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Steinbeck is woken up by an insistent tug to his sleeve.
Momentarily, he mistakenly thinks he’s back home, already expecting the little whine that could only come from his younger sister, Ruthie, ever so ready to start the day by annoying her big brother. He realizes a few seconds later that it isn’t Ruthie, and that this is definitely not home. He opens his eyes, blearily, the blurry interior of the camper’s truck cabin coming into view. He squints at the LED clock in the dashboard – 4:05 am, it reads – before turning to look over at his partner in the other seat.
Lovecraft isn’t even looking at him. He has one hand on Steinbeck’s sleeve, giving him yet another tug, but he’s focused on something outside the window. There’s something strange about this picture, John realizes - Lovecraft's face is bathed in some kind of eerie bright purple glow.
Steinbeck stares at him for a moment, his sleepy mind too perplexed to make heads or tails of what he’s seeing. Lovecraft, as if sensing his confusion, speaks up in his characteristic low, dry monotone as he gestures to the window:
“…Look at that.”
Steinbeck looks. Instantly, the mystery of the source of the bright purple glow is solved. Outside their window is a house, and within one of its windows is a big sign, letters blazing neon, reading:
PSYCHIC READINGS
PALM READING
OPEN
The shape of a hand, also made from neon lights, hangs above the letters.
It’s odd. Steinbeck momentarily wracks his brain – last night, too weary to trust himself at the driver’s seat (and smart enough not to let Lovecraft have a go on the dark, winding roads), had pulled over at the first exit he saw. He had parked near some kind of building, assuming it was something like a store, but now, it seems like it wasn’t a store at all. Whoever lived in this house must have turned the signs on not too long ago.
As Lovecraft continues to stare at the lights, transfixed, Steinbeck takes a look outside. The air is heavy with dense gray fog. Vague outlines in dark grey of fences and plants and stones stand like shadows around them and Steinbeck shudders, a certain chill settling into his bones. Something about this place, this situation, is making his skin crawl, and he doesn’t know why.
“Psychic readings?”
Lovecraft asks, softly, finally turning his head back. Steinbeck focuses his attention on him – the glow doesn’t soften Lovecraft’s face. It does the opposite. It sits in the edges of his face, deepening the shadows already there. He looks almost skeletal.
Steinbeck rubs at his eyes.
“Yeah. Psychics are those people who says they can read your future.”
“So, an ability user?”
Steinbeck lets out a snort at that.
“What’s so funny?”
“Lovecraft, I guarantee you, ninety percent of these people have never even heard of ability users before.”
His partner doesn’t seem to grasp the statement – his thin eyebrows furrow together in confusion, so Steinbeck speaks up again with a sigh.
“They’re con-artists, Lovecraft. They say they can see the future, but it’s actually them just getting a good read on you and making really good guesses about that.” He pauses, before smiling, ruefully. “Besides, I’m sure that if most of them were real, Fitzgerald would’ve snapped them up into the Guild by now.”
Lovecraft nods. “Like that man. What was his name…? David…?”
“Not David, it was…right, Dan Brown. Yeah, that guy’s useless. I mean, cool power and all, but only thirty-three minutes into future? And only he can interpret whatever nonsense he writes? I can see why Fitzgerald doesn’t like him all that much.” Steinbeck moves to take the hat resting in his lap, moving to casually place it over his face, covering his eyes in quiet, comfortable darkness. It’s still too early to even be talking, in his opinion. They still have a long road ahead of them to the next mission, and the more he stays awake, the more he knows he won’t be able to get the rest he needs to keep focused on the road.
It’s blissfully silent for about two seconds before Lovecraft, irritatingly, pipes up again.
“…And palm reading?”
Steinbeck lets out a groan, lowering his hat to look over at Lovecraft with an unamused look. Honestly, the man was like a child. He’d been on Earth for countless number of years, yet things as mundane as dialing a phone or using an elevator were completely outside his realm of knowledge. Sometimes, the questions he asked were almost adorably naïve, but sometimes it’s like he couldn’t speak in anything but questions.
“What about palm reading?”
“How does one even read a palm?”
Lovecraft gazes quizzically down at his own hand, squinting as if he can somehow find letters hiding in the books and crannies of his skin.
“They look at the lines or something.”
“Lines?”
Steinbeck huffs, reaching out and pulling Lovecraft’s hand closer to him by the wrist. He proceeds to tap at the center of Lovecraft’s palm.
“These lines. You see them?"
“Yes? The…creases.”
“They read these.”
A pause.
“I don’t understand.”
This is getting nowhere. “Look, I don’t know, either. I’m not a psychic, Lovecraft. It has to do with…like, the length and shape of some lines? Some of them mean stuff like how long your life is, or if you’ll find love. Stuff like that. I think it’s a load of nonsense, anyways.”
He stares down at Lovecraft’s hand for the first time in this conversation. It’s incredibly pale and bony – all Steinbeck needs to do is shift his fingers a little and feel the ridges slide underneath the skin. It’s odd, really, he thinks – Lovecraft’s skin almost looks puckered, like he’d just been in a long shower, parts of it almost looking too white and bloodless to be comfortable.
They look like a drowned man’s hands.
He presses down unconsciously on what he thinks is a finger bone, and something shifts and squirms underneath – Steinbeck instantly twitches in surprise. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that Lovecraft has things slithering in his depths, quite literally.
“Anyways!” says Steinbeck, clearing his throat in an awkward attempt to suddenly change the subject and ignore what just happened - he lets go of Lovecraft’s hand. He then reconsiders, reaching a finger back to tap at his pinky and thumb. “A psychic would never be able to read this. You’re missing fingerprints on these ones.”
Lovecraft looks down. Sure enough, his pinky and thumb are about as flat as a board. He purses his lips in concentration, and swirled lines slowly start to appear and twist through his skin, developing the intricate fingerprints that identify a human hand.
Steinbeck almost wants to laugh, but he doesn’t. Here is a being who is trying to fit in with humanity who somehow is too lazy to form his own fingerprints sometimes.
Somehow, that fact is both ridiculous and chilling at the same time.
He doesn’t have much time to think more on the topic when Lovecraft speaks up again, gesturing to the hand already sitting comfortably in his lap.
“Give it to me.”
Steinbeck blinks. “What?”
“Your hand. Give it to me.”
“What, do you want to have a go at reading it? You’re not a psychic either, Lovecraft, did you forget that?”
But Lovecraft only gives him a dour look in reply and gestures again to his hand. Of course. He wants his turn too, and Steinbeck, unable to say “no”, lets out a sigh and reaches his hand over for Lovecraft to take in his cold, spider-like fingers.
Steinbeck’s hand is different. Where Lovecraft’s hand is long and pale, Steinbeck’s hand is short and stocky, his fingers thick and callused from years of hard work. Lopsided scars, pale against his tanned skin, almost look shiny against the low light – how many times has he opened them up and stuffed a grape seed inside to take root in his blood vessels? Too many times to count, really. His fingernails are a bit long (Steinbeck reminds himself to cut them soon), and there are a few dark flecks here and there from blood he hasn’t washed out yet.
He doesn’t know what Lovecraft will find, in the lifelines of his hand. He doesn’t even know why he wants to try to find anything in the first place. Then again, this is the same man who spends hours counting wood grains in the door of the cabinet in the back of the camper truck. Lovecraft had so many idiosyncrasies that it was hard to tell where the quirks began and the man-shaped creature ended.
Lovecraft pores over the creases, murmuring to himself, his fingertip tracing along each ridge, each line. Steinbeck watches him in silence, seeing the way he cocks his head, dark eyes narrowing. The purple glow is still there, but with Lovecraft putting his back to it, it almost forms a bizarre outline, a halo, giving him more of an ethereal appearance than usual.
Steinbeck finally speaks up, stifling a yawn with his free hand.
“So? Find anything you like?”
The other jerks his head up, blinking in slight surprise.
“…Your future is very short, John Steinbeck.”
“…What?”
Lovecraft uses a hand to curl Steinbeck’s fingers up to form his hand into a fist, leaning forward. His pupils have swollen to the edge of his eyelids, turning his eyes into dark, depthless holes.
“You will continue to work like this, and your death waits for you. It waits. It comes. It waits. You have come close to it already many times. You chose this. You know it. Part of you knows it is inevitable. Will you accept it? Embrace it? It’s a part of you, now.”
Steinbeck feels bumps prickling up and down his skin and he pulls back, but Lovecraft only holds his grip tighter, as if aiming to pull him into the sudden void of a man he’s become.
“Lovecraft, cut it out, it isn’t funny-“
Lovecraft continues, ignoring Steinbeck’s plea. The words pour out of his mouth like black tar, low and sonorous, and only his mouth moves in place, the rest of his face frozen, unmoving.
“Your future is dark because you have made it this way, John Steinbeck.” He speaks the name as if tasting it, as if it’s a pair of strange words he has never had the chance to say before. “Your death slips a hand around you and claims you because your choices have made it this way, John Steinbeck. Innocents will scream and writhe in senseless pain because your heart is cold and black, John Steinbeck, and you do not care to ease their sorrows because your own sorrows weigh too heavy on your own mind.”
“No, I-“
“Will you go down this path? Will you continue to allow monsters to thrive in your shadow? Your hands will be so red. So red. Your grapes, red. Your blood, red. Your wrath, red. Can you save yourself? Unlikely. Your future is short and it is red, John Steinbeck. This is what I see for you. This is what fate will bring to you on a silver platter.”
The man known as John Steinbeck shakes his head, his senses dull, unwilling to listen. He doesn’t know where this came from. He doesn’t know why Lovecraft is this way. There’s something terribly wrong, there’s something inside this cabin that isn’t something he knows. His eyes jerk in his sockets – he wants to look away, he wants to avert his gaze, but something won’t let him. Lovecraft’s nails are digging into his skin. There’s a low ringing in his ears. Lovecraft is something wide and imperceptible and dark as sin, all skin and bones and flesh and black matter, alien stars dotting around the edges of his form.
And then Lovecraft, suddenly, lets out a huge yawn.
Just like that, whatever had come over him dissipates – he pats the top of Steinbeck’s hand lazily before releasing it, settling back into his seat with a weary look. The darkness is gone. His eyes are normal. He scratches at his chin nonchalantly, and Steinbeck hears a strange, audible sound, like drumming pounding over and over in his ears.
It’s his own heart. It’s racing like mad.
Steinbeck lets out a ragged breath, like he only just gotten the chance to breathe, and stares over at his partner. His tongue feels dry as he tries to struggle for words, finally blurting out:
“Lovecraft…what the hell was that?”
Lovecraft looks over at him, arching a thin eyebrow.
“What was what?”
“You…you just…come on, Lovecraft, don’t play dumb. You just…it’s like you were…”
He can’t put words to it. Like there’s a barrier of sorts, preventing him from even describing what he just saw. Lovecraft turns his head away, to the window, and Steinbeck follows his gaze, and what he sees suddenly makes his heart feel like it’s dropped into his stomach as he dimly realizes what has changed.
There isn’t any purple glow, anymore. The sign, which was shining so eerily in the fog, is gone. The house stands, derelict, its windows void and empty.
Lovecraft shrugs, shifting in place languidly as he glances back at the other, some strange half-smile creasing upwards on his face.
“…Looks like the palm reading is over.”