Work Text:
Jeff sighs as he steps out of the car. His joints pop, the sound sharp and sickly satisfying. He takes a moment to look around the cul-de-sac, at the neatly trimmed bushes and freshly mowed lawns, and wonders how his parents managed to afford the move, even with his dad’s promotion. He guesses his mom has something to do with it; she always longed for a more lavish lifestyle than their mobile home had to offer.
Liu hops out of the car behind him, the twelve year old vibrating in excitement as he takes in their new home. He turns to Jeff, yelling about having dibs on the biggest room before taking off at a sprint to the front door.
“Liu,” Margaret calls, “Honey, the door’s not even unlocked yet.”
He watches his mom chase after Liu, thin heels tapping against the paved driveway. The noise is aggravating, not that Jeff would ever say anything.
Honestly though, she’s a little overdressed for a five hour car trip.
Inside, the house smells faintly of fresh paint and cleaning supplies. It was fully furnished, movers paid extra to set up their rooms before the family arrived. Jeff’s room is bigger than Liu’s, a fact that earns a loud groan from his brother. Boxes of his belongings are scattered around the floor. He can’t find the energy to unpack any of it.
Morning comes devastatingly fast. Jeff stumbles into the kitchen to find his mom deep in conversation with a stranger over coffee. A tall, cheerful woman who introduces herself as Barbara, their neighbor from down the street.
“Oh, Jeff!” Margaret beams, her smile too bright, too wide. “Barbara has a son your age! Isn’t that nice?”
Barbara adds, “His birthday is this weekend. You’re all invited!”
Jeff just stares, silent. His mom’s smile falters, then sharpens.
“Maybe,” she says, voice dripping with hidden anger, “you’ll even make a couple of friends.”
Barbara glances between them, her cheer dimming. She mumbles something about needing to get home. Margaret escorts her to the door, and Jeff lingers, listening to the forced politeness in their goodbyes.
As soon as the door clicks shut, Margaret starts yelling.
Two days later Jeff finds himself wandering the block with Liu. His brother had wanted to explore and it became Jeff’s responsibility to entertain him. There are a lot of kids around, playing in their yards or riding their bikes down the road. A kid passes by on a skateboard, before doing a double take, kicking his board up and catching it in a practiced motion.
“Nice hoodie,” the boy says, voice dripping with mockery. He has shaggy brown hair, a chipped front tooth, and an ugly smirk that sets Jeff on edge. Two others appear behind him, flanking Jeff and Liu like wolves closing in on prey.
Jeff straightens, his fists clenching. “Can I help you?”
“Maybe.” The boy, Billy, gestures lazily toward his friends. “This is Troy and Keith. We’re a little short on cash. Think you could help us out?”
“You serious?” Jeff scowls. “You sound like a fuckin’ idiot.”
The skateboard comes down faster than Jeff can react, the hard edge cracking against his skull. Pain explodes in his head, vision swimming as he stumbles back. He pulls his pocket knife from his jeans, mind eerily calm even as rage bubbles in his chest. The big guy, Troy, he thinks, lunges, and Jeff doesn’t hesitate to stab him in the side. Blood blooms across Troy’s shirt, his scream shattering the quiet suburban air.
Jeff’s head starts buzzing, like a swarm of bees have nestled in his skull. He doesn’t know where Liu is.
Laughing wildly, he runs, road twisting beneath his feet
When the cops show up later, Liu confesses. His voice trembled, his lie shaky and unconvincing, but it didn’t matter. Margaret clung to the excuse, spouting something flowery about “specialized care” and how Liu needed help they couldn’t provide at home.
Jeff listened, numb. The words, thorny and sweet, felt like biting into a rose.
That night, something whispers to him from the woods behind his house. In his dream he meets something ; a god maybe, or a devil. It asks him questions he doesn’t know how to answer. The giggling children make it hard to think. It hums and sings and speaks a language old and cursed.
He wakes suddenly, heaving breaths loud in his empty room. There are dried tears on his face and his sheets are soaked with sweat despite the violent chill seeping into his bones. The humming doesn’t stop.
His parent’s still insist on going to Billy’s party that weekend. They dress up real nice, too, dad’s favorite polo and mom’s expensive jewelry. Jeff throws on his white hoodie and walks out the door before they can make him change. Margaret gives him the evil eye and his dad pretends not to notice.
He’s sent off to the backyard as soon as he gets there, his parents heading inside with the rest of the adults. There are a dozen kids scattered around, playing a game of tag that involves water guns. Jeff heads to the back, hopping the fence and wandering into a small patch of trees behind the cul-de-sac. He leans against the rough bark and dozes, lulled by the rustling leaves.
He wakes to rough hands hauling him off the ground. Keith pins him against a tree, the bark scraping his back through his hoodie.
Billy stands in front of him, holding Jeff’s knife. The blade gleams in the dappled sunlight.
“Missing something?” Billy sneers.
Jeff doesn’t hesitate. He slams his head back, the crunch of Keith’s nose is followed by a howl of pain. Jeff slips free, lunging at Billy. They hit the dirt in a tangle of limbs.
The knife skids into the leaves, and they scramble for it. Jeff’s fingers brush the hilt, but Keith yanks him up and tosses him aside.
The wind is knocked out of him and Keith kicks him in the stomach for good measure, once, twice, three times, before Jeff rolls onto his side and pukes in the leaves.
Then comes the smell: sharp, chemical, choking. He flinches as liquid soaks through his hoodie, cold against his skin. His lungs spasm as he tries to crawl away, but the laughter behind him seals his fate. The click of the lighter echos in his ears like a gunshot.
He screams as his world erupts in flames.
His skin grafts itch. He doesn’t care enough to ignore it, clawing his way through freshly healed skin until his arms and back are red and inflamed. His hair got caught in the fire, the majority of his face burned and scarred. He’s lucky to be alive.
At first, the scars made him feel hollow, like a shell cracked open and scraped clean. But the emptiness became clarity, the pain became purpose. His old self had died in the fire, the ashes swept away. All that remained was something more. Something untouchable.
He looks in the mirror and it feels like becoming a God.
The fire was his rebirth, a new beginning, his awakening.
Gods don’t sleep. They don’t feel. He can’t feel-
He carves a smile into his face. Lets the blood dry on his skin.
The humming in his ears grows until his skull feels full with it, brain quiet for the first time in days.
The False God asks its question. Jeff answers.
The Detective sighs, leaning back in his chair as he skims the case notes for the umpteenth time. Jeffrey Woods—burn victim turned brutal murderer. It was a bizarre case, no doubt about it. The file is thick, filled with gruesome photos of crime scenes and reports from horrified witnesses. The murders of his parents were particularly unsettling, both bodies left in grotesque displays of violence that spoke to an unfathomable rage.
But the thing that tugs at the Detective’s interest, the detail that stops him from closing the file altogether, is the kid’s sketchbook. When the police had dropped it off with the other pieces of evidence, he’d barely glanced at it. Just a piece of junk from a deranged mind, he’d thought. Then he opened it.
The Detective takes a long sip of his coffee. It had long gone cold and he grimaces at the taste, gathering up the case documents before carefully sliding them back into their folder. The images on those pages still haunt him, but he can’t help but feel a strange sort of empathy for the kid turned killer.
Every page of that sketchbook had been a harrowing tribute. The drawings were dark, frantic, with fear or rage, The Detective will never know. It hadn’t been just a monster to Jeffrey; it was the monster , the one that haunted his dreams, his thoughts, and maybe, just maybe, pulled his strings.
The cases aren’t officially connected, at least not yet, but something in his gut told him that they are pieces of the same puzzle.
The file in question is thinner, less notorious, but no less unsettling.
Tobias Rogers.
The Detective leans forward, his fingers brushing the edge of Tobias’s file as his mind works through the threads tying these two cases together. Two boys, both drawn into the darkness. Both changed by it. And in the heart of it all, something watching, waiting in the shadows.
If he could just figure out what connects them, what it was, maybe he could make sense of the madness. Maybe he could stop it.
Or maybe, he thought grimly, he was already too close to being its next victim.
The road stretched ahead unendingly as Tobias stared through the passenger window, his mother a silent figure next to him. She had been in a hurry to leave the hospital, and as a result, he still wore the thin scrubs the nurse’s had provided him with.
His mother had yet to look at him. Though she never said it, he knew what she thought. Though there had been no way for him to predict the accident, he was the only survivor, and that, inherently, made it his fault.
His sister would be alive if he had died. He has no proof of this, but he knows it to be true. He’s always been the curse in their family, and it held strong enough to keep him alive.
The bandages around his arm provide a grounding pressure, keeping him from slipping completely into his wandering thoughts. Typically, the ride home wouldn’t take this long, but his mother had taken a winding back road, boarded by a tall, dark forest.
She sighs and he turns to look at her, her small diamond earrings glinting in the fading sunlight. “You’re bleeding again,” she says, brow creased with disdain, “Napkins are in the glovebox.”
Toby hurries to obey, momentarily forgetting about his arm and hitting it on the center console in his haste. He sees his mother roll her eyes when she thinks he isn't looking. He grabs a napkin from the glovebox and gently dabs at the blood dripping down his chin; he must have bitten through his lip without noticing.
Exhaustion slowly drags at his limbs. He stuffs the bloody napkin into the cup holder. Letting his eyes fall shut, he’s asleep within moments.
He dreams of the crash, of the violent lurch of the car, of his sister’s final scream cut short.
He startles awake to his mom shaking him. She starts walking to the house when she notices his eyes open. Toby probably won’t see her for the rest of the day. He sighs, unbuckling his seatbelt and emerging from the car. The neighborhood they live in is quaint, dotted with small rows of houses on either side of the street. He makes his way up their small porch, almost tripping over the concrete steps in his haste to get inside. His mom left the door open, and he quietly shuts it behind him
His father is home, the deep timber of his voice echoing off the walls. He can’t hear what his mother says, but it’s obvious they’re arguing about something. There are beer cans scattered around the living room and he’s careful not to knock any over as he makes his way to his room.
He closes his bedroom door softly, quickly changing into a t-shirt and a pair of sweats, eager to be rid of the hospital scrubs. He settles on his bed, hands twitching. A dark shadow catches his eye for a moment, something darting outside his window, but he quickly brushes it off. The pain meds he’s on are strong and sleep pulls at his eyelids. A nap before dinner couldn’t hurt.
He wakes to heavy footsteps and harsh knocking. His father says nothing as he walks away, and Tobias takes that as a sign to be as unobtrusive as possible. He quietly makes his way to the kitchen where his mother is setting the table. He eats in silence, for the most part. He can feel his fathers glare from across the table deepen when a rapid series of blinks makes Toby set his fork down.
His father slams his hands against the table when Tobi tics again, shoving his chair back harshly. His mother watches with a frown as his father heads to the living room. The silence is oppressive as his mom stares down at her plate, broken by the sound of an opening beer can.
“You know it makes him angry when you do that.”
Tobi looks up to see his mother staring at him, frown deepening the wrinkles on her face.
He doesn’t know how to respond, so he doesn’t. He watches as his mother leaves the table, disappearing into her bedroom like a ghost.
He lays awake in bed that night, tossing and turning. Every time he closes his eyes, he hears the screech of tires, feels the violent, shuddering impact of the car; his sisters scream echoing in his ears. He can feel each heavy breath as it leaves his chest and he shivers under his comforter. Throwing the covers off himself, he paces in front of his window, fingers pulling at his hair. Harsh, heavy sobs wrack his small frame, making his shoulders curl and knees buckle.
A whistle slips past his lips and he stills, chest heaving as he tries to calm himself. He’ll wake up his father, at this rate.
There’s hair tangled around his fingers when he pulls his hands away and he can only hope the damage isn’t too bad. He settles on his bed and tries to wipe the wetness from his face with little success.
When he wakes it’s still dark outside, the barley there stars shining through his window the only source of light. A humming noise seems to vibrate through his bones, calling, calling. Something. Him, maybe? He’s pressed against the screen of his window. The humming is louder here, seeping under his skin. There's something calling from the woods. Calling him .
He sleeps in late the next day, and the day after that. His mother tries drawing him from his bedroom for dinner but he refuses to leave. On the third day, his father takes his door off its hinges and throws it into the backyard. Toby can’t bring himself to care. He doesn’t have the energy.
The humming from his window seems to grow louder every night, until, eventually, it’s all he can hear. It clouds his mind and keeps him from sleeping. Thoughts slip through his fingers like fish in a stream. Nothing lingers anymore. Any fleeting emotion he feels is quickly smothered. Even his father’s harsh screaming doesn’t evoke the familiar rage it used to. Or, was he ever angry? Hasn’t he always been numb?
There are drawings on his wall. The same figure, over and over and over. He doesn’t remember making them, but he knows they’re important. He knows it will save him, that it will turn him into something more than the hollow shell he is.
Waking up means nothing anymore. He can’t remember why he keeps doing it. The whispering is louder when he sleeps.
Something is calling to him. He’s getting ready to listen.
The hallway is dark as Toby makes his way to the garage. His legs shake under his weight but carry him all the same. His hair is thinning, strands falling out as he brushes it back with his hands. It’s speaking to him now, the dark webs tangling in his thoughts. He doesn’t know where he’s going, until he’s there. Doesn’t understand what it’s telling him, until, with sudden, frightening clarity, he does.
There’s a hatchet hanging from the wall in the garage. He takes it.
He’s running through the woods. Something heavy coats him from fingers to elbows. The shirt he wears sticks to his skin, peeling away with every stumbling movement. He runs until his legs give out, then keeps going, bare feet sinking into decaying leaves and freshly turned dirt.
Something is calling. He will answer.
The file is gruesome, to say the least. The Detective can barely glance at the crime scene pictures before feeling nauseous. He stacks the papers neatly on his desk and slides the pile across his desk. A piece of paper flutters to the ground, catching his gaze on its slow descent. He stands with a hearty groan, eyeing the empty coffee cup on his desk. He might as well get a refill while he’s up.
He grabs his cup and heads to the break room, paper momentarily forgotten in his haste for more caffeine. The clock on the wall ticks ominously, the sound grating on his ears. The station is almost completely silent at this time of night, nothing but call operators left at their desks, mumbling softly to each other. He flicks on the light and messes with the shitty coffee maker until it turns on, brewing himself a nice pot of liquid dirt.
Closing his eyes, he leans against the counter, letting his head rest on the cool surface.
When his coffee is done, he sits up slowly, eyes aching as he pours himself a cup. He takes a long drink and winces at the flavour.
A shadow catches his eye and he whips around quickly, hand reaching for the gun in his holster. He sighs in relief when he sees a familiar face looking his way.
“Jane,” he sets his cup down, now wide awake, “Here for your report?’
She leans against the wall, arms crossed in annoyance. “I don’t know,” she huffs, “Are you awake enough to hear it?”
The Detective grumbles an apology and leads the way to his office. Jane remains quiet as she follows him, but he’s used to that.
“Sorry it’s a mess,” he sighs, motioning to the papers littering his usually pristine workspace. “I’ve been reviewing some old case files.”
Jane raises her eyebrows as she turns on the light. The Detective squints at the sudden brightness, rubbing his face as he settles behind his desk. He hadn’t even realized he’d been reading in the dark.
Jane settles in the seat across from him with the type of grace he’s learned not to be jealous of. She’s dressed as she always is; a dark turtleneck and jeans, her long black hair pulled into a sleek ponytail, little wisps falling across her forehead. Perfectly put together, as always.
It’s hard to tell what she’s looking at, with her eyes dark as they are; he can’t help but think she’s judging him.
“I found something. Something big.”
It should be exciting. New information in cases like these are hard to come by and mostly written off. Despite that, he feels nothing but dread. When Jane brings him info it is, unfortunately, always accurate.
She doesn’t wait for him to compose himself before tossing two photographs in his direction. At first glance, they seem to be pictures of children. The one he picks up first is a group of teenagers on a dirt road. The second, a younger group of kids on a playground. Both are slightly distorted, and his eye’s burn looking at them.
The Detective looks at Jane for clarification, but her gaze is locked on the photos. He turns one over, looking over the writing on the back. It’s small, written in delicate cursive, but he can read it well enough. “We didn't want to go, we didn't want to kill them, but it's persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time…”
He sets the photograph down none too gently. “Where did you find these?”
Jane shrugs, which usually means he doesn’t want to know.
“Is this it,” he mutters, examining the photos again, “Is this what we’ve been looking for?”
When he looks up, Jane is gone and the office is dark. An empty coffee cup sits at the edge of his desk.
There are no pictures. His desk is clean.
The sound of rain pitters at his window, and, for a moment, he swears he sees something outside.
Jane leans on the wall outside the police station, cigarette smoldering between her fingers. A humming sound breaks through the sprinkling rain, soft, delicate. Is this what the others heard? Such a sweet thing, comforting those poor souls before devouring them. How thoughtful, to make those final, dark moments a little more peaceful before tearing them apart.
She doesn’t look up when it’s dark shadow falls over her, pretending not to notice the heavy presence at her side.
“I almost had a normal life you know, before all your bullshit.”
The creature doesn’t move, but the soft humming continues, comforting her, expecting Jane to spill her guts to it like all the others. All her dirty little secrets pouring from her mouth for it to feast on.
She doesn’t. Some things she will take to her grave, and the life she could've lived is one of them. The life before Jeffery Woods; before something that should've been lost to time came back to claim it’s rightful place in history.
Taking a long drag of her cigarette, she turns to meet the devil's favorite angel.
It’s hard to look at, really. The very air surrounding it seems to vibrate and swirl, its shadow stretching further than the dim light should allow. Its very shape seems to morph and change before her eyes.
“False God,” she whispers in fake reverence, “Soul Taker, ugliest , most pitiful saint, what brings you to my parlor?”
The humming becomes a heavy, overbearing thing as the rain picks up. Jane smiles, all teeth, and blows smoke in its pretty white face.
It leaves. She drops the cigarette butt into the growing puddle under her feet. Lights another and wills her hands to stop shaking. The Detective is waiting, after all.
It’s time to make her report.