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Douglas Keane, Jr. is grieving.
It’s an angry kind of grief: nestled in the pit of his stomach like so many smouldering coals, ready to ignite if it’s given enough fuel. He’s not usually the type for angry, but he’s not usually mourning his father, either --- much less mourning a father he’s just found out was murdered --- and the circumstances are extenuating enough that he allows himself at least this. It’s not hurting anyone (except maybe himself) and he doesn’t have it in him to strive for numbness anymore.
Numbness is for after.
After what? He’s not entirely sure he knows. In fact, that’s part of the problem, as his father is, quite simply, never coming back. Any version of after Doug might imagine is merely a perpetuation of this too-brutal fact. It’s an after he moves on. An after he picks up the pieces of a life he hadn’t expected to shatter so abruptly. An after that has, quite suddenly, come to include graveyard visits and flowers purchased from a nearby drug-store instead of family meals and holidays and get-togethers. An after born from grieving recollections of the love he has for his father and will never again be able to share.
Douglas Keane, Sr. was larger than life. A big man --- not particularly surprising, with his career built from law enforcement --- both in size and in personality, with a voice loud enough to match and still feel right. He actually went by Douglas. Dark hair, like his son’s, but with eyes lighter and greener than Junior’s brown could ever hope to match. Wide smile, when he showed it. Grim solemnity that seemed well nigh unshakeable when he didn’t. Seemed he could move the world when he glared, though those instances were few and far between. Never seemed the type to die.
Die, he had.
No one was quite sure how, though everyone knew it wasn’t an accident. It was hard to explain away the tell-tale gash of a knife stuck between two ribs and twisted. Harder still to explain away the deep slash of that same knife just under the hyoid. Folks who saw the body said they’d thought it was a smile at first, before they’d registered the blood, though no one was quite sure how that made any sense, either. (Perhaps it was a trick of the light. Fact of the matter was, strange things happened in the Witchwood, and when murder was on the easier to swallow end of the list, there are bigger problems than chasing down hallucinations.)
Doug didn’t care about the look of it one way or the other; it wasn’t like the optics --- in the most literal sense of the word --- could take away the fact that his father was dead. No, worse than that: was killed. Was murdered, in a too-isolated glade at the very cusp of the woods, with a knife no one could find and a killer yet more elusive.
Then again, at least there were traces of the knife. The killer had entirely vanished.
Perhaps even more than that: there was technically no sign they’d existed at all. Sure, the killing had occurred, no doubt. Sure, someone had to have perpetrated it. And yet there was no trace of another person in the glade at any point. No discarded paraphernalia that might suggest the other’s identity. No abandoned murder weapon or convenient trace evidence. No grass bowed underfoot save that resting beneath the body.
Nothing.
That didn’t stop Doug from stopping by, though. He’d spent hours out there, just… sitting. Thinking. Mulling over everything he knows. 0730, Douglas Keane, Sr. leaves home to go to work, but not before kissing his wife on the cheek as she gets ready for work and ruffling his son’s hair as he scrambles off to high school. 0800, he’s strolling into the precinct with a thermos of home-made coffee and a hello to everyone he passes perched on his lips. 0830, and he’s settled down for work. 1200, and he breaks for lunch. 1230, and he’s back at work. 1523, and he’s responding to an emergency call-out, situation unclear, no sign of when he’ll be back. No word, either, until the next morning when the search party finds him at 0400, dead under suspicious circs. It’s not much. Not enough. Too little for it to make sense.
And so Doug Keane sits and waits and thinks and watches and hopes to find out what happened, sooner or later, because to do otherwise wouldn’t quiet the fire in his gut.
– – –
He’s not always alone.
His first visitor is a friend. Any other day, he’d be ecstatic to see her; now, he’s burning too bright to do more than smile weakly at her. She’s got a thermos in one hand --- bound, he’s sure, to hold some of the coffee she’s so good at making --- and a container in the other, though she sets both down next to him first thing. “Here,” she says, and there’s a smile to the words. She wants to be a singer. With a smile like that --- the type to set butterflies in his stomach even now, with it twisted into knots --- he knows she’ll make it big. “Betcha haven’t eaten, have you?”
He shakes his head, though the motion feels a bit like too much and a bit like too little. “Nah. Not hungry.”
She shrugs. “Gotta eat sometime.” Sits down beside him, legs folded to match his, jean jacket discarded beside her. Orange hair stands stark against the leafy green backdrop. “Now’s as good a time as any.” She smells of the coffee she carries, of apples, of something burning. It’s a nice break from the smell of blood still thick around them. “Made my specialty.”
“You know I love your pie, Darlene.” Feels clumsy just saying it.
Her hand finds his. “I told ya I’m sorry yet?”
“Yeah.”
She nods, well aware. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.” He breathes in. (Sounds like he’s crying. He isn’t sure he’s not.) He missed her. “Me too.”
“You skippin’ class again?”
“Yeah.” He nods. That’s not the kinda thing he usually does, but he figures he’s got an allowance built up. Got a damn good reason, too, and couldn’t stomach the crowds either. The looks. The pity. The curiosity. “You think the teachers’ll be mad?”
“Nah.” She shakes her head. “They’ll cut you slack.”
Her hand hasn’t moved. She hasn’t either. “You’re gonna be late, you know.”
“I’m not goin’.” She shrugs. Grins his way with straight teeth and apple-gloss lips. She looks sad, and he hates it. Hates it even more knowing he’s causing it. “Figure I’ll give playing hooky a try.”
“Your classes–-”
“They’ll be fine, Douglas. You look dead on your feet.” She pulls the cap off the thermos and flips it over, then unscrews the inner cap and pours some of the contents into the cap. Then, she reaches out for his hand, waiting for his nod before pulling it over, wrapping it around the makeshift cup. “Here.”
He pulls it closer and breathes in the steam for a moment. “Yanno, Darlene, everyone else calls me Doug.”
She nods. “I know.”
“You could too.”
“Nah.” She shakes her head. Picks up her jacket and arranges it around his shoulders. “I’m special.”
Doug smiles, and it actually even almost feels genuine. “Yeah, you are.” He means it. Can’t mean anything like he means that. Feels like it’s the only thing that hasn’t changed in the after. “All the more reason you shouldn’t skip class, Miss Retro.”
“You tryin’ to get rid o’ me, Douglas?”
“Nah.” Never would. Didn’t think he could. That felt even more impossible than the ugly truth of his dad’s death. (Strange, the way the world built inevitabilities from impossibilities.)
“Good.” The grin was back, but it still didn’t ring quite true. “‘Cause I ain’t leaving.”
Doug didn’t get any answers that day, but he couldn’t quite begrudge the time either. Didn’t get answers any other day either. At least he had company this time; she stayed for the rest of the day and fell asleep on his shoulder when it got too late.
– – –
The second time, it wasn’t a person, and they didn’t walk in.
Not really, anyway; it was just that the clearing was empty and then it wasn’t. The figure in question was large --- too large for Doug to comprehend, anyway, and too large to be able to fit in the clearing at all, no matter how much it had clearly managed it --- with eyes so big that he could only see one at a time. The air no longer smelled of blood because it smelled of mildew and sea water instead, but the odour turned his stomach just the same.
The whole thing felt wrong. Not like Douglas’ death --- that felt wrong too, but in that oh-so-human brand of denial and anger and bargaining and depression that packaged up the unnameable so neatly --- but like Doug’s brain was breaking. Like something as old and unnameable as grief itself had popped into existence mere inches away. Like Doug had seen a circuit board and then gone back to being an ant, brain halfway to melting just from the strain of it.
“Who are you?” he asks anyway, and is half surprised he’s able to speak. “What are you?”
The sense of angry, writhing tentacles from just out of view. “That’s not very polite, little boy. Seems a little bit rude, don’t you think?” The oddest sense of something being pleased, carried only by the air. At odds with the words themselves. “Not a very nice thing to do at all! That hurts my feewings!” The word grates. Feels like an adult talking with a child’s voice. “Say you’re sorry!”
“Sorry.” He’s too numb to consider meaning it. Looks into sun-bright eyes again and thinks that maybe he’s looked too long by looking at all. Can see the curve of infinity and smell the darkness at the bottom of the sea until he blinks and feels himself again. Almost staggers under the weight of it. “Didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”
“Of course not! Don’t worry, though…” The thing gives the vague impression of grinning. It takes until then for Doug to process the fact that he’s not actually standing in the clearing anymore. Hasn’t been for a while. It’s too dark where he is now to be that little glade, and the smell of blood is stronger. “We’re going to be greattttttt buddy-wuds!”
The thing blinks away. Something else oozes into place. They’re less brain-breaking, but no less impossible. Poison-green eyes bright enough to be termed luminescent. Denim in four different styles, colours clashing. A body woven together of pieces equally dissonant. Scars writ in green slashes across wan skin, like a child with a highlighter had been set loose upon them, but leaving everything just lopsided enough to know they’re deeper than the skin itself.
They smile and it’s like the spread of an oil slick: vibrant and deadly. “Hiya there, Douglas.”
“Don’t call me that,” he says, but it’s instinct more than anything. Can’t quite remember why he feels so strongly about it. No, wait, he remembers. Someone else calls him that. Someone–
“Good ta meet ya. Seems it’s ‘bout time.” An apple --- as bright, toxic green as their eyes --- flips out of nothingness and settles into their palm. “I hear, you’ve got somethin’ you’re burnin’ to do.”
The smell of blood gets stronger again, though Doug’s not sure how that’s possible. “What?”
“You were sittin’ in that clearin’ for a reason, weren’tcha? Care ta share?”
Blood again. The shine of an imagined knife. The corpse he’d had to identify as being his dad, laid out on a silver tray with too pale features and a glaring red marring its throat. Are the images in his head or are they coming from the void around him? Could Doug even hope to guess? “My father…”
The stranger grins. “Yes?”
“I need to know who killed him.”
“Nah, nah, nah, that ain’t it.” The apple flies into the air. Drops again. Flies. A playful game of catch that Doug can’t help but track. “My boss likes ya too much for that.”
Doug blinks. Ponders the comment. Thinks about the knowledge he wants so badly and wonders why it feels purple. But, no, purple’s not right for him. He’s feeling too green for that. “What do you mean?”
“Ever heard the sayin’ knowledge is power?” Those teeth shine pearly white in the darkness. Doug wonders how many more are hiding out of sight. “That’s one kinda power. Ain’t yours though.”
Fair enough. “What is?”
“Well, now, that’s kinda up to you.” The apple flies. “Then again, kinda inevitable too.” Lands. “Funny how things work.”
“What is?” Doug repeats. Wonders if he even said it at all the first time.
“Ain’t it obvious?” Those eyes flare, power flickering in them as teeth gnash in the darkness. The oil slick is back, oozing through the darkness, and Doug wonders how to tell the danger from the colours. “Wrath.” The apple’s in Doug’s hand now. Doesn’t remember taking it, but then there’s a hand on his shoulder and the stranger’s behind him. “Vengeance.” A shrug that feels ill-fitting. “Call it what ya like.”
“Oh,” Doug says, like it’s obvious. Maybe it is. Feels green enough for him. “And what do I gotta do to get that?”
A laugh that sounds like broken glass and screeching metal and something screaming. “Oh, that’s simple! Works like anything ya want nowadays. Gotta give a little somethin’ up to get that big somethin’ ya want.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, nothin’ you’ll miss, don’t worry about it.” Sharp fingernails skim along the denim jacket still draped around his shoulder. He’d forgotten to give it back to Darlene. (He’ll have to remember to do that, once he wakes up.) “Just somethin’ ya cherish.”
Doug blinks. Feels like he’s coming out of a stupor, though his head’s hurting enough to feel like murder all its own. “Wait, what?”
“Think about it. Somethin’ got your dad dead, didn’t it?” Blood again. Doug can almost hear it dripping. “That somethin’s dangerous. Might just come back. Don’tcha wanna stop it ‘fore it can? Don’tcha wanna get it back for what it did? Maybe even help others like you in the process?”
“Yeah.” Dough nods. It’s hard to think, but he manages to wonder whether he should be worried about that response. Can’t quite bring himself to be anyway. “I do.”
“Could be dangerous. Don’t wanna let anyone else get hurt, do ya?”
Doug thinks of Darlene again. It’s hard not to on a good day. Harder still with her jacket around his shoulders and the smell of apples in the air. “No!” It’s the first thing he’s really, truly felt since he saw the thing in the woods that brought him to wherever here is. If here Is; he’s not quite sure. “Never.”
“Then it shouldn’t be a hard thing ta give up. Just keep her safe.” Did he mention Darlene out loud? How would this stranger know about her? “Just let her go. Give her up. Let her forget you and she’ll be safe. And you’ll have alllll the power you need.”
It’s hard to refuse. Harder still when he finds himself entirely, absolutely certain that something bad will happen if he does. Even harder with power and vengeance in the bargain. The anger’s burning bright and hot in his gut --- smoke, blinding him --- and he’s nodding more from the grief and the pain and the devastation of it than he is from agreement.
But it is agreement. And they both know it.
The stranger grins. “Alright, then. My boss’ll be glad ta hear it.” A moment, then: “You’ll be glad of it too. Catch!”
Doug brings his arms up on instinct. Catches the thing tossed his way before he realises what it is. A book. Black-bound. Something white on the cover he can’t quite see through the gloom. “What is this?”
“The power you asked for, buddy! Chock full o’ all the stuff you’ll need to do all the good your little heart desires. And all the vengeance, too. ‘Course, there’s rules…” They grin. “But, ehhhh, you’ll figure all that shit out for ya own self. Can’t just give ya everythin’, now, can I? Gotta read the book for that.”
They turn, like they’re leaving, and Doug shifts forward. “Wait!”
A glance back, almost unconcerned. “Yes?”
“Who did it?” A beat, then: “That particular knowledge was part of the deal.”
“True.” A nod. Then, again: “True.” When the stranger speaks again, every nerve of Doug’s body screams danger in blaring sirens and flashing red lights. “You wanna know who killed dear old daddy?”
Doug nods. Steels himself for the answer. “I do.”
The stranger grins. (Did Doug think the stranger was frightening before? It’s worse, now.) “I did.” Another laugh. Something is definitely screaming. “Catch me if ya can!”
And then they’re gone and Doug is back in the woods. He’d wonder if it were a dream, but he’s quite certain it wasn’t.
The black book in his hands was too much evidence to the contrary.
– – –
He finds Darlene as she waits for the bus to school, at their usual spot. She’s standing under the tree where they usually meet, arms crossed against the morning chill. She looks slightly confused. Smiles when she sees him coming, but it’s not the usual smile for him and that sends warning signals trailing up and down his back. “Hello,” she says. There’s no Douglas in sight. “Who are you?”
He blinks. “Doug,” he says. Watches as her eyes glaze over for a moment before snapping back to focus.
“Who are you?” she says again, like it’s the first time.
For a moment, he can’t help wondering if she just didn’t hear him. “Douglas,” he tries again. “What’s the matter: the cold gettin’ to ya?”
Her eyes have gone fuzzy again. He knows what she’ll say when she blinks awake again, but it still hurts to hear. “Who are you?”
He can’t bring himself to answer. Doesn’t know what he’d say anyway. Feels the weight of the book in his backpack like Atlas’ burden itself.
Waits too long. “You new?”
Doug nods, for lack of a better thing to say. “Yeah.” His voice sounds rough even to his own ears, and he’s pretty sure Darlene hears it too, but they don’t address it. He’s too busy feeling the floor drop out from under him to care about fixing it. “Yeah, that’s right. Very new here.”
She nods and smiles. It’s a polite smile. Kind. The sort of smile you give a stranger, not a friend since elementary school. “I get a name to go with?”
He nods. Tries to come up with one. Thinks of his father. “Duke,” he manages eventually. Her eyes don’t glaze over; he figures it’s fine. “The name’s Duke.” He reaches out a hand, waits for her to take it, to shake it with that fierce grip she’s always had. “Good to meet ya, Darl--” He pauses. Remembers that she hasn’t introduced herself. Fumbles the sentence ‘til it works without being creepy. “-–darlin’.”
She shakes the hand. “Holloway. Good to meet ya.”
– – –
Douglas Keane, Jr. is still grieving.
It’s Duke, now, and he misses the old name. Misses the simple times of being Doug. Misses the gentle curl of a familiar voice around two teasing syllables. Douglas, she’d say, and he’d pretend not to be tickled by it even though he always was and she always knew.
His grief has mellowed, some, though the coals still burn beneath a thick veneer of melancholy. He’s spent his time figuring out the rules instead of taming the fire, has worked most of them out. The book is his, to do with as he pleases, but he derives his power from the Lords who commissioned it and thus cannot act against Them too extensively lest They revoke their… blessing, They call it. (Curse, he prefers.) Can’t take out Uncle Wiley ‘til it won’t get him or Darlene dead in the bargain. Tries to help the kids he works with in the meantime and is glad of his supernatural life span in the process with how dangerous it is.
Not everyone forgets him; that’s an honour reserved only for her. She can learn nothing, or can retain nothing, or forgets everything as soon as she hears it. He stops trying as soon as he figures it out; the sight of her forgetting is too painful for further attempts. (A lot to do with her is painful. He’s almost starting to get used to it.)
She does become a singer. Does make it big. (Every album cover has a photo of a place he recognises because they used to hang out there. She takes what was once her usual spot every time. There’s never anyone in Duke’s old place. He collects every one.) Retires while she’s ahead. Opens a diner. (It’s called Miss Retro’s. Doug used to call her that, before he was Duke. Wonders if she remembers anything about where she got the name.)
When he meets her, he calls her darlin’ because Darlene hurts too much. Lets her call him Duke because it’s all he’s got left. Finds her whenever she forgets all the way.
The bell rings overhead, and he grins at her as she scrubs down the counter with a familiar greeting on her lips. Says hello back. “Hiya, darlin’.” Sits down. “Name’s Duke. Pleasure to meet ya.”