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It was quiet in the morning. Terzo slipped from Primo’s room while the elder Emeritus was still sleeping. He didn’t go to his room. Instead, he wandered around the empty halls, listening to the sound of his footsteps echoing off the walls. The sun was barely visible, thin rays of pale orange and yellow light filtering through the windows, catching dust particles floating in the air. Terzo slipped out a side door and wandered across the grounds, bypassing the garden and heading across the open field to the woods that bordered the grounds. As a kid, he’d always found solace in the woods. In both the woods and the ministry, he was boxed in, but sometimes the box was nice. Sometimes the box protected you.
The rain started just as Terzo ducked under the trees. The thick foliage protected him from the sudden downpour, only the occasional droplet sliding off a leaf making its way to the forest floor. Terzo wandered deep into the woods, until the ministry was completely out of sight, and it felt like he’d been dropped into the wilderness from above, stranded in a vast expanse of green and brown. The air smelled richly of earth and pine wood. It leaked from the peeling bark of the trees, rose up from the moist soil, slid off the wet leaves like teardrops.
A sudden snap broke Terzo’s reverie. It had sounded like a twig being stepped on. He turned towards the sound, his senses heightened. There was a short silence, just long enough that Terzo wondered if he’d imagined the sound. Then he heard something else, something that sent a shiver down his spine.
“Strayed a little far from home, haven’t you?” It wasn’t a voice he recognized, but it sounded menacing and cold, and when Terzo whirled to the source of the voice he saw a very tall, very broad man striding towards him. He was dressed entirely in black, with a mask covering half of his face, and a bunch of cloth balled up in one hand.
“W-who are you?” Terzo took a step back, his balance nearly quitting him. From behind, he heard a rustling sound, and to his dismay a second figure emerged from within the trees. This man was carrying a baseball bat, slung lazily over his shoulder, and at his hip there was a gun.
“Don’t be alarmed,” said the first man. He lifted the bundle of cloth, letting it fall loose. It looked like an empty sack. “We’re not here to hurt you.”
“Let’s just make this easy,” said the man behind him. Terzo’s head whipped from side to side. If he made a break for it now, before they got any closer, maybe he could lose them in the trees. He had to know these woods better than they did. All he had to do was get within screaming distance of the ministry, and someone was bound to hear him, if nothing else. They wouldn’t dare try to take him when he was so close to home.
The Sack man was only a few feet away, and the Behind man sounded dangerously close. Terzo turned and sprinted madly, kicking off the moist earth with all his might. He heard both men let out cries of frustration, and two sets of heavy feet came thundering after him.
Terzo ducked his head as he ran, lifting his arms to protect himself from the low branches that scraped his skin. Wet leaves slapped his cheeks, and he felt thin droplets of water sliding down his neck. The trees passed him in a blur, the ground spiraling beneath him as he sprinted madly. His heart was hammering, his breath cold and thin in his throat. He could see empty space in the distance, a sheen of rainfall over the field, and beyond it, the ministry. Home. Salvation.
Rough hands grabbed him from behind, hauling him backwards. Terzo screamed, surging forwards with strength he hadn’t thought he possessed. He broke away from the man’s grip, dashing for the tree line. He was so close. He was so close.
Another pair of hands gripped him, and this time, before Terzo could break free, he was dragged not back but downwards. Rough hands forced him to the ground, and the sack was slammed over his head, plunging the world into suffocating, musty darkness. It reeked of old fish, and Terzo could taste it.
“Let me go!” he struggled pointlessly, as his hands were yanked behind his back. A zip-tie tightened around his wrists, biting into the skin.
“Easier or harder than you thought it was gonna be?” said one of the men—Terzo thought it was Sack.
“Easier,” replied Behind. “We didn’t even have to sneak into their fake church.”
Terzo kept struggling against their hold, mostly for the sake of his pride. He’d never been a physically strong man, and against these two meatheads he doubted he could have taken them even if they were the ones zip-tied.
The men shoved him along through the woods, but it was slow going. Terzo kept tripping over loose stones and exposed roots, falling to his knees on several occasions. As Sack hauled him to his feet after his third spill, he said, “this is ridiculous. Just whack him and let’s carry him.”
Terzo’s blood ran cold. “No,” he started, but there was a sharp whooshing sound, and then something struck the side of his head with a terrific crack. There was a second of head-splitting pain, and then nothing.
---
Copia hadn’t slept very well. He’d spent several hours tossing and turning in bed, until eventually he’d kicked off the covers and padded down the hallway to his ghoul’s room. They slept in communal disarray, draped over couches and sinking into bean bag chairs. Copia slipped onto the couch beside Dew, putting himself as close to the ghoul as he could without waking him. There he lay, half-asleep, for many hours.
He must have fallen asleep at some point, because the next he knew he was blinking awake to find Dew peering down at him kindly. “Hey,” he said quietly. Copia straightened, yawning, and surveyed the room. Everyone else was still asleep.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Dew suggested.
They stepped into the hallway, but neither made an attempt to move from the spot. “I assume you couldn’t sleep because Terzo screamed at you,” Dew said.
Copa had always appreciated his refusal to beat around the bush.
“I feel so guilty,” Copia confessed. “I... I know I should have told him, but I guess... it’s like a bad dream, you know? I... I try to put it out of my mind, and I guess... selfishly... I thought maybe I wouldn’t have to bring it up again.”
Dew nodded darkly. He remembered that day vividly—Copia had arrived on the set with no idea what was about to happen, and been presented with his beloved brother’s severed head on a platter. He’d been told it was just a prop, but the game was up when the blood started leaking onto his gloves. Copia had stumbled into the ghoul’s room a sobbing wreck, inconsolable for several hours. For days, he’d been like a ghost, wandering the halls with a sad, lost look in his eyes, wiping away tears and mumbling to himself like a man half-mad. He’d eventually gone back to his normal self, but it was clear the day had left its mark on him.
“I’m sure Terzo will understand,” Dew assured him. He decided to ignore, for now, the comment about him being selfish. There was a time and a place for that discussion, and when Copia was looking seconds away from bursting into tears was not the time. “He’s just... angry, and hurting. I mean, that must have been quite the shock for him.”
“I just... I wish I could have stopped him,” Copia said. “I should have just said I was sorry. Maybe he wouldn’t be so angry.”
“Honestly, Copia?” Dew laid a hand on his Papa’s shoulder. “I don’t think anything could have snapped him out of it yesterday. Sometimes, people just need to be angry for a bit.”
“I suppose.” Copia worried his lip. “But...”
When he trailed off, Dew nudged him. “But, what?”
Copia stared at his shoes. “Do you... do you think he meant it? That he... that he isn’t my brother anymore?”
His voice broke at the word ‘brother’ and he turned away from Dew, lifting a hand to his mouth. Dew sighed gently, sliding his hand from Copia’s shoulder to snake his arm around the man. “No,” he said, “I don’t think he meant it. Like I said, he’s angry and hurting. People say things they don’t mean all the time when they get like that. I mean, remember that fight Swiss and I had the other week? It was about pasta shapes, and we both said some shit we’d better hope isn’t true.”
Copia chuckled wetly. “Thank you, my dear ghoul,” he said quietly. Dew smiled, nuzzling into Copia’s hair.
“Anytime. You’re my Papa, for Lucifer’s sake.”
The morning went pleasantly for about an hour more. Then Omega burst in, looking for all the world like a wild dog. His entrance awoke the entire room, and immediately a chorus of annoyed and confused voices filled the air.
“Aw, what the hell--”
“Who’s banging pots?”
“Omega, what--”
“None of you heard it?” Omega demanded.
Copia rose to his feet. “Heard what, Omega?”
The ghoul’s face darkened. “Terzo. He was screaming.”
“What?” Copia glanced around the room, as if someone might have the answers. He was met with matching confused stares. “Omega, what are you talking about?”
“He’s not in his room,” Omega said in a breathless rush, “I checked. I couldn’t sleep, so I was stalking around the grounds, and I heard him scream—a real scream. One of fear.”
Copia stiffened, his face paling. “You-- you know it was him?”
“I’d recognize him anywhere,” Omega said with conviction.
“Okay.” Dew stood up beside Copia, laying a hand on his arm. The man was shaking. “Let’s-- let’s not panic, okay? We’ll search the grounds, and we’ll inform the clergy, and we’ll... we’ll find him, okay, everyone?”
He was speaking with a confidence he didn’t feel, to a room full of people who damn well knew it. But he had to say something. Because other than that, all they were left with was that Terzo was gone again, and this time, they might not get him back.
---
Everything was dark. He felt smothered by something rough draped over his face that he couldn’t shake off no matter how hard he tried. His hands were tied behind his back, and his feet were tied as well. His skin felt chaffed and rough. Bitten into. It hurt.
His head was pounding. The pain started at the back of his head, flowering out like a skeletal hand squeezing his skull. With every jostle, a wave of nausea hit him, and he had to swallow a mouthful of vomit.
Jostle?
He could hear a rumbling engine and muffled voices talking. There was a faint song playing through a hailstorm of radio static. It wasn’t one he recognized.
I the Lord of snow and rain... I have born my people’s pain...
The car hit a bump in the road, and Terzo coughed up a mouthful of stomach bile. He tried to twist away from it, but the stench followed him, and when he slumped in exhausted defeat, something sticky pressed against his cheek.
I have wept for love of them... they turn away...
He wanted Primo. He wanted Omega. He wanted to go home.
They hit another bump, and the spike of agony in his head dragged him under again.
---
The next time he awoke, it was to a bright light. He groaned, rolling away, but rough hands held his head in place. “Alive?” someone said. Even though they were high above him, they sounded like they were underwater. Or maybe he was the one underwater. Terzo tried to blow bubbles, but he couldn’t get a full breath out.
“He’s alright,” someone else said. Was that Sack? He didn’t know. Terzo squinted against the bright light, hazy, dark silhouettes hovering over him.
“Do it now,” one of them said. Terzo whimpered. He’d been meaning to say “no” but apparently, his tongue wasn’t working.
He felt a quick, sharp pinprick in his neck. He gasped, panic flooding his mind. Not again, not again, not again...
Darkness overtook his vision, and it occurred to him, and he slipped away, that he didn’t remember what it had felt like to die. All he knew was that it hadn’t hurt this much.