Chapter Text
Three cylindrical towers of crumbling, reinforced concrete stand at the edge of a field of yellow grass. Grain silos, long out of commission since the new ones were built a few years back, they have more bats and bugs in them now than anything else. They’re such an everyday sort of haunted. Someone has even been so bold as to tattoo graffiti along the side of one.
Tyler stares up at them, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans, and contemplates.
At the top of the central tower sit two vultures. Their wings are spread out to either side of their bodies to catch the rays of the sun. It’s a stance Tyler more closely associates with music services at church. Hands held out, head tipped back, worshipful.
But they’re creepy animals, regardless, with their mostly bald head and hunched posture. Not to mention the general association with roadkill and rotten meat. Though, it’s really not their fault they’ve got a bad rap.
Someone has to clean up the dead things in the world.
Vultures just work a really thankless job.
Tyler tugs the cellphone out of his back pocket and snaps a grainy photo of them perched there on top of the silo. Certainly not paying him any mind.
He ignores the long line of text message notifications, the recent missed calls. Instead, he tucks the phone back in his pocket with a frown and picks a june bug off his pants. It wiggles its legs at him, caught between his thumb and his forefinger. After a long moment, he flicks it into the grass.
His morning walks are supposed to be good for him. Exercise, he’s been told, is the key to a healthy body and a healthy mind. It sounds like something cooked up to sell gym memberships to him. But ever since his dad’s best friend offered the entirety of his farming property to Tyler for his “exclusive recreational use,” to put it in his words, he hasn’t minded the walks so much.
Better than kicking up and down the sidewalk of his own neighborhood at least. He always feels like people are watching him from their windows when he does that. Which is stupid, he knows. And vain or, better yet, paranoid. Probably a fun mixture of all three.
He shakes his head roughly, fingertips clawing at his short hair as he does. It’s a calming gesture he’s picked up, at least when there’s nobody around to see him. Or maybe “calming” is the wrong word. More like “warding,” fending off unwanted thoughts.
Probably if anyone else caught him at it they’d think he’s really lost it. Or maybe that he has fleas. He’s not sure which would be worse.
At the end of an overgrown dirt road, his ride home waits beneath a shade tree. Wrestling open the door to his borrowed truck - his dad’s “kick-around” as he calls it, which really just means it’s old and decrepit - Tyler climbs into the driver’s seat and grabs for his journal.
It’s a fancy leather-bound book that his mom bought him when he started therapy again. He thinks she probably intended it to be something he’d keep his thoughts in, self-reflect and hopefully self-correct. Instead, it’s turned into his weird art project.
Unwinding the leather cord from around it, Tyler lets the journal fall open where the cracked spine is most familiar. Pages of scribbled ideas, images clipped from magazines, ripped-out book pages highlighted in yellow and underlined in red. There’s even a few of his awful camera-phone photos printed out at the local drugstore and taped to the pages.
A picture of his sister in a bright red raincoat, her back turned somewhat ominously to the camera. A bonfire spitting sparks into the night sky. The discarded antlers of a young buck sticking up from wet leaves. Each annotated with story ideas and errant nightmares.
It’s all the darkest contents of his mind spilled out in gory detail, just not the way that anyone originally intended.
He thinks of it as the working-bible for his movie.
Really, he doesn’t know what put the itch in his head to make his own horror movie. Maybe it was too many late nights in his dorm, staying up watching bad indie flicks instead of studying. Maybe it’s his kid brother’s endless rants about the Slenderman games. Maybe his mind just needed something to cling to when everything else in his life fell through the rotted-out floor of his skull.
Tyler thumbs through the book until he reaches a clean page, snatches a ballpoint pen from his cup-holder, and uncaps it with his teeth. He spends a few quiet minutes gnawing on the already-mutilated pen cap and jotting down ideas from today’s walk, and he finishes by leaving enough room for the new photos before scribbling, at the very bottom:
Towers of Silence
Tapping the end of the pen to the paper, he looks back over what he wrote with bleary eyes. Good for his health or not, these walks are murder on his allergies. Apparently every pollen-producing plant in Ohio grows somewhere on his dad’s buddy’s farm, and every one of them wants Tyler dead.
If he weren’t already going by the drugstore to print his pictures, he’d stop by just to stock up on some more allergy medicine. And a Red Bull. He could really use a Red Bull.
Convincing the aged truck to start is a fine art in timing and spitefulness, but with a little luck and a few choice words that he’s glad his mom isn’t around to hear, the engine rattles to a choking half-life. Tyler eases his way down the old dirt road between fields that have been left fallow this season. An impressive cloud of dust kicks up behind his back tires, all the way back to the paved but pothole-riddled highway.
He’s fussing with the radio nobs and praying for a clear signal when something in the road catches his eye.
For a moment, it’s a human-shaped bonfire with a blackened figure at the center. An effigy, body made of twisted together sticks moving at odd angles, set ablaze like a Roman candle, leaving fire-touched footprints on the cracked blacktop, right down the yellow-dashed center line. Tyler blinks.
And then it’s a flesh-and-blood person.
He hits the breaks and swerves the truck to miss them. He shoots over the shoulder, through the shallow ditch, and partially into the next field. When he finally gets the old truck back under control, it jerks to a bone-rattling stop. The back of his skull impacts with the headrest of the seat. Whiplash, white hot TV static explodes behind his eyes, and for a moment, his whole world spirals into darkness.
After an indeterminate amount of time, Tyler becomes faintly aware of a Katy Perry song playing through the truck speakers. He groans, the heel of one hand pressed to the center of his forehead. He can feel his pulse through his whole body.
“What the-?”
Tyler glances around, trying to connect his present situation - “E.T.” playing in his ears, truck engine still rumbling, tires inches deep in mud at the edge of a field - to the string of snapshot memories from the moments before. Then he remembers the guy standing in the road.
Unbuckling from his seat, Tyler falls through the driver-side door and into the tall grass. His legs are jelly beneath him, and the ground feels like a waterbed, constantly shifting under his feet. His weight pivots. Shaking hands cling to the side of the truck for balance.
When he finally manages to get himself back onto the gravel shoulder of the road, he spies the other guy, still walking down the center of the highway like he wasn’t almost struck at full speed by a moving vehicle.
Tyler jogs after him.
“Hey! Hey, are you okay?”
But the stranger doesn’t turn. Doesn’t acknowledge him. And when Tyler reaches him, he sees why.
Dark eyes half-lidded and distant, jaw just slightly slackened, he watches as the person shuffles along zombie-like. He’s sleepwalking, Tyler thinks. And he’s pretty sure that everything he’s ever heard about sleepwalking says you’re not supposed to wake the person who’s doing it. But he feels like this is pretty extenuating circumstances, considering another vehicle might come barrelling down the road at any moment and squash them both. Bug-on-windshield.
He grabs one of the stranger’s tattooed arms and pulls. “Come on, man. Wake up!” He glances down the road in either direction. No one’s coming. Yet.
Then Tyler snaps his gaze back to the other guy’s face when he hears a groggy string of incoherent words. He blinks at his surroundings as Tyler draws him to the side of the road where the truck is idling. The moment their feet are off the pavement, the guy gasps and twists his arm from Tyler’s hold.
He stumbles back, but Tyler grabs for the front of his shirt and keeps him from falling back into the road. Thrown off-balance, they both skid down the gravel slope into the ditch where they each land gracelessly in the grass.
The jolt sends a new wave of pain through Tyler’s neck and shoulders, singing all the way down to the base of his spine. He has to lay back in the dirt a moment just to breathe.
The other guy hisses a few choice profanities before pushing himself up onto one elbow and glancing down at Tyler.
“-was sleepwalking, wasn’t I?” Tyler hears through the ringing in his skull.
He nods, barely able to move his head as he squeezes his eyes shut against the sun rising higher in the blue June sky. “I almost hit you, dude.”
Now he realizes that part of the pain is from his heart hammering itself to death against his rib cage. Tyler presses a hand to his chest and wills himself to breathe deep. It’s hard, though, when every muscle in his back is twisted into knots.
“Sorry, I’m - God - I’m so sorry.”
Tyler glances up to see the other guy - curly brown hair frizzed in the morning humidity, sun-tanned shoulders shaking where they slope from a wrinkled Space Jam tank - with his head between his knees. His fingers are laced together at the back of his skull. His chest heaves with every breath.
For a moment, Tyler sees a flash of his vision from before. Humanoid figure of burning sticks, the flames nearly ten feet high. He swallows the acid burn of bile in the back of his throat.
“‘S cool,” Tyler sputters through his own ebbing panic. “You do that often?”
It takes the guy a moment to respond. He’s rocking a little and rubbing his fingertips over the back of his scalp like he’s trying to self-soothe. “Unfortunately, yeah. It’s- It’s happened once or twice.”
After a moment, he raises his head. “Is your truck okay?”
Tyler snorts. But even that hurts. “Dude, I could have killed you, and you’re worried about the truck?”
But to placate the guy, because he really does look worried about it, Tyler juts a thumb over his shoulder as he sits up from the grass. “It’s still running. I guess that’s as good as I can hope for. It’s an old beater anyway.”
They both go silent then, enough for them to hear the final bars of the song spilling out through the open driver’s door.
Tyler is all nerve-endings and jello. He knows he should say something, ease the guy’s mind, but he’s pretty sure his brains have turned to mashed potatoes. He wonders distantly why all his metaphors for his current state are food-related and then remembers he hasn’t had breakfast.
Then the guy extends a hand to him. It’s still shaking a little.
“I’m Josh, by the way.”
Smirking slightly, Tyler shakes his hand. It’s all wrong for this moment, a gesture he’s only ever seen his father employ with any real social effectiveness - “Every man needs a good firm, handshake, Ty” - or something reserved for the awkward, formal greetings involved in Sunday church services and job interviews. Not for sitting in a ditch off the side of a highway enjoying a collective panic attack. But he figures he’ll throw the guy a line.
They’ve both had a rough morning.
“Tyler,” he says by way of greeting.
Another car speeds past on the road, startlingly close.
“Tyler,” Josh repeats back at him, and then sighs his next words through a bashful smile, “thanks for not hitting me with your truck.”
“Any time, man. Any time.”
Tyler scrubs his fingers through his hair. He’s certain it’s sticking in every possible direction now. Not to mention his t-shirt and jeans are covered in dust and wet grass. But he figures Josh will give him a pass on his appearance, all things considered.
“So, Josh, is there someone you want to call? Or maybe I could give you a ride?” Tyler fishes in his pocket where his phone has managed to hang on through all the recent harrowing events. He holds it out in offering to Josh between the knuckles of his first two fingers.
Josh waves his hand at the device. “Nah, technology hates me. I swear, it’s a curse. It’ll probably break just from me touching it.”
Tyler raises an eyebrow, but he doesn’t question it. He’s got his own thoughts about the reality of curses, after all. Not that he thinks now is the time to share.
“But,” Josh continues, looking up at Tyler through his lashes, “I wouldn’t mind a ride into town, since you’re offering.”
“Cool.” Tyler pushes himself up from the ground, takes a moment to find his balance, and then offers a hand down to Josh.
When he pulls him up, they nearly fall into each other. It seems they’re both a little shaky on their feet. But once Josh settles, he lets go of Tyler’s hand and nervously brushes his palms on his shorts. Then Tyler jerks his head for Josh to follow him. They round either side of the truck and both hop in.
The moment Josh clicks his seat belt into place, the truck’s radio bursts with a scream of sharp static before going dead. Tyler looks at the radio, looks at Josh. The other guy’s face is grim, his eyes suddenly turned dark, mouth pressed into a thin line. He looks annoyed. But he doesn’t look surprised.
Finally, he cuts a glance towards Tyler and raises his eyebrows as if to say - See, what I mean?
Tyler nods slowly. “You weren’t kidding - noted.” He drums his hands on the cracked leather of the steering wheel, still a little jittery with nervous energy. “So, where am I taking you, Josh? I’m just gonna keep saying your name so I don’t forget it.”
Josh has started scratching at his arms, which even Tyler can see from where he sits are covered in bug bites. Probably from his sleepwalking escapade. “Oh, well, I hate to put you out of your way-”
Tyler focuses on navigating the truck back onto the road, but he’s beginning to think this Josh guy is maybe too nice for his own good. “It’s not a problem, really. I was heading back into town, going to run by the drugstore to grab some things before heading home. That’s the direction you were coming from, right?”
Josh nods, still scratching. “Drugstore, that sounds good. Maybe they’ll have a landline I can use to call a ride. And some anti-itch cream.”
“Landline?” Tyler gives a sideways grin as he brings the truck up to speed and feels the last of the anxiety fade from his chest.
Shrugging his shoulders, Josh glances around the interior of the truck. “They tend to work better for me than cellphones.” He leans down and picks something up off the floorboard. It’s Tyler’s journal.
“Oh, don’t-” Tyler starts, realizing too late.
But the book automatically falls open in Josh’s hand, to a page covered in psycho-looking scribbles and more disturbing photos.
Josh frowns. “Is that- is that a picture of a dead rat?”
Now it’s Tyler’s turn to look bashful. He scratches at his scalp, a little more violently this time. Great, Josh is going to think he’s a psycho with lice.
“So, this is the part where I say that I’m making my own horror movie, and that’s why I have a photo of a dead rat in my journal. For inspiration. Not because I’m a serial killer.”
He chews on the inside of his cheek a moment, eyes cutting back and forth from the road to Josh’s unreadable expression, before asking, “You regret getting in my truck yet?”
But Josh only shrugs and lets the journal fall closed again. “Nah, I like horror movies.” He grins, and Tyler feels a weight lift from his shoulders.
“So, what’s this movie about?”