On cue, there’s a spark of terrified fury in Dad’s eyes. 

“You hit your head and you drove!?” 

There it is. Dad grabs him by the shoulders, the way he always does when Wyatt makes a stupid decision, weathered fingers desperately squeezing but letting go as soon as Wyatt flinches from the touch to his wounds. 

“ What were you THINKING?! ” 

Better to roll over than try to fight this. Dad… isn’t wrong, per se. He’s wrong a lot, but maybe not this time. “I wasn’t. I… ” 

“You- this eye is too dilated, that’s gotta be a concussion.” Dad rushes out of sight, probably grabbing his bag and keys. His voice is still clear in the next room. 

“You’re going to the hospital - Do not fall asleep on that couch! ”

Yeah, going for the keys. So much for the ‘sleep it off’ plan. 

Wyatt still aches to his core, but a knot in his gut loosens. 

He’s home. Dad is yelling at him for doing something dumb. This is the closest to normalcy he’s seen all day. Maybe, just maybe, he can forget this ever happened. 

A few days earlier

Wyatt slips the trail cams into his backpack, careful not to let them bump each other too roughly. Remembering his old professor even had these was a lucky break in and of itself. Good thing, too, that she’s only a stone’s throw away. She’s come in clutch a lot like that. At least, she usually does. Maybe less so when it comes to trying to jam botanical study into his head. 

Still, she’s a professor for a reason. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. 

“Thank you again, I really appreciate it- I’ll give you a shoutout.” He smiles, fiddling with the bag’s stuck zipper. It’d be the least he owes her at this point. 

She’s never been one for internet fame, though. 

“It’s nothing. This way, someone’s actually using them.” His old professor shrugs, frizzy hair bouncing. Sharp natural light of the bio lab reflects on her glasses as she turns, putting away equipment that had been dragged out to find the cams. “Don’t worry about the shoutout, either. You can shout all the questions you want when you’re back in my class.” 

When he switched majors, she swore she wouldn’t take it personally. Yet her last quip has a sharper edge, disappointment hidden under playful banter. 

He gets it. She cares about him as much as she does her work.

Tension is easier to shrug off when he can hear the grin in her voice, at least. Wyatt snarks back accordingly. It comes naturally when she’s around. 

Dad always joked that this is where Wyatt must’ve sourced his sarcasm. 

“Yuh-huh, I bet they’re gonna be testing all about gip-so-sperms during the finance unit.” 

“Gymnosperms.” She says plainly, turning to face him again. “You’d be surprised. You know, I can email your new professor any time…” 

“ Kimmm- ” Wyatt playfully nudges her side, poorly stifling a laugh. 

She strings along their routine, tone playfully stern in a way only she can pull off. 

“That’s Aunt Kim, to you.” Aunt Kim nails her point with a small elbow jab, flawlessly evading Wyatt’s swing of a bag over his shoulder as they both walk out of the lab. Wyatt half-stumbles from the swing, jogging a few steps to catch up. 

God, he missed this. He prepares his best fake-mocking french accent for his turn. “What else would it be, Professeur Beaumont? ” 

Aunt Kim promptly ignores him, shoving off the arm he jokingly drapes over her shoulder. This time, he doesn’t manage to hold back his laugh, already scrounging up whatever verbal jabs he can from the endless mental repertoire for his next turn. There’s a lot to pull from the years. 

“Oh, Wyatt.” Her tone softens. In the funny little way where she almost always one-ups him, her arm falls over his shoulder. “I miss having you in my class. I really do.” 

Oh. 

That’s… different.

Wyatt accepts her support, matching her steps.  “...Yeah. At least we still get to see each other?” 

Aunt Kim is rarely soft. There’s always an air of seriousness with her, that hasn’t gone anywhere- but the only time he hears her talk like this is when she talks with Dad. Usually when they talk about events unspoken to Wyatt, serious shit that happened some years ago. She was never willing to tell him more than that. 

Everyone has their secrets. Wyatt does, too. Functionally, this is one of her’s. 

“That’s true.” Aunt Kim sighs, patting his back as her hand slips away. 

He fucking sucks at botany. He really does- the neverending web of complexities between different families, phyla, let alone species- it’s a bigger, more convoluted mess than animal science was, and he sucked at that too. Business has the mercy of being straightforward, offering a path to stability, even if it lacks the flare. Pretty plants can only get him so far if he’s the last to climb to the top, unneeded and unwanted in a field where he doesn’t know the half of what everyone else does. 

That’s what he learned from botany. Everything else was anecdotes, things to know just for the sake of knowing. 

Sacrifices, he guesses. There was something on Instagram about that- letting go of things that seem familiar and safe to make connections. Something like that. There’s nothing stopping them from going out and picking samples together. Nothing but time, but that’s precious nowadays when there are connections to make, foundations to build. 

A brief silence falls between them, filled only with the sound of steps on tile, until Aunt Kim speaks up again. 

“What’s it all for, anyway?” 

Well that’s a heavy-ass question to drop out of nowhere. 

Wyatt glances at the floor. ‘ Doubt your doubts’, the little opportunist in his head says, but ‘ I don’t know’ scratches at his mind like a dog at a door. He goes with neither. 

“I mean… That’s a tough question.” 

Unexpectedly, Aunt Kim laughs , echoing down the empty hall. “So you don’t even know why you need the cameras?” 

Oh. Fuck. Leave it to him to make up some existential shit. 

His shoulders relax, thumbs dipping into his pockets, doing their best to slip the mood away. Wyatt puts on the mischievous smile that she always seems to get a kick out of and gives her his best answer. She’s always been good at keeping his secrets.

“I’m trying to stake out this nice urbex spot, I wanna see who might be coming and going…” He tells her about the hole as she walks him to his car, lowballing the staircase and leaving out the shopping mall entirely. To her, it’s a weird basement, too big to be a storm shelter but too split off from an ‘abandoned neighborhood nearby’ to be of any use. 

Not all secrets are for sharing. Not yet. 

She’ll get to see that in the video. 

Morning comes too soon. 

The sun has yet to rise. Crickets sing obliviously to the dawn, tuned with the occasional whistling of an early bird. Low wind weaves through the trees, calling back to a walk in the hills, from before he found the staircase. 

It’s all Wyatt wants to hear right now. Fuck the morning grindset, His head hurts too much to look at his phone, or- right. Fuck. the phone… 

Memories flash as briefly as cricket chirps; Flickering lights, thorns, dark eyes. Someone. Blood. Pain. 

Fuck, he’s gotta stop thinking about that.

If he could sleep more, that’d be nice. Unfortunately, luck ran out yesterday. She has other plans, like keeping him awake and bored out of his aching skull. 

Little paws walk over his pillow in the dark. Judging by their weight, it must be Edward. 

The fat tabby licks Wyatt’s forehead before settling down, taking his place amongst the two other cats already on the bed, sitting closest to Wyatt. Apparently, it’s not good enough for the old cat. Edward shifts halfway through settling, moving instead to lay over Wyatt’s neck, partially burying him in warm fur. 

Wyatt hums, huffing. Yep, he can still breathe, if a little less than before. 

There are worse things that could happen. 

A concussion. Two broken ribs. More than a dozen little puncture wounds from some of the biggest bramble thorns the nurses had ever seen. A stupid decision, like driving after hitting his head. Even one of the nurses chewed him out for that one. Dad was long finished with that by the time he was driving Wyatt to urgent care. At that point, he’d moved on to worrying about the phone being lost. 

That’s his best camera, his second best mic, easy access to Discord, not to mention Dad and Aunt Kim. 

It could be so much worse.

A staircase, open one moment and collapsed the next, burying him alive-

Ah fuck- not now, think of something else. 

There’s a reason Eleanor is his favorite of the cats. She stretches out at his side, sitting up and lazily meandering to Wyatt’s pillow. If it weren’t for Edward, he’d reach out and pet her. 

The cream-colored cat opts to lay on the pillow itself, leaning against the top of his head and mercifully avoiding the back. The bruising is still tender, its dull pulsing easier to notice when there’s nothing to think about. 

But there’s so much to think about. 

A dark gaze with something, someone, behind it. Staring him down with hell-wrought rage. Thorns digging deeper, dragging him-

Eleanor begins to purr. 

If anyone can make the sun rise faster, it’s her. 

The morning air is full of birdsong. Entirely too happy, entirely unfair, but they're ignorant to the horrors of the forest.

Wyatt can’t forget that fucking sound for the life of him. Creak, creak, creeeeeak, paired with the squealing of metal wheels. Something that, by all means, shouldn’t have been heard or seen at all. The rustling of foliage. Bone hitting glass, a dull pulse in the back of his head. Fucking elevator music. 

He tries to hone in on nicer things: Wind in the trees, Edward snoring on the hutch, the dog’s collar jingling as she shakes her head, Dad humming as he turns down the stove and scrapes at stuck egg bits in the frying pan. 

Metal on metal, flora on flesh, tearing- Fuck. 

Maybe it was just a nightmare. 

A waking nightmare, if a nightmare at all. The thorn pricks dotting his skin trace the deathgrip of a hand almost as big as he was. They’ve been slow to heal. 

Right. It was only yesterday. God, his head hurts… Nausea still lurks deep in his stomach. The scent of breakfast that would otherwise give him something to look forward to is less than appetizing. Fuck's sake, he can't even eat in peace because of that thing.

The pain meds help a little. Focusing is easier than it’d been earlier, and light doesn’t feel quite as overwhelming as it did yesterday. 

Dad gently pushes a plate of scrambled eggs in his direction, rousing Wyatt from thought. 

“Here, try to eat something.”

He looks as tired as Wyatt feels, a worried edge to the way he gives the plate another nudge. 

Wyatt takes the offer.

“Thanks.” 

He owes Dad one for sure. Two for the ride to urgent care. Three for paying for the meds… 

Yesterday’s events roll in their grave as he picks at the scrambled eggs. Shadows of birds outside dance across the kitchen, light of morning flickering on the walls with their flight. Their song drifts in from an open window, a little more tolerable now that he’s getting food in his stomach. 

Dad goes back to the kitchen sink. The frying pan sizzles as it's dunked underwater with the rest of the dishes, sound quickly drowned out with Dad’s resumed humming. Some MGMT song in an album he showed Dad a while back. 

It’s too normal. 

What happened yesterday shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t have been possible, but here he is, a lucky idiot still alive and breathing with a Dad who cares way too much. 

He shouldn’t be alive. He should still be back there, buried in his own fucking idiocity. 

Creak, creeeak. Two white eyes stared him down with the wrath of a God in their gleam. Fuck, maybe that was it. He found some fucked up weird forest god, that totally makes sense. ‘Security Robot’ is too far out of the picture by now. 

Yeah. Totally believable. Nobody’s gonna send him to a mental hospital for that one, right? Maybe Dad wouldn’t, but he wouldn’t believe Wyatt either. Nobody would believe that. 

“I’m glad we’ve been keeping the cats in.” His Dad comments, gazing out at grackles and robins squabbling at their feeders. “The birds have gotten bolder.” 

Something else to focus on. Probably for the better. 

“...Yeah.” Wyatt adds little. “I dunno. Maybe the birds can’t smell them anymore.” 

“Hm. Can birds smell?” 

The scent of fresh-cut grass in a darkness filled with stone and silence.

Fuck off. 

“I don’t really know.” Wyatt looks back down, pretending to think of birds. He wonders about the scent of fresh-cut grass. 

Nobody would believe him. It just doesn’t make any sense. There’d been no graffiti, no other signs of the property on the surface. The lights were on, there were fully outfitted shops and still-living plants and music filling the corridors. It was a fucking shopping mall, hundreds of feet underground. No other soul for miles around. Except for the statue-forest-god-whatever-the-fuck. 

Any urbexer worth their cent would have known what to avoid. The music of the mall sings in the back of his mind, droning in the dimness of something unexplainably fucked up. It was a trap, but then it wasn’t. The stairs opened up again. 

‘I just want to go home-’

A change in the gaze, a flicker in the burning fury. 

Wyatt blinks. 

It reacted to what he said. 

Okay, so not a security robot. Definitely not a security robot. Maybe a forest god. Something. 

Months ago, on a trek through the tunnels of Fort Worth, another explorer told him a story about a military training town hidden out in the desert. Not marked on any maps, uninhabited, but with staffed drive-thrus and a camera on every corner. A distorted reflection with purpose never meant to be known to outsiders. Something like that would explain the lights in the mall, but not the total emptiness. It wouldn’t explain why it was further down in the ground than a fallout shelter. 

Too big to be a fallout shelter, too. No signs, and the government wouldn’t have blown so much money on a massive doomsday bunker in the middle of nowhere with one way in. The stairs would have been considered unsafe, even back in the cold war. 

They were unsafe. They fucking collapsed. Or what if they didn’t? What if it was some kind of trick to scare him off for good? 

But what the fuck was trying to scare him off? 

Eyes as black as night, white painted pupils narrowing like they were organic. Rage. 

That thing wanted him dead. A shadowy monster in a story no one would ever believe is true. At least, no one important to him would care about it. Conspiracy theory abduction stories are one thing, but this is so much more than that. It has to be. And the only chance that someone would believe him would be if- 

“You’ve been quiet.” 

Wyatt startles, flinching when Dad pulls out a chair to sit at the table. 

A line of thought is severed. 

Dad’s brows twitches, a worried look on his face. 

“Yeah… Yeah, I’m fine. I had a nightmare, that’s all.” He sits up, too obviously correcting himself, fork quietly scraping ceramic as it almost slips out of his hands. 

“I can imagine. Yesterday wasn’t really… it was difficult for both of us, I think.” 

Dad’s been treating him with kid gloves since freaking out at him yesterday. Wyatt had it coming, he’d have freaked out too, but Dad’s always been the type to feel bad anyway, in the fun little way that makes Wyatt feel guilty, and on the cycle goes until one of them says something about it. 

He can’t. Not this time. 

Dad sighs. He leans down a little, trying to look Wyatt in the eye. 

“Did anything else happen yesterday?” 

“I’m fine. ” Too fast, too sharp, too ashamed. “The meds are just making me more tired. And my head still hurts.” Wyatt gives it more pause, running his fingers through his hair before meeting Dad’s look halfway. “...And I’m sorry I scared you. I was in over my head.” 

Thankfully, Dad backs down from the prodding. Instead, he smiles. “Always have been. You wouldn’t be Wyatt otherwise.” 

For the first time since yesterday, Wyatt huffs with laughter. 

“That’s true, isn’t it?” 

It’s the first thought today he can really believe. 

Dad gets up, a weight seemingly off his shoulders. He pats Wyatt’s shoulder on his way back to the kitchen, coming to a brief halt to look him in the eye again. 

“I’m happy you’re okay. Rest up today- and none of the ‘grindset’ stuff, let me know if you need anything.” Dad shakes his shoulder with the same force he’d usually use to ruffle Wyatt’s hair as he walks away. 

Good to know Dad’s been feeling his way around Instagram again. 

Still, he’s got a point. Wyatt’s head swims with fatigue. It wouldn’t kill him to fit a nap in before checking his socials. 

That way, Dad might not be as worried. 

Twenty pings on Discord . 

Wyatt slouches at his computer, fingers carding through his hair again, uncertain of what to type. 

Half of them are announcements for giveaways or streams, thank god- but at least ten are check-ins, random pings of his mutuals asking if he’s alright. He gets it. It’s not exactly encouraging to see your internet buddy say they’re ‘gonna go urbexing’ and not hear back for more than twelve hours. 

He types out part of an update. 

I’m fine, guys. Things were wild yesterday. I got all the way down the hole and it still looked like a weird shopping mall with shops and everything. Think I set off some kind of security system, not sure wh 

A severed connection clicks back into place. 

He stops. Types, stops, backspaces, repeats the process until it’s at least halfway good enough. 

All good, guys- got a bit busted up yesterday, but that won’t stop me.

His finger hovers over ‘enter’. 

Liar.

It may be better not to say anything, but knowing his buddies, they won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. 

I’m back guys. I got fucked up on the way out of the tunnel yesterday, but I’ll be fine. Trip wasn’t worth it. 

Sent. 

Half-truths work well enough. If he’s lucky, most of them will read it as the stairwell having nothing worth talking about. They don’t know about the trail cams, or anything else- worst comes to worst, he can take down the first video, as much as the thought stings. 

No, no- he’d better keep that up. Edit out the end? He needs those views if the channel is gonna have a chance of taking off. 

But how much does that matter without anything else to upload? With his phone MIA, screen shattered and battery dead, he’s got nothing. 

A webcam’s dead eye stares him down, perched atop the monitor like a vulture. 

Almost nothing. 

Two or three pings from Discord go ignored as Wyatt adjusts the camera. He switches it on as recording software takes its sweet time to load, and the flash of color and movement just below his field of vision tells him it’s working. A few more tweaks, and Wyatt leans back, reaching for his headset. 

Wyatt’s own face looks back at him from the monitor. He stops. 

Dark circles hang under his eyes, his hair unkempt, mussed and half-brushed thanks to the bruising. Thorn wounds dot his arms, a few on his throat and collarbone, some forming bruising around the puncture. Their harsh redness makes his skin look paler than it should be. His fingers trace the dark marks under his eyes, as if they can be wiped away, as if to make sure he’s really looking at himself and not a poorly made copy. Nothing changes. 

With a brief click, Wyatt turns off the webcam. 

It’s fine. He’s tired. He didn’t feel like talking anyway. Dad was probably right about trying to rest. 

Wyatt’s halfway back on the bed, one foot on the floor and his other knee still bent on his chair, when he remembers. 

Cloud storage. 

He whips back around, pressing a power button that had only just dimmed to blackness. The computer boots back up, and Wyatt’s spamming the ICloud icon before anything else has time to load. White overtakes the screen. 

A minute passes, Wyatt bouncing his leg for the entirety of it. Muscle memory has him reaching for an absent phone a few seconds before his computer sorts itself out, a menu welcoming him. He beelines the cursor past update popups, clicking the ‘images’ tab, waiting. 

Blank gray squares overtake the window. Loading. Images load in like street lights flipping on after dark, one by one in a neat row. 

The most recent few images take longer. His heart skips a beat when they finally appear, and- 

… 

The Hole stares at him. The last thing he took a picture of before making the descent. Resting in the front of the line, mocking him like the other random pictures of plants and the trail cams. 

Nothing. Wyatt refreshes the page a few times. Nothing. 

No, something: A waste of time and hope. Wyatt doesn’t bother with closing tabs, prodding the power button and whipping around to reclaim his spot in bed. This is a problem for his future self. Can’t be disappointed when you’re asleep- 

…in the spot where Edward just settled, eyes narrowed and paws neatly tucked under his chest. 

Wyatt’s sigh ends in a growl. 

“No. Get up-” he reaches under the cat, partly lifting and rolling the feline over on the mattress.

Edward makes a pitiful noise in return, no louder than a kitten. Stupid cat. Stupid fucking fatass cat who knows how to pull at his heartstrings. 

He pushes Edward a little more as he settles. Edward keeps the middle as Wyatt curls around him, pulling the blanket over them both. It’s not the most comfortable, but it’s more compromise than the computer had to offer. 

Over the course of an hour, Wyatt and the cat readjust. Edward allows him to reclaim the middle of the bed in return for laying on his chest, partially flopped into the crook of his arm. No small price to pay with broken ribs, but his chest hurts anyway. Something or other on TikTok mentioned how cats’ purrs could speed up the healing process. This had better be more repayment, then. 

His fingers absently rub at Edward’s neck. 

Zeke, the family rottweiler, leans up against Wyatt’s legs. She wanted to cuddle earlier, but she’s too heavy and knows when the cats have dibs. September’s given her what for a few times. The scars left on Zeke’s nose are what she has to show for it. 

Household animal politics; pretty easy to wrap his head around, compared to… everything else. 

Zeke haphazardly itches her ear. Wyatt closes his hand, trying not to itch at the closest thorn wound. He blinks at the wall, searching for something interesting in the splotchy patterns.

You almost died yesterday. You almost didn’t come home. 

Something to show for it. 

Dark eyes glaring at him with hatred. A few words well-spoken, and something else surged beneath the surface. Regret? Humanity? 

Something to show for it. 

A dead mall. No music rings through its darkened corridors. Only a faint rustling of leaves. 

Wheels on tile, creaking scaffolding. The sounds persist until they don’t.  

A flowery hand snakes to the floor, searching. Vines unfurl from its fingertips. They wrap around something new, something foreign, something that does not belong to Him. A little flat box flashes to light, then returns to dimness. It is shattered like an old window. Curiously, He brings it up to His eye, examining further. 

It lights up again. Pieces of the box’s window are beyond repair, blackened as though burned, but an image is miraculously visible. Numbers flash with the glaring image of the setting sun behind them. The silhouettes of tree limbs reach up into a gorgeous red sky. 

He takes pause until the picture fades. 

The enormous hand places the little box back on the floor. 

This is not His. 

Someone could come looking. People don’t like to lose beautiful things.

Dark eyes examine thin streaks of blood on the floor of the corridor. Someone’s. 

Wheels on tile, creaking, creaking. Echoing. Wheels meticulously turn, reaching His spot in His place. Silence falls in the Gallery at Midtown. 

“The first three letters of the last name are L-E-I. Is this correct?”

“Yes…” Wyatt’s father drones into the phone. Better to tie up this loose end tonight. He’ll forget if he waits until morning. 

“ This request has been sent. Would you like to refill another prescription?” 

“No.”

‘ Thank you, have a great day! ’ A sharp beep, and the line goes dead.

He mumbles to no one. 

“You too.”

It’d be nice to get it taken care of online, but doing it this way has the benefit of being marginally smoother. Less room for error. He can’t be the only person sick of automated phone calls, but it’s better than having to bother a real person. Again, too much room for error. 

Hm. A preference against people and A.I.- Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t. 

Oh well. A.I. would be nicer when it comes to dealing with insurance paperwork, at least. Or maybe the time-consuming agony is his fault for leaving all kinds of important documents scattered between folders and drawers and cubbies abound. He might need Wyatt’s help organizing the desk again tomorrow, if the poor kid’s feeling up to it. It’d be better for him than staring at a screen most of the day. 

It’d do good to keep him out of trouble, give him something to do that doesn’t come with the risk of getting himself killed. 

Right, tomorrow. Wyatt’s Dad glances at the clock. He should- 

The time reads 2:32 a.m. 

Ah. He should go to bed. 

Wyatt’s father steps softly through the hall. By now, Wyatt must be sleeping. As often as they’re both awake into the dark hours of the morning, the last thing he wants is to wake the poor thing up.

The door to a dark room hangs open as Wyatt’s Dad approaches. 

Weird. Most of the time, it’s closed at night. He peeks in, preparing a verbal jab or a greeting, but seals his lips before the words can escape. 

The room is pitch-dark, save for a streak of light from the hall on Wyatt’s pale skin. His son faces away, cuddled up tightly, With Eleanor nestled up as close as she can get to his face. Zeke’s head rests on his side, rising and falling with the rhythm of sleep. 

Wyatt’s father smiles. 

It’s nice to have him back. To have him at all after that scare. 

Slowly, slowly, His father tiptoes into the room. 

Zeke’s eyes follow him. Her tail lightly thumps as he pets her head, scratching behind her ear. No other part of her moves, loyal creature that she is. Eleanor, meanwhile, squints at him, chattering in mild annoyance. 

Wyatt doesn’t move, sound asleep. 

Emboldened with the animals behaving, taking another little risk is impossible to resist. It’s not often he gets chances like this. 

Wyatt’s curly hair is gently patted down by his father’s hand. He leans down, placing a quick kiss on his son’s cheek. Scarred hands run over Wyatt’s hair in a slow, rhythmic motion. It takes a little twitch from Wyatt for him to finally succumb to the urge to retreat. 

Can’t risk waking him up. 

It’s all too easy to steal one last glance as he reaches the doorway. Zeke and Eleanor keep their vigil. Wyatt, it seems, breathes more slowly. 

Exhausted and content, Wyatt’s father steps away. He pauses before bringing the door to a close, watching light disappear from the room. 

He quietly shuts the door. 

Howling. 

Wyatt sprints, footfalls echoing through a dark tunnel. Old brick looms overhead, Shoes splashing through filthy puddles on what was once a path underfoot, ancient roots tearing at the seams of the walls. There is only one way forward. Going back isn’t an option. The howling grows louder, ringing in his ears. He runs towards the light of day, an exit he’s been trying desperately to reach. You’re not supposed to be here. 

Far behind him, something is screaming, like a human cry carried too far on the wind. Distorted by time and distance. This place, these sounds, none of it is right, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if it’s supposed to be different. He has to keep going.

Breathing is a battle. Something’s caught in his lungs, his chest, slowing him down from the inside out. 

Doesn’t matter. He has to keep going.  

In the blur of the chase, the old tunnel opens up into an explosion of flora on all sides, giving way to thick forest, leaves above so dense that no sunlight can pierce through to the ground below. A muddled pathway flushes to life in the dark green burst of a forest floor. Moss coats every log and stone, leaves hang heavy with moisture. 

With every step, the path ahead of him fades. 

This place isn’t made for people like him. You are NOT supposed to be here. Yet, somehow, it’s familiar. 

Wyatt slows, coughing in the deep humidity. His first mistake. The howling voice is too close now. Wind whips at his back, aggressively reaching for him. 

Darkness stalks him, taking form in the spindly things watching from the trees, hidden in shadow, camouflaged amidst branches. Wyatt feels their eyeless gaze in his blood. Thorn-wounds pulse in pain. They know his pain, know what he runs from, but they stay in place. This isn’t their quarry. 

Foliage grows thicker, forcing Wyatt to push aside branches that scrape at his skin like claws. Overhead, wind rattles the trees, a hollow song echoing through the forest. An earthy smell looms as thick as fog. 

With it, he can smell the faint scent of fresh-cut grass. 

He knows so many of these plants by heart. California native flora; Blechnum spicant, Athyrium filix-femina, Dryopteris arguta.

No, no. He shouldn’t remember them. Why do you remember them? 

Another call joins in the hunt. A distant thrum, deep and consistent, like war drums. The eyeless watchers offer their song too, a cacophony of distorted voices ringing through the trees. 

Please, God, Please- His heart pumps with the war drums, gasping for enough air in a bed of thick fog.

Far above the treeline, the blades of a helicopter whir. Wyatt stops to look up, catching his breath, watching its shadow pan through the forest crown. It’s going too fast, it won’t see him.

The howling wind advances, breaking its way through low branches in its relentless pursuit. Right and left, the brambles are too thick. He has to move forward. 

Terror grips him, skin as slick with sweat as the muddied rocks underfoot. He ducks down, scrambling into a rapidly narrowing tunnel of roots and debris. Large sticks, blunt like metal bars, dig into Wyatt’s lower back as he wiggles through. Vines and branches tighten into one great mass, walling him in from all sides, the path narrowing with every step forward. 

You’ve been here before. You’re not supposed to be here. 

It doesn’t matter, you have to keep going. 

Darkness does not wait at the end of the tunnel. What seems like a dead end is nothing more than a false bottom, falsehoods given away by slivers of dim blue shining between gaps of wooden furls. He claws at it, for freedom, for safety. 

There’s always another way. There has to be another way. 

Wyatt bursts through dead vines at the bramble tunnel’s end, hands meeting wet concrete as he catches his fall. He coughs roughly, crawling, dragging himself from the tight grip of flora. 

Behind him, the forest song fades. A final echo rings through pale halls. 

This place is familiar. You’re not supposed to be here, but he can’t go back. 

It’s darker here. Sporadic patches of grass overtake the concrete floor. Moss droops in clumps from an office ceiling overhead, sodden chunks broken off and collapsing, a building’s corpse spilling open with forest rot and water. Ivy clings to pillars scattered about the space, climbing up walls that used to be white, an army of leaves reaching ever upwards toward a skylight in the room’s center. 

A song plays here, too. A dying whisper of muzak. It’ll belong to the forest soon. He’s not supposed to know that. 

No one is supposed to be here. 

Wyatt pulls himself up on a truncated pillar, flattening wilting leaves beneath his fingers. He leans against it as he collects himself, letting his shoulders relax after what feels like hours of running. He can’t remember when he began.

A few feet in front of him, the floor has long collapsed into a sinkhole. Water runs through the sunken space, flowing from a random pipe and funneling into a lower floor, gracefully flowing around a raised planter that survived the initial damage. The planter’s occupant is long dead: an oak trapped in its own home. 

Wyatt’s breathing slows. He leans forward, glaring into the sinkhole.

None of this should be here, none of this, it shouldn’t exist, it’s not supposed to exist.

The tree rests half-fallen against the other side of the hole. Uncaring branches reach upward into the skylight, stray limbs pushing ceiling panels out of place, as if the tree kept growing after its fall. Wyatt’s gaze follows their silhouette. Up, up into the dim blue of night, seeming to grow brighter when met with Wyatt’s gaze. 

I’m not supposed to exist. 

If the branches are strong enough, he could climb out through the skylight. Freedom.  

There has to be a way.

His eyes screw shut as light drastically shifts from blue to white. 

The light is aimed at him . Wyatt’s breath catches, like he’s been knocked onto his back, the world turned sideways- the sinkhole, the tree and the plants are gone, erased from the dark expanse of white drywall and concrete floors. All that remains now is raw fear, something impossible staring him down behind a mask of light. 

I’m not supposed to be here I don’t want to be here please let me out- 

He scrambles backwards, preparing to run. Just as his feet are back on the ground, Wyatt turns to meet a shadow in the dark. It stands tall, glowing white pupils unmoving. Fuck.

One of its flora-laden hands reaches out for him. 

THERE HAS TO BE A WAY-

A familiar voice begs in the dark. 

“ Don’t- Don’t shoot- ”

Wyatt looks over his shoulder. The voice is gone, silenced by the piercing ring of a gunshot.  

Pained wailing fills the void. Panicked screaming, terror, blood spilling over epoxy, white static screeching in his ears as the world around him slips in and out of itself, flashing images of vacant rooms, artificial light, screaming, fire, blood. 

YOU HAVE TO TELL THEM

A door. 

There has to be a way out.

He reaches for it. This, too, is a false bottom. 

THERE HAS TO BE A WAY OUT. 

War drums begin again, thrumming without order or cadence.

“I’m trying to leave!” but thorn-claws tear into him without mercy, bleeding him ecstatically as he hangs above a void, stairs spiraling down at every angle. 

THEY NEED TO KNOW- 

Wyatt wakes himself with his own screaming. 

He shoots up in bed, adrenaline pumping, soaked with sweat. Eleanor bolts away, nearly as spooked as he is. Events flash fresh from the nightmare; Screaming, a gunshot, the wind, fire, familiar voices. Static. 

His chest throbs with pain again. Instinctively, Wyatt brings his hand to his heart. Feeling it beat with receding fear is one of many ways to remember he’s still alive, but pain serves that purpose just as well. 

Droning static fades. 

Now the wind passes him by, carrying birdsong as it weaves through the trees outside. Grackles and mourning doves are still bickering, by the sound of it. 

No screaming but his own. No hallways or rotting buildings. Nowhere but home. 

Just a nightmare. 

His other hand toys with the edge of the blanket. Gradually, his breathing quiets itself, taking harsher pain with it. 

It aches more than yesterday. Bruising must have fully set in. 

If Zeke were here, she'd be all over him. That’s how she always was with his nightmares as a kid, she always knew . The rottweiler-shaped indent in the bed is vacant, meaning she’s probably out with Dad. Still outside, because Dad would have been running up the stairs the moment he heard yelling. Been there, done that. God, he should really be over this sort of thing by now. It’s been a while since the last one.

There could be plenty of reasons for this one, though; Meds, stress, the concussion that continues to make itself known through dull pain if he thinks about it too hard, it’s all pretty circumstantial. 

Totally, absolutely normal. 

A sunken forest, white rooms- Those weren’t right. There’s a word for that, liminal-something… Uncanny , that’s it. Uncanny. A false memory drawn out for all its distortions to be exposed. Some nightmare. 

Wyatt pulls away the blanket, sitting criss-cross on the bed. He reaches for a glass of water on the nightstand. 

He’d never seen a door like that before, strung up to rods and wires.

Never heard that voice.  

A genuine, desperate voice ringing out behind the echoes of a gunshot, clear as stars in the night: ‘ They need to know.’

Pretty fucking subtle of his subconscious. Most everything else is faded by waking, save for the statue and the tree. Why the hell did it have to be that tree? 

You have to tell them. 

Shut up. What happened yesterday may as well have been part of the stupid nightmare. 

Wyatt glances at the puncture wounds in his arms. He leans to the side, and one of the wounds below his shoulder stings harshly. He hisses, sitting back up.

They need to know. 

Do they? He could tell them anything, the difference is whether or not they’d believe him. An easy lie, I fell and hit my head like an idiot, or an impossible truth, I got chased by a murder statue in a place that doesn’t exist. 

The most possible truth about the nightmare- the mall- That could be a game changer. For content, at least. He’d be the first one to have found something lost, something that actually matters, instead of a rotten husk everyone’s seen before. He’d never seen anything like it before. His own discovery, something that could get people to pay attention for once. 

But that’s just not realistic, is it? Not without the phone. 

There was more than just footage on that phone. A lot of good memories, some old phone numbers he hasn’t saved anywhere else. Good job references. The video is paramount, sure, but it wouldn’t be the only reason to go back. 

Reason enough to walk into a waking nightmare, though?

They need to know. 

Shut up. His head hurts. 

He cards through the details of last night’s horror as the edges of memory fray. Weird rooms, creepy forests, dead malls, guns. Ultimately, a bunch of random shit dredged up to process everything from the underground mall. Apparently, his brain had to make it worse to make the nightmare worse than yesterday. That forest was creepy enough on its own, but nooo, gotta go ahead and throw in the murder monster and some weird liminal space shit that’d make the rounds on TikTok. 

Zeke’s deep barks echo through the yard. 

Outside, a car dodders over the gravel path behind the house. Zeke recites her usual, loudly barking while Dad jumps up to take her by the collar and keep her in place. 

Wyatt sits up, leaning over to look out the window. 

Aunt Kim’s car comes to a stop at the end of the old driveway. 

Kim isn’t nearly as pissed off as Dad was. She’s more disappointed. It’s the same look she had when Wyatt told her he was switching majors; lips slightly pursed, brows low, arms crossed over her chest while she tries to self-correct to a vaguely bitter smile. 

It’s almost worse than Dad’s freakout. Getting that look twice in six months has to be an all-time record. 

There are more important things to worry about today. 

Aunt Kim takes the helm where Dad’s been backing down. She’s as relentless in her questions as she is in the classroom, with a personal touch. 

Such as quoting a few of Dad’s expletives, with the added interrogations about ‘hiking safety’ that he’d briefly reviewed not long before switching majors. Something he sort of remembers, but not really, same as almost everyone else in the class who weren’t avid wilderness explorers. A lot of them were there for functionality, to learn flora’s place in the larger ecological systems of their world, to learn the ins and outs of how they functioned as living things. 

Wyatt was there for something else, too unimportant to remember while Aunt Kim chews him out. He looks down, scratching at the quilt beneath him, failing to hide the heat in his face. 

“You- you could have died out there. I thought you knew better. ” 

She doesn’t know the half of it and still has the gall to be so… punctual. Heat sinks down to his chest as she pushes on. 

“I’m fine. ” He snaps. “You don’t need to talk to me like I’m a fucking kid.”

Dad could be a mile away, and Wyatt would still feel him tense up. Like clockwork, so does Kim. 

Everyone needs reminders from time to time. He fucked up, yes, but that was his decision. His fuck-up to make. They don’t even know what really happened, they don’t get to keep pressing into him like a pincushion. It’s fine. He’s fine now. Really, he is. 

A desperate, familiar voice echoes in memory. He chooses to ignore it in favor of Dad’s. 

“ Wyatt. ”

A warning, but Dad’s never been one to get in the middle of their occasional spats. 

Kim blinks in surprise. Wyatt keeps his eyes down, ready to take the brunt of more disappointment, when Aunt Kim’s voice turns softer. 

She reaches out, taking his arm, lightly tracing the bandages from yesterday.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” 

Oh. Wyatt drops his shoulders. He looks back up, fighting to make eye contact, but the look on Aunt Kim’s face is genuine. Her hair is a little messy, frizzy strands framing her face. No pushback, only worry. 

“...Yeah.” He rubs at one of the larger bandages. Beneath the surface, it still hurts. “I’m gonna be okay.” 

He hopes it’s true. 

Kim ebbs with the tide as tension bleeds away, leaning back against the couch’s arm rest, allowing a moment to pass. 

“That- that wasn’t appropriate of me.” Her lips twitch as she searches for the right words. Punctual again, but not the same way as before. “I just hate to see you hurt.” 

She always has, but it’s not always obvious. Not when lectures come first. Like any good professor, she’s quick to slip everything back where it belongs once classes meet their end. She’s even quicker when it’s time to catch up on their usual series. A tradition to slip back into, something none of them need to think too hard about. The only questions to be begged are the ones woven into plots and characters, ideas of people and their stories. 

They’ve thought enough about yesterday. Dad, Aunt Kim- they don’t need to know yet. 

“It’s alright. I’m good.” Wyatt shrugs. “Can we watch Breaking Bad now?” 

“ Yes. ”

He never expected Dad and Kim to be interested in crime drama, but the show hit off for them fast. Kim hinted before about how the desperation and tension felt like ‘The good ol’ days’, a passive nod to a past she’d normally be cagey about. Dad picked up the mask she’d dropped and turned the conversation around as quickly as it had arrived. Discarded without hesitation, mentioning something to the effect of how they ‘shouldn’t get into that.’ 

That’s how it always goes, when it comes to whatever they used to do.

He wouldn’t blame them if they’d done their fair share of drug trafficking. It would explain how Dad is as well-off as he is, but something tells Wyatt there’s more to it than that. The way they look at eachother every time it comes up has never been a great sign. Pushing the topic never turned out well. 

Not all the pieces add up. Wyatt hides his juul for good reason, but those stakes must not be as high compared to theirs. 

The thought was put aside with other theories about the innocuous old job, along with further hints and comments that slipped over the years. It hasn’t come up again since. 

As is tradition, Aunt Kim closes the curtains while Dad distributes blankets. The fluffiest one is draped over Wyatt’s shoulders, Dad playfully messing with his hair and pivoting out of reach. 

He swipes back at his Dad and misses, thinking little of secrets as his family settles in. 

An hour or so later, Wyatt bites his cheek, swallowing a pained groan. Leaning forward was apparently a fucking mistake- one of the puncture wounds in his back throbs with pain, aching  below his shoulder. He fails to snuff out a reaction entirely, shoulders tensing. 

The reaction doesn’t elude Kim, who sits up. 

“What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing,” He speaks through gritted teeth. “It’s- I’m good. Just hurts.” 

An understatement, but the pain should pass soon. If he was able to sleep through this, it really shouldn’t be a big deal. The spot below his shoulder aches more than the rest of the wounds. Couldn’t sleep on that side last night. 

The spot where It had a vicious grip, sharp enough to pull and pin and drag him like some kid’s toy. 

Aunt Kim has other plans, disregarding the talk before, swiftly pulling up his shirt to look at the wound without even asking. Before Wyatt can say anything, Kim lightly touches the bandages. He twists in retaliation, but shooting pains cut through the reflex.

“ Fuck- ” He moves back, slow this time, resigning to let the pain fade. “Can you not?” 

Kim holds her ground, working through the sudden tension. It takes the opportunity to grow as she quietly unwraps part of his bandaging. 

“Are you alright?” Dad rushes from his chair to the couch, Zeke following eagerly and blissfully unaware of urgency. He stops to pause the TV before leaning against Kim’s arm rest. 

“Sorry, Wyatt.” With a free hand, she pats his shoulder. “I’ve seen colleagues deal with this. It can’t be left unchecked. This- Hmm…” 

Urgent Care was busy yesterday. In the hustle and bustle, the nurses’ biggest priority was his aching concussion and the dried blood smattered against the back of Wyatt’s head. Plenty of his other wounds were given time to stop bleeding on their own before anyone had the chance to wrap them, and even fewer were re-opened through cleaning. Yeah. Yeah, they could have fucked up their job there. 

To think he’d be able to watch a show in peace hasn’t been the wisest move. To think today would be any more peaceful than the day before and the day before that was fucking stupid. 

Wyatt holds no irritation from his voice. “Sure. Yeah, sure, let’s keep gawking at me. Sounds great.” 

Might as well happen. Might as well fucking happen at this point. 

“Drop the attitude and bear with me.” Her thumb touches the spot, and he winces. “Do you want an infection?” 

It’d be easier to agree if she weren’t dicking around, nudging the sensitive spot once more from a different angle. The touch stings fiercely, burning as the initial pain winds down, but Kim doesn’t let up even as he lurches forward. 

Her other hand latches to the back of his shirt collar. Instinctively, he pulls back. A few hundred go-arounds of the collar grab as a kid might as well have been for this moment. 

“S- sorry.” Like clockwork. As if he hasn’t changed a bit. 

“Stay still.” Kim leans down, her gaze burning more than the wound. “They missed something here.”

No shit Sherlock, Wyatt loses the chance to quip as Dad firmly grabs his shoulder. He obscures the view of Kim, reaching down to grab something from her bag, too far out of peripheral to make complete sense of. 

Dad’s grimace is poorly hidden. 

“You might wanna brace yourself.” 

“What’s she gonna- AUGH-” Dad’s arm stops him from twisting, pushing Wyatt against the cushion, his fingers digging into the material as Kim tries to fix whatever problem she sees. The burning turns raw. 

“ Ow ow OW -” 

“Stop it.” Kim huffs sternly. “You’re being a baby.” 

Wyatt whips his head around, ready to curse her out through gritted teeth. He hesitates. His aunt works intently, eyes focused, the way she looks behind the desk at University.

Again, Dad beats him to the punch. 

“Kim!” 

At least someone here cares about his dignity. 

Pain briefly subsides. Something in the wound loosens, matching the twitching of Kim’s hand. The relief is whisked away almost as soon as it arrives. 

“He is.” With that, Kim violently yanks away from the wound.

Wyatt yelps. Cold relief is immediately overtaken with a fresh, pulsing ache. Dad mercifully lets go of his shoulder, allowing him to writhe onto his side, hissing in pain. The thought that floats by- Oh, that feels better -is one he wants to strangle as badly as Dad and Aunt Kim. 

“Oh, wow.” Dad’s nervous edge doesn’t fade. His attention is drawn to Kim’s ‘discovery’. 

Glimpsing it from the edge of his vision, held firmly in a pair of tweezers, is enough for Wyatt to shoot up. 

A thorn, nearly as long as his fingers, bright green dulled beneath a layer of red gore. The same green that emerged from a chicken wire cage, one of many came inches away from tearing him to shreds. A piece of something that wanted to kill him. 

That let him get away. 

You have to- 

No. No. Not now. They don’t need this now. 

Fuck. There’s no fucking way. 

“Here- I need to cover this back up.” Kim dabs the newly-opened puncture with a cotton ball, manifested somewhere from her purse. “Marv, can you grab some ice?” 

It doesn’t hurt as much now. Wyatt stares at nothing, feeling nothing, adjusting himself to let Aunt Kim do her work. She and Dad tag-team, scrounging up an ace bandage and an ice pack to calm down the angry redness. 

Wyatt says nothing, scratching Zeke’s head as she rests it on the cushion. 

It was with him the whole fucking time. It was real. It’s right there, a piece of It. 

One thorn isn’t gonna prove anything. It won’t help them guess anything. 

It was real . Not some haze from falling down a cliff, memory mussed up in cover stories and lies that are hard not to start believing. So it was definitely, absolutely real. 

Funny how that reminder comes in the form of getting manhandled like a fucking kid. 

Wyatt doesn’t settle back down like Dad and Kim do. He rises to his feet, feigning uninterest to hide the boiling mix of rage and terror lurking under the surface. He sulks up to his room with a haphazard excuse- Sorry, I’m tired, I’ll catch up later - followed up the stairs by a number of cats he doesn’t bother to count. 

Just tired. Why wouldn’t he be tired? Maybe a little pissed off, too. Maybe a lot pissed off.

Dad and Kim share a glance as Wyatt’s disappears up the second floor, the denotation written all over their faces.

Concerned. Guilty. 

Summer days are long, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s the time of the day where heat begins to fade back into the earth, inviting cool breezes and the stir of night. Nyctinastic flowers, fireflies, bats, birds, fragments of nature falling into the circadian rhythm the same way they’ve been for years uncounted. 

It’ll never get old. Not to her. 

Kim gingerly shuts the door behind her. Like any old door, it rattles, taking an extra push to close. 

She hands her old friend a glass of tea as she moves to sit down. 

“Thanks.” He smiles weakly, taking half of a sip before setting it down at the foot of his chair.

She nods, settling in the glider next to his. This one creaks more, but the clamor fits like a glove with the rest of dusk, a distant song of insects and birds filling the air. Through the day, the wind’s been slowing down, but an occasional gust flitters through the trees to remind them it’s still there. 

“No, Thank you. ” She looks out into the back yard: a select few buildings and a mowed plain of grass nestled in hillside forest. Closest to the porch, a flourishing garden, flanked by a foggy greenhouse and the looming workshop further away. “I’ve always loved this old property.” 

His yard is flourishing. Field work is one thing, but having a diverse woodland in proximity to air conditioning has been a treat over the last few years. The greenhouse works its own wonders, holding more than a few specimens that needed their own TLC, something Marv was always happy to provide. 

Team effort pays off after some years. Kim spots new clusters of flowers on the edge of the woods. Native plants, whose seeds were scattered by her hand.

She sighs in content, calm and reverent. “ Come a long way from the hallways, haven’t we?”  

Marvin laughs the same old half-chuckle that he always has. A laugh all too easy to tease, but he’s heard enough of that. There are better things to talk about. With the right cues, Marv’s an open book.

“Yeah, it’s been something.” 

He looks out into the green, fingers twitching. Undoubtedly thinking about Wyatt. 

But it’s rude to assume. Marv surprises her sometimes. 

Still, Wyatt’s almost always where chit-chat inevitably leads. After today, Kim can’t think of a more appropriate time to cut to the chase, as sloppy as it feels to shift the mood. Not everything can be as exact as she’d like it to be. The thorn is the first thing to come to mind, followed by the rest of the reckless mess that is whatever Wyatt did to get himself practically impaled. 

Marvin is usually the one to shoulder those sorts of bumps in conversation. Not so much this time. He’s happy- Marv’s always been happier with her around -but his knuckles aren’t always so tensed up like that. He’s twitchy, uncomfortable, jumping at little things, trying to clear the path before she can walk it. 

Like now, stuttering out the gate. 

“So- I think I know what you’re gonna say.”

Right on cue. Kim gets it, she really does. 

But not even she knows what she wants to say. How much is there to be said? It’s been hours of talking, re-bandaging, chewing Wyatt out for not being careful enough, lecturing him with a script she knows he’s heard at least five different times about hiking safely, asking questions- almost none of those questions actually being resolved. 

Culminating in a way that may or may not have been a bit of an overreach. 

He’d all but crawled back up the stairs to get some rest, a select few of Marvin’s quadrillion cats trailing behind as he did, but none of them seemed to cool him off the way they typically do. 

She’s seen Wyatt angry- seen it since he was only a baby in his Dad’s arms -But Wyatt being angry and saying nothing about it is something she isn’t used to. It’s a massive red flag at best. Marv knows that as well as she does. 

“We were too hard on him.” She slouches, unconsciously matching her friend. The handling was too much, with the lecturing in mind. He needs less stress, not more. “It’s been a long time.” 

Since he stormed off without a word like that, but Marvin comes to a different conclusion. 

“Mhm. That- I- I don’t think we can just hold the problem down anymore. I don’t know. If it’d been me, I would start biting.” 

Kim stifles her own retort- You think? -with a half-cocked laugh. 

It can be hard to remember who Wyatt is now. Not the loud, curious kid obsessed with her specimen collection, asking the same questions over and over, the one who could never get enough piggyback rides from his dad. He’s still Wyatt , but he’s nearly an adult now. It pains her as much as it makes her proud. 

Marvin continues, “But I don’t really- where’s the line? How the Hell am I supposed to trust him after yesterday?”

A bit of a nightmare, really. On the other hand, how much can Wyatt trust them? 

Marvin has a point about biting back. 

“I think we can trust him to tend to his own injuries,” Kim reaches over to pat Marvin’s shoulder. “But I hear you.” 

Driving concussed was a death wish in and of itself. Factor in the way he likes to stumble around crumbling buildings alone, and all it adds up to is an unnecessary risk of him getting hurt. Hurt somewhere alone, where no one can hear him or help him. 

A distant, familiar cry echoes in the back of her mind, as if through labyrinthian halls. 

It’d be nice not to hear or think of that kind of death again. 

Marvin’s on the same page. 

He looks down through the floorboards of the porch. Her hand on his back, she can feel his breathing shift. 

"...I had the nightmare again. Last night."

Kim’s breath freezes in her chest. She remembers, as though it were yesterday, Marvin’s whimpers of sheer terror in that dark office room. Leaning down, she tries to look him in the eye. 

"The one with him?”

They both recall what was once repeated a dozen times, in his head and in his voice, haunting him, twisting and rotting with age. 

"Yeah. Yeah.” Marvin glances up at her, the fear in his eyes as familiar as nostalgia. “It was Wyatt this time."

Oh. 

That would do it. 

"It's been years , I just- I don’t understand..." He cups his face in his hands, rubbing at his brow, as Kim pats his back. Up from her chair, she leans into him, encouraging him to sit back up with her own weight. He does, still looking out into the woods, unable to find what he wants.

"Retirement gives you room to think.” It’s true; the tension in his shoulders, his voice, his everything, would be hard for a real friend to miss these days. “You think too much. Keep it at arm’s length."

“...Okay. Okay.” Marv shakes his head, poorly adjusting himself to sit up straight. “Alright. I’m gonna be fine.” 

It’s been a long time. Things are different now, but he’s still Marvin. He sighs in one big huff, trying to shake off the fear. It hasn’t fully left his voice by the time he tries to change the subject. 

“Speaking of arm’s length, did- did you figure out what it was? The thorn?” 

She’d almost forgotten. 

Forget Wyatt, forget the nightmares- the thorn is its own tangled-up mess that Kim can only begin to unravel. 

“Not yet.” Kim reaches into the purse slung over her shoulder, pulling out a ziploc bag with the thorn resting lengthwise on the bottom. She angles it so that the blunt, broken-off end slides into the corner of the bag instead of the sharper end. “I’ve checked what I can for local flora, no matches. Either it’s invasive or it’s one-of-a-kind.”

It’d be easier if direct comparisons were on hand, but a floral encyclopedia has done well enough for her until now. Some thorns and flowers on the pages have diagrams, or real-size sketches, but this one has yet to line up. 

“Oh. You kept it.” Marvin’s never been good at keeping a poker face. For a moment, his lip pulls up in disgust. 

“And rinsed it. With gloves. Enough to get the blood off.” She holds the thorn in the bag between her thumb and index finger, scrutinizing it in the porchlight. Marvin leans in to get his own look, hesitantly curious of the bright green specimen, blunt end tipped with magenta.

“ Jeez. He probably feels better with that out, but God , where do you find a thorn this big?” 

“In your local reckless idiot nephew.” Kim’s response is dry, but still enough to get Marvin to huff a laugh. “Okay, but seriously. I was starting to think it could be from a gooseberry, but it’s just too big.” 

Too bright, too. She’s seen enough gooseberries to know their thorns are a darker green this time of year, not bright like this. Especially after being torn from the host plant. Even then, gooseberry was the closest of all other candidates. 

Kim sighs, frowning as she gazes down at the thorn. “Where did you go, Wyatt…” 

The chances that he just-so-happened to find a big, healthy plant with thorns this size in the middle of the woods is slim to none. It’s too specific, lining up too well. Either her nephew is just that lucky, or something isn’t right. 

It would be far from Wyatt’s first lie to them. 

Marvin looks down in thought, glancing between the thorn and the darkening wilds beyond the porch. He gestures out to something beyond the trees.  

“Could it be from an orange tree? I remember those being thorny.” 

There’s something out of the box. 

“Hmm.” Kim hums, tapping her foot, jogging her memory. The closest citrus groves are far from here, closer to the coastal side of California. According to Marv, Wyatt had been gone a few hours. 

“How long was Wyatt gone?” She says, looking back up at Marvin. “Before he got home.” 

“It was a wild day, but… About four hours. Somewhere around there.” Marvin quivers his hand back and forth. It’s an incomplete picture, but all she needs to know. 

“The closest groves are up north from here. It would have taken him around six hours to get there and back, and that’s if he wasn’t impaired.” 

Not to mention the mountains, the sun in his eyes and the busy roads. Wyatt’s crafty, but he’s not that crafty.

Marvin blinks. 

…certainly crafty enough to lie about where he went, even through the fog of a concussion. Sneaky bastard. With Wyatt, white lies go without saying, but even those manage to slip between the cracks.

Enough of a reason to wrestle him out of disaster every now and again, but watching Wyatt sulk away to safety doesn’t exactly bring a feeling of justification.

“I mean- Where else would he have gone to find something like this? And fall into it? You pulled it out from such an odd angle. It-...” 

Doesn’t make sense. Not one bit, but she’d be damned if she didn’t enjoy a puzzle. 

Kim slouches, glaring at the thorn. She carefully pulls back the seal of the bag, fishing it out to feel it between her fingers. Citrus would have a barky, woody texture for their thorns. The shape doesn’t match- too rounded instead of flat -but texture may offer something. She runs a painted nail over the surface. 

It doesn’t scratch. It doesn’t even feel like a plant. She prods it with her nail, tap-tap-tapping uncharacteristically. Marvin turns to her with an eyebrow raised. 

“What’s wrong with it?” 

No, no, this can’t be right.

“Marvin? Is this… plastic? ”