Chapter Text
Taylor sniffs in the pitch-black darkness of the cave she discovered. At some level she knows that it’s not fair on the organizers that she’s feeling like this. Especially given how much fun she’s been having. But after talking to Emma on the phone last night, she was reminded that her mom died last year.
Hence her uncharacteristic breaking of the rules to explore beyond the safety barriers in the major cave complex that is on the grounds of the summer camp. Oh, she wasn’t stupid about it, she took a double handful of the white stone gravel from the driveway and placed one on the floor every few yards into the cave. And she has a spare set of batteries in the pocket of her hoodie (that she brought because caves are much colder than the summer outside), just in case her torch dies.
She sniffs once more, finally having cried herself out in the darkness. A faint tremor and the sound of falling rocks running through the cave suddenly brings to mind just why they were told these caves were off limits.
Taylor can’t help the loud scream that’s drowned out by the echoes of the crash of stone somewhere very close to her. The shower of broken rocks pelting her arms and face telling her just how close it was.
To the background noise of squeaking bats leaving the cave, Taylor desperately fishes through her hoodie pocket and pulls out her torch before turning it on. Its feeble glow barely illuminating the ground right beneath her feet, let alone anything else. With one exception, a silvery patch of wall seems to glow far brighter than it should do.
With a sniff of suppressed tears, this time due to terror rather than grief, Taylor empties out the remaining stone from her pocket while she’s searching for the spare batteries. Annoyingly, the second battery is the last thing she finds in her pocket, and it takes her two tries to put the new batteries into the torch. The first, she somehow managed to put them in backwards.
With adequate illumination, she looks around the cave in dismay as she can no longer see the trail of white stones she left. Even if she could, she knows she couldn’t trust them given the massive knee high boulders that are now strewn across what used to be a mostly clear floor. As she runs her torch around the cave, there is a massive slab of rock just in front of the glowing rock. Though, under direct torchlight, the rock doesn’t seem any different to the surrounding rocks. Additionally, the faint squeaks of bats seems to be coming from the dark void beside the silvery rock.
Or, rather, that dark void is the only one that lines up with the sound of the squeaks that are echoing around the cave.
With a sniff, Taylor says to herself, “Don’t worry, it’s only twenty or thirty yards back to the out of bounds signs. Maybe fifty yards.”
Rather distressingly, the sound of bats cuts off as the echoes of her voice dies out. Taking a deep breath, or three, Taylor carefully picks her way over to the wall and uses it to steady herself as she makes her way towards the void. As she gets to the large slab of rock that fell down, the torchlight reflects off the trail of white rocks she left herself in the dark passageway.
Her surge of joy is cut off as she braces her hand against the glowing rock and it gives way beneath her hand. Her eyes barely have time to widen in panic as it seems like the entire rock wall falls on her and stifles her scream before it can be born.
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Taylor pushes herself into a sitting position as she rubs her head while muttering about sugar and ketchup. Absently, she pulls out her phone and uses the light from the screen to find her lost torch.
Once she finds it on the floor, down between the slab and the cave wall, she gives it a couple of whacks with the heel of her hand and puts the phone away when the torch lights up. With a smile that’s half grimace, she clutches her head as she follows her trail out of the cave and into the grounds of the summer camp.
She’s not got halfway back to the dormitories when one of the camp supervisors runs over to her, “Taylor, are you alright?”
Taylor nods as she holds her head, “I’m alright Miss Sharp.” At the raised eyebrow she adds, “I, uh, have a headache.”
“Where were you? You missed lunch.”
Taylor looks away and doesn’t say anything. With a sigh, Miss Sharp puts her hand in the middle of Taylor’s back, “Let’s get you to the camp nurse.”
Taylor shakes her head, “I’m fine.”
Miss Sharp sighs and shakes her head, “Taylor, you’re covered in dust, and I can see some cuts on your hands and face. You are not fine, and we are responsible for you.”
Taylor hangs her head as she realizes that she probably has tear tracks too. It doesn’t take long until she’s led into the nurses office with its greenie-blue, easy to clean walls and grey linoleum flooring. There, nurse Callie Haynes cleans up and disinfects the scratches, gives her a couple of aspirin, and teases out of her the fact she hid in the caves to cry, and that she did it because her mother died nearly a year ago, and she’d forgotten about it until she spoke to Emma.
She also thinks nothing of it when she’s given a book on death and grief by the nurse and told to spend some time reading it. She thinks nothing of the notification that her skill with Thanatology (and natural living, herbalism, rock climbing, gemology, and wellness – from the meditation exercises in the book on death and grief) have increased to one, the fuzzing at the very edges of her vision, or the fact that she’s unusually compliant for the last few days of the summer camp.
On the plus side, her headache does eventually go away.
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A few days after she returned from Summer camp, Taylor skips up the front path to the Barnes front door and rings the bell. After several seconds she hears Aunt Zoe’s voice call out, “Coming!”
As the door opens, Zoe looks happy to see Taylor, and Taylor smiles at the fact the relationship bar is friendly.
“Taylor! It’s so good of you to pop round. Did you have a nice holiday?”
Taylor nods enthusiastically, “I did, though I had a moment when I remembered mom.”
Zoe pulls Taylor into a hug, “Oh honey, there’s nothing wrong with thinking about your mother. It happens to everyone who’s lost someone. I still think about my grandmother from time to time. But I doubt you want to talk about that after such an exciting time. Emma’s upstairs if you want to talk to her.”
Taylor smiles, “I don’t mind Auntie Zoe, how have you guys been getting on?”
Zoe looks out the window, “Things have been difficult.”
Taylor’s expression drops, “Is Uncle Alan alright?”
“Oh. Oh, no, nothing like that. Emma’s just been in a mood for a few days, and she’s got a new friend. Anyway, would you like some juice?”
“Yes please Auntie Zoe.”
“Well, head on upstairs and I’ll bring it up.”
Taylor heads up stairs and knocks on the door to Emma’s room, “Hey Emma!”
“Go away!”
“Um, are you ok?”
As the door is wrenched open, for the first time since the cave, Taylor becomes very aware of the fact that something is very different with her, as she can see that instead of the green of friendship, there’s a red color floating above Emma’s head. “No I’m not ok, you’re continuing to bother me.”
Taylor steps back as the red bar grows slightly. Further in the room is a black girl called Sophia Hess.
Taylor blinks and says, “Ok, I can see this is a bad time. I made you a bracelet… I’ll leave it with Auntie Zoe.”
Emma slams the door as she says, “I don’t want your stupid bracelet.”
As the door slams shut, Taylor flees downstairs, where Auntie Zoe is just heading towards the stairs with a glass of orange juice. “Taylor, what’s wrong?”
Taylor sniffs and wails, “She hates me.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
Taylor sniffs again, “It’s true, I could see it. Just like I can see you’re friendly, and dad’s indifferent. Her hatred was growing too…” Almost as soon as she’s spoken, Taylor realizes that she’s probably said too much and her tone turns pleading, “Please don’t tell anyone I said that.”
Zoe sigh and wraps an arm around Taylor’s shoulders, “Come on, let’s talk in the kitchen. It’s the quietest room in the house after all.”
Taylor nods morosely and lets herself be led into the kitchen with the stucco ceiling that she knows hides polystyrene ceiling tiles. Something that Uncle Alan and Anne – Emma’s sister – loudly demanded be installed when Auntie Zoe went through a period of using a tenderizer on every steak that passed through the house. That, coupled with the sound of the garbage disposal and stand mixer, was the last straw. Weirdly enough, as soon as the ceiling was finished, Auntie Zoe stopped tenderizing everything.
“Taylor, are you ok?”
Taylor blinks as she looks down from the ceiling, “I was just looking at the ceiling, and remembering…”
Zoe looks up with a smile, “It was your mum’s idea, did you know that?”
Taylor shakes her head, “No?”
Zoe points at a corner under the bathroom, “You and Emma were five or six when one of you started a bath and then went to sleep. The first thing your mother and I knew about it was when water started pouring through the ceiling. We couldn’t afford to have it fixed properly immediately. Then when things were doing better, Alan wouldn’t hear of it because none of his clients would ever come into the kitchen, but it was still a large brown stain. That’s when I started baking and making good use of the garbage disposal. Now, what was that about you could see Emma hated you?”
Taylor flinches slightly, and takes a sip of orange juice to cover herself, “Um… It’s just something I, uh, realized was happening a few days ago. I thought it was my imagination until just now.”
Zoe walks over to a cake tin, and grabs a small plate to serve a slice of home made chocolate cake, “What do you mean?”
Taylor shrugs, “I don’t know. I mean, it just seems so normal and natural to me. So I figured it was just my excitement from learning stuff at summer camp, and getting home, and stuff. And it all lined up with what I knew, so I figured that I was just seeing things, and it was my active imagination.”
Zoe hands Taylor the plate and gestures to the silverware drawer, “Oh, I know you always had an active imagination Dr Curlyhair.”
Taylor fights down the blush by reaching for a cake fork, “I was eight.”
“You were, then you wanted to be Alexandria. What changed your mind about your ‘imagination’?”
Taylor looks up towards Emma’s room, “Before I answer that, is Emma’s new friend Sophia Hess?”
Zoe nods, “She is, how did you know?”
Taylor looks down at her half eaten cake, “I saw her. I’m scared Aunt Zoe.”
“Whatever for?”
Taylor sniffs, “This means I’ve got powers doesn’t it. But not cool powers that will help me make things better like Alexandria and Legend, crappy powers that will just get me killed if I let anyone know.”
Zoe takes the plate and puts it on the counter as she pulls her goddaughter into a hug, “Oh Taylor, it’s not going to get you killed. Why ever would you think it will?”
Taylor sniffs, “What if I see a villain’s secret identity?”
“You ignore it, just like anyone else would. You’re old enough that you’ve heard of what happens to normal people who reveal cape identities. So, how is it different to now?”
“I, ah, don’t know?”
Zoe kisses Taylor on the forehead, “It isn’t. Now, school starts in a couple of weeks’ time, are you looking forward to it?”
Taylor slumps in Zoe’s arms, “I was Auntie Zoe, I don’t know anymore.”
“Why not?”
“What if Emma doesn’t stop hating me? I…”
“Why don’t you ask your dad to contact the school and join the sophomore year, like they offered.”
Taylor gives Zoe a weak smile, “Thanks Auntie, I’ll do that.”
“And remember that you’re my goddaughter, I promised your mom and dad that I’d help raise you. So don’t be a stranger.”
Taylor sniffs as Zoe lets go, and reaches for the last of her cake, “I won’t Auntie Zoe, thank you.”
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When she gets home, she heads up to her room and puts one of her pillows on the floor so that she can meditate and try to put the day’s events to one side. Just like the book on grief and death suggested.
After what feels like hours of meditation, she jumps as a chime goes off and some text appears in a blue box in the top right hand corner of her vision. When she tries to focus on the text, she realizes that not only can’t she understand what it says, but she can only see part of the box as it keeps moving with her head. Putting it out of her mind, she tries to go back to meditating.
After a couple of attempts to resume meditating, she puts the pillow back on the bed before she sits down at her desk and freezes at the weird text that appears around the computer. Her eyes flick to one of the options, as she tries to read it. Then a monster of a migraine hits as she reaches out to turn the computer on, and it powers up faster than it’s ever done before. A moment later, her eyes start to water as she opens some sort of browser, and starts to browse forums written in a language that she’s never seen before today. After an hour, the headache recedes to a dull ache, and she is able to understand what she’s reading and writing now.
It takes her another fifteen minutes to get control of her own body back, and start looking for information about capes or powers. Frustratingly, by the time her father gets home from work, she hasn’t found anything about what she understands to be capes or powers. What she has stumbled across is a comparative essay on the different methods of bringing a loved one back to life. Which, facially, seems ridiculous. However, whatever country’s internet she’s stumbled across seems to be taking the discussion entirely seriously, as the default search site has given her multiple forum posts about each of the things being discussed. She’s also found a few job listings for The Netherworld Department of Death, discussions on voodoo dolls of all things, and videos of ghosts visiting nightclubs.
“Hey kiddo, how was your day?”
Taylor jumps as her father, Danny, speaks. Gathering her thoughts, she looks away from the computer, “Uh, better than it started.”
“I see, was everything alright with Emma?”
“Yeah, it was fin…” she sighs, “No not really. She hates me.”
Danny walks into the room and slumps on her bed, “I’m sure she doesn’t.”
Taylor glances back at the computer, the looks at her father, “Dad, could you look at this and tell me if you are seeing the same thing I am?”
She takes a moment to re-find a video with ghosts chatting in a night club.
Danny watches it silently. After a minute or so he says, “What country is this in? I don’t recognize the language.”
Taylor shakes her head, “I don’t know, the town is called Willow Creek. Though they call it a world in the video. And I couldn’t speak the language earlier either.”
Danny sits up a bit straighter and his eyes gain a little life as he looks at his daughter quizzically, “What do you mean by that?”
Taylor looks down at her hands while the video continues playing in the background, “I, uh, think I have powers dad. Auntie Zoe knows, as I only realized when I saw how much Emma hates me now.”
Danny reaches out to put his hand on his daughter’s arm. With a heavy sigh he says, “I’ll call the PRT in the morning.”
Taylor startles, “No Dad! Don’t do that, my power isn’t the sort of thing they want. I know I always dreamed of being a superhero, but what sort of hero can see other peoples names and relationship levels? Oh, and apparently, being able to use a computer in a different language.”
Danny sighs and says, “Taylor, I get it. But I’ve seen what happens to the kids that don’t join the Wards. Every month or so we get a notice from the cops to keep an eye out for some kid or another who went missing. I only lost your mother less than a year ago, I’m not going to lose you too.”
Taylor stares at her father as he stands up and walks out of the room.