Chapter Text
The town of Gracefield screams dreary. Houses may be built in various, brightly painted pastel shades of slats and the town may broadcast an excellent, local high school with a plethora of opportunities for the youth, but in actuality, you soon learn that is just a pretty mask for what is a rather dim American neighbourhood. One full of people who show off their toxically green front lawns and ostracise anyone remotely different. Anyone like Daniel Howell.
Dan was fully aware he was not an ordinary seventeen year old. Maybe he had been normal at some point, although deep down he feared that had never been true, he had been especially strange since his mother passed. He hardly spoke to anyone due to his 'traumatic mutism', however, his step-mother claims he makes the decision to be a difficult child all on his own. What his father sees in Janet is beyond Daniel and yet he still has to deal with moving halfway across the country to Massachusetts to live with this strange woman and her surprisingly optimistic daughter, Taffy.
She was as sickeningly sweet as her name suggested and had a peculiar obsession with attempting to perform her self-proclaimed sisterly duties to Dan. Like going to this dumb party some guy was throwing.
"So these things usually last until about one or two o'clock in the morning although we can leave whenever you want, but I wo-" Taffy droned on from the driver's seat of her bright red Volkswagen, occasionally glancing at Dan to see if he was paying attention. He definitely was not. "Danny! You aren't even listening."
"Don't call me that." Dan replied sourly. He knew she meant well, but she was irredeemably annoying.
"Sorry. I'm just excited to bring my little brother to his first house party!!" She beamed. Taffy was an objectively nice person, despite the fact her mother was Satan incarnate. She had tanned, glowy skin with deep brown eyes and straight, swoopy hair that she spent hours styling. The kind of hair Dan envied. Albeit, she was kind enough to let him borrow her straighteners to tame his own without calling him a pansy... so that was cool. "You kinda do need to leave the house sometimes."
"I leave the house. I like going to Bachelor's Grove."
"Dan, you're kidding right?? An abandoned graveyard is no place to hang out."
"Well, I like it there... It's quiet and there's this one grave I really like, it has the stone bust of a young man on top of the headstone. I talk to it sometimes."
"Dan, that's really weird." Her perfectly proportioned face did the closest thing it could to looking grossed out until she quickly changed the topic. "Why didn't you use the tanning bed?"
"It slightly electrocuted me." Dan remarked flatly. The tanning bed was a prize Taffy had won from one of her stupid pageants and upon trying to use it Dan had found out just how cheap and worthless a prize it was as it sent sparks through his skin.
"Oh my god!" She screeched abruptly breaking and causing Dan to fly towards the dashboard before his seatbelt winded him. "I'm so sorry! I've never actually used it because I have like a natural kind of tan going for me, so I had no idea it was busted!"
"It's fine." It wasn't. Taffy had slammed the breaks in shock slightly prematurely, although they had pretty much arrived. The house in front of them was large and painted a faded white but was completely overshadowed by the massive eyesore pool in front as well as the crowd of teenagers mingling about it.
Taffy latched onto Dan's arm, excitedly leading him towards the hellscape while hauling a pack of beers in her spare hand. "I brought drinks!" She squealed, causing a stampede of girls to race towards her, forcing Dan out the way. He was slightly grateful to them as it meant he could wander off and not be thrown into anymore unnecessary social interactions. He spied a cheap cooler propped open by the pool edge and bent down to grab a diet coke.
"They have real stuff inside you know." A sultry voice remarks behind him. "Unless you don't drink or something." Dan whipped round to see a tall, blonde boy staring at him smirking.
"Oh yeah, I drink... for sure." Dan stuttered taking in the way the boy's long hair framed his chocolate brown eyes and weapon sharp jawline. He was suddenly brutally aware of the hideous, grey gingham shirt he'd chucked on his scrawny figure in attempt to not stand out.
"You're Daniel right? You're in the school jazz band? Piano wasn't it?"
Dan could only nod meekly, his spare hand reaching for the beaded bracelet he always wore around his wrist. It wasn't actually a bracelet, rather his mothers multicoloured rosary she kept with her before she died. Dan had the habit of playing with it whenever his stomach began to flip like it was fiercely doing right now.
"Oh well I've heard you play, you're really good, like some sort of Mozart."
Dan felt the red flush in his cheeks violently. Although he didn't know this guy's name, he definitely recognised him from several of his new classes. He wasn't all that popular, but he was extraordinarily good-looking and gave off the mysterious loner vibe Dan was was also trying to pull off. "Uhh thanks... you're...?"
"Michael." He finished flashing his pretty, white smile at Dan which could have sent him into cardiac arrest the way his heart was rapidly beating.
"Who's this?" Dan had failed to notice a short, dark-haired girl approach them. She scanned him up and down, narrowing her icy eyes, concluding with a look emanating complete and utter disgust.
"This is my friend Daniel! He's looking for something real to drink." Michael calmly responded, completely ignorant to the evils this girl was injecting into Dan. It wasn't unusual for Dan to be stared at in such an inhumane manner, what really held his attention was Michael labelling him as a "friend" and the cheeky wink that followed it. The fluttering in Dan's stomach began to make him feel ill. No. Michael is just being friendly.
"Oh 'kay." The girl mumbled dryly as she shoved a plastic, red cup into Dan's sweaty hand. Dan flinched slightly causing an ugly snorting laugh to escape her. She had very heavy eyeliner and a gothic look about her which he kinda admired but he already had a distaste for her.
"Tamara." Michael interjected, snapping at her and quickly giving Dan a reassuring smile. "Daniel's cool! He's a really advanced pianist and he's got that pretty-boy look about him."
Pretty-boy? Dan was sure he resembled a tomato with the scorching he felt in his cheeks. Michael was becoming confusing. You can't just say something like that to another boy? Or can you? Maybe that's a casual thing to say? Still it didn't feel casual to Dan. Anxiety ridden, he took a sip of the mysterious liquid Tamara practically threw at him, the pungent and extreme taste hitting him instantly. He winced. Dan had never really drunk before, excluding sips of his mother's Rosé on special occasions, and yet he could tell something wasn't right.
Tamara scoffed at him rolling her eyes as Michael's widened. "Oh my god, Tamara! Was that fucking spiked? Are you mad?" He reprimanded, flailing his hands in ways Dan's head was spinning to quickly to keep track of.
"What? Thought you said he wanted something real." She snickered. Dan didn't feel angry at her though. He felt light, airy even...
Dizzy. Yeah he's dizzy. He should lie down. A house should have a bed. Don't all houses have at least one bed? Even greenhouses do. Flowerbeds. Even without pillows they are still beds...
"Danny!?" A familiar squeaky voice wailed at him. Taffy. Like the candy. "Did those wannabe dweebs give you something? Oh my god I can't even-" The voice carried away but became louder and whinier as it approached Michael and Tamara.
Dan continued, head reeling. He stumbled cautiously towards the turning house which was changing colours before his very eyes, eventually making it inside.
Hands on him. A boy almost a foot shorter than him had grabbed him. "Dan...? It's me, er Doug... you're lab partner. Are you drunk?" He stammered gawking at Dan.
"Noooo." Dan barked. Wait, he barked? Weird. Why is Doug still touching him? "Where are the bedrooms?"
"Oh um, this way." Doug was leading Dan down a long curling corridor until they made it to a little, minimalistic bedroom with a large double bed dominating it and a tiny, wooden desk by the door. Dan pounced for the little trash can in the corner and emptied his guts. "Eugh." He heard Doug exhale somewhere behind him.
After getting whatever that was out of his system, Dan perched himself on the outlandishly patterned sheets of the bed still feeling immensely odd. It was a good few moments before he noticed the hand on his thigh.
Looking up slowly in horror, the sight of Doug's repulsive gaze and rat-like face met him. "I know you like it, you queer." Dan winced as his eyes began to sting with tears. He thrust Doug off him before jumping up so fast he almost fell right back down. What? How did he? Why?
A sickness rose within Dan, choking him with it's rotten nature. A rot Dan knew all too well. He couldn't understand what was going on fully and yet he was coherent enough to feel the wrongness of it.
"Oh come off it. Everyone thinks you're a nancy boy. Just something we have in common." His now extremely ugly features formed a devilish smile and Dan could only think of one thing to do. Run.
So he did. Out the house, through the garden and into the infinite, shadowed forrest that separated him from an unaccustomed 'home'. The forrest that contained Bachelor's Grove cemetery.