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Joan Kelly had a problem.
Said problem was currently sitting next to her, copying Joan's homework line-by-line. For the third time this week.
Vivian was the source of most of her problems these days. Joan, I spent my lunch money at the diner, can you lend me a couple dollars? Joan, if my mom calls, can you tell her I’m at your place? Joan, let’s sneak out to the lake tonight and –
Her best friend was a menace, and a troublemaker, and somehow had everyone else in town believing that she was a complete angel – hardworking and virtuous, like her twin sister Pearlanne, but magnitudes friendlier.
Vivian frustrated her sometimes, but Joan secretly enjoyed being the only person privy to her less principled antics. Not that she’d ever admit that, of course.
Viv turned the page of her notebook to answer the next question – a six hundred word essay summarizing the events leading up to the 1918 Collapse.
"Don't copy it word for word," Joan said. "Change the sentence structure, or something, or they'll figure it out."
"Glad you reminded me," Viv rolled her eyes. "I wouldn't have thought of it otherwise."
"Don't be an ass."
"Don't curse," her friend responded with a self-satisfied smirk.
"Why do you even need to copy that one, anyway? You must know more about the whole Collapse thing than I do, you could just answer it yourself."
"Yeah, well. Just 'cause I can, doesn't mean I want to." She tapped the pen against her mouth thoughtfully. "How does this sound: 'Ultimately, it was the termite-ridden support beams that proved the final straw leading to the mine's untimely and tragic collapse'?"
"Too flowery. You don't need that many words."
"Eh, as long as it makes sense. I just gotta hit the word count."
Joan reclined against the grass, gazing up at the sky. Still-green leaves fluttered down from the branches, and with the sun sinking below the treetops, the air was bordering on uncomfortably cool. Summer was fast ending, and she knew that within the next few weeks they would no longer be able to spend their evenings outside like this.
She rolled her head to look at Vivian, who was still curled over her schoolbook, the light of the dusk wreathing her edges in golden hues. Her hair had fallen to cover the side of her face. Joan quashed the urge to tuck it back behind her ear.
Behind Vivian, just at the top of the hill, the Scarlet Estate loomed. Imposing, creaking, and built high enough that it was visible from every corner of town, as if built for the sole purpose of reminding everyone else here who owned them.
Eventually, Viv closed her notepad and flopped onto the grass. “So, did you put in your application for med school?”
“Yeah”, Joan replied. “Actually, Doctor Holden talked to me about it last time he came for our check-up. He wants to retire soon, so he’s going to tutor me for the entrance exams.”
“And what, you’d be going straight after we’re done with school?”
“September,” Joan confirmed.
The breeze rolled over them, tugging at loose strands of Vivian's hair. "I'm gonna miss you."
"You don't have to miss me. I'll just be in Charlotte, you can come visit whenever you like."
Viv hugged her arms. "Charlotte… that'd be nice. I wish I could see it." There was a weirdly wistful note to her voice.
"Well, you can. I'll even come pick you up, we can drive there together. See the sights, eat some fancy city food…"
A grimace. “I don’t think Edwardine would like that very much.”
Joan snorted. “Since when have you ever cared what Edwardine thinks? She won't be there to impose her weird diet on you. Or her curfews.”
“No… no, it’s not that. I don’t think she’d let me go at all.”
“What are you talking about?” Joan scoffed. “You’re almost eighteen, it’s not like she’ll be able to stop you.”
Viv didn’t meet her eyes. She looked like she was thinking of how to phrase her thoughts, chewing on the words before they left her mouth.
“She’d find a way,” she said finally. “She doesn’t want to give me the opportunity to leave – I think she’s scared I wouldn’t come back. The town won’t survive without a Scarlet, and all.” She laughed, uneasy.
“There is a Scarlet in town, though”, Joan said, frowning. “Edwardine’s training Pearlanne to run the mines when she's gone, right?”
Viv opened her mouth to reply, but hesitated, and whatever she would have said was interrupted by the approaching sound of boots on gravel. Both girls jumped to attention as Pearlanne’s telltale screech echoed down the hill, as if summoned by the mere mention of her name.
“Vivian! Is that you? Get up here, supper’s nearly ready!”
Viv’s distant expression was long gone, and Joan watched her friend school her face into a perfect, neutral mask. “It doesn't matter. Look, I’ve gotta go. See you tomorrow, yeah?"
Joan didn't stop her friend as she stood, brushed the grass from her knees, and made her way up the hill.
Joan Kelly had a problem.
Quite a few problems, actually, if you counted her empty wallet, a broken boiler, and the three separate finals that she still had to face down before graduating.
Her main problem, though, was currently on the other end of the phone.
“We need you home,” her mother said, voice tinny through the line of the payphone. “Your father’s condition has… well. He’s not doing so good.”
Joan pressed two fingers into the bridge of her nose. “You know I have exams, mom. I can be home to help next Tuesday, I’ll come back as soon as I’m done, but I have to finish my finals first."
“He might have - Joan, he might not be here by then. Doctor Holden says he's in the – the final stages–” even through the static of the phone line, she could hear the break in her usually stoic mother's voice. “The final stages of life. His lungs are failing."
Ice flooded Joan's veins. She’d known this day had been long coming: the COPD her father had developed a decade ago had advanced into lung cancer the year she left for university, and there was no miracle treatment to reverse forty years of working down the mines and chain-smoking cigarettes. Still, the last time she’d visited, he’d still seemed as fit as a man his age could be – pottering around the kitchen humming tunes, playing rummy and drinking beers with his fellow retirees. Still smoking. He'd never stopped smoking – she'd never even thought to push for him to. Some prospective doctor she was.
Her mother continued. “We don’t – you know, you won’t need to give him medicine, or anything like that. We’re past that point now. You can bring your textbooks, study for your exams. I’ve not moved anything from your desk, there’s plenty space–”
“All right,” Joan forced the words through the lump in her throat. “I’ll be there tonight.” Without waiting for an answer, she hung up and stepped away from the booth.
God. It had been years since she’d last been in Scarlet Hollow. In truth, she'd been putting her next visit off, delaying it a little more with every school holiday: it was just a bit too far away, and there wasn't anything for her there any more, even Vivian had stopped bothering to write a year or so back.
For shame, Joan had even started thinking about reneging on her promise to Doctor Holden and taking residency somewhere a little larger – maybe Asheville, or Brevard, or hell, she could've even stayed in Charlotte.
Guilt welled in her chest as Joan recalled how brief her goodbyes had been the last time she left town. She’d been so absorbed by her studies she'd barely even spoken to her parents at all. During her time in school she'd called them on the payphone exactly once a week, as a courtesy, before forgetting all about them until the next time.
She wondered if they looked any different now. The ravages of cancer on her father, the daily stresses her mother had to bear year on year, compounded by decades upon decades of coal dust and cigarette ash.
Suddenly her head was spinning, and she sucked in a deep breath to dispel the surge of nausea. The air here was so different to the air in the Holler – grey and unnatural and disjointed. The volatile gas smell from the petrol cars city-folk favored hung in the air. Petrichor from rain on rubbery asphalt instead of forest floor. There was a constant hum of noise, but it wasn’t alive – no chatter of birds or rustle of trees, just the sputter of cars and wail of sirens, the buzz of the electricity grid.
It felt wrong, Joan thought, and with a wave of sudden determination – no, of absolute certainty – she realised that it was imperative she return to Scarlet Hollow as soon as possible.
The walk home passed in a blur. Joan slammed through the front door to her student apartment, its shoddy hinges whining under the force, and grabbed a duffel bag, three days' worth of clothes, the stack of textbooks she'd prepared to revise for Tuesday's exam. Then she left.
Her hands shook as she tried to jam the keys into her car door, and she dropped them on the ground with a clatter. She paused and took another deep, heaving lungful of air, clearing the fog that had wrapped around her brain like a thick blanket.
It was almost dark by the time Joan finally made the turn into Scarlet Hollow, tires skidding mud up her passenger door. Her car's pathetic headlights barely shone bright enough to illuminate the few feet ahead, but Joan took the corners almost by muscle memory, as if she hadn't been out of town for the last seven years – as if she'd never left at all.
Forest became fields became buildings, and soon enough Joan was speeding down Main Street, and the houses were the same, and the diner was the same, and the Town Hall still had that stupid statue out front, and the Estate still creaked in the distance. And in front of the general store, chatting animatedly with Sybil Forsyth, was Vivian Scarlet.
Viv turned, eyes lighting up in confused recognition as Joan's beat up car cruised down the road. She met Joan's eyes through the windscreen, and even in the dim of the evening Joan could see how much older her friend looked – as if exhaustion had already set in to her young bones, the bags beneath her eyes deeper and darker, gaunt beneath her high cheekbones.
Vivian dropped the bag she was holding to stretch out a hand, and her mouth opened around some surprised sound that looked like she might have been calling out, and –
– and Joan disregarded the idea of reconciliation. She couldn't deal with a second difficult conversation today. Besides, it had been seven years, what difference would another day make? She didn't even tap on the brakes.
Her heart didn't stop thundering in her ears until the car was sat in her parents' driveway.
Two days later, Joan held her father's hand as his lungs gave out. She did not cry. She didn't reach out to Vivian, or anyone else for that matter. The birds kept singing against the quiet rustle of the trees, and the town ticked on, as it always had.
In the aftermath, Joan wondered why she'd been so desperate to return. Perhaps it was the grief, the guilt of knowing she could have done more. Or perhaps she'd simply been homesick, and hadn't realised it.
It didn't matter. Just the act of returning had confirmed what Joan had always known in the back of her mind: that her life was not meant for any big city. She was meant to be here.
She returned to Charlotte, finished her degree, and packed up to begin her old-new life as Scarlet Hollow's resident doctor.
Joan Kelly had a problem, and despite her best efforts to avoid it, that problem finally came knocking at her door one chilly October morning.
“I’ve never liked this building,” Vivian said, shivering as the two of them walked through to the doors to the clinic. “Gives me the creeps, I’m not sure why.”
“I think you just don’t like doctors,” Joan said. “I’m surprised to see you at all, to be honest. I thought all Scarlets were allergic to medical professionals.”
“Hey, I only know one doctor. And I’m certainly not allergic to her, thank you very much. Though I’m starting to think she might be allergic to me, with the way she’s been ignoring me for the past – what's it been? A decade?”
"I've not been ignoring you, I've been busy. You could always come to visit, I don't have time to socialise in town any more."
Joan flicked on the light to the exam room. The blue-white of the tube lights threw Vivian's face into a greyish hue, a striking contrast to the smile she had plastered on. Joan had tried to make the room as comfortable as possible for her patients, but constraints on time and money had slowed progress to a crawl – the paint on the walls peeled under the cold damp of the building, and she was still doing most of her work from the previous doctor's awful plastic swivel chairs.
She'd not even managed to buy a bookshelf. For the past three years her old school textbooks had sat in hastily piled crates in the corner, waiting for the time a new home might finally arrive.
Vivian ran a finger along one of the dust-lined boxes. “Wow, Joan. I didn’t realise med school made you so disorganised!”
“It didn’t,” Joan snapped. “I just haven’t unpacked everything yet.” She sat in her chair, and kicked out the matching one opposite, gesturing for Vivian to do the same. “Now. Tell me what I can help you with.”
Vivian sat perched on the edge, clasping her hands on her knees in a mockery of the professional environment Joan was grasping at straws to maintain. She looked Joan in the eyes, and cleared her throat.
“I haven’t had a period in two months.”
Well.
Joan wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but it wasn’t that. She opened her mouth – closed it again. Then she asked the obvious question. “Is there any chance you could be pregnant?”
The corners of Vivian’s mouth twisted down. “I suppose it’s possible?”
“That sounds a lot like a yes.”
“Well yes, I suppose it does, but it was one time. And he didn’t,” she waved her hands vaguely through the air, trailing off. “You know.”
Joan stared her friend in the face with what she hoped was a neutral, professional expression. “So you didn’t use a condom?”
“N-no!” A blush crept up Vivian’s neck. “He didn’t have any, and I wouldn’t know where to get one. They don’t exactly sell them at the general store.”
“Fuck, Viv,” Joan exhaled, pressing her fingers to her nose. “First of all, if you need them, you can get them from me. Second, please don’t make me lecture you on the importance of sexual health. Some of these miners have barely been in town for five minutes, you have no idea what kind of diseases they’ve brought with them.”
Vivian laughed. “Okay, fine, fine. If it happens again, I promise I’ll be careful. But I don’t think… you know, I really don’t think that is on the table. It’s probably just stress. The Estate has been mighty chaotic lately, what with the baby Tabitha and all.”
Joan crouched from her seat to rifle through the cupboard at her knees. “Best to remove all reasonable doubt.” She dropped a slim box into Vivian’s hands. “Full instructions are in there, but you just have to pee on it. It’ll give us the results in a few minutes. Then we can figure out what to do from there.”
“I have to piss on it?!”
“Yes.” Joan span in her chair to point at the door. “Bathroom’s through the hall, on the left. You can come back with it when you’re done.”
Joan busied herself with menial tasks as Vivian left for the bathroom. Tidied her pen back into the pot of other pens. Shuffled the stack of papers on her desk. Wiped the dust off the pile of crates. Maybe the place would feel more like home when she finally got around to unpacking them.
She thought about the possibility that Vivian might actually be pregnant. Would that mean she'd come to the clinic more often? Pearlanne had only visited once during her own pregnancy, a formality in her third trimester to ensure the baby was growing as expected – and it was a miracle that Tabitha had, in fact, come out perfectly healthy, given her mother had not taken a single pause in her sixty-cigarettes-a-day habit.
Of course, if Vivian was pregnant, then there must be a father somewhere. Joan supposed she would have to deal with him, too. She wondered which of the latest cohort of miners had managed to catch her friend's eye. She shuddered at the thought of rough, coal-dust hands on her friend's delicate skin.
The door swung open and Vivian returned, unceremoniously dumping the used test on the counter. "A few minutes, right?"
"Shouldn't be longer than two," Joan replied, and slid a clean piece of tissue under the stick. "The time will pass faster if you don't look."
Vivian laughed, but there was an edge to it. "You know, now that we're doing this, I'm really quite nervous." She twisted her hands in her lap.
For a moment, neither of them said anything. The clock on the wall ticked too loudly. Joan made a mental note to swap it out for something newer.
"So," Joan began, awkwardly. "Would I know the guy?"
Vivian bristled. "Does it matter?"
"I suppose not."
Neither of them looked at the other. The room descended into an uneasy silence once more. Joan turned to her desk and pretended to fill in a form, scribbling nonsense on the lines as she counted the seconds. Vivian span in her chair. The hinges squealed.
After one hundred and twenty seconds, Joan looked back up. "It should be ready by now."
Viv's response was watery. "God, this all feels so serious–"
"Do you want me to–"
"No, it's alright." Vivian stood up, crossed the room, and snatched the test from the table as if it had personally offended her. She glared down at it, confident as ever. And then she faltered.
"One line means not pregnant, right?"
"Correct."
"And if I was pregnant – two lines?"
"Two distinct lines."
Vivian looked in Joan's direction, but didn't meet her eyes. "This must be wrong. I splashed some water on the stick by accident when I was washing my hands, we should do another."
The second test came back positive. So did the third.
All three sat on the desk, six unmistakable parallel lines. Pregnant, pregnant, pregnant.
Joan tore her eyes away from the sticks, and instead looked at Vivian, who had begun pacing, wringing her hands.
She looked as though her entire world had shattered around this new information – and Joan supposed it probably had. A child born out of wedlock was one thing, a bastard born into a family like the Scarlets in such a tiny town was another scandal entirely. Vivian would be the centre of town gossip for years, and Joan shuddered to think of how Edwardine would treat her, how Pearlanne –
The tears that had been welling in Vivian's eyes for the past twenty minutes spilled over with a choked sob, and she buried her mouth in her shirtsleeve. "Fuck, what do I do? What the hell do I do?!"
"Viv – it's okay, this is fixable. When did you sleep with him?"
"I don't know, some time back in August? I can't remember, I–"
"We take a drive out to a bigger clinic, and we get someone to take care of it. It'll take a trip to Brevard, but we can be there and back in an afternoon. Edwardine won't even–"
"What do you mean go to Brevard? I can't leave."
"What do you mean you can't?" Joan said. "Yes you can, we can make up any excuse, I'll drive, I'll cover for you–"
"I can't, Joan, I–" Vivian stopped mid sentence, the rest of the breath leaving her lungs in an exasperated huff. "It's my family."
"Oh, fuck your family," Joan sneered. "For crying out loud, Vivian, you're a fully grown adult. You don't need their permission to terminate. You don't need their permission to keep it either, if that's what you want. It's hardly a teenage pregnancy."
Vivian winced. "You don't understand."
"I understand just fine! You're, what, scared Edwardine will cut you out of her will if she finds out? She doesn't need to find out. Christ, we all know she's a monster, it doesn't take being a Scarlet to figure that one out–"
"Yes, it fucking does!" Viv shrieked. "You don't know anything about them! You've not even been here for years and years and you never talk to me any more and – oh for fuck's sake–" her sentence was interrupted by another heaving sob.
"If I don't know, then tell me, Vivian. Please, just let me help you."
Vivian blew out a shaky breath. "This is my bullshit to deal with. Just – look, just don't get involved. It's for the best."
Her eyes had gone vacant. She laid a cautious hand on her stomach. The gesture startled Joan. Did she want to keep it?
Joan sighed. "Fuck – I'm sorry. I'm sorry. If it makes you feel any better, I know you'd be a better parent than Edwardine ever was. And there's the baby Tabitha to grow up with, they'd only be a couple of classes apart. Maybe they could be friends?"
Vivian snapped out of her reverie for a second, turning her tear-streaked face to look at Joan, and laughed shakily. "I – you think – that won't happen."
Joan mentally kicked herself. Of course, that was a stupid thing to say – just look at how Vivian and Pearlanne's relationship had turned out.
But perhaps it could be different this time. Maybe Viv could shield them, soften Pearlanne's harsh lessons, teach her own child and little Tabitha both that domination and cruelty was not the only way.
Or perhaps, Joan thought deliriously, Vivian could come to live in the clinic instead. It was a huge building, after all – she could convert that big basement room into a full suite. They could raise the kid together, and Viv could go back to being the source of all of Joan's problems.
She didn't say that. It was a stupid idea.
Vivian had gone back to staring at the wall. Joan reached out to her, as if to a frightened deer, but her friend didn't even flinch as fingers met her arm.
"Talk to me, Viv," she pleaded. "Tell me what you need."
A resolute look was dawning over Vivian's face. Joan could see the wheels turning in her head but, for once, nothing at all was coming out of her mouth – no sarcastic riposte, no idle chatter. She was wearing an expression nothing like Joan had ever seen on her before: it wasn't the thin bravado of the not-quite-heiress charming the townsfolk, nor the mask of a teenager going back to face the family that tormented her.
It was the face of a cornered animal. The heroine at the climax of the thriller, realising that the only remaining option was to either face down the villain or flee.
Vivian dropped the test back on the desk, turned, and ran out of the clinic.
Joan Kelly had a problem, but at least she had someone to talk to about it now.
Okay. Maybe ‘someone’ wasn't quite the word.
“And then she just up and left. That was months ago, and now… well, who knows. I suppose she might have a baby. Or not. Perhaps she’s dead.” Joan laughed bitterly.
“Have you asked?”, her companion inquired.
“Pearlanne won’t tell me shit.” Joan sighed, leaning back with her hands behind her head. The grass was soft, pillowy. “Not where she’s gone, not what she’s doing. Not even any contact details. I think she might not actually know.”
“And how does that make you feel?”
Joan scoffed. “What are you, some kind of therapist?”
“I’m lending an ear for you to talk about it. It sounds like nobody in town is willing to do that. Or perhaps you don’t let them?”
Joan stared at the canopy above her head. The falling leaves shifted and blurred into one another, beams of golden sunlight leaking through the clouds. The grove she'd created for this dream was a facsimile of the one at the crossroads by the Estate – familiar, but far more palatable than the reality. It was perennially late spring, a comfortable eighty degrees. No wind. Sunny, but not so bright as to hurt her eyes.
Lucid dreaming had started as a way to escape from reality. Being the sole doctor of a tiny mining town was such a monotonous job. Her daily life consisted of yearly physicals, lung check-ups, and writing sick notes for miners to take to Pearlanne, who had proven to be even more fervently against workers’ rights than her grandmother. The same tasks, day in, day out. Wake up, go to work, go home. Except that work and home were the same place. And nobody came to visit out of hours anymore.
Joan was ashamed to admit that she’d become rather dependent on the novelty her nightly escapes allowed. Especially since she’d created a – friend? A confidant, who showed up every now and then to keep her company. A voice she hadn’t heard before; a body she hadn't palpated. The conversation was nice – distracting enough that she could, if just for a while, suspend her disbelief enough to pretend that she was talking to a real person, and not a figment of her imagination.
“Well?”
Joan turned to face the creature, sighing. “No, you’re right. But there aren’t many opportunities to make friends here. Not unless I want to drink seedy liquor with a bunch of miners, or stuff myself full of greasy diner food. And they’re all my patients, anyway. They wouldn't want to see me.”
“What about your parents?”
“Dad died a few years back.” Strange, that it wouldn’t know that. “Mom… we’ve never been close in that way. I wouldn’t want to bother her with my problems.”
The creature turned to face her, lifting spindly arms to rest on its knees. Joan imagined it might be raising an eyebrow, but she couldn’t really tell: her companion’s features always seemed to be dressed in shadow. It felt just as surreal as everything else in the dream, but stood out distinct against the scenery in a way that nothing else seemed to except Joan herself.
“It must be hard,” it said, “to have to keep those walls up all the time. That distance must be so alienating.”
“That’s the reality of living in a small town,” Joan snapped. “Everyone has their nose in your business. There’s no starting over if people decide that they don’t like you. Or that you’re weak.”
“Even your mother? The person you should trust most intrinsically?” It gestured with large, jagged hands. “That’s not right, Joan. It’s not fair on you.”
Joan rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well. Life isn’t fair. And it’s been a hell of a lot fairer to me than to a lot of the poor people coming through this town.”
She thought about Vivian, of her laughing eyes concreting into that pale, haunted mask. Edwardine, and her tyrannical diets and rules and curfews. “At least I have a mother – one who cares about me, no less. We don’t have family therapy sessions, sure, but I know she’d help me out if I was in a bind.”
She thought about Pearlanne, screaming down the hill at her sister, and scoffed. “And I might be an only child, but that’s far preferable to having siblings that torment me all the time.”
She thought about the baby Tabitha, barely even a toddler and already hailed as the next heir to the Scarlet mines. Hot anger rose in her throat. “I chose my job. It’s mundane, it can be isolating, but it’s mine. Nobody forced me into it, I chose it of my own free will, and it means I can – I can help people.”
But she couldn't help Vivian when it was needed most, could she?
"I want to help people. I wanted to help Viv. I just – I don't know what I could possibly have said to make her listen, to make her stay. I didn't want her family to hurt her. But now she's gone, and I don't know where, and what if she is hurt? What if she's dead? God, I don't think I could live with myself if she's dead. She was right there in front of me, and now she's just…" She threw her hands up in a shrugging gesture. "She's just gone."
The creature looked at her silently, before bringing a jagged finger up and running it along her cheek, wiping away the wetness there. Was she crying? Ridiculous. Joan was not a crier, not even in her dreams.
But she was crying. Tears were streaming free down her face, and before she knew it she was sobbing into the creature’s chest.
It – he? – wrapped his arms around her. His hands were cold, and surprisingly, rather soothing. "Situations, people – these things have a habit of slipping from your grasp if you don't take the reins and steer them right."
He pulled back, and Joan couldn't see his eyes, or if he even had eyes, but she imagined that if he did, they were looking into hers.
"It's time to start taking the initiative in your life, Joan," he said. "Clearly, you're not incapable of doing so. You created this world, didn't you?"
Joan looked up through her tears at the perfect sky with its fluffy clouds. She had created that. She was good at it, actually. She imagined a bird, and it flitted across the sky. With another thought, it vanished. Joan was great at taking control: she could do it in her sleep, after all.
Take the initiative. She could do that. She would do that.
Joan took the creature's face in her hands, and kissed him where she thought his mouth might be.
Six weeks later, against every expectation – everything she had ever been taught – Joan found herself staring down at the two distinct lines of a positive pregnancy test.
Joan Kelly had a problem, and he was growing fucking fangs.
It started when she’d had to all but drag him away from his friends after school that day. Stella Richmond had got it in her head that there was some kind of bipedal frog monster in the forest, and had, as usual, decided to make it everyone else’s problem.
“I’ve told you before, Reese, you can’t stay out in the woods after sundown. Just because the Richmonds let Stella do it–”
“And Kaneeka! Mrs Forsyth lets her stay out too, it’s just you that has a problem and that’s not fair!” He stomped his shoes off and kicked them against the front door. Joan winced as clods of dirt flew across the hall.
“Those woods are dangerous, and you are a child. I know for a fact there are bears out there, and Duke’s been talking about seeing mountain lions, for crying out loud–”
“Oh my god, mom, there are not mountain lions. Stella says–”
“I don’t care what Stella says. Her parents let her get away with far too much.”
Reese scoffed under his breath, a sharp noise that made anger roil hot in Joan’s chest. “It’s not my fault Stella’s mom isn’t paranoid like you.”
“I am not paranoid,” she snapped. “I am trying to keep you safe.”
“Safe from what?!” He threw his hands up. “Trees? Dirt? The fucking sunset?”
“Do not use that language with me–”
“No, seriously! You act like the woods are going to swallow me up the second it gets dark!”
“Accidents are far more likely to happen in the darkness. Breaking your leg by falling down a cliff, for example.”
Reese groaned loudly, dragging a hand down his face. “Oh my god it was one time. I said I’d be more careful. You’re being impossible.”
“And you’re being disrespectful.”
“Well maybe if you didn’t treat me like I’m five years old–”
“I treat you like a minor who needs rules. Which you still are!”
Reese’s jaw tightened. For a moment Joan swore she could see the impression of his teeth under his cheekbones. Maybe she ought to be feeding him more.
“You know what – forget it.” He turned towards the stairs.
“Do not walk away from me when I’m talking to you, Reese. This conversation isn’t over!”
He spun back around with a snarl. “Then stop talking like I’m stupid!”
“I never said you were stupid.”
“You don’t have to say it,” he retorted. "You just act like it. Every single day.”
Something cold settled in the pit of Joan’s stomach. Was that really how he felt? “Reese…”
But he was on a roll. “Stella and Kaneeka get to hang out after school. They see owls and fireflies and film cool videos. I’m the only one who has to run home before sunset like a baby.”
The light of the sunset caught Reese’s eyes as he turned, casting them in an unusual golden glow. "They get to have sleepovers. They get to eat junk food. They get to have parents who aren't always watching over everything they do, but I get cursed with having a doctor mom who wants me to be as lonely as she is!"
He straightened up and Joan realised, with a jolt, that her son – tall for his age, but usually only reaching her sternum – had somehow, in the past few minutes, almost caught up to her in height.
“Are you even listening to me?” Reese bared his teeth. They were long – really long. Past his bottom lip long.
Joan watched, frozen in horror, as her son continued to rant, his face twisting and contorting beyond human capabilities into something almost unrecognisable. His teeth continued to grow out, jaw extending as if to make space for them. He gestured with long fingers, pointed – jagged – those were talons, not nails – for a moment she wondered, absurdly, what kind of creature had both talons and fangs?
Reese stopped mid-rant and waved a hand in front of her face. "Mom?"
Joan's thoughts whirred as she stared at her son's hand. It was huge, spindly, absurd at the end of such bony arms. She'd seen hands like that before, of course. She'd shoved down the memory of her miracle pregnancy, written it off as a fluke –
"…Mom?"
But miracle pregnancies didn't exist, Reese had a father –
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to call you lonely, I was just mad…"
Reese reached out tentatively, and she jumped as his fingers reached her arm. The rage seemed to have left him all at once like a deflated balloon, muscles no longer squirming under his skin. His face was flat again, ears and teeth back to normal. He blinked at her with his big, grey-blue eyes.
He looked so much like her. Of course he did. He was her son.
It must have been a hallucination. She hadn’t been sleeping much lately.
But a few months later, it happened again.
The second time, Joan found herself hastily scribbling out a prescription for Klonopin.
The fifth time, despite her own better judgement – but with nobody else to turn to, and desperately needing to control a situation beyond her own capabilities – she knocked at Sybil Forsyth’s door.
Joan Kelly had a problem, and he was out in the woods right now, scared and alone and hopefully not terrorising the town.
It took her all night to clean the paint from the walls, but it was a necessary task. Life didn’t stop, and she was certain she’d be seeing more medical emergencies before the week was over.
The pager beeped just as Joan was stowing her gun in her backpack. She sighed. Usually, the Sheriff’s insistence on using the archaic device pissed her off, but today – just this once – she was glad to not have to talk to another human being. She rifled through the desk to locate the source of the beeping. The screen lit up in her hands.
187 – Calloway
One-eight-seven. A murder.
...Was it him?
God, she hoped it wasn't him.
The hours of cleaning had given Joan's mind ample time to run frantic over all of the possibilities following Reese's departure. He'd been more monster than she'd ever seen him last night, all jaws and teeth and seething rage – driven by a fury so all-encompassing, so final, that Joan knew, cornered and unarmed in the safe room, that this was it – these were the consequences of her decades of sin come to fruition. She recognised her doom, and for just a moment, she welcomed it gladly.
But then the Scarlet kid stepped between them, put a hand against Reese's huge maw, and brought him down without uttering a single word.
Part of Joan was irked that her son was so affected by someone he'd only known for two days. The other part knew that only one person she'd ever known could have done the same thing for her – and that person had had the same eyes, the same high cheekbones, the same disarming charisma.
Unfortunately, nobody else in Scarlet Hollow had ever been quite as charming as Vivian or her infuriating child.
Joan had shouldered her gun to chase him down, but Vivian's kid stopped her as well. She wished she hadn't listened, but apparently those eyes still had an effect on her, too.
So now Reese was out there, no longer under her supervision, no longer sedated enough to stay human, and very possibly at the murder scene she was about to head off to.
The more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed.
Then again, plenty of weird bullshit had happened in town this week. Between the mine collapse and the burgeoning strike and the other supposedly supernatural goings-on, tensions in the town were at an all time high – there was every chance, Joan supposed, that she was simply headed for the long-awaited Tremaine-Calloway showdown.
She tried her best to crush her worries down as she grabbed her keys and left for the car.
On the drive down from the clinic, something small caught Joan's eye emerging from a roadside bush. One of Reese's painted minions? She slammed on the brakes.
No – a second look told her that it was just one of those weird, grey animals that had beset the town over the past few days. What were the kids calling them – ditchers? Joan blew the adrenaline from her lungs as she watched the pathetic creature drag its way down the road. They were everywhere now, obvious to see if she just looked a little closer – hanging from every tree branch, crawling over the forest floor. She shuddered.
She had just made it into town, car idling at the junction of Main Street, when she spotted a very spooked looking Miles outside the – wait, why did she think that was a general store? Scarlet Hollow didn't have one of those.
Whatever the building was, it didn't matter. Miles was talking to Vivian's kid, who was returning his frantic gestures with a sympathetic gaze.
Okay, great, so Reese wasn't with them. Another strike for 'probably out murdering', then. Joan sighed, and looked down the street to ensure the turn toward the farm was clear.
But then, just as she was about to release the handbrake, she saw the Scarlet kid take a furtive glance around before dipping into the trees.
Joan faltered. There were very few reasons why anyone would stray from the main roads of town, especially with those things out there, and with everything that had happened last night, she could make an educated guess as to who else might be out behind the treeline.
She pulled over in a covert spot beside the town hall and threw the station wagon into park. She considered her options for a moment. Then she grabbed her bag, heavy with the weight of her gun, and left the car.
Farm feud be damned. If there'd already been a murder up there, there wasn't much she could do about it. Joan made toward the trees, crouched behind the bushes, creeping closer until the distant murmuring became two distinct voices.
“Miles also thinks I should go to the farms.”
“I? You mean we. There’s no way I’m not coming with you.”
“You don’t have to – no, you shouldn’t. You said the stone’s making you feel weird… What if something happens to you?”
Joan peeked over the leaves in time to see Reese straighten up, the light catching on his relievingly human-looking face.
“I don’t think you have to worry about me.”
“But I am worried! I don’t want to put you in any more danger!”
“You’ve been through so much this week already, and so much of it alone. I don't want you doing dangerous stuff on your own anymore. You shouldn't have to!”
Joan couldn't see the expression on Vivian's kid's face, but she could see the expression on Reese's – complete resolve. Determination.
“I'd do anything to protect you," he said fiercely. "I hope you know that.”
Joan tried not to roll her eyes. She knew what happened next: the pushback, the running. Maybe Reese would transform and give chase. Either way, this wasn't ending well.
But… it did.
She could see the moment Vivian's kid gave in, shoulders sagging. “I guess having you by my side does make me feel safer.”
Reese liked that. She could tell from the low rumble that came from his throat, the way his teeth grew out a little bit. Like he was preening. He took the Scarlet cousin by the hands, achingly gentle. “We can fix everything. I know we can. Then we can be together, wherever we want. But probably somewhere far away from here."
Reese leaned in close and spoke so softly into his companion's ear that Joan couldn't hear what he was saying. But it didn't matter.
It didn't matter, because she couldn't tear her eyes away from the scene in front of her. Reese still looked so much like her that it was almost like an out-of-body experience, and Joan thought that perhaps in another life – a parallel universe – it was her leaning in, tangling her hands in Vivian's hair and kissing her gently. Running a thumb over her cheek and holding her close and promising that all of her problems would go away if they only worked through them, together.
In another life, Joan saw her son transform for the first time, and she stroked his hair and told him not to worry, that it wasn't normal but it was okay, that they'd work through it, and that no matter what he was, nothing could ever make her regret being his mom.
In another life, Joan returned from med school and reunited with her best friend. She broke down both Viv's walls and her own, and together they discovered what horrors were hiding behind the Scarlet facade, before burning that legacy to the ground.
But those lives did not exist.
Joan shouldered her gun as the sound of Reese's thudding footsteps faded into the distance. Then she turned back to the car.
In this life, she supposed, at least she was still here to atone for her mistakes.
And she would start today.