Tucker Foley and the Long Arc of the Paranormal Universe - helpivefallenandicantgetup (2024)

Chapter 1: Not a French Artist from the '30s

Chapter Text

Not a French Artist from the ‘30s

or alternatively: First Impressionism

Tucker knew as soon as he woke up that today was not going to be his day.

At first he put it down to the splitting headache from staying up until 3 a.m. playing Black Ops XXIII. He smacked his phone screen to stop the alarm (set to the zen xylophone-ish thingy, which ceased to be soothing around the seventh time it woke him up) and rolled over to face the wall and doze for just a few more seconds…

Tucker knew when he woke up the second time that there was more to it than a headache brought on by his own lack of regard for his health and wellness. There was an itch in the clumps of tendon and the marrow of his bones, and it made him uneasy. Reluctantly, he rolled out of bed and landed carefully on the balls of his feet. His limbs didn’t feel like they belonged to him, and he found he suddenly hated the feeling of friction pulling at his skin. Something’s coming.

He padded across the wooden floorboards toward the long, thin rectangle of light at the bottom of his window curtain. It picked out the reflective surfaces of his room in a sort of dreamlike, dusty blue. Something’s close. He wrapped his fingers gingerly around the cord– something’s! –and suddenly pulled with all his might. The curtain whirred upward with a noise like a chainsaw, drenching the room in bright morning sunlight, and Tucker stumbled back, blinking, the feeling dispelled and his limbs once more his own. Still awkward, too-long teenager limbs, but no longer floating or itching in the silence.

Tucker wondered why he was shaking.

He stared out the window for a minute at the sun-stained telephone pole and the five crows balanced on its crossbeams. Occasionally one would rustle its wings, and then another would object to being jostled and take a quick snap at it, and there would be a brief flurry of motion before all again went still, watching the sun. Tucker watched it with them until he could feel that the sweat had dried on his hairline.

Then he turned around to grab some clothes. God damn it, where was his beret?! Did his mom seriously expect him to wear a normal hat? At least yesterday’s shirt passed the sniff test, so he had that going for him.

The rest of his morning routine went much the same way. At 9:27 he pounded down the stairs to find his mom, a short woman in her fifties with cropped hair and an easy smile, sitting at the kitchen island reading the newspaper. Light wooden cabinets protruded over the granite countertops at just about head height around the room, and in the center was the kitchen island, finished in the same dark granite with an inset white sink. He swept past toward the pantry with a quick “Morning!”

“Morning, baby, you’ve got toothpaste on your cheek,” she responded without looking up. How did she even know? Her mom instincts were truly terrifying. He swiped at his cheek with one hand (ineffectually, as a look in the mirror would tell him later) as he snatched the cereal box out of the pantry with the other and dumped about half of it into a bowl.

Tucker’s dad strode in as he was halfway through a gigantic, milk-sodden bite and raised one skeptical eyebrow. “Where does it all go? That’s enough cereal for two hollow legs and an arm, Tuck.”

“Two words: growth spurt.” Tucker grinned around his bite of cereal.

“Aren’t you getting a little old for that, buddy?”

Tucker glared at him as he chewed the last of his bite. “I’m about to hit a growth spurt that will have all the ladies swooning over me. Aaany minute now, just you watch.”

The corners of Mr. Foley’s mouth twitched upwards. “Oh, we’re watching. Right now I’m watching you eat a borderline blasphemous amount of Lucky Charms. The chemicals in that stuff are more likely to stunt your growth than anything.”

“I’ll eat a salad for lunch or something.”

His mom, whom he’d all but forgotten, laughed from behind the newspaper. “Sure you will.”

“Hey, whose side are you on?!” Tucker took another indignant bite.

She folded down the paper so just her eyes were showing and gave him a deadpan look. “I’ve spent the last fifteen years trying every trick in the book to get you to look at a vegetable; whose side do you think I’m on?”

Damn, he was outnumbered. They won this round. It was extremely unlikely that he was going to eat a salad for lunch. He lapsed into half-serious sullen silence as he plowed through the remainder of his Lucky Charms and his dad headed upstairs to grab his suitcase.

Tucker’s dad was an associate at a law firm that had first grown in Chicago and then begun to slowly but surely crop up in the surrounding cities and counties of Illinois. Amity was decent-sized, so the offices here took up a few floors of the tallest building in the business district, and the commute from the suburbs was an easy twenty minutes by car. That was also convenient for his mom’s job as restaurant manager at Amity’s hippest new hipster eatery (not restaurant–that wouldn’t be hipster enough), Nagual’s on 7th. Maurice Foley was a lean man in his fifties with a hairline just beginning to recede but a full goatee still going strong. He wore slightly outdated suits not because he couldn’t afford new ones but because Tucker’s mom, Angela, was the only one in the family with any sense of style (which was also why she kept trying to get rid of Tucker’s beret in various creatively sneaky ways).

He had almost finished his bowl and was fishing out the last of the marshmallows so he could slurp the rest when his mom looked up again. “Oh, Tucker, you remember you’re supposed to help Tristan with his project today, right? Something about photography?”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m up before noon on a Saturday.” He gave her a quick hug around her shoulders from the back before heading toward the stairs. “Love you!”

“Love you, too,” she called back absently, already returning to the paper.

That is, until he stopped at the foot of the stairway. “Hey, mom? You wouldn’t happen to have seen my beret anywhere, right?”

Mrs. Foley’s voice was very deliberately casual from behind the paper. “Can’t say I have. Looks like you’ll have to go out without it. The horror!”

Tucker crossed his arms and employed his best (very manly) pout. “Mommm….”

She set down her paper with an exasperated sigh. “You’re always saying you want girls to like you, and then you wear a beret 24/7! You are not a French artist from the ‘30s, Tucker.”

“I like the beret.”

“You also like all-nighter video game sessions, even though you’re the one who claims it makes your brain feel like feta cheese the next day.”

“Can I please have my beret?”

She sighed again and cast her eyes heavenward. “It’s in the laundry room.”

“Thanks, mom!” Tucker shot her his best roguish grin and jogged down the hallway. He swept back through the kitchen on his way to the door, but this time she didn’t have a perky farewell for him; she’d set the newspaper on the table and was leaning down close to it, brow furrowed in consternation. “Tucker, honey,” she asked, “do you know a girl named Amber McClain?”

Tucker thought about it. It sounded familiar, but…. “Nope. Why, who is she?” But his mom just waved him off, eyes sliding intently down the page. Tucker shrugged and pulled on his beret.

Now properly uniformed and armored against the day, he headed out the door just in time to beg a ride into town from his dad. In the car, he checked his texts: two pictures of him making weird faces in middle school from Sam, a notification from his own specially coded calendar app that his science lab was due Tuesday, and one from his cousin Tristan asking if Tucker could bring his heavy-duty filming gear. Luckily, he’d assumed it would be needed and packed accordingly.

His dad dropped him off in the parking lot of Amity Park’s main park (heh), and he pushed through the slightly rusty metal gate to find Tristan and his senior friends already waiting for him. Tristan was a tall kid, with lighter skin than Tucker but the same honey-brown eyes and strong nose Tucker’s mom shared with her sister. “Tuck!” he called from the nearest weathered wooden table, where he was arranging a variety of props that seemed to include a polyester toga, a bunch of plastic breastplates, and a surprisingly realistic-looking trident. “Did you bring a tripod?”

“Yeah, dude, I got it.” Tucker wrinkled his nose at the objects on the table. “What’s this play about again?”

“We’re supposed to adapt a piece of classic literature or theater into the modern vernacular, and try to apply a modern theme,” spoke up a blonde girl voice, breaking out of the conversation she’d been having with the other two seniors. “We’re doing Agamemnon by Aeschylus.”

Tucker struggled for anything witty to say about a Greek play he knew nothing about, but by the time he’d thought of something besides “Cool” she’d already turned back to her friends, who were now arguing with Tristan about which “guard” would get to use the trident and which one would be stuck with the boring yet historically accurate sword. Tucker started pulling the legs of his tripod to full length in silence. What did you expect, they’re seniors.

Amity Park Park (it was actually named after some old rich dude, but that was how Tucker liked to think about it) was a broad expanse of mostly yellowing grass abutted by a shady treed area, some fenced-in tennis courts, and a tiny library. The library looked very Brady Bunch -era with its beige brick walls and low, boxy ‘70s architecture. Tucker wasn’t a great reader and hadn’t gone in since he was a little kid, but Sam assured him he wasn’t missing much in terms of variety. Scattered around the park were weathered tables with twin benches like the ones Tristan’s group was sitting on right then. The lack of buildings seemed like a problem to Tucker, but when he asked, the blonde girl told him they’d film the indoor scenes at the courthouse a few minutes away (it had columns) and then went back to loudly arguing about the historical accuracy of plastic weapons.

Things got increasingly awkward as time went on; after that first stumble Tucker’s tongue kept tying itself in knots, and he felt increasingly self-conscious. The only person he really knew here was his cousin, and Tristan was busy planning with the others. At least no one was really talking to him, but he kind of hoped they’d stop planning and start acting so he could do something other than fiddle around with his already-prepped equipment. He drifted over to the water fountain and was just considering re-downloading Instagram (despite his tendency to lose track of time and spend hours going through memes on Explore) when Tristan clapped his hands. “Alright, guys, let’s get going! Tuck, is everything ready?” Tucker gave him two thumbs up.

The next two hours were a lot more fun. Tristan had a lot of interesting ideas for camera angles, and the Latina girl playing Clytemnestra was actually really good. They were halfway through the final scene (“But Iphigenia’s never coming back, and for that I could never give you the death you deserve, not if I had a thousand more knives and you a thousand more breaths to suffer through. So I didn’t do this for revenge. I did it because she deserved a better world than the one she got. A world without you”) when Tristan, his character having just died offscreen, sneezed loudly from behind the camera. Clytemnestra giggled and then quickly tried to cover it with a wild, expansive gesture of one bloodsoaked hand, only to accidentally smear red food coloring on the nose of her co-conspirator and boyfriend, “Aegisthus.” Tristan yelled, “Cut!” and everyone groaned.

“Once more from the top?” questioned the blonde girl (Tucker hadn’t actually caught her name, so he was just thinking of her as her character, Cassandra). “I’m down to redo my monologue, but I still think Tristan and I should die on-screen. We’ve got more than enough ketchup.”

“But we don’t have retractable knives, and anyway it’s not in the actual play! I don’t want to get marked down, we talked about this,” complained “Aegisthus.”

“But what better way to contrast Cassandra’s impotence with Clytemnestra’s agency outside of the moral system?”

“Jesus, Caeley, it’s a high school project. We’re not submitting this to the Cannes Film Festival.”

Tristan sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Alright, you guys can fight this out again if you want. I’m going to the bathroom.” He turned and started to walk toward the library, which was about fifteen yards away.

Tremors exploded across Tucker’s skin. All of a sudden he was shaking and short of breath and cold even in the heat of a hot September afternoon. The itch was back in his joints, but ten times worse, and all he could do was stare at Tristan’s retreating back with his heart in his stomach and his throat at the same time. Something’s coming. Now. Tristan pulled open the door of the library, the bell over the door somehow managing to tinkle loud enough across the whole park to overpower the bickering behind him, and Tristan paused, door open in his hand, for a long few seconds. One hand clutched absently at his chest. Don’t go in there, don’t go in there, don’t go–

Tristan marched purposefully into the library.

Tucker’s tremors subsided enough that he could catch his breath, but he was sweating buckets, and he couldn’t look away. The deep feeling of unease in his chest only grew stronger, making him queasy. And Tucker knew something bad was about to happen.

Not just as an instinctive thing, though. Not like “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Intellectually, based on precedent, based on so many little past incidents and big ones, Tucker knew to trust his hunches. But he tried so hard not to think about them and it had been so long that he’d almost been able to dismiss it this morning, almost been able to convince himself this nameless thing was something he’d outgrown–

And he should go to the library, but he was freaking out because he also knew he wouldn’t like what he found, but he didn’t know what it would be, and that was terrifying. And he thought of all the times he’d had a bad feeling about a place or a stranger and ignored it, and how if anything bad had happened he’d never found out, so he could almost convince himself nothing had happened at all–

And he thought of his aunt and uncle, Tristan’s mom and dad. Then he mumbled something to the rest of the group and took off running toward the library.

The librarian looked up in surprise from the book she was stamping for a little girl when he threw open the glass door. The bell pealed almost reproachfully, the high pitches piercing through the tight knot in his chest, and he made a beeline for the checkout desk. “Miss? Where’s the bathroom?”

She laughed–the mystery of his entrance solved–and leaned over the desk to point in and to the left. “Right back there, through the nonf–” He was gone before she could finish her sentence.

Tucker sprinted past rows of shelves, not even noticing the two little girls on a high ladder or the shifty-looking man with a ponytail who turned around, startled, as he pounded by. Something is–someone is–! By now he was breathing hard for normal reasons: Tucker was really out of shape. He started to lag, but then a faint thud from the bathroom had him redoubling his speed. He threw open the door and stopped short, almost tripping over oh holy fuuu–

Tristan was sprawled across the dirty tile floor, muttering something. There was blood on his head and on the door of one of the stalls, and his shirt looked dark and sticky and there was something sticking out of it. There were grainy red smears across half of the bathroom. Someone in a hoodie was dragging him through another door on the other side of the room, ten feet away—and the door behind Tucker had just swung shut.

The person’s head snapped up, showing Tucker a cheap plastic mask. The fluorescent lights flickered and went out. Tucker grabbed behind him for the door handle with sweaty hands and tried to yell, but his voice wouldn’t work. Tristan made a noise–was that Tristan? He turned to the door, but it still wouldn’t open– and he felt movement behind him and he yanked at the door handle with his entire body and SOMETHING WAS COMING and he screamed.

A heavy weight thudded against his back, and he was dragged down, banging his shoulder on the door as he kicked and fought frantically to get away from whatever had its arms around him. Then there was a hand on his mouth and he bit and the weight was off of him with a cry of pain. He wrenched himself off the floor and threw himself back onto the door handle. Behind him he heard a door open and shut, just as he got his own door open and fell into the bookshelf opposite before scrambling up to his feet again, back against the bookshelf, eyes locked on the open door of the bathroom. His heart was going to beat out of his chest.

The bathroom was empty.

Well, no, Tristan was there, laying on the ground, and the ground was red, and the grout between the tiles was never going to be unpleasantly greyish-white again because the stains would never come out. But the other door (maintenance closet, his brain supplied helpfully) swung shut again, and the bathroom was empty.

The man with the ponytail and the two little girls were staring at him with wide eyes from the end of the aisle. The librarian was sprinting toward them. “Oh my god, are you okay?” One of the little girls started crying, and with a start Tucker realized he was, too. He was sobbing. Slowly, he slid down to the ground, feeling the wood shelves bump, bump, bump against his spine.

He looked again at Tristan, bleeding on the floor, and he knew he should check on him, but he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t go back in that bathroom.

Instead, he turned to the librarian, slowly, fighting through a bone-deep exhaustion like he’d never felt before. “Call 911.”

~(*0*)~

Tristan was awake when they bundled him into the ambulance, head lolling to the side and mouth muttering things that Tucker couldn’t understand until the EMTs finally strapped the oxygen mask on. Three hours and a trauma blanket later, the policeman with the short red beard allowed Tucker to leave with his parents, though not before making sure to obtain a phone number in case the police needed a follow-up statement. Tucker’s parents hugged him for a full two minutes in total, and they had an early dinner at his favorite restaurant, Steak Your Life on It, on the way home. Somehow everything tasted bland. He just wanted to go to sleep.

Before she would let him go upstairs, though, his mom took him through to the right and sat him down at the dining room table. The dining room’s blue walls looked almost a sickly brown in the orange-yellow light of the small iron chandelier that lit the room. Two of his dad’s amateur paintings on the walls showed leafy outdoor scenes, and Tucker found himself distracted by the way the lights also reflected in the polished mahogany of the table, turning the table into a stagnant pond and the dining room as a whole into a murky swamp lit by fireflies. Angela Foley looked him in the eye. “Tucker. I know you’re going to be very careful from now on, and I’m sorry for how you had to learn, but your dad and I think it’s best you understand everything. Did you hear about Mrs. Ainara? Her son Kwan is in your class.”

Tucker, who had been sort of staring at the ground next to her, looked up and made eye contact at that. “Yeah, we had a memorial assembly last week. Second day of school.”

“What I doubt they told you, and since you don’t read the newspaper what you might not know, is they think she was murdered by someone who was already responsible for two other deaths in Chicago. And last month they found the body of a girl who used to go to your school, Amber McClain, within Amity city limits. They’re still investigating.”

Tucker’s eyes widened. “So I–was that…?”

“No. Look at me. We don’t know anything right now, but the police are inclined to investigate in that direction as well as all the others. So if some of their questions seemed weird, that was why.”

Tucker started. “They...they asked me if Tristan had ever been to Chicago. I didn’t know.”

“Right. So we don’t know anything right now, but–and I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this–you need to be very careful from now on. Anywhere you go, I want you to bring a friend. If you’re sleeping over at Sam’s house, make sure her parents will be there as well, and if they’re going out of town offer to let her stay with us. And if you see anyone weird or suspicious around the school or really anywhere, you call the police and let them know. Got it?”

Tucker nodded. His mom regarded him sternly for another moment, and then her face broke and she pulled him into a tight hug. “Whoever it is, they’re going to catch him soon. Okay, baby? You’re safe with us. You’re safe.” He nodded into her shoulder, eyes finally dry.

But if he really paid attention, the feeling was still there. Like a mosquito buzzing just out of hearing range, like knowing there’s something crawling across your skin even though you can’t actually feel it. And with a start, he realized he’d felt it before, that this was something he could classify based on past experiences and the ache of hard-won instinct in the back of his skull, based on the crawling sensation that had plagued him in the weeks before Mikey Sullivan’s dad was diagnosed with cancer and the memory of some several-celled organism that saw a dot in the sky 66 million years ago and for the first time understood the true meaning of death from above.

Something was still coming. In fact, something had just begun.

~(*0*)~

Tucker woke up from a turbulent sleep at noon on Sunday, then stayed in bed and played video games for the rest of the day. He ate a lot of chips, and his mom kept bringing things like apple sticks with peanut butter and pizza pockets for variety. It was a good move. By the end of the day, he’d managed to spend a few hours forgetting, not thinking about it at all. He was also bored out of his mind, bored enough to actually willingly finish the rest of his homework besides CompSci (he’d finished that Friday since it was actually interesting, even if the pace of the class was a little slow). By 10:00 he’d realized something surprising: He wanted to go to school the next day.

His mom was exceedingly shocked at this declaration, mostly because he’d never before in his life expressed an actual desire to go to school the next day. Quite the opposite, actually. But Tucker was bored, and there was only so long one could subsist on pizza pockets and peanut butter.

(And if his skin was still itching when he sat still for too long...well, he wouldn’t have been able to put it into words if he’d tried. The concept didn’t really translate into English. He wondered if there was some perfect word out there, if a few hundred hours and a Duolingo account would allow him to define and categorize the feeling of wrong in his chest and the backs of his nostrils. He suspected not.)

The next morning he got up in the usual way, with only a vague feeling like cat’s paws running down his back. He brushed his teeth in the usual way, he had a slight pounding behind his eyes but no headache, and he didn’t flinch at small noises or anything like that. His nervous system had settled down, as much as it ever did. And that, somewhat ironically, was making him nervous.

He caught the bus to school and sat with a vague sort-of friend, occasionally making conversation but mostly scrolling through memes on Reddit. The bus had a funky smell to it, like the unholy lovechild of Axe body spray and the fungal cultures in AP Biology classroom, which contributed to his desire to keep his mouth shut for the duration of the ride.

So Tucker didn’t really talk to anyone until he got to first period, where Sam glommed onto his wrist like a starfish with a wild look in her eyes. “Tucker! Why the hell didn’t you answer my texts?! I heard something happened at the library, and then my parents heard from Mrs. Rodriguez that your cousin got hurt, and then we didn’t know what was happening and you could’ve been hit by a truck or something and I—”

“Woah, Sam, calm down! I’m okay.” He subtly tried to pry her hand off his wrist and failed, which was a bit humiliating because his gaming fingers were really the only muscles that he exercised regularly and strenuously. “And they think Tristan’s going to be okay too. I’ll tell you what happened at lunch; I don’t want to” —he side-eyed the rapidly filling classroom— “make a big deal out of it.”

Sam gave him an assessing glance. He tried for a smile and added, “Plus, showing this much emotion in public is not your style. You’re going to ruin your rep.”

Sam hmph ed and slid into her seat. Tucker did the same, wincing when his bruised hip from hitting the bathroom floor banged into the metal bar attaching the desk to the chair. A few idle conversations fluttered through the air around them, and Tucker just as idly tuned in. Certain voices, mostly the A-listers since to a man they all talked unnecessarily loudly, popped out and then faded back like he was switching between distant, staticky radio stations. “—4th of July? That was insane dude I don’t even rem—” “Yeah, his name’s Josh and he’s super sweet, I—” “—do the reading last week, it was a total waste of—”

Mr. Lancer strode into the classroom five minutes late and everyone immediately quieted down. Baldness, literary swearing, and conspicuous gut notwithstanding, Lancer was a good teacher and an intimidating one. You could tell he enjoyed his power by the faint smirk that drifted across his face when silence fell.

He gave the room one imperious survey as he walked to his desk and then gestured impatiently to someone standing just outside the door. A skinny, pale teenager with black hair took a few reluctant steps into the classroom and stood to the side of the desk. He looked like a normal high schooler besides the huge backpack, which made him look like a snail who was also an apocalypse prepper.

Tucker’s skin immediately tried to crawl off of him.

Sam gave him a weird look, and he realized his breathing had gone funky. He consciously controlled it and looked back at the the new kid, whom Mr. Lancer had just introduced as Denny Feldman or something, from Chicago. The new kid hooked his thumbs behind his backpack straps and scanned the room nervously. Was nervously really the right word? No, warily. That was it.

Tucker’s goosebumps revolted one more time, pointedly, and then the feeling settled down to a dull hum in his capillaries. But as the new kid hiked to an open seat at the back of the room, Tucker still couldn’t keep his thought from earlier from ricocheting around his mind with even greater urgency.

Something had begun, and the something that had been coming? It was already here.

Chapter 2: Three Conversations in the Calm Before the Storm

Chapter Text

Three Conversations in the Calm Before the Storm

or alternatively: The Universe Could Use LinkedIn

“It was horrible, Sam. I’ve never been that afraid in my life. I keep seeing guys in hoodies and swallowing my lungs a little bit.”

Sam hugged his shoulders a little tighter, resting her cheek on the left one. They were sitting at the end of the bleachers farthest from the school, on the second row from the top. A few other small groups sat on the bleachers eating lunch, but none were close enough to overhear. “I’m so sorry that happened,” Sam said lowly. Tucker glanced at her and was a bit surprised at what he saw. She didn’t look sympathetic or scared so much as angry.

Well, actually, this was Sam, so he didn’t know what he’d expected.

Sam squeezed one more time and then let go to start arranging her lunch tray. (Three iceberg lettuce leaves, chips, and a muffin—the cafeteria really could afford to improve its vegetarian options.) “I hate to say this, but...is there any possibility he could come back? For you, I mean.” Her furtive glance at him looked nervous this time, as if she were afraid she’d overstepped, but it was a valid question.

“I found out this morning that the police sent a car to sit outside my house late last night. My dad talked to them, and they don’t think it’s likely, but they’re going to keep the car out there for a week or so just in case, and then my dad has a cousin who’s a cop who’s going to come stay with us for a while. With a gun and stuff. So that’s...nice, I guess. 24/7 police detail. Tons of fun.”

Sam sighed in relief like one of her mom’s heavy designer purses had been dropped on her chest. She picked at a lettuce leaf. “Good. I’d like to keep you around for a little while at least.” She paused. “So, I guess...what now?”

“Uh...what do you mean?”

Sam took a big bite of muffin and then tried to talk around it. “I meungh, luff, wha—?” She gestured expansively with the hand holding the muffin, and Tucker snorted into his boiled chicken while she huffed in frustration at her inability to articulate exactly what she was trying to say. “Whuh do you do nowfgh, whuth thuh cashe?” She swallowed. “With the case. Are you going to have to testify again or something?” she tacked on almost as an afterthought.

“I mean, maybe? They have our number. And my parents want me to visit Tristan tomorrow. But other than that, I guess just wait for the police to solve it and stuff.”

Sam frowned. “I can’t believe they haven’t caught this asshole yet. I mean, Chicago PD is on this. Chicago. If they couldn’t solve it after three people died in their own city, I don’t know if Amity PD really stands a chance.”

“I dunno, Chicago PD is more overworked than Florida—” Tucker paused, letting his mind catch up with him. “Wait, three people in Chicago?”

“Yeah. Well, sort of. I looked into the case after...you know, Kwan’s mom”–she looked away guiltily, the way people do when something incomprehensible happens to someone else–“and there’s a third case that they’re on the fence about attributing to this guy. Software engineer in the ‘burbs named Nicholas something. His case didn’t have the same ‘characteristics’ as the others, whatever that means—lot of journalists are pretty sure he had different wounds than the other two in Chicago—but the chief of police announced that they did find evidence of a connection in his house.”

“Huh.” Tucker took another thoughtful bite of his chicken and bacon-sprinkled mashed potatoes and chewed slowly. They lapsed into silence. The bleachers creaked under them as a cool autumn wind rustled the painted white lines in the grass of the football field and whistled between the twin prongs of the field goal. For a second, the prongs reminded Tucker of horns, which reminded him of the other thing he’d wanted to tell Sam about, the thing he’d been dying to tell the only person he could ever since his close call. “There was one more thing, though, about the library.”

Sam looked up with concern and lettuce between her teeth. “What is it?”

“Look, I know how you feel about this stuff, but...you remember how when we were kids I would get those, like, feelings?”

“Dude, eight puberty jokes literally just flashed before my eyes.”

“Yeah, okay, me too, but that’s not the point. I mean, like, the weird feelings. The creepy ones.”

Sam raised one eyebrow. “You’re not making this any better, just a lot more vaguely worrying.”

Tucker snorted, then caught himself. “Ok, but you know what I mean, dude.”

Sam’s slight smile drooped, and she crossed her arms, looking uncomfortable. “Yeah, I know what you mean. And you know what I think, so do we have to have this conversation?”

“But dude, I got it again that day. Stronger than it’s ever been. That’s how I knew to follow Tristan into the bathroom.”

Sam snorted and then tried to hide it behind a cough. Tucker stared at her. “What?”

“It’s nothing, go on.”

“Wait, I want to hear what you were thinking.”

“No, seriously, it’s super insensitive and I feel guilty! Don’t make me say it, Tuck!”

As a matter of historical importance, it was extremely hard for Tucker and Sam to maintain a serious conversation. “Okay, but now I have to know.”

“Aughhh, fine! Just, your weird, creepy feeling prompted you to follow your cousin into the bathroom?”

Tucker stared at her for a second, then burst into that kind of wheezing, scandalized laughter you get when you really shouldn’t be laughing at something but you can’t stop . He punched her. Between wheezes he whisper-yelled, “Sam, what the hell? I don’t want that in my brain; why would you even think that?!”

“My sense of humor is 100% your fault and you know it. I was so pure before you corrupted me.”

“Please, that degree of nasty can’t be learned .”

Sam let him stop chuckling before re-broaching the subject. “Ok, but that aside, I thought you stopped having these in, like, eighth grade.”

Tucker shifted uncomfortably. “Nah, I just kind of stopped talking about them. I knew how you felt about, like...stuff.”

She cringed. “You know I believe you about the feelings, Tuck! I think it’s totally possible the human subconscious can pick up on danger signs the conscious mind can’t. It’s the other part that I can’t get behind.”

“Ok, well, the Tristan thing was just a regular vanilla feeling . If vanilla tasted like nightmares. But do you remember when Lancer introduced that new kid?”

“Yeah, Danny something. You looked like you were tweaking,” Sam said warily. She munched on a chip and offered him one. He waved her off, which made her somewhat worried face gear-shift into exceedingly concerned.

“Yeah, well, he also gave me a vibe. But not, like, a danger vibe, just a wrong vibe. A lunch lady vibe.”

“Tucker….”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I just...you were a little kid. And the afterlife and the paranormal, they’re not real , Tucker. They can’t be. Dead is dead.”

“But if it’s not—” Tucker cut himself off. “Okay, fine, but you believe the subconscious thing, and Dennis Whatever gave me a seriously weird feeling.”

They both paused. “Wait,” Sam said slowly, “...didn’t Lancer say he was from Chicago?”

“...Yep.” He popped the ‘p.’ His eyes were wide.

Sam sat up straight, eyes flicking once around the field. “But it couldn’t be him, right? I mean, he’s our age!”

“The guy in the bathroom definitely seemed taller.” Tucker shuddered. “I think? It was dark, though, and it happened really fast. But you’re right, though, there’s no way….”

“Yeah, of course, yeah!” Sam laughed nervously. The bell sounded in the distance, and she started picking up her trash and putting it on the tray in hurried, jerky movements. “That would be ridiculous.”

“Totally. Completely ridiculous.”

They avoided each other’s eyes the whole way across the field.

~(*0*)~

Sam couldn’t forget about the conversation for the rest of the school day. Three p.m. found her waiting outside the school and replaying it again and again in her mind, the way she used to replay various Black Veil Brides songs during her gothier phase (she had toned down the goth about halfway through sophom*ore year). Usually at this time she would be going somewhere with Tucker or a more peripheral friend, but today her dad had said he would pick her up from school, what with the two actual murders and one attempted murder that had occurred in the last month or so in normally tranquil Amity Park. And Jeremy Manson picking his daughter up from school? Sam had accepted the offer mainly to either witness the highly improbable or call his bluff.

It was looking like the latter as Sam’s digital watch blinked its cheerful neon way toward 3:30. She was good and steamed both figuratively and literally (once the wind had died down it’d quickly become a hot September afternoon, and the front of the school provided little cover for Sam’s sensitive vampire-esque skin tone) when a (not the, a) family Mercedes carefully signaled and pulled up a tidy seven inches from the curb where Sam was standing. Jeremy Manson opened the passenger window and leaned across from the driver’s seat toward Sam. He looked utterly unruffled. “Samantha, sorry I’m late. Last-minute problems at work. Do you want to drive?”

Did Sam want to drive? She was still learning, so she needed the practice, and it would give her an excuse to avoid the conversation. But if she agreed, she would be supporting through passivity the way he’d redirected the conversation to completely pass over the fact that he’d left his daughter standing alone in front of the school for 27 minutes with a serial killer on the loose. Sam fixed him with cold eyes. “I’ll pass this time, if you don’t mind.”

Something in Jeremy Manson’s face seemed to fall, or maybe crack a little and flake away, but he was still smiling when he answered “Suit yourself” and unlocked the passenger door. Sam scanned quickly to make sure no one saw her climbing into the sleek blue Mercedes. As she sat down, she caught her dad running one fumbling hand through his platinum blonde hair, mussing it up just a bit at the back so that it stood up the wrong way against the (stylish and completely vegan-unfriendly) leather-and-chrome headrest. So maybe not so utterly unruffled.

The keychains on her backpack jingled as she played with them, not looking at her dad. The black backpack on her lap turned the car into a mountainous environment, and the atmosphere between them helped complete the illusion: it felt prickly with phantom pine needles. Mr. Manson signaled a left turn, completed it in silence, and then side-eyed Sam once he was on a straightaway. “So, Samantha. How was school?”

Sam shrugged. “Fine. Average.”

“And your friend Tucker? Is he okay?”

She snuck a glance at him over the Mountain of Zippers and Sorrow, but his eyes were firmly on the road. It was impressive that he’d heard about what happened to Tucker and remembered it, even if it was weird how he still referred to him as “your friend Tucker” despite having had him over for dinner many, many times over the course of quite literally years. They only knew one Tucker! No one knew more than one Tucker. “Yeah, he’s, he’s good. Seemed okay at school today.”

“He came to school? Good for him.”

“Yeah, I thought so, too.”

“Mhm.”

The conversation wheezed out one last breath and keeled over on the side of the road. Mr. Manson checked for it in his rear view mirror, then apparently decided to leave it for dead. Sam went back to jingling her keychains.

It was another good five minutes of trekking through the suburban jungle before they spoke again. “So, Samantha, I was thinking.” He paused, and Sam waited for him to go on before another slightly frazzled glance at her in the rear view mirror revealed he expected prompting. She mustered a “what?” at the same time he gave up on her and started in with “Remember whe—sorry.”

“No, go on. What were you thinking?”

Jeremy Manson breathed in and watched the windshield more determinedly. “Remember when you were little and you took ice skating lessons?”

She snorted, but not mean-spiritedly. That was a good memory. “Yeah, what about it?”

“How would you want to go ice skating weekend after next? We can get dinner in the mall and then you can show your dad some moves.”

Now Sam was the one who found herself frazzled. She looked out the window and ran one hand through her hair, pulling a few strands out of the usual half-up black ponytail. “Uhh, you have time?”

“I should be able to get out early Sunday. Maybe seven or so?”

Okay, woah. Jeremy Manson had free time? His time was money; it was most certainly never free.

Another important thing to consider: It would be awkward as hell. They barely spent time together as it was, and this car ride was a shining example of how it usually went.

She needed a buffer. “Can I bring Tucker?”

Mr. Manson stared straight ahead, tapping a steady rhythm with his thumbs on the (vegan-unfriendly!) steering wheel. “Well, I thought it would be fun if it were just us. Like when you were little.” He checked both side mirrors without catching her eyes.

And that was when she grasped the full deviousness of his plan. The absolute asshole! It wasn’t just that he was pretending nothing had ever gone wrong between them and he could just pick up where he left off, the way her parents always did after arguments—the way she hated. No, this was more than that. He was going to take away her ammunition. He was going to free up two hours for her, and then whenever they got into their next screaming fight where they tried to control every aspect of her life and she pointed out that they were barely even in her life otherwise, they would point out this one day. Where they went ice skating. As if that had fixed everything and they had ice skated right back up to the moral high ground. Well, tough break, Jeremy: You can’t even skate, much less skate uphill.

Sam white-knuckled her sharpest-edged keychain and plastered on a patented Manson smile. “Sorry, I just remembered! I’m busy all that weekend, huge project and stuff, you know how it is.” She stared him full in the eyes. “How about the next one?”

He looked away. “I’m not sure. I can try, but you know how things come up.” His eyes pleaded with her in the dusty side mirror.

Sam drew in breath to say something snarky and accusatory that would inevitably lead to a fight–and something caught her eye out the window.

They were driving past Masters Park and its associated library. The squat building’s roof had an overhang that, with the sun overhead, drenched the walls in heavy shadow. A “closed” sign was visible in the darkened glass door, and left-behind police tape fluttered and writhed in the breeze as the library slowly slid out of view behind the car. Funny how a bit of context could give an unassuming building such an aura of menace.

Tucker had almost died on Saturday. He could have died, just like that, if the attacker’d had, say, another knife or a few more seconds. That was a legitimate possibility . And the killer was still at large.

Sam thought of Grandma Ida.

Sam’s grandma had lived with them for nearly all of Sam’s childhood. When Sam had come down with the flu in the middle of the night and been sick on the bathroom floor, it had been Grandma Ida she’d woken up to deal with the mess. When she’d brought home her report cards, it had been Grandma Ida who’d read over the comments with her on the big squashy beige couch, and Grandma Ida had played heavy metal on the radio as she drove Sam to soccer practice in fifth grade, then Frank Sinatra when she picked her up later. Sam’s most vivid childhood memory was of falling into those white pleather seats and staring up through the sunroof at the moths playing in the golden streetlights as Grandma Ida’s husky voice sang the wrong lyrics to “Fly Me to the Moon.”

Grandma Ida had passed away when Sam was in seventh grade. She’d been very old.

That had been the start of Sam’s occult phase. She’d always casually thought it was cool, she’d watched Ghost Whisperer and Supernatural and a lot of k-dramas of a similar nature, but she’d never thought much about whether she believed in ghosts. That year she researched for hours a day. Her grades slacked off. She started wearing all black and didn’t stop. She tried everything she could and more, and her parents got tired of cleaning up candle wax and various odd-smelling herbs from her room and sweeping salt out the window. When they found the scars across her palms from dripping blood on the floorboards under the rug, they put a stop to it, or at least to her more obviously ritualistic eBay purchases.

But by then, they barely needed to do anything. It’d been a full year and she’d gotten zip, zilch, nada from the spirit world. Either the afterlife didn’t exist or the Beyond just didn’t have time to waste on a spoiled little rich girl. The former was easier to stomach, if only slightly—so that was what she chose to believe.

But that was three years ago; Sam wasn’t even thinking about that now. She just thought of Grandma Ida, and how wrecked she would have been if the last words they exchanged hadn’t been “I love you.”

She slowly let go of her keychain, feeling the suction as the metal unstuck from the grooves of her sweaty palms. She looked out through her own window. “I guess I could shuffle some things around for that Sunday. Seven, right?” (She’d had no plans for Saturday or, in fact, any other day that week.)

Mr. Manson’s eyebrows climbed about an inch up his forehead. “Really? I mean, that’s great! I’ll ask my secretary to put it on my schedule right away.” He hit the phone button on his steering wheel and carefully articulated, “Call Margaret,” leaning up toward where the car phone’s microphone was presumably located in a way that made him look like a particularly ridiculous blonde meerkat. Sam tuned him out.

Curse her sudden pangs of conscience and forethought; what had she gotten herself into?

~(*0*)~

Tucker sat on his plain green bedspread that evening and stared at his phone for a good ten minutes. It was 8 p.m. and all the lights in his room were on, as they had been the night before, and the night before that. His ceiling fan cast revolving swaths of shadow over the electronic knicknacks cluttering up his desk, his dresser, and the free space on his seldom-used bookshelf. As soon as he’d finished his homework, his mom had ducked her head around the doorframe–once again demonstrating her awe- and fear-inspiring Mom Senses–and asked him if he was up to talking to Tristan in the hospital. The staff still didn’t want him receiving in-person visitors (something about an infection), but they were letting him receive calls from friends and family as long as they didn’t interrupt his sleep schedule.

Come on, Tucker. Mom made meatloaf. It’s just this...and then meatloaf. You can do anything with that kind of motivation. He unlocked his phone and dialed the number written on his mom’s fancy Nagual’s on 7th managerial stationary. He wasn’t sure if the ringing in his ears was actually the phone or another one of his hunches. That freaking imaginary mosquito had been just a bit louder ever since fifth period. (You know, the period where Danny Whatever left to go to the bathroom and didn’t come back to Calc BC for another twenty minutes. Totally a coincidence. Yep.)

The click on the other end of the (not literal) line was more of a clatter. Tristan’s voice sounded like oatmeal, but like...without any oats. (Thin. It sounded thin.) “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Tuck. Enjoying the hospital cuisine? I’ve heard it’s very avant-garde.”

Tristan laughed, a soft, cracked sound. “You sound like the ‘bone apple-teeth’ meme.”

“Don’t I always?”

“Pretty much.” Tristan paused, and Tucker could faintly hear hospital bustle in the background: phones ringing, people talking in short, clipped tones. When Tristan came back, he sounded more serious. Urgent. “Tuck, there’s something I need to know. Do you ever get...feelings?”

Right now Tucker was mostly feeling like he very much wanted to end this conversation, but he forced a laugh. “Please, I’m a real man. My only feelings are hunger and testosterone.”

Tristan didn’t laugh. “Seriously, Tuck. I mean, like, premonitions. Bad feelings before something happens. My mom says it runs in the family, and you were there when….” He cut off, and his breathing went a little thick and heavy.

Ah, sh*t. Now Tucker felt weird and guilty. Mostly weird. I mean, this might sound super shallow and insensitive, but the guy was a senior. They didn’t hang out much outside of family reunions, but Tristan had always seemed unassailable and cool. Like, he got invited to parties and stuff. And he, like—okay, that was pretty much Tucker’s only metric for cool since he had no sense of fashion and wasn’t super up on the senior class social hierarchy, but—oh yeah, and he had a hot girlfriend that one time! So anyway, it was weird to hear Tristan sounding...vulnerable.

Ugh. Now he had to tell the truth. “Yeah, dude, I know what you mean. You have it too?”

Tristan laughed. “Yeah. Guess it’s not quite so reliable when the bad thing’s happening to you, but that’s the universe for you.”

Tucker flopped backward onto his bed and stared up at his ceiling fan. His mom had turned it on and opened the windows to clear the smell of moldering laundry and sneakers corrupted by gym class from his room, but the air still seemed stagnant and heavy, gelatinous somehow. Looking up at the blades made Tucker feel like he was in a blender. Round and round…. “So does Aunt Lacey have it too? What does she say about it?”

“She says you’ve always got to follow it or terrible things will happen. Can’t say I’ve stuck to that advice. It’s freaky. Plus, not enough hours in the day, you know?” He chuckled bitterly. “But who knows, maybe that’s how I ended up here.”

There was a pause. Tucker, as a rule, hated pauses, so he broke it first. “Sooo...was there a point to this or are we just generally talking about our feelings?”

Tristan must have dozed off a little, because he snapped back to the conversation with an “Oh! Right. There was something weird during the—in, in the library. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it felt wrong. Like dead things. Or, like, like pollution! Unnatural and, okay, I’ll say it, evil . And you know we only get these senses if there’s something we’ve gotta do, or something we’ve gotta stop.” That was news to Tucker, but he kept it to himself. “I’ve spent a lot of time avoiding it, but sometimes you just can’t. And this seems big, like, cannot sidestep big. And I can’t do it from here, man. So it has to be you.”

Tucker choked on his own spit. He bolted back up into a sitting position while the room seemed to spin in the opposite direction of the fan, so now the fan blades were standing still. “What?! Dude, no, I can’t fight a serial killer, are you crazy?! I’m high schooler! I don’t even work out!”

“I know it sounds insane, but I get the feeling this isn’t the sort of thing that can be solved by one of them. It has to be one of us.”

“The hell?! By ‘them’ do you mean the highly qualified cops who are, like, trained for and experienced in this kind of stuff? Because, like, I make plenty of ACAB jokes but I’m not trying to be some sort of vigilante, man! Just, no! You know what, why am I even trying to justify this; this isn’t the sort of thing that you have to justify. It’s just not going to happen!”

Tristan sounded like he was fading a little bit when he replied, “Well, good luck trying to get out of it, I guess. But for something this weird, I’m not sure the cosmos will be willing to cut you a break. Speaking from experience.”

“But your theory is the universe is letting you out of it because you got stabbed.” Tucker started laughing a little hysterically. “Great. Never thought I’d ever be jealous of someone for that.”

Tristan was possibly feeling the pain meds; his voice had gone a little wobbly. “Not cool, dude. I’m wounded. Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you. Thanks for calling, and I guess say hi to Aunt Angela for me.”

“Oh, just like that? That’s it, you just tell me I’ve got to single-handedly stop a serial killer because the universe apparently doesn’t have a LinkedIn account, and then you want to say hi to my mom.”

“Pretty much.” Yeah, he was definitely sounding a little loopy. “I delivered the message; not my problem anymore.”

“I’m so happy for you.”

Okay, yeah, he’d just been stabbed, but was Tristan usually this much of an asshole? No wonder they never hung out. Tucker suddenly felt like this was a very natural place to end the conversation. He dropped his phone away from his ear and was about to hit the big red button when he heard faint squawking from the speaker. He sighed. Against his better judgement, he lifted the phone again. “What was that?”

Tristan’s voice was back to being serious, if thready. “I said, for what it’s worth, I really am sorry.”

“...Thanks, I guess.” Tucker hung up the phone, then hung his head and stared at it for a while.

~(*0*)~

It was only four hours later when he was finally getting to sleep and mulling over the conversation in one corner of his mind when he suddenly sat upright, throwing off the covers with the violence of his reaction, and asked the dark, empty room, “Wait, ‘wounded.’ Was that a f*cking pun?!”

Chapter 3: Two Black Marbles

Chapter Text

Two Black Marbles

or alternatively: How to Win a Land War in Australasia

Tucker kept one eye on the new kid through all of Tuesday’s English, CompSci, and French classes. He could tell Sam was doing the same in English–it was usually her best subject, but this time when she got cold called she actually had to fudge the answer for once. And they were studying Poe. Sam memorized Poe. Tucker vowed then and there to find a cask of Amontillado on eBay for her next birthday just so she could never live this down.

Anyway, between the two of them they were in five of Danny’s six classes, so they had eyes on him practically all day. Here’s what they’d learned by Tuesday afternoon:

1. No one had warned him not to eat the ominously pulsing sludge the cafeteria called “baked bean surprise.”
2. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, since he really shouldn’t have needed a warning not to eat something called “baked bean surprise.”
3. Math seemed to be his best subject, although neither of them was in his Chem class so they couldn’t testify to his performance there.
4. In classes he was good at, he answered questions, but not, like, an unusual number of questions.
5. In the rest of his classes, he was mostly asleep.
6. Seriously, the dude could power nap.
7. He was really bad at keeping his shoes tied.
8. He was even worse at opening his locker. It took him almost three minutes between first and second periods and even longer between second and third, to the point where during mid-morning break he just sighed and dumped all of his remaining textbooks into the enormous space-themed backpack.
9. He wasn’t very good at making friends. In fact, he didn’t really seem to be actively trying. At lunch, he just picked a shady spot outside the school, facing the field, and listened to music while he poked dubiously at his beans.
10. The “surprise” in the baked beans probably merited suspicion and rigorous investigation more than Danny.

He seemed like a totally normal kid. A slacker, possibly a low-key druggie if his ridiculously long bathroom break the day before had been any indication, but not anything that couldn’t be found in every typical high school across America.

And yet, every time he walked into a room Tucker’s flesh crawled.

Which was really annoying him, honestly. He probably wouldn’t have paid Danny any attention but for the way his spideynightmare senses tingled every time the guy entered a room. Sam was invested in the serial killer angle probably because of her fascination with the macabre (her Netflix recommendations...really scared him, sometimes), but he’d promised himself after the phone call with Tristan that he wasn’t going to get involved. And he would enthusiastically keep that promise, too, if his skin would just stay where it was supposed to around the kid he shared half of his classes with.

On Wednesday, Sam was Tucker’s carpool to school (since her parents wouldn’t let her drive what they called the “nice” cars, she was stuck with the boring old Maserati, and she didn’t have access to it Mondays or Tuesdays because of whatever her mom’s newest charity thing was). Pretty much immediately, Tucker noted with a cringe that her driving wasn’t the only thing that was a bit more erratic than usual. The first thing she asked him after he’d heaved his backpack into the trunk (no worries about breaking anything; he was, as always, clutching his PDA to his chest like a baby) was “So what did your cousin say?”

“What?” He’d been really making an effort to put the incident out of his mind, and also he’d gotten about four hours of sleep the night before, so for a second he was genuinely confused.

Sam huffed and swerved violently out into the street without signalling. Tucker subtly grabbed that handle thingy on the ceiling at about head height on the passenger side (what his mom had, during his driver’s training, called the “Oh-Jesus handle”). “You went to the hospital to visit him yesterday, right? Did he say anything about the attack?” Sam had apparently exhausted her rather limited reserves of sensitivity on the bleachers on Monday. Which was fair; Tucker was admittedly surprised she’d managed that as well as she had.

“Uh, I actually talked to him on the phone Monday night. He said some pretty crazy stuff.”

Sam waited until the last millisecond to come to a screeching halt behind a red sedan stopped at an intersection. Several someones behind them honked loudly. Sam continued the conversation as if nothing had happened. “What?! Dude, why didn’t you tell me yesterday?”

Tucker was still trying to control his breathing after the near-collision, so it took him a second to answer. “It was about my, ya know, feelings, and I know you don’t believe in that stuff! Plus, he was high as a kite on pain meds, so in this case I might kind of agree with you.”

“Okay, fair, I guess. But what did he say?” The light turned green, and Sam tailgated the red sedan until it very deliberately changed lanes.

Tucker opened his window so he could be ready to apologize to irate motorists. It’d become a sort of system: Sam cut people off and Tucker yelled “Sorry!” if it looked like they were going to get road raged. Which happened a lot. When Sam wasn’t doing the road raging, that is. He stuck his head out the window to try to see around the next car, a blue jeep, as he called back, “I don’t know, weird crap!” Satisfied that they weren’t about to cause a pile-up at the next intersection, he settled back into his seat. “Apparently he and my aunt both have the same premonition-y thing that I do, and if you get a bad feeling about something big it means the universe is going to, like, make you fix it. And since he got stabbed, now he gets to lay on a bed completely blitzed for like two weeks while I apparently have to stop a serial killer? Or the universe will, like, give me a wedgie or something.”

Sam glanced at him quickly in the rear view mirror. “You know, he has a point.”

“What? Uh, no, he really doesn’t.”

She licked her lips, slightly fading her grey-purple lipstick. “I mean, we do live in this neighborhood. We’re tapped in. We’re connected to two of the victims and one attempted victim, you’re, like, one of the only living witnesses, and you’ve got your premonition thing….”

Tucker felt an intense need to cut her off right there. “Sam! There are people who actually get paid to do this stuff. The only thing I’ve ever gotten paid for is working a cash register at Walgreens, and I was barely even qualified for that.” When he gave her his full attention, he could see the way she was holding her jaw: rigid, like she couldn’t wait to respond. Suspicion slithered its way along the dome of his skull. “Wait, is this your whole government thing again?”

Sam started gesturing wildly with her hands the way she always did when she got defensive (pretty rarely) or when she got argumentative (quite frequently). This meant that she was not holding the wheel. This meant that the car swerved violently. This very much didn’t help Tucker get less panicky as she wound up for a good long debate. “Okay, but bureaucratic incompetence coupled with a culture of secrecy, of–of power-mongering, and declining trust in individual intelligence and agency –if you would just read Ayn Rand–”

“Dude, the government isn’t some, like, faceless, shady alien entity! It’s a bunch of people for the most part” –he glared at her to make sure she had caught the qualification–“doing their best to make good decisions.”

Sam kept her eyes fixed on the yellow lines running down the center of the street. “I know. That’s why it scares me.”

Tucker paused for a second to gather his thoughts. Sam always seemed to want to argue, but Tucker was terrible at it. He didn’t understand how someone could enjoy being in conflict with others. He’d rather crack a joke, break the tension, spread some smooth peanut-butter banter over whatever was awkward or whatever he disagreed with and steer the conversation in a more fun direction; wasn’t it natural to want people to like you?

So he didn’t know the joys of debate. He did know Sam, though: She tended to think in high-minded ideological terms, so the best way to make her see reason was to force her to reconsider her points from a more down-to-earth perspective. “Okay, so what happens when we catch him?”

“We...call the police.”

“And how do we prove who it is in the first place? I mean, I’ve seen cop shows, dude! Sneaking around, probably snooping on some whack people’s private lives–what do we do if he catches us?”

Sam’s hold on the wheel got a little more stiff. She was wavering. “That’s a real hypothetical if.”

“And?”

She huffed through her nose like a bull and pushed some of her flyaway hairs, freed by the open window from ponytail captivity, back behind her ears. “I dunno, kick him in the balls and run?”

Now Tucker was the one wildly gesticulating, because she had to know that was ridiculous. “Sam, that is reckless well past the point of ordinary stupidity! You’re, like, trespassing into insanity there, dude!” He’d been trying for a while to catch her eyes, and at this she snapped her head over and glared at him. Tucker gave her what was probably a weird little panicky half-smile and tried to calm down. “No offense. But, I mean, this is a serial killer. We are high schoolers. Not only that, but we are shrimpy, untalented, weak-ass high schoolers. I, personally, have never taken a self-defense class in my life! My mile time is over ten minutes, dude! This body is a finely tuned instrument of love, not death; the one time I tried to hit someone I ended up punching my own—!”

“Okay, Tuck, I get the picture. It was a dumb idea, I know.”

She focused back on the road and stewed in silence. Tucker hated silence. It almost made him regret winning the argument. The road narrowed to one lane on either side, then one lane period, and they entered a roundabout surrounded by tidy, upscale white adobe houses with red terra cotta roofs and stylized bars on the windows. They were almost to the school.

Ugh. Sam was actually driving with a modicum of caution now, which meant she was in a really bad mood and was probably planning to sulk all day. He offered her a hesitant, goofy smile. “Hey, if you want, in the free time left over from not hunting serial killers today we could go sabotage Nasty Burger’s deep fryer again. You know how much of a sacrifice of ideals that is for me.”

She snorted, and one corner of her mouth twitched up. “Nah, my parents will probably take the car if I get in trouble with the police again. Nice try, though.”

“Hmm.” He considered. “Yeah, on second thought, today’s not actually a great day for me either. I’m feeling pretty fried.”

It took her a moment. Then, at the next light, she slammed on the brakes and gave him the most disgusted, dead-eyed look he’d ever seen on a human face.

Tucker grinned shamelessly at her and hit the button on the side of his seat that slowly reclined it back out of range of her poisonous glare. The “whirrrr” of the seat’s motor was too much for Sam, and she snorted out a laugh and banged her forehead against her hands on the top of the wheel, shoulders shaking visibly. When she raised her face, more flyaway hairs had come out of her ponytail to frame her face like a wispy, dishevelled lion’s mane. “Tucker, whyyy?!” Tucker just kept grinning like a dog who’d eaten all the towels as well as the shoes.

Internally, he was hearing his own personal pom-poms-and-ponytails cheer squad. Crisis averted, and a pun had won the day. As it should.

~(*0*)~

Tucker should have known that Sam wouldn’t truly be diverted from her course by something as insignificant and trifling as logic. Everything was fine through all six periods, even his in-class tingles of premonition (which he’d decided to thenceforth refer to exclusively as “the uh-oh feeling”) having died down a bit since the day before. Then came lunchtime. That was when he let Sam march him into the cafeteria and toward an empty table at the back of the hall, only to startle and punch her hard on the arm when she suddenly called, “Hey! New kid! Danny!”

Alone at the next table over, Danny looked up and quickly checked behind him, just in case Sam might have been referring to another new kid named Danny. He quickly fumbled out out one earbud and motioned with the hand holding it toward his chest. “Me?”

“Yeah, you. Come sit with us!”

Danny looked a little panicked for a second, but then he sort of shrugged and started gathering up his lunch tray. “Thanks. But, uh, don’t you guys need to get food?”

Sam grinned and held up her purple bat-themed lunch bag (it’d come with her backpack from ninth grade, and even though she’d ditched the backpack sophom*ore year she couldn’t bring herself to throw the lunch bag away). “Brought mine from home. Tucker, you gonna go get lunch?”

“Uh. Right.” With one last meaningful glare at Sam and a slightly sickly-looking smile at Danny, Tucker headed toward the end of the lunch line, adjusting his beret on the way. He had to squeeze past Danny and gritted his teeth when the expected shiver ran down his spine and back up again like the slider on a zipper. There was a weird smell, too, like lemons soaking in chlorine. If it was cologne, the kid needed to get his nose examined.

The cafeteria was a large room with white walls and big windows that let in a good amount of natural light. About fifteen plastic tables with office-style chairs were set up on the hardwood floors, and basketball hoops hung halfway folded up toward the ceiling on both ends. About a quarter of the way from one wall, a giant white curtain separated the kitchen from the eating area, and along that curtain was the gleaming chrome counter that serviced the lunch line. The cafeteria was usually pretty empty, since the kids had permission to take their lunches and eat anywhere on the school grounds; currently only ten of the tables hosted chattering students or the occasional loner staring off into the abyss while mechanically chewing his or her sandwich. In Tucker and Sam’s freshman year there had been one centralized cafeteria where all students had been required to eat, but that building had collapsed in a freak earthquake the day after Sam had gotten her still-infamous pet project of an ultra-recyclo-vegetarian menu implemented (she was just vegan now, thank god), and the money had never come in from the city to rebuild. Two and a half years later, the school was still using this repurposed gym that couldn’t even fit an eighth of the student body at once.

Tucker glowered his way back across the hall to their table to find Sam and Danny laughing so hard that Sam visibly almost choked. He set down his tray of mystery-meat-and-limp-lettuce-on-whole-wheat sandwich with ill humor. Jeez, you leave Sam alone for three minutes and apparently she befriends the possibly-supernatural serial murder suspect.

“Seriously, look it up on Wikipedia. It’s actually the best thing I’ve ever read,” Danny wrapped up, snickering.

Sam finished chewing a giant bite of her veggie wrap and swallowed with some difficulty. “I’ll do that. Yo, Tuck, have you heard of the Great Emu War?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Yeah, in, like, the ‘30s Australia had a military operation to deal with the emu infestation—and they lost.” Danny’s grin was bright and mischievous, which sparked some weird, jarring cognitive dissonance seeing as the only emotions he’d seen Danny exhibit thus far were “tired,” “bored,” “tired,” “mopey,” and “exhausted.”

It surprised a snort out of Tucker. “Wait, I was gone for, like, five seconds. How did you guys get from small talk to emu infestations?”

Sam shrugged. “I asked him what his favorite military conflict was. It’s a surprisingly good icebreaker.”

Danny washed down a bite of his own mystery meat sandwich with a swig from one of the only-slightly-spoiled cafeteria boxed milks and glanced at her in interest. “Wait, really? People usually have an answer to that?”

“Mhm, i’sh pre-y fummy,” Sam confirmed around the leafy end of her wrap.

“Heh, and here I thought I was special. That was a fun forty seconds.”

Sam inclined her head toward Tucker. “What about you? What’s your favorite war?”

“Uhh...what’s that one 300 is about?”

Sam raised one disdainful eyebrow at him. “The Persian Wars?”

Danny raised one hand. “Is that the same as the Peloponnesian War or not?”

Sam turned the look on him. “Danny, you’re in my World History class.”

“I know, that’s why I’m asking.”

“We talked about the Peloponnesian War yesterday.”

“I have a massive sleep debt and a general lack of motivation.” Danny shrugged and took another bite of his sandwich.

Tucker saw an opening. After all, if they were going to kinda-sorta investigate Danny, they might as well do it. “Yeah, you totally zoned through English.” (And CompSci and half of French, but it would be kind of stalkerish to mention he’d noticed what Danny was doing in all of the classes they shared. Hey, it was hard to ignore the source of your paranormal heebie-jeebies.) “What do you even do all night?”

Danny shrugged, avoiding their eyes for the first time since they’d broken the ice. He dropped the half-eaten sandwich on his plate. “You know, the usual. Netflix, video games.”

Huh. Well, that was vaguely suspicious, but Tucker could always use someone else to one-on-one in Doomed when Sam was busy, like, organizing a bake sale to to save the blue-speckled giraffe. Consider his interest piqued. “Any recom–”

“Hey, Foley.”

Tucker’s blood auto-transmuted into frozen sludge for an entirely mundane reason. He did a slow swivel, and sure enough, Dash was looming over him horror movie-style, Kwan a few steps behind. Sure, Dash hadn’t been all “let’s get physical” since he’d messed with the wrong senior’s kid brother and some actual gang members had kicked his ass right into the hospital midway through sophom*ore year, but Tucker couldn’t exactly help the way his lizard brain reacted. His Pavlovian conditioning meant he automatically associated that blonde, slicked-back ‘60s hairdo and those oddly contrasting black eyebrows with moderate pain and immoderate humiliation.

His usual policy when he was humiliated was “return to sender,” but all of his smart comments seemed to have run for the hills. They’d probably taken the way his heart had jumped into his throat as a signal to vamoose, and boy, did Tucker wish he could follow. Luckily, Sam had his back this time around. “What the f*ck do you want, Dash?” Short, sweet, and to the point: Tucker approved. Danny mostly looked confused.

Dash shuffled his feet in their Yeti-size definitely-bought-them-on-eBay Yeezys. “We’re not talking to you, Manson,” he muttered. There was a weird look on his face. Like he was about to hurl or something. Maybe he was really hungover. Or—uncomfortable? Kwan elbowed him hard, and the human incarnation of the Minotaur from every crappily animated fantasy game cleared his throat. “Uhh, Foley. We just wanted to say...sorry about what happened to Tristan. He’s a pretty great guy, and he’s thrown some epic parties, so, like...yeah.”

Kwan nodded emphatically. “Anything we can do, man? Could you tell him to let us know if he, like, needs help?”

Okay, had they phased into another universe or something? Was the LSD in the mystery meat making Tucker hallucinate all this while in reality he was passed out on the floor, foaming at the mouth? “Uhh...thanks? I’ll...let him know, I guess.”

He couldn’t help side-eyeing the two probable steroid abusers as Dash shrugged uncomfortably and stuffed his hands in the pocket of his omnipresent red Letterman. He nodded once, looking somewhere over Tucker’s head, and then started back toward his table with Kwan trailing behind like a really muscular sheepdog.

There was momentary silence at the table. Danny broke it by finishing off his carton of milk with one giant glug and then tossing it at a nearby trash can (he missed). “Well, that was awkward.” He got up to go retrieve it and throw it away properly.

Sam grimaced. “Yeah, stay away from those guys. What you just saw was an outlier; they’re usually total assholes.”

Tucker started to voice his enthusiastic agreement, but the bell rang, cutting him off with the unnecessary staticky aggression characteristic of most public high school PA systems. “Ah, crap.” They all hastily gathered trash onto their trays (or, in Sam’s case, gathered up their biodegradable lunch wrappings and reusable thermoses made from recycled materials) while Tucker stuffed the last of his sandwich into his mouth and chewed quickly. Wow, that was terrible, he thought through the immediate wave of regret. Only the school cafeteria could pervert the natural order of things enough to make him hate meat. “I gotta get to Robotics. You have MUN, right?”

Sam nodded. Danny, who’d started to go back to staring into the middle distance (Tucker couldn’t help thinking of it as his “I-can-still-smell-the-napalm mode”), perked back up. “Oh, yeah, my mom signed me up for that. You think you could show me where to go?”

“Yeah, sure.” Sam was oddly cheery this afternoon. Was Tucker’s company alone really that boring? “See ya, Tuck!”

Danny trailed a step or so in her wake, as one tended to do when confronted with the gravitational phenomenon known as Sam Manson’s force of personality. “Yeah, it was cool meeting you!” Danny offered one last friendly, sideways smirk as they slid between Tucker and the next table, and Tucker caught another whiff of that weird smell (along with the usual goose walking over his grave). It reminded him of the family road trip where their car had broken down next to a forest after a thunderstorm. The sky had been unrepentantly bright, and the air’d smelled almost bitterly clean, like… ozone! That was what it was; they’d talked about it in one of his middle school science classes, about the way you could smell ozone after it rained. But there was something else underneath it, too, something almost sickly sweet. Like an old tree stump that had gotten wet during the storm and started slowly, surely to rot. He narrowed his eyes as he watched them cross the cafeteria and pass out of sight through its doors, talking the whole way. “So, Sam, do you have to, like, participate in MUN, or is it the sort of thing where no one will notice if you kinda drift off a little bit….”

Hmph. Tucker shrugged, pacifying himself with the way the physical motion reinforced his internal decision. He was just going to ignore the strangeness; if he didn’t get involved, it couldn’t hurt him. He shoved his own trash through the swinging door for garbage and deposited his plastic lunch tray on top the increasingly tall and haphazard red stack on the trash bin, then turned to head to Robotics with a skip in his step. Behind him, the stack teetered silently, unnoticed, ever closer to the edge.

~(*0*)~

That night, Tucker dreamt about the fox for the first time.

It was small and grey, and it padded quietly next to him everywhere he went. At first, he was walking down an empty street in the rain, and it trotted out of an alley to join him. The street became a mountain, which became a forest of charred trees like branching nerves exposed to the chilling breeze, which became his favorite Mexican restaurant with that same wind buffeting laminated pictures of enchiladas verdes and street corn. He took a seat, and the fox settled at his feet and turned its snout toward him, unwavering. Its black eyes were wet and terrible and blank. The lady at the counter smiled sunnily. She looked familiar, he thought, and then he thought it was silly that he should think anything because he didn’t exist and hadn’t ever existed, had he? And when he looked down for his legs, just to double-check, they were gone and all that remained were the wet eyes of the fox, hanging in the air like two black marbles next to an empty chair at an empty table in a Mexican restaurant whose posters flapped loudly against each other in the pitiless breeze.

Chapter 4: A Stab in the Dark

Chapter Text

A Stab in the Dark

or alternatively: Quality Time with the Recently Deceased

Tucker wanted to like the new kid. Truly. He did.

Danny was funny and reasonably friendly, he played the same kinds of video games as Tucker and was more of a nerd than Sam, and the degree to which the universe seemed to despise him really made Tucker feel better about his own life. Danny was like a walking, wisecracking schadenfreude machine, and watching him try to open a locker or wrestle with the zipper on his backpack for ten minutes or whatever was incredibly cathartic. Did that make Tucker a bad person? Most likely yes.

The point is, it should have been easy for Tucker to like Danny. And it would’ve been, if Danny weren’t so incredibly suspicious and weird.

The half-hour-or-more disappearances became a recurring and noticeable phenomenon over the course of the week. Every few days Danny would give some terrible excuse to duck out of class and then be gone for an extremely unreasonable amount of time. Was he on his man period or something? (Sam’s first suggestion.) Tucker would assume he had some sort of, like, digestive problem and leave him alone, but one time he happened to go to the bathroom right after Danny left, and Danny was most definitely not there. And there was only one bathroom on that floor of the building, and it was in perfect working order! The next most obvious conclusion was that he was ditching class to inject horse tranquilizers (or, ya know, smoke weed), but Danny just didn’t seem like a stoner. He was too sharp and with it right after returning from his mysterious sojourns to the most forgotten cobwebby corners of Casper High. On top of that, there were the mostly-dissipated weird feelings and his stratospheric B.O., which was weird even for high school. And Sam said his hands were always, like, really cold.

Sam, incidentally, had been hanging out with him a lot. She said it was like being the unwitting protagonist of a Lovecraft novel. Tucker had two problems with this: first of all, people shouldn’t read early twentieth century literature for fun, and second of all, who would want to live in a Lovecraft novel?! (When you hung out with Sam enough, you absorbed some things.)

However, when Tucker dragged himself through his front door after school on Tuesday, September 17th, he wasn’t thinking about any of that. After all, he had other things in his life to deal with, like that essay he was planning to procrastinate on for weeks and then scramble to half-ass at 2 a.m., or how his policeman uncle-once-removed (or something like that) kept leaving his gigantic shoes right in the blind spot at the bottom of the stairs and eating all the cereal.

He took off his hat to run one absentminded hand through his fledgling dreads, ambled into the living room, and froze.

His aunt and uncle, Tristan’s parents, were sitting on the blue sofa in front of the coffee table. He couldn’t see their faces, but his mom in the nearest chair had his aunt’s hand in a death grip, and they were all staring fixedly at the TV.

Tucker opened his mouth to ask something and then shut it. The volume was turned down so low that the news anchor’s voice sounded rustling and strange, and that quiet along with the tightness in their shoulders strangled the words in his throat. Carefully, slowing his steps with some instinctual solemnity, he moved around behind his mom’s chair so he could hear the news and see the shifting colors of the screen batter his aunt’s face.

The ticker-tape at the bottom of the screen read, “Chicago serial killer claims another victim.”

The anchors were Tiffany Snow and Lance Thunder. The channel was the local news.

Tucker literally jumped into the air when the doorbell rang. He nearly swallowed his kidneys and just managed to catch a stack of Better Homes and Beyond magazines before they fell off his mom’s wicker nightstand-style table. His aunt and uncle glanced over, looking startled and red-eyed besides, and Tucker’s mom gave him a meaningful glare.

“H...hi, Aunt Grace. Uncle Jay,” he mumbled. They looked kind of out of it, slow to respond. Tucker crumpled his beret in one hand and gave a little half-wave as he turned away awkwardly. “Uhh...sorry.”

As soon as he made it through the threshold and out of sight, he jogged to the front door.

Sam was standing on the faded welcome mat, finger raised to push the doorbell button again. Her hair was up in a full ponytail with purple clips holding back her half-bangs, and her eyes were a little wild. As soon as she registered who it was, she started back down the driveway toward her currently double-parked blue Maserati. “If there’s any possibility we can stop this, we have to investigate,” she tossed back over her shoulder. “Get in the car.”

It was that or stay a moment longer in the unnerving, silent apartment. Tucker called in, “I’m going out with Sam! Back before sunset, I promise!” He waited a beat for his mom’s faint affirmative, then didn’t even look back as he closed the door behind him and hurried after her. The gravel crunched like popcorn under his sneakers, too loud in the afternoon sun.

~(*0*)~

Sam pulled up and parked about two feet from the curb in front of the weirdest house Tucker had ever seen. It was a regular two-story brownstone for the most part, but the address number was on a neon sign on the side of the house rather than painted tastefully next to the door, and there was what looked like a modified observatory just visible over the edge of the roof. Were Danny’s parents astronomers or something?

She marched up the paved path to the door with the same air of purpose she’d maintained since showing up at Tucker’s house unannounced. He didn’t know how she kept it up; just watching her was exhausting. The button for the doorbell was hanging out of the wall by a few loose wires, so Sam knocked three times, briskly. While they waited, Tucker eyed the bronze doorknob set into the light blue door. There was some weird detailing around the keyhole, an engraved horizontal leaf shape. The inset circle for the keyhole turned it into a small eye.

Someone yelled something muffled inside the house, and then the door swung open to reveal a pretty red-haired woman in her late 50s, wearing a teal tee shirt and leggings. She gave them a puzzled smile. “Hi! Can I help you?” She had a husky, low voice that reminded Tucker of his old gym teacher.

Sam smiled warmly, which gave Tucker the creeps. “Hey! We’re friends of Danny’s. From school!”

She co*cked her head inquisitively in a way that reminded Tucker of Danny, and a few strands of hair escaped her neat bun. “Oh! Sorry, he didn’t say anything about having friends over. Come on in!” She pushed the door shut, then turned and craned her head toward the staircase Tucker could see to the right, just beyond the green-walled entryway. “DANNY?!” Tucker winced. Damn, this lady was loud.

“YEAH?” Danny’s voice echoed from somewhere above them. Rapid footsteps sounded from that direction, quieter than Tucker would have expected based on the volume of everything else in this house. He’d become aware as soon as Mrs. Fenton shut the door of about six things whirring, what sounded like a leaky air conditioner blasting, and irregular mechanical beeps that seemed to emanate from every corner of the room. Danny trotted around the corner into the entryway and stopped short. “Oh, uh, hey.”

Tucker mustered a smile but let Sam do the talking. She did not disappoint. “Hey! Sorry to drop in unannounced, but you said we should come over sometime soon to play Doomed 4: The Kiss of Doom, right? And my parents’ housekeepers are doing the bathrooms right now so I thought I’d get out of the way for a few hours.” She sounded downright apologetic. Maybe miracles were real. “Anyway, you free?”

Danny took a visible moment to process this spiel. “Uhh, yeah! Yeah.” His mom smiled and headed away without further ado, and Danny started back toward the stairs. “Come on up.”

The stairs were dark wood with a blue carpet, and they creaked when Sam and Tucker put their weight in the bowed middle of a step. Tucker held the railing and kept to the edges. “Dude, how did you get the new Doomed this early?! I thought it didn’t come out ‘til mid-October!” Okay, so maybe Tucker was getting a bit distracted from the mission, but he’d been excited for this game for months.

Danny smirked as they made it to the landing and padded down a hallway toward a white door with one of those dry-erase calendars on it (still displaying events from December 2018. Nice). “One of my mom’s friends from college works in production. He lets us bug-test sometimes.”

“Sweet.” Sam caught Tucker grinning and sent him a warning glance behind Danny’s back. Right. Possible serial killer. What exactly were they doing here, again?

They followed Danny through the white door into a room painted a surprising shade of lime-green. The twin bed in the corner was covered in a blue-black comforter printed with tiny stars and corkscrewing galaxies lined with visible nebulae in purple and green. The walls were adorned mostly with pictures of Danny and some combination of family members. The family seemed to consist of his mom, a younger woman who looked a lot like her (sister?), and an absolutely enormous man whom Tucker assumed was Danny’s dad, and who seemed to be wearing some variation of an obnoxiously orange Hawaiian shirt in every picture. Only a few photos showed Danny with kids their age–friends from Chicago, most likely.

Sam clicked her tongue impatiently while Danny sat down to boot up his computer (Tucker would judge him for not having a laptop, but he could understand the benefits of a more powerful wired-in setup. Also, it would maybe be a bit hypocritical and unfair to Sheryl, his current PDA). Tucker could see in her eyes the moment she decided on her angle of attack. “Crazy what they’re saying on the news, right? About the Chicago killer dumping another body?”

Tucker just managed to suppress a snort. Did she really think that was going to–Danny had gone still. Noticeably. Blue eyes darted quickly, guiltily to Tucker and then back to his screen. Tucker’s heart started hammering, and one foot slid back toward the door, stealthily.

Then Danny responded, keeping his focus on the screen, “Yeah, I heard about that.” A pause. “Uh, sorry about...I mean, he hurt your...cousin, or, uh, something. Right, Tuck?”

Oh. After the whole Dash and Kwan confrontation, he must have asked around for an explanation. The reaction hadn’t been guilty; he’d just felt awkward talking this way about a guy who’d damaged Tucker’s family.

Then and there, Tucker pretty much exonerated Danny in his mind. He probably ditched classes because he had a serious vaping habit, or—and here was a novel idea—he just really hated his classes. Both miles more likely than, like, “astral projecting with knife” or something. “Yeah, my cousin Tristan. It’s cool, though, he’s totally okay.”

Sam, however, apparently hadn’t even considered tact as an explanation for Danny’s behavior (of course) and wanted one last stab, so to speak, at getting him to expose his guilt. “You guys have to admit, though, with how popular true crime stuff is, having a serial killer in our city...I mean, it’s pretty sick.”

Danny goggled at her like he was the one getting ready to run for it. “Uhh, that’s not really my thing.” His right hand, resting on the computer desk, curled into a fist, and his eyes strayed into a corner, unfocused. “I think anyone who could end someone else’s whole life on purpose is disgusting.”

Woah. Tucker was kind of taken aback. He’d never seen someone look so angry talking about impersonal tragedy. Danny’s lip actually curled up in revulsion before he seemed to sort of shake himself and retreat back onto stabler conversational ground. “I mean, you know. It’s kind of a big deal.” He laughed lightly. “The biggest deal, really.”

“Yeah, I agree.” Tucker glared pointedly at Sam, who seemed almost put out to discover that Danny was almost definitely not a psychotic killer. “So...Kiss of Doom?”

Danny grinned mischievously. “I got three consoles that can hook in. Time to be complete hypocrites and murder some some NPCs.”

~(*0*)~

Okay, so it was official now: Tucker genuinely liked Danny. He was still a pretty unknown quantity, but Tucker already vibed with him more than he did with Mikey or any of the other guys he hung out with to talk about coding. He, Sam, and Danny played Doomed for a while, trading snarky commentary and trying their best to reenact the worst, most physically impossible glitches (Danny was terrifyingly flexible, but Sam and Danny agreed that Tucker did the best faces), and then when they got bored of repeatedly losing a boss fight and staying stuck on one level, they walked down to the nearby mall with Danny’s wallet and the loose change from Sam’s Maserati (the irony) and bought cheap slushees. They were basically just wandering around between surprisingly empty stores when Sam stopped, a subtle smirk on her face. “Hey, you guys ever worked in retail? Don’t answer that, Tucker, I know everything about you and you’ve only worked at Walgreens.”

Danny shrugged. “Nope. I haven’t actually had a job yet.”

Sam looked delighted in a very evil, very Sam kind of way. “Then I’ve got something you’ve gotta see.”

She led them to a discreet employee access door at the back of her favorite punk clothing outlet, Stick a Fork in It, and quickly scanned for witnesses before barging in. Tucker and Danny followed, albeit a bit more reluctantly. They ended up in a series of rough hallways that were floored in cement and walled with unplastered plywood, well-lit overhead by dangling lamps with black wires strung like telegraph lines between them.

Sam swept her arms out palms-up movie-villain style, walking backward and smirking. “This, naïve children, is the dark underside of the Westside Mall.” Her voice echoed with a strange flat quality down the corridor, which was utterly empty.

“Woah.” Tucker jogged down to where the corridor ended, only to discover that it really just intersected another identical hallway. This one had two doors bearing emergency exit warnings on the push bars. “Do these things go through the whole mall?”

“Yep, most stores have an access door to them. It’s apparently a pretty common feature, although not so much in smaller malls like Westside. They’re for evacuations and also, like, deliveries when they don’t want to deal with all the people wandering around aimlessly.”

“That’s too bad, ‘cuz these tunnels seem like an awesome place to wander around aimlessly.” Danny took a few running steps and jumped up, trying to touch one of the simple metal lamps, but despite his truly impressive hang time it remained just beyond reach. “How did you find out about these?!”

“They don’t really tell employees, but my ex-boyfriend I met when I worked at Stick a Fork was the owner’s son, and he let me in on it. We even had a picnic in here once on our lunch break.”

Tucker cracked open one of the doors on the adjoining corridor and quickly pulled it shut when he was treated to a view of the line outside one of the mall’s public bathrooms. “Yo, these doors aren’t even all in businesses! They’re just all over the mall in plain view!”

Sam had joined Danny in trying to touch the dangling lights, though he tended to get a lot closer even though he was only maybe an inch taller, and she let her boots clonk down loudly on the concrete before responding. “Yeah, it’s the worst kept secret of the Amity Park retail industry. It’s not even really a secret, they’re just fire corridors, but I like the vibe. They’ve got mystery.”

Danny snorted. “I’m with the delivery guys on this one. These tunnels are cool ‘cuz they let you get all over the place without having to deal with people. I need a system like this for, like, everywhere I go.”

Inevitably, someone gave in to childhood instincts and voiced what they were all thinking about the coolness of the air and how the long corridors stretching ahead of you looked so inviting and run-able. Really, their true purpose was rather self-evident. And then they were sprinting down the hallways and skidding around corners, laughing breathlessly, converse and combat boots slapping oh-so-satisfyingly on the concrete underneath them, getting just as hopelessly lost as they’d ever hoped they could be.

Tucker was the first to tire out. “Hey! Flyboy and Wandergirl!” Admittedly not his best work, but he was literally wheezing. He dropped to the ground and leaned heavily against the nearest plywood support beam. “Stop trying to ditch me!”

Sam’s laughter echoed around the next bend in the corridor. To her credit, though, in a few seconds he could hear the sound of her and Danny’s feet heading back toward him. A moment later they reappeared in the flesh, both breathing heavily and stumbling over their feet.

“Dude, I shouldn’t have eaten that whole slushee,” Sam groan-laughed, clutching her stomach and propping herself up on the wall opposite him. “And I definitely shouldn’t have gotten blue raspberry.”

“Yeah, the laws of nature say you shouldn’t ever get blue raspberry.” Tucker pulled a face. “Just get lemonade.”

“I think she’s too goth for that,” Danny piped in just as Sam retorted with “I don’t like yellow, okay?!” and they all fell over themselves laughing again, though maybe Sam’s red face wasn’t entirely from the running.

“Is there anything else to do at the Westside mall?” Danny asked, idly gesturing with one limp hand. “Right now I’m getting the impression it’s just Starbucks, Lululemon, Macy’s, and an unnecessary number of frozen yogurt places slowly moldering into bankruptcy.”

“Yep, that’s pretty much it.” Sam shrugged. “Oh, and the rooftop is supposedly the best sunset view in Amity. Is it sunset yet?”

“Nope.” Danny shrugged as Tucker pulled out his PDA to confirm.

“Yeah, he’s right. Sunset’s about an hour and a half away.”

“sh*t. Oh, well.” Sam pushed herself to her feet by bracing her back against the wall. “We’d better head back now, then.”

Tucker stared blankly at her. “To do...what?”

She crossed her arms and started clomping away, leaving Tucker and Danny no choice but to scramble to their feet. “Finish that level. Seriously, am I the only one around here with any tenacity?”

It was almost seven when Sam and Tucker left Danny’s house. They could still the sun over the ridges of the cookie-cutter suburban houses to the west, but the sunset was splattering orange and pink over the grey clouds rolling lazily across the dome of the sky. Tucker tripped over a garden hose left lying across the Fentons’ path, bent down to twitch it back onto the grass, and from his crouch caught a flash of grey in the corner of his field of vision.

The small grey fox was sitting by the corner of the Fenton home, next to where the coils of the garden hose hung against the brick wall. It stared at him with those button-black eyes, then with deliberate slowness turned and slipped around the side of the brownstone. Before Tucker could even try to get Sam’s attention, it had disappeared into the dark space between the house and the fence.

Well, that was horrible, and Tucker very much disliked it. Despite a pretty fun day with a new casual friend, Tucker hopped into Sam’s passenger seat just a beat too fast and didn’t relax until they were speeding at 35 through the residential streets.

~(*0*)~

Tucker’s aunt and uncle were gone when he got home. His mom scolded him for cutting it so close to sunset, but her mind was clearly elsewhere. When his dad got home thirty minutes later, his mom exchanged a few hushed words with him and then left him to set down his briefcase, loosen his tie, and turn on the news. She and Tucker’s aunt and uncle had apparently recorded it with Maurice in mind. Tucker made a quick sandwich from the ingredients in the fridge and then wandered through, eyes averted, toward the stairs.

The staircase was the darkest part of the apartment even in daytime because there weren’t any windows that looked in on the space. It was narrow, hemmed in by high walls on both sides, with no railing and no lightbulb overhead (an oversight when the builders were doing the wiring). The stairs themselves were an uncarpeted dark mahogany that blended together so that you had to place each foot very carefully, and even then people coming down would often imagine a phantom step at the end only to thump too hard and too soon onto the floor. Tucker hated that little heart-stopping jolt of wrongness; when he was a kid he would always make sure one of the upstairs rooms had a door open and the light on so that at least the top third or so of the staircase was visible. He’d abandoned that practice after his dad had accused him of conspiring against the polar bears and being personally responsible for sustaining global warming. At sixteen years old, he was pretty comfortable now with getting up and down when he needed to.

Halfway up the stairs, he started to get that feeling.

It wasn’t like nails on a chalkboard, it was more like...drinking hand sanitizer. Swallowing it in big oily slippery gulps and feeling the sharp, sour chemicals slide into his stomach and swish sickly around his tongue. He swallowed reflexively and debated retreating to the living room. He wasn’t afraid, per se, but even the buffest, badass-est bodybuilder would have to admit that he had good reason to trust his instincts.

His upraised right foot was hovering above the next step up. Slowly, he braced his left forearm on the wall and lowered the foot onto the step behind him. He turned over his shoulder to look back at the warm lights spilling out onto the first step. “Dad?”

His dad’s shadow shifted across the floor, just barely visible from beyond the doorframe. “Yeah?” The warm light flickered once.

The feeling faded down a bit, mixing with regular nerves until Tucker wasn’t quite sure if it was real. Maybe he’d just had a bad burrito. And either way, what was he going to do, never go upstairs again? “...Nothing.”

“Mhmm.” His dad had already refocused on the screen.

Tucker breathed out once, long and shaky. He turned and jogged up the stairs.

As soon as he hit the landing, he banged open the bathroom door and scrabbled for the light switch. The whole landing became visible, if dim: about fifteen feet of white walls and light brown carpeting, with a dark splooch creeping from the bottom of the bathroom door from the bathtub overflowing and flooding the room when he was six. The space was really more of a hallway, just a bit wider than the stairs, so that if Tucker stretched out his arms he could just leave fingerprints on both walls’ tidy wainscotting. He opened the other three nearest doors, flipping switches with blind, brusque efficiency. Finally, when the landing was fully (if not brightly) illuminated, he breathed a sigh of relief and leaned back on the closet door.

There was a girl at the other end of the hall.

Tucker would be pretty sure later that he yelped, but he didn’t actually hear it. She had blue hair in a dirty, tangled ponytail with pieces escaping. She was wearing all black clothes. At first she wasn’t quite looking at him, more down and to the right, but at his silent yell her head snapped up and she started toward him, movements too fluid, like a sped-up, grainy tape of someone walking underwater.

Tucker bolted for the stairs, but her course took her deceptively fast to cut him off. He scurried back to grab the doorknob of his room—hadn’t he just opened that door?—but it wouldn’t turn. Then he was backed into the wall with her feather-light hands on his shoulders and his inner monologue wasn’t doing anything but screaming.

“You have to remember,” she whispered. Her eyes were red-rimmed and impossibly angry. “You need to remember me.”

From a few yards away one might almost mistake her for human, but this close Tucker could see how her ripped black jeans exposed too-pale flesh that bulged in a way he’d never seen on a human being. Her skin seemed to be almost writhing, a grotesque parody of life. “Uh, I…?” His voice cracked out a high-pitched whimper, and he swallowed laboriously. Apparently that wasn’t good enough, because she twitched impatiently and dropped her hands from his shoulders, pacing a few steps down the landing. She kept making bizarre, choked-off little noises in her throat. One hand slid around, not through the air in a careless gesture that made Tucker’s stomach rebel.

She dug her hands into her hair in frustration, fingers slipping through the strands, and Tucker couldn’t help but feel a spike of queasy sympathy despite his terror. “Uh...miss?” He licked his lips and swallowed more air down his dry throat. “Is there anything I can….”

Reality bent. Tucker scrambled to push himself backward through the wall as she whirled on him, loose strands of hair drifting gravity-free as the landing tilted wildly sideways. Colors screamed in fractured voices. The girl’s pale makeup cracked and flaked off piece by piece to reveal something terrible and...infested underneath. And her voice

seemed to come from everywhere as she screamed

You

will

re

m e m b e r

me

~(*0*)~

“–ctim’s name was Victor Schulker, a 46-year-old Canadian national stopping in Amity on his way to the Pere Marquette hunting grounds outside of St. Louis.”

Tucker was on the couch. Tucker was on the couch, and his eyes were open.

“Mr. Schulker had no close relatives, but coworkers at CrossHares Fishing and Game Store in Alberta were surprised and unnerved when notified of the incident by police.” Tucker was on the couch, and his ears hurt, and the TV display read three in the morning, and he didn’t remember going to sleep. Over a thin sound-blanket of static, a clock ticked loudly. From behind her desk, Tiffany Snow stared at the camera for a moment of bad editing, and then the box in the upper left-hand corner that had been displaying pictures of the victim, usually wearing camo and grinning over some gigantic fish, expanded to fill the screen.

In the slightly shaky video, a weedy-looking white guy with a brown goatee jumped as a microphone was shoved under his nose. “It’s just shocked all of us here,” he said, glancing into the camera and then looking away guiltily. Text at the bottom of the screen identified him as the manager of the CrossHares store where the victim had worked. “Victor wasn’t the friendliest guy, but we respected him, and he was a damn good hunter. Best I’ve ever seen. Never went anywhere without his rifle and a knife or two, either. Can’t imagine how someone was able to get the jump on him.” He shook his head, accent creeping more into his vowels as he got more affected. “What a waste.”

The screen shrunk back into a smaller box, once more giving Tiffany Snow center stage. “A waste indeed.” She gave Tucker soulful, sympathetic eyes for a second, then launched back into her lines, looking like a peppy shark with her slightly overlarge white teeth. “And thank you to the Alberta Inquirer for obtaining this interview for our viewers here in Amity. Now, according to the statement delivered by Police Commissioner Davis this morning, Mr. Schulker’s body was found early in the morning last Friday, September 13, in a dumpster behind the Pins and Needles Bowling Alley at the entrance to the Westside Mall. Police have been sitting on this situation for the last four days, but this morning they made the decision to ask the public for any information they might have.”

The corner box reabsorbed the whole screen, this time showing Amity’s harried police commissioner, sunlight gleaming off his bald head and the buttons on his formal uniform. He and six other officers were arrayed at the top of the Amity courthouse stairs, flanked by the columns that just a week ago (had it really only been a week?) Tristan and his friends had mentioned filming for their play. They cast long shadows over the men and women onstage. “We ask that anyone with information pertaining to this heinous act to call in to our tip-line immediately,” the commissioner rumbled. “We are doing the absolute utmost we can to protect the city we all love and ensure that you and your children are safe. No further questions.” The crowd of journalists, more than Tucker had ever seen in Amity before, erupted, shoving microphones and cameras in the faces of the unfortunate officers now struggling to edge their way down the marble steps.

The video minimized one last time to reveal Tiffany Snow positively beaming for an instant before she schooled her face into a more appropriately grave expression. Tucker could just see the reflection of his own terrified eyes superimposed on her smooth, poreless face. “There you have it. Don’t forget to call in any tips to the police–or, if you’d prefer, our own tip-line here at the Amity Local News” –she proceeded to rattle off a number, feral grin threatening the edges of her immaculately lipsticked mouth again– “and stay safe out there, Amity Park.”

Chapter 5: The Hauntings of Tucker Foley

Chapter Text

The Hauntings of Tucker Foley

or alternatively: Sharp, Is What It Is

Tucker saw his first ghost when he was eight. This is how he remembers it.

He tore across the classroom with a yell, relishing the way the soles of his sneakers lit up bright red, blue, and green for all of his third grade classmates to see. That was his ulterior motive for chasing Star; his pretense was that he was enraged at her for her attempt to deal a cowardly and dastardly blow to his grades. Just before, she’d drawn an ugly line in colored pencil across Tucker’s multiplication worksheet. Luckily, Tucker was good at multiplication, so her plan had failed miserably. Now Tucker just had to formulate his own plan for what to do if he caught her.

Or...deal with that after lunch. The bell had just rung, signalling Tucker’s favorite time of day, and the assistant teacher was calling for him and Star to join the line.

The hallway of Tucker’s elementary school was an ecosystem in its own right, a hectic breeding ground for all things colorful and unfamiliar. Posters upon posters upon crayon-drawings were tacked onto sagging corkboards, and the walls were a scratched-up but still pleasant shade of robin’s-egg blue. En route, Tucker got to peek into the classrooms of the older kids (in fifth grade they made dioramas, but you also had to learn the states, and all fifty?! Tucker could never) and even passed Star going the other direction hand-in-hand with the assistant English teacher, heading toward where Tucker vaguely supposed the principal’s office was. Revenge was no longer warranted, then, and all was right in the universe.

Most of the third graders’ still-anxious parents packed them lunch every day, but a few kids (mostly the ones with an older sibling or three) got the mini pizzas or mac and cheese or the occasional reviled vegetable, generally with a side of animal crackers and a choice of juice. For the sake of these exception students, the classes filed through a cafeteria room in rotating sections on their way to the outdoor lunch tables while the teachers leaned against the walls and gossiped. With so many kids in such a state of excitement (this far into most of their scholarly careers the joy of lunchtime remained undimmed, even though they did it every day), it was easy for someone to get lost in the commotion. Tucker pushed doggedly through the pulsing throng and was almost to the open door when a hand on his shoulder arrested his progress.

Tucker’s whole body tingled. Like pins and needles, only more, like there were actual needles sliding and scraping downward just beneath his skin. He gasped and turned around quickly.

One of the lunch ladies was bending over to talk to him. She wore a big pink dress and an apron, and her face had the appropriate friendly wrinkles Tucker had come to associate with grandmotherly warmth, but there was something in her eyes that unnerved him. They were strangely...empty.

Her voice, though, was as smooth and buttery as the fake cheese on the cafeteria’s Kraft mac, and something about it put Tucker at ease. “Mr. Foley?” That was confusing because for a split second he looked around for his dad, but then as soon as he understood that he was Mr. Foley, the title felt quite flattering. “Would you do me a favor, dear, and go fetch me another package of pepperoni from the freezer?”

Tucker looked around, but none of the teachers seemed to have noticed them. “Um. Me?” He didn’t think a grown-up had ever asked him for anything besides, like, cleaning his room or times tables.

She nodded seriously. “It’s quite urgent. Children need lots of protein for their developing brains. And it’s a bit heavy, so you should fetch a teacher to help get it down from the shelf. Would you do that for me, Tucker?”

It was kind of cool to be given a mission like this. Like a real-life version of one of the cool older-kid video games Tucker’s cousins on his dad’s side were allowed to play. “Okay!”

“What a gentleman.” She winked, jolly, but behind the sweep of short eyelashes her eye was glossy and fixed. The needles pricked more insistently at the inside of Tucker’s skin.

But then she turned and headed back toward the lunch counter, and the feeling subsided and went dormant along with the part of Tucker that was questioning this situation. He ran over to Mr. Nguyen, his favorite science teacher (from last year, unfortunately. The current one had yelled at Sam for reading in class, so Tucker was her mortal enemy for life). “Mr. Nin? I need help.”

He smiled and bent down a bit. “Sure, Tuck, what is it?”

“I need to go to the freezer.”

Mr. Nguyen’s smile got a little bit confused at the edges. Tucker clarified, “The lunch lady said they need more pepperoni? And she told me to get somebody to lift things.”

Mr. Nguyen full-on frowned and straightened up to survey the aproned ladies behind the counter, in the process pulling his tie just a little bit further out of the clip halfway down his white dress shirt. “They shouldn’t...huh. Let me see about this.”

He started to head for the counter, and Tucker panicked. He wouldn’t get to finish the quest! He grabbed for his teacher’s shirt. “She said it’s urgent. That means right now, right?”

“Uh...yes.” Mr. Nguyen stared at the counter for another second, then shrugged. “Okay, Tuck, and you want to come with?”

“Yeah!”

Mr. Nguyen laughed and grabbed the attention of the Social Studies teacher, briefly notifying her of where he was going with Tucker and asking her to keep an eye on the second grade Section B for a few minutes. Then he pushed back through the door they’d come in from, holding it open so Tucker could follow. Older kids ambled around the hallways in messy lines, talking and laughing, and Tucker kept to the wall so as not to bump into them. He and his guide had to tromp a surprisingly long distance down the hall, actually past the third grade homeroom; Mr. Nguyen explained that they kept medicine stuff there too and needed to be close to the youngest kids. That the freezer was near Pre-K and the cafeteria was all the way past the fifth graders’ rooms was just bad planning. Heh, and some grown-up had made this all up? Tucker could architect better than that.

At last, the threadbare brown carpet became somewhat grimy tile as they turned down a nondescript hallway on the left of the main thoroughfare. Before them loomed a giant set of shiny metal doors with fogged-up windows too high up for Tucker to see in anyways. To someone of Tucker’s slightly-above-four-foot stature, the doors loomed large as the gates to the underworld (though to say Tucker was pulling his mental image from a reliable source would be giving children’s book illustrators far too much credit).

Mr. Nguyen strode up and pushed. “Huh. That’s weird.” He took a deep breath, set his shoulders, and pushed hard on the door on the right. There was a long, slow, screeching of metal. Cold air rolled over Tucker with a lazy, slow malevolence. Then, “What…?”

The first thing Tucker saw was Star, kneeling on the ground next to a long metal shelf and examining the cans of tuna with great fascination. The assistant English teacher, Mr. Browning, was standing in the opposite corner, staring wide-eyed at the doors.

Mr. Nguyen appeared, for a minute, as frozen as the canned fish. Tucker watched in confusion as his face darkened. Visibly. Tucker wouldn’t recognize the parallel until much later, but he looked almost as impossibly angry as the blue-haired girl on the landing. “Dave. Why was this door blocked.” It was not a question, and Mr. Nguyen didn’t give him a chance to answer. “It’s against school policy and a breach of contract for a teacher to be alone with a child at any point without notifying another teacher. Does someone else know you’re here?”

Mr. Browning–Dave, apparently–swallowed and searched for words. Tucker could see visible spit hit the plastic-wrapped meat next to him as he sputtered, “I–of course–”

“He said I could see where they kept the food!” Star piped up excitedly, blonde hair sticking up behind her headband. “We just got here. Tuck, you wanna see the cheese?”

Tucker shrugged and went to join her, enmity forgotten. “Okay, but first I gotta get pepperoni for the lunch lady. It’s urgent, so I gotta do it right now.”

He turned back toward where he’d seen the meat (Mr. Browning’s spit was freezing on it, ew), and almost bumped into Mr. Nguyen’s back. He was standing in the middle of the freezer, blocking Tucker’s view. “That’s okay, I’ll get the pepperoni later. Can you and Star get back to the cafeteria okay?” He paused, and Tucker figured he was considering that, although he couldn’t see his face. “Never mind, you guys just go into the room directly across the hall and get Ms. Holly. You know her, right, Tuck? She’ll take you back.” He dug his phone out of his back pocket without looking at it.

Tucker frowned. “But she said urgent–”

“Now, Tucker. Go with Star.” Tucker’s heart flip-flopped in surprise at the tone.

Star was already out the open door. She shot Tucker a mischievous smile over her shoulder and revealed the can of frozen fish she had hidden in the folds of her dress. At least she had gotten something out of her trip all the way across the school. Tucker hadn’t completed his own mission, and he was starting to get really cold. He scowled and left with Star, but at the last minute his mom’s teachings on good manners struggled past his sullen mood. “Thanks, Mr. Nguyen. Bye, Mr. Browning.”

Mr. Nguyen didn’t answer. He was dialling a number on his phone. Tucker followed a skipping Star across the hall to Ms. Holly’s room. Ms. Holly, the second grade teacher who also ran bi-monthly, barely-controlled art classes, gave them a weird, indecipherable look like Mr. Nguyen’s before stretching a cheerful smile over it and leading them back to the cafeteria.

Tucker was worried the lunch ladies would be mad that he hadn’t completed his mission, but they were apparently doing okay serving lunch, and no one mentioned pepperoni to him again. He headed to his class’ tables and sat down with Mikey, bragged about seeing the freezer, rubbed the bone-deep chill out of his arms, and pretty soon forgot the whole incident.

The next day was a Saturday, so he thought it was weird when his mom bundled him into the car after breakfast and headed to school, though he was reassured when she laughed and said no, she wasn’t making him do extra school on the weekend. The school was empty except for the janitor, who was listening to music on an iPod Touch. Lucky. Tucker’s mom led him with a warm hand on his back toward the principal’s office, which raised the hairs on the back of his neck again. The hallways seemed to narrow and darken, his breath sharpening in his throat. Was he in trouble so bad that they’d brought in the principal on a Saturday just for him?!

No, his mom and Principal Tuhoe quickly assured him, he wasn’t in trouble.

“In fact,” the principal continued, smiling in that way people smile at kids but with a hint of something else sharpening the indulgent edge, “you helped prevent something very bad.” He glanced at Tucker’s mom. Tucker’s mom shook her head. He looked confused. “Uh, Mrs. Foley, school policy would—but you’re choosing not to…?”

She shook her head. “Later. Not...not just yet.”

Mr. Tuhoe looked like Tucker’s teachers when someone played just a bit too violently with the Polly Pockets, but all he did was nod. “Tucker, we brought you in here because we were hoping you could identify the lady who sent you to the freezer. Do you think you could do that for me?”

Could he? Tucker thought back to their meeting. An image jumped immediately to his mind: her face as she crouched down close to him, all friendly wrinkles framing empty eyes. A wave of chills, apparently left over from his time in the freezer, crawled up his spine. Yes, he would definitely recognize that face if he saw it again. He nodded with all the solemnity he could manage.

“Okay, Tucker. Here’s the employees who were working in the cafeteria that day.” Mr. Tuhoe slid an open binder across the desk. Inside, a series of printed pages in plastic sleeves displayed (mostly) smiling pictures of women who looked vaguely familiar next to text providing their names, availability, and other information. Some of their pictures had been circled in red marker. Mr. Tuhoe leaned a bit over the desk as Tucker paged slowly through the binder, distracted by the way the plastic sleeves slithered across each other and stuck together due to the static cling. “Do you see the lady you met here? I circled the ones who should have been working that day.”

Tucker made it all the way past the lunch ladies and through another ten or so staff members to the end of the binder, but he didn’t see anyone who even resembled her. He looked up and only then became aware of both his mom and the principal watching him closely, of the tension that had been building in the room. “She’s not there.”

His mom leaned down over him to flip the binder back to the start. “Are you sure, baby? Could you look again?”

Tucker obediently started again, rubbing the edges of the pages between his fingers to make sure two sleeves didn’t stick together anywhere, but again he came up empty. “Sorry, she really isn’t here.”

His mom and the principal exchanged a loaded look (had he ever seen an adult look nervous like that before?). “Could you tell us what she looked like? And what she was wearing?” asked Mr. Tuhoe.

“Uhh...she was a white lady, and real old….” The detail about how her eyes were weird didn’t seem like the kind of thing they were looking for, and mentioning her wrinkles would probably be rude and make his mom mad at him. “She had a pink dress and one of those—those hair thingies, the net thingies.”

“That...doesn’t sound like anyone who’s worked here, at least while I’ve been here.”

“So you have no idea who was in your school, talking to my child?!” Tucker’s mom was still leaning half-over him with a hand splayed out on the desk, but now her focus was on Mr. Tuhoe and the knuckles on that hand were pale.

Mr. Tuhoe was moving a lot more than he had been when they’d entered, fidgeting with his hands on the desk as he leaned back a bit more in his chair. “I assure you, Mrs. Foley, the school is already in the midst of a thorough investigation. Mr. Browning will never work in education again—”

“That’s it? That’s all that’s going to happen to him?!” Tucker, leaning into her warm side like this, could feel his mom shaking.

“There’s nothing else we can do, Mrs. Foley, there’s no way to prove intent! We’ve put him on multiple watchlists for schools nationwide, but other than that we can’t…” He trailed off, rocking back and forth slightly in his chair.

The school never released any sort of formal statement, and as far as Tucker knew none of those involved said much. Once Tucker was old enough to figure out what had really happened, he often wondered about Star: if she knew now, if she’d ever realized the danger, what she did with that can of tuna. They attended different middle schools, but now she went to high school with him, and he would pass her in the hall, or have her in his math class–he even participated in a group project with her once. And every time they made eye contact, he would wonder if there was some connection, a shared something that came from knowing a pseudo-secret no one else around them knew. He never asked. She never told.

So in the end, Tucker never got the answers he wanted, and the lunch lady never got her pepperoni.

~(*0*)~

The point is:

Tucker saw his first ghost when he was eight. In the intervening years he caught a few glimpses, got a few eerie vibes when expired consciousnesses fluttered briefly against his own, but the next ghost he really interacted with was the blue-haired girl.

So it seemed like a reasonable thing to assume that the cosmos had exhausted themselves with this new torture and the horror was over, for a while.

Nope.

On Wednesday, Tucker passed the blue-haired girl in the hallway between first and second periods. He didn’t even register it at first, then almost choked and whirled around, jostling several annoyed classmates unprepared for his sudden stop. She had already disappeared into the throng of students, leaving him unsure if he’d really seen her or if some sophom*ore had just entered her punk phase with a slightly bedraggled dye job.

One period later, Tucker was ten minutes into his Physics class, taking a bored stab at the example problem Mr. Marcel had just written on the board, when he felt a little trickle of nausea down the back of his throat. Someone near the back of the room snickered loudly, disturbing the quiet classroom. Tucker glanced over his shoulder and then immediately bolted out of his seat, banging his hip on the table and dropping his calculator with a clatter onto the floor. The blue-haired girl was sitting at a desk in the back corner, staring straight ahead at the board.

Tucker froze, watching her. She didn’t react, though other students were giving him weird looks. Mr. Marcel cleared his throat. “Tucker. Everything alright?”

Tucker didn’t take his eyes off the corner desk. “Uh—yeah, yeah.”

Mr. Marcel crooked an eyebrow. “Are you sick? You’re looking a bit off. Do you need to leave the room?”

The hallways were empty. Maybe she was in the classroom, but so were thirty other kids; the hallways were empty. “That’s—thanks, Mr. Mercer, but that’s okay. I’m okay. Thanks.”

“Are you sure? You look like you’ve seen a—”

“No, I’m great!”. He flashed his best charming “hey there, ladies” grin. “Really. Peachy keen.”

Mr. Marcel’s eyebrow was on the verge of disappearing into his prominent forehead wrinkles. “Alllright then. Now, who can tell me about the work done on this structure? Mikey?”

While Mikey wrestled a somewhat strident but correct answer out around his new braces, Tucker slowly picked up his calculator and sat back down, still staring at the girl in the corner. She didn’t even glance at him, staying perfectly still with her eyes fixed somewhere beyond the whiteboard. Tucker turned to face it as well, then quickly glanced back, almost expecting her to have disappeared while he wasn’t looking. Still there.

“Tucker! Am I boring you with this?” Mr. Marcel was glaring at him, marker hovering above the whiteboard.

“Uh–no, no way. I swear, Mr. Marcel, physics is my passion and practically my sole reason for being.”

Mr. Marcel smiled reluctantly with one side of his mouth, and Tucker was again reminded of the value of doing his physics homework and bringing brownies to the teacher’s lounge every once in a while. “It’d better be. Now, I need everyone’s attention for this next part; you’ll probably need to know this for the AP test and I’m not going to cover it again before May.”

Tucker felt sick to his stomach; his uh-oh feeling was going full-force. He risked another quick glance over his shoulder. Still there.

It was like knowing there was a really big spider on your wall but not being able to squash it or leave the room–as a person with extreme arachnophobia. He couldn’t concentrate on anything but the violent pounding of his heart and the acute awareness of her proximity to him. Whenever he wasn’t looking at her, he could almost feel her coming closer, could picture her unfolding from the desk and doing that jerky and yet somehow too-smooth walk forward to breathe down the back of his neck...and then he turned around, and she hadn’t moved. Not a muscle, or whatever hid under her skin. So he would reluctantly turn back to the board for as long as he dared, and then the cycle repeated. She only moved once in the full 35 minutes of class time: Five minutes before the bell, he looked back and caught her chewing slowly and deliberately on a pencil. Gleaming spit was visible on it from where he sat. She still wasn’t looking at him.

When the bell rang, Tucker leapt out of his seat with only slightly more alacrity than everyone else in the class. He looked down for just a fraction of a panicky second to shove his notebook in his backpack (he hadn’t taken any notes) and violently jerk the stubborn zippers closed. When he looked back at the corner desk, it was empty. He scanned the room. She was nowhere to be seen.

Only then did he notice the maimed yellow pencil sitting innocuously on his desk, two feet from his face.

Backpack over one shoulder, Tucker sprinted out the door and down the hall to his locker, turning sideways to slip between the wall and the edge of the passing period crowd. Sam was at her own locker already–the one next to his. Thank God. He banged into the lockers and slid halfway down, trying to calm his ragged breathing.

Sam jumped at his sudden entrance, then immediately slammed her locker shut. “Oh my God, Tucker, what happened?”

Sam would freak out if he told her. She’d call it a hallucination and might even tell his parents if she was really worried. “Nothing. Just didn’t realize there was someone behind me and got jumpscared. It was nothing.” He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, fighting the backpack strap still hanging over one elbow, and then quickly tore them away again to glance both ways down the hallway.

“Tucker, if Dash or somebody did something–” Her face was murderous.

“Nonono, I swear! I would tell you. I just got freaked out. It was dumb.”

“Okay, Tuck….” He could tell she was unconvinced. “Just...remember, my parents are major donors, okay? If we need to try to get my mom involved, or forge something from her or whatever we need to do, we can do that. Anytime.”

“Yeah, I know. I swear, it wasn’t anything bad.” Slowly, he stood up and managed to calm his ragged breathing, tearing his eyes from the hall long enough to input his locker combination. “What do we have next, English?”

He didn’t see the blue-haired girl again that day. Maybe she could only appear for so long, or maybe she’d filled her daily haunting quota or something. Still, not seeing her didn’t exactly help his nerves; he was jumpy enough in English that Danny kept giving him weird looks and, albeit jokingly, asked him after class if he was okay. When he got home, he finished all his homework downstairs with his mom in the kitchen (she’d taken a sick day) and then reaped the rewards of leaving on all the lights in the upstairs rooms that morning, with the doors open so he could sprint up the stairs and straight to his bed, polar bears be damned. He left the light on in his room all night. He barely even dozed. On Thursday, he was possibly even more on edge because if she showed up three days in a row, then that was a pattern, and he didn’t know how long he could function like this.

And luckily, the blue-haired girl didn’t show up on Thursday.

No, on Thursday, September 19th, Tucker met the hunter.

Chapter 6: Baader-Meinhof Blues

Chapter Text

Baader-Meinhof Blues

or alternatively: Sleepless in Illinois

Tucker edged warily into the school two minutes before the bell after a somewhat-more-silent-than-usual (but still life-threatening to the usual degree) carpool ride with Sam. Sam wasn’t the most empathetic individual in most of the rooms she’d ever been in, but she could definitely tell how exhausted he was. A feral mongoose could probably tell how exhausted he was. Or, like, a sociopath. Tucker’s analogies tended to break down a bit after what was essentially two all-nighters in a row. Hey, at least he’d been able to do all his homework for the past two days quick-and-crappy at 2 a.m. as a distraction. God, he was really brought low if he was using French syntax worksheets as a coping mechanism.

Sam had to run across campus for World History first period, so Tucker was on his own for the next few minutes. Joy. At least the hallway wasn’t empty.

He napped through the documentary they were watching in French–for once Danny wasn’t the only one conked out on his desk–and made it through the settlement of Jamestown unscathed in his U.S. History class. Halfway through CompSci, though, he realized with mounting horror that he very much needed to use the restroom.

Reluctantly, he ducked out of the class.

The hallway was empty. His sneakers squeaked slightly on the tile floor, mingling with the vague mumbling of a hundred voices that slid sibilantly around or rumbled through most of the closed classroom doors he passed. He was almost to the bathroom, with no sign of anything out of the ordinary, when out of nowhere a flash of movement–at his feet, too close! The grey fox wound around his legs, making him jump and swear. Tucker tore into the bathroom and pulled the door closed behind him, then ran to put his back to the opposite wall, heart pounding.

Only then did Tucker realize what a series of terrible decisions that had been, because the bathroom was dark, and he had a very bad feeling. It was frigid in the bathroom. And this time, no other fancy feelings came to Tucker. Just cold, and dread.

Tucker looked to his left and came face-to-face with a man in the mirror.

And it probably spoke volumes about the state he was in that his first half-hysterical thought was the first few bars of the chorus to Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” as the man grunted, “Hey. Kid.”

I’m starting with the man, in, the mirror. He was wearing fatigues. Hunter’s fatigues.

I’m asking him to chaaange his wayyys. Behind his beard, his lips were chapped and cracked. The worst Tucker had ever seen.

And no message, could’ve been aaany clearer. “Kid, I’ll admit, I ain’t never been very good at tracking. Usually I’ll just go wandering through the forest, quiet as a mouse, until I find my quarry’s done showed up right under my nose.” His voice was deep, husky and as cracked as his lips. He wasn’t old, maybe in his forties. His hair was mid-length, black and greasy.

If you wanna make the world, a better place– He lifted a finger and somehow, impossibly, started to write on the condensation on the mirror. The condensation caused by Tucker’s own warm breath. He noticed in a detached way that he could actually see his breath, misting out in shallow puffs between them. The hunter’s fingernails were cut short and visibly blue, with half-moons of dirt under the nails and cuticles.

Take a look at yourself

A series of symbols now stretched across the glass–thick lines just starting to drip.

And make a

The hunter grinned; there was dirt between his teeth. “Gimme a call, kid. Whenever you’re ready.” He turned and walked to the right, passing through two more mirrors and out the reflected door.

Tucker snapped out of his daze in time to feel his legs buckling beneath him but not in time to stop them. At the last moment he clutched at the sink with both arms, stopping himself before he could crash backward into one of the stalls. He clung there for a minute, breathing heavily, frantically, thinking this must be how a rabbit feels when the mountain lion passes by. And about how rabbits, more easily than almost any other animal, can actually die of fright.

He pulled himself up. With shaking hands, he fumbled his phone out of his pocket and snapped a picture of the symbols on the mirror. Even in the photo, they showed up, clear as day.

Then Tucker sprinted out of the bathroom, letting the door bang shut behind him, and all the way to the school office. The secretary looked up, surprised; he could see the concern and alarm rush to the surface and leak out along the lines of her face the moment she registered him. “Oh, no, honey, what’s wrong?”

“I need to go home.”

“Are you sick? Do you need the nurse?”

“Uh–yeah. No, I mean–I don’t need the nurse, I just–can I call my mom?”

“Of course, hon.” She looked a little helpless, and only then did Tucker notice the tears in his eyes. He swallowed down a sob and turned away, though she’d obviously noticed. She paused for a second. “I’m going to go get you a glass of water, okay? I’ll be right back. Go ahead and call your mom.” She headed into the next room as Tucker sat down and choked on the thickness in his throat while he unlocked his phone. It took two tries to dial. “Mom? I’m sorry, I know you’re at work….”

“It’s okay, what is it, baby?” She’d definitely picked up on the hoarseness in his voice. And he was alone in the office. Tucker let his breath hitch. “I just–I need to come home.”

Twenty minutes later the paranormal had officially won: Tucker’s mom got to Casper High and drove him home.

~(*0*)~

On Friday, September 20, Sam was hella bored.

Tucker had texted her saying he was home sick, so there was no one to complain about Sam’s death metal playlist or apologize to other motorists for her driving on the way to school. She actually ended up driving relatively safely without the added incentive to cut people off. Sam, obeying the speed limit! She might as well tattoo “conformist” on her forehead. Go all-in with a full-shaved-head portrait of Ronald Reagan.

Actually, that could be kind of cool, as sort of an ironic surrealist statement. Sam filed the idea away for future reference.

Anyway, the point is, she was bored.

So when she texted Danny at lunch “hey wya” and he responded “running late srry :/” just as she pushed through the doors to the cafeteria and spotted him hurrying out the other entrance, still looking at his phone...well, let’s just say Sam was born without the instinct to leave well enough alone.

And she had reason to be curious! She’d asked Danny what he did when he disappeared (almost immediately after they’d started hanging out, and in MUN so Tucker wasn’t there; Tucker got shy about the weirdest things) and he’d categorically denied doing anything besides what he told the teachers he was doing. He’d been phasing out the bathroom excuse, so that was usually “getting water.” For ten minutes on average. She’d told him she didn’t care if he did anything illegal and would probably respect him more if he did. She’d told him she wouldn’t judge him if it was embarrassing and shared about her middle school collection of Goth-ified Barbies and Kens to prove it. He’d maintained his denial, and gotten all twitchy about it, too. “I just drink a lot of water!” he’d insisted in a hushed voice as the kid at the front of the room droned on about either parliamentary procedure or Venezuelan healthcare.

Now, Danny walked back into the school. Sam let the heavy doors swing closed behind her and followed.

He was moving fast under that big backpack. Something drifted down the hallway after him, briefly, almost invisibly; she stumbled straight into a haze in the air that dissipated in little midair whirlpools upon her intrusion. Was he smoking? If so, then why hadn’t she seen anything in his hand or mouth? And why did it smell like nothing?

She scrambled around three freshmen gabbing by the water fountain(a process that involved bumping painfully into the glass case with a fireman’s axe and fire extinguisher projecting from the opposite wall) in time to catch a last glimpse of the backpack’s many zippers disappearing into a supply closet. The door banged shut audibly; two of the freshman shot it weirded-out glances before continuing to discuss the latest bio test, which Sam gathered had them all righteously appalled.

Here was a conundrum. Sam hadn’t eaten lunch yet, and she’d rather not eat her vegetable fried rice soggy and cold when there was a school microwave available in the cafeteria. However, if she left she might never find out what about Danny was so off. So it came down to a question of which was stronger: her hunger for secrets, or her hunger for dehydrated carrot bits in a soy sauce reduction?

The carrot bits won out. Sam headed back to the cafeteria with only minor reluctance.

There was, as usual, a line for the microwave. Sam and a powerful coalition of the kids with weird allergies had fought the school for that goddamn microwave for months, and of course this was how it repaid her. It was located on its own table under the southern windows; Sam tapped one combat boot the whole time and glared down the scrawny little sophom*ore who dared to raise an annoyed eyebrow at the noise. He scurried away with his head down low over his steaming (to a completely unnecessary degree–he could have taken a minute off of that cook time) gluten-free pasta. Finally, her turn had arrived. She cranked the dial and waited impatiently for the wonders of modern technology to be over with.

Two minutes later, freshly armed with a hot plate of rice and a refilled Hydroflask, Sam clomped urgently back to the school proper. She tried taking a few clumsy bites as she walked, but what with the canteen in one hand and the backpack weighing her down she soon gave up the attempt.

The hallway was in the process of emptying. She passed the three freshman girls, the entire math club, and Danny on their way out. Danny was hanging his head low and looking generally exhausted. He noticed her a few feet away and paused, leaning too-casually on one pockmarked yellow wall and mustering a smile. “Hey, Sam! You heading to the cafeteria?”

She smiled back, equally forced. “I gotta stop in the bathroom real quick, I’ll meet you there in a minute.”

“Alright, see you.” He trudged out, snaking around the math club to escape into the sunlight she’d just left behind.

She really would join him in a minute. But first, she checked up and down the hallway and then tried the handle on the door Danny had disappeared behind earlier, labelled “JANITOR’S CLOSET” by a sad little nameplate of fake mahogany that slanted diagonally from its only remaining screw.

It was locked. Probably automatically. Hmm.

Well, the area was still empty of teachers and known snitches. Sam pulled two bobby pins out of her half-up ponytail and got to work.

The door was a pretty easy pick, and it wasn’t even alarmed! (Which was good, because she didn’t even consider that possibility until she was already turning the handle.) Inside was….

A janitor’s supply closet.

Sam supposed it was about what she’d expected: beige walls with the frequency of unidentifiable stains increasing near the floor, a vent in the ceiling since there were chemicals in storage, one of those big yellow cart-buckets giving a chemical bath to a mop, and a shelving system supporting various cleaning supplies, rat traps, and a black binder that teetered off one edge. It was a bit roomier than she’d expected. She flipped flippantly through the binder, but it was just an index for the contents of the shelves.

Everything you’d expect to find in a janitor’s closet was there, but one thing was missing: it didn’t smell like smoke.

There was no way it could have dissipated that quickly. And for another thing, there was a green-blinking smoke alarm clearly visible next to the vent! So Danny hadn’t been smoking. But then why the hell has he been in there?! He could’ve been crying, but it really hadn’t looked like it when he’d passed her in the hallway. He could’ve been napping, but he’d already demonstrated that he could and would do that pretty much anywhere. What did that leave? Stealing cleaning chemicals?

The janitor’s closet held a lot of mousetraps and 409, but no answers. She glared for a minute at the mop, and then left it behind, carrying her fried rice and her questions with her.

She didn’t like the closet, anyway. It gave her a weird feeling, like cold fingers at the base of her spine. Must be the Windex fumes.

~(*0*)~

After dinner, which was abnormally quiet probably so his parents could devote all their energy to giving him intermittent sympathetic looks, Tucker sat on the couch and toyed with his PDA while his dad read the newspaper next to him. His online friends were active tonight. “@tkfire u live in illinois right?” asked a guy who said his name was Jeff, although his username on this particular forum was “bootyslayer420.” Tucker was not positive it was meant to be ironic. Tucker’s thumbs hovered over the screen for a second before he answered.

“@bootyslayer420 yeah why?”

“@tkfire u anywhere near this whole serial killer case?”

Tucker drew his hands back as if the PDA had started spitting out sparks uncontrollably (again). He considered, tongue playing with the backs of his incisors. Then, palms sweaty, he avoided the question. “@bootyslayer420 y do u know about that? its not national news or anything”

Another user, purportedly hailing from the UAE with the username “proud2bweeb,” piled on. “@bootyslayer420 ya why r u so interested in this u creep!! [laughing emoji]”

“@proud2bweeb **** off, its interesting @tkfire so do u live near chicago? or amity?”

“@bootyslayer420 lol u literally just revealed ur a serial killer groupie, now is not the time to ask where he lives...”

Tucker sent a brief note of agreement and then closed out to let proud2bweeb fight his battles for him.

He browsed drowsily through Netflix for a while (yes, his PDA had Netflix. Sheryl was perfect) but didn’t find anything of interest. Finally, having thoroughly exhausted his digital entertainment options, he glanced at the front page of his dad’s open newspaper.

And it wasn’t really surprise he experienced, more a dread-filled leaden weariness that sank stinging into his gut, when he saw the picture next to the bottom article, and the picture was of the blue-haired girl. Because yeah, duh, of course it was Amber McClain. That didn’t mean he hadn’t wished with all his willpower that it wasn’t. That this would stop coming up in every area, every moment of his life. That he could escape this, somehow.

Leaning forward and ignoring the way the slight movements of his dad’s hands rippled the paper, he skimmed the article. “The Amity police have been comparatively liberal with details, leading some to question their…” “...modus operandi appears to have changed. After the third victim, Ainara…” “...multiple stab wounds to the throat and chest, leading some investigators to question…” “...Amber McClain, 21, a graduate of Casper Williamson High School…” “...parents declined to comment.”

Tucker slumped back into the couch for a second, feeling numb. His fingertips were tingling. Slowly, he reached for the PDA he’d left beside him and searched “Victor Schulker.” The man in the picture–the same picture shown on the 3 a.m. news, he remembered now–was younger, and cleaner, but he had the same dark beard and chapped lips as the thing in the mirror that morning.

At least now Tucker knew more of what he was up against. He opened his messages with Sam and typed one sentence, then stared at it for a minute before one thumb-tap sent it off.

It read, “i need u to help me summon a ghost.”

Chapter 7: Hello, Operator

Chapter Text

Hello, Operator

or alternatively: Phone Tag

“So is there a reason you’re suddenly desperate to summon something that doesn’t exist, or are you just getting into the Mabon spirit?”

Sam was leaning against the doorframe, swinging her key ring on one finger when he answered the door (bell rung about six times in the 40 seconds it took him to get there). It was dark out, and the streetlight in front of his house flashed a pale orange off the wings of tiny bugs whirling in enthralled, erratic circles below it.

“Uh, the first one,” Tucker responded. “What’s Mabon?”

“Pagan harvest festival. It goes through, like, the 28th I think?” She paused, glaring at the clouded-over sky as she tried to remember. One star peeked out a hand’s span above the horizon. “It’s around the autumnal equinox, celebrating the last light before the coming dark of winter. The druids offered, like, food and stuff to trees for the Green Man, and Wiccans celebrate the Goddess moving from Mother to Crone and the God preparing for death and rebirth.”

“Huh. Uncomfortably auspicious.”

“Yep!” She scrunched up the edge of the welcome mat with one black skater shoe. “So, uh…I’ll do this if you want me to, but you know it’s not going to work, right?”

And there it was. Tucker groaned internally. “Can you just do this for me? Please? I won’t push or anything if it doesn’t work. Just do this for me once, and I won’t bug you again.”

The lines around Sam’s mouth relaxed a bit. “Yeah, okay. Of course.”

“Thanks.”

They stood there, slightly smiling, for a second of perfect mutual understanding. Then apparently something occurred to her, and Sam’s smile widened in a way that boded extremely ill. “But you have to do one thing.”

Tucker narrowed his eyes. “...What?”

“Go vegetarian for a week.”

Tucker groaned. “For real, Sam? I thought we had a moment there!”

“One week, Tuck! It’s healthier anyway.”

“Ugh, fine. Deal.”

Sam grinned and flipped some short hairs over her shoulder with a victorious air. “Okay! Do you have, like, a clear ground area? Maybe five feet square?”

“I can move the rug out of my room.”

She considered. “That should work. Okay, I need you to help me get a bunch of stuff out of my car.”

The stuff in Sam’s car turned out to be a pile of white candles, incense (sandalwood), a single lemon, and a thermometer, in addition to a bar of what Sam called “spirit chalk.” Apparently she’d dug around in her closet and found a leftover half-bar that she bought during her goth phase from “some middle-aged crystal mom on Ebay.” “It’s just salt and chalk, I think. And maybe crushed wolfsbane or something else suitably bullsh*tty,” she explained.

Then, desperately juggling his armful of candles, Tucker followed her up into his room, where they rolled up his round carpet and shoved it in a corner. Sam unpeeled the rest of the label from her stub of spirit chalk and started drawing in bold lines on his worn wood floor.

“This is the fifth pentacle of Mercury, from the Key of Solomon the King . It’s supposed to just open all doors as well as removing obstacles, in the figurative sense, but I’m treating it as a traditional summoning circle instead of a seal by not doing it on paper and adding a Triangle of Solomon for conjuring. Ugh, I really should’ve done this on a Wednesday.”

“Uh...will it not work since it’s not Wednesday?”

Sam didn’t answer, intent on transcribing some tricky symbols around the triangle she’d placed on one end after consulting the compass on her phone. “We stand in the circle, and whatever you conjure supposedly appears in the triangle. So do you know who you want to summon?”

Tucker shifted and stuffed his hands in his pockets, feeling awkward standing against the wall while she crawled around on the floor doing all the work. He did not want to tell her he was summoning one of the murder victims after her earlier eagerness to investigate; it would only encourage her. “...No, but—”

She looked up to glare at him. “For real?”

“I have these symbols! I think they’re like a phone number.” He pulled up the picture on his phone.

She took it and crooked an eyebrow. “Huh, these look like Nordic runes. All right, I guess I can throw these in.”

“I feel like that’s weird though, right? Like, those are only five symbols, I think that’s a couple thousand permutations if you allow repetition? There have to be way more dead people than that.”

Sam hummed agreement and continued sketching. Tucker, bouncing a little with nervous energy, grabbed for his phone in his pocket, then realized Sam still had it and stepped carefully around her drawing to get to the laptop on his desk. “Okay, so this article is saying about a hundred billion people have died since the emergence of the species. And there are...24 runes in the ‘Elder Foo-thark,’ or whatever, which is the proto-Norse runic alphabet.” The sound of keys clacking furiously overlapped with the sound of breathing and the gentle scraping of Sam’s chalk on the floor. “So that’s 5,100,480 permutations, if you allow repetition. Wayyyy less than there are dead people.” He took off his hat and played with the brim, swiveling toward her in his chair. “I guess they don’t all have to be five runes long. Or maybe intention matters?”

Sam grunted. The thing on his floor was getting increasingly complicated. There were three circles around the outside, with some phrases that looked vaguely like Hebrew but could also be a lot of other languages, and a sort of grid-like thing in the middle along with the ghost in the bathroom’s—Victor Schulker’s, and somehow it was a lot more disturbing to think of it that way—symbols. On one end there was a pretty hefty triangle, big enough to hold about three standing people comfortably.

Tucker’s voice sounded loud in his own ears. He pulled his hat back on extra snugly. “Isn’t there supposed to be an upside down star in the middle? A pentagram, right?”

Sam snorted. “Upside down? Buddy, we’re not trying to summon Satan here.” She straightened up, brushing chalk off of her hands. “Okay, so we need to put all the candles equidistant around the edge, then light the incense. The thermometer can go anywhere.”

Tucker grabbed three candles from where he’d dropped them by the door. “Why the thermometer?”

“Fifth pentacle of mercury. It’s supposed to help if you have the metal nearby.”

Huh. He’d been pretty sure she’d brought the thermometer just to screw with him, but that sounded reasonably occult-y. “And the lemon?”

She paused in setting a candle down to wink at him cheekily. “You’ll see.” Okay, so she was at least partially screwing with him, which he guessed was to be expected.

They finished setting out the candles, and then she instructed Tucker to light them while she tapped something into her phone. Wow, okay, this was actually happening. He stood from the last candle, wringing his hands. He was nervous, but not as much as he’d anticipated. Something about Sam made it a lot harder to be scared when she was there. As a goth-turned-punk, she’d probably resent that if he told her.

Sam scrolled down on her phone. “Oh, right, and if at any point you have any doubts about the identity of the spirit we’re summoning, we need to terminate contact immediately,” she mentioned offhand, in the tone of someone reciting from a truly stultifying textbook.

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah, that’s a thing they say. There’s a chance whatever you summon won’t be who or what it represents itself to be.”

“That’s...horrifying.”

“It’s not real, Tuck.”

“It really, really is.”

“Are we doing this?”

“Okay! Yes! Just say the evocation already!”

“It’s a versicle. Oh wait, I probably need an evocation too…”

“I thought you knew how to do this!”

“I learned magic from the internet, what do you expect?”

“So we’re doing, like, a lot of things wrong.” A sneaking suspicion slithered around his chest. “Sam, are you actually trying to make this work?”

She gave him a look, then sighed at length, with the air of a college professor with multiple PhDs teaching remedial chemistry to undergrads. “Okay. So there’s eighty million ways to summon a ghost on the internet, and way more off of it. Almost every culture with a belief in the afterlife or spirits or powers of some sort has a way to summon the dead. The only real common thread through most of them is belief: you have to really, earnestly believe you’re about to summon something. And, remember, I did, and it still didn’t work for me. But anyway, one of my favorite blogs talked about how this belief, channelled through any kind of symbolic, spiritually resonant objects, is the only thing that really matters, so I got a bunch of the objects and associated processes I liked most and combined them. Once this fails, if you want to do some in-depth historical research and go one-by-one, by-the-book through all of the million distinct summoning processes that have ever existed, be my guest–I tried it, and it wasn’t exactly a party. For now, I’m going to do what’s most familiar.”

“Okay, jeez, sorry. I will follow your lead, Sensei.”

“And that’s two weeks you owe me now.”

Tucker mustered a theatrical gasp, more for his own benefit than anyone else’s. “Two weeks?! I’ll die of malnutrition!”

She sniffed. “If you died of two weeks without meat I wouldn’t even bother trying to summon you. You’d make a pretty pathetic ghost.”

Tucker scowled. “Say that again when I’m haunting you. And I can confirm that that is not fun!” Sam kicked him in the shin and stole his desk chair, logging into his laptop with the password he very much did not remember telling her (“tuck.is.da.man69420”).

So they took a five minute break for Sam to find a decent evocation on the internet, during which she made him check over her runes–apparently they had a lot of common lines and were easy to get mixed up. Tucker had no idea what her standards were for a “good” evocation, and he didn’t ask.

Finally, she made an approving noise and motioned for him to step into the circle. She walked to the door and, though he’d known it was coming, his heart still jolted up into his lungs when she flipped off the light that had been left on for a solid three days. Tucker imagined the overheated bulb and wiring gasping in relief. Sam stepped into the circle and grabbed his clammy right hand with her own much drier left one, turning them both to face the triangle. He noticed that her right hand was holding the lemon. As she started to chant, all the ghost stories that had ever terrified him as a kid flashed through his head. He really wished he’d remembered to bring extra salt. It was right downstairs, in the pantry, he could just….

Sam was finishing the versicle and moving on to the evocation. “...ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in….” Her voice shifted, got perceptibly deeper. “Papa Legba, Saint Peter, Hermanubis, Keeper of the Gate, Lord of Hidden Road Between Life and Death, I call on you. Hermanubis, I summon you. A follower of the Old Ways calls out to you. Open the gate between the realm of the Living and the realm of the Dead for I would traffick with the peac–” –she caught and corrected herself– “the departed.”

The room was silent. Tucker realized he was holding Sam’s hand way too tightly, although she hadn’t said anything about it. His other hand’s sweaty fingers trembled and writhed against each other. He was suddenly aware of the silence–no wind outside–and his exposed neck.

They stood there for thirty seconds. Then a minute. Then Sam, who’d been getting visibly impatient, sniffed the air. “Tucker, did you leave the stove on? I think I smell gas.”

Tucker sniffed. There was a weird smell, sliding around and under the heady scent of incense. It was sour; otherwise, he couldn’t place it. He turned to face her. “I don’t think–”

There was a deafening sound, like boots crunching shards of broken glass but multiplied by a thousand. The world spun and shifted; both of them staggered. The candles ceased producing light. Tucker’s heart rate accelerated into hummingbird territory, and then he noticed that there was someone standing in the triangle.

Sam saw it too. Her eyes widened to an almost unnatural degree. “Oh sh*t oh sh*t oh sh*t oh sh*t–” She took one quick step backward, and Tucker panicked and yanked her hand hard to keep her in the circle.

The person in the triangle was hard to make out. It looked vaguely male in a square sort of way, and it wasn’t tall; it might have actually been shorter than Tucker if it were standing on the ground. There was a vague suggestion of white drifting around its head, and darkness below. As Tucker watched, features began to become more distinct–the shadow resolved itself into a black shirt and...maybe jeans? The face was still an amorphous shadow, but Tucker thought he saw two flashes of green and a wide, wide black mouth underneath.

The thing co*cked its head, then spun in a quick circle in the air, moving like a swimmer underwater. It hit the ground with an actual audible thump. It was at this point that Tucker stopped considering the way that side of the room was weirdly visible, the broken gadgets on his dresser casting knife-sharp shadows as if the thing itself was generating light—would that be abioluminescence? Necroluminescence?—and remembered that they’d set out to catch a specific specter, and this was almost definitely not it. It wasn’t even pretending. And then he remembered what Sam had said about if the thing you summon isn’t who you wanted, and he swallowed a yelp so that it came out a little strangled noise in his throat.

“Sam.” He grasped her hand harder, shaking it between them. “Sam, it’s the wrong–it’s the wrong thing I don’t know how to get rid of it please Sam please–” He groped with his left hand for her shoulder, not daring to look away from the thing in the triangle, which had turned to face them and that was almost definitely a mouth. “ Sam! You have to get rid of it NOW!”

Sam didn’t respond to his shaking. Her eyes were wide, and her mouth kept moving, but almost no sound came out. She’d abandoned her “Oh, sh*t” mantra. Leaning in, Tucker caught only one whispered word: “Unreal…”

The thing in the triangle put one hand (or something that could have been a hand or could have been streaks of pale greenish-white paint) up and forward until it hit some sort of invisible barrier extending from the chalk line on the floor. It raised its other fist and banged once, and the barrier gave a little bit before rebounding back inward. And then it went crazy, pinballing off the walls in a flurry of streaking motion until the invisible barrier was made visible as a prism of furious shadows. The dim light from that side of the room flickered and whirled as if the actual air was boiling. Tucker found that he was hyperventilating, which was unhelpful. Instead he tried desperately to remember the names Sam had said in the evocation. “ Hammurabi! Saint Peter, whoever the–you need to close the gate, please please please listen to me you need to close the f*ckING GATE!”

In an instant, the it resolved itself again into the short light-haired boy-shape. It made a noise, a grating staticky gurgle that reminded Tucker a little bit of the crunching-glass sound that had accompanied its summoning, but somehow more–pained?

Then the thing in the triangle crumpled to its knees. Its shoulders heaved, and it made the glass sound again, almost like it was...retching. It swayed, and then it fell over on its side, curling in a loose heap on the floor.

Huh. Not exactly what Tucker had been going for, but he wasn’t one to kick a gift horse in the teeth. He directed his gaze tentatively upward. “Uhh, thanks? Saint Peter? Anubis, whoever? Yeah…sorry I swore at you… ” Was it dead? What do you even do with a dead ghost?

Slowly, a gray-blue mist seeped out from around where its mouth and nose (did it have a nose?) seemed to be. It started in little rivulets, and it built against the barrier until there was a growing mound of greyish smoke writhing upward, more and more until it completely obscured the dark, slumped shape behind it. Tucker’s hair follicles stood back on end. Now this particular flavor of terror he knew. It was the creeping stomach-deep rabbit-dread, the bone-deep knowledge of one’s unfavorable position on the food chain. The instinctive understanding of an apex predator.

The mist resolved itself into something resembling Schulker. He looked the same as he had in the mirror that day, scruffier and dirtier than his pictures. He smiled, and Tucker could see the dirt in his teeth and his beard, and the way his lips cracked as they stretched, opening up old scabs and sores. He looked a lot more human than the thing on the ground behind him. “Hey, kid. You called. Now we can talk for real.”

Tucker licked his own dry lips. “Thank–” His voice broke. He coughed and continued, shaky. “Thank you for coming. Did you–what do you want to tell me? Are you, I mean are you gonna tell me who–” Again, his voice cracked high and dwindled, and he lapsed into silence.

The ghost chuckled. The room temperature dropped a few degrees, and Tucker became aware of how tall Schulker was. His head almost scraped the ceiling. He loomed, and even in the dim light of the room his shadow seemed to project huge on all four walls. “Ya know, kid, that would be–” He cut off, suddenly frowning. His eyes widened. Tucker and he looked down at the same time.

Four greenish-white bands clutched tight around his ankle. Schulker only had time to growl once, an animalistic sound that made every muscle in Tucker’s body tense for flight. Then he dissolved back into mist and dissipated into nothing as the thing that had appeared first dragged itself to its feet.

Green eyes bored his. That long mouth opened, and it spoke. “You will not do this again.” The voice carried undertones of static that made every hair on Tucker’s body rise Ben Franklin-with-kite style. It was like listening to the feeling of chewing on tinfoil.

It took one step forward and pushed on the barrier. “You’re gonna erase this figure, you’re gonna throw away that chalk and that stupid thermometer, and you’re gonna go home and live nice, happy, long lives and never mess with this sh*t again, ‘cause this sh*t will kill you, okay?” It took a step forward, and Tucker could tell that the barrier stretched. “You’re lucky I was here.” It had one foot almost over the chalk line. “You could very easily have died right here, right now.” It was an inch from entering the circle. “ You still could.”

And at that moment, Sam came back online. “I banish you from this space and this realm!” she screamed hoarsely. “Return from whence you came and trouble the Living no more!"

The thing co*cked its head. “Now that’s just rude.”

“I banish you from this space and this realm!” She wrenched her hand from Tucker’s and shoved it into her pocket, pulling out what looked like some kind of herb. “Return from whence you came and trouble the Living no more!"

The thing took another floating step forward, more cautious. “Do you really think some dime store exorcism’s gonna….”

Sam threw the herb; Tucker watched, transfixed, as bits of leaf floated to the ground, glimmering silver in the light the thing cast. “I banish you from this space and this realm! Return from whence you came and trouble the Living no more! Papa Legba, Saint Peter, Hermanubis, close the gate!!"

There was no crunching glass sound this time. Just a flash of white light and a quiet, diminishingly staticky “Oh h , sh it.”

Tucker squinted through the sudden darkness and choked on his own spit. “Danny?!”

Danny was standing in the middle of the triangle, wearing pajama pants and no shirt, looking simultaneously terrified and extremely sheepish. He had toothpaste smudged on one cheek. Slowly, carefully, he placed a palm flat on the air between them. “Okay, I’m sorry for the whole ‘scared straight’ thing, I swear I can explain, could you just like...let me out? Please?”

Sam was shaking her head very rapidly. “No. No way, not until you tell us what the hell you are.”

Despite his obvious discomfort, Danny had the nerve to smirk. In the dark, it was actually super disturbing. “Okay. The thing is–well, I swing both ways, if you know what I mean.”

Sam stalled. “...What?”

“You know, like, I bat for both teams.”

Sam remained stalled. Tucker made a cracked sort of sound.

“Jesus, okay, tough crowd. Basically, I’m both very much alive and maybe sort of a little bit... not alive.” He shifted uncomfortably to his other foot and leaned sideways against what to Tucker’s perception was thin air. “Vitally neutral. Schrödinger’s ghost, except not, because that would be the ghost of an old German guy. And then also sometimes I’m a portal. Is that good enough?”

Sam managed her second reboot of the night and choked out a laugh, taut and incredulous. “Uh, no?!”

Danny gazed off somewhere in the distance. “Well, it had better be, because Tucker’s mom just got home.” The next second, Tucker’s mom’s voice drifted up to them: “Tucker, honey? I’m home!”

“Are you really looking forward to explaining to her why you’ve got a major fire hazard going on her nice wood floor?” Oh, yeah, Tucker noticed belatedly, the candles are burning again. They lit most of the room with a cheery warm light, but threw huge shadows on the ceiling. Danny’s kept moving in ways Danny himself didn’t. “Sorry, guys, I’m not helping you play this one off.” He let one accusing finger drag pointedly down the barrier.

Tucker’s mom yelled again, “Tucker? Are you up there? Sam?”

“Yeah, we’re here!” Tucker called back. He came to a snap decision. “How do we let you out?”

Sam spun on him. “What? No, he could eat us or something!”

Danny sighed. “For real, Sam? I’ve sat next to you in MUN for two full weeks, and now you think I eat people?”

“Sam, I am not telling my mom ghosts exist and my classmate from Chicago is actually dead.” (He ignored Danny’s sullen little interjection of “Only half….”) “We don’t have proof, and she already thinks I’m traumatized and fragile. I’ll end up in a psych ward.”

“That’s better than eaten! He’s almost definitely, one hundred percent the serial killer, Tucker!”

“Woah, wait, hold on. You thought I was the serial killer?” Danny raised an eyebrow. “Based on what? I’m from Chicago?”

“He’s not going to eat us, okay? And I saw the killer; it was a guy in a hoodie. If anything, this is proof that he’s not the killer, because why would someone with a horrifying ghostly alter-ego kill people as a human guy in a hoodie?”

“I don’t know why he would do anything, Tucker; he’s dead!”

(“Half….”)

Tucker sighed. “Okay, whatever you are, how do I release you?”

“Uhh….” Danny paused, thoughtful. “Widdershins is a classic. Counterclockwise, I mean. Just walk widdershins around the circle and say something about releasing me, maybe call upon a gatekeeper entity or two, and that should do it. Possibly I’ll just revert back to where I was when you started summoning, and you won’t have to call an Uber for me. Because I don’t have my phone, and I feel like that would be really awkward under the circ*mstances.”

Tucker didn’t even have the energy to laugh anymore; he had experienced too much supernaturally induced terror in the span of ten minutes. He felt like someone had injected anaesthesia directly into his brain. Slowly, he started walking counterclockwise around the edge of the circle. “Saint Peter, please release the spirit we have brought into this home. Hammer-Anubis, please release the spirit we have brought into this home. Uhh, leg guy–”

“Papa Legba,” Sam interrupted impatiently, though her voice was still trembling. “Ugh, fine, I’ll help you get us killed. Hermanubis, Saint Peter, Papa Legba, Keeper of the Gate, we thank you for opening it to us tonight. As I erase the lines that bind the gate, release the spirit bound within. As I snuff out the candles that light the way, may you guide it back from whence it came.” With one foot, she smeared away each of the runes as well as the Hebrew words and grid figure inside the circle, and then she pulled a pocketknife out of her pocket (and Tucker wasn’t even alarmed to see Sam with a knife; he was truly spent) and quickly cut the lemon she was somehow still holding in half. She walked around the circle extinguishing the candles with one half of the lemon, while keeping distrustful eyes on Danny whenever possible. When she got halfway around he started to look wispy around the edges, and when she snuffed out the final candle both she and Tucker looked away or blinked for a split second and then squinted back through the almost pitch blackness to find the triangle empty.

Tucker released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Is he gone?”

Sam grabbed his hand again in the darkness. He could feel her pulse jumping through her skin. “How should I know?!”

“Can we...turn on the lights? I mean, leave the circle….”

“Who knows if the circle even does anything? I sure as hell don’t.” Sam sat abruptly on the ground, letting go of his hand again in the process. “Ghosts are real. The supernatural is actually real.”

Tucker gathered all of his courage, then leapt the two steps to the wall, slapped on the lights with extreme violence, and sprinted back into the circle. Under the harsh fluorescents, the room was suddenly a very different place. It was his room, with his green bedspread and ceiling fan and cluttered dresser with one long sleeve hanging out of the top drawer. It was not a place that had been invaded by monsters, though it was a place they had been called to. Even ignoring the sprawling pentacle scarifying it, the floor looked weird bare of his round carpet. He stepped carefully out of the circle and went to get it from where they’d rolled it up against the wall. Nudging candles and Sam out of the way with his foot, he carefully unrolled it to cover the whole array; then he plopped down in the middle of it, relishing the way his fingers dug into the coarse knotted fibers. After a second, Sam joined him.

“Why the f*ck did it work for you?” He could tell she tried to say it casually, jokingly, but there was a weird bitter undercurrent biting off her consonants, and he looked up, confused. She was still breathing hard and smirking to herself, a little wryly.

“What, summoning?”

“Yeah. I spent a whole year trying, and now….” She trailed off.

Tucker avoided her face; it was showing complicated things he knew she didn’t want him to see. “Maybe...now that Danny’s here?”

“Maybe.”

They sat in silence, leaning against each other for a minute, then two. Finally, Sam laughed once, a short, high sound, and pushed herself laboriously up, staggering a little when she made it to her feet. “Well, one thing’s for sure,” she commented. “Amity Park just got a helluva lot more interesting.”

Chapter 8: Of Monumental Things

Chapter Text

Of Monumental Things

or alternatively: Our Heroes Do Some Research

Tucker woke up that morning and almost stepped on Sam, who resembled a black mop wrapped in a blanket on his floor.

Sitting up on the bed, he dangled one foot off and poked his toes into her head. When she didn’t respond, he planted his foot where her shoulder appeared to be and shook her back and forth.

“Mfff. Ughhhhhhhh.” Sam rolled over and gave him a dirty (if bleary) look. “You’re dead meat, Foley.”

“Good thing you’re vegan.”

“I don’t like the implications of that sentence.”

“Oh. Ohh. Nope, me neither.”

While Tucker retrieved his glasses from the bedside table, Sam wrestled one arm out of her blanket cocoon and threw it dramatically over her eyes. “What time is it?” she croaked.

Tucker checked his (silenced) alarm clock. “Uh...Nine-forty. Forty-three, actually.”

“Considering I summoned a demon yesterday, you could’ve at least let me sleep past ten.” Sam jolted a little, pulling her arm away from her face as the full import of her sentence hit her. “Wait, that actually happened, right? I wasn’t hallucinating?”

“I think so?”

“Then Danny— oh my god, Tucker, we’ve literally spent hours alone with him!!”

Cold mouse feet scurried up and down Tucker’s back. “That’s...terrifying.”

“And is he going to be at school tomorrow? How are we supposed to deal with that? He’s literally not human, what the f*ck even—” Sam sat up and pulled her blanket tighter around her shoulders.

Tucker took a deep breath and physically shook the idea off. He stood up and moved to the window, and the visible blue-white strip of light widened with a screeching sound as he raised the curtains, like their own personal bargain-bin sunrise. Outside, the telephone wires swayed lightly in the breeze, no crows adorning the wooden pole today. Without them, it stood out stark against the sky, a monument to some long-forgotten king.

“So that hunter guy,” Sam said from behind him, “he was one of the murder victims, right? Victor Sulker?”

Ugh. It had begun.

“Schulker, with a ‘kh’ noise. I think it’s German,” Tucker corrected warily. “Why?”

“So we’re investigating the case.”

He spun to face her. “No, I’m investigating, extremely reluctantly, because I’m being haunted by the ghosts of the victims and it’s very unpleasant. I’m hoping one of them will just tell me something useful and I can tell the police and be done with it. You don’t have to do anything.”

Sam rolled her eyes. “Please, Tucker, of course I’m investigating. For one thing, I was already super interested in this case, and for another thing I got really bored when you were all jumpy and absent.”

That was...exactly what he’d been hoping she’d say, if Tucker was honest with himself. Suddenly, this whole thing had gone from Extremely Ridiculously Horrifyingly Scary to just Extremely Ridiculously Very Scary, and though he felt a little guilt for involving her in his nightmare, it was very easily swamped, dragged under, and drowned mercilessly by his relief.

“Thank god. Uhh, so what do we do next?”

“No clue.” She paused. “We could, uh, try to summon—“

“We’re not summoning that guy again.”

“Then we could...wait, how much do you actually know about this case?”

Tucker cringed. “I’ve actually kind of been deliberately avoiding it. So, almost nothing.”

Sam groaned and flopped backward onto his floor, pulling the blanket up over her face. A few seconds passed in silence.

“Alright,” she said, voice muffled. “I guess we’re doing some research.”

~(*0*)~

Sam leaned over Tucker’s shoulder, playing with his Rubix cube, as he tapped away at his laptop. He clicked the first result that contained the keywords “chicago amity murders unsolved news.” “Okay, so this article is from the Chicago Sun-Times. Uhh, talking to the families, something about mishandling evidence…” He flicked the touchpad to scroll down the page, then quickly stopped and backtracked. “Oh! Here’s a timeline. Okay, first victim was Frankie Young, a—sh*t. Eleven-year-old from the Chicago suburbs.” They paused for a second. “That’s horrible,” said Tucker.

“Yep.”

“...Anyway, he was found on March 15th. The next one was John “Johnny” Mallory–oh, apparently a famous stunt motorcyclist? Found April 30th. And they immediately started investigating the connection because of a pattern...of…” —he scrolled down to see the rest of the text box— “...burns, that the bodies had in common. And it wasn’t a detail they’d released to the public.”

Sam suddenly slammed the Rubix cube down on the desk, missing his hand by an inch. “Wait, John Mallory was a famous motorcyclist? Is he J13? My friend Geoff–the guy with the weird tan, remember–was super into that guy, and I think his real name is John, or James something?”

“I’ll look it up.” He opened a new tab and searched “john mallory motorcycle.” The top results were all obituary or tribute pages. “Woah. Yeah, it was him. J13, pretty big name. He was a stuntman in Fast and Furious 8 , made it to the X Games for motocross at one point. Not huge yet, but people came to his shows with a couple other stunters.”

“Yeah, Geoff said he’s not a super consistent rider, but he’s done some crazy stuff. Some of his videos—like, dude.” She leaned down and stole his trackpad, clicking on a video. In it, a motorcyclist in a black helmet with “13” painted on the front zoomed down an almost vertical ramp only slightly wider than his wheels shaped like a ski jump, hit the curve upward at the end, did a few flips and contortions in the air, and after a full loop landed facing backwards on the same tiny ramp.

“Woah.” Tucker wasn’t a huge sports guy, but damn. “How did this guy not die until now?”

Sam snorted out one of those “I shouldn’t be laughing at this” laughs. “I mean, you’re not wrong.”

The chair squeaked quietly as Tucker closed out the tab and switched back to the previous article. “Okay, the next person discovered was—oh. Kwan’s mom.” The cheer evaporated from the room, leaving behind a residue of uncomfortable gloom. “June 21st.”

Sam stared at the desk, tracing a knot in the wood with a finger, while Tucker closed some other old tabs he had open. “Did you know her?” she asked suddenly.

Tucker looked up at her in surprise. That was a weird tone from Sam. “Uh, not really,” he offered. “You?”

“No. I mean, my parents once asked her to take me home after school in, like, elementary school? She made really good popcorn. Although now that I think about it, it probably just came from a bag....” She trailed off.

Outside, a crow screamed. Someone shouted something and slammed their door.

Tucker cleared his throat. “Anyway, after her is where it apparently gets weird.” He leaned in to read the small print. “The next victim was Nikolai Technus, this software developer, also from Amity. He was found on...July 4th. Oh, the Fourth of July. And he had a similar burn pattern to the others, but a completely different cause of death. All the others—oh, that’s not given, I wonder why this is—but anyway he was blunt force trauma-d. To the head, and also a lot of bruising and internal bleeding. Yowch.” Tucker cringed in sympathy.

“The whole burn thing: Does it say what’s up with that? Like, pre- or postmortem?” Sam was now rapping the Rubix cube impatiently on the desk, and Tucker was tempted to snatch it, but he wasn’t quite willing to risk life and limb. Sam fought dirty.

He skimmed the article above the timeline. “Uhh...yeah, they do say. Postmortem.”

“Huh.”

Tucker returned to the timeline. “So there’s two more victims to date: Amber McClain and Victor Schulker.”

“No note on your cousin?” Sam ventured after a brief hesitation.

He skimmed again. “Apparently not. So if the police think it’s connected, I guess they’re not telling the media.”

“Huh. I guess that’s good,” Sam allowed. “The local media’s not handling this great. They’ve done everything but give this guy a cutesy name.”

“There’s no name yet?”

“Yeah. Naming them is usually a bad idea. Inspires copycats, for one. Just like releasing modus operandi information, like the stuff about the burns. I actually did read somewhere what the pattern was: small first-degree burns on the sides of the wrists and ankles.”

Gross. Also, why would she know that? “Do you just research this stuff for fun?” Tucker asked, a little weirded out.

Sam sniffed. “Not fun, per se . Mainly because when someone inevitably makes a true-crime podcast about this case and starts interviewing locals, I’m gonna be ready.”

“Okay, that’s slightly less scary.” He flicked the trackpad to let the whole article zoom past, then stopped it and half-turned to face her. “What bothers me about this whole thing is don’t serial killers usually target a specific type of person? Like a profile? These people have absolutely zilch in common.”

Sam frowned and set the Rubix cube with an air of finality on the desk. She backtracked to his bed and dropped heavily onto the foot of it, narrowly avoiding hitting her head on the wall as she bounced. “Yeah, you’re right. Completely different ages, men and women, different ethnicities, I think different religions.” She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. “I read that Technus had a rap sheet, and I think Schulker was under investigation for something at some point, but Mrs. Ainara certainly didn’t have a record.”

“They’re not even all American—Schulker was from Canada,” Tucker noted. Then he paused, considering that more. “Mrs. Ainara came from Japan in her teens, right? And Schulker was a Canadian citizen traveling in the U.S.?

“I think the news said he came from Germany as a kid, too.” Sam propped herself up a little higher. “Look up the others!”

It only took about thirty seconds to kill that train of thought. “Nope. Technus was Polish but born in the U.S., and Mallory was a white-as-bread all-American several-generations citizen. And my cousin’s whole family has been here, obviously; I keep forgetting him.”

Sam frowned. “So they have absolutely nothing in common.”

“Yyyyep.”

There was silence in the room for a minute. Sam flopped backward onto the bed and stared at the ceiling, kicking her legs morosely. Tucker peeled himself out of the swivel chair and padded over to turn on the fan, mainly just for something to do. Outside, ragged strips of cloud drifted overhead, their shadows skating over the treetops and the paneled roofs of the one-story houses that surrounded the apartment. Tucker had always liked being able to look out his bedroom window and see people’s roofs. It was almost afternoon, and though there was probably a September chill outside, it looked from here like a hot, sunny day.

“The burns thing is weird,” Sam piped up after a minute, still staring at the ceiling. He plopped back into his computer chair and spun around to face her. “It’s very ritual-y.”

“I mean...yeah, but isn’t that sort of a serial killer thing? Weird rituals that they do when they kill?”

“Sort of. Not all of them, but a lot, I guess. But that’s not what I mean, I mean occult- y. I’m trying to imagine how you would get those kinds of small burns, and I’m thinking candles.”

“Well, a serial killer who’s into the occult wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Me neither.” She hooked her legs against the side of the bed and used her abs to slowly swing herself up to sitting. “Wait, what was the date when they found Mrs. Ainara’s...you know...body again?”

Tucker huffed a nervous laugh at the awkward horribleness of that. It felt…weird to be talking like this about someone they both knew, if only in passing—the mother of one of their classmates. They weren’t exactly friends with Kwan, but they’d seen the effect it had had on him. It was disturbing, in a subtle, twist-in-your-gut kind of way, to think that there were probably thousands of people reading about the ending of her life to whom she was just a name, just like the other people on this list were to them. Those people were capable of discussing her casually, clinically, making jokes, using the word “yowch.”

It drove home the scope of this thing. Six people was really a small number—but it wasn’t really a number.

“Uh. They found her on June 21st.”

“...That’s the summer solstice.”

They looked at each other, wide-eyed. Sam bounced to her feet and quickly crossed the room, grabbing the back of his swivel chair with both hands and leaning forward onto it, so he had to push backward against the floor with his feet to avoid being rolled forward. “Gimme the other dates.”

Obligingly, he pulled up the timeline again.

“Don’t know about the first one, but April 30th I’m almost positive is a thing. Then there’s the summer solstice, which has huge significance to a lot of traditions...dunno about the Fourth of July...August 1st is definitely a holiday, it’s one of the Irish ones! I remember because the name was, like, ‘nose’ something. It involved noses.”

Tucker typed it in another tab. “Lughnasadh?”

“Yeah!”

“What does that have to do with noses?”

“It’s the ‘-nasadh,’ I guess. Like ‘nasal.’”

With mounting urgency, Tucker searched the other dates. Some took more keyword-fishing than others. “Okay, we’ve got the Ides of March, Walpurgisnacht which is also Beltane Eve, the summer solstice which is Litha and a bunch of other things, July 4th which is still kind of a mystery but this sketchy website says is 13 days after Litha and therefore some sort of Satanist half-birthday kind of thing?—And then Lughnasadh and one more that doesn’t seem to have any significance,” Tucker recapped.

“Which one is it again?”

“Schulker, September 13.”

Sam squinted threateningly over his shoulder at the computer for a minute, while he, too, wracked his brains for any possible way it fit into the pattern.

Suddenly, he straightened so fast he felt something pop in his lower spine. “Friday. September 13 was a Friday.”

“Holy—” Sam let go of his chair and stepped back so fast that he didn’t have time to stop pushing against her weight with his feet and went rolling backward, almost tipping over when the wheels hit the edge of the carpet. He quickly got out of the seat after that. “Holy sh*t, Tuck, they all fit,” Sam said. “Do the police know about this?!”

“I don’t know, maybe? I don’t think they’ve mentioned it.” He paced around the room, suddenly filled with nervous energy. When that wasn’t enough, he climbed up and started jumping on the bed, running his fingers through his hair, accidentally tugging on his dreads and knocking his glasses down over his nose. “Holy crap, this is actually really big!”

“What do we even do with this?!”

“Should we tell the police, like, just to make sure? Or I guess I could tell my Pseudo-Uncle Brock?” “Uncle” Brock, Maurice Foley’s cop cousin, had left as quietly as he’d come. That was pretty quietly, given that his time staying in the Foley house had been characterized by his going out early in the morning to the gym and coming back late at night after long shifts, when the rest of the house had already gone to sleep. Brock was also a pretty quiet, unobtrusive guy; if not for the occasional manly nod on the way out the door, the size 14 loafers in the hall, and the way cereal boxes lasted around half as long as they used to, Tucker would have barely noticed his presence or lack thereof.

“What if they don’t believe we just figured it out and it’s suspicious? My parents would freak out if I got police attention again.” Sam paused, then slowly grinned. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea.”

Tucker let himself drop into sitting position on the bed. “Wait, I’d really rather not be investigated either. Especially because I was the only other witness when Tristan got attacked, and his friends would probably say I was acting weird before.” He worried at one fingernail with the other hand. “Crap.”

“We could call in an anonymous tip?”

“Can they track those?”

They both considered. Sam stole Tucker’s computer chair and started spinning. “Uhh, maybe? Probably.”

Something tickled the edge of Tucker’s memory. “Doesn’t the local news have a hotline for this case?”

“Do they?” Sam woke up his laptop (again, how did she know his password?) and looked it up. “You’re right, they’ve got one.”

“But what if the police know about the whole date thing, and they’re trying to keep it quiet?”

“It seems really unlikely that they would release the thing about the burns but keep this quiet.”

“That’s true….”

They paused for a second, mulling it over. It was getting a little chilly, so Tucker got up and killed the fan. As he walked back over to his desk, he stood on tiptoes and interrupted its slowing spin with his fingertips, dragging them over a few blades and then stretching up a bit more to just block a blade entirely. The fan bounced twice before it finally made a worrying grinding sound and stilled.

Sam stood. “Let’s do it.”

“Right now?!”

“Yep.” Sam pulled out her cellphone and hit *67 to hide her caller ID, then started dialing the number on the laptop screen. “You want me to do it?”

“...Sure, I guess.”

The phone rang a few times before someone on the other end picked it up. “This is the Amity Local News, bringing you the truth and nothing but the truth, plus some occasional paid promotions by local businesses, since 1995! How can we help you?”

Sam cleared her throat and lowered her voice a few tones. “I’d like to report a tip? On the serial killer case.”

“Oh! Oh my god, really?” The voice on the other end positively quivered. “Thank you so much! What’s the tip?”

~(*0*)~

About forty minutes after the overly perky and breathless-in-a-way-that-kinda-weirded-Sam-out tip line monitor hung up, a realization twisted Tucker’s intestines into double knots. “Wait—what about Tristan?”

Sam turned to him, wide-eyed. “Oh—you’re right! What was the date?”

“Uhh, September 8th?” He clicked a few times. Then clicked some more. Then some more.

Five minutes later, he quietly closed his laptop. “Nothing.”

Sam leaned sideways against the wall next to him. She didn’t respond for a second, then admitted, “Also, I just remembered something. Friday the 13th is more of a modern thing, so using it as a day of occult significance for a murder seems almost . . . tongue-in-cheek.” She made a blech face and swiped the laptop. “Yeah, see, Wikipedia says it didn’t become a thing until the 19th century, also it’s Tuesday the 13th in Hispanic and Greek cultures and Friday the 17th in Italy. It’s not ancient or religious like the other dates.”

“Was that all a coincidence? Did we just give them a bad tip?”

Sam shrugged. “I mean, all we did was figure out a thing that might be true. They’ll do their own research, not just take whatever we said at face value.”

It was noon, and he and Sam were still hanging around his room. With the summoning circle covered up by the rug and all the candles cleaned up the night before so Sam could sleep there, the only reminder of the night before was a permeating and, Tucker feared, permanent eau de sandalwood.

“Sooo…,” Sam drawled, sitting up against his dresser on the floor, “what’s next?”

“I mean, that was kind of a lot.”

“That took like an hour tops, if you ignore the time we spent messing around and showing each other memes.”

(The author chose to ignore the time they spent messing around and showing each other memes.)

“It was a big thing! I’m sure the universe will be cool with it for a little while.”

“You really think so?” Sam gave him the same look she always gave when he skipped his homework, even though she usually half-assed the same homework. Her GPA was only like a half-point above his. “We could….” She’d started putting her messy hair up in a ponytail and wasn’t looking him in the eyes. “I heard they took down the police tape at the library. We could go check out the bathroom, see if you get any” —she wiggled her fingers— “vibes.”

Tucker sputtered. “Seriously? No way!”

“Come on! With my occult know-how and your psychic-ness we stand an actual chance of saving lives here!”

Tucker started emphatically pulling off the socks he’d slept in. “You–Do I have to repeat my speech about my utter lack of badassery? ‘Cause that was damaging enough to my ego the first time.”

“Ugh, fine.” Sam rolled her eyes at him in a way that made it very clear she did not see how stressed the idea made him and was in no way showing mercy, or demonstrating empathy. “Then you owe me lunch, at least.”

“That, I can do.”

And thus, the afternoon passed in a haze of reluctantly vegetarian paninis, planning their first electropunk single once they realized what a great band name “Reluctantly Vegetarian Paninis” would be, and strategizing on what to do about Danny now that they knew that he was, y’know, whatever he was. They eventually decided on confronting him about it in a very public place with a lot of witnesses. It would have to happen eventually, so they might as well choose the playing field.

At around 6:02 Sam looked at the clock and suddenly stood, abandoning her Mario Kart (Princess Peach; she claimed it was ironic) to careen over the edge of the road. “Crap. I’m supposed to go ice skating with my dad at 7.”

Tucker almost crashed himself in his surprise. “Your dad? Really?”

“Yeah, it’s going to be so awkward.” She dropped again onto the couch and let her head loll back onto the cushions. The living room window shades had all been pulled back to let in the maximum amount of light, even if the glare off the TV had been throwing Tucker off his game. The glare was dying down now anyway, what with the lengthening autumn nights; sunset was at 5 p.m., so by now the sky had that internal blue glow that made it look convex rather than concave, or like the deep ocean illuminated from within by submarine lights and angler fish. Houses became silhouettes, and telephone lines were indistinct except where they crisscrossed the last sunlight leaching up just above the horizon.

“You want me to come?” Tucker offered.

“Nah, he wanted it to just be the two of us….”

“So when are you gonna leave?”

“Uh, I should go at like 6:15.”

“Sweet.” Tucker grinned pointily. “I’m turning on Teen Wolf.”

“What did I ever do to you?”

~(*0*)~

At 6:15 Tucker paused the show mid slo-mo sequence. “Don’t you have to get going?”

Sam stole another of the faded pink-embroidered pillows from Tucker’s couch. She now had four on the left side, while he was down to one. “Finish the episode, I’ll go at 6:30.”

At 6:32, Tucker said, “Sam, it’s 6:32….”

“Okay, but why do the suicides keep happening at that hotel? Like, is the curse of the hotel that they all arrive at the hotel in the midst of unrelated circ*mstances that cause there to be wolfsbane around or a bite or something that would kill them anyway? That’s, like, exceedingly specific.”

“It’s for the vibe, you aren’t supposed to ask these questions.”

“Yeah, I guess I appreciate the vibe.”

“But, uh, are you gonna go meet your dad?”

Sam chewed on one purple nail. “Ugh, I mean, my stuff is all over your house so at this point I’ll be late anyway.”

“So…what time are you going, then?

Tick, tick.

Sam inspected her nail for a second, frowning at the cracks in the matte. “You know what, screw it. This is more important, we’re embroiled in a murder investigation! Like, that’s crazy! And magic is real. I think I need a little more time to process that.”

Tucker shrugged. “Alright, if you want to hang around here more that’s fine by me.” He paused. “You gonna…text him?”

Sam visibly waffled. “Ugh, then he’ll call and be all pissy and want to know why. If I don’t text, I can just say I forgot!”

“Okay, as long as you’re ready to lose at Mario Kart again.”

Sam scowled. “I wanna go back to Wii fencing.”

“Sam, I thought we’d established I have self preservation instincts!”

Sam flicked the button to silence her cell phone with that same cracked purple fingernail. “I’ll steal your cereal.”

“Hey!!”

~(*0*)~

The Manson mansion (for real, Sam thought, our last name is Manson, couldn’t we have gotten, like, a bungalow?) was dark when Sam pulled up in front and fished her keys out of the cupholders in her car. It took a little scrabbling around among old gum wrappers and spare change before she could get them, and as she pulled them out one wrapper was dragged over the edge and drifted to the floor. She hit the lock button reluctantly, mostly killing the car’s headlights, as she picked her way up the small semicircle of brick steps leading to the front door. Phone flashlights were for cowards.

The fumbling of the key in the lock sounded too loud for the silent cul-de-sac. Even the couple who always threw those loud parties her parents enjoyed complaining about so much seemed to have turned in early. Oh, wait, it was almost 11. Sam fumbled faster.

Only to have the door opened—scaring the bejeezus out of her in the process—by her father. He stared her down for a moment, wearing a hint of stubble and a monogrammed bathrobe with the same dearth of panache. “Samantha. Why didn’t you come to the ice rink? I cleared my schedule for you. I was waiting for forty minutes.”

Sam mentally prepared herself for some of the greatest acting of her life. “That was today?! Crap, I’m so sorry, Dad, I totally forgot!”

Jeremy Manson glowered. “That was very irresponsible of you, Sam. And why didn’t you answer any of my calls?”

“I have to put my phone on silent for school, and I guess I just forgot to take it off. I’m so sorry, Dad, can we do it another time?”

He hmph- ed and stepped aside to let her in the door. It was strange to hear him padding down the dark hallway in bare feet while she clomped along in the combat boots she was regretting a little right now. Her mom always complained that they scratched off the finish on the hardwood. “I’ll try to find another time, but I’m facing some issues at work that might not blow over soon. I’ll let you know after I look at my schedule. But Sam, this kind of behavior is unacceptable. I expect you to keep your ringer on in the future, and if your teachers complain tell them they can speak to me. And you really should start keeping a calendar.”

Sam held the relief down in her throat, out of her face. She probably wasn’t going to do either of those things (Jeremy Manson wasn’t the type to cold-call her at school to make sure her ringer wasn’t silenced), and it looked like there wouldn’t be any consequences beyond that.

They turned left out of the narrow hallway, and the light changed from moonlight blue to orange. Two lamps were on in the living room. And sitting between them on the mauve flowery couch, brooding like a supervillain with perfect posture, was Pamela Manson. Sam startled and banged her hip into the sharp side of the doorway.

“Where have you been, Samantha?” In sharp contrast to her father’s rumpled exhaustion, her mother seemed wide awake, sitting at jagged angles in a pristine blue silk pajama set.

Sam reluctantly walked further in, cringing in anticipation. “Tucker’s, why?”

“You were extremely rude to your father today. Maybe you should be spending less time with Tucker; he’s apparently a bad influence.”

Crap, crap crap crap! No way. “Mom, you know Tucker!” Sam squawked before tempering her tone a bit. “You like his parents! And anyway, you can’t tell me who I can associate with anymore, I’m sixteen!”

“A sixteen-year-old who only has a car because we let her.”

Sam’s father shifted where he stood slightly behind her and to the right, covering up a yawn. “Pamela, I was annoyed earlier, but I would have been home early anyway. We can leave this discussion for the morning.”

“Jeremy, we can’t just let her act like this, it’s disrespectful!” Pamela broke her perfect-posture supervillain pose to lean forward a bit, gesticulating wildly. Her eyes were slightly red, and without makeup she looked just a bit crumpled around the edges, like cheap polyester.

“I already spoke to her when she came in, and she understands that she needs to avoid this sort of behavior in the future. And we could give her some chores or take the car, but can we please talk about it in the morning?” Jeremy apparently realized then that nothing was likely to happen if he just stood there continuing the conversation, so he started walking slowly away with an air of “I know you probably won’t, but I’m still hoping against hope that you’ll follow my example.”

And then her mom was muttering something under her breath, and something creaked in the attic, and the tip of Sam’s tongue hurt from not railing against injustice and also biting it earlier. So she decided to make it worse.

“It’s kind of hilarious, though, you getting mad at me for not showing up.”

Her mother’s green eyes snapped up. The lamplight sparked and scattered off stray red hairs. “Oh for god’s sake, not this again.”

Jeremy gave up on escaping and stopped, leaning one hip against the wall next to the entrance to the hallway. “Sam, you know we do try to make it to your events. I came to your last debate, and I wanted to come to the Audubon thing but things come up and you have to understand it puts us in a difficult–”

“No.” Pamela whipped around, shaking her head and sending more orange hairs escaping from her loose updo. “No, you don’t need to make excuses, Jeremy.”

“I’m just saying–”

Sam found herself spreading out her stance, readying for battle even as a part of her wondered why she was even doing this, the part that just wanted to go to sleep and was so done . But the rest of her was filling up with superheated air from her lungs, nitrogen bubbles escaping her tissue and gushing into her blood. “At least Dad has an excuse! He works! What do you even do all day, Mom?!”

At that, Pamela stood, with far less than her usual grace. One finger shook in the air by her head. “How dare you.”

“I don’t even see you anymore! What do you do, besides sit in your room brainstorming new ways to ruin my life?!”

Sam’s dad pushed off the wall at that, cheeks flushing. “Sam, apologize to your mother!” he boomed, but both ignored him.

“Other people are allowed to have problems, Samantha! The universe doesn’t revolve around you!”

“Pamela, that is our daughter! That is out of line—”

“Don’t call me f*cking Samantha!”

“It’s your f*cking name, it’s what I named you!”

“Sammy, we care about you so much, it’s just hard sometimes but we’re trying—Pamela—”

“I am a goddamn fantastic mother, and I also have my own f*cking life—”

“Pamela, shut up!!”

“Don’t you dare f*cking start on me, Jeremy!” It was almost screamed.

The room went silent.

For a moment all three stood there looking at each other, shell-shocked. The lamps flickered.

Jeremy was the first to back up.

“I think you need to go clear your head.” He started walking quickly toward the hallway.

Sam was left feeling not unlike she’d just witnessed an Olympic ping pong tournament. Wasn’t that a thing during the Cold War? Ping pong diplomacy?

Pamela deflated, suddenly and without warning, back into a sitting position on the edge of the couch. “Sam, go to bed,” she rasped quietly, not looking her in the eye.

Sam hovered on the edge of the living room’s pool of light. The upholstery flowers curled around each other ever so slightly, wriggling like worms. The lamps flickered again. Pamela reached up with one hand and turned one off with a loud click. The nitrogen bubbles had made it up Sam’s spinal column to the brainstem, and for a moment she stood paralyzed, weightless, detached.

Slowly, Sam walked to her bathroom. The light was too bright. She took her toothbrush out of the drawer.

Chapter 9: Of Bananas, Lemons, and the Living Dead

Chapter Text

Of Bananas, Lemons, and the Living Dead

or alternatively: Some Answers, Finally

When they met up on the steps of Casper High the next morning (Sam didn’t have the car on Mondays), Sam was practically bouncing in her black Vans. “So I have a theory,” she announced breathlessly.

“Jeez, how late were you up?” Tucker cringed just to look at her under-eye bags. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and even her skin looked tired.

“Not that late. I was excited, nothing this exciting has ever happened to me! Now do you want to hear my theory or not?”

Tucker raised an eyebrow and readjusted his beret. “Okay?”

She crested the last step and stopped next to him, readjusting her backpack straps. They were obstructing foot traffic, but Sam didn’t generally care about that sort of thing. Students streamed around them, their body language and complai– conversations expressing various flavors of exhaustion. “I did some more research,” Sam explained. “Into the victims themselves, not the actual case. Apparently, Nikolai Technus was an infamous black hat hacker. Stole millions, wiped out some people’s entire savings to pay for his sister’s hospital bills, but they could only make a few charges stick, so he did, like, five years. And Schulker went to trial but was acquitted for the murder and cannibalization of two hikers in the Canadian Rockies.”

“You think the murders are some sort of vigilante thing?” Tucker frowned. “But that doesn’t make sense; Mrs. Ainara and my cousin were targeted. And one of them was a little kid!”

Sam looked suddenly uncomfortable, seemingly noticing for the first time the high schoolers shuffling past them. She grabbed his arm and started steering him through the doors, into the hallway. “But Tucker…I hate to bring it up, but didn’t your cousin have that thing? With the girl at the party…”

Tucker halted in front of Lancer’s door, dragging her to a stop by virtue of her grip on his arm. “That was not true,” he whispered fiercely. “She said he was the wrong guy, and she confirmed it when they arrested the right person! Tristan would not do anything like that.”

“I know, I know!” Sam quickly assured him, looking a little surprised. “I’m saying, though, the killer might not, or might be operating on some crazy, distorted idea of justice. You have to admit, it’s weird that three out of the seven of them were suspects in criminal investigations. And I feel like Ember was a little sketchy, right?”

Tucker shook off her arm and walked through the door a little abruptly, but he was mollified. “I don’t know, I don’t think I ever met her.”

Sam took a seat at a desk near the back, Tucker settling in the one to her left, next to the window. She leaned over to talk to him in a lowered voice as he opened his backpack. “My parents made some comments when the school sent out the newsletter about what happened to her. Apparently she had a reputation. Not sure what, though.”

“Huh.” Tucker leaned back in his seat, twiddling with the mechanical pencil he’d dug out of his pencil case. “I mean, I guess it’s a decent theory, but—”

He cut off abruptly, staring at the front of the room. Sam followed his gaze. Danny had just walked in.

He noticed them immediately too, making quick, accidental eye contact over the heads of the Kids With Weird Allergies Coalition (they’d really bonded over that microwave campaign) and then hurrying to sit at one of the open desks on the far side of the room. Tucker’s mouth felt dry and his heartbeat jumped, but his Nightmare Sense remained disturbingly silent.

Sam tried to say something else to Tucker, but she was cut off by the bell ringing (they both jumped) and then Lancer striding out of his office and into the main classroom.

“Good morning, students!” he enthused, setting down his coffee to stand jauntily at attention behind his desk. “And happy Monday!” The only answer was a Greek chorus of groans, the usual accompaniment to Lancer’s announcements. Lancer was literally the only person in the room happy that it was Monday.

“Jane Eyre, people, it’s not that bad. You didn’t even have homework due today. That’s not something you’ll experience often in this class.”

While Lancer pulled up his hideously designed but informative Google Slides about “The Most Dangerous Game,” Sam leaned over and intoned to Tucker, “Do we try to catch him in the hallway after class? Or lunch?”

Tucker considered. “Are we gonna be able to find him at lunch?”

“I don’t know, probably?”

“Miss Manson!” Sam jerked in her seat, looking up at their slightly red-flushed teacher. “Please pay more attention, this will be important,” Lancer sighed in his nasally voice.

“Sorry, Mr. Lancer.” Sam exchanged one more loaded glance with Tucker and then focused her attention on the board. Tucker’s eyes slid over to the other side of the room. Danny was staring at them again, but he swiftly looked away when Tucker caught him.

~(*0*)~

They were, in fact, able to find Danny at lunch—he was standing outside Tucker’s Physics classroom, trying and failing to look like he wasn’t waiting for him. Which meant Danny had almost definitely heard their whispered conversation from across the classroom. Which was really, really scary.

“Hey, Tucker,” he said, trying to grin easily and instead resembling a nervous hyena. “Is Sam around? I think we have some things to clear up.”

Tucker eyed those teeth, backing away a foot or two. “Uh, yes. Definitely,” he responded, projecting confidence about as well as Danny was projecting nonchalance.

“But not here,” Danny added, glancing around. A passing pedestrian jostled Tucker toward him, and Tucker hurriedly pushed back before they could touch. Danny didn’t seem to notice, pointing down the hall. “There’s this maintenance closet outside our French classroom. Text Sam to meet us there?”

“Hold up.” Tucker fought his way into a less busy side hallway and turned to fully face Danny, both of them standing against the wall. “We are not going anywhere alone with you, dude. We are staying where there are witnesses.”

“For real?!” Danny whispered back. “Do you really think I’m going to murder you in a closet with security cameras outside, in the middle of the school day?”

“I don’t know, man, this is all kind of new territory for me!”

Danny ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Look, I can’t talk about this around people, okay? The government’s been trying to dissect me for like a year now!”

Tucker…supposed that was reasonable. In some senses of the word. In this weird new world they’d only just discovered they’d been living in all along. He sighed. “Okay, fine. We’ll go to the closet.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and quickly texted Sam about the change in plans. “People are definitely going to think we’re making out,” he added under his breath.

Danny laughed nervously. “As long as they still think I’m alive, I’ve learned not to care.”

They made it to the closet and waited until Sam had gotten there, voiced her own objections, and heard Danny’s understandable reasons for wanting secrecy. She still made sure multiple people passed by and saw them before they turned to the closet door, Sam and Danny hovering uncertainly in front of it and Tucker leaning with forced nonchalance against the glass fire extinguisher case a few feet down the hall. “I don’t have a bobby pin on me today, so how are we getting in?” she griped, more as a final reason not to go in the closet than as acknowledgement of an actual obstacle.

Danny looked around. “Uh, cover me.”

Sam looked at Tucker, who shrugged, and then they stepped in close on either side of Danny to hide whatever he was about to do from prying eyes. And then Tucker did a double take as Danny’s hand met wood and then just kept going through the door. His stomach flip-flopped, and he tasted iron and ozone way back in his molars. Sam just kept staring, openmouthed, as the doorknob turned on its own, or more accurately was turned from the other side, and then Danny pulled it open with his other hand and removed the one previously in the door. “Voila.” He stepped aside with a slight bow to let them in.

“What the hell did I just watch.” Sam looked a little traumatized and made no move to enter.

Danny huffed in exasperation. “Seriously, that was so basic, now could you please get in the closet before people see? Please?”

Tucker blinked once and then decided to just accept it. He really had seen way weirder. He went into the closet, fumbling for the light more urgently than he might have a week ago. After a moment, Sam followed.

With Danny inside and the door closed, they all began to realize that it really was a tiny closet. The small light in the ceiling was one of those old-school plastic-covered ones, and the cover was filled with the silhouettes of dead flies, which cast faint orangey shadows over their heads. Tucker examined the cracking green walls for any livelier bugs as Danny cracked his knuckles (not the best nervous habit when you were trying to appear nonthreatening) and exhaled. “Uh, so I’m going to start by apologizing, again, for scaring you guys the other night. I’m told my ghost form is a little…much, if you’re not used to it. I was just trying to get you to not mess with the supernatural again, because it’s really dangerous, but I guess I maybe could have handled it better? Anyway, if you would not turn me in to the government to get, like, tortured and stuff, I would really appreciate that.”

Tucker and Sam stared at him blankly. Finally, Tucker processed all the information revealed in that spiel. “Uh. Sure. That seems fair.”

“Yeah,” Sam said slowly, after a second. “We can do that. You don’t try to eat us, and we won’t turn you in. Sounds like a plan. But we have some questions.”

Danny started to rub the back of his neck with one hand, banged his elbow on the shelf, jumped, and brought it back down quickly. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, uh…what do you want to know?”

Tucker was trying to think of a polite way to phrase the question on his mind when Sam, ever the more straightforward of the two, just went for it. “What are you?”

Danny shifted, moving back into the corner between the wall and the shelf of cleaning supplies to make a little more space, as he took a deep breath and began. “So. I have some abilities that one might describe as ghostly, and I’m affected by a lot of the same things fully dead people are. But I can switch back and I’m obviously still alive, too. Based on what I’ve gathered from, ah, some of the more…traditionally deceased, I’m simultaneously alive and my own ghost, like a sort of halfway point. And then another side effect is that as far as we understand, I’m a portal.”

Sam frowned. “A portal between what and what, exactly?”

“Between the dimension or realm or whatever of the restless dead, and this one.”

In the ensuing silence, a thought occurred to Tucker. He wasn’t gonna say it. He wasn’t gonna say it…He had to say it. “Bro…you’re like Raven from Teen Titans.”

Danny choked on a burst of incredulous laughter. “Wow. Actually, yeah. But instead of cool magic tattoos I get random bouts of intense nausea.”

“So when you would skip out of classes and stuff, or disappear during lunch, you were in here…throwing up ghosts,” Sam stated flatly.

Danny cringed. “Or hunting things that were already here, or hunting down the ones that get away. But yeah, pretty much. It’s really gross.” He sounded personally offended by these circ*mstances.

“And no one else at school knows?” Tucker asked.

“Nope. It’s really a miracle I’ve hidden it this long; I’ve been almost caught like eight times since I got here.” He started counting on his fingers, looking up at the treacherous lightbulb and its victims. “There was Mikey, there was that blonde girl and the Asian guy from my Chem class, there was the actual janitor… it’s just a mess, let’s be honest.”

It took a while for them to get out of the closet. At some point they all got tired of standing, and then Tucker knocked an empty and very loud container of bleach off the shelf and almost got them caught by a teacher, so they ended up sitting on the floor, Sam’s knees bumping up against Danny’s as she leaned back onto Tucker’s side and he braced his feet against the door. And Danny told the story of how he’d died.

His parents were parabiologists (or, as they preferred, ectologists) as a very time-consuming hobby, although they paid the bills as a chemical engineer and a regular engineer. And at their last house in Chicago, not long before the start of Danny’s sophom*ore year, they scavenged parts on moonlit nights and built something in the basem*nt. It was a shadowy hunk of machinery as tall as cathedral doors, with twinkling lights that disappeared when you looked at them straight on and strange reflections that twisted of their own accord across impossible planes. It made strange humming sounds late at night, at a frequency so low that the whole house quivered in its foundation. But for all its ominous vibes, it didn’t actually do anything, no matter what the Fentons poked or prodded.

That is, until Danny was cleaning the basem*nt lab and happened to trip on an exposed wire (a wire he couldn’t find later, no matter how hard he searched) and fall into the machine in the basem*nt. He remembered the smell of burning hair and bright green light, and the feeling of his esophagus crawling into his stomach, and then he remembered waking up on the floor of the lab at three in the morning and stumbling upstairs to his room, mind foggy and muscles still seizing, to pass out again in bed.

It was the next day, when he woke up with a floating-y feeling and scared himself to death (heh) looking in the mirror, that things started to get really weird. And it only escalated from there.

Ghosts began finding him, even those who already resided in the land of the living or had entered the dimension through other, less testy portals. Some were friendly, just looking for a door to the other side as the logical next step toward whatever, if anything, lay beyond. Most were decidedly not friendly; a lot weren’t even coherent. These, he could forcibly send back. (And no, he hastily clarified as he saw Tucker’s wide eyes and correctly read the question on the tip of his tongue, he did not have to eat the ghosts to do that; how many times did he need to reassure them that he did not eat people?! Tucker thought again of the ghost in the triangle’s big, wide mouth and said nothing.) At first, his parents were ecstatic about their neighborhood’s sudden, inexplicable uptick in paranormal activity. Then the house began accruing damage, and no one could tell where it was coming from. Including their insurance company. Creeping things started coming to Danny’s school, and back then he wasn’t nearly as experienced at fighting them off. They sent kids of all ages and their teachers flooding into the hallways, chased by nothing but a nameless reflexive panic, an involuntary knee-jerk of fear. They cornered people in bathrooms and back alleys and under the bleachers. Half the school was in counseling; the counselors were in counseling. It was hell on the electrical wiring.

And then Todd Zelenski was found dead at the drinking fountain, drowned in two inches of water.

Everyone knew Danny Fenton had been near or at the sites of most of the attacks. Everyone knew Danny Fenton had been acting weird.

Danny Fenton and associates decided it would be wise to get the hell out of Chicago.

The consulting company Mrs. Fenton worked for (she determined if pharmaceuticals were safe for human testing) had a lab in Amity Park. They’d been trying to get good researchers out to the suburbs for years, and the pay was better even if the resources were worse, so she didn’t take much convincing. Jack Fenton was an independent inventor at that point, so he could wander wither the wind blew. Jasmine Fenton was in college. So they moved to Amity, and all summer, it seemed like it was going to work out. Chicago was murder city, while Amity was lucky to see the occasional downtown stabbing; the restless came less and, when they did, were less angry than confused. For a while Danny could breathe, and hope against hope that things would be easier from now on.

He’d definitely jinxed himself. Hope was a scam.

The one “good” thing, according to Danny, about this current ectoplasmic upwelling was that the ghosts (he’d met two: Amber and now Schulker) were very recently dead. Old ghosts were much worse; they seemed to degrade , stewing in their restlessness, bearing less and less psychological and physical resemblance to their living templates as time went on.

At this point, Sam interrupted the flow of the story, frowning. Outside the closet, a group of students passed, most likely coming in from lunch. Their loud laughter was muffled and distorted by the closet door. “So what exactly are ghosts? Like, are they actual souls, or, like, echoes or something?”

Danny made a vague handwave-y gesture. “Unfortunately, when I died I was not given a manual. Right now, we’re thinking a sort of remnant. More than an echo, but, like…ugh, it’s hard to explain.” Sam readjusted her crossed ankles, pulling the bottom one onto the top, as he continued. “I used to think of it as similar to the way a star’s light can reach Earth millennia after it died, so we’re seeing a version of what it was even though temporally, that star doesn’t exist in the moment that we’re experiencing; it could have died before our great-grandparents were born. And since light gets refracted and lost on the journey through space, what we’re seeing is a slightly corrupted version. But that’s not a great analogy, because some ghosts actually do seem able to, like, learn, or at least adapt to changing circ*mstances. Starlight that reaches Earth will never be anything more than what it was when it was first generated light years ago.”

He paused for a breath after that spiel and frowned thoughtfully. “Also,” he added, “since light travels and your brain processes it and stuff, you never actually see anything or anyone as exactly what it is in the instant you perceive it.”

“Huh.”

They sat with that for a minute.

Then Sam snapped her fingers. The light flickered, and Tucker hoped it wasn’t one of the bugs in the cover moving, maybe roused from rigor mortis by all their talk of undeath. “I got it! They’re more like banana candy. You know, Tuck, from that text post you sent me.”

“Oh, yeah!” Tucker remembered thinking, rightly, that the goth in Sam would like the concept. “I read that the flavoring they use for a lot of banana-flavored candies was actually based, when it was invented, on the taste of a species of banana that then went extinct,” he explained to Danny. “So when you eat those candies, you’re actually tasting a long-dead type of banana.”

“And!” Sam added, straightening excitedly, “the recipe could’ve been changed over the years—like, a little more of this, less of that—so that little by little the taste changed! But there aren’t any more of the original banana species, so we have no way of knowing anymore if that’s really what they tasted like, when they were alive.”

Danny grinned. “Well, but humans share more that half their DNA with bananas. So by that logic, I’m totally norm—”

“What are you doing in my closet?!”

There was a general clatter and clash as all three teenagers scrambled to their feet in the small space, knocking at least three unidentified cleaning-related objects off of the shelves and sending the shelving unit itself rocking in a very unnerving way. The door was being held open by an older man in work pants and a tee shirt. He also held a broom and looked extremely exasperated under a stubble goatee. The badge hung on a lanyard around his neck said “J. Klein, Janitor.” It dawned on Tucker that he was, in fact, the janitor.

When none of them answered (they just stared at him with a deer-in-the-headlights sort of look), Mr. Klein sighed gustily and hit a button on the walkie-talkie hanging next to his badge. “Just caught two more kids making out in my maintenance closet,” he intoned in a dry, husky voice. “I deserve a raise for dealing with this crap every day.”

Two more? Tucker looked to his left, over Sam’s shoulder. Danny just…wasn’t there. What the hell?

Sam stumbled into him suddenly, and then she and Tucker made wide-eyed eye contact. Woah, she mouthed.

Tucker decided to focus on the issue at hand. He put on his best “aw, shucks” grin. “Sorry, Mr. Klein, we were just curious about what was in here, and the door was open! I swear we’ve only been here for a few minutes. And we weren’t making out. Really.”

Sam made a “gross” face. “Yeah, Mr. Sunshine here is not my type. He thinks he’s funny.”

A muffled snort emanated from thin air near Tucker’s head.

Klein harrumphed, but there was a slight crease in his stubble on one end . “Whatever you say, kid. As long as the lock isn’t damaged I couldn’t care less. Now get going.”

“Thank you, sir!” Tucker declared enthusiastically. They hurried out of the closet past Mr. Klein and into the hallway, stopping about 20 feet away. Mr. Klein glared at them until they got to some arbitrary safe distance, then grabbed a rag and a new 409 spray bottle off the shelves, closing and very deliberately locking the closet door with one more pointed glance at them before he left.

“Heh. That was hilarious,” said Danny’s voice from directly behind them. Tucker and Sam both whirled to see him leaning smugly against a wall that a second ago had been entirely empty. Tucker’s increasingly unreliable sixth sense chose that moment to spark up taser-to-the-kidney style and then die down again to a low nerve-fluttering hum.

They stood there for a moment. Tucker slowly nodded, assimilating that ability into his new reality. “...So. That went...well?”

“He didn’t eat us,” Sam pointed out with a shrug, in a surprised-but-approving tone of voice.

Danny gave her a look but let it pass. “Anyway. I think you guys sort of get the gist of how this stuff can ruin your life, right? So in the future you stay out of my stuff, I’ll stay out of yours? And no more summoning, please, you don’t know how close you were to catching me in the shower—”

“Wait,” Sam said. “You don’t understand, we have to deal with this case—”

“—But there’s no reason we can’t take a supporting role!” Tucker interjected hurriedly. “Very small. Minuscule. Like, an extra’s role. I’ll be a tree.”

“Uh, okay?” Danny absentmindedly rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and held out the other for a joking handshake. Tucker grasped it to shake emphatically, as if the universe might consider that an official transfer of cosmic responsibility.

He felt a shock, like Danny had one of those prank buzzers in his palm.

Tucker crumpled.

Distantly he heard a panicked voice say “Holy—I swear that wasn’t me!” and a slightly less overtly freaking out one respond “I mean, Tucker’s psychic, so this might be a thing that just happens?” and then the first one to say “Wait. Tucker’s psychic?!” Oh yeah, he thought faintly with one side of his brain, I guess we totally forgot to tell him about that. The other side of his brain was stuffed with cotton and pine needles that scratched and poked at his occipital lobe.

He looked blearily around from his position on the threadbare carpet. His vision warped and darkened, and he realized he wasn’t sitting on the same floor he’d just fallen on.

He was somewhere dark, with stale air and thin smoke and a warm but not penetrating orange glow. He started to roll onto his side and yelped, snatching his hand back to his chest, when it hit something that burned. He craned his neck and focused blurry eyes and saw that he was surrounded by a circle of white candles.

He struggled to focus more, past the nausea, and look past the circle of lights. Barely visible walls, carpet stains—a boot. He looked up with a sinking feeling and saw bulky camouflage and a dirty beard.

Something hissed, drawing his attention to the outside of the circle to his left. He tried to sit all the way up, but his limbs were vague unwieldy instruments and he could not will them into reacquiring the dexterity of millennia of evolution; his synapses just weren’t firing. Even my nervous system’s nervous, he thought, and laughed inside his head. To his left, he finally saw, was the blue-haired girl. Amber. Remember, he thought she mouthed, but maybe it was just the way her skin was swimming. At his feet, directly in front of him beyond the candles, the grey fox sat perfectly still. They all stared at each other, in silence, while the flames crackled merrily. The air was still. After all, no one was breathing.

If you wanna make the world, a better place…

The hunter smiled.

Then the grey fox made a little mewling sound, shifted, and scratched its left ear with its back foot, dismissing them all.

Tucker surged upward, gasping for air, in the brightly lit school hallway. Strong arms grabbed him and held him upright as he coughed violently, his whole body heaving with the force of it. It wouldn’t stop, and Tucker wondered frantically why he couldn’t catch his breath until he realized he was talking, his lips curling and lungs straining around words he couldn’t even make out. With effort, he swallowed whatever had been coming next. “What…?”

It took a few seconds, but he finally caught his breath and was able to put his hands back and support himself on them, grounding himself in the feeling of worn, crumb-strewn carpet, and a few seconds later Sam let him go, sitting back herself with a worried crease between her eyebrows. “I’m fine,” he managed breathlessly. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure, dude?” she answered, sounding just as haggard as he undoubtedly looked. Flyaway hairs stood out all around her face. “You just collapsed. I think you were unconscious for a second there. Danny went to get the nurse, should I…?”

“Nah, I think it was” — breathe— “a psychic thing. Definitely. I saw—what was I saying?”

Sam frowned at him and folded her legs to the side with the aid of one hand. She took another second to visibly check him over before answering. “You said, ‘Schulker, he’s not human. He’s not human. He’s not—’ and then you cut off.”

“...What the hell?” Tucker wheezed out. “I don’t remember saying that; I don’t even know how I know that.”

But he did know it, he realized. He’d known it since he’d first met the thing that was and wasn’t a hunter. It was that instinct, that prey animal adrenaline rush, the physical, chemical manifestation of the word “run.” Amber was scary, but Schulker was paralyzing.

He couldn’t believe he was about to say this. “...Heckity-heckin’ crap,” he said in tones of wonder. “I think we need to do another summoning.”

“Are we making Danny help this time?”

Sam still looked frazzled, but at the concept of less talking and more action, a smile was now playing around the edges of her upper lip, creeping up to her nose and flaring the nostril with the almost-invisible piercing hole her parents didn’t know she had. It made Tucker smile to look at her. “Yeah, we’re definitely making Danny help this time.”

She grinned. “I’ll bring the lemon.”

Chapter 10: Dissembling and Dissemination

Chapter Text

Dissembling and Dissemination

or alternatively: That’s Not How You Do Zumba

Sam slapped her phone down on the counter hard enough to make Tucker nervous. “He’s a wendigo.”

“A what?”

They were in Sam’s kitchen, having decided to spread the risk of opening a hellmouth through repeated summonings over a larger geographic area. Tucker’s house was cursed enough. Plus, Sam’s house was empty on Tuesday afternoons—her mom’s charity thingies kept her out of the way.

“A wendigo,” Sam repeated. “It’s a monster from Algonquian tradition. Supposedly, if you break a taboo, you turn into this insane thing that consumes human flesh.”

“Okay?” Tucker allowed. “Your evidence. Lay it on me.”

“Schulker is a hunter; he’s from Eastern Canada, where the legend originated; and the case he was suspected in involved the cannibalization of two hikers.”

“Okayy….”

“And wendigos are thought to symbolize greed and destruction of nature. Schulker is a hunter.”

Tucker shot her a sidelong glance. “Stop bringing your crazy vegan sensibilities into my murder investigation. Was the dude even Algonquian?”

“No clue,” Sam admitted. “But why would a curse like this only apply to people from one, like, language group?”

“I don’t know, didn’t you say something during our first summoning about how you think the key to the supernatural is belief?”

“Tucker, I was completely talking out of my ass.”

“Fair.” A pause. “So we have an extremely unlikely theory. How does this help us?”

“Line of questioning?” Sam smirked. “It does give us an excuse to make more jokes about eating people around Danny.”

Tucker swung his Converse against the wood panelling beneath the pristine dark marble of Sam’s parents’ counter and snorted involuntarily. “Sam, do not antagonize the unpredictable paranormal creature we just met.” He glanced around, taking in an overabundance of natural light gleaming off of various polished metal kitchen instruments. Sam’s kitchen had glass sliding doors taking up most of one wall, looking out into her sprawling backyard, which was kept from sprawling too much by high, dark hedges. Most of the yard was covered in immaculately maintained lawn, but the ferns toward the back bordered on chaotically overgrown, and there were a few ripped-up patches of lawn where squirrels had buried things, or unearthed them. Tucker liked Sam’s backyard a lot better than he liked her house. He got the feeling she did, too.

“You know, if Schulker is a supernatural monster….” Sam twirled idly on socked feet. She was clearly more accustomed than Tucker to the slidiness of the walnut hardwood floor; Tucker slipped at least once every time he was over. (Granted, not all of those “accidents” were unintentional.) “That could be the reason he was targeted.”

“Then what about the other victims? You went over to Kwan’s house and ate his mom’s popcorn. She most definitely was not a monster!” Tucker found himself a little affronted for this woman he’d never met. “And besides, you said that I only said that Skulker wasn’t human during the mini-trance.”

“Dude, I don’t know! I’m just theorizing!” Sam almost glared.

Woah. That was weird. They both took a breath.

Into that quiet, a doorbell rang.

Sam spun again, grinning. “Yes!” She hurried dangerously fast out of the kitchen and down an equally slippery hallway.

By the time Tucker’d pulled back on his beret and caught up, Sam had already opened the door to admit their reluctant guest. Danny stood in the doorway with a backpack over one shoulder, fidgeting with a small orb full of silvery liquid. He visibly startled when he spotted Tucker over Sam’s head.

“Heyyy, dude.” Tucker advanced slowly down the entrance hall.

“Hey, man, you okay?” Danny had switched in an instant from glaring to concerned. With a start, Tucker realized that the last time Danny had seen him had been during the whole fainting episode. Sam must not have filled him in.

“Oh, yeah. It was a psychic thing.” Tucker would have shared more, but he was caught off guard by the question, and Sam pounced on his momentary pause like a housecat on a sunbeam, finally free to ask a million more questions of their best and only source on the supernatural. “So what makes a summoning work? Do you have to have someone’s specific runes? And does it have to be Nordic runes?”

Danny shifted, still uncomfortably standing on the stoop. “Uhh, okay. You need someone’s combination of symbols or their blood to summon them involuntarily. The ‘number’ can be in a lot of languages–I think regular Arabic numerals might even work in a pinch–but the language has gotta be really old, and the more letters or numbers the better, statistically speaking. You can also get them to agree to come with an offering of some sort that’s, like, specific to them.”

“Wait, back up–blood?”

He gave her a cautious look, apparently considering his next words carefully. “Yeah, dead man’s blood has a lot of…interesting qualities.”

If this was allowed to continue, they’d never make it through the door. Tucker scanned their surroundings for a distraction. “What’s that?” He pointed at the silver ball.

“I asked him if he had something with mercury. Something better than a thermometer,” Sam piped up, positively beaming.

Danny, in contrast, scowled. He stepped past Sam, over the house’s threshold. (Tucker made a mental note to ask Sam if she’d said anything at all inviting-y. For science purposes.) “You’re way too cheerful for two people blackmailing a guy into performing a séance.”

“Woah, we are not blackmailing you!” Tucker squeaked just a little on “not.” Then he reconsidered and darted a glance at Sam as she closed and locked the door. “Are we?”

They all started migrating at a more sedate pace down the hall, Tucker making sure not to brush into Danny and risk another psychic trance/damsel-in-distress fainting spell. “Okay, I may have implied some things,” Sam admitted without a smidgen of actual remorse on her face. “But he chose how to interpret those implications.”

“So I’m not being blackmailed?” Danny stopped and raised a dubious eyebrow, leaning backpack-first against one creamy wall.

“It’s all a matter of interpretation.”

“No. No, we are not blackmailing you. We’re not going to reveal you. We promise,” Tucker reassured him hurriedly. “Pay no attention to the maniac with the black lipstick.”

Danny seemed a bit stumped by this turn of events. “Oh. Okay? Uh, then I really think you should not be doing this. This thing you’re about to do? Like” –he turned to Tucker– “you, at least, have to realize this is crazy.”

Sam gave him a look. “Weren’t you just saying that this is what you do?”

“I mean, yeah, sure, I’ve fought a dead serial killer before. But a living one is entirely different!”

Tucker started to clarify that the killer wasn’t necessarily alive, but he was cut off by a skeptical Sam. “Wouldn’t a living one be easier?” she asked.

Danny glared at her. “It’d better be. The dead one kicked my ass,” he muttered. Tucker let his point drift off into the emptiness of Sam’s spacious living room.

He also let himself drift toward the back of the group, considering which bag of supplies to pick up as Sam gave Danny an abbreviated tour of the first floor. Tucker had always found her habit of going into hostess mode funny, and a little endearing. She did it at school, too; she loved giving freshmen directions. It was also, weirdly enough, the only habit Sam had that reminded Tucker of her mom. (That’s why he’d never mentioned it to her—he didn’t want her to try to stop.)

Eventually, they all grabbed plastic grocery bags of candles and herbs and tromped upstairs to Sam’s mom’s personal gym. It was a quarter past 5, twilight just setting in deceptively slowly. A golden sort of early evening, rather than a purple one; the kind favored by lazy bees and honeysuckle vines rather than night-blooming flowers and cactus buds. Inside the gym, that type of evening translated to long amber shadows on light wood floors, and glowing faces looking out, startled, from the huge mirrors covering one wall. The whole room was about 30 foot square, the mirrored wall adorned with the stereotypical ballet handrail (probably the result of wishful thinking on Sam’s parents’ part) and the adjoining one with large, austere windows, looking out on the same backyard view as the kitchen. Sam kept up a constant stream of questions as they set everything down.

Once Sam had chalked out a preliminary circle on the floor, several feet wider than the last one, Tucker started setting candles around the outside. Danny leaned against the door and glowered uncomfortably for a minute before giving in and helping Tucker out.

“For the record,” he commented when Sam paused for breath, “I’m only doing this because in the only-somewhat-likely event that this summoning did work, I would be yoinked inside the triangle again anyways.”

“What about us not getting murdered? Doesn’t factor into your motivations at all?” Sam prodded absently from her place on the floor.

“Well, you do still owe me ten bucks for the slushees.”

Once the pentacle (this time with, Tucker noticed, a few more sigils of some sort inside and outside, and a bowl of the silvery herb that had affected Danny easily accessible within) and triangle were completed, the candles were lit and reflecting off the floor, and the gym absolutely reeked of sandalwood (with faint undertones of something more cloying, older, that Danny claimed made his nose itch), Sam and Tucker finally stepped into the circle. Danny threw them one more dirty look, sighed, and stepped with exaggerated caution into the triangle, settling onto the floor cross-legged. Tucker understood that throwing up ghosts on demand was not anyone’s idea of a fun after-school activity, but he still thought the attitude was a little unwarranted. They’d given him a pretty roomy triangle this time, with room for about six Dannies to sit comfortably. Just as Sam had unlocked her phone and was opening her mouth to start the versicle, he seemed to remember something. “Oh, yeah, sorry, before you start, I should probably remind you, I know my ghost form is a little disturbing? So, like, if I change suddenly, just...don’t freak out.”

“Dude, I’m already freaking out,” Tucker not-entirely-joked. “Freaking out is the baseline right now.”

“Fair. Uh, then I guess just don’t run? I’m very fast, and I can smell fear.”

Sam and Tucker regarded him in identical abject horror.

“Kidding! I’m kidding! I mean, I am fast. And I guess technically–anyway, I swear, ‘ghost me’ is internally more or less ‘regular me.’ There is zero possibility I’m gonna hurt you.”

Tucker plopped carefully into one of the open spaces in the pentacle. “You know how I was acting before like I wasn’t very scared? This is making me very scared!”

“Okay! Okay, my bad, just say the evocation, Sam.”

Sam gave him one more weird look and then started into the versicle. “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in!" she proclaimed in a ringing tone Tucker recognized as her finishing-up-a-particularly-good-rebuttal debate voice. She quickly tapped her phone screen, pulling up a different tab. “Papa Legba, Saint Peter, Hermanubis, Keeper of the Gate, Lord of the Hidden Road Between Life and Death, I call on you….” Nothing visibly changed, but Tucker could feel a shift in the air, like the pressure change indicating the onset of a cold front. Danny subtly poked a finger into the space above the chalk line and winced when it rebounded, shaking out his hand at the wrist.

“...For I would traffick with the departed.”

For a count of ten, all was still.

Then Danny’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell sideways onto the floor. He started choking, loudly, and shaking with increasing violence. Tucker, watching with a kind of horrified, detached fascination, saw light start to burst from his body once, then twice, only to just as quickly extinguish. Danny himself remained apparently human, fighting to hold himself up on his forearms as the seizures accelerated and something splattered out of his mouth and nose and onto Sam’s mom’s hardwood floor beneath him.

After a few seconds of uneasy eyeing, Tucker set aside the potential dangers of breaking silence and whispered to Sam, “Dude, this does not look right…Is he okay? Is this supposed to happen?”

“No idea.” Sam stepped carefully to the edge of the circle nearest the triangle, revulsion and fear tugging at her lips. The last ray of sunlight through the windows glanced off the near edge of her face, turning her temple and the arc of her cheek into something flat and artificial, the curving side of a violin with black hairs for strings. Then the light slipped off, and away.

Danny was fully on the ground now, curling around horrible, hacking coughs. The pool of ooze and gristle on the floor with him flowed and writhed. Tucker’s heart pounded hard enough that he felt shaky on his feet; he could barely hear his breath. Then, with a start, he recognized the breaking-glass noise from the last summoning, at first hidden behind the retching but steadily becoming louder, until he was forced to cover his ears. Out of the corner of his eye, by dim candlelight, he saw Sam do the same. He closed his eyes on instinct, and terror.

When he opened them, the candles were out and the hunter was in the circle.

Tucker’s nightmare sense went crazy as the ambient temperature dropped about thirty degrees. Schulker himself was also icier than the last two times. Dim, skittering moonlight revealed in flashes the tiny icicles hung from his beard, and his fingers, hanging where he’d hooked his thumbs in his belt, looked purple. Frostbitten.

“Well, thank you very much for the call!” Schulker enthused in a voice that rasped and echoed in equal measure. “I took care of our little…access problem” –he gestured to Danny, who Tucker hadn’t noticed was lying on the floor behind Schulker, apparently dead to the world (heh, it was so petrifying it was hilarious)– “so we should be able to talk at length, little seer. You got a question for me?”

sh*t. Tucker hoped Danny was alright. Now he had yet another reason to end this as soon as possible, beyond the looming, increasing risk of a premature heart attack. “Uh. Yes. Sir. So, uh, were….” Tucker licked his lips. “Were you a wendigo?”

There was silence in the room for a minute, beyond the cracking of ice. In the dim light, Schulker was less a person and more a huge mound of grey and black. A mountaintop in silhouette–the suggestion of a head–tilted slightly to the side and considered Tucker for a long moment.

Finally, the spirit looked down. Tucker’s eyes started to adjust to the low light, revealing that he had taken his thumbs out of his belt and was examining his fingernails. “Wechuge, actually. Bigger, smarter, harder to do in, and more of a possession sorta situation usually. I didn’t want to play by their rules, so I made me a contract. But eh, technicalities.” He smiled. It was just barely visible. It was not a nice smile.

Tucker was keenly aware of how hard he was shaking. Sam shifted, stepping subtly in front of him and brushing against his arm. He could feel that her hand was sweaty, but her voice didn’t waver as she raised her chin regally and pronounced, “Who killed you?”

The hunter idly scratched his beard, dislodging a few beads of ice and a small flurry of snowflakes to melt on the carpet. “Dunno. Prey knew its stuff, though. Went through the whole campfire rigamarole ‘n whatnot. And after all that work I put into gettin’ stronger.”

“Uh…” Tucker dared another quick glance at Sam. No dice. For the first time (but not the last), Tucker wondered why they didn’t bother coming up with interview questions before going to all this trouble. Finally, he settled on “Is there anything else you’d like to, uh, tell us?” His voice cracked hard on “tell.”

The hunter’s smile stretched wide, like a dog’s. Something squirmed in his purple gums. “There’s a storm coming, kid. We can feel it, over here on our side–or at least I can, thanks to my friend. I smell it, through the rot. Ozone and abracadabra and all that merde.”

“Uhh.” Sam’s voice was high and thin. “Could you be more specific?”

“Maybe I wanna wait and see how it plays out.”

Tucker nodded. Swallowed. The room dropped another few degrees, and the gym floors had started to become caked in black frost. Tucker decided enough was enough; his gut didn’t like the way Schulker was looking at his throat instead of his eyes, the way one boot edged just over the chalk line. “I–okay. Th–thank you. Now, um, sir, could you, um, please leave?”

The boot crossed the line.

The hunter stalked out of the circle and slowly forward until he loomed over Tucker, who found himself as frozen as the man’s beard as he watched, wide-eyed. The hunter stopped right in front of him, looming overhead so Tucker could better appreciate the almost animalistic planes of his face. He laughed once, scorn heavy in his tone. “Happy to oblige, little seer.” He turned, knelt, and pressed his thumb flat between Danny’s eyes, and then he was gone, the only trace of his presence melting slowly on Mrs. Manson’s floor.

The candles snapped back to life.

Their glow, though Tucker couldn’t decide if it was cheery or eerie, at least illuminated their immediate surroundings. The dark shadows in the corners of the room contained nothing but shadow, and the mirror wall reflected only their own wide eyes, faces lit orange from beneath. Tucker started to step toward Danny, who was still slumped on the floor, but Sam grabbed his arm. Her fingernails dug into his skin. “Wait. The door isn’t closed yet.”

Sam hacked up her lemon with a shaky hand and recited the gate-closing verse, tossing around a few generous handfuls of the herb from her bowl for good measure as she snuffed the candles. They both hesitated for a moment on the boundary line of the darkened circle, looking around. Silent, empty space had never seemed so perilous. They teetered on the edge.

Then Danny coughed and pushed himself up. “Sh—sh*t, what…happened. What—” He bolted upright, looking around wildly. “Where is he?! Is he still here?” His eyes glowed green, and his movement, as he pushed himself to his feet with his fists clenched, was just a little too smooth.

“We think—” Tucker gulped, spoke louder. “We think he’s gone. We banished him.”

“Okay. I’m just gonna. Just gonna check.” He shot them another careful look, and then with a flash of white light Danny was replaced by the thing from the first summoning. In the dark, his skin glowed like a dim paper lantern; his facial features were indistinct except for the pitch-black suggestion of that wide, wide mouth. It moved as he spoke, in a crackling voice. “Okay. Don’t freak out. I don’t see him, or feel him. I think he’s gone.”

When no answer followed this reassurance, he twirled back like a beta fish to find Sam and Tucker openly staring at him. Something abruptly changed in the way he stood; though he’d never left the ground, he seemed to get heavier, settling more firmly into his gravitational niche. The light brightened and extinguished again, and human Danny was back in the other thing’s place, green eyes like a glowstick in the dark.

Sam was the first to recover this time. She swallowed. “Well then.” She swallowed again. “Uhh, I guess we’d better get rid of this circle. Before my dad gets home. Did anyone remember to pack Clorox wipes?”

Tucker didn’t take his eyes off Danny. With painstaking slowness, he stepped out of the circle. Paused for a moment. Sprinted for the light switch.

Under fluorescents, it all seemed a little ridiculous: the arcane figures scrawled on the gym floor where Sam’s mom did Zumba, the kid from school who joked that he made MUN a “paranormal activity,” and even Tucker’s own slowly subsiding heart palpitations. He laughed once, a little hysterical, a little embarrassed. “Nope.” He turned, paused. “Hey, Danny?”

“Yeah?”

“Sch—...the ghost who was just here, he said he did something so you couldn’t, like, portal him away or whatever. And then you had some sort of seizure and didn’t transform. Um. Has that ever happened before?”

“...No.”

“Huh,” Sam said, traces of a shaky rattle still audible in her voice. “Maybe because he was a wechuge?”

“Wait, he was a what?”

Sam looked at a squinting Danny, suddenly nonplussed. “Well, we knew he was something. Tucker psychic-ed it.”

“Tucker psychicked–” Danny ran a hand through his hair. Took a moment. Breathed. “For god’s sake, share your information!”

~(*0*)~

“Seriously? Ghosts just kind of tell you things?!” Danny groaned. “This is so unfair. I complain about my vital condition not coming with an instruction manual, and then Tucker’s ability is that he literally is a cosmic instruction manual. Or at least a scavenger hunt hints sheet.”

“That’s the way the cookie crumbles, my friend,” Tucker ventured, perhaps less hesitantly than he might have earlier in the evening. Sam and Tucker were sitting on Sam’s bed at 7 p.m., excavating a box of Double Stuf Oreos. Danny perched precariously above them, on top of Sam’s tall headboard. Sam’s room was mostly a purple-and-black nightmare, with occasionally the merest suggestion of taste-–the subtle lilac walls, for example, or the round rug woven from various textiles that added just enough color to deter accusations of dichromaticism. A striking painting of a field at late sunset was framed next to a poster of a middlingly popular death metal band hailing from somewhere with fjords, and on the adjoining wall a window revealed dark trees, their limbs swaying in a low wind. As Tucker made his way absently through another Oreo (sugary inside layer first, of course. He and Sam had fought many battles over this. Again, Sam had no taste), he watched his phone screen darken as the outgoing call to his cousin connected. He hit the speaker button with his pinky.

The ringer filled the room like the sound of a tiny, tinny jackhammer at work. Thunk. “Hey.”

“Hey, Tristan,” Tucker said false-cheerily. “How’s life as a kebab?”

“That was extremely insensitive.”

“Yeah, I just had to summon a ghostly cannibalistic monster because you procrastinated. I’m not feeling sympathetic.”

“Damn, you summoned something?” Tristan sounded interested in spite of himself. “What did you learn?”

“Very little,” Sam monotoned.

“Yep,” Tucker confirmed. “We wanted to run some theories by you, though. ‘Cuz we’re–I guess we’re kind of running out of ideas?”

“Go ahead.”

Tucker bit his lip. This was going to be awkward. “Okay, so Sam suggested that the killer is going after people who have been convicted or suspected of crimes. Schulker and Technus both were, and you, and Sam said Amber was sketchy?”

There was a pause. “I’ve never been charged with anything.”

“Yeah, but there was that thing with that girl...a while ago….”

Tristan’s tone abruptly changed. “Are you kidding me?!” he gritted out. “I put that behind me, you know it was a mistaken—”

“I know, I know!” Tucker cut in. “But this killer might not know! Okay? That’s all we’re saying.”

An audible breath came through the phone. Then another, this one less labored. “Oh. I guess...I guess that does kind of make sense...Amber was a low-level dealer for a big chunk of my grade and the one above it. Mostly prescription pills, but she could get you weed and some other stuff if you asked for it.” Tristan paused. “But the only people who would really know that, and know about my thing…are people from school.”

There was a horrified silence, and then Danny breathed, “A student?”

“Or a teacher. Or administration,” Sam added.

Tristan chuckled softly, likely in disbelief at how preposterous their lives had become. Or maybe Tucker was just projecting. “Yeah…and I always caught a lot of whiffs of the paranormal around Casper. If I were you, I would start by just keeping an eye out for people acting weird.” Tucker shifted on the bedspread. Sam held half an Oreo hovering near her head, apparently forgotten. “Uh, by the way, who’s that with you?”

The temperature in the room dropped a few degrees. Literally. Tucker directed a dirty look at Danny, who cringed and mouthed “sorry.” He cleared his throat and focused his attention back on the phone in his lap. “Nobody...nobody important.”

Now Danny was glaring. Tucker shrugged exaggeratedly and mouthed “what did you want me to say?!” Sam snickered into her Oreo.

“Really?” Tristan started. “Because he’s giving me the psychic heebie jeebies even just over the phone—”

“You’ve been super helpful, thanks so much, bye!” Sam leaned over Tucker’s lap and ended the call.

Danny gathered in his socked feet and then stood up on Sam’s headboard, pacing back and forth and absently running fingers along the ceiling a few inches above his head. Tucker had a sudden, wild impulse to throw an Oreo at him, and see if that would short out the freaky preternatural grace. “So it’s someone at school,” Danny reflected. “I don’t think I’m gonna be much help since I don’t know what’s normal there yet, but I have a limited sense for when undead stuff is nearby, and I could do some invisible snooping.”

That was a quick about-face–apparently Danny was now completely on board with their investigation. Tucker wasn’t going to be the one to mention it. “How many kids are in the school, 550 or so?” he asked instead. “We can probably rule out freshmen, and maybe sophom*ores.”

“Yeah, my money’s on a teacher,” Sam mused.

Danny stopped abruptly, frowning. “Wait, but how could it be someone from Amity if the first two murders happened in Chicago?”

Sam and Tucker groaned in unison. Sam bounced to her feet, almost sending the Oreo box to the floor, and turned to face the bed. “This is so irritating! Every time we come up with a decent theory, there’s one or two details that completely destroy it. I don’t know if it’s because we just don’t have enough information about the victims or because we’re missing something big, but it’s immensely frustrating.” She gesticulated with extra force on “immensely.”

Tucker took a calming breath and dug his toes into the fringe on Sam’s rug. “I think we need to stop theorizing until we have some actual data. We’re trying to fit the facts to our theories, but we don’t even have enough facts.” They considered for a minute. On Tucker’s left, the windowsill halved a rising moon, and the silhouetted trees tossed more urgently, a few notches below panic. Just a few.

Danny dropped soundlessly to the floor. “Okay, so let’s make a plan. We’re going to get more information, we’re going to figure it out, and then we’re going to nail this scumbag to the wall.”

Tucker waited a second, then prompted, “...By telling the police.”

“The police. Right. Definitely.”

Chapter 11: The Fortress, Assailed

Chapter Text

The Fortress, Assailed

or alternatively: This Cannot Fairly Be Called Intelligence Work

All of Wednesday the 25th was spent snooping. Unsuccessfully snooping, to clarify. Tucker and Sam lurked in doorways and listened in on any and all conversations in every period, and at lunch they agreed to hang out with their respective sophom*ore and senior friends to get a bead on those populations. Danny lurked much more subtly (he was good at that) in hallways and empty rooms, making use of the slightly enhanced hearing he’d reluctantly admitted to that morning. Nothing. Danny and Tucker did both report a ping or two on their respective radars, now that they were paying attention, but they weren’t able to identify the specific people who gave them those reactions; Tucker’s “ick” sense was much stronger and seemed to be more precise, but all he could say at the end of the day was that it had been someone in his computer science class and at least one sophom*ore. Tucker had also forgotten to do his physics homework what with the whole séance thing, so he lost brownie points with Mr. Marcel. Not a great day overall.

Despite Sam and Tucker’s strategizing session in the car before school, Thursday looked to be turning out the same for the first hour and a half after the bell. Seeing as that carpool war room discussion had involved Sam taking her mind off the road and, several times, her hands off the wheel (to “gesture more eloquently”), Tucker now felt obligated to turn up results as soon as possible, if only to justify having risked the lives and limbs of all of the drivers on their route that day. Nonetheless, nothing out of the ordinary caught anyone’s eye until second period—English, the one class they all had together. The classroom smelled like ham today, the grey light through the windows barely supplemented the flickering fluorescents, and the historical quote posters on the walls seemed to be sagging more than usual. Just as Lancer was winding down a very long and vaguely propagandistic speech about Quiroga’s use of narrative voice, something bounced off the side of Tucker’s beret.

He glanced around in confusion and caught Danny’s wide, purposeful eyes. Danny nodded toward a small piece of paper crumpled on the ground next to Tucker’s sneaker. After checking to make sure Lancer was still occupied (he’d taken to diagramming on the board while continuing to talk, with effort, over one shoulder. Geez, someday soon the guy was going to end up in a neck brace), Tucker folded painfully over the bar connecting his chair to his desk and snagged the note off the tiles.

In capital letters, bolded by somebody’s re-scribbling all of the lines several times with a dying pen, it read, “DASH SMELLS FUNNY.” The message was underlined twice.

Tucker’s first reaction was to snicker under his breath. Then his brain caught up to him. He stared again at the two emphatic lines under the sentence, then looked up, wide-eyed, back at Danny, who nodded furiously. Danny, who was seated right behind the hulking red-sweatered monstrosity known colloquially as Dash. Danny, who had supernatural senses.

And come to think of it, Dash’s very presence had always terrified Tucker, hadn’t it? Dash set off his fight-or-flight response just by being in the room. Now Tucker was forced to ask himself whether that really was just instinct born of painful experience…or something more.

He passed the note on to Sam the moment Lancer seemed fully absorbed in his diagrams (drawing a “jungle” that looked more like several heads of broccoli) and watched her proceed through basically the same series of reactions as him, ending with the look of wondering disturbance he himself still wore. After class, they all declined to join the rowdy parade that filed into the hallway, instead lingering in the empty room to confirm their game plan.

“We haunt him,” Danny said decisively. He took a moment to look smug while Tucker and Sam both groaned.

“Phrasing notwithstanding, that’s what Tucker and I were saying in the car,” Sam said. “Follow him around, listen to his conversations, see if anyone else could be involved in whatever he has going on, and try to come up with a plausible excuse to pump him for information.”

“We could just catch him alone and confront him,” Danny hazarded. “I mean, there are three of us, two of whom have supernatural abilities and one of whom has fighting experience.”

“Hey, I did Taekwondo for like three years in elementary school.”

“Okay, one and a half of whom have fighting experience.”

Tucker stuck out a foot to deter Sam in case she really did attack Danny and patiently tuned out her mostly joking rant. When the bickering seemed to be winding down, he jumped in. “Okay, so I’d prefer not to confront a serial killer under any circ*mstances? Just, like, me personally? Anyway, if we’re wrong he’ll think we’re crazy and tell everyone, which my already fragile street cred definitely won’t survive. And come on, I know he’s a violent asshole, but do you guys really think Dash is capable of murder?”

Danny raised his hands in a casual “don’t shoot me” sort of gesture and stepped back. “I’ve met him exactly once, so I’m going to leave this one to you guys.”

Sam bit her lip. “I don’t know. He can throw a punch, sure, but he was really shaken up when that guy kicked the crap out of him sophom*ore year. I sincerely doubt he’d be capable of killing his best friend’s mom.” She paused, ruminated. “Then again, that’s what everybody says, isn’t it? When you find out Greg down the street is a killer? ‘Oh, but he was such a nice boy, he fed my cats when I was away…’”

“Well, he’s only the first kid we’ve narrowed down with connections to the paranormal; there are at least two more,” Danny pointed out, hiking a hip up onto one of the front desks (perilously, in Tucker’s experience–those desks were tippy) and reinserting himself into the conversation. “And we’re not in any rush.”

Sam frowned, but with purpose this time. “Yeah, true. Okay, we’ll investigate him subtly first and see where it goes from there. Most likely he doesn’t have anything to do with the murders and his mom just brought home the wrong Raggedy Ann doll or something.”

“Cursed dolls? Are those a thing?” Tucker felt impelled to ask. He and Sam both turned to Danny.

“I don’t know, probably?! You guys just assume I know all of these things!”

Tucker was midway through pointing out how, from their perspective, that was an entirely rational assumption when the bell rang and two freshmen clattered into the classroom, signalling the end of the five-minute passing period. “Crap, I’m gonna be so late!” he yelped, frantically shoving pens into his bag. His next class was two buildings away. He sprinted out of the classroom, Sam and Danny right behind him, and began the arduous process of shoving and dodging his way through the teeming halls.

~(*0*)~

At lunch Danny, with his slightly better hearing, was the primary lurker. Sam and Tucker sat with him two tables away from Dash, Kwan, Star, Paulina, and two seniors they didn’t know, maintaining a stilted cover conversation to mask the fact that he was eavesdropping. They were in the common area of the school library. Students technically weren’t supposed to eat there, but the librarians had given up on trying to enforce that rule after a year of creative smuggling techniques, and now they just kept the exterminators on speed dial to deal with this week’s mouse or roach infestation before the damages could get too bad. The library had tall ceilings with windows toward the top, so shafts of natural light arced elegantly overhead and almost entirely avoided the inhabited levels. Two rows of freestanding bookshelves standing about six feet high lined the perimeter of the surprisingly small room, and then larger bookshelves lined three of the walls, leaving only one expanse of orange-beige wallpaper uncovered, along with a set of large glass doors. The view they provided of the open courtyard outside just barely prevented the illusion of the library being cramped, since five fake wood tables, all generously tattooed with black carved-in initials and the occasional curse word, took up most of the open floorspace in the middle of the room. All five tables were occupied, so the space was louder than Tucker would’ve considered optimal.

“Okay,” Danny began, squinting and hunching unconsciously over the uneaten sandwich in his hands. “They’re finally getting around to something interesting. Keep talking!”

“Gee, I sure do love The Office, don’t you?” Tucker exclaimed with a wide, plastic grin. Sam groaned and put her face in her hands.

Danny listened in silence for long enough that Tucker was able to finish his cafeteria lasagna without any significant pauses in his and Sam’s extremely natural-sounding conversation. When Dash and Kwan started getting up and collecting their bags to head to football practice, Danny finally freed him from his misery by leaning in with a slightly too-wide grin. Tucker, still watching their targets over Danny’s shoulder, was relieved to see that Dash didn’t spare the eavesdroppers a glance. He tracked Protein Steve and Steroid Stu’s progress–very covertly, he thought–across the library to the doors behind him, and then had to quickly spin back to Sam when Kwan shot their table a confused look while holding the door open for Dash. Still, Tucker didn’t think he’d been caught staring. He relaxed back into his seat.

That’s when he made direct eye contact with Paulina, still sitting with the seniors, over Danny’s shoulder. She raised both perfectly manicured eyebrows expressively.

Tucker quickly lowered his eyes to stare at the middle of the table. Against his will, he felt himself blushing.

Sam gave him a look, but Danny hadn’t noticed, too busy dishing the dirt. “Okay, so mostly they were just talking about weekend plans and some TV show and stuff, but then Kwan started bugging Dash about where he disappeared to a few weeks ago. Apparently he skipped out on a nighttime football game, so they were all giving him a hard time about it, and he didn’t have a good explanation. Then Kwan mentioned that he’s actually blown off their plans a few times with no explanation, always at night. That’s super weird, right?”

“Yeah, that’s really weird,” Sam agreed. “Really convenient that they would talk about it right when we were listening, too. So now we pretty much have to follow him around every night until he does whatever it is again, right? Like, we’re morally obligated.”

“You say that like you’re looking forward to stalking some random high schooler in the long term. Dude, this is going to be so boring. And time consuming. And difficult, logistically.” Tucker pushed aside his lunch tray and slouched into its place on the table, resting his chin on his crossed arms. This way, Danny’s head blocked him from Paulina’s view.

“We can take it in shifts,” Sam defended. “Share the burden.”

“Communist.”

“Hey, wait, I have enough on my plate trying not to get murdered by the undead all the time,” Danny broke in, excitement having given way to petulance at the direction of their conversation. “I’m not doing more than an hour of stalking a week, even if it is for a good cause.”

“For real? But you’re our best lurker!” Tucker attempted to look pitiful. It was ineffective.

“Sam is the goth here; that makes her automatically the best lurker. I’m, at most, an incidental emo. Which is significantly better than a voluntary emo.”

Tucker tried a bit longer, but Danny wouldn’t budge, and it was eventually decided that Sam and Tucker would follow Dash after school today and they could figure things out from there.

So that’s what they did. Tucker knew what Dash’s car looked like (grey sedan, nothing special), and it turned out that he parked basically right in front of the main steps, so they waited until that conspicuous red Letterman was halfway out of the parking lot and then peeled out in Sam’s car before decelerating and beginning an uncharacteristically subtle, slow pursuit. Tucker had expected it to feel like he was in an action movie, but the most exciting thing that happened was Dash forgetting to signal before he turned once, meaning Sam had to change lanes in a hurry to keep him in sight. They got excited when they realized he was going toward downtown Amity rather than heading home, but instead of continuing onto the freeway he pulled into the decaying parking lot of the Westside Mall. Sam parked in a space two rows away, front tires kissing a pale cement wheel block that was cracked down the middle, leaving its long, rusty rebar fasteners partially exposed to the air. The parking lot always smelled like wet asphalt and weed.

Dash locked his car and strode through the doors of the mall, absently tossing his keys in the air with a level of coordination Tucker definitely envied. Sam and Tucker followed, waiting until Dash was almost around the corner before coming into the range that would cause the automatic glass doors to slide open—they didn’t want the noise to make him turn around. Then, of course, they had to jog to catch up again, and there was a moment of panic as they turned the corner and thought they’d lost him before Tucker spotted him on the “up” escalator. Luckily, the crowd in the mall was still sparse, probably because it had only been a little under two weeks since a murder victim’s body was found behind the bowling alley. Tucker was stricken with a sudden, morbidly curious urge to go find the dumpster where Schulker had been found. He quickly squashed it.

Tucker and Sam walked very fast and very casually to the escalator, barely giving themselves time to hesitate and make that lightning-quick calculation people always make before stepping onto something in motion. As a result, the mild jolt caught him by surprise. The escalator vibrated slightly, purring, the impression of warmth beneath his feet. Above them, ahead of two teenagers and an older woman in a jacket reminiscent of several famous dictators, Dash stepped off onto an expanse of faux white marble.

They managed to play this game undetected for awhile. Dash bought a smoothie and a pretzel and walked into a bike shop. Their luck ran out exactly 37 minutes after they entered the mall, when Dash walked out of the bike shop and made a beeline for one of the mall’s small indoor seating areas. Tucker and Sam had retired to it after ten minutes of browsing unconvincingly through women’s clothing stores (all the clothes were just slightly out of style) and then discarding the prospect of loitering behind a big marble pillar like complete creeps. The seating area was convenient because it was near the bike shop, it was designed for loitering and therefore wouldn’t earn them weird looks, and it was surrounded by large fake tropical plants in artful pots in hopes that patrons occupying the stained cushions and wicker chairs would feel immersed in nature. The plants weren’t great at accomplishing this effect, but they were very good at screening sitters from view from most angles.

Unfortunately, on this particular occasion they failed in that mission as well. Dash marched right up to the area, shoved aside a few plastic palm fronds, and halted directly in front of Sam and Tucker, who were frozen in the act of getting up to flee. Sam recovered first, casually sliding back to lounge in what was essentially a lawn chair and raising one eyebrow at Dash. Tucker took a moment longer frozen on the edge of his seat, and he settled back much less smoothly into a straight-backed posture he could easily run from.

Dash took in this reaction and snorted. He skipped past any preamble. “Why the f*ck are you following me?” he asked, effortlessly looming, like a fortress on a sheer cliff.

Tucker assessed him. He didn’t seem particularly angry; mostly just confused and annoyed. They could get out of this one pretty easily if they just played it smart and subtle–

“Are you sure you want to talk about that here?” Sam riposted with audible disdain. She paused for dramatic effect, giving Tucker just enough time to curse nine generations of her ancestors, one by one and with personalized venom. “We know.”

Dash was not a good actor. He glanced from side to side, hunched his shoulders a bit, and then caught himself and squared his shoulders more aggressively. “Know–know what?” he half-muttered.

Sam narrowed her eyes. Again, entirely for drama purposes, Tucker could tell. “About you.”

“I don’t—I don’t know what you’re talking about; you’re the freaks who’ve been following me around—” He was working up a bluster, and soon there would be no stopping him.

Sam took a gamble. “We know what you are,” she whispered harshly.

Dash paused mid-sentence, buffering. Threateningly. Tucker could see the anger mounting in the way he widened his stance, clicked his teeth together. Oh, they were gonna die. They were gonna die and it was going to be painful, and slow, and entirely the fault of one Samantha K. Manson IV, and Tucker would spit on her grave from his own.

Abruptly, half the tension dropped out of Dash’s stance. The fortress aged a few hundred years, and the cliff eroded. “sh*t,” he growled, mostly to himself. Then again, louder. “sh*t. Alright, how did you find out, and what do you want?” He lowered his bulk into the wicker chair next to Tucker’s, ending up in a pose much more similar to Tucker’s “poised-to-flee” posture than Sam’s “deceptively relaxed supervillain.” The rounded back of the chair didn’t help; he had to arch his neck awkwardly to fit.

Tucker needed to step in, although at this point it was mostly as damage control. “I mean, we’re not going to tell anyone!” His voice squeaked a bit. “We just want to…know how it happened?”

Dash sighed heavily. Tried to get comfortable in the chair. Failed. Sighed again. “Okay. So it’s a year and a half ago.” His voice, possibly unconsciously, was lowering and softening as he spoke–maybe to prevent passers-by from hearing, or maybe just to inject into this incongruous setting a few milliliters of the ambiance of a good ghost story.

“I’m getting out of my car, in my own driveway, at about two in the morning after a party. Maybe I’m a little out of it. Anyway, I’m fumbling through my cupholders, trying to find my keys, and I hear something moving in the bushes. I’m like, okay, that sounded big, but I gotta lock the car or my dad’s gonna kill me. So I finally find my keys under the seat or something, and I lock my car, and between the car and the front door something–something huge jumps onto me.” Tucker noted with interest that, just with the retelling, Dash’s pupils had blown wide, deerlike and eerie.

“I’m screaming and rolling around, trying to fight this f*cker off, right? And that’s when I feel it bite me, on the arm. And–you ever watched Shark Week? It’s the weirdest thing, but right then I remember once somebody saying a shark’s snout is weak, and if you can hit it on the snout it’ll leave you alone, so I reach out with my car keys and I stab this thing in the face. And it lets go and runs off into the woods behind my house. And that’s when my dad comes out, woken up by all the screa–the yelling, and sees me sitting in the driveway covered in blood and drives me to the hospital. Wasn’t that deep of a wound, actually, but we thought I might’ve had rabies.”

“And did you?” Sam had leaned forward, drawn in by his tone and the way he was telling it. It surprised Tucker, how good Dash was at telling this story, and that he was even bothering. Then again, this was probably the most exciting thing that had happened in his life, and maybe he’d never had the opportunity to tell anyone before.

Dash actually laughed. Short, but genuine. “No. I only found out later what I had, about three weeks later, when this lady who looks like a soccer mom–she’s even got that mom haircut, you know, the spiky hair in the back?–with, like, a gnarly bandage on her face shows up at my house and tells me ‘Hi, my name’s Marinette, I live down the street, oh and you’re a werewolf now.’”

“Holy sh*t,” Sam breathed. “So that’s really what you are?”

Dash frowned, the spell of the story breaking like an egg across his face. “Wait, I thought you knew.”

Tucker coughed. It was probably time to come clean, before Sam could say something worse. “Uh, sorry. So, we knew you were something, cuz I’m…psychic, sort of, and I sensed it? But we didn’t know exactly what? Sorry. Again.” He shot Sam the dirtiest look he could muster. This time, she at least had the self-awareness to look embarrassed.

“Are you kidding me?! You got me to expose the pack–she’s gonna kill me!” He started to get to his feet, anger mounting. A mom with two kids glanced curiously into the seating area at the noise. “If you tell anyone–”

“We won’t tell anyone, seriously! Anyway, who would believe us?!” This particular speech brought up very old memories, tasted sour on his tongue, but didn’t hurt as much as Tucker might’ve expected.

Dash looked slightly mollified. He glared, clenching his fingers on the seat of his chair. “There’s–there’s people. I haven’t told my parents. Marinette said if it got out…it could be really bad.”

“And you haven’t told your friends?” Sam ventured, skeptical. “I thought you and Kwan were, like, joined at the biceps. Or, sorry, I can do better–joined at the lack of neck.”

“Yeah, you’re f*cking hilarious, Manson.” Slowly, Dash settled back into the chair. “Paulina knows something’s up; I haven’t told her exactly what. But Kwan and Star’s dads are both part of like, a hunting club. They go out and shoot stuff together on the weekends. From what I’ve heard, it is not a good idea to be messing with that.”

Tucker’s brain stalled for a minute. For the first time in that conversation, he was able to completely forget the cold, unpleasant way his skin was prickling, and the faint smell of blood. Because, well: “Wait, wait, wait.” There was a manic energy building in his chest; he trapped it beneath his epiglottis. “Are you telling me–” He had to pause. Dash was giving him a weird look. “Are you telling me. There are werewolf hunters.”

“Nobody will really give me a yes or no answer–” The rest of Dash’s answer was drowned out under Tucker’s peals of laughter. Sam started giggling too, a little hesitantly, although it seemed like she didn’t really get it. She was something of a sympathetic laugher. Several mall patrons looked through the leaves as they walked past, and smiled at the deceptive picture they made–three teenagers, having fun at the mall. Dash just looked irritated. “What?”

“Sorry, it’s just–” Tucker struggled for breath. “Werewolf hunters. It’s just–it’s just too ridiculous.”

“More ridiculous than ghost portals?” Sam countered skeptically. “More ridiculous than summoning somebody with ‘dead man’s blood’?”

“Yes! I’m sorry, there’s just” –wheeze– “no way I’ll ever be able to take werewolf hunters seriously!”

Dash growled–not really, but, like, close–and a distant part of Tucker’s mind registered that okay, his teeth were just a little too long. “You’re laughing about people whose literal job is hunting me down to kill me.”

“Oh, look, I’ve offended the werewolf.” This was too much. Tucker exploded in another round of uncontrollable, air-gulping laughter, Sam joining in with a little less force.

“f*ck you, Foley. I’m leaving. Don’t follow me.” He stood up and loomed again, switching his weight between the balls of his feet, reminding Tucker of the combination of sixth sense and instinct twitching down his spine. Dash had scrunched up his nose in incensed disgust, baring his teeth in the process. The smell of blood got stronger. “If you try to blackmail me with this, we will kill you. And that’s not a f*cking joke. You hear me?”

The manic energy was still there, emboldening Tucker, dampening his common sense, so he didn’t make any assurances. Somehow, the discovery that his childhood tormentor was a werewolf had made him far less scared of him. “Hey, I’m psychic, remember? You come for me and I’ll r–uh–rip you apart with my mind.”

Dash faltered, glancing at Sam. “Can he really–?” He cut himself off, but not before Sam could figure out the full question and give him a wide, gleaming, truly wicked grin.

“Oh, 100%. I’ve seen him do it. Takes him 20 seconds, tops.”

“...f*ckin’ freaks.” Dash had apparently figured out that he wasn’t going to win this one. He stormed out of the seating area with far less dignity than one might expect from an apex predator of the night.

Tucker and Sam looked at each other and burst out laughing again. It wasn’t actually funny; it was just that it was really funny.

“Okay, so I’m thinking it probably isn’t him,” Sam gasped out once she’d almost recovered.

“Yeah, he–he has an alibi for where he goes at night, at least once a month,” Tucker agreed. “And anyway, I doubt he would be out here ritual-sacrificing people with a kitchen knife when he can literally turn into a kickass wolf.”

“Oh my god, Teen Wolf was right about so many things,” Sam said in a tone of awed reflection. “I hate it.”

Tucker paused, reminded of how they’d gotten here. He didn’t like to get into it with Sam–he generally followed a policy of pacification, containment, and silent disapproval in their friendship–but this needed to be said. He sobered at the thought, and in preparation. “Hey, I know it worked, but seriously, warn me when you’re going to do something like threatening a supernatural creature and potential serial killer, okay? That’s twice now, dude, and it’s actually not smart. Like, you realize, right? We’re laughing now, but this stuff is dangerous. We could get really hurt.” He paused again, considering, debating if he wanted to pull this card, deciding it was worth it. “I’ve seen it.” And it was terrifying.

Sam had opened her mouth like she was about to retaliate, but she subsided at the reminder. Wow, Tucker had actually gotten through that thick skull. Incredible. She was sitting up from the back of the lawn chair, and the plastic leaves behind her head crowned her with a spiky green halo as she spoke, haltingly.

“Okay. That’s fair. I really do understand, Tuck; I know I joke about it, but this isn’t a game to me. I’m angry at whoever would do that to people. I want justice for them–maybe not Schulker, but the other ones. And we aren’t going to accomplish anything without taking risks.” She visibly caught herself as her tone edged toward belligerent at the end, and she wrung Debate Team Sam out of her voice before continuing. “But yeah. I’ll be more careful, and I’ll give you a heads-up if there’s a risk I really think is worth it.”

Privately, Tucker doubted she actually understood the danger. How could she? She hadn’t seen blood splattered on a stall door, dripping off the hinges, and known she had about a 50% chance of continuing to live on a lazy afternoon in a library bathroom. Sunny-lawn suburbanite kids weren’t programmed to understand mortality. Tucker doubted he fully grasped it, either, and hoped he never would.

But in the history of their relationship, this was an almost unprecedented victory. Tucker would take it.

~(*0*)~

Speaking of fraught relationships, Sam dropped Tucker off at home around 10 to find his mother standing in the entrance hallway, still in her impeccable tan suit from work, arms crossed. His seventh sense–specifically, his teenager sense–warned him that this was not a good sign.

“Where were you, Tucker? I texted you 45 minutes ago, and you didn’t respond.”

“Oh, crap, right!” He’d seen the notification when the text came in, and intended to respond, but then their waiter had come with the check for dinner and he and Sam had had to figure out who was paying card or cash and they’d forgotten to ask the waiter to split the check in the first place. He pulled out his phone, and sure enough the text was still there, unopened, along with two more he hadn’t even noticed. His phone was still silenced from their brief and unsuccessful stint of stalking Dash. “I’m sorry, Mom, I was out to dinner with Sam at Old Tom’s Transdimensional Thai and I just totally forgot to reply.”

“That’s not good enough, Tucker!” He’d been half watching her and half scrolling through other texts as he talked–oof, there was a missed call from her, that wasn’t good–but now his head swung up, fully alert. He was surprised at the emphasis in her voice. Looking more closely, he realized she was really irritated. Maybe even angry. Was she…shaking a little bit? She was standing, tense, with one hand on the dark knick-knacks table that stood against the right-hand wall of the short hallway before it opened into the kitchen and living room. It was a high-ceilinged space, and it opened quickly, but in this situation it still felt claustrophobic.

“I’m really sorry!” he said hurriedly. “It was bad, I know, and I’ll answer everything quickly in the future, but I told you I would be out with Sam all afternoon; what’s the big deal?”

That was definitely the wrong phrasing, and he cringed as soon as he said it.

“The big deal is that there is a serial killer in our city, Tucker, and your cousin got stabbed in the middle of the day! So when I text, you answer, and when I call, you definitely answer!!”

Was she going to cry? Please, don’t let her cry. Tucker shifted uncomfortably, readjusting his grip on his backpack with one hand, the other still on the door handle. Behind him was the open door, a rectangle of night, dark in a way he hadn’t really been aware of until lately. He closed it.

“Thank god I didn’t call your father. Thank god it was just me who had to sit here for 45 minutes wondering if my son was–” She broke off. Shoot. Tucker had really messed up.

“I’m really, really sorry, Mom.” And he realized that he was. His satisfaction from the day was dissolving in his mouth. “I’m okay, and I promise I’ll answer everything as soon as I see it from now on, and keep my phone off silent. And I’ll make sure you know where I’m going, and I’ll make sure I’m always with someone. I have been making sure I’m always with someone.” Tucker deliberated for a second, then locked the door and walked forward to give his mom a hug.

She returned it, and now he could tell that she was shaking, but only slightly, and he would guess more from anger than fear. She hadn’t cried. He’d scared her, but not enough that she would cry. Still, the shame dripped hot and acidic into his stomach, and he hugged her tighter.

“I won’t do it again,” he mumbled into the cool fabric on her shoulder.

“You’re damn right you won’t. And you’re coming home by eight until this person is caught.”

He pulled back, stumbling a little as his backpack overbalanced him. “Eight? Mom, I mean, nine–”

“No, I am not having this argument with you! Sunset is at seven; eight is more than generous!”

“But–” He cut himself off; the shame sloshing in his stomach and, admittedly, the impulse toward self-preservation both whispered to him that this was not the time to push. “You’re right. I promise. Home by eight. …But do you have to tell Dad?” He wasn’t exactly eager to get yelled at twice.

She sighed, dropping her left hand back onto the table and slumping a bit, letting it take more of her weight. “If it’s settled, then I guess we don’t need to discuss it further. But I trust you to honor that promise.” She said “trust” like she meant “expect;” Tucker supposed it was more of a mixture of the two.

“I will. Can I go to bed now?” He worried once he’d said it that it had come out as snippy, rather than as the genuine question he’d intended, but luckily she either understood or was willing to overlook it.

“Yes. I’m glad you’re safe.” She stepped back and toward the kitchen, shaking off the distress of the evening with audible effort. “There’s leftover penne in the fridge if you want to pack a lunch tomorrow.”

Tucker started toward the living room. “Thanks, Mom. Does it have that tomato sauce? With the nuts?”

“Yep.”

“Ooh, yes, then I am definitely stealing those before Dad can get to them.”

“It’s not exactly a heist if you have carte blanche from the lady of the house.”

She was rallying! Yet another success in a long and storied career! He pushed his advantage. “I would actually describe it as more of a smash-and-grab? Less elegance, more pasta-fueled rage and desperation.”

From out of sight, Angela Foley’s voice floated to him, disembodied and not the least bit eerie. “You’d better not be doing any smashing in my kitchen, Tucker Charles. Most of my glassware is older than you, and it’s certainly done more for this family over the years.”

“I am hurt, Mother! Wounded!” Tucker called over his shoulder as he padded up the stairs. For some reason, it was a lot easier to discount even the threat of spectral intruders when he could hear his mom making tea in the microwave a few yards away.

The argument stayed with him, though. He supposed, now that he thought about it, that eight really was a generous curfew given the circ*mstances. Inconvenient, if he, Sam, and Danny had to stalk anyone else, but reasonable, especially given how shaken up she’d been.

It brought back what he’d been thinking, earlier, about suburban kids and the possibility of disaster. About how even after seeing blood on a stall door, he still couldn’t quite grasp the concept.

Maybe one day, when he had kids–that’s when he’d get it.

Chapter 12: Nails in the Coffin

Chapter Text

Nails in the Coffin

or alternatively: Tucker Gets a Girl’s Number, and Other Groundbreaking Developments

Danny showed up at lunch on Friday the 27th with a huge strip of gauze wrapped several times around his hand, purpling a little on the palm. “What happened?” Sam asked, tone shaded with concern.

Danny looked confused, then glanced down and was reminded of the injury. “Oh,” he answered, smiling a little. “I cut my hand on a broken beaker in Chem and bled all over my lab partner. I hope he was able to find a change of clothes.”

Tucker leaned in close, causing Danny to give him a weird look and back away slightly. He glanced around, then intoned, “Is that code for fighting a, you know”–he leaned in closer– “G-H-O-S-T?”

“What? No, it means that’s actually what happened. I’m a total klutz.”

“Oh.”

“So, the crusade to figure out Dash’s darkest secrets,” Danny offered with the air of a person eagerly changing a subject. “Any results? Or do I have to beat him up later?”

“Yeah, actually.” Sam lowered her voice to a safe level for the mostly empty area of the bleachers they were sitting on. She and Tucker had let Danny in on their preferred lunch spot a week or so ago. “Turns out he’s a werewolf.”

Danny choked on his watery cafeteria milk. “I’m sorry, actually? You’re joking. Are you joking?”

Tucker felt gratified by this reaction, since it somewhat vindicated his own. Sam nodded soberly. “Not joking. And it gives him a decent reason for mysteriously ducking commitments on nights with a full moon.”

The coughs had continued through this speech and showed no signs of abating. Tucker was beginning to wonder how effective the Heimlich would be on a ghost when Danny abruptly did something that set Tucker’s teeth on edge, and the milk dropped through his throat. Sam looked queasy. Danny ignored it, thoroughly invested in voicing his disbelieving outrage: “You found out that werewolves are real and you didn’t think that merited a text?!”

Tucker and Sam made eye contact, equally uncomfortable. Tucker murmured, “Oh, sorry, we just assumed you knew.”

Danny looked almost homicidally exasperated at this point (another person probably would’ve looked angry, but every expression in Danny’s emotional repertoire was at least a little bit tainted with “tired”). They would never find out what he was about to say, however, because they were interrupted by the tinny taptaptaptap of gel nails on metal way too close by. Tucker jumped and whirled to look for the source, somewhere immediately behind and below him.

Paulina stood on the grass at the bottom of the bleachers, uncharacteristically dressed down in Lulu leggings and a green crop top but appearing characteristically bored. The long cotton-candy colored nails she had just tap-tap-tapped on the bleacher railing disappeared as she folded her arms. “Hey.”

Tucker and Sam stared.

Danny, likely because he was the one least familiar with Her Majesty Paulina Sanchez, reacted first. “Uh, hey. What’s up?”

She paused before answering, as if to gather her thoughts or maybe overcome her disgust at associating with them. Paulina hadn’t really been popular, per se, since freshman year; she had come into high school with that rare, magnetic breed of confidence seldom seen in fourteen-year-olds, but people had quickly recognized her standoffishness and relish for conflict as red flags. She had a decent number of friends, but nobody else really wanted to be her friend. And she had always seemed fine with that, which was why it was weird to see her here, alone.

She made eye contact with Tucker, expression intense and strange. “Dash told me about what happened at the mall, and what you were looking into. I might be able to tell you a few things.”

Sam slowly put her salad down. “Like what?”

“Not here. You know the pool shed?”

The pool was a five-minute walk from the football field, around the back of the humanities building. They marched in silence (confused silence, on Danny’s part), following a rigid-backed Paulina, who still carried her shiny silver backpack over one shoulder. It was another clouded-over day, and windy enough that the trash from Tucker’s lunch fluttered and had to be held down with a thumb on the edge of the tray or weighed down by his lasagna plate. A moment of inattention as they walked cost him his almost-empty chip bag; it floated gracefully over one fence only to be caught by another and hang there, squirming. Everything was washed out and halfway to gray, like an old black-and-white movie halfheartedly colorized by a bored intern.

Danny edged up next to Sam. “What’s in the pool shed?” he whispered.

“No idea.” They were close enough to hear wind-thrown ripples lapping against the side of the pool.

The pool shed was one of those small plastic buildings commonly seen around schools that don’t want to spend money on construction, about a foot taller than Tucker and maybe 10 feet square. Everyone was forced to duck as they entered. Coiled like slinkies on two walls were the green-and-white lane lines that floated in the pool during swim practice, and another wall was taken up by a metal shelving unit similar to the one in the janitor’s closet, with chlorine and other chemicals as well as general cleaning stuff. A pool skimmer leaned in one corner, slowly dripping sharp-smelling water onto the grimy grey plastic floor. Paulina hesitated for a moment, then settled onto the cleanest part of the floor she could find, opposite the shelves. Her followers, slowly and with varying degrees of wariness, did the same, and Sam pulled the door closed, leaving them mostly in the dark.

Paulina unzipped her backpack, and something about the loud chainsaw buzz of it made the hair on Tucker’s arms raise.

“You guys are looking into the supernatural,” she began, totally nonchalant. “I know you confronted Dash after hearing that he’s gone missing a few nights, and I know the killer attacked Tucker’s cousin or something not that long ago, and I know that something’s wrong with the new kid.” She indicated Danny with a tilt of her head. “So what I think is that you realize something is up with this serial killer case, and you’re trying to solve it.”

They sat there in stunned silence for a second, and then Tucker figured he should respond for the group. “Wow. Yep, that’s…that’s about it.” He shifted and resettled nervously. “So, uh…how do you know about the supernatural?”

“My aunt taught me a little brujería, when I was younger.” When everyone but Sam showed no signs of recognition, she looked irritated but obligingly elaborated. “The way she used it, it was a broad term for a lot of Latin American and Afrolatino variants of witchcraft, including some religions. My grandma taught me not just the charms and spells you can’t really see proof of, but also some of the more noticeable and…less socially acceptable techniques. That’s how I learned that supernaturally influencing the world is possible.

“So” –and her tone of voice said naturally– “I started looking into other types of occultism. By now I’d say I’m probably a decently accomplished novice practitioner of a few things. The one I really became good at immediately, though, is tarot.”

To punctuate this thought, she tossed down a deck of cards with one hand, then flipped her hair over one shoulder with the other. “I guess I’m just talented like that,” she added in an airy tone, positively radiating smugness.

The deck of cards sat on the floor in the middle of their circle, tilted slightly upward–the plastic floor had puckered and deformed over time as the sun and water did their work. Sam eyed the cards the same way one eyes an undetonated land mine. “Okay,” she hazarded. “What does that have to do with us, or the murders?”

Instead of answering directly, Paulina folded her legs to the side, leaned forward, and dealt, facing Tucker since he sat directly across from her. She went with a simple three-card spread, ostensibly Past, Present, and Future. With little fanfare, she flipped them all over. The three of pentacles, the king of swords reversed, and Death.

Tucker’s spine twitched. Sam looked ill. Danny looked like he might have been nodding off a bit.

“For the past few weeks, all I’ve been getting for the future is Death. Even if I remove the Death card from the deck, I’ll turn it over and it’ll be Death,” Paulina explained. She indicated the irritant card with a pink-nailed flourish. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. And lately it’s gotten to the point where it’s not just happening when I’m doing divination or other types of cartomancy.” She scowled. “I can’t even play solitaire anymore. It’s like, honestly, I get the picture!”

Paulina always used English idioms like she was still slightly unfamiliar with them, deliberately rushing through “I get the picture” and “that’s the last straw” like a middle schooler swearing for the first time. It was one of the few things about her that Tucker found disarming—it was her one admission of insecurity, but it also demonstrated her tenacious refusal to let insecurity overcome her. Paulina never apologized. Tucker had always been a little impressed by that, and a little scared.

Now, Paulina regathered the three-card spread into her hand, frowning. Hesitantly, Sam reached over and selected another three cards, dealing them out the way Paulina had. She flipped them one by one. Sure enough, the third was death. Tucker’s teeth ground together again, and a sickness pooled in his chest. Paulina fanned out the previous spread, revealing that she now held the Fool as her third card.

“I think it has to do with this murder. Certain paranormal...elements…have been extremely unhappy since the murders came to Amity.” Paulina paused for a millisecond of indecision, then continued a little softer than Tucker was used to from her. “Also, I was—good friends with Amber McClain. The, the fifth victim. She was my assistant coach in club soccer, and she got me and my friends into parties, and—well.” She’d turned her head slightly to the side, gaze tangling somewhere in the lane line coils, but at this she abruptly refocused on her audience.

“I mention it because Amber was teaching me about Vodun before she died.” The fierceness was back in the set of her jaw. “Eh, voodoo. Amber dabbled. I’ve been trying to build a group of people who share my interests for a while—”

“Wait, is that why you were so nice to me in middle school?” Sam interrupted. “I thought it was because I’m rich, but you were trying to build a coven?!”

Paulina fixed her with a bored look. “Yes, and from that you can understand how truly desperate I was, lacking even mediocre candidates. Now, can I get to the point?” She didn’t wait for an answer, which was good, as it likely would have been extremely insulting.

“Amber didn’t deserve to have that happen to her.” Tucker straightened a little, surprised. She was speaking quicker, and louder, abandoning any remaining vestiges of defensive boredom. “I want to help you find the cabrón who did it and make him pay with my own f*cking hands. If he’s something supernatural, we may be the only ones who can stop him, and also I do not want to deal with whatever terrible thing is going to happen when I can make you all deal with it for me. So. In conclusion. What do you know, and do you have any idea what’s coming?”

Finished, the declaration of war drifted down to the center of the circle, settling next to the innocent tarot deck. Paulina sat back and crossed her arms. Waiting.

Tucker exchanged a glance with Sam. Even Danny seemed to wake up a bit. Tucker could see his own question reflected in the narrowing of Sam’s eyes and the way her lips thinned: Paulina Sanchez was not a good person.

But was she trustworthy?

Tucker chewed on the inside of his cheek. Sam squinted one eye in distaste. Tucker smiled wryly–

“Well, mostly we’ve just been summoning victims, so they can tell us things. We know Schulker was a wechuge...all the victims were found on occult holidays, more or less...uh, it may have something to do with people committing crimes. That’s what we know so far, I think. Did I miss anything?” Danny turned to Sam and Tucker, the picture of innocence.

Sam seethed, and Tucker frowned. The already tense mood in the pool shed soured. Well, those secrets are out now, Tucker reflected ruefully. No taking them back. Paulina was already eyeing them like they’d just told her chocolate was good for you.

“Summoning?” Paulina arched an eyebrow. “That’s pretty high-level witchcraft. Since when can Manson summon things?”

“You talk like you’re some big successful witch but you can’t draw a circle and light some candles?” Sam laughed, angrily, and Danny looked at her, unnerved. The bitterness in seeping out between her next words was so palpable even Tucker cringed. “Turns out nobody stays dead in this town. Not if you know where to look.”

Something dripped from the ceiling onto Tucker’s leg. In the awkward moment that followed, Paulina sniffed and shook her head, throwing the full force of her dismissive dignity into her endeavor to ignore Sam entirely. “Okay, so what is this ‘wechuge’? I have never heard of it.”

Sam was fuming and Danny probably hadn’t done his research, so Tucker recognized with discomfort that it fell to him to be diplomatic. Again. “Uh. Wechuge–or wechuges? I don’t know the plural–share a lot of characteristics with wendigos, but they’re more associated with, like, winter and ice. They’re an Athabaskan thing, whereas wendigos are Algonquian. You know what a wendigo is, right?”

“Yes, basically.” Paulina nodded.

“Uh…yeah.” Tucker paused; something had just poked into his memory, like a pebble in his boot if his boot were his skull. “It’s weird, though,” he started slowly. “Schulker said he made a deal, like, stated his own terms to become a wechuge. But from what I’ve found on the internet, it’s not something you choose. Some sources say it’s a sort of possession thing by animal spirits, and religion-related, but it always seems to be unwilling.”

“Huh.” Paulina frowned. “I was going to say it sounds like some of the practices of Vodun, but the goal there generally is successfully being possessed.”

“And Amber taught you about Vodun, right?” Sam growled from her corner. Good old Sam–Tucker could hear that she was struggling to suppress her annoyance, but she had her priorities straight. Sam leaned forward over her crossed legs and further into the circle, planting one fisted hand on the ground to support her and tapping impatiently on the side of her knee with the other. “Let’s back up to that. That’s three victims or attempted victims out of seven who we know were involved in the occult or paranormal before their deaths: Schulker, Amber, and Tristan. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that motorcyclist–the second victim–had some sort of supernatural help to pull off those stunts.”

Paulina put a crooked pointer finger to her lower lip and absentmindedly pressed on it, apparently a tic that showed up when she concentrated. (If it were anyone else, Tucker would assume she didn’t know it was kinda hot.) “My dad once complained that Kwan’s mom’s enemies on the PTA always seemed to have bad luck. Like, I think Mrs. Winters got caught in her affair in the middle of the graduation debacle.” She moved her finger to her chin, eyes narrowed. “And right when Daddy was siding with Ms. Lee against Mrs. Ainara on the expulsion procedure issue, the Lees were arrested for tax fraud.”

They shared a wide-eyed moment in the dark.

Sam breathed out purposefully, anger fully pushed aside now that she had the puzzle pieces in her hands. “Okay. So I think it’s safe to assume that they were all involved in some type of occultism. But you know what bothers me with this pattern? Why the hell would the killer come to Amity? Just based on population, wouldn’t it make sense for there to be a lot more potential targets in Chicago?”

Tucker was sitting in a damp spot on the floor, and it was starting to soak through his jeans. He shifted to put his weight on his right hip and arm, leaving as little of himself on the ground as possible. “My cousin did say Casper High has a weird amount of supernatural stuff,” he ventured. “Maybe that extends to all of Amity?”

“But Chicago has a lot of ghosts. The boundary is thinner there. That usually leads to weird things developing.” Immediately, Danny looked like he regretted contributing to the conversation, because now Paulina was devoting her full attention to him, along with an unhealthy amount of curiosity. Tucker noted that Danny hadn’t shared any information about his whole deal when he was spilling the results of their investigation. And what exactly was the boundary, beyond what the context implied?

Sam was still reasoning through this latest snag in the puzzle-solving process, staring off into the middle distance. “Maybe he’s not just looking for occultists or whatever,” she muttered, sounding it out as she went. “Maybe it’s more specific. But Vodun and Athabaskan folklore don’t have a lot in common– wait.”

Tucker could see the moment of lightning inspiration. Sam’s eyes positively burned, she looked so excited. Her stray hairs caught the thin grey light from the crack between ceiling and wall, and she sparkled.

The group waited, holding its collective breath. The pause stretched further.

And further.

Paulina lost patience first, despite being the member of this quartet with the greatest appreciation for drama. “What, Manson?”

She grinned widely. “It’s contract magic!”

…

Everyone kind of looked at her blankly. Tucker thought he would have to prompt her to explain, but after a few seconds, once she saw that no one appreciated her brilliance off the bat, she deigned to elaborate. “Okay, so! Paulina was saying that practicing voodoo–Vodun–is like the wechuge because it involves possession, right? There’s another, stronger, extranormal party involved. And Schulker said he’d made a deal, while in voodoo I think you do have to offer something in exchange if you want to, like, commune with a–loa, I think?–or ask a favor! And Tucker, when you’ve talked about your psychic thing, you make it sound like there’s some big outside force that’s giving you information in exchange for your performing certain duties and responsibilities. Like a contract!”

Tucker grumbled. “Can I break it, then? I don’t remember signing anything.”

“Shut up, I’m being a genius. Johnny–the 13 motorcycle guy–could easily have, like, a demon contract or something! I think the victims are being targeted because they practice this kind of magic–having outstanding deals or exchanges with a supernatural being. Because wouldn’t there be power? In breaking those contracts, or assuming them?”

Something twanged, a slender finger plucking one of Tucker’s neural connections like a guitar string.

Tucker’s hindbrain liked this theory. Which was, on so many levels, disturbing.

Distantly, the grating brinnggg of a bell careened between buildings and back down the wires of the PA system, signalling the end of lunch and the beginning of 7th period extracurriculars.

“sh*t, I have cheer.” Paulina dug into her backpack and pulled out a flowery notepad with a pen in an elastic loop on the inside cover. Shifting her weight over her legs until she was kneeling, she scratched something onto a clean page, then tore it out ruthlessly so it ended up a trapezoid with one messy edge. There were more pastel flowers printed onto in the upper right-hand corner, and when she shoved it at Tucker he saw that she’d written ten digits. “Here’s my number. Text me if you think of anything, and I will help you make this bastard pay.”

Then she gathered up her cards, rocked back on her heels to stand, and stalked out into the open air with a hiss of “This never happened.”

The sudden opening of the door let in a cascade of light, stronger and whiter than the cloud-cover grey of before, and Tucker blinked as his eyes adjusted. In the wake of the tornado that was Her Majesty Paulina Sanchez, the three of them sat for a moment, processing, and then began struggling to their feet.

“Well,” Danny drawled, grinning at Tucker. “That’s one way to get a girl’s number.”

Tucker shoved him into the cleaning supplies.

Sam, who now stood just outside the door, was not amused. Honestly, Tucker had hoped they could avoid this whole argument as Sam basked in the lingering warm self-satisfaction from developing her theory, but she wasn’t one to let things go easily.

“Are you stupid, Fenton?! The killer is probably someone connected to the school, and Paulina is connected to the school and the supernatural! You can’t just tell her everything immediately!” she ranted, gesticulating wildly.

Danny halted in the doorway, looking surprised. Sam kept walking, so Danny was forced to jog a few steps to catch up as he responded. “Oh. Sorry, it’s just—I mean, she’s in our class! I’ve fought some pretty tough kids who, like, died tragic and traumatic deaths, but in my experience normal spoiled high schoolers just...don’t really pose a legitimate threat.”

“Have you heard of a school shooter?!”

Fair point. “I mean, yeah, but, the stuff I fight….” Danny trailed off. Considered Sam’s profile for a long moment, and something contorted in his face.

“...I can see your point, though. Okay. Sorry, I just–I think my sense of scale for danger has gotten a little screwy. With, you know, dying and all.” He frowned, and nodded. “Yeah. I won’t do that again.”

That seemed to have taken the wind out of Sam’s sails; she turned to look at him for the first time, posture opening. Tucker was surprised, too—he himself was a pretty easygoing guy, but he almost never backed down like that, especially with Sam. They didn’t tend to get into actual fights, but they could argue for days about minutiae, continuing long after either of them actually cared about the topic at hand. And Danny didn’t seem all that mature.

Huh. Well, Tucker wasn’t complaining. He could see it in Sam’s tense back and fidgeting fingers as she mulled it over, and he could see, as they turned the corner and followed the humanities building’s north wall back toward the main courtyard, when she reluctantly let it go.

Which was good, because the usually comfortingly populated main area of the school wasn’t comforting in the least–figures dotted edges and doorways, but he couldn’t make out a single face.

Dense winds tugged at his ankles, chuckling softly, and the sky was still so dark. His gorge rose, remembering the sick way his bones had clacked and rubbed past each other when Paulina had turned over that last card. The bulbous yellow skull in black armor, mounted, peeked around bricked corners and leaned against shadows, horse pawing restlessly at the ground. Stumbling, erratic, huge eyes rolling...waiting the gentle heel-touch to the ribs that would signal the charge…

Haha, I hate it! Tucker checked over his shoulder once more, and then jogged up to level with the other two. “So! Now that you’re not going to kill each other, how about a movie night?” he yelped. His voice sounded too bright to his own ears. “You can sleep over after, and we even have” –though he shuddered at the thought– “vegan popcorn!”

Tucker hoped his grin didn’t twitch.

~(*0*)~

Against all odds, since all odds seemed to indicate that the world was ending or something equally terrible and ridiculous, the movie night was pretty fun.

Sam offered her house, since she had the better gaming system, TV, and general floorspace, but Tucker was mindful of his new curfew. He’d promised to be home by eight, and he wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of leaving Sam’s an hour and a half after sunset to return to a dark, empty apartment, so he insisted his place was the best option. They met up on the school’s front steps and made it there around 3:30, leaving a comfortable three-hour cushion between them and the encroaching night.

“Are we ordering a pizza? Sam yelled from the upstairs closet, where she’d gone to grab spare pillows and blankets.

“Yeah,” Tucker shouted back. “Spinach flatbread?”

“Obviously!”

Tucker turned to Danny, who’d just gotten off the phone with his parents. “What do you want? Like, pepperoni, or something else?”

“Uh. Can I get sausage? I’ll pay you pack.” Danny had a hip hitched over the arm of the sofa as he surveyed the living room. “Did you lock the door?”

“Yep.” Tucker popped the “p.” “But let’s not talk about that! Do you know a movie we should watch?”

“Huh? ...Nah, I’m good with whatever. Are we not gonna, like, strategize or something?”

“Nahhh. We are going to sit back, relax, and not think at all about our impending doom. Sausage it is!” Tucker started typing the name of the closest pizza place into his phone (it was a mom and pop business called Cheese Please, though he hit enter before completing the phrase so what he actually searched was cheese “pleas”) and waved absently toward the kitchen. “We have, like, cereal in the pantry in the meantime.”

“Oh. Thanks, but I’ll pass.” Danny laughed lightly. “Wow, it’s kind of funny–I’ve seen your room but literally none of the rest of your house. And your room is upstairs.”

Right, Danny had been summoned directly into Tucker’s room, and then left via un-summoning rather than the front door . Tucker snorted, surprised at the warm amusem*nt that curled in his chest. “...Why are our lives like this?”

“Ignorance is bliss, dude.” Danny dropped backward onto the couch, leaving his legs hanging over sofa’s squashy blue arm and smiling wryly. “Ignorance is bliss.”

The three ended up huddled on Tucker’s couch, digging socked feet into the carpet and watching the most lighthearted, least threatening thing they could find. They settled on Parks and Rec. Danny claimed it didn’t really fit his sense of humor, but that didn’t matter much because he conked out at six and only woke up two hours later, roused by the smell of Sam’s vegan aberration parading as popcorn butter.

Tucker realized at some point that evening—probably when Danny woke up to find Sam had drawn a pretty realistic goatee on his face while he slept, and looked to Tucker for permission to use one of his couch pillows to beat her up for it—that Danny had stopped being “that weird guy from school who’s, like, arguably dead” and become “our weird guy from school who’s, like, arguably dead.” It was a nice realization. Tucker fell asleep smiling, listening to Sam’s whistling breaths from the other end of the couch and Danny shifting in a pile of blankets on the floor. (He didn’t breathe audibly? Which should have been much more disturbing than it was.)

He didn’t dream at all that night.

Chapter 13: The Night Has Loops and Layers

Chapter Text

The Night Has Loops and Layers

or alternatively: Some Casual B&E

Between them, Sam and Danny made a deep dent in Tucker’s Lucky Charms supply that morning. They sat around the kitchen table, crunching in peaceful silence as buttery 8 a.m. sunlight burnished all the wood surfaces to a deep yellow-gold. Tucker’s spine was still twitching slightly when he least expected it, a nausea-inducing jangling feeling, but the warmth of morning and companionship had mostly teased the tightness out from between his shoulder blades.

“I’m gonna get so many cavities,” Sam complained around a mouthful of oat milk. It was a sad reality that Tucker’s pantry and fridge had come to reflect her tastes almost as much as his own. “I didn’t brush my teeth last night, and now this. Plus, I’ve never flossed once in my life.”

“It might help if you didn’t pick extra marshmallows out of the bag for your cereal,” Danny needled. Sam shoved him, but her hands passed through his shoulder and she almost tipped out of her chair. She ended up shaking them out, grimacing, as Danny snickered behind his spoon.

“That feels awful when you do that. Like pins and needles but like… oilier.” Sam looked up in abject horror. “Tucker, is that what your psychic thingy feels like all the time?!”

“Nah, it’s different things for different people. And it’s pretty much stopped registering Danny unless he does something super weird,” he added with a reassuring smile at the paranormal abomination in question. Danny’s returning smile was warmer than usual, closer to containing a normal number of teeth. Heh, adorable.

“Tucker, is my blue folder down there?” called his mom from upstairs, accompanied by the sounds of slammed drawers and generic rummaging. Tucker’s dad had gotten home from a work dinner at 9:30 the night before and left again for his commute before Tucker had even woken up, though he’d managed to leave a smiley face post-it note on Tucker’s forehead utilizing what he termed his “ninja dad skills.” Apparently Sam had already been awake, though, and he’d made her an extra cup of coffee. (She was a huge fan of Maurice Foley’s.)

Danny scanned the kitchen. “It’s on the counter, Mrs. Foley!”

“Thanks!” More banging and shifting from overhead. Angela Foley was usually terrifyingly organized and an incorruptibly calming presence, but today she was running late. And when she was late, all hell broke loose.

Sam waited until she’d grabbed her folder and clacked out the door in her business pumps before bringing up the topic they’d been avoiding since the night before. “Okay, we need to figure out what we’re doing next. As soon as possible. Before whatever’s coming…comes. Personally, I think we should experiment with activating Tucker’s psychic thingy.”

Tucker winced. “Do I get a vote?”

“Can we at least go home and practice basic hygiene first?” Danny put in. “No one has ever devised a winning battle strategy with morning breath. That’s a direct quote from The Art of War.”

“I wholeheartedly agree. Please stop breathing into the clean, fresh air of my kitchen and general vicinity.” Tucker wrinkled his nose. “And I actually can’t do today; I have to visit my cousin. Can we meet up tomorrow at Nasty Burger?”

Danny immediately looked uncomfortable at the mention of Tucker’s cousin. Which Tucker might have felt bad about, except that that was the intended effect of the lie and the triumph overwhelmed the guilt. However, it was more 50/50 whether or not Sam was insensitive enough to point out that he didn’t really need all day to visit his cousin. Tucker held his breath. “Nasty Burger doesn’t open until, like, four on Sundays. Can’t we go somewhere for lunch tomorrow instead?” Sam objected. Yes!

Tucker did understand the need for haste. But he was tired, okay? Just one rest day. What could it hurt?

As for the location: “Sam, think about it. This could be the end times.” Tucker started regretting that joke and what it acknowledged about halfway through, and his voice wavered a bit on the final phrase. He reinforced his smile and forged on even more cheerily to the end. “Are you really prepared to risk never again tasting the magnificence that is Nasty Burger?”

Sam rolled her eyes but acquiesced. They sold a mean stuffed portobello.

“Uh...is that the burger place on Via Coltello? That’s pretty close to my house, and my mom is out and my dad should be in the basem*nt all day if we want to walk there after,” Danny offered.

“Oh.” Tucker didn’t know why he was surprised, but he supposed this confirmed it: Danny was really in this with them now. Whole-hog. “Yeah, sure! Let’s do that.” Then the actual import of Danny’s question hit him. “Wait, hoooold up, you haven’t been to Nasty Burger yet?!”

Sam shook her head and tsk-ed. “That is a travesty.”

“Dude, you haven’t lived until you’ve had their fries!! And the shakes, like, dude...” The conversation continued in this vein for…well, some time.

At length, the two guests departed into a sunny suburban morning. The last Tucker saw of them was Sam peeling out and Danny in the passenger seat clearly holding on for dear half-life. His spine twinged again as he carried dishes a little too quickly to the sink.

~(*0*)~

Despite the unease peeking over his shoulder, nothing much happened for the rest of Saturday. Tucker watched Netflix, ate dinner, slept with a light on. Got up late the next day. Ate breakfast. Napped. He was glad his parents were home, and even volunteered to help his mom with a few chores.

Tension headaches came and went. The unease never really left.

And that, though he would never admit it (unless it was somehow for comedic effect), was why at 5 p.m. on Sunday the 30th, Tucker had been waiting by his bike on the sidewalk outside Nasty Burger for fifteen minutes already.

Sam showed up two minutes late in a fresh black t-shirt and high-waisted jeans, grinning at him and swinging her keys on their lanyard. “Where’s Danny?”

And wasn’t that the question of the hour.

The day so far had been a sunny one, with a vague lingering fall heat cut by a chilly breeze. The sun was off to the left, and white sun-circles gleamed on the hoods of parked trucks and anything painted shiny. Nasty Burger was an establishment with a thing for chrome, so various surfaces blinded them as they waited under the huge red-and-yellow copyright violation of a sign.

Sam texted the groupchat. No answer. They leaned against the bike rack and made small talk, and took turns glancing both ways down the street. A mom walked by with two little girls in brightly-colored sundresses. A gaggle of teenagers Tucker vaguely recognized from school piled into a brown Ford Ranger. The bright spots of sunlight slipped lower, elongating and caressing unshadowed license plate frames, and a young guy in the red Nasty Burger uniform shirt stepped outside and started wiping down the windows.

At 5:25, Tucker and Sam exchanged confused looks, walked inside, and ordered. Sam complained as they walked to a booth about how irresponsible Danny was: Not only was he a half hour late, but he’d also probably let his phone go dead. Tucker weakly agreed.

By 6:21, the blue of the sky had faded and dimmed to a light periwinkle, interrupted only by the patch of glowing peach-and-tangerine tacked up behind western rooftops. They’d finished their burgers and now sat idly in the booth, staring at the window with their greasy paper-lined trays in front of them and ignoring the pointed stares of an increasingly irate waitress. Traffic outside had dwindled to only the occasional car, about half of them with headlights lit.

They left at 7:03. The group chat on Sam’s phone was filled with stacked blue bubbles. Danny never showed.

“I’m sure there’s a reason,” Tucker reasoned, weakly, as they hovered in the sidewalk space between Tucker’s bike and Sam’s car. The sun had set, and the light shining out through the Nasty Burger’s front windows teased their silhouettes. “I mean, his parents probably took his phone or something. And wouldn’t let him go out. I mean, we don’t really know them, they could be like that. Or! Wait! He’s probably fighting a ghost!” That was actually a really plausible answer, and Tucker felt a little dumb for not thinking of it sooner. To be fair, it wasn’t the most common excuse.

Then again, it also wasn’t the most…reassuring one.

“Oh, yeah!” Sam smiled, but it quickly wavered. “Or hey, maybe he just decided last-minute not to come. He did say he’s not big on planning. Usually just kinda jumps into things.” She toed at a seam in the sidewalk.

There was mutual silence.

“Well,” Tucker declared to the world at large, “it can’t hurt to check, right?”

“Yeah, we have to yell at him if he flaked.”

“Totally. Maybe we can guilt him into letting us raid his fridge or something.”

“Foley, I like the way you think.”

They wrestled Tucker’s bike into the considerable trunk of Sam’s Maserati Levante and headed for Danny’s address, which Sam had helpfully added to his contact in her phone after the first time they’d stalked him (that time, they’d drawn upon this year’s school directory. Mrs. Manson hoarded those things).

It was darker once they got into the residential area. No street lights here; Tucker used the flashlight on his phone to navigate them up the driveway. Sam knocked. Then again, more forcefully. No response. “Danny did say his dad would be in the basem*nt. Maybe he didn’t hear…?”

Finally, after about ten minutes of bruised knuckles and semi-embarrassed yelling, Tucker was forced to turn to Sam, balling up his beret in one hand and running the other sheepishly over his hair. “Dude, I…gotta get home by eight. Should we try again in the morning?”

“Yeah, let’s.” Something about the quiet street made the false bravado in their voices sound not so brave and especially loud.

“Was there a landline number in your mom’s directory?”

“One way to find out.”

The ride to Tucker’s house was quiet. The street lights were tall and lean, and half broken.

Sam texted a few minutes later. No one had answered the land line.

~(*0*)~

“Tucker? Baby? You need to wake up.”

It took Tucker a few bleary seconds to register his surroundings. His mom was standing over him in his dim room, which was lit only by a small lamp turned toward the wall on the corner of his desk furthest from his head (probably a fire hazard). “Ugh. I’m up.” His nearest pager (Denise) displayed the time: 1:03 a.m. sh*t. He pushed himself upright. “What’s wrong?”

His mom was in pajamas, her face drawn in tight lines. She was holding a phone absently a few inches from her ear. “I’ve got him, Maddie. Tucker, it’s Mrs. Fenton, your friend Danny’s mom? She wants to know if you’ve seen him.”

His stomach slid downward to somewhere around his knees. “He…” sh*t. Again. Should he cover for Danny, knowing what he did about his secret supernatural skirmishes? His paranormal pugilism? His–

This was not the time for alliteration. Or withholding information. Danny had been missing for at least eight hours. This was the time to be…

...well, terrified.

~(*0*)~

He snuck out the door at 2:15, the layers of regular human nervousness and paranormal dread in his lungs now topped with a fine sprinkling of guilt: This was the exact opposite of what his mom had wanted when she’d trusted him to be home by eight. But his mom was asleep, having finally gotten back to bed after fifteen minutes of coordinating with the Fentons and Mansons, the former of whom honestly, to Tucker’s mind, didn’t seem nearly freaked out enough for this situation.

“It’s worrying, but Danny is a bit irresponsible when it comes to keeping us apprised,” Maddie Fenton had reasoned tinnily over speakerphone, sounding perturbed but far from frantic. Tucker’s mom had frowned at the table. “He’s been gone like this before, back in Chicago. Even overnight, and he always comes back. It’s just–it seemed like he was doing better here.” She’d exhaled noisily. “The police?! No, we’ll hold off–I mean, he’s a teenager. I don’t think there’s any call for that yet.”

If the marbles rolling around in his gut had anything to say about it, there was definitely call for that. But Danny hadn’t even been missing twelve hours.

So it fell to Tucker, Sam, and Tucker’s gag reflex, the heroes no city deserved.

Tucker’s apartment building was relatively small–two families and two couples–and it faced a quiet street rather than forming part of a more extensive apartment complex. Tucker sat on the sidewalk in the dim moonlight, framed by beige stucco walls.

Sam pulled up with a (muted) screech and swung open her door. She leaned out. “Okay, psychic boy. Where to?”

Tucker didn’t hesitate. “Left.” Because really, why would he hesitate? His bones had been itching to run since yesterday; he’d just never noticed where to. Apparently, left.

He clambered into the car, and together they followed the yellow line out into the dark.

~(*0*)~

The tingles in Tucker’s vertebrae led them to the Westside Mall.

It was eerie, being here all alone. They parked in front of the main entrance, around which the larger restaurants tended to congregate. The lights strung up between upper-level railings weren’t lit, and all the stores were closed, several with metal shutters or bars pulled down over their windows and doors. Police tape shifted limply on the ground around a corner, reminding them that while the threat of the killer may have felt omnipresent in Amity these past few weeks, this was one place where they actually knew the killer had been: This was where Schulker’s body had been found. Specifically in the dumpster behind the Pins and Needles Bowling Alley, where a lot of kids from their school worked over the summer. Where they’d made some of their best childhood memories, of gutterballs and buffalo wings and uncomfortable leather shoes. Something more than the pinball machine was broken now.

Tucker faltered, eyeing the shadows further into the mall proper. The Westside Mall was set up like a long, twisted U that opened to the front parking lot, with a double layer of stores on each side enclosing a large courtyard with one modern-ish fountain and some scattered metal tables. If you followed the courtyard inward from the main entrance, you would wind around a few bends before reaching a larger enclosed portion with locked front doors and huge glass windows. This was the white marble area, where smaller stores stacked on top of each other, linked by implacable escalators. Tucker wasn’t sure if it was actual psychic-icity or just plain wishful thinking that led him not into the enclosed courtyard full of corners but instead to the left, around the side of the building where the police tape slithered like a toppled flag. Either way he was relieved not to be forcing himself yet into that new type of darkness; just peering into the courtyard had his knees knocking like a woodpecker on meth.

Their eyes had adjusted even with Sam’s headlights dying behind them, so they ventured to the left without a light. They walked gingerly. Spoke little.

The Pins and Needles was, of course, locked.

Sam cursed. “Well, what did we expect, I guess.” She pitched her voice low, focus drifting.

Tucker stuffed his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie, hunching inward. “I’m pretty sure we need to go in here.”

“How sure?”

“Uhh, like a good 70 percent? 75?” He grinned unconvincingly. “60?”

Sam glared. Tucker found this line of questioning unproductive. He pulled out his PDA and fiddled with it idly. “I could try my hand against the security system, but I don’t like my chances if we don’t know the model.” So maybe Tucker had done some…research…into the practical implications of black hat hacking in his youth. Sue him; he was a teenage boy who’d watched too many action movies. And, furthermore, he felt that the fact that they were in this situation now pretty much entitled him to an “I told you so” on that count. However, the main thing he’d learned from that research was that while hacking a security system with the right tools wasn’t all that hard, hacking this sort of security system with very little information and even less time was basically asking for a prison sentence (and possibly a spot on an FBI watchlist if they checked the rest of his internet history and learned what other skills he’d picked up).

They both spent a good forty seconds staring at the front door and frowning. This was actually an impressive feat, given how much it was killing Tucker not to look behind him.

“It doesn’t have another entrance, right?” Tucker attempted to confirm with Sam. The bowling alley was part of the mall proper, specifically taking up the northwest corner of its extensive floor plan. As such, it only had two freestanding walls, and adjoined a pizza place on one side and a boutique on the other. “Maybe a window…?”

“Wait.” Sam held up one hand, absolutely still, scowling ferociously. “Something’s bothering me. What is–” She trailed off, squinting, though her pupils were blown wide like a cat’s in the dark. “Where’s the alley?”

“Uh...it’s a bowling…? Alley? I think they call them that because of the lanes…?”

“Nonono, that’s not what I meant.” Her brow crinkled further. “Schulker’s body was found in the dumpster behind the Pins and Needles Bowling Alley, right? But where’s the dumpster? There’s no alley behind it because it’s part of the mall. Where would they even put a dumpster?”

“Maybe there’s, like, a communal dumpster for this part of the mall?”

“Yeah, but then why would they say ‘behind the Pins and Needles’? ‘Behind’ would have to mean either where we’re standing or inside the mall, somehow, and they wouldn’t want customers just wandering around and seeing their dumpster. There has to be some sort of extra space, somewhere where only the employees would have to deal with it….”

The metaphorical timer dinged, the lightbulb lit, and Tucker’s heart slipped up his throat. Sam’s hand was still hovering next to him. He grabbed it in a tight grip.

“Sam. The tunnels.”

~(*0*)~

The fourteenth door they tried, the one near the mall bathrooms with the wall of art deco tiles (classy, but missing a few), wasn’t locked. Sam’s lock-picking skills weren’t quite up to the task of opening a door protecting actual merchandise rather than school cleaning supplies, so they’d been forced to venture deeper and deeper into the mall–that awful courtyard, Tucker had known that the prospect of avoiding it was too good to be true–trying promising-looking doors as they went. Someone had tried to lock this one, but hadn’t turned the key all the way, probably in a hurry, and a little jiggling of the handle opened before them their very own personal portal into the void.

Tucker whistled, a short expression of awe and disbelief. Sam evidently concurred. “Wow, that’s dark.”

Slowly, they stepped in. Slowly, they closed the door.

Slowly, they began to walk.

The ovals of pale light cast by their phone flashlights should have been comforting, but all they really did was make Tucker dearly regret playing any horror game ever. However, unlike horror game protagonists, Tucker and Sam did have a few things going for them. First of all, these half-built passageways were by no means a maze, as long as you weren’t actively trying to get lost. Since they weren’t in that more complex marble-columns portion of the mall, there were also fewer branches to be taken into account, and their target was conveniently located in the northwest corner of the mall: Sam had checked on her phone’s compass before entering. And hey, at least it wasn’t grimy.

Now, Sam kept the compass app open and the phone level with the ground, letting the flashlight illuminate the floor a few steps in front of them. Tucker, in turn, aimed his light forward, dimly illuminating concrete beams and plywood walls and, inevitably, the black rectangle promising a continuance of the tunnel when the light was not strong enough to reach the end. Sweat dampened the back of Tucker’s shirt. His breath came short and fast and as quiet as possible. Neither of them twisted to shine a light on the space they’d left behind; there was an unspoken agreement that seeing whether it was empty or not would just make it worse. But they listened. As hard as they could, they listened to the hallways behind.

In this manner, the solemn two-person cavalcade of soft tapping footsteps–still two people, four footsteps, yep, yep–wended its way a sweaty eternity and three heart-pounding blind turns later into the final, correct stretch of passageway.

They were greeted by the worst smell in the world.

“Oh my god.” San broke the silence by gagging. Tucker could barely breathe even through his mouth. “What the f*ck is that??”

Tucker held one sleeve up in front of his nose and jerkily panned the flashlight (don’t look back, don’t look back) over the extremely pungent space ahead. There were two nondescript metal doors here: one straight in front of them, where the hallway dead-ended, and one on the right. Their goal. Hopefully. The walls were that same plywood, looking a bit grimier and worse for wear here than elsewhere, and there were four sort of rusty-looking dark rectangles on the grey floor that denoted— oh, there was a dumpster here.

A dumpster with a—oh my god, oh my god, have I ever smelled a—what does it smell—it wouldn’t have been long enough for Danny to—would it…? Tucker almost retched, his mind swirling with horrible possibilities and his senses overwhelmed by that horrible smell. He was beyond terrified and nauseated and oh my god I can’t do this.

He jumped and staggered away several feet when a warm hand fell on his shoulder. “Tucker!! Tucker! It’s just the dumpster, okay? There was just a dumpster here, okay? Although why the hell anyone would put a dumpster indoors like this—they should be, they should be sued for p—for employee health risks—anyway, anyway, we can get out, okay? We can get out!” The oval of light focused on the side door shrunk and brightened, to the size of a stained glass window, to the size of a dinner plate, as Sam approached it. Tucker had put his back to the wall, gasping, and but almost subconsciously his trembling hand held up his phone to illuminate her as, holding his gaze with equally wild eyes, Sam wrenched down with a burst of manic energy on the handle of the door on the right.

Moonlight spilled onto the floor of the hallway.

Without looking at each other, without any semblance of caution or dignity whatsoever, Tucker and Sam almost tumbled over each other as they sprinted out of the tunnels and slammed the door as hard as they could on whatever lay behind.

…

…

“sh*t. sh*t. Shiiitttt.” There was a strange hitch in Sam’s voice at the end. Tucker looked over from where he sat with his back up against the door to see Sam in much the same position, scrunched into a ball with her arms wrapped around her knees. Her breath hitched again, and then she made a noise like a sob. “Oh my god. Oh my god. That was the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

It took a moment for Tucker to think up around his violently pounding heart and tingling limbs and realize she really was crying. He hadn’t seen Sam cry in quite a while, probably not since they were both very small. Now, above her sharp elbow and the slanted angle of her arm, he could see that her cheek was shiny with tears. His own breath was hitching as well, although it was a sort of dry terror, and as of yet no tears fell.

Following from that insight, he vaguely realized that his breathing was too loud, too much and much too fast; the overabundance of oxygen was making him lightheaded. He donated a fraction of his consciousness toward bringing it back under control. His eyes were still watching Sam, and the biggest part of his brain currently active registered another thing he definitely wanted to be doing right now, and then puzzled slowly through how to go about it. In the process, he registered with some vague surprise that he did, in fact, possess limbs. Four of them. Feeling like he was moving underwater, he planted his hands and scooched to the right, and then clumsily, awkwardly, quickly reached over and around his best friend and hugged her shoulders tight.

She was warm, noticed the biggest part of his brain. He let himself fall forward into that unquestionable fact: she was warm. Like a synchronized swimming team, the disparate pieces of his consciousness began to drift back into formation as he closed his eyes and just squeezed.

The hitching of her breath began to slow down.

At length, Tucker was cognizant enough to notice that her shoulders were really rather boney, weren’t they. One pressed into his chest at a weird angle, catching him under the collarbone with that odd specific pain of a compressed blood vessel. He shifted, and she shifted with him, one arm sliding behind him until she was hugging him back, a little less tightly, hand fisted in his sweatshirt and twisting it in a way that would probably stretch it out. They sat in warm silence for another minute, and Tucker lifted his head partially to get her hair away from his mouth and partially to survey their new surroundings.

The bowling alley was one big open room. The glass door that had unfortunately been locked earlier was opposite them, with the big glass windows all spread out around it letting in that light that had seemed so little before and seemed such a breathtaking, incomparable radiance now. To their right scrolled out the long row of bowling lanes, twelve in total, their polished golden wood greyed in the night but just as lovely. A significant distance in front of them, maybe 20 feet beyond the ends of the lanes, was the counter behind which bored high school students waited to hand out bowling shoes; the system of large cubbyholes behind that displayed the shoes themselves, organized by size.

The warm mass shifted again beside him; looking down, he saw that Sam was also examining her surroundings, cheeks dry again, though some of her eye makeup was smeared down and sideways. She shrugged off his arms as she stood up, shakily. Tucker decided reluctantly to follow suit, leaning a good portion of his weight against the door for support. His hands still shook, but at some point when he hadn’t been paying attention, he’d gone back to breathing normally.

“Heh. I almost wanna say that was too easy,” Tucker joked ruefully. It was an attempt, anyway. Sam snorted and shoved him, even though the joke definitely didn’t deserve that much of a reaction. This was why she was his favorite.

Somewhat reluctantly, Tucker began to wander up the narrow avenue between the leftmost bowling lane and the wall. Sam took a more direct route toward the center of the room by stepping carefully over gutters and across the lanes themselves.

“Don’t slip,” he warned her in a low voice, amused just a little bit. Seriously, where were litigation-shy employees when you needed them. She waved him off, turning to survey everything more effectively.

“Tucker? I’m not seeing any idiot teenagers. Or, uh, s–ssserial killers.” She stumbled a bit on the phrase. “…Are we in the right place?”

He focused inward on that out-of-place feeling again, past the floating feeling, past the dread, past the residue of terror.

It was warm. “Yes,” he replied with absolute confidence. “We’re in the right place.”

He ambled farther out into the area. Getting warmer. Turning in a slow circle, he counted doors. First was the door they’d come in from, sitting innocuous as anything. (He had to fight the sudden strong stomach-clenching urge to block it with something heavy.) There was the cheerfully transparent door to the outside, showing sidewalk and moonlight (and being shown, he realized with a start followed quickly by a rush relief, by the room’s only security camera. Since they hadn’t entered through it, they almost definitely hadn’t been filmed). There was a swinging door on the wall to his right that logically led into the kitchen of the adjoining pizza place–the kitchen that provided the alley’s pizza and buffalo wings. The third door looked a lot like the door to the system of tunnels, and it was located in a mirror of that door’s position, on the other side of the lanes. Tucker remembered that the plywood passageway had kind of curved around something as they’d gotten close to the end of their journey. The bathroom, maybe?

He pointed it out quietly to Sam, and padded out around the lanes in that direction. Sam, crossing them more directly if nerve-wrackingly squeakily, arrived first and waited for him beside it, attempting to look diffident and largely failing. She was too tense, and her shirt had come half-untucked from her jeans. “This one, you think?”

Tucker did think. They considered the door.

It wasn’t as bad as turning a corner in the flashlight-illuminated emergency passageways. That had been furiously, relentlessly dreadful, the process of shining their lights forward and around and then forcing their heads inch by inch around as well, almost overwhelmed by the utter dread of having no idea what could be on the other side (a man standing, a man running, that mask running oh my god don’t think don’t think) , but knowing that once they saw it, there would be no way they could unsee. Still, even in the moonlight, a closed door always holds a degree of awful mystery. The comparison between the two situations actually reminded Tucker of his phone flashlight, which was still on and angled behind him on the ground as he absently held it in one dangling hand. He checked the time: 3:23, September 30th. (There was something about that date, wasn’t there…?) He swallowed and readjusted his grip purposefully; there was no crack under the door, but whatever lay behind it would be dark, most likely.

Sam saw his expression. Her jaw tightened as her eyes communicated a grim soft understanding, and she wrapped black-tipped fingers around the handle.

She pulled it like ripping off a bandaid.

And then swore as they both lurched back a step, blinking. It turned out the moonlight wasn’t nearly as bright as they’d thought it was, because they were instantly blinded by the light streaming out of the small, empty space. (Tucker’s mind shied away from the word “hallway.”) Tucker forced himself to inspect it even as his eyes twinged painfully, adjusting. Two red doors bearing the ubiquitous symbols for “men” and “women” stood set into the white wall on the right (bathrooms and premonitions, bad associations, bad associations…). On the left was a plainer brown door labeled “EMPLOYEES ONLY.” The two fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling buzzed cheerily. Someone had left them on.

“...Huh.” Sam stared.

Tucker glanced over his shoulder. The sudden influx of light had had another effect: suddenly, the bowling alley looked a lot darker. Rather hurriedly, he stepped inside beside her and shut the door. They examined their options.

Great, now they had to open another door. “Left?” Sam asked him, raising an eyebrow.

“Left,” he confirmed. No more bathrooms, not if he could avoid them.

They repeated their nervous choreography from before.

And then freaked out in unison.

“Danny!"

~(*0*)~

The room contained four rolls of paper towel, six spare rolls of toilet paper, one bucket, one mop, one container of Windex, two of 409, and one crumpled body, complete with recognizable mop of messy black hair.

“sh*t, Danny!” Sam hastened to her knees next to him. Tucker gave the room another wide-eyed scan before allowing himself to take his focus off of his surroundings. Danny was sprawled out on the floor on his side, one arm trapped under him in a way that would definitely have made it fall asleep if he’d been here for any significant length of time. There was no blood or anything visible on the floor, but Danny didn’t move or respond in any way to the intrusion.

Scooting around behind him, Sam carefully tipped him toward her so he was mostly on his back. Tucker very nearly had that heart attack that had been threatening all night when he realized Danny wasn’t breathing–but that wasn’t all that unusual for Danny, actually. (God, what a sentence.) He knelt to feel at the side of his neck for a pulse: thready, but definitely there. Oh my god. Thank you. The open door behind them made it decently easy to see details, and Tucker noted that Danny’s face was even whiter than usual, muscles slack. There was some sort of blotchy red discoloration around his eyes and trailing down half of his face, raw-looking like when Sam had a bad sunburn.

“Shiiiit, what’s wrong with him?!” Frantic energy escaped through the cracks in Sam’s vowels and the quick, pointless motions of her hands. “He’s not waking up!”

Floating slightly in his head again, Tucker stared closer at Danny’s face, which seemed to be down a small tunnel. There was something weird about it, wasn’t there? Besides the blotchy thing…it was kind of…blurry. Indistinct. Mouth a little too wide.

Before he could put his finger on it, Sam, apparently for lack of anything better to do, shook Danny roughly by the shoulders, then pulled back abruptly with a small yelp as he jolted, face animating and screwing up in pain. Sam bumped her head on the wall behind her and then scrambled to her feet just as Danny began to hack, loudly, curling around into himself on his side again. Tucker abruptly surfaced out of his stupor. “Auhh! Danny! Danny, are you okay?!”

He didn’t answer, just coughed more loudly, convulsing. Which led to his head whacking into the wall at high speed. “sh*t! Sam, get his head!”

Together, they wrestled a violently retching, very cold unconscious teenager out of the supply closet and into the brightly lit entrance hall. There, Tucker hovered while Sam tried to protect Danny’s head and yelled a lot. “Danny! Can you hear me? It’s Sam and Tucker, we’ve got you! You need to tell us what’s wrong!”

Tucker stood off to the side with an increasingly uncomfortable feeling of deja vu.

What comes around, goes around, and everything comes around. Tucker distantly reflected that he’d been recognizing uncomfortable repetitions and patterns all day. Maybe that was all his psychic “gift” really was: recognizing the patterns that boded disaster. They’d found Danny in the same place Schulker had been. They’d had to use the tunnels they sprinted down, the three of them, only a few weeks ago, tasting an entirely different flavor of adrenaline. The thread of this foreboding had ended at a bathroom door, with someone he cared about hurt on the ground. And thinking way back, to that day with the lunch lady when he was oh so young, he had to consider that maybe long trips down labyrinthine hallways had never, for him, ended in good places.

Because now, standing off to the side, cringing at Danny’s ugly, wracking coughs with absolutely no idea how to help, Tucker thought, Gosh, this feels a lot like the start of that last summoning we did, doesn’t it?

And then he processed that thought completely and screamed, “Sam, get away, I think he’s gonna–!!”

And then Danny choked and arched his back and the world turned green.

~(*0*)~

There was an impression of a great many things whooshing past him, and Tucker was knocked off his feet by something moving too fast to see. He scrambled backward into a wall, his entire nervous system screaming at him wrong, bad, badbadbad getawaygetaway as hurricane-force winds buffeted him even as he felt without a doubt that the air stood completely still. Someone was screaming, and he couldn’t tell if it was him or– Sam! “Sam!! Sam, are you okay??!” he hollered into the green, into the writhing mass of stumbling, buzzing, crawling, slithering, green static that was everywhere and nowhere and inside him and in the walls and squealing in his head and biting into the inside of his skin with a thousand slimy teeth. Rat king, said his mind, and Tucker curled up and shut his eyes and covered his ears and prayed it was a dream.

Minutes passed.

“Tucker!! TUCK!! Where are you?! I’m here!!” came Sam’s voice in response, and Tucker almost cried with relief–was he already crying? He couldn’t tell–as he pulled his fingers out from too deep in his ears before rasping back, “Sam! I’m okay! What’s going on?!”

“Tucker, where are you? I’m coming to you!” answered Sam’s voice.

…Except it wasn’t Sam’s voice, was it? Tucker strained his ears past the screeching green static. Wasn’t it a little…tinny? A little slick? A little wrong? “Tuck, tell me where you are!” it yelled again. Closer by. Tucker very nearly threw up. He jammed his fingers back in his ears, deeper, deeper, and prayed to survive.

Something was in front of him, trying to pry his arms apart. Trying to pry his fingers out of his ears with cold hands, and he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t open his eyes.

Something was in front of him, touching him, close enough for him to feel the radiating chill.

Tucker wouldn’t open his eyes.

The hands on his arms released. It seemed to move away.

Seconds passed.

Minutes.

Something was screaming.

~(*0*)~

…

….

……….

“Tucker? Tuck, it’s just me. Tuck, open your eyes.”

The hands on his shoulders were warm, gentle. They hovered restlessly over his fingers, his arms. “Tucker, it’s Sam. You can open your eyes.”

Tucker felt warm breath on his face. There were already warm tears there, and the muscles around his eyes were sore from how tightly they’d been clenched shut. But he knew he couldn’t open them. That was what the thing in front of him wanted. The thing stealing Sam’s voice. Oh, god, Sam–

“Tucker, listen, I swear it’s me, okay? There was something in me, but I think Danny pulled it out. I’m okay now. We’re okay. It’s over. But he’s hurt really bad, and I don’t know what to do….” The voice sounded close to tears.

It’s not her. It’s not her. It’s not her.

...

And then it let out a huff of air and growled, “Okay, this is getting ridiculous. Tucker, stop being a little bitch and look at me, you’re fine!”

And that–

Okay, that sounded like Sam.

Hesitantly, Tucker opened his eyes.

Sam was on her knees in front of him, hair wild and teeth bared. Behind her was the brightly lit room from before, looking exactly the same. The lights didn’t even flicker. Beyond Sam, Danny lay on the floor, once again utterly still.

“What happened,” Tucker croaked.

“You think I have a f*cking clue?” She laughed breathlessly once, with a note of hysteria.

Wincing, Tucker stood up and stumbled over to Danny. He seemed sort of half-conscious now, eyes partly open and tracking Tucker’s movements above him, but he didn’t respond to any sort of question or command.

From behind him, Sam ventured, “Maybe if we get him outside, into some fresh air…?

Tucker almost fell over for, like, the eighth time tonight. “Fresh air?! That’s your one idea, he just needs fresh air?!” he squeaked, panic warring with how utterly wrung-out he felt. This must be what it was like to be a worn-out dishrag. Like those ones in the infomercial that absorbed all the water and then squeezed it right out just so it could be filled up again–a ShamWow. That was it. Tucker felt like a ShamWow for trauma.

“f*ck, heh, okay, let’s just–let’s just get him outside.”

And that’s how they ended up wrestling a limp Danny onto Tucker’s back–and he wasn’t ridiculously heavy but unconscious people were surprisingly hard to move, it felt like every time Sam got an arm in place and Tucker moved to take the leg the arm would slip off again over his shoulder, how did you even distribute the weight?– and making their jittery way as fast as they could across the dark bowling alley to the door they’d entered through, the tunnel door. Tucker braced for the dark, and the fear, and the smell, and gritted his teeth under the new dead weight that would make it that much harder to run. Sam speedwalked in ahead of him, pointedly not looking anywhere but straight forward. She made for the door to the right, the one that should lead outside but had been locked when they’d tried to go in before, almost two hours ago now. And all the while Tucker was thinking please, please, please, I can’t go all the way back there, how will we even find the right door, please please open...

It opened easily from the inside.

Tucker almost shut down from pure disbelief. Escape, just a few feet away–actually–really?

Sam let out a whoop. “Come on, Tuck!” She sounded manic, drunk on fresh nighttime air and the outside. She held open the door and grinned at him, crazy and wide.

Tucker took a deep breath and sprinted out after her. And for a few brief seconds he didn’t really care how Danny bounced on his back, or that they were in the dark and maybe immersed in the smell of a dead man, because he could see an empty parking lot and their ride home and he was so done with tonight. He was already grinning, already starting to feel so alive because it was over, probably the worst night of his life and they’d gotten him, they’d won, it was over, they were outside and alive–

Tucker made it a few steps outside the door and froze.

Just like that. His knees locked in place, and his heart dropped into his stomach and dissolved into bitter acid. He stood there, head tilted back, and god, he just wanted to cry.

September 30th. Mabon was over, and from horizon to horizon stretched a green, green sky.

Chapter 14: Ozone and Abracadabra

Chapter Text

Ozone and Abracadabra

or alternatively: Mother Said a Smile Breeds Goodwill and Amity

“Wait.” Sam had let the tunnel door swing closed, and now she stepped up beside Tucker where he stood transfixed, looking upward. “...What’s wrong with the sky?”

A combination of that question and Danny’s leg slipping off of his right arm shocked Tucker out of his horrified reverie. When he was done scrambling not to overbalance and dump his friend on the concrete, he turned to her, panting. “You can see it?”

“Yeah, I can see it, it’s neon green and it’s the whole f*cking sky.”

Tucker felt like he should probably be more upset by this revelation, but he honestly just…didn’t have the energy. “I thought maybe it was a psychic thing. But if you can see it…then probably everyone else can too.”

Sam shifted her weight between her feet. She seemed at a loss, which was possibly not a state in which Tucker had ever seen her before. “Well. That has some implications. Do you think there’s, like, anything we can do about it?”

Whatever Tucker would have replied (something along the lines of “uhhhhh” or just a blank, exhausted stare) was lost when all the windows of the buildings in a sixty-foot radius abruptly shattered and exploded outward, with a noise like chandeliers dropping in a movie scene. Tucker and Sam instinctively ducked, crouching in place and shielding their heads. Next to Tucker’s ear, Danny muttered something that sounded like “Owww….”

“What the hell?” Sam shrieked. Together they stood (Tucker more slowly, hampered by the weight on his back) and turned to stare in shock at the shards of shining glass strewn across pavement, a few pieces still tinkling and thudding on the ground.

It was only one quiet out-of-place crunching sound that drew Tucker’s attention to the right, but it was a very good thing he did look. Because picking its way over the glass about fifty feet away was a humanoid figure, no more than a silhouette, but something about the odd, stop-motion way it moved made Tucker want to puke.

It took another tentative step forward.

“Sam, we gotta go! We gotta go now!!” Tucker put his head down and sprinted for the car. Sam, blessedly, only took a half-second to identify what he had been looking at before taking off right behind him, pulling her lanyard with her keys out of her pocket. The car’s headlights flashed on with a soft crunch-click. After a moment of hesitation by the passenger-side door Tucker remembered Danny and yanked on the handle of the back door nearest to him. It was still locked, but Sam smashed the button on her key again as she dove into the driver’s seat, unlocking all the other doors. Tucker heaved the deadweight in with very little ceremony, only pausing to shove Danny’s legs past the door frame too before scrambling in himself and slamming the door. “Drive!”

Sam already had the engine on. She reversed at a speed that sent Tucker and Danny both flying forward to mash uncomfortably into the back of the passenger seat and the armrest console respectively, and then she floored it. And then abruptly shouted as the handful of broken glass shards that had stayed on the hood of the car slid backward and directly into her face. Because–oh, yeah, Tucker had forgotten to mention–the car no longer had a windshield, or windows.

He should probably put his seatbelt on now, shouldn’t he?

Once that was accomplished, he considered Danny. Danny was slumped down halfway off the seats and into the foot space in front of him, which, while not exactly comfortable, might be the safest place for him. Tucker dared to twist over his shoulder as they sped out of the parking lot and yelped when he saw that same humanoid figure much closer than he’d expected: about two thirds of the way across the parking lot and walking purposefully toward them.

Thankfully, though, Sam was still making it eat her dust. It disappeared behind a screen of trees as they peeled out onto Hemlock Avenue.

There were no cars on the road—luckily, since Sam had swung left across several lanes without even considering that possibility—but as Tucker watched queasily out the window he began to discern the shapes of…things, lining both sides of the road. Humanoid shapes, every quarter mile or so, with indistinct faces, or moving strangely. More frequently whispers just at the edge of his hearing, flashes of motion and color wherever he wasn’t looking. The whispers lilted, curious; the humanoid ones turned to watch the car streak by, or took a few drifting steps in its direction. A thought struck Tucker. “Sam, can you see them?” he whispered.

Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “Yeah. Are they—Tucker next to you!!”

Tucker whirled as the car fishtailed. He frantically scanned the backseat, but there was nothing there except him and Danny and an empty packet of Sunchips, what—

His eye caught on the rear view mirror. There was something reflected in it next to him, a shifting mass—a woman, bloodied, grinning—

Tucker yelped and flailed and punched the empty air next to him. When he looked back at the mirror, the middle seat was empty.

“f*ck. Tucker, call Paulina,” Sam said in a choked voice, breathing hard. “See if she knows any, like, protective charms? I’m going to take us to my—” She broke off and gave her full attention to swerving around something in the road that looked like a pothole, or possibly a smear with teeth.

Tucker was infinitely glad that he’d bothered to put Paulina in his contacts immediately after their talk in the pool shed instead of procrastinating, as he was wont to do generally. Sam poured on more gas, and their surroundings blurred as he hit the call icon. Paulina picked up on the third ring. “Foley, what the hell is going on?! The sky is, like, green—”

“We don’t really know, there’s a portal involved, but that’s not important right now, what’s important is do you know any charms or protective anything against ghosts?”

“Ghosts, wha—are you driving?”

“Please!”

That seemed to shock Paulina out of her confusion. Tucker put her on speakerphone. “Eh, yes, but most protective charms need materials. What do you have with you?”

Tucker had copper wire, two washers, and a screw in his pocket (the last time he’d worn these pants, he’d been trying to fix poor Diane, PDA number seven). Sam had dried sage, the herb that she’d used at the ends of the summonings; she now apparently never left home without a packet. The car itself had one unidentifiable little plastic thingy that may have come from a water bottle and a cache of spare change. Paulina sighed gustily. Tucker wondered if he should’ve mentioned the Sunchips bag.

“Okay, can you light the sage on fire?” Paulina asked after a moment. The answer was no, since not only were they in a moving car with no windows, but it was also a bunch of small shavings of sage rather than a cohesive bundle. “Great. Great. Okayyyy, copper wire. Is either of you religious? Any religion?”

Tucker said “Kinda…?” while Sam grimaced.

“Alright, then I’ll choose the symbols. You know what an evil eye looks like?”

“It’s just, like, an eye, right?” Sam called over her shoulder.

“At its most basic, yes,” Paulina responded with no small amount of disdain. “The copper wire should be good. Make an evil eye with it and…well, there’s no doorways, but maybe you could put the sage in the windows? Below, in the crack, I mean. And I will give you some spells to ward away evil, so you’d better get your notes app out fast, because I am not repeating myself.”

Tucker quickly jotted down the charms she dictated to him and set to work twisting the wire while Sam started chanting the shortest one. Paulina hung up after a few more pieces of advice on wards, likely to call her friends and strengthen her own barriers. If these things got aggressive—and Danny had assured them that they did; haunted houses were avoided for good reason—then someone had to start notifying the city, or the county, or however far this thing spread.

It was unfortunate that the copper wire wasn’t sealed, because even though it would seem that bundled metal threads would provide more friction, they quickly became slippery between the pads of Tucker’s fingers. Finally he had something that vaguely resembled an eye–just in time for something to thump down hard on the roof of the car, making the whole car bounce on its shock absorbers. Sam swore.

The sunroof was the only window that hadn’t broken–something about the angle, maybe?–and Tucker could just see the dark pads of a splayed hand through the tinted glass. Fingers curled around the top of the hole where the windshield had been, notwithstanding the round-edged but still sharpish remaining glass.

Tucker jammed his wonky-looking evil eye into the sunroof directly above him. The hand disappeared immediately, and the fingers near Sam’s head uncurled and retreated as well. Something thudded to the ground behind them. Tucker twisted over his shoulder so fast his neck muscles wrenched, and then his breath caught when he saw something dark running up behind them, impossibly fast. “Sam! Speed more!!”

“I know….” she responded through gritted teeth. The car hit 75 mph, and then abruptly took a (luckily wide) corner. Wind whipped into Tucker’s face. They didn’t go up on two wheels, but it was a near thing; the Sunchips bag went out the window, and Danny’s limp body audibly whacked into the console at an angle that could not have been pleasant or good for his health. In retrospect, Tucker probably should have belted him in at the start.

“Tucker! Spells!”

“Right!” Tucker gripped his phone and reopened his notes app. “You should probably have the eye. Like, on the dashboard or something?” Though the absence of a windshield made that a perilous proposal.

He dropped his evil eye into Sam’s clammy hand and began chanting through the list of Paulina’s spells. And it did seem to help, or maybe it was just that they were getting further from the paranormal weirdness’ point of origin. They still rocketed past the occasional figure on the side of the road, heard the occasional whisper, but nothing else tried to get in the car. Recognizing this did nothing to slow Tucker’s galloping pulse.

At long last, they screeched to a halt in front of Sam’s house.

…

It was so quiet.

For a moment, they just sat in the car and breathed.

The street was empty. There were no streetlights, and the large houses on the cul-de-sac crowded above them, denser darknesses to complement the night sky. Or they would be, but the effect was rather diminished by the sky’s sickly greenish tint. Beyond it, the moon dipped and wavered.

Sam swung her door open and leaned out to toss a distrustful glance up and down the street. Only when she seemed satisfied did Tucker open his own. “You get the feet?”

“Ugh.”

With plenty of jostling, Sam and Tucker managed to carry Danny (who had ceased to be at all responsive; Tucker remembered the console-whacking, cringed, and made an extra effort to stabilize the head) to her front door. Sam fumbled with the key one-handed while Tucker nervously rocked on his heels. “Your parents–”

“Gone. Mom’s with friends, Dad’s on a business trip.”

The door opened just as Tucker started noticing flickers of motion in his peripheral vision. He set down his half of Danny in order to close it emphatically behind him. Sam dropped the legs. “Okay,” she said, letting out a shaky breath. Paulina had instructions for this part, too. “Salt lines.”

The pantry was stocked with a full, unopened box of Kroger iodized salt as well as a half-used one. “Lucky” felt like an understatement. Thusly armed, Tucker and Sam traversed the hallways in silence only broken by the occasional terse comment, spreading lines of salt as thin as they dared on the sill of every window or threshold of every door on an exterior wall. At one point, Tucker noticed that the outline of the copper eye was imprinted in red creases on Sam’s sweaty palm.

They were halfway up to the second floor when a gust of cold wind skipped up Tucker’s sleeves to chill the backs of his arms. He stopped, clutching compulsively at Sam’s wrist. “Wait. What if something was already in the house.”

Sam cursed. She sounded exhausted. “Just block off every room we don’t need. If it’s in the hallways…” She trailed off because really, at this point? There was no planning for that scenario. They would throw whatever they had at it, and they would run.

There was something in the gym on the second story.

Quietly, quietly, they drew their line across the floor, blocking off not just the door but the whole wall it abutted. Quietly, they crept through into the rooms adjoining and lined those side walls as well. And then they noticed that the door was cracked. Gently, gently, Sam pulled it closed with a small click.

Something slammed into the wall from the other side. Tucker and Sam bolted, crushing salt into the carpet fuzz and stumbling as they went.

~(*0*)~

In conclusion.

Tucker Foley spent the last few hours of the worst night of his life so far shivering himself awake on a pile of clothes in the laundry room, in a house shared by his best friend and one-and-a-half monsters. The house was quiet, but it was not empty, and it certainly was not kind.

Outside, the remnants of decaying starlight whispered over windowsills and practiced their smiles.

~(*0*)~

Morning looked like pea soup in the odd green half-light. Yet another reason to hate everything, Tucker supposed.

Speaking of existential despair, Danny woke up at around 7:15. He groaned, coughed, pushed himself up from his pile of crumpled-up towels, and glared blearily at Tucker. “What the f*ck,” he enunciated carefully, with palpable indignation.

Sam laughed, a little breathy, from her perch atop the washing machine. “You’re asking me.”

Danny coughed again, pushed himself up further, cleared his throat twice (he sounded awful), and then caught sight of the verdant view out the laundry room’s small window. His eyes widened, and he scrambled to his feet only to have to squat down again, woozy. “What the—are we—?!”

Frankly, Tucker was too tired for this sh*t. Though it was vaguely nice to see that even Danny could be shocked by something this horrifying. “Yeah, the sky is green. Please tell us why, and how, and where you’ve been for the past 24 hours, and also I’m stealing your towel.” He proceeded to yank it from under Danny’s hip without giving him a chance to process. It was cold in the laundry room.

The Manson laundry room, which was a little smaller than Tucker’s bedroom, and they were posed in it a bit like a Renaissance painting. Tucker sat on the floor wrapped in large, ugly sweaters and leaned indolently against a dusky blue side wall. Danny sprawled on a mound of fluffy bath towels a few feet in front of the washer and dryer, and Sam lorded above them, perched atop the washing machine like a powerful feudal queen with the under-eye bags to match. A small window above her and to her left poured its sickly green sunlight onto the wood floor between them. Two sticks of sage burned quietly in the corner.

Danny blinked and looked ill. “Uh. Okay, I—what’s the last thing—sh*t! I got summoned, didn’t I.” He looked at Sam and Tucker for confirmation. Sam shrugged.

“I, I got summoned, and….” He paused, staring off into the middle distance. The dryer creaked. “I was on my way to Nasty Burger. To meet you guys. Woah, thank god I didn’t drive, it could’ve—”

“Danny!” Sam snapped.

“Yeah?”

“Focus. You got summoned?”

Danny’s pupils were blown strangely wide, cat-like. It was only because he noticed this first that Tucker went on to register that Danny’s eyes weren’t usually that very familiar green. Ignoring his scrutiny, Danny continued. “Uh. Yeah. I got summoned. But it—felt weird. Like, usually I get a chance to sorta resist? Like, decide if I’m gonna show up and place the call. This time I didn’t even have time to decide, I just blinked and was there and something…something hit my face that burned, and there was someone behind me? And then…I….” He trailed off. Blinked. Looked unsettled. “I don’t think I remember anything after that.”

Sam kicked the glass door of the washing machine she was sitting on, making a dull thump. Tucker sighed gustily. “Fabulous. Outstanding.”

They considered for a few seconds. Then: “Are you feeling o–”

“What did it look–” Tucker and Sam both cut themselves off at the same time. Tucker gestured for Sam to continue.

“The place where you got summoned to, right before you got hit. Do you remember what it looked like?”

Danny paused for a long, long time, squinting down. The seconds ticked by. Sam leaned forward in anticipation. Finally: “It was dark,” Danny said triumphantly.

Sam dropped onto her side on the washing machine and groaned. “Anything else? What about the circle you were in, did you see that?”

Danny hesitated again before looking up, brow furrowed. “Oh! It was on tile. And I think it was a…pentagram,” he said slowly. “But that doesn’t make sense, I’m a conduit for ghosts.”

Now that was interesting. Tucker shoved past his heavy, heavy exhaustion for the first time this morning and rolled up to a crouch. “Well, maybe that’s why everything went crazy and you yakked up, like, an entire dimension of green stuff. Speaking of which, are you feeling okay? I think you might be concussed.”

“The green stuff is ectoplasm,” Danny commented absently. “I feel generally like sh*t, but that’s nothing new.” Then he processed for a second, and shot to his feet, panicked. “Wait, I’m sorry, I threw up a whole dimension?!”

Tucker’s exhaustion, which he had successfully shoved to the side for a few seconds, toppled sideways and rolled back over him like a wave. He let Sam take over explaining what they’d been doing for the past day and night. Other than one surprised “Woah. Uh, thanks,” when Sam got to their breaking and entering for his benefit, he mostly stayed silent. When she explained about fortifying the house with salt and mentioned the presence upstairs, Danny’s shoulders tensed further and he glanced upward and to the left. “You’re right. There’s definitely something up there. I can–go deal with it if you–” He started for the closed door but staggered on his first step and had to lean against the wall. “sh*t, that really was not good for my core.”

Tucker had leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, but at that he opened one to squint at Danny. “Dude, you should probably sit down. We salted it off, so it shouldn’t be able to get into the rest of the house, according to Paulina. Uh, but, ya know, on the off chance, do you think you can defend us if anything comes in here?”

Danny sat down and did a quick self-assessment. “Uh, yeah. Probably.”

Reassuring. Well, whatever. “Then I’m gonna take a nap.”

~(*0*)~

In the interest of not waking up a quietly snoring Tucker, Sam and Danny migrated slowly and painfully out into the hallway, Danny still attempting to stifle a periodic cough. The hallway was spacious, with white walls and a window at the nearer end throwing unnatural-natural light toward them like a child spilling jacks across the hardwood floor. Neither Tucker nor Sam had tried turning on the overhead lights during the long night; it hadn’t even occurred to them as an option. Sam and Danny sat against the wall nearest to the laundry room and conferred in low voices. “Do you know how many there are?” Danny asked.

“No, we don’t even know how far the effect goes. Like, if it’s local, or–” She cut herself off. Worldwide was too horrifying to contemplate, much less voice.

Danny frowned. “I—I think I shouldn’t be a big enough portal to displace that much ectoplasm. Have you looked at the news?”

Sam wanted to kick herself. How had they not thought to look at the news? God, she needed a nap. She tossed out a “Not yet” as confidently as possible and tooled around on the internet until she found a national news channel that streamed live footage on its website. It was crackly and barely comprehensible, which gave them both pause, but eventually they were able to gather that there was no mention of a green-tinted apocalypse at the national level. She opened a new tab and pulled up the website for the Amity Local News.

Tiffany Snow was not in her element. She wore no makeup, her hair was pulled up in a fraying ponytail, and her tone was subdued, as opposed to lascivious or vaguely maniacal. She shuffled frantically between papers from the ever-growing pile on her newsdesk, some intern’s hand occasionally reaching into the shot to hand her another. There was no livestream, but the broadcasts of the past few hours were posted in twenty-minute video chunks below the channel’s logo. Sam clicked on one somewhere in the middle.

“–urging all residents to stay in their homes. Unverified reports suggest the phenomenon does not extend beyond the Heights in the north of Amity and Wilhelm Avenue in the southwest, but authorities advise sheltering in place over evacuation. There has been discussion of an organized evacuation in the last hour; we’ll keep you updated on, uh, that…. All public buildings in Amity except those involved in the emergency response, whether inside or outside the affected area, are closed for the foreseeable future; this includes but is not limited to libraries, schools, post offices, the Department of Motor Vehicles, and the mayor’s office. Water and power stations will continue to run with a skeleton crew, though you may experience blackouts as employees report trouble monitoring levels and maintaining their, uh, salt barrier–”

Shuffling feet and a number of faint car alarms could be heard in the background. Sam pressed the home button and then opened Google Maps, zooming out to show the whole of Amity. “Where did she say it was? Northeast of Wilhelm and below….”

“Uh, I think ‘the Heights.’”

“Got it.” Sam traced her finger over the map. “Okay. So we don’t know how far east it goes, but if it vaguely centers around the Westside Mall then it should only be about, like, two-thirds of the city, including suburbs. But if it ends in the Heights, then we are nowhere near the edge.”

“I couldn’t leave anyway. These ghosts are my fault; I need to get rid of them,” Danny stated with the calm assurance of absolute fact.

Sam didn’t argue with him. She’d barely listened, really. Something had been bothering her for a few minutes now (besides the many, many obvious things currently bothering everyone with a pulse). Sam didn’t like not fully understanding her situation. “You’ve mentioned ectoplasm twice now. Like, that’s why the sky is green.” She frowned. “What actually is ectoplasm?”

“Okay, that might take a while.” Danny coughed again as he settled more comfortably against the hallway wall. He had been sounding worse and worse the longer he was awake, and he looked even more tired than usual, but he took a deep breath and launched into a lecture.

“Okay, so ectoplasm’s…weird. I’ve read a lot of my parents’ research, and I barely understood anything, to be honest, like, have you seen my grades? But so anyway, it’s not—it’s not matter, in the way we traditionally understand matter. And it’s not energy—notwithstanding the whole, they’re the same thing—but—you know what I mean. The thing with ectoplasm is, it’s a thing, but it’s also a place. And yet you can move it, despite its being a location. That’s how it generates power actually, because when it’s moved from over there to over here there’s a sort of ‘should be’ flowing from the ‘here’ to the ‘over there,’ like a kind of cosmic battery where the electrons are particles and waves and, like, gravity or whatever, and also something else entirely. And ghosts are made mostly of ectoplasm so they tend to flow with it, following that ‘should be’ from here to there, but if they’re particularly messed up and want it enough, sometimes they’re actually able to move against that current and flow in the opposite direction. But Ja—I think that every second they do that, they’re being battered by that energy and whatever else of the ‘should be,’ and that’s why they tend to, like, corrode. And also that’s why so many ghosts manipulate energy in some way, ‘cause of that separation.”

“...Huh. So if the tendency of ectoplasm is to flow back along the should–”

A weird buzzing sound interrupted Sam mid-follow up question, making them both jump and eye the direction of the gym. The panic passed when they heard scrabbling from the laundry room and Tucker’s voice, laced with panic, saying, “Mom, listen to me.”

Danny cursed. “My parents!” He felt in his pockets, but his phone was nowhere to be found. “Sam, can I borrow your phone?” She handed it over. Her parents were still out of town and not due to be back for another two days, and they definitely did not watch the local news.

The Fentons picked up on the second ring, and from the sound of it they were frazzled. Sam could hear at least two distinct voices from where she sat next to him, what was presumably his father’s deep voice vibrating over the line and his mother’s glitching and fizzing more frequently.

“Yeah, I’m fine, I’m with—I just went for a walk, and—yeah, my phone died. I know. Sorry…. Wait, are you in the car? Are you kidding me, it’s not sa—Mom!”

There was a long pause.

“No, I’m—I’m good here. I don’t think she minds. But you really shouldn’t be—oh. Okay. Okay.”

Another pause. Danny’s volume had been rising over the course of the conversation, but not really corresponding to his level of irritation. Loud family. Sam could hear his dad, too, sounding boisterous even if she could only catch the occasional word. His mom no longer seemed annoyed, but maybe…excited?

“Bye. Oh, I think I’ve got a cold. And the connection is bad. Yeah. Love you too.” Danny looked a little embarrassed about that last part. He hung up and slid Sam’s phone toward her on the ground. “They’re out studying ghosts. Literally. Dad said this was the single biggest break in their career.”

Sam frowned. “Is that…safe?

“Not at all! But they think they’re better prepared than everyone else. And, I mean, they’re probably right, but….” He pushed back further into the wall, gathering up one leg against his chest and resting his chin on his knee. His eyes went distant. “There’s…things. Out there. I don’t know if any of them came through, but there’s things you couldn’t even imagine, that could shred through salt barriers like, like tinfoil.” He marinated in that for a few seconds. “sh*t. I should go shadow them, or something. I need to deal with this.” He stumbled to his feet, and the hallway filled with hissing voices as a tattered white light came from everywhere and nowhere. For a moment his limbs were strange and distorted and his features flickered like shadows—and then he hissed and grabbed his chest and his arms were the right length again. He slid down the wall and sat, heavily. “sh*t.”

“Not happening?”

“Not happening.”

Sam figured this was probably the part where she was supposed to act sympathetic, but she already had the phone in her hand, so she left him to his increasingly unimpressive (if really, really unsettling) attempts to warp reality and poked reluctantly at her dad’s contact info.

Jeremy Manson picked up the phone on the second ring. “Sammy? Is something wrong? I actually need to be in a meeting in a minute, can we—”

How would she start with this? Yikes, it was already awkward. Best to confirm what he knew. “Uh. So you haven’t heard anything? About Amity?”

Something in her tone must have clued him in. Or, more likely, it was the fact that she’d called him at all. Either way, his own tone became significantly more tense. “No, what’s wrong?”

Sam pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s hard to explain. Um. There’s a citywide crisis going on. I’m safe, and I’m with my friends, but I. Thought I’d let you know.”

“Wait—citywide crisis? What does that mean, citywide—Sammy, are you in danger, what the hell is going on?!”

“The news will explain better than I can! Go on the website, it’s—it’s not a prank, Dad, it’s really bad, and you can’t come back in the city, okay? It’s safer for both of us if we stay where we are.”

“I—wha—is your mother alright?”

Sam’s heartbeat quickened. “Isn’t she in Chicago?”

“Oh! You’re right.” He paused for a moment then, a male voice just audible over crackles of static. Her father’s answer was quieter, as if he’d moved the phone away from his ear. “No, I’m sorry—I’m talking to my daughter. Yes, it’s an emergency. Sammy? Are you still there?”

“Yeah, but the connection is really bad,” she responded quietly. And then Sam had run out of things to say. It was weird; somehow, she’d thought that in an emergency like this, it would suddenly just flow. No more stilted conversations, all awkwardness washed away by mutual concern. But her dad was panicked, and she had no clue how to deal with that, and for some reason it was making her a little angry, just a little seed pod cracking open in her chest. And if she told him what was going on he would probably think it was a joke. And her phone was at two percent.

“...Dad, I’m gonna hang up and charge my phone. You should probably call Mom. And check the news?”

“Wait, Sammy, what—?!”

“Phone’s dying! Sorry!” She hung up. One percent.

And her charger was upstairs, wasn’t it.

She pressed her fingers into the ridges under her eyebrows and groaned. Let herself curl forward over her knees, relax, blank eyes staring mindlessly at the floor.

Sam had a headache.

~(*0*)~

Tucker was startled awake by his phone vibrating, loud against the hardwood floor. The room was empty, but he could hear muffled voices through the wall. He fumbled for his phone; the caller ID said “Mom.” Tucker was instantaneously wide awake.

He answered the call and didn’t even wait for her to speak. “Mom, listen to me. You need to get table salt, whatever salt you have on hand, and line all of the doorways and windowsills, right now. Is Dad with you?” Oh god, oh god, he was the worst son, he hadn’t even thought to prepare them and oh godddd Mom and Dad could have been, could have been–

“We already did, we turned on the news when we woke up and it said to drop everything and then Aunt Lacey called and Tucker where are you, are you safe?” She sounded just this side of hysterical.

Thank you.

“I’m safe, Mom, I’m totally safe.” An overstatement, but he got the feeling standards for “safe” in Amity had shifted a bit in the last twelve hours. “I’m at Sam’s house. I’m so sorry, I know I violated your trust, I–Danny was in trouble. It has to do with what’s going on. Have you seen–have you seen what’s outside?”

On the other side of the line, Angela Foley took four slow, deep breaths. “Yes. There was one in the yard. We think it went away. But that’s–that’s not important right now, Tucker, where did you go? And you’re involved–? Explain. Now.”

Tucker swallowed an egg-sized lump of fear and shame; it cracked on the way down. So it had been a close call.

What could he–

What should–

He slumped against the wall and told his mom the whole story.

There was a long silence when he finished.

“I’m so sorry all that happened to you, baby. I’m sorry I didn’t notice.” She sounded close to tears.

“It’s okay, Mom, I’m fine–”

“But also.” There was a loud crackle of static. “Tucker Foley. You are not going to continue looking into this, you are going to sit in that house and be safe. Promise me.”

“Mom, I–”

“Promise me!”

“I can’t make that promise, Mom, listen to me!”

“You’re a teenager, it’s not your job to deal with a serial killer!”

“But I’m a psychic, or something, and Tristan made it sound like something worse will happen if I do nothing! Either to me, or other people, or both. And I might be the only one who can do anything! So I can’t promise that, Mom, this is an emergency! People are getting hurt! I can promise to be careful, you know I am, but I would–I would really appreciate it if you would help me with this.”

She paused again, longer than before, breathing long and controlled. She was considering. She had actually listened.

She let out one more deep breath.

“...You don’t go outside without calling me.”

Tucker’s breath caught.

“You don’t go outside without calling me. I’ll pick you up; they said you can salt a car. Right now, you stay with your friends and keep each other safe. And if you think you know where this—this killer is, or is going to be, you don’t go anywhere near there. You call the police. Deal?”

Wait, actually?! “Deal!”

“And listen to me!” Her voice was low and fierce. “I am only saying this because my sister said something similar about how you could get hurt if you don’t do what the–what the victims need. You are my son and a child; I appreciate that you don’t want others getting hurt, but you don’t have any responsibility whatsoever in this situation except to keep yourself safe. Do you understand me?”

Tucker wasn’t sure he entirely agreed with the second part. But fair point, that was mostly why Tucker was doing it too. And he would really, really like his mom and dad’s help with this mess he was in.

“I get it, Mom. Thank you.”

She sighed, long and low. “I’ve got to go break this to your dad. Do you have a phone charger there?”

“Yeah?”

“Good. You stay on the phone.”

He fell back asleep to the warm susurration of static on the line. Much more reassuring.

~(*0*)~

“So this…fox you keep seeing.” That was Aunt Lacey’s slightly husky soprano voice, on a group FaceTime that also included Mr. and Mrs. Foley. How had Tucker never thought of asking Aunt Lacey?! After Tristan told him she shared their little problem, he should have called her first thing. Though she would definitely have told his mom. (Honestly, he should’ve just told his mom.) “That’s the part that doesn’t make sense to me. You’ve seen the ghosts of the last two victims, and this fox. In the occult, things tend to come in threes. Why two ghosts and a fox? Could the fox be the ghost of the third most recent victim? The, I think he was a Russian guy?”

“Was he Russian? The hacker, with the funny appropriate name,” Tucker’s dad added in. They could hear him hitting keys. Internet was still working, for now. “Nikolai Technus. That can’t be his real last name.”

“Maurice.” Tucker’s mom’s contribution.

Tucker felt kind of weird disagreeing with Aunt Lacey, as the most experienced person he knew with his species of paranormal inclination, but she’d told him first thing that she had never dealt with something this big before. She’d driven a few people home late at night, directed a few spirits to their final resting places. Nothing fancy.

Also nothing to write home about, literally. Lacey was six years older than her sister, and hadn’t even considered telling her about the scary circ*mstances she dealt with until Angela was twelve and Lacey was eighteen. Angela had declared the whole situation creepy and hadn’t seemed eager to hear more, and by then Lacey had been heading to college anyway, so she simply hadn’t mentioned it again. Angela had, quite plainly, forgotten about the weird story her sister had told her once, convincing herself it was a dream, or an especially confusing prank. Lacey hadn’t felt the need to remind her. She only had to deal with it once every few years anyway; it wasn’t a huge part of her life.

But right now, it was basically steamrolling Tucker’s life, so he voiced his opinion. “The fox didn’t really seem like a ghost to me, actually,” he explained. “It didn’t give me the same heebie-jeebies. But it was in the room with Amber and Schulker when I, uh. Fainted that one time.”

Tucker, Sam, and Danny were all on the floor of the laundry room this time, resting against strategically constructed piles of clothing. It was late morning, now, and the stronger light barely showed the green, so it was comforting as long as you didn’t look out the window. In the center, propped up on a sweater vest and facing Tucker, was his phone.

The sage was burning low and sputtering—Sam would have to replace that—but even though that meant he was probably being mildly poisoned less than the last time he was in the room, Danny was fading; he curled at an angle against the wall, contributing little. “Another thing that seems weird to me,” Lacey continued, “is that you’ve only encountered those two, or possibly three, spirits. But there’s six victims.” She was clearly enjoying being the voice of authority, even in these stressful circ*mstances. Aunt Lacey was good-natured and witty, generally leading the conversation at family get-togethers, and she’d always enjoyed a good mystery novel. Tucker found it ironic but a little cheering that this was what had broken her out of the shocked, cold, fretting state she’d been in since Tristan’s attack. “If the murderer hasn’t been caught, if they all have unfinished business, then I would expect all of their ghosts to be active,” she finished.

“But the first two died in Chicago. They’re probably buried there,” Sam put in. “Is the idea of ghosts being tied to their final resting places for real, or is that just in books?”

“I’ve seen some evidence of that,” Aunt Lacey acceded. “But I think it’s more of an inclination than a rule. And I’ve talked to people who say they’re actually more likely to latch onto the person who killed them.”

There was a long pause, filled with drifting sunlit dust and static over speakerphone.

And then Sam bolted upright. “What if they weren’t all killed by the same person?”

Something pinged in Tucker’s head. “That’s right, that article we read said the police considered the possibility of a copycat, didn’t it?”

“I read that article.” The cautious interest was obvious in Angela’s voice, even over the phone. “It said they weren’t pursuing that angle yet because the condition of the bodies was so similar, with details that hadn’t been leaked.”

“But what if they knew each other?” Maurice piped up.

“Or they could be following the same ritual! Like, off the internet or something,” Sam added.

The short nap may have helped more than he thought; Tucker was getting excited. “So maybe the first four were killed by the first murderer and the last two, the active ones, by the second?”

“Or the two in Chicago were the first and the four here in Amity were the second…” put in Mr. Foley.

“And what about the crime thing? Or the immigration thing?” Sam added animatedly. Tucker privately prayed that she not elaborate on the “crime thing” in front of Aunt Lacey, given her son’s categorization in that theory. “All of our theories split the victims into two groups, right? So it all makes sense if they were chosen by two different killers!”

“You should make a spreadsheet or something,” Danny muttered encouragingly from his huddle against the wall.

So they did. Seven victims, including Tristan. Patterns seemed to emerge, but they were spotty at best. The last three or four victims seemed to check a lot of the same boxes, while the first two, Frankie Young and John Mallory, were similar in that they didn’t seem to check any.

And that was it. One good idea, and then for the next half hour, they remained stumped.

Tucker’s dad yawned one of those huge dad yawns. Not everyone had pulled an all-nighter, but the adults had all been rudely awakened far too early. “What about your friend Paulina? Have you asked her about this?” he suggested.

Sam made a face but didn’t argue; that was probably a good idea. As the most experienced of their collaborators in a wide range of paranormal practices, occult and otherwise, Paulina was likely to know something useful, especially about the fox thing. Hey, they’d finally mastered sharing their information!

The dust settled on the floor, against the grain. “Well, I need to charge my phone. While we still have power, anyway. And I need to check on Tristan,” said Aunt Lacey decisively. “Shall we pick this up again later, ladies and gents?” She really was treating this like a mystery novel. Every time he talked, Tucker cringed as he heard himself very much not sounding that blasé.

“Tucker? Are you okay if we hang up?” worried Mrs. Foley. Under any other circ*mstances, Tucker probably would have been embarrassed.

“I’m fine, Mom.”

“And you’ll tell us if anything happens?” Mr. Foley.

“I will, I promise. Thank you guys. Really.”

“Bye, Mr. and Mrs. Foley,” Sam slid in. Danny mumbled something to the same effect.

“Bye, Sam. Danny. Bye, Tucker.”

“We love you, honey.”

And it was something about the way she said the last part that punched Tucker right in the gut. “We love you, honey.” It wasn’t a throwaway, wasn’t just something you say. No, Mrs. Foley had said it fiercely.

Tucker said it right back, the exact same way.

~(*0*)~

“hey paulina”

“if ur free”

“u know anything about summoning?”

She responded within thirty seconds.

“no”

“insightful.”

“sorry that was sam”

“ill be more general then”

“we Have Reason To Believe this guys a way more powerful summoner than he should be”

The reason was Danny, who seemed–was the correct word miffed? Miffed, with undertones of intense unease and a dash of trauma–that he’d been yanked away without any opportunity whatsoever to resist.

“would u, in all ur experience, have any idea why that is?”

Tucker hoped she was a sucker for obvious flattery. She seemed the type, but hey, she’d definitely surprised him before. She took a while to answer the question, but it was a thoughtful pause more than a sullen one. When she responded, it was, in fact, insightful.

“a lot of things r affected somewhat by belief”

“also intention but anyways”

“so like hypothetically, the greater the practitioner’s capacity for self-delusion, the more powerful the practitioner.”

...

“or idk maybe hes just liek rlly good at it”

“big words!”

“shut up sam”

“thanks paulina”

A pause, while Tucker formulated his next thought. He should probably ask about the fox first…? He hesitated, and Paulina beat him to the punch.

“so what actually happened?”

Tucker had to consult with Sam and Danny on this one. Danny had consented, reluctantly, to Tucker’s mom and no one else being told about his, ah, vital status. Mrs. Foley had, in turn, promised not to tell anyone, including his parents, though she didn’t seem happy about it. The three of them had worked together to give her the impression that no, Danny’s condition was not dangerous, it was just something large and life-changing he’d like to be able to tell his parents about on his own terms. (They had neglected to mention the whole ghost-hunting thing.)

Now, they settled on short, sweet, and vaguely true but incredibly misleading.

“the guy opened a portal”

“let a bunch of ghosts through”

“what did you expect?”

Tucker wrestled his phone back from Sam and moved out of tackling distance.

“sorry”

“please dont hold her against me”

Judgemental silence. Tucker cringed.

“were trying to figure things out, my parents r helping”

“we have no idea whyy tho”

“ideas?”

Three dots bounced on Tucker’s screen, indicating that Paulina was typing.

…

…

…

Read 11:52 AM

Tucker stared at his phone for a good ten minutes before giving up and setting it aside. Twenty minutes later, he texted her a quick rundown of all of their theories, in hopes that it would motivate her to at least voice her derision at what incompetent detectives they were. Paulina never replied.

He and Sam finally got some substantial sleep that afternoon, after Danny woke up from a short nap and felt well enough to offer to drag down mattresses from the nearest bedroom. He also made an expedition to the ominous second floor to retrieve Sam’s phone charger, and reported back that whatever was up there was still in the gym but hadn’t crossed the salt lines, and the rest of the barriers were holding fast. (He knew the latter to be true because he kept mildly shocking himself whenever he brushed against an exterior wall. The periodic yelps and swear words echoing down the stairs were surprisingly soothing.)

In a patch of green-gold sunlight, Tucker dreamt about the fox. It trotted down the street in front of him between two lines of gutted brown buildings. It looked like a bomb had gone off. A red-upholstered chair peeked through a gaping hole in a cement building, and water ran down the street toward them, glistening, reflecting broken cobblestones up and up. He blinked, and there were two foxes where there had been one, and this wasn’t strange at all.

They went left and left and left again, and once more, and arrived at Ember’s house. There was no reason to know what Ember’s house looked like, and indeed it didn’t particularly look like anything at all. That’s simply what it was.

There was a knock at the door, though no one in particular was there to do the knocking. A few moments of silence, and the two grey foxes padded, and the water flowed toward the house. Another knock. Amber opened the door and smiled.

Paulina opened the door and smiled.

Amber opened, Paulina opened the opened the door and smiled.

~(*0*)~

In conclusion.

It would later be publicly made clear what else had happened in the long hours before morning on October 1. After preparing all of her close friends and family as well as she could, Paulina Sanchez called in to Amity’s late-night radio station, which was just about to shut down when the greenout hit. (The greenout was what they called it, afterward. Sam complained that it was uncreative.) One of the radio hosts was the cousin of Lance Thunder, the head cameraman of the Amity Local News, and Thunder in turn woke up his colleagues and made a mad dash to the studio at around 4:30 a.m. Nearly all of his colleagues made it to the studio. Meanwhile, while the late-night radio hosts frantically repeated Paulina’s instructions, their intern called 911 exactly eight times, elbowing aside other contributors to an unprecedentedly high call volume. When he finally got through, he was transferred to the sheriff and relayed a somewhat garbled but thankfully usable version of what they had to do to ward a building. Twenty minutes later, the sheriff had cobbled together an emergency broadcast system consisting of 43 officers and staff members driving optimistically salted ambulances and police cars, tearing through the streets of Amity and stopping in highly populated areas to shout into megaphones over the sound of their sirens, instructing people to salt their houses, call as many friends and neighbors as possible with the same instructions, and above all do not leave your homes.

34 of these drivers made it back to the station. Of the remaining nine, three were later found wandering the streets with holes in their memories, covered in mud and strange lacerations. Another walked up to some of his coworkers two days into the greenout, smiled pleasantly, and opened fire, wounding two before they could drop him to the pavement, still grinning. What might’ve been the body of another police secretary was discovered in a dumpster, skin unbroken but missing all of the joints from its limbs and neck; it was impossible to confirm his identity, however, because not even his wife could remember his name.

The last three remained missing.

Chapter 15: Welcome to the Emerald City

Chapter Text

Welcome to the Emerald City

or alternatively: A Stew of Restless Minds

The second day of the Amitypocalypse—reporters had already begun to call it the greenout by then, but Tucker coined his own term to mollify Sam, who smiled and agreed that yes, that was much more creative—passed much like the early hours of the first. The main difference was that some of the fear had been bled off and replaced with a transfusion of pure, unadulterated boredom. They napped periodically. They bullied Danny, as the most combat-ready member of their little huddle, into escorting them to the kitchen for snacks every hour or so. That said, Danny still looked peaked. He napped more than either of the others, and the closest he could get to invisible was a sort of half-translucent state that sent whispers stirring up the back of Tucker’s neck, wherein when you looked from the corner of your eye you thought you saw patches of glittering darkness where his organs should be. Once it took Sam a full minute of shaking to wake him up.

They had dared to emigrate from the laundry room to the living room and were watching the live news stream on Sam’s parents’ flatscreen (the power was somehow, miraculously, still working, and those guys at the station had better get a raise sometime in the future) when word first came in that the federal government had come to town. Danny snorted derisively when the first shaky footage aired, filmed through someone’s second-floor window. Two people in white hazmat suits were setting up shoulder-height plastic barricades at the edges of the affected area. Something moved sinuously at the corner of the screen, and the two agents looked at each other, eyed the camera, and then speedwalked back to their plain black van.

“Those guys are terrible,” Danny commented when Tucker asked about the sour look on his face. “Literally incompetent. I’ve been running circles around them since I got zapped, except this one time when they pulled me into a circle and then accidentally summoned, like, six poltergeists.”

The embers of hope in Tucker’s lungs dwindled, but he didn’t let them die. “Maybe they just hadn’t sent their best guys. How high-profile were you in the Chicago supernatural scene? God, I just said that sentence out loud, didn’t I.”

Danny considered, cracking a half-smile. “I didn’t have a specific, like, haunt or anything, so they just sort of had a vague idea that I existed and I wasn’t your normal ghost. Don’t think they ever connected the portal operator to the guy who’d been doing their job for them for, like, half a year. So I guess it’s possible they have better people.” He seemed to find the notion more unsettling than promising, which, fair.

The next day, Wednesday the 2nd, wasn’t much different, hazmatted bureaucrats notwithstanding. School was still cancelled. Danny went into the other room and had a long, tense phone call with someone named “Jass” or possibly Jeff, according to Sam, who listened through the door. For some reason Danny seemed reluctant to tell them who this was; Tucker had noticed him starting a sentence with “Ja–” and then backtracking a few times, always when talking about ghost science or his fights back in Chicago. Another ghost-person, maybe, or just someone who needed to maintain their deniability if Danny’s probably-illegal existence was ever noted by the powers-that-be? He seemed nervous enough about it that Tucker had never pursued the subject. (Sam hadn’t noticed.)

Tucker’s dad called in the afternoon; his mom was busy on the phone with Aunt Lacey, who was not doing well. Tristan had woken up that morning with a fever of 101F, his mostly-closed stab wound ringed with swelling and redness that he’d apparently been hiding for a few days. He’d been discharged with instructions on long-term wound care, of course, but the only thing the family had been told to do in case of infection was to bring the fever down and report back to the hospital as soon as possible. Now there was no way to get him to the hospital, and no one answered the phone when Lacey called seeking any advice they could give her on deep-tissue infection, so she was stuck scouring the internet and cold-calling doctors outside the greenout zone for tips of the more and less reputable varieties.

Mr. Foley dutifully updated his son on this development, but tried to maintain an upbeat tone. He was sure these new government guys would get a handle on things soon. He and Mom were here if Tucker needed them, just a phone call away. Everything would be fine, no problem at all.

The weird thing was, it actually made Tucker angry. He gave one-word answers around a hot chest and gummy tongue. But he could hear the tension in his dad’s voice, so he nodded along. His parents needed to hear from him as much as he needed to hear from them, if not more.

When the time came to say “I love you,” he didn’t forget. Across the room in a patch of sunlight, Sam untied and retied her shoes.

By Thursday morning, it was apparent that the guys in white polyester and latex were not the heroes Amity deserved. It became apparent because of someone in an apartment in the Heights, who sent Tiffany Snow and her crack team a grainy photograph of two guys dragging a third one back out through a gap in the orange plastic barricade–two white hazmat suits flecked with red, and the third significantly more dirty, and also missing both legs. Apparently this had been the government’s first incursion into the greenout area. They did not try again on that particular Thursday.

On the bright side, quite a few Amity residents were showing an interest in amateur photojournalism. So. There was that.

The media and police were relying a lot on individual citizens for information–casualty counts, areas with more concentrated paranormal activity, etc.–so ringtones could be heard through thin walls all over. In the evening one of Danny’s friends from Chicago called, implying that while the crisis wasn’t yet on national news, it had at least made its way through the grapevine of family members, coworkers, and acquaintances to nearby cities and towns. (Coworkers were probably a big one. Tucker pitied the guy who had to tell his boss that he couldn’t commute to work because he was dealing with a highly localized ghost emergency.) The Manson landline got a lot of calls from concerned neighbors, and four of Tucker’s friends rang his cell to make sure he was okay. Among them was Mikey, who reported that he was holed up with his parents in their third-floor apartment, and it turned out their landlord, a weird, unsociable old man who was quick on repairs but otherwise practically impossible to deal with, was actually the perfect kind of weird for this situation: the prepper kind. He had bags and bags of salt stocked up in his basem*nt along with plenty of other non-perishable food items, and he was quick to set up a system for rationing supplies, calling up tenants, and keeping a lookout on all sides of the building. He was noticeably happier, huffing up and down the stairs at all hours dispensing safety tips; this was apparently the emergency he’d been waiting for his whole life, or at least since his last tour in ‘94.

Of course, this begged the question of how those without emergency food stockpiles were doing across the city. Things were already bad, but they would get much worse if a large number of people were forced outside in search of food. The looting so far had only been limited by the fact that many of those who attempted to loot…didn’t even make it to the stores.

Finally, on Friday, Danny was well enough to go out and fight some ghosts. Whatever was in the gym seemed well and truly unable to get in–they’d triple-checked–so Sam and Tucker didn’t really have a legitimate argument to keep him there, though they did their best.

“You’re already dead, wasn’t once enough?” Sam yelled from the kitchen. Tucker could faintly hear the microwave humming behind her. Sometime soon they should really start rationing, he noted absently.

“Seriously, it’ll be fine. Everything people have been able to film so far seems like a total pushover.” He said it laughingly, but his face didn’t quite match his tone. Maybe it was the way his smile was just a little too wide. Or maybe it was his pupils, dilated in a way that Tucker was pretty sure did not mean he was looking at a loved one. He kept glancing at the door and taking aborted little light-footed steps toward it, like it was going to run away if he stood here much longer.

In the end, Danny did make it out the door, and they watched him walk with terrifying purpose down the middle of the sunlit street and slip fluidly around a corner.

The whispers were louder without him.

So Sam and Tucker had some time to kill. Just two old friends in stale, sweaty clothes, scrambling for any topic other than the one that had dominated their lives and allowed no room for distractions. The silence was suffocating, oppressive. The green sky taunted them through shrinking windows. Despair bore down from above, starving conversation, dooming action, threatening even to swamp coherent thought and drown one’s very soul….

“Sooo, you come here often?” Tucker asked with a waggle of his eyebrows. Sam covered her face and groaned.

~(*0*)~

Danny came back five hours later as dusk gathered on the edges of buildings, bloody, limping, and grinning with every one of his teeth. The air around him seemed to quiver, his outline hyper-distinct along with the shadows on his clothes and skin, and Tucker was struck with the bizarre notion of a three-dimensional object in a two-dimensional world. Like at any moment he could pop forward, right out of the reality around him.

Sam squinted at him, shook her head slightly as if shooing a fly, and then proceeded to walk far closer than Tucker felt was strictly healthy right now. He silently resolved to stay at least five feet away until whatever this was was…well, not gone, but hidden. Wrapped back beneath Daniel Fenton’s skin.

So Sam took charge of surveying Danny up and down while Tucker very subtly moved from the couch to the stairs in the corner. “Yikes. Who had you for breakfast?” she asked with the air of the rookie detective at the murder scene in a bad CBS cop dramedy. Tucker thought it was a figure of speech until he took a closer look and, oh yeah, those did look a lot like bite marks, didn’t they. Grandmother, what big teeth you have….

Danny flopped onto the couch and stretched hugely, arching his back and popping his shoulders. He glanced at Sam slantwise and offered a languid smirk while the leather creaked and gave beneath his weight. “You should see the other guy.”

“And the other guy was a…yeti?”

“Dragon.”

“No f*ckin’ way.”

Danny just grinned.

“How…is it, out there?” Tucker ventured hesitantly.

“Not nearly as bad as I thought!” came Danny’s cheery reply. “If anything really big got through, it’s laying low in the sewers or something. And I’m not the only one out exploring! Obviously there’s my parents, not accomplishing much, but there’s also someone in a red hoodie setting sigil traps all over town–pretty clearly not an expert, it’s all pretty simple stuff you can get online rather than some of the really horrible ones I’ve dodged in really active places, but it’s working! They might have even sliced up more than me today. Wouldn’t let me get close enough to see their face, though.” He seemed disappointed, but then brightened again. “Oh, yeah, and a couple times I think I saw a werewolf!”

Predictably, Sam latched onto the part about the red-hooded ghost hunter, probing Danny’s memory for more details, and Tucker was happy to fade into the scenery the same way the sky outside faded from lime green to kelly green to emerald-on-black-velvet above the Mansons’ similarly darkening hedged-in yard. It wasn’t just the furtive movements, or the absolutely horrifying vibes that Danny probably couldn’t help radiating; it was the open, relaxed body language, the lazy but alert smile. This new version of Danny made him uneasy, but he couldn’t put a finger on exactly why. Something had changed….

Oh. Danny wasn’t tired. And it was terrifying.

It didn’t last, or at least Tucker was pretty sure it diminished. Danny talked animatedly on the couch with Sam for a while, and by about an hour in he was blinking more often and his smiles glinted less. He yawned once, and he and Sam padded into the kitchen to eat Captain Crunch straight out of the bag. By the time they got back, the earthquake-in-reality effect was pretty much gone, leaving only that faint smell of ozone and aftertaste of tinfoil that Tucker had mostly become accustomed to. Danny conked out in the laundry room not long after.

Now, if only that goddamn fox would stop showing in his peripheral vision, Tucker’s life would be absolutely peachy keen.

Tucker made the educated decision to take another nap. When that didn’t work, he said screw it and tried eating Captain Crunch straight out of the bag. He actually did feel a little better after that.

~(*0*)~

“Oh, yeah. I think it’ll probably be relatively safe to go out probably…day after tomorrow, at least in large groups. I talked to a guy who knows about this stuff, and I’m pretty sure he said all the ectoplasm should automatically drain back through me and all the natural portals over the next few months.”

Tucker startled, and he and Sam glanced at each other. “Okay, wait, you do know someone who knows a lot about ghosts? Why didn’t you tell us?! Or, like, go to him straight away?! And also what do you mean ‘pretty sure he said,’ who is this person?!” As she occasionally managed to do, Sam expressed Tucker’s exact thoughts with pinpoint accuracy.

Danny fidgeted, sliding his hands into his pockets. “Well…he’s dead….”

“Oh.”

“I guess I should’ve clarified that.”

“I mean…okay, I guess that makes sense?” Tucker was forced to allow. They were all awake again, leaning against counters or, in Sam’s case, the enormous black refrigerator, debriefing more thoroughly in the kitchen now that Danny had stopped eyeing people’s jugulars. It was 11:23 pm and full dark outside, but their eyes skated carefully across the walnut flooring, carefully avoiding the windows and especially the big glass sliding doors. There was an unspoken understanding that the meeting wouldn’t end until they’d finished the Captain Crunch.

“So who is he beyond the fact that he’s dead?” Sam questioned around a sugary mouthful. All Tucker had to do was stare at the box longingly, and she handed it over without a word. Sam was cool like that.

Danny hopped up to sit on the counter, leaning forward so he wouldn’t hit his head on the cupboards overhanging the stove. “I met him this summer, and I’ve only really talked to him, like, twice. He haunts the old clock and watch repair place next to Porky’s BBQ. He’s pretty scrambled, so I’m thinking he’s really old, but the couple of times now that I’ve caught him lucid and not, like, a vague scattering of semi-sentient particles, he knows a lot about being a ghost. From an instinctive perspective, rather than a scientific one. And he basically told me that the should that makes ectoplasm flow from here to there will always prevail in the end. Just like, you know, how time flows forward toward the inevitable heat death of the universe? Entropy, and how it causes and is echoed by the decay of civilizations? He says that on every level, our existence is structured around that should, like regression to the mean except the true mean is zero. Everything moves toward death.”

…

Sam and Tucker both stared at Danny. Danny slurped orange juice out of a cup through Sam’s metal boba straw.

…….

“What? Oh, yeah, he uses a lot of weird time metaphors. Guess that’s what happens when all your roommates are clocks.”

“Moving on!” Tucker announced. He passed Danny the Captain Crunch. “So the good news is, it’s going to go away on its own.”

Danny frowned. “Not exactly. The whole green-sky thing and a lot of the weaker ghosts and ambient energy are gonna go away on their own, but most of the actual conscious stuff is gonna need some…polite urging. And then the rest of them I’m going to have to beat up, or that person with the sigil traps will take care of them, I dunno. Getting them all is gonna take probably a couple of months.” Schlorrrp. “But if I go out for a couple hours each day and Red Hoodie keeps helping, I feel like we should probably get enough of them that it at least seems like it’s no longer dangerous. Just a few sewer monsters snatching unattended children once in a while. Hospitals and stuff will probably open again” –he glanced at Tucker when he said this, once again prompting Tucker to get really uncomfortable about the exact range of his hearing– “and we can actually go around and, like, see who’s okay. And get food, and stuff.”

It took Tucker 2.3 seconds to process this.

And at that, half the nervous energy that had been cluttering up Tucker’s hindbrain throughout this nightmare just…left him, in a rush. The numbness in his limbs rushed up synapses to replenish his negativity supplies. Five days. Wait, had it really only been five days? They went for Danny early Sunday morning, so that was Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…yeah, five days. Less than a week. And if Danny’s, to be fair, very-much-inexpert opinion gleaned from tangential experience, a very sketchy ghost source, and someone named Jeff (or maybe Jass?) was to be believed, the whole state of emergency might be resolved before the week was up.

And what would they find, when it was? Empty streets, people still living off stale crackers and afraid to go outside? Broken windows, shops that might end up closed for good? (Empty beds with red-brown splotches? That odor, everywhere, drifting down hallways and circling stairwells, wafting in noxious concentrated clouds from heretofore unopened bedroom doors, maybe even the same odor that had emanated from that dumpster and filled their noses and the cramped dark corridor, was that what it smelled like, had that been the smell– Stop.)

The detritus of five days’ time. That was all it took to obliterate a city’s peace of mind.

And, you know, a person’s. Obviously. But that was beside the point.

(Heels bouncing against the cupboard where the Mansons’ cook kept skillets and pots, Danny smiled quietly around his boba straw, looking fully and completely alive.)

~(*0*)~

It was late afternoon on Saturday in the light-blue-and-chrome microcosm of the Manson kitchen when Sam got a surprise. Tucker was in the living room toying idly with his PDA and Danny was out doing his thing again when it arrived, in the form of an unknown number on the home phone while she was busy taking perishables out of the hulking black fridge and pondering how to use as many of them as possible in tonight’s “dinner.” (They hadn’t yet really figured out organized meals, but Tucker had tried last night with limited success, which is to say, lukewarm marinara over vegan pasta that was only slightly too hard, supplemented with various bruised fruits and energy bars). Tiffany Snow, who looked worse and worse with every passing day and should probably get a key to the city or at least some sort of journalism award when all this was done, had warned them to expect rolling blackouts as the power station coped with dwindling fuel and missing personnel; it could be life-or-death, she managed to convey without saying anything of the sort, that citizens empty their fridges and preserve anything that could spoil. As such, Sam had to drop several chilled chicken cutlets and an armful of artisanal butters in the sink in order to answer the phone before the last ring. “Hello?”

“Is this Samuel Manson?” A man’s voice, low, flat.

Uh. “This is Samantha Manson? To whom am I currently speaking?” Ugh, she sounded like her mom. She really needed to un-brainwash herself in the area of phone and email skills.

There was a quiet “ah” of understanding. “I’m from the Government Bureau of Irregular Emergency Response. There’s a woman at the checkpoint here who claims to be your mother? We were hoping you could speak to her and explain why she cannot pass the barrier, there is no need to pass the barrier, and she needs to back off and wait at an appropriate distance like everyone else and no, she cannot purchase some sort of pass.” The guy gained steam as he rolled along, and then at the end sort of caught himself and cleared his throat uncomfortably. Pamela Manson tended to do that to minor bureaucrats and customer service people.

But wait, seriously? What?

With trepidation, Sam assented and waited through the clunking and clicking sounds of a cell phone changing hands. Her mom’s voice faded from quiet to loud, as if she had started speaking before completely raising the microphone to her mouth. “I swear, I–Samantha? Sam?”

“Uh. Yes?” The freezer door slowly swung shut, leaving Sam face-to-face with her own full-body reflection. Shoulders squared, tailbone hitched against the opposite counter, face pimply and wan. Cradling a jar of fig jam in the crook of her elbow. Was the unease audible in her voice?

“Oh, thank god, I left my phone at Mabel’s when I left and I tried to call at that gas station in Ohio but I don’t have my contacts and I forgot the last digit and your father wasn’t answering and–Samantha are you alright, are you okay?!” The words tumbled over each other and cut each other off at the legs so that ultimately the whole sentence ended up slumped on the floor in a breathless heap.

If Sam didn’t know better, she’d say Pamela was drunk. But this was actually the opposite of what that sounded like. Sam’s tongue stumbled. “I’m. I’m fine, I’m with friends. Didn’t Dad say that when he called you?”

Pamela took a moment to process this. Her inhale rattled on the other end. “He–yes, but that was four days ago –or, wait, it–is today–today is Saturday? Six days?”

“...Yes, it’s Saturday.” Sam slowly set down the jar of fig jam on the counter beside her, maintaining eye contact with her reflection. The color of the fridge gave it the illusion of night. “Is everything alright?”

“No, Samantha, everything is clearly not all right!!” Fair point, but Sam still bristled for a moment before registering that the hysterical bleeding edge was still in her mom’s clipped vowels.

“Mom, did you…” No, don’t ask that. “Okay, wait, where are you right now? Are you actually trying to get into town?”

“Of course! This whole quarantine is ridiculous, I have a right to go into my own city, my child is inside.”

Sam blinked. “Mom, you can’t just push past the government guys, they’re trying to protect us.” She gagged a little at that sentence, but in this particular situation it held true. “Dad says most hotels are filled up with people trying to get in, but I’m sure you can find a room somewhere. Call Dad, okay? They don’t think this will last much longer.”

Pamela interrupted at around the word “last,” so for a moment they were both speaking at the same time. “Wait, hold on, but what is this, what is going on?!”

“...Did you not watch the news?”

“No, I didn’t watch the news; I didn’t even bring my phone, Samantha!”

Unbelievable. Sam wrenched her eyes away from her dark double and spun on a toe to start re-stacking the chicken cutlets in the sink for easy carrying. “Mom, seriously?! There’s really too much for me to explain–! Okay, I mean–uh, there’s, like, ghosts?”

“What does that mean, ghosts?!”

“I don’t know! It means ghosts! They—” This was going nowhere. A chicken cutlet encased in styrofoam and plastic slid off the small pile, and she angrily snatched it up by the corner and smacked it flat on the counter with her free right hand. “Just watch the news, okay? You can get the channel at any nearby hotel. Just—Mom?” She paused, pulled the phone away from her ear to look at it, put it back to her ear. “Mom?”

There was a crackle of static. The small, old-style digital display showed a horizontal line that you’d expect indicated booting up or powering down, then went blank.

Right next to her, where he most definitely hadn’t been before, Danny casually picked the fig jam up off the counter and sniffed it. There was a small smear of blood trailing into his hairline. “Y’know, that happened to our house phones once back in Chicago. Something probably chewed through your wires. Or someone. Heh.” He made an approving face and carried the dig jam to the opposite side of the counter while Sam was still trying to recover from swallowing her lungs.

Breathe in, breathe out. “Stop doing that!” she groused, consciously loosening her white-knuckled grip on the phone.

Danny looked confused. “Uh. Okay? I can probably get my dad to look at your cords sometime soon if you want.”

“Th—I—” Sam took another deep breath. In a strange shifting of perspective, sudden clarity, she became aware of how her heart was pounding. “Uh. You know what, sure. Thanks.”

~(*0*)~

It was weird. That was what Tucker kept thinking. Probably the reflection he returned to the most.

It was weird how fluidly those five days slipped further and further behind them. At a pace that sometimes felt slow and sometimes felt almost absurdly fast, the city began its recovery. Squares of green light migrated slowly across the walls just like any other hue. The government people began to push into town; more and more often they could be spotted wandering empty streets carrying beeping sensors with long antennae, which looked impressive but never truly seemed to detect much of anything. Calls from friends became less frantic, more conversational. Infant weeds dragged themselves little by little from beds of potting soil; flowers bounced when breezes passed. Fathers and mothers left Timmy Jr. with the neighbors and met up to shuffle in wary packs to City Hall, which had received an emergency shipment of hygiene supplies and non-perishables.

The predicted blackouts came and went. The Manson mansion’s resident carnivores had luckily eaten the ham in time, and they’d packed the rest in trash bags full of ice, so all they ultimately had to throw away was three eggs and some wilted lettuce. There were advantages to waiting out a supernatural disaster in a household that was one third vegetarian.

By Saturday afternoon, the streets were safe enough that half of the staff of the Amity Local News was able to go home for the night. Tiffany Snow took a much-deserved shower. Danny stopped shadowing his parents’ van and turned instead to darker corners, the dockside warehouses, the sewers. By Sunday evening there wasn’t an extranormal entity in sight. (They were still around, of course. Danny assured them of it. They may have slunk into basem*nts, down tunnels, behind human eyes, but they were still there, still smiling. Any ghost worth its sanctified salt knew how to hide.)

And so began what Tucker privately thought of as the second stage of the Amitypocalypse. First came the greenout; then came the Hush. Because here’s a tidbit about human psychology: We are incredibly uncomfortable with the lack of a pattern, and with the lack of a cause to marry to effect. So much so that we even see patterns where they do not exist, and we convince ourselves that natural, random regression to the mean is the result of our own words and actions, or someone else’s. We struggle to objectively evaluate chance. And so when a phenomenon is truly unprecedented, when there is no comprehensible pattern from which to draw predictions, when the sky is still green and we have no clue what caused it and therefore no clue how to prevent it from happening again…. Well. That’s a foolproof recipe for some very uncomfortable minds.

~(*0*)~

DATE: 10/6/2019

AMITY PARK, ILLINOIS

POPULATION: 168,390

CONFIRMED DEAD: 120

CONFIRMED MISSING: 364

Chapter 16: The Princess, Dethroned

Chapter Text

The Princess, Dethroned

or alternatively: Back-to-School Scheming

“Did they have to choose now to start caring about our education?”

It was Wednesday, October 9th, ten days since hell on earth had been unleashed upon northeast-central Illinois, and Sam, Tucker, and Danny were at school.

When the news that schools were reopening had first reached the general public, the general response had been incredulous and dismissive. It was still green out, damn it! No one was sending their kids to school in this. However, by a few days later a good number of people had started to reconsider. Johnny’s school served lunches, yeah? It’d keep him from pacing around the house, snapping at everyone and stepping on the salt lines. And anything that got Katie off the goddamn computer….

So Tucker’s dad had picked them up from the Mansons’. (His mom was with Tristan and Aunt Lacey.) He’d wanted to take Tucker home after dropping off the others, and quite possibly take the others home as well, but the Foley household was closer to the epicenter and therefore probably less safe to concentrate three extra people in. Tucker had gotten out of it himself by taking his dad aside before the front steps of the school and, after a second long hug, saying he didn’t want to leave Sam alone. (Or Danny, although Tucker was...fairly certain he could take care of himself at this point.) And Maurice had threatened him with codependency therapy after this whole thing was over, but he’d also reluctantly let him walk away across the white-grey concrete.

Gosh, it was cold today, wasn’t it? Quite brisk. Tucker rubbed his arms and patted moisture from his eyes with one sweatshirt sleeve.

The source of the complaining was Sam, naturally. She stood beside Tucker on the top step, eyes darting around constantly like they had been the whole car ride over. Danny leaned against the railing, combing down his hair with his fingers to try to see his bangs.

“Well, I heard half the teachers didn’t show up. So that really depends on who you mean by ‘they,’” Tucker offered, smiling.

The bangs were apparently sweaty–or maybe there was some dried blood and ectoplasm there, who knew–since Danny made a grossed-out face and mussed them up haphazardly. Nasty. Tucker was grateful for his dreads. Hoarding water for the extremely localized End Times had somewhat derailed most Amityites’ vigorous showering routines.

Inside the main building, the crowd was sparse. However, when Tucker stumbled into their first period English class several minutes late (he had taken a detour around That Particular Bathroom–which could actually refer to one of three locations now; wasn’t Tucker’s life great), he was surprised to find that there were only six or seven empty seats in a class of 30.

As soon as he and Sam had sat down, Mikey scooted his desk sideways toward Tucker’s with a noise like a drowning tuba and leaned in, eyes wide. “Dude, are you, like, involved with this whole greenout thing? Do you know what it is?” he whispered feverishly.

Tucker’s shock must have shown in his expression, because Mikey’s eyes bugged out further against his pale, freckly face as Tucker hastened to answer. “Uh, no, haha what? Where did you hear that?!” The subsequent nervous laughter went on long enough to get Sam, seated on his left, to tune into the conversation and shoot him a look potent enough to break the compulsion.

Mikey twitched unconsciously away from her, back into his seat. “Dude, Paulina and Dash were telling a bunch of people about it on the front steps. They said you were investigating ghosts and supernatural stuff like, weeks ago and you asked Dash about it, and you called Paulina right when it first happened. She says you were the first ones who knew it was happening, and you were in the car coming from somewhere. And, uh. Well, also, the new kid’s really weird.” (Danny, sitting across the room, didn’t seem to hear this. He probably would have thought it was funny.)

Tucker had to process for a minute. “What?! She–we were, uh–”

“–We were hanging out at, like, 3 am at Denny’s when we got attacked by one of those things,” Sam smoothly interjected. (Not very convincingly, but at least it was smooth.) “We heard from Dash that Paulina is into the supernatural, so when we were freaking out Tucker had the idea to call her and see if she had anything that could help. And she did–she actually knew a weird amount about warding off spirits. If you ask me, that makes her way more suspicious than us, but I dunno.” She affected a shrug.

Mikey looked skeptical, even though Sam’s pure force of personality usually scared him enough that he took her word as gospel. “Wait, why were you guys asking Dash about that stuff, then?” He paused, reconsidered his question. “Actually, why would you ever willingly talk to Dash, ever?”

Tucker agreed, that was a better question. Sam opened her mouth to reply and–paused. Glanced at Tucker with a question in the crook of her eyebrows.

What–oh. After they’d interviewed Dash, he’d asked her to consult him before taking risks in their investigation, hadn’t he?

Huh. Well, he had no idea what to say, so she might as well. He hoped she would be cautious. He made a face that he hoped conveyed his utter lack of helpful ideas and the fact that he’d basically given up at this point, and was about to almost imperceptibly nod, when–wait.

Wait. Okay.

He huffed out an uncomfortable laugh and assumed his best “reluctant” body language. No eye contact, slight self-deprecating smile. “Uh! So. Heh. Okay, that’s...kind of a weird story.”

Mikey laughed a little as well. “Yeah, I would think!”

“Uh...you know how my cousin almost got...um, you know? With the serial killer?”

Mikey’s smile wavered, Tucker noted with satisfaction. He hunched his shoulders and examined the floor before continuing. As garnish. “So, uh. It scared him. Like, a lot. I mean, obviously! Hah. But so he thinks the killer is, like, involved with the supernatural, somehow. We didn’t believe him, but he’s...really worked up about it. So.” He took a breath. “I promised to, like, ask around. I know, it’s really dumb.” He kicked the leg of his desk and peeked at Mikey out of the corner of his eye.

And sure enough, the reminder of Tucker’s traumatic experience and badly injured family member did its good work by immediately making Mikey extremely uncomfortable. Uncomfortable enough to accept everything about their sketchy story at face value. Uncomfortable enough to blush and offer reassuring somethings in a slightly higher voice about how that made sense, totally, yeah, and return his desk to its earlier position, still blushing up his neck.

And, knowing how Mikey acted whenever he had any means to garner wide attention, Tucker and Sam’s fabricated side of the story would be all over the school by the end of lunch.

Once she was sure Mikey wasn’t looking, Sam raised an appraising eyebrow at Tucker and grinned. But just then a particularly haggard Lancer swept into the classroom, and Tucker, disaster averted, was already lost in the implications of this conversation.

Namely, the fact that it was Paulina who’d directed all the eyes he could now feel crawling on his back. Paulina, who was back at school and chatting with her friends when until recently he’d been pretty darn psychically certain she was most definitely not…well, at the very least not alright.

They needed to talk to her, he concluded, staring blindly past his symbolism notes. And they needed to bring Danny.

Because, to be honest, Tucker still wasn’t quite convinced she was alive.

~(*0*)~

As soon as English ended, Tucker and Sam made a beeline for Danny, who instead of sitting with them had chosen the seat nearest the door. “In case anything comes in,” he’d murmured when they’d split off, sizing up the hallway like a matador (or possibly a man about to tuck into a particularly tasty steak).

Sam’s grip on Danny’s elbow propelled him down the hall in the center of their tight arrowhead formation as she explained in a low voice what they’d learned from Mikey, and what Tucker had reluctantly recounted afterward in the hubbub of everyone packing up their things. They’d briefly debated the significance of the two-fox dream: It seemed to pretty transparently imply that the murderer had gotten Paulina, but clearly that wasn’t the case. Probably. Best to keep an open mind.

Over the course of the trip to the cafeteria (Tucker and Sam had both been informed that their teachers for the next period were on the list of those who hadn’t shown up today, and Danny just really didn’t care), Tucker also became increasingly aware of how many people were staring and whispering as they passed. A girl with a pink backpack startled and looked away when he caught her eye; a senior with a buzz cut stared openly. Challenging, assessing, wary.

That was the moment it really hit Tucker that, intentions notwithstanding, Danny had, in fact, maybe, technically, okay undeniably caused the greenout. Caused the horrific cataclysm that had been terrorizing everyone for ten whole days. The unexplained disaster that had possibly left holes in a few of these kids’ families.

And sure, there was no way anyone here knew the actual details. (Except maybe one particular person. ...Or two.) However, they knew that Tucker, Sam, and Danny knew something. They knew that Tucker, Sam, and Danny had very likely been doing something, out in the city at 3 a.m. And they knew that right after Tucker, Sam, and Danny had quite possibly done something, a blight had descended upon their homes.

The whispers stopped feeling wary, and started feeling very, very angry.

Oh, why hadn’t Tucker just gone home with his dad that morning?

The oppressive feeling would likely have been diminished on the lawn between the main humanities building and the cafeteria, had the sky not been quite so overcast. And, y’know, unpleasantly tinted. Small, scattered groups of students scurried from place to place with their heads down and their shoulders raised defensively, checking furtively over their shoulders when they thought no one was looking.

And this body language was so pervasive that Tucker’s stream of consciousness tripped over a stray glial cell and had to pick itself back up to recalculate when it noticed someone breaking that mold completely. The shockingly beautiful and eminently formidable (one time in third grade she’d thrown sand in his eye) Valerie Gray strode past him out the cafeteria doors with a new firmness to the set of her shoulders and a red hoodie tied around her waist.

…Interesting. Perhaps Tucker would keep this particular observation to himself.

The gym-slash-cafeteria was teeming with students, so crowded that upon entering Tucker was immediately jostled bodily to the side from one direction and then elbowed in the head from another. He was glad they’d left their backpacks in a pile against the exterior wall; navigating this would be difficult enough without them. Students, faculty, and the occasional staff member could be seen sitting on tables, crouching on chairs, standing to loudly argue at the people near them, or just ambling around quietly with no particular goal evident on their faces. A good number of kids sat slumped along the walls with their heads pillowed on their arms, listening to music or pretending to be. The dull patter of conversation ebbed and flowed, building to a crescendo as some table’s discussion grew particularly heated and then rapidly dwindling back to a low anxious hum.

At the center of it all was Paulina, along with about a third of the rest of their friend group. Dash was there, as were Kwan, the girl with the box braids, and the guy who always wore button-downs with tiny plants and animals printed across them. Star, her cousin Mikayla, the younger blonde guy with the weirdly square chin, and the two twitchy but amiable senior boys with the barest beginnings of co*ke nose were among the missing.

Tucker, Sam, and Danny had made it to about 15 feet away when Paulina, halfway through an expansive gesture, caught sight of them over the heads of some shorter sophom*ores. Tucker got to witness in profile how her face reacted. The smile faltered, mouth still slightly open, and her visible eye widened slightly and froze in place for a heartbeat before her mouth did some sort of complicated gymnastic routine conveying– no, that can’t be it . Nervousness? Regret? What was that? It had been so quick–and then she turned back to her friends with a whip of her hair, said something inaudible, laughed, and was already in motion toward the other side of the cafeteria. In the opposite direction of her approaching supplicants.

A glance at Sam told Tucker she had seen Paulina see them as well. (Wait, seen her–seen them–yeah.) A moment passed, and then she growled and grabbed Tucker’s hand. “What is she–? We’re cutting her off.”

Tucker was still mulling over that reaction as Sam marched him around Paulina’s lingering friends and toward the gym’s other door, speeding up to a reasonable intercept pace. What was Paulina thinking? Did she want to talk to them privately, as well? Tucker caught a glimpse of Paulina’s long hair and white sweatshirt once, twice in the crowd, and then they ceased to appear. It didn’t help that the crowd had, from what he’d seen, parted to let Paulina through, while people were still startling when they noticed him, Danny, and Sam and then eyeing them with suspicion rather than politely getting out of the way. It was getting less creepy and more frustrating as time went on.

It took suffering two more thrown elbows and inelegantly stepping over a few of the kids sitting against the wall for them to finally make it to the double doors. Sam used her forearm to push down the big horizontal metal button thing on the right-side door and put her whole weight into swinging it outward, with an expression reminiscent of an Austen villain on the verge of ruining the heroine’s reputation.

And then stopped, puzzled, still holding the heavy door open, because the heroine waiting on the other side wasn’t Paulina.

Kwan crossed his arms, scowling. “Why are you people following Paulie? She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

Tucker couldn’t think of a response for a minute. He’d never minded Kwan all that much–sure, he wasn’t all that nice , but he wasn’t nearly as much of an asshole as, say, Dash. He’d always struck Tucker as just kind of living his own life, not going out of his way to make a scene or meet new people. Not the first guy you remembered when you thought about Paulina and Dash’s group, but not the last one either. Very beefy. A side-character type. That is, until his mom had died.

Tucker shook himself mentally and recovered his wits. “Uh. I mean, sorry? We were just hoping to talk to her for a second. It’s important.” The polite route seemed most appropriate here, so Tucker hoped Sam could keep her mouth shut. A glance confirmed that she seemed to understand that. Or maybe she was just concentrating on fighting the door.

Kwan scowled harder, shifting his weight to his back foot. The back of the cafeteria gave onto a path of small grey concrete paving stones about eight feet across, which in turn gave onto a strip of slightly overgrown grass of the same width with some thin, pale-trunked trees growing out of it, which ended in yellow-green sprays of leaves a bit higher than the opaque seven-foot fence. The whole space was shadowed by the cafeteria building. Kwan was standing in the middle of the path, awkwardly front and center and out in the open, and clearly self-conscious because of it. The guy was not made for the stage. He tried his best to project, however, which ended up making his volume a little wonky. “What do you even have to talk to Paulina about? I don’t think I’ve seen you willingly talking to each other since, like, eighth grade.”

This was every single flavor of awkward. Tucker leaned against the doorframe to his left and resisted the impulse to fiddle with his beret. “I mean, okay, it’s kind of complicated. Um.” He tried a self-deprecating smile to show he also found this conversation completely weird. “Could you just, like, tell her? That we’d like to talk? We’re just confused about a few things.”

Kwan was quiet for a moment.

His eyeline was somewhere between the three of them and the backup salt line on the cafeteria’s threshold when he finally spoke. “Look, I. I know you guys think you’re, like, helping? But you need to leave it alone. It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

Huh? Tucker was confused, but he managed to respond eloquently. “Um.”

Silence. Wind rifled through the leaves of the skinny trees, disturbing them slightly, and Kwan hunched his broad shoulders and put his hands in his pockets. He was at least a head taller than Tucker, the asshole, but with this posture it wasn’t apparent. “Anyway, stop stalking Paulie. Stalkers,” he muttered with an air of finality as he edged past Tucker and back into the cafeteria.

Oh. ...Wait, what?

“Okay, Paulina’s definitely evil.” Sam said it quietly but with an air of finality as she let the door swing shut on a discomfiting number of perked ears and furtive glances.

“She’s definitely hiding something,” Danny contributed absently, having slid out of the cafeteria as the door was closing. He winced a little and shook out one hand like he’d just gotten a mild shock from a metal handle, and used the side of his foot to slide some loose threshold salt back into place. His eyes were fixed on the buildings a good distance to their right in a way that inspired Tucker to very casually start them walking to the left. Sam caught up to him as they ambled down the path between the cafeteria and the tree-lined fence, while Danny remained a few steps behind.

Tucker mustered a laugh. “‘Definitely evil?’ Sam, please never investigate my murder. You’d have, like, 18 people who acted kind of shifty in jail by Tuesday.”

“What? She’s totally in league with the killer! If she isn’t herself the killer. She’s deliberately attacking us, Tuck! And obstructing our investigation. And also she’s always been evil, so it makes sense.” Knowing Sam, she was approximately 40-45% joking.

Tucker almost tripped over a loose paving stone but caught himself and kept walking. They rounded the edge of the building and emerged from its shadow, though on such a cloudy day it didn’t make much difference. At least the green was filtered by the grey-white cloud cover, to the point where you could almost forget about it. The small, fast-moving bundles of kids had presumably all made it to their classes or back into the cafeteria-gym, so the lawn was once again deserted. Tucker kept silent for a minute, mulling over the alternatives to Sam’s proposal. Was Paulina being threatened? Was she mad about the greenout too, somehow? Try as he might, however, he couldn’t concentrate on the possibilities behind Paulina’s bizarre behavior; this new facet was bothering him even more.

“So wait, did Paulina tell Kwan?” he brought up finally, and somewhat abruptly.

“Tell him what?” Sam responded, one eyebrow raised. “Tell him what she told everyone else?”

“Tell him we were looking into his mom’s killer.”

“Ooh.” Danny hissed through his teeth from just behind them. “Haha, that would make sense, and also makes things way more awkward.”

But unlike Danny, Sam had fully caught his drift. “You’re right, that’s weird. She told the whole school we were looking into the supernatural, but she didn’t tell them why. And if she told him why, then…wouldn’t he, like, fully support that? More than anyone?”

“The way he said we think we’re helping, I mean….”

“I was confused for a second thinking he was talking about the greenout. I didn’t even consider he could be talking about the murders.”

“Yeah, me too.” Tucker frowned. “But that’s the only thing that makes sense.”

They had to pause the conversation as they rounded to the front of the building again: a group of freshmen had just exited, and they needed to pick up their abandoned backpacks from one of the many piles near the doorway. In retrospect, leaving their stuff there may not have been the greatest idea, with half the school holding some vague, pervasive ill-will toward the three of them, but neither Sam nor Danny had brought a laptop and Tucker of course kept his precious PDA concealed on his person, so all that would’ve been lost in the case of theft were a few sparsely populated notebooks and Sam’s two-year planner with “The Raven” copied onto the inside cover in squiggly “calligraphy” by a ballpoint pen.

Sam put off making her next point, crossing her arms over the straps of her backpack, until the cafeteria doors were closed again and the freshmen were out of hearing range. “Well, wait, okay. Kwan could’ve been talking about Danny’s…cleanup efforts.”

Like, maybe, but– “But how would he know about that? And why wouldn’t he want him to be doing it? That doesn’t make any sense.”

She crooked one elbow to chew absently on a purple thumbnail. “True.”

“And, like, if anyone has a right to know, Kwan does, and he’s one of her closest friends. So if he does know, he’s acting weird. And if he doesn’t know, then she’s acting even weirder than we thought.”

“I dunno. It seems reasonable to me not to want these random classmates nosing around about, like, your mom’s case. Closure is a thing, you know,” Danny contributed from behind. (His eyes were still absently roaming the rooftops of the nearest buildings in an exceedingly nerve-racking way.)

Oh. Well…okay, yeah… Hot, guilty blood pooled in Tucker’s gut. That was true. He didn’t know anything about grief, so who was he to say Kwan wasn’t grieving normally? First the guy had lost his mom, and then in the same year he’d been plunged into a viridian hellscape that whispered and giggled when you didn’t watch the corners. Everyone was on edge. Everyone was acting irrationally. Guiltily, Tucker dropped the issue.

They tried twice more to talk to Paulina that day and twice more were intercepted and rebuffed, first by Dash and then by Star. Star even went so far as to accuse them in front of witnesses of bringing a curse down on Amity Park. Where before all this the witnesses would have laughed and left to tell everyone how Star McCrary literally thought there was a curse on the town, now they muttered ominously among themselves and went to tell everyone that Tucker, Sam, and Danny hadn’t managed to come up with a good response.

Mrs. Foley picked them up at the steps from amidst a prickly mass communicating mainly through whispers and hostile body language.

In the end, Sam and Danny refused the Foleys’ pleas and entreaties that they come back to Tucker’s for the night. Danny just wasn’t super human right now (heh) and Mr. Foley remained unaware of his condition. Sam didn’t want to leave him alone, and she was honestly probably safer with him than with them. She almost reconsidered, though, when they pulled up in front of the Manson mansion.

There were people outside of Sam’s house. Two men and a woman with greasy hair loitered on the sidewalk, while some kids gathered on the corner trying to look casual. Goddamned school directory.

~(*0*)~

That night, as he lay in bed waiting for sleep at around 2 am (desk lamp on, obviously), Tucker brooded over his questions and suspicions. One of the main things on his mind was a pet theory he’d become more and more certain of over the last few days, and was planning on floating to Sam the next morning: Tucker was pretty sure the greenout was a mistake.

It just didn’t make sense from what they knew of the second killer. He (or she, but as they’d already concluded, probably a he) seemed to choose his victims carefully, based on some sort of perceived guilt or personal antipathy. He then used them in one very specific ritual, which seemed to have a very specific goal. It would seriously break pattern for him to suddenly carry out a ritual aimed at unleashing something completely unrelated like the greenout (Danny’s still being as alive as he ever was, was evidence enough that the ritual was different), and Tucker doubted this had been the long-term goal of the killings. It was too random, and too likely to backfire and leave the killer dead himself, since anyone who carried out a hypothetical greenout ritual would presumably be at the epicenter when it happened. The fact that the killer had apparently just left halfway through could indicate that he had known this would happen and deliberately gotten out of the way, but, especially when Tucker looked back on the relative clumsiness of the failed attack on Tristan, it seemed more likely that the killer had messed up, panicked, and run, not knowing what effect his mistake would have soon after he left.

The best evidence for this theory was what Danny had said when he first woke up about the pentagram, and how that didn’t make sense for a ghost summoning, or really any summoning using Danny as the portal. If the killer had used fully the wrong type of summoning circle, it would make sense that the ritual had gone haywire in a big, unpredictable way.

What this implied, Tucker wasn’t sure. That their killer wasn’t as smart or good with the supernatural as they’d assumed, definitely. Using the wrong circle seemed like a really stupid mistake for an expert. It also reassuringly suggested that perhaps the killer did have scruples and wouldn’t voluntarily escalate to mass murder unprovoked. However, it also meant that he must be reckless enough to set all that lethal chaos in motion regardless of his personal principles.

It also implied that the ritual he’d been trying to do had been somehow related to the killings—probably some sort of culmination of that process given the rule of three—and he was almost definitely going to try again.

Great.

In addition to mulling over this theory, Tucker couldn’t help circling back to the smallest but arguably most pressing unsolved mystery of the day: Paulina’s reaction to seeing them. It had been so quick, only half of her face, and he couldn’t even remember what it had looked like now, but he could remember his first split-second interpretation.

Discomfort. She’d seemed unsure of herself.

And it had taken his shocked mind a moment to process, because the one thing Tucker had always grudgingly admired about Paulina was that, no matter what she was doing or who she was hurting, she was never, ever unsure of herself. Wouldn’t be caught dead with anything less than a perfectly lipsticked smirk and all the stubborn poise of a princess in exile.

And yet, in that brief moment, she’d lost her footing. So the real question was, if she wouldn’t be caught dead without her confidence, then who’d managed to catch her alive?

Chapter 17: Three Conversations in the Eye of the Storm

Chapter Text

Three Conversations in the Eye of the Storm

or alternatively: Angst and Schmangst

“How are things over there? Eating your parents out of house and home again?” Sam grinned, and the scene displayed on Tucker’s phone swam and juddered as she presumably readjusted her phone on her knees. She and Danny had managed to convince Mrs. Foley to let them stay at Sam’s house even after they’d seen the lurkers out front, mainly by just sorta refusing. Danny was not going to let anyone else find out about his spooky side; he was uncomfortable enough with Mrs. Foley already, averting her eyes and stepping a bit heavier on the floor whenever they interacted. So now it was 4 p.m. on Thursday and Sam and Tucker were Facetiming across town. Tucker may complain about the universe at large fairly often, but he did truly appreciate how the interdimensional ghost fog hadn’t messed with their cell service.

“They stocked up yesterday in case there’s an aftershock. How about you guys, do you have enough?”

“Yeah, now that our resident bottomless pit is gone.” Sam was sitting on the carpeted floor of her house’s smaller dining room, leaning against a dark wooden chair leg with a big window to the side yard letting in dim aqua-tinted light behind her; her face was in shadow but still easily visible. Tucker had spent enough time in her house to know she was just around the corner from the main entryway.

“Gee, the sad thing is you have no idea how nice it is to be eating meat again! I’ve been having steak for dinner every night!” Tucker needled. He himself was sitting in the living room, listening with one ear to the faint comforting sounds of his mom and dad moving around the kitchen.

“Shut up, nature-murderer. Oh, and Danny’s out again.”

Tucker’s grin drooped, its foundation undermined by the sudden seriousness in her tone. “Is he good?”

“Yeah, I mean he was fine this morning, you saw him at school. He says hunting stuff is still getting easier. And also he says the thing in the gym isn’t there now but it might have dropped back in while we were at school. And apparently it feels familiar?”

“He for real has met the poltergeist hanging out in your mom’s Zumba gym? I mean, I don’t wanna be the asshole who assumes all ghosts know each other, but….”

“Heh. We need to get that guy a social life.”

“Well, at least he has a robust spiritual life already.” Cue the exaggerated groans.

“Honestly, I don’t even–”

Something crashed on the other end. Sam screamed and covered her head with her arms, although Tucker only caught the first part of this movement as his screen became an erratic swirl of greys and blues before finally resolving itself into a view of the ceiling and part of a chair from right next to where chair leg met carpet. The perspective made Tucker feel like a human who’d wandered into a house of giants. “Sam?! Sam!!”

Seconds passed. Then: “Holy sh*t! What the f*ck?!” Sam’s voice was faint and grainy, but grew in volume toward the end. In another second, Tucker saw her huge hand reaching toward him as she, now standing, picked up her dropped phone. The perspective shifted to shakily show a side view of her face; she was breathing heavily and displaying an odd mixture of caution and fury. “Someone threw a f*cking brick through my window!”

“Is there anyone there, are you okay?!”

“Nah, whoever did it is gone, apparently.” She was still for a moment, just breathing, and then her one visible eye widened. “Ohhh sh*t, wait, the salt line!!”

So Tucker was left to have another heart attack on his couch as she ran back to the window and checked on the barrier. It seemed fine, she reported after a minute, but just in case she went to grab the salt from the kitchen while Tucker worked on getting his heart rate under control again.

Once he was once more able to process events semi-logically, he realized there were several less obvious but still important things wrong with this situation. “Wait, did you seriously go toward the loud crash to investigate?! Why didn’t you try to get out of there?!”

Sam, swinging her phone by her hip instead of bothering to hold it up by her face, did not dignify this with a response, hustling to the kitchen and grabbing salt, tape, a plastic bag, and a dustpan. “Who the f*ck would throw a brick through my window?! I mean, I’ve been told my attitude isn’t the greatest, but I didn’t think I’d pissed anyone off that much.”

“You need to call Danny! Like, now!”

“Haha, that’s…probably smart, yeah, I’ll do that now.” There was this odd quality to her tone, somehow overly flippant, businesslike, and dazed at the same time. She might have been a little bit in shock. “Don’t tell your parents about this, okay? I’m not letting someone drive me out of my own f*cking house.”

“Sam, that’s stupid, you–Sam!” She had hung up. Hopefully it was because she was calling their one supernatural and combat-competent ally back to the house where she was stuck all alone cleaning up a pile of glass, and not just because she liked dramatic exits.

“Tuck? Is something wrong with Sam?” Angela Foley stood in the doorway between the living room and the hall leading to the kitchen, brow furrowed in worry. Tucker hoped he didn’t look as frazzled as he felt.

“Uh. ...No. I mean, yeah, she’s fine. She’s just a little stressed.”

The degree to which Angela Foley believed this reassurance is extremely ambiguous. However, whatever the case, she let it be, leaving Tucker to sit on his couch and breathe very consciously and ponder his recently discovered talent for gross understatement.

~(*0*)~

Danny reentered the Manson mansion at a run, not even pausing to flinch as he crossed the threshold. Or so Sam presumed given the volume of the thud as her front door slammed open. She idly checked the kitchen clock—approximately two minutes since her call. “Sam! Where are you, are you okay?”

“I’m in here!” Sam shouted from the kitchen. She came out with a dishrag draped over her hands, tiny shards of glass still clinging to the fibers. She almost collided with Danny as he sped down the hallway and had to sidestep him at a brisk walk to redirect his momentum back toward the front of the house. “Scene of the crime is back this way.”

The brick had landed plopped on one side of the Mansons’ blue carpet, no longer surrounded by any big shards of glass but with a halo of invisible points still glittering in the sunlight when she shifted her viewpoint. “I just kinda left it there,” Sam commented of the brick as Danny took in the scene that he apparently hadn’t noticed on his way in. “I don’t really know what to do with it. Like, could I just put it in the trash can? Is that weird?”

Danny took a moment to register her question, still glaring at the innocuous piece of masonry. “It—huh. I mean, I guess?”

“Right? Like, it’s not hazardous waste or anything, but it feels weird just throwing it away like that.”

“Yeah—” Danny started absently, clearly not listening. “Did you see who threw it? Or like, anyone who was around?”

Sam, standing a few feet behind him and to the side, began folding up the towel in her hands, careful to keep the remaining glass pieces pouched on the inside. She noticed with some vague irritation that her hands were still shaking. “Nah, there was no one there when I looked.” She came up next to him and crouched to examine the brick more closely, as if she would find some message there that she hadn’t noticed two minutes before. Maybe even the thrower’s autograph, in sharpie and a curling script. The brick remained frustratingly blank; she’d already tipped it over with two cloth-shrouded fingers to check the bottom. She kept her eyes on the brick when she next spoke. “Do you have any ideas? Maybe a few, um...extranormal ones?”

“I could get their scent.” Danny indicated with his chin at the brick sitting innocently on the wood flooring.

Sam stared at him blankly for a minute. “You…. You’re gonna sniff the–”

“I’m joking, I can’t actually do that.”

Sam stared at him for a moment. He smirked slightly, for the first time since he’d arrived. And Sam was startled to hear herself laugh, high and abrupt, at the sheer ridiculousness of their situation. The lingering floaty feeling in her brain started to clear up a little.

Danny’s smile widened. “...Dash probably could.”

“No.”

There was a pause. Sam and Danny’s giggles faded. Danny cleared his throat. “Sorry about this. I should’ve been here.”

Sam looked up from the brick again, confused and a little uncomfortable. “What? You were out beating up cannibalistic ghosts, I feel like that’s clearly more important.”

“I mean, yeah, but there’s not that many left anyway, and Red Hoodie’s doing a pretty good job on their own.” He paused. “I just feel like—sh*t, this is all my fault, isn’t it? I got myself f*cking ghostnapped and released all this sh*t on you guys. f*ck.” He stood up from his crouch and paced across the room. “Sorry. I just—I’ve been sorta high off the ectoplasm levels for a while and I don’t remember if I apologized yet. That whole situation was pretty pathetic. Sorry.”

Well. That had escalated quickly. Gee whiz, Sam really wished Tucker were here right now. She was so not good at this stuff that it was almost funny. She could say something sappy about how it wasn’t his fault or whatever since it clearly wasn’t, but would he even believe that if he was irrational enough to be thinking it was? Anyway, their relationship thus far had consisted mainly of memes and murder accusations; she didn’t know if she could say anything sincere and touchy-feeley and not have it sound sarcastic.

Ugh, it had been less than two seconds and this already felt so awkward. She laughed nervously and groped for something to say beyond “no, seriously, it’s fine, we’re totally chill.”

“Okay, but hear me out: You’re like that guy from Indiana Jones.”

Danny, who had been leaning against a wall and avoiding eye contact, stopped looking uncomfortable in favor of looking confused. “Uh...which movie?”

“I don’t remember, but you know that guy who comes out and is doing all that martial arts intimidation-y stuff that’s really impressive and then Indiana Jones just shoots him?”

“...Yeah, and I’m missing your point.”

“That guy’s probably super impressive when he’s fighting other hand-to-hand people, but I mean, realistically, what do you expect him to do against a gun? He wasn’t prepared for it and couldn’t prepare for it, so you can’t really blame him for being shot. It’s like you with witchcraft. ‘Cuz, like, your whole ghosty deal makes you super good at fighting ghosts and I guess, like, monsters and stuff, but you’re at a natural disadvantage against occult stuff, a lot of which is specifically devoted to summoning and dealing with ghosts. An unknown human serial killer with knowledge of the occult is literally the worst possible opponent for you. How were you even supposed to prevent that whole thing from happening?”

Danny still looked confused. “I mean, I—I probably could’ve broken the circle with a little more time.”

“Really?” Sam crooked an eyebrow.

“...Eh. It’s 50/50.”

“See? There you go.” A thought occurred to her, and though she cringed at the cheese, she added it anyways, sounding it out. “And hey, that’s why Tucker and I are here. If you could just beat up all of Amity’s problems, we wouldn’t have anything to do.”

“...Heh. Sure, I guess.” Danny definitely looked embarrassed. Seemed they both wanted to be done with this conversation. Sam did what she did better and changed the subject.

“Okay, so what should we–and by we I mean you, I’ve cleaned up enough–do about the little tiny glass shards too small to pick up?”

“Weaponize them.”

“I like the way you think.”

~(*0*)~

Tucker sat hunched over his computer, the blue-white glow of the screen illuminating the lower half of his face as he scrolled through sketchy site after sketchy site after Wikipedia article. In the aftermath of the Brick Incident, he’d felt the need to be doing something useful, and he’d remembered someone mentioning that if it was two killers using the same undisclosed-to-the-public ritual then maybe they’d gotten the ritual off the internet somewhere. If he couldn’t find anything resembling it online, then that theory could be semi-confidently discarded. If you eliminated that possibility, then it meant the killers knew each other. And that seemed like a very good thing to know.

If, of course, there actually were two killers. He was grasping at some pretty thin straws here, as usual. But anyway, he could afford to shore up his occult knowledge a bit on the side.

Two hours of research later, Tucker was very glad he’d used his special uber-protected FBI-unfriendly fourth pager, Denise, because otherwise he’d definitely have tossed up a few red flags in a government facility somewhere. His research techniques were a bit more sophisticated than the average high schooler’s (Denise had some wonderfully sketchy browser extensions, for one thing), but ultimately they boiled down to searching different combinations and variations on “human sacrifice,” “contract magic breaking ritual,” “wrist candle circle pentagram,” “criminal human sacrifice,” “three human sacrifice,” “multiple occult holiday human sacrifices,” “wechuge occult ritual,” and “satanist churches near me” (plus a few minutes of looking into “ghost summoning open portal ritual” just for kicks). He’d also tossed what he was looking for out as a special favor request to a few of his less easily freaked-out online friends, but he doubted they’d find anything. He certainly hadn’t. He was frustrated and hungry with very little to show for it. Either they were working on incorrect assumptions about the parameters of the ritual, or it was from a very obscure site or not on the internet at all. Either way, it seemed unlikely two like-minded creeps in a relatively small area of Illinois had gotten ahold of it at the same time. It seemed most likely that the two killers—if there were two killers—had made contact at some point. At least once.

Which got Tucker...where?

Not very far and craving pizza pockets, that’s where. Well, two creeps who knew each other were probably easier to look for than one, right? And at least he’d done something with his time.

Knew each other…. There was something there that made his spine tingle, but he didn’t know what.

Tucker had just opened his search history, preparing to clear it and shut down his pager, when one set of keywords in particular jumped out at him.

“multiple occult holiday human sacrifices”

Wait. There was another angle he could pursue right now that was both easy and potentially very useful. Excluding the whole Danny thing, which they’d agreed didn’t seem at all like part of the normal pattern, the killer only seemed to strike on the nights before occult holidays. That meant they could predict and anticipate him! Tucker’s fingertips hovered over the keypad, preparing to begin a new search into occult, religious, and otherwise significant and vaguely ominous days in October.

And they remained hanging there, as he realized with mounting horror that he didn’t need to search to figure out at least one. Not only was it obvious in itself, it had also been mentioned often enough in his time paging through spelling error-ridden ceremonies on virus-incubating websites.

Halloween. Samhain, All Saints’ Eve, Nos Galan Gaeaf, Mischief Night. The most significant occult-associated day of the year in the Western tradition was just three weeks from now. If something big was going to happen, it was probably going to happen then, and it was probably going to be very, very bad.

Tucker shut down his PDA with a decisive click and went into the kitchen to eat way too many pizza pockets and stare fixedly at the wall.

~(*0*)~

Tucker dreamed about Amber McClain that night, and the next one. She seemed angrier, if at all possible, and both nights he woke up sweaty and shaking. On Friday evening the power went out, so his room was dark when he woke up gasping at 2 a.m., and he almost had a heart attack when his hand, fumbling for the useless switch on his bedside table lamp, touched something that felt like warm skin. (It was his leather wallet, which had been sitting directly below the lamp while the power was still on.) He was also seeing the fox more often, around corners or just four paws in the crack under a door, and one time he could’ve sworn it nipped his ankle with cold, sharp teeth. He skipped school on Friday, and so did Sam and Danny. His parents had a lot of hushed conversations and took turns casually being in the same room as him whenever possible, which he appreciated under all the layers of anxiety. He felt tired most of the time, but that was nothing new.

Sam, often with Danny in the background now, Facetimed for hours, several times on Friday and Saturday. Even though the city was opening up internally, it was still strictly quarantined with respect to the outside world, with the government people (somewhat to their credit, Tucker supposed) resisting even the most generous of bribes. As such, Sam’s parents remained stuck outside the orange plastic barrier for the foreseeable future.

On Saturday at around 4:30, Sam called without texting, which was a little weird. It was also just a voice call, no video. Tucker pressed the cool glass (plastic, really) of his phone screen to his ear.

“The thing in the gym is back,” Sam stated, with no prelude.

Tucker breathed out deeply, letting all the air out until he felt it pinch in his chest. “Shoot. That’s pretty nerve-wracking. Is Danny there?”

“He’s upstairs keeping a—heh, keeping a third eye on it.” Her tone was still light, but her attempt at levity fell flat on the airwaves between them and was promptly run over by several outgoing emails. “I’m watching the front. There’s a bunch of people out here again.”

“Anyone you recognize?”

“Yeah, I think I know some of them from school. Is Paulina answering her phone?”

“Still no.” Tucker had called and texted her various “what the helllll” messages like, six times today alone. Radio silence, still.

When Sam didn’t respond for a second, Tucker abruptly refocused on the voice on the other end of this call. “Sam, are you okay? My dad and I can come over there right now if you’re getting a bad vibe.”

“No, yeah, I’m fine. It’s just a bunch of loitering teenagers. And one possibly man-eating ghost. Nothing new.”

“You sure? We’re coming over tonight anyway….”

“Yeah, it’s fine, we’ll just stick to that plan.” A beat. Tucker remained quiet; it sounded like she wanted to say something.

“You know, it’s kind of funny–” she laughed a little, breathily. “Okay, so I used to play soccer when I was a little kid, right? Like, AYSO. Little league. I sucked. But I was really competitive, and I remember whenever we were near the end of a night game, and we were losing, and I was all flushed and hot even though I could feel the chill on my skin–I would get really angry, at the other team. And I remember thinking, ‘If I just push myself as hard as I can, and go as fast as I can and don’t stop, then we’ll win.’ Like it was impossible that we could lose if I just tried my absolute hardest. So I would go faster than I ever had, and of course we would still lose. But still, the next game I’d think that again, and I’d be just as convinced.”

Tucker paused, considering how to respond. “I mean, I think everyone does that. We trick ourselves into feeling like we have more control than we really do.”

“Yeah, and I guess there was also the kiddie TV of the early 2000s. ‘Anything is possible if you just believe!’” Tucker could just imagine her making a little Reading Rainbow in the air with her hands. She sounded so tired. “Believe in magic, believe in spirit chalk and summoning circles, believe in yourself. And then it turns out you actually can believe in at least two of those, and you still can’t do anything! You know?” She took a shaky breath. “It’s just–it’s terrifying. Especially now. I guess it’s like I can’t–I feel like I can’t abide a, a limited existence. Or at least, I really hate understanding it.”

“...I’m sorry.”

Although Tucker couldn’t see it, Sam pressed the heels of her palms into her face, and when she pulled them away her eyelashes spiked oddly in different directions over red eyes. “No, I’m sorry. I’m getting all weird and philosophical on you. I’m freaked out. Ignore me.”

“Nah, it made sense. This stuff is freaky, and I’ve been frustrated too. But it’s getting better, right? And all things considered, it really hasn’t been that long.”

“That’s right, Tristan got shish-kebabbed in, like, mid-September, didn’t he? Less than a month ago?”

“Hah, I’ve lost all conception of time, my friend. It was like six Lucky Charms boxes ago.”

“I do not respect that as a measure of duration. Mostly because you eat cereal at a truly alarming rate.”

“Hey, a man has needs.”

“Gross.” Tucker started to say something in response, but then Sam interrupted. “Okay, I gotta go, Danny’s yelling something from the other room. See you in four hours?”

Despite himself, Tucker smiled. “I’m bringing vegan chocolate cake mix.”

“This is why you’re my favorite, Tuck.”

“See ya.”

“Bye.”

Click.

Chapter 18: A Hunting Party

Chapter Text

A Hunting Party

or alternatively: Problems Develop Rapidly in Sequence

Tucker, Sam, and Danny were awoken on the morning of Sunday the 13th by a high-pitched scream from outside the house. Such things were not uncommon lately, so Sam was about to roll over and try to get to sleep again when she noticed that Tucker, on the ground to her right, was sitting up and fully alert, head turned unerringly in the direction of the sound. Like a supernatural bloodhound.

Slowly, Sam sat up as well. “Tucker? What’s wrong?”

“My nightmare senses are not happy.”

Oh. She edged forward cautiously. “Well, yeah, but they haven’t really been happy this whole time, right? I thought you were starting to get used to it.”

“Nah, this is different. Uh. I think someone just died.”

“sh*t!” Sam slid out of her sleeping bag and stood, kicking two of the pillows that had been underneath it askew in her haste. “Mr. Foley?” she called in the general direction of the upper story.

“Tucker! Sam! You guys okay?” Mr. Foley’s bass voice was accompanied by the sound of footsteps on the stairs, until at length he appeared in the doorway that led from the living room into the stairwell, looking rumpled but alert. After they’d accidentally let slip about the thing in the gym, Mr. Foley had insisted on sleeping in one of the upstairs rooms to be between the gym and the kids below. After this announcement, Danny had quietly drifted upstairs with his sleeping bag and a few blankets, to sleep between the gym and Mr. Foley. Sam had caught a glimpse of Tucker’s face when he’d realized this; she was pretty sure that in that moment, Tucker had finally begun to consider Danny one of his best friends.

All this mainly served to explain why Danny was coming from behind Mr. Foley when he blew past all three of them and headed straight for the front entryway with a dark look on his face. Sam hurried after him, Tucker hesitated but followed after Sam, and Mr. Foley went with Tucker, calling surprised, cautionary admonishments the whole way.

~(*0*)~

Tucker rounded the corner of the Mansons’ front wall and immediately turned around and went back to stand with Sam, who’d just done the same thing. Yep, that’s a corpse. Mr. Foley made an involuntary noise of surprise and disgust upon turning the corner, but stayed there, with his back visible but his face obscured by the wall, pulling out his phone to call 911. The young woman who’d screamed–looked familiar, wasn’t she a senior at Casper?–was still standing on the sidewalk a few feet beyond him, with her hands over her mouth and her eyes wide.

It was a clear but cold morning, the sky a sickly shade of aqua green (although was it Tucker’s imagination, or was it slightly less green than it used to be?). The chill bit through the relatively thin fabric of Tucker’s long-sleeved sleep shirt and pajama pants, but he was more preoccupied with the odd realization that the idea of a body–especially the nebulous phantom image that had hung in his mind’s eye in the dark tunnels under the mall–was actually significantly more upsetting than the real thing. Sure, he’d only seen it for a moment and was happy to stay over here and never see it again, but he didn’t feel overwhelmed by fear or disgust. Maybe slightly queasy. Sam looked about the same. Then again, it made sense that they were somewhat better off than the girl who’d discovered it; ever since hearing her scream and taking stock of the electricity zinging up Tucker’s spine, they’d been more or less expecting something like this.

Tucker figured they should do something for the senior girl; she looked like she might be in shock or something, and it would probably be helpful to at least get her to stop staring at the body. Carefully avoiding looking left, Tucker sidled up to her and tried to get her attention. “Um. Hey. Excuse me?” When that didn’t work, he edged around to get in her line of sight, blocking her view of the scene that now lay behind him. It was hard not to be hyperaware of what he had his back to, especially since his joints were still sparking and twitching occasionally with low-level animal dread (he half expected the...owner of the body, or their shade at least, to show up any minute now; was his nightmare sense supposed to be a murder sense as well?). “Excuse me?”

He was relieved when her facial muscles slackened after a moment and her eyes focused on him; he was less relieved when then she seemed to become even more horrified. “Oh my god,” she exclaimed, voice wavering. “What the hell did you people do?!”

“Um. What?” Tucker was so surprised that he briefly forgot that he was supposed to sound soothing. It didn’t seem to matter to the girl, though–she started backing up down the sidewalk, stumbling a little, without taking her eyes off of him and Sam. “Hey, sorry, I understand you’re freaked out, but I think you need to stay until the police arrive–”

“Not much they can do, actually,” announced Danny’s voice from behind Tucker. “Ghost did it.” The senior girl’s panicked attention shifted to somewhere over Tucker’s left shoulder.

Oh. Great. Danny had been chilling in the side yard with the body this whole time, hadn’t he? Tucker wasted a few seconds on attempting to telepathically scream “BE NORMAL FOR ONCE!!” into Danny’s head. He did not succeed.

Luckily, Tucker’s dad got off the phone with the 911 operator just then and managed to catch the second part of Danny’s statement. He abruptly took charge. “Tucker, Sam, Danny. Go back inside and reinforce the salt lines. Especially around the gym.” His voice softened. “Miss, you can go inside with them or wait with me for the police. Are you alright? Did you see what happened here?”

The appearance of an authoritative adult finally shocked the girl out of whatever trance-like state she had been in. “Uh. I’m–I’m fine, no. I didn’t–I just found him like this.” At the mention of the body she brought her hand up to her mouth again, eyes welling up with tears.

Seeing the danger signs, Mr. Foley coaxed her into sitting down on the curb, facing away from the body, and began the process of asking her name and getting in contact with her parents. He caught Tucker’s eye over her shoulder and jerked his head to the left, and Tucker realized with a start that they hadn’t followed his first directions. He caught Sam’s elbow, ignoring her questioning glance ( Ghost nearby?–I don’t know ), and they both jogged to catch up with Danny, who had somehow managed to pass them without their noticing and was already through the front gate, heading back in toward the house. “What now?” Sam asked, slowing to a walk as they drew up behind him.

“I think–Tuck, did you sense any ghosts nearby?”

“No, nothing out of the ordinary.”

“There you go, then. I’m killing the thing in the gym.”

“You think it...?” Sam trailed off.

“Yeah, I waited too long.”

“Didn’t we wait because it’s probably really dangerous and possibly going to kill you? All the way? Dead?” Tucker interposed.

“I mean, so are a lot of things. I was mostly being lazy,” Danny offered with a humorless chuckle. There was some pep in his step, though. Tucker didn’t love that.

“Well, if it…y’know, killed that guy, then we have to get rid of it,” Sam decided, abruptly switching sides to the one that promised violence.

To his own dismay, Tucker couldn’t exactly bring himself to disagree, especially when the corner of Danny’s mouth was stretching slyly sideways like that. The guy clearly needed to work off some ghost mojo immediately. But if they were going to do this, they had to do it smart. “Okay, then here’s the plan. We’re making sure it’s in the house and then salting it in. We’re not letting it anywhere near my dad and that girl out there, not to mention anyone else who happens to stroll by.”

Sam considered it. “Sounds good,” she said with only a slight waver in her voice. Danny shrugged assent. They kept walking.

They were halfway up the stairs when Sam stopped short. “Wait. Okay, we need slightly more of a plan.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, good point,” Tucker agreed nervously, stopping between two steps and leaning against the wall. “Okay. I’m assuming Danny, as the least likely to, y’know, uhh perish horribly, is doing the luring inside, right?”

“Or violent herding, hopefully, but yeah, sure. Actually, I don’t really see why I shouldn’t just do this on my own?” He frowned.

Darn it. Tucker had thought the combination of Sam’s steamrolling skills and his own blithe avoidance of unfavorable discussion topics had allowed them to fast-forward past this whole mess, but it seemed Danny had regained some presence of mind. “‘Cause it’ll be a lot easier for you to fight off an angry poltergeist while keeping it away from a few people, or, like, one area, than for you to fight off an angry poltergeist while drawing a very precise unbroken line with salt in a particular area, right?”

Danny was forced to concede that point. “Okay, fine, but do we really need both of you in here? Can’t one of you draw the line? Preferably the faster one?”

“Nope,” Sam said resolutely. “We’re doing it together. Better chance of success.” She glared directly into Danny’s eyes, daring him to put up a fight.

So it was settled, then. “I’ll go grab the salt!” Tucker volunteered, vaguely wondering why they’d gone halfway upstairs without it, when it was their only necessary prop and the kitchen was on the first floor. He skidded to a stop in front of the Mansons’ pantry, across from and just beyond the big black fridge, and snatched the cylindrical cardboard container of kosher salt from the top shelf. It was worryingly light. Salt was almost impossible to obtain in Amity right now, flying off supermarket shelves as soon as the hazmat guys could shepherd a shipment in, and for the first time Tucker found himself wishing they’d been a bit less careful in reinforcing the house’s wards. They’d already gone through a full container of iodine salt and another mostly full kosher box brought over from the Foleys’ place.

When he’d pounded back up to their place on the stairs Sam and Danny were no longer in a staring contest, so he assumed Danny had given in and the plan was set in stone. Danny would fight, Tucker would pour, and Sam would watch his back while he was doing it, making sure he dodged anything that needed to be dodged. Wordlessly, they continued up the stairs. They stopped in a pressed-together clump in front of the closed door to the gym. Something rustled on the other side.

Tucker flipped down the little metal spout on the salt canister like a man co*cking a pump-action shotgun. The air around Danny rippled and distorted, and he was replaced by something not quite there and yet completely terrifying. Sam just kind of scowled.

Then Tucker kicked apart the salt line in front of the door and they rushed in with a furious yell.

…

It was Schulker.

...

Well, of course it was Schulker. Tucker didn’t know why, but it somehow made sense to him. He didn’t let himself hesitate any longer over the revelation, only noting the poltergeist’s position–squatting down on the polished floor in the room’s rightmost corner, a very hunter-lying-in-ambush-esque pose–before he and Sam sprinted to the far wall, the one with the big westward-facing windows.

It felt like there was lightning in the air, crackling and screaming, and it only made the too-hard pounding of Tucker’s heart even worse. It was physically painful to turn his focus away from the confrontation happening on the right side of the room, but he managed it, and began his salt line with trembling fingers in the left back corner. He just had to line this one wall, 15 feet or so across. He wasn’t even doing the hard part.

Speaking of which, he heard first a gasp from Sam, who stood behind him with her hand clenched on his shoulder and her leg pressed against his side, and then Schulker’s voice, barely audible over the roar of the invisible lightning, which made it seem as if the room contained a raging windstorm even though the air, if he focused on how it felt on his skin, was actually still.

Still in his crouch, he began stepping to the right, shaking out the salt on the floor below the windows as his pulse pounded in his ears. He felt Sam move with him. There was the sound-sensation of the lightning storm, and there was also a high, inhuman keening sound that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. If he tried to actually listen to it, it became inaudible, slipping out of reach. Could Sam hear any of this? And he’d gotten distracted and the salt had formed a small pile, unnecessarily thick and wasteful. He attempted to spread it along to the right with his left hand’s fingers, cursing how the sticky grains clung to them. Focus!

“So you kids got tired of our little standoff, then,” Schulker teased, voice raspy with static and dipping at odd moments into a lower register. He didn’t sound at all put off by the fact that, from what Tucker understood, Danny was furiously attacking him right now, having rushed right in without pausing to chat. “Can’t blame ya, I was gettin’ bored as well. It have anything to do with the early morning snack I left outside? I been told my table manners aren’t all that refined.”

“Shut up,” growled a voice with a timbre midway between the roar of a buzz saw and the onslaught of a thousand mosquitoes, completely unrecognizable as belonging to Danny Fenton. There were a number of wet-sounding thumps, and the keening noise grew louder. Tucker took another crab-walking step to the right; he was about a third of the way across and breathing much harder than the exercise warranted. Something big hit the wall to his left with enough force to shatter one of the huge mirrors and bury itself a foot or so in the plaster and wood underneath. Sam yelped, a wavering note terminating at a painfully high pitch, as shards of mirror gouged small valleys in her flesh. Angled as she was to protect Tucker, she took the brunt, and he only squeaked and squeezed his eyes shut reflexively as one stray shard glanced off his cheek and another bloodied his knuckle. Whatever–whoever?–had been thrown into the wall was already gone by the time he looked, and so he refocused on the salt line, moving faster as he sensed the centerpoint of the turmoil move behind him and to his right, whirling around the room rapidly.

Halfway across. His thighs burned. He sucked the blood off his knuckle and kept going.

~(*0*)~

Sam wasn’t certain exactly what she was looking at, here. Turned out the general vibe of a fight between two ghosts fell somewhere near the intersection between unutterably terrifying and completely incomprehensible.

A good amount of the time she wasn’t actually certain if they were still in the room. The door had been slamming open and shut wildly since this thing began, which could mean they were going in and out, chasing each other at incredible speeds throughout the whole house, or could just be a thing that happened with ghosts. The fighters themselves were completely silent, so her ears couldn’t help her resolve that question. Occasionally she would catch a glimpse, for a second or two, of two human figures, one in camo and one mostly shadow. They weren’t so much visibly moving as leaving afterimages, like a bad flipbook. Their periodic appearances kept her tensed to run and only controlling the impulse through an immense exertion of will. Three or four times she saw huge, ambiguous smears of indeterminate color, against the ceiling or on the floor or halfway through the nearest wall or too close too close too close , visible only long enough for her to register that the figures they contained were very much not human, and not long enough for her to decide upon their actual shape. Craters appeared in the walls, cracks raced along the ceiling, shards of mirror glass embedded themselves too fast to follow in surfaces they logically had no business penetrating. The second mirror exploded, then the third, and all this in what appeared to Sam’s eyes to be an empty gym. The light flickered wildly every few moments, which was improbable considering they hadn’t turned on the electric lights and were relying on what came in the windows. Sam curled forward, attempting to cover her neck and face with her arms, unable to stop her eyes from tracking every tiny movement. She could feel her pulse in her ears and a sickening panic in her stomach. Still, when she felt Tucker move, she moved with him. They were only a few feet from the opposite wall. Three feet. Two feet. One.

And then Tucker said in a very small, very watery voice, “Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“I think I’m out of salt.”

Sam’s guts crawled.

“Can you help me spread it out? What’s already down there?”

“Yeah!” she squeaked, hating the pitch of it. “Yeah, should I get more from earlier on the line?”

“Ea–yeah. Yeah.” He was already kneeling to look at the line more closely, feverishly pushing individual grains forward in groups of four or five.

It wasn’t like she could actually do much to protect him, anyway. From the moment they’d entered the room, she’d been weighed down by the horrifying conviction that his battle was beyond her comprehension, much less her abilities. Beyond her mortal ken, as pretentious-goth-phase Sam probably would have said it. God, she couldn’t die now; she’d only just become a person she liked.

Her shoes crunched glass shards into the wood as she ran back to the middle of the room and squatted over the line. It was thicker here, and got progressively thinner as it neared Tucker’s end of the room–clearly he’d become more and more conservative with the salt as he felt his container getting lighter. Her chest heated with a pulse of new unease when she spotted a place where a glass shard had actually parted the line, and she quickly pushed salt back together, keeping a weather eye out for other such spots as she thinned the line with her pointer and middle fingers. The best method seemed to be scooping up the separated grains into her other hand, a task complicated by the way they stuck to her fingers when she tried to deposit them in her palm. The panic and frustration made her want to scream.

It felt like hours focused entirely on her miniscule task and her beating heart before she finally had a good enough reservoir of salt in her palm to dash back over to Tucker. He’d managed to extend the line, perilously thin, to just five inches short of the wall. Not bothering with delicacy, Sam dumped her small handful into the middle of that remaining space, pushing grains off her palm with her other fingers as Tucker began sliding them into a linear formation with the sides of his hands. They moved faster, frantically, bumping into each others hands–

And then, all of a sudden, it was done.

And its efficacy was proven when something hurtled into that barrier only to rebound with a vibrating thud-clanggggg and a sense of immense force. The cause of the disturbance became visible as it slowed down, rolling across the floor and stopping about three quarters of the way back across the room: It was Danny. Or ghost-Danny, anyway, and it was hard to tell, but Sam didn’t think he was doing so hot. His luminance was wavery, and some of his composite shadows seemed to be pooling off of him and onto the floor. But he still pushed himself to his feet pretty quickly.

“Guys?” came the staticky tinfoil-shredding voice out of the long slit mouth. “Tactical retreat.”

Which was all the impetus it took for Tucker and Sam to do what they’d wanted to do this whole time and run like hell.

~(*0*)~

There was a flash of white light just before they crossed the front door’s threshold, and then they were outside and Danny was with them, sweaty, bleeding black from his mouth and nose, and cradling his left arm protectively against his torso. He looked exhausted. “What the hell is wrong with that guy?! He literally won’t f*cking die!” he complained loudly. A few weeks ago, Tucker didn’t think he would’ve been able to detect the note of panic under the exaggerated irritation.

“Well he’s a—“ Sam started, still breathing hard.

“Yeah, yeah, he’s a ghost, you know what I mean!”

“No, I was gonna say he’s a wechuge.”

Danny frowned. (He wasn’t breathing hard, which irked Tucker slightly.) “But he’s not a wechuge, he’s a ghost.”

“Can you...not be both?” Tucker put in cautiously. He was speaking in a low voice; it felt weird to be having this conversation out in the open, in the filtered sunlight of Sam’s manicured green front yard.

“Well, I—he said before it was a contract, didn’t he?” Sam frowned. “Actually—that was weird, now that I’m thinking about it. There wasn’t anything online about making a contract, per se, to be a wechuge. It usually isn’t...voluntary, I think?”

Which raised a lot of questions. Tucker absentmindedly chewed a scab off his lip. “So is that actually what he is? Or was?”

“There’s a lot of things out there that like making deals. And you should never believe at face value that something is what it says it is,” Danny noted darkly.

Sam coughed. “Okay, but—okay. Regardless. Whatever he really was, we were working off the theory that the killer targets people with contracts ‘cause death breaks them, and when you break them that releases energy. So now that he’s dead, any contract he had should be broken.”

“Sam, that wasn’t really a theory, that was just you spitballing wildly.”

“Tucker! Constructivity!”

“Fine, fine! We’re brainstorming. So your theory and Danny’s–horrible spooky intuition?–both say he’s not a wechuge anymore. Because he’s a ghost. Danny, my friend, I’m almost afraid to ask: How do you usually kill a ghost?”

Danny frowned. “Well, okay. So the weaker ones you can get rid of just by targeting the vital areas they had when they were alive. Like, you stab it through the heart, and it’ll just sort of move on, even though logically it doesn’t need a heart to exist. The hard ones to kill are—” He paused, and his eyes widened. “The hard ones to kill, the ones you really just have to completely obliterate, are the ones that understand that they aren’t human.”

Sam made a horrified noise. “And Schulker wasn’t human even when he was alive. He’s used to it.”

It was tempting to give into despairing silence here, but no. No, this was good, they were finally starting to understand things! Tucker bounced on the balls of his feet, full of nervous energy, and shook out his hands. “So wait, it’s like the mind-over-matter principle again. Right, Sam? How you think what you can do in the occult is governed by belief?”

She met his urgent gaze with equal intensity. “You’re right, it’s sort of the same thing—!”

“So if the usual ghost-obliteration isn’t working, how do we make Schulker believe you’ve killed him? He thinks of himself as a wechuge, so what kills a wechuge?”

Sam already had her phone out. Danny groaned and slapped his forehead dramatically as Tucker’s brainstem did that ping thing. “Seriously? Wait, that’s so obvious. We didn’t even need to go into all the technicalities about contracts and beliefs and whatever, that literally should’ve been our first thought.”

“But isn’t it better to know why something works than to just sort of hope it works by accident?” Sam questioned absently, squinting close to her phone screen and rapidly scrolling.

“We don’t know anything, we’re wildly guessing and I’m gonna have to go back in there and just sort of hope our wild guesses actually kill that thing,” Danny grumbled.

Tucker offered him a lopsided smile. “Danny. Constructivity.”

“Ugh.” But he looked more energized and was smiling too, if a bit wryly. And it was barely even disturbing.

While Sam stepped away to research, another thought occurred to Tucker, and he tapped Danny, who was turned slightly and glaring fixedly at the house, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Dude. Is there–like, a–a reason Schulker has been hanging out in the gym, where we summoned him before?”

Danny took a moment to notice him, and another to register the question. “Um. Yeah, actually. That’s another area where movies and books and stuff are pretty on the mark–when you do things like that, then there’s less separation between this side and the other side in that place for a while. I don’t wanna say ‘the barrier’s thinner’ ‘cuz that’s, like, not really accurate, but it’s definitely sort of charged afterward. That’s...probably also why I got summoned to that back area in the mall where they found Schulker’s body–because they probably did some ritual or killed him there, and that primed the area for more supernatural stuff. Increased the chances of a successful summoning.”

“Hmm.”

“Why’d you ask?”

“Oh. I guess it just seemed weird. Weird situation all around.”

“Heh. Yep.”

Sam turned back into the conversation just then, still looking at her phone. “Okay, so this sucks. Apparently we have to get him into a fire and keep him there. Overnight.”

“Overnight? Seriously?” Tucker couldn’t believe this. “Okay, that’s–okay, what does that mean though? It’s morning right now! Do we need to keep him there for like, twelve hours, or do we have to wait for nighttime and then another twelve hours, just?! Why?!”

“I guess I could...just keep trying to obliterate him?” Danny offered, sounding a little overwhelmed and completely dead on his feet. (Heh.)

“Do you, uh. Think there’s a good chance that would work?”

“Um. Like sixty-forty.”

“Any other ideas?”

Sam crossed her arms, shifting her weight. “We could summon a bunch of other ghosts to fight him.”

Danny groaned. “But I just ate.”

“Yeah, also, I think the last thing this situation needs is more ghosts. Danny, any ghost friends who are already here who could help?”

“Nope. None who can fight stuff.”

The back of Tucker’s mind said, Heh. Not popular among poltergeists. He ignored it.

There was a moment of silence, and then Danny hissed through his teeth. “Oh, yeah! I almost forgot! I don’t know about where to like, make a fire, but if we have to lure him somewhere, Tucker’s bait.”

“What?”

“He was totally targeting you. In the house. Maybe it’s a psychic thing. But if we want him to go somewhere, just, like. Run there.”

Tucker’s stomach flipped. “...Ah. Great. ...So what do we do once we have him in a place?”

Another thinking pause.

“Well, rope’s obviously not going to work,” Sam reasoned slowly. “He’s incorporeal. Also, I’m assuming we’re all thinking of the downstairs fireplace, right? The oven can’t be big enough, and I don’t know if it would work anyway.”

“Isn’t the upstairs fireplace bigger?”

“Wait,” Danny interrupted whatever Sam was going to say (probably something about stairs and Tucker’s stamina, possibly about that time he got thrown off of an elliptical machine). “Is the fireplace back in the wall? Like a niche?”

Tucker caught his meaning a split second later. “Oh, damn, we can salt him in!” he burst out, suddenly elated. “...Oh, damn. We’re out of salt.”

A moment of silent despair. And then Sam smacked her forehead, audibly.

“Oh my god, we’re so stupid!” She locked eyes with him and said, with a growing grin and perhaps more passion and gravity than the sentence had ever before merited, “We can literally just borrow salt from the neighbors.”

~(*0*)~

The ensuing encounter with the aging Mrs. Crawford next door was, in a word, awkward. For one thing, they were all in pajamas and extremely sweaty, and one of their number currently looked like he’d been gnawed on by a rabid dog. However, Mrs. Crawford did have a mostly full box of salt, and she liked kids enough not to want them to be eaten by ghosts. They left her house seven minutes later with a small tupperware about a quarter filled with fine-ground salt and snuck back into the front yard. Amity’s extremely thinly stretched and depleted police force still hadn’t managed to send someone for the body, so Mr. Foley was still waiting in the side yard. They took a few deep breaths and ran back inside the house just as Mr. Foley’s voice drifted faintly over the fence: “Tucker…?”

Schulker met them in the entryway. Danny instantly transformed and shoved himself to the front. “Gotta say, kids, this is pretty...eh, what’s the word, cushy for a trap.” He grinned, gums showing.

He didn’t look much better than Danny, if that meant anything. His clothes were badly torn and the camouflage pattern was obscured in large swathes by the same dark, ichorous substance that ran from his nose and covered most of his chin. He might have been missing a few fingers. He’d always looked fairly solid during summonings, but then he rushed forward in that horrible nerve-jolting flipbook style he and Danny had used while fighting, and he seemed to be visible for longer between flickers.

Then there was, again, no time for idle observations, and Sam and Tucker were sprinting pell-mell into the living room while the lights began flickering wildly behind them.

~(*0*)~

In the end, it took them fifteen whole minutes to manhandle Schulker into the fireplace. Twice, Danny managed to throw or shove him in but Tucker was unable to close the small remaining gap in the salt line before he could slip out again. It was fifteen minutes of blood-churning frustration and intoxicating adrenaline, and Sam holding on firmly to her best friend’s arm and watching as his eyes tracked back and forth, following things she couldn’t see as more than the occasional blur. She wondered what it looked like. From his tense body language and occasional flinch, she thought maybe she didn’t want to know.

On the third try, though, Danny managed to yell a warning right before kicking (?) or otherwise propelling Schulker through two walls and into the fireplace. Tucker, panting and sporting a gash in his left shoulder that Danny hadn’t been able to prevent, closed the gap with salt the instant after Schulker rebounded off of the back of the fireplace–an outside wall, and therefore warded as long as salt lined all the windows and doors. From Sam’s perspective, what happened was that Tucker dumped salt onto the brickwork of an empty fireplace, there was a terrible impact, and then all of the sudden Schulker was just there, in the fireplace, as huge as at the first summoning and not nearly as self-possessed.

She didn’t look at him. A strange, nauseating frequency became audible, perhaps just in Sam’s head, making her ears ring as she held tight with her furiously trembling fingers and attempted to light a match.

Her first scrape along the matchbox failed when, his task accomplished, Tucker sprinted back a couple of steps, dragging Sam with him. Danny– where was Danny? Tucker was speaking. Screaming, practically. “So tell us who it was!”

The fuzzy ringing in her ears grew worse, and Sam realized Schulker was probably talking as well. She couldn’t make out his features, either–upon a frantic second look (the match broke against the matchbox when she looked away from it), she realized couldn’t make out much of anything. Her brain refused to process it as anything other than a man wearing fatigues, but she knew that wasn’t what she was seeing.

“Well then who was the f*cking first one then? In Chicago?” Tucker again, low and grating. More pseudo-silence. He laughed once, a very unhappy sound tinged with mania. “Oh, spare me– Technus?”

Sam struck the new match, and it lit.

“So what’s he gonna do now, you f*cki –you piece of sh*t, he’s got three, you can’t just– Sam!” That last part was a high yelp, as the thing in the fireplace surged against the invisible wall locking it in, making the whole house seem to shake on its foundations. The whining in her brain rose to a fever pitch, so high and loud that it hurt to exist, it hurt to think, but she didn’t need to think–she had–

–match–hand–

–running–forward–not overthesaltboundary–paper–

–dropmatch–heady–beating–

–too light, snuffing–falling–

Sam threw herself backward as the fireplace erupted in flame.

There was that horrible, broken-glass screech, louder than a thousand woodchippers, and it went on and on until Sam realized it was gone and had been for minutes, had maybe only sounded for seconds or maybe hadn’t happened in the first place. A piece of hair was stuck to her cheek, gross and sweaty. She was sitting back on her bruised tailbone, supported by her elbows as her hands clenched into fists so tight it hurt to force her fingers free.

With an enormous effort of will, she forced herself to look at the fireplace. And–

Well. Heh. There was still something there, at least. It looked like a burned-up effigy, withered and twisted and blackened with soot but vaguely human-shaped, bulging in places it wasn’t supposed to be. There wasn’t enough space in the fireplace for this emaciated cinder to lie flat, so it was leaned partway against the invisible barrier of the salt line. A cheerful, tidy fire crackled steadily around it. The half-fused fingers twitched, and Sam fought a bubble of laughter rising up her throat from somewhere under her ribcage.

The newspapers were mostly ash, by now, but the logs behind them, half underneath the body, had caught, and promised to keep the fire steady and enthusiastic for at least another four hours or so. Sam experienced the impulse to add insult to injury. She stumbled to her feet, walked to the set of switches by the nearest doorway, and turned on the gas. The fire flared blue and gnawed on the silent figure with a touch more hunger.

She stared at the fire for another moment, then turned with a slight swaying motion to where her best friend was still sitting on the ground. Tucker blinked, met her eyes, and, despite his obvious exhaustion, grinned sideways.

“We are...so cool,” he informed her tiredly.

~(*0*)~

When they had collected themselves sufficiently through a combination of self-congratulation, compartmentalization, and very careful breathing, they went in search of the muscle of their team. They didn’t have to search any further than the next room opposite the fireplace. Danny was sitting on the ground, back to human, leaning his whole body weight against the living room-facing wall with an expression of dazed relief. He tried to say something when he saw them and immediately coughed, that oozing black stuff flecking out of his mouth and onto the greenish-brown carpet. Extremely toxic, probably. Radioactive, maybe. He cleared his throat with a fist in front of his mouth and tried again. “That f*cker french toast yet?”

A few more heartbeats, processing. “I would’ve gone with french fries, but yeah.” Tucker laughed tremulously. “It seems like he can’t get out. He’s still there, but he’s not moving. And he’s getting weaker as he’s burning–I can see it,” he added, eyes flicking nervously back in the direction of the fireplace. He’d allowed the wall to separate him from it. Sam had stayed in the doorway, never letting her eyes shift for more than an instant off of the shrinking corpse rapidly immolating in her parents’ fireplace. It was so incongruous that it almost felt fitting.

“I...trust that significantly less far than I threw it,” Danny responded, smiling slightly. “Take it in shifts?”

“I call first nap,” Tucker consented, sliding to the floor beside Danny, who very clearly should not be taking the first watch either. Sam didn’t mind; she didn’t think she would be able to take her eyes off the fireplace anyway. They should really do something about Tucker’s shoulder, not to mention Danny’s...everything, but they were teenagers. Procrastination was their thing. If Tucker didn’t mind sleeping on the ground in the Mansons’ secondary reception area with his pajama shirt soaked through with blood and pasted to his skin, then Sam wouldn’t deprive him of that luxury.

Quietly, as quietly as the burning gas issuing industriously from the pipes around the charred corpse in her parents’ fireplace, Sam slipped back into the living room. She settled down for a long, unblinking wait.

~(*0*)~

The daylight passed away in eight shifts.

Mr. Foley came and went, successfully kept from Schulker’s remains by Sam and Tucker. When he first made it back into the house, they caught him just before he could enter the living room and managed to redirect him to the kitchen with pleas of trauma-induced hunger that could only be satisfied by a famous Foley-formulated grilled cheese. Tucker had by that point changed his shirt, after allowing Sam to wipe his scratches clumsily with alcohol wipes and bandage his shoulder in an inexpert imitation of a Youtube video she pulled up on her phone. Danny had been the one to declare that the injury probably didn’t warrant stitches. Neither of them had asked how he knew.

Sam got her sea legs back, Tucker hugged and distracted his dad, Danny watched videos on Sam’s phone while his charged, and they all took shifts watching the form in the fireplace crackle and distend. It was peaceful, somehow. It was mesmerizing, in a way. The torturous buildup of tension accrued since the portal’s first opening had been discharged all at once, in one insane morning’s expenditure of energy, and if Tucker was right, then they had two whole weeks until they really had to deal with this stuff again. Until Halloween, when the killer did whatever it was they’d ruined three souls to achieve. And it was definitely three. The current killer had been confirmed the second killer, and Schulker had said Nikolai Technus was the first. (“So victim number four really was killer number one,” Sam summed up, closing her eyes to enjoy the sensation as that slotted into place and things made just a little more sense. “That’s why the first three victims never showed up. Their murders had already been avenged.”) If the rule of three meant even half as much in the occult as everything Sam had ever heard or read had suggested it did, he wouldn’t kill again. Shouldn’t do anything until Halloween. Two weeks are a long time, for a teenager with a due date.

An hour before sunset, it occurred to Tucker to inform his dad that they were now truly, totally, definitively out of salt. Which was–bad, in the current circ*mstances. Mr. Foley reluctantly left to grab some from the Foley apartment, since stores remained almost definitely sold out. Sam, Tucker, and Danny didn’t begrudge him this absence, or his use of the Foleys’ car, the only car at the house that wasn’t almost out of gas. After all, they were out of danger, basically, right? Would be for two weeks.

As near as they could figure later, Danny was on his second shift, ninth overall, when the first people started arriving.

~(*0*)~

Somehow, there were nearly forty of them by the time Tucker noticed, a murmuring, milling mass on the Mansons’ front lawn and driveway. Maybe fifty. Maybe more. Every time he snuck a glimpse, Tucker saw more faces he recognized, faces from school, but unfamiliar faces, too. Parents, perhaps. Older friends. Dash was there, and Star, and the guy with the patterned shirts, and the girl with the box braids. Amity Park, scared and angry.

Tucker figured they’d more or less found out who threw the brick.

He called his dad for this one, and his mom. Murderous ghosts were one thing; this was a whole different animal, right here. Maybe the worst part was, after the ordeal this morning Tucker found he was too tired to even feel scared properly. Instead of making it to his head, the feeling just kind of curdled and soured in his stomach, compressed to a few measly dribbles by the weariness that settled over it like the lead weight in an experiment on liquid displacement. Mom and Dad told them to sit tight, and not to answer the door or show themselves through the windows. They told him they’d called the police, but given the force’s response time to the body this morning they weren’t likely to get there for a few hours. They told him a lot of the roads were shut down, making it hard to navigate, but they were on their way as fast as possible.

Of course, when the first window broke, they still weren’t there yet.

From his position around the corner, Tucker imagined he could feel the gust of cold air, even though that probably wasn’t physically possible on a night with no wind like that one. Danny and Sam were both with him, Danny holding both their hands in case he had to turn them invisible in a hurry; they’d finally abandoned their watch. Even if the power went out and the gas stopped running and the new logs they’d added burned down to ash, Schulker would still be stuck behind the salt line. Apparently they’d had their respite; the universe had decided it was time they faced this new trial. Woohoo.

A lone voice called through the breach, too bright and slightly accented. “Foley? Sammy? We know you’re there.”

Sam’s hand visibly tightened in Danny’s. She shot Tucker a look that said, Of course it’s Paulina. I told you so.

“Why did you kill that man? Or have the ghosts do it, I guess. Outside your house, Sammy, you didn’t even try to hide it?”

He shot her back a look that said, Ahaahaaaaghuhuhhgh sh*t. Danny caught the tail end of this look and just looked tired.

“We just want answers, Sammy. We know you’re not telling us. How did this whole green sky thingy start? What’s wrong with the new boy? All these people deserve to know what you’re hiding from us.” The manipulative bitch, she knew practically everything they knew, she’d helped them figure it out in the first place, why was she doing any of this?

“We are coming in, Sammy. Foley. Is the new boy there? He’s kind of cute, for what I am pretty sure he is….”

There was the tinkle of glass shards carefully removed from a windowsill. The quiet stamp of feet on wood flooring.

Danny sighed, and said, quietly, “We’re leaving.” And then everyt hing w as c old and h e coul d s ee –

~(*0*)~

“Woah, wait. What’s wrong with Tucker?”

Their small group, linked up in a line like kindergarteners, had made it a good three blocks away from the Manson house (by going out the back door and then invisibly, intangibly phasing through a good number of fences, doghouses, and street lamps, which was a horrible sensation) before Sam noticed that there was anything wrong with Tucker. She’d been concentrating on the gross tingly feeling under her skin and walking into things without flinching or tripping or thinking about how this was the first time ever in her life that she wasn’t seeing her own nose, and Danny had been concentrating on...being a ghost, she guessed, and doing the thing that made them invisible and intangible. Neither of them had broken the silence, for obvious reasons. As such, it was something of a surprise when they noticed that Tucker was stumbling along with them mechanically, eyes wide and fixed on the asphalt beneath them, mouth moving to form silent words as Danny jerked him to a delayed stop.

Danny frowned, peering closer. Well, Sam thought that was probably what happened; he was kind of hard to visually process right now. “I think he’s having a weird reaction to being–what’s the word, she–uh, discorporated. Because of the psychic thing?” he said in that staticky way of his.

Oh, that made sense. Wait. “Discorporated?!” Sam squeaked, suddenly very preoccupied with the nose thing after all. “I thought you said we were just invisible and intangible! Where are our bodies?!”

Danny probably looked taken aback. It was still really freaky to have him face her like that. “Uh. Well. I don’t know exactly, but if you had bodies you wouldn’t exactly be intangible and invisible, right? So they’re probably a little–nonexistent, or something, right now. Temporarily! Once I let go you’ll go right back to normal. We’ve totally tested this. Exhaustively.”

Sam immediately snatched her hand back and was both relieved and kind of surprised by the way her nose reappeared in her field of vision. It was cold out. She took a moment to breathe, then grabbed Danny’s wrist; the tingly feeling washed over her again, and goodbye nose. “Shouldn’t you let go of Tucker?”

Danny glanced over his shoulder. They were on an empty street, another cul-de-sac, and by now it was fully dark. Two streetlights out of ten were working, and the three of them were under neither of those two. “We should probably get further away…?”

Sam had to concede this point, but god, the checked-out look on Tucker’s face was starting to make her scared again in that visceral way she hadn’t been able to become in the face of the mob. “Okay, five more minutes. The Foleys’ house is that way.”

Five minutes later, they were walking briskly down a major street and halfway to the Foleys’ house, but there were people out, so Sam was forced to let Tucker continue to stumble and mutter. In another ten minutes, they finally got to Tucker’s street, and Sam figured they might as well just go all the way at this point. As soon as they were under the lip of the roof at his front door, Sam let go of Danny’s semi-tangible dead-person wrist and lightly whacked his other hand, even as he grumbled about how he was letting go anyway so they could get across the front door salt line. As soon as the contact ended, Tucker started to pitch forward, and Sam caught him under the arms just as light flashed to her right and Danny made himself human enough to open the unlocked door.

She didn’t have to bear Tucker’s full weight, though, because he recovered his footing almost immediately after she got a firm hold. “Tuck? Tucker? Are you–Tuck, what’s up?”

“Ugh, I–what?” He looked around, confused. This close, Sam could see that his pupils were both shrinking down from a much larger size, but at different speeds.

“We’re at your house, Danny got us away by dis–the invisibility thing he talked about. Paulina was at the house, you remember that, right?” She steered him inside as she talked, not that he needed much steering; the puzzled furrow in his brow smoothed out pretty quickly.

“Yeah, I remember, I just don’t remember–what the hell, that felt weird, dude!” He turned an incredulous stare on Danny, then Sam. “You didn’t feel that?”

It seemed like he would be fine, as long as she kept ignoring his risks of shoulder wound infection. “Uh, no, I just felt cold. It tingled.”

“It was like all my–like all my senses were–and I was feeling– inverted? It was completely freaky.” He absentmindedly pushed past Sam to flop on the sofa of his own couch. She followed him while Danny, looking a little guilty, moved around closing curtains. They’d left the lights off, as well. “Wait–we’re at my house,” Tucker noticed.

“Yes…?”

“Where are my parents?”

“...Oh my god,” Sam responded. “They were on their way to my house….”

“I’m calling them right now,” Tucker declared in a cracking voice but with new energy, already pulling out his phone.

While he did that, Danny wandered back to the couch and fell onto it just as exhaustedly as, though somehow more gracefully than, the other two had. Sam and Danny looked at each other for a minute, clearly mutually desiring not to have to talk about any of what had happened that day.

At length, Sam resigned herself to the responsibility. “...Okay, so Paulina is working with the killer, or she is the killer. Or maybe there’s three, who f*ckin’ knows. What the hell is up with that.”

Danny, without standing up, managed to slide off the couch and onto the ground. He still looked awful, and he was stabilizing his messed-up arm against his torso. “I mean. I dunno. She’s your scary goth archnemesis or whatever.”

Tucker, who’d just finished conversing over the phone in a low voice, chuckled at that, a bit weirdly. “Goth? Have you seen the woman’s wardrobe?”

“Hey, those were some really threatening pinks.”

“We’re getting off topic.” Sam scowled. “The point is, she’s either switched sides, or she was messing with us the whole time.”

Danny crossed his arms and looked to Tucker consideringly. “Well, she’s against us now. Question is, does that mean she knows who the killer is?” Sam turned to Tucker too; he was the people person here.

Tucker looked confused at this bend in the conversation, and he took a moment to organize his thoughts. When he spoke, it was slow and measured. “I’m still–her reaction was weird, in the cafeteria. I just don’t think she wanted to do any of this. I don’t know if she’s being controlled in some way? And honestly if it’s connected to the murderer at all, but it’s gotta be.” Tucker leaned his head back slowly against the top of the back of the sofa, gazing from under heavy lids at the ceiling. A good position for musing. “I mean, essentially all she’s done is redirect suspicion away from whoever actually caused the Amitypocalypse, sort of. And now everyone hates us and is super aware of us, and our main method of investigation was just getting close to people and having awkward conversations and eavesdropping, so now we can’t keep...investigating...the school….”

“...Oh.”

“...sh*t.”

They processed that. One thing was clear: They needed to have a serious and intelligent discussion about how to proceed.

~(*0*)~

“I–dude. Samantha. Love of my life. I swear, Paulina is definitely not the guy who attacked me in the library! One hundred percent certainty! Statistically speaking, I could not be more certain!” Tucker might have been going a little insane. Or maybe the ceiling really was swimming.

“Maybe you just don’t want to admit that you got beat up by a 5’4” cheerleader in acrylics,” Sam goaded.

“I mean, gymnastics makes you buff,” Danny said consideringly. Tucker wasn’t sure what his goal was; did he think he was helping?

Okay, in all honesty, Paulina probably did have a good chance against him physically if she got in quick and used her nails with maximum meanness, but she really was more of a psychological or emotional threat. And trying to make a link between the semi-comedic image of the two of them really going at each other, and his memories of the library that still woke him up in a cold sweat, was kind of brain-breaking.

“I know what I saw, though. The guy was built like a linebacker.”

It had been a long three hours of completely unproductive conversation, after that little oh-crap moment before, and Tucker’s parents still weren’t home. He’d reached them on the phone, and apparently they’d gotten stopped at one of the hazmat suit guys’ checkpoints. Once Tucker had reassured them of his safety, Mom had decided to take advantage of the delay to tell the hazmat guys–the ghost FBI?–an abridged, Danny-free version of how the greenout had started, and also to try to get them to get people dispatched to the Mansons’ before the property damage could become too severe. Mom and Dad had tried to reach the ghost FBI before, despite Danny’s nervous grumbling, but the guys didn’t seem to have an agency phone number and were ridiculously hard to find when you actually wanted them there. Almost like some sort of...secret government organization, huh.

Anyway. The point was, they were alone in the house for the time being, sitting on the couch and getting nothing done, simultaneously so, so tired and too wired to sleep.

Tucker should end the conversation, at least; it was miserable to mull over the endless possibilities. There was no plan of action developing tonight. “Ughhhh. I don’t wanna thiiiink….”

Sam leaned over and poked him hard in the ribs.

“...Too tired…my brain just got made into a ghost omelet….”

“All two brain cells, what a loss.”

“Tuck, do you have wet wipes?” Danny asked, apparently also giving up.

‘What, more extradimensional oozing?” He turned a gimlet eye on Danny. “Not on Mom’s couch.”

“I know, that’s why I was asking!”

And so they settled in again, for the second time that day, to forget about murder and mayhem for a while and focusing on the possibilities of sleep. It was unlikely Paulina’s mob would come here, with the police at least informed and the Tucker household boasting two responsible adult authority figures to the Manson house’s zero.

And if the mob showed up, Danny could just invisible them away again. Tucker still couldn’t fully comprehend what he’d experienced during that little episode. Apparently his nightmare sense did not like the sensation of him being the nightmare. But although it wasn’t ideal, clearly it was efficient.

Something half-remembered from that little psychic episode stayed with him now, and it was keeping him awake even though all he currently wanted in this life was to sleep off all that cardio. It was like a shiver of anticipation, a tiny, gnawing worry.

Despite it, though, he managed to relax again. Whatever was coming, they had time to prepare. They had the resources to deal with it, probably, given how Danny had made the very serious angry mob a non-issue. They had a whole entire whopping two weeks.

At midnight, Tucker grabbed them all blankets from the hall closet.

At 1:16, Sam got up and tore off a banana, chewing it slowly and sleepily.

At exactly 2:03 a.m., Danny sat up straight, yelped “f*ck!” and, accompanied by the sound of smashing glass, blipped out of existence entirely.

Chapter 19: The Culprit, Revealed

Chapter Text

Sam and Tucker stared for a silent moment at the spot Danny had just ceased occupying. “...What?” said Tucker.

The living room was totally still. The lights were off but light from the TV penetrated fairly well into the corners. The slightly crushed pillow Danny had been leaning against was slowly regaining its form. Blue sofa, blue chairs, beige carpet, dark mahogany stairs. There was the door to the kitchen and the light switch on the wall. Tucker crossed to the switch quickly and flipped it on, and warm yellow light took over for the TV’s dim blue in illuminating a perfectly ordinary living room, not a ghost to be seen. Which was the problem, really.

“Did...did he just get summoned?” Sam proposed hesitantly.

Another moment of silence.

Tucker’s mental gears turned one notch clockwise with a devastating click. “...Is the ritual-whatever-thing happening tonight?!”

“Oh my god! What– what?!”

Tucker slapped himself in the face. When that didn’t make things make sense, he slapped himself again, harder, and the realization that he probably looked ridiculous doing this jolted him out of his shock. “sh*t, okay, we need to do something right now!”

“Like?”

“Uh, we–can we summon him back?”

Sam looked hopeful for half a second. “Wait, that’s actually–oh, no, we don’t know his runes. We’d need his blood for that.”

“He was bleeding a ton! Did it get on the couch at all?”

They both set to studying the couch cushions intently. Some distant region of the surreal floaty space in Tucker’s head quietly informed him that this, too, looked ridiculous.

It quickly became clear that there was no visible blood on the couch. Tucker groaned. “And he was holding onto the wet wipes–there’s gotta be dried blood all over your house but Paulina–”

“And I don’t even know any proven rituals for summoning something with blood. This is pointless.”

Tucker was the strangest combination of tensed to the limit and very, very tired. With effort and some bouncing on his heels, he rallied. “Okay, alright, groovy. So do we know where they would have summoned him? Oh–Danny said it’s easier in places where something supernatural already happened, they’re like...charged or something.”

Sam nodded, her eyes unfocused. “Yeah, I figured that. Well, there’s the mall where they did it before, where they did the Schulker ritual too.”

Tucker nodded slowly. “Yeah, that’s probably, like, supercharged because the green-apocalypse came from there.”

“Wait–but didn’t the news say that’s a no-go zone? It’s too active, most of the remaining ghosts are, like, concentrated there. It’s too dangerous for people. Plus, if I were doing a ritual, I wouldn’t want to be somewhere where a bunch of ghosts could interfere.”

“Okay, so probably less likely. Where else? Where did they do the other murder-ritual things?”

Sam frowned and pulled out her phone. “Well, there’s Amber’s apartment, which is still being treated as a crime scene, and...so’s the field where they found Technus, I guess. Both of those were pretty close to Casper, actually.”

“But aren’t those murders kinda old? Does that charged significance thing, like, wear off, do you think?”

“I would think, but I don’t know how long and anyway I’m completely guessing. I–is there anywhere we’re missing?”

Tucker had a lightbulb moment. “Wait, Danny’s a portal, right? Before the green-apocalypse wasn’t he yacking up ghosts on the daily?”

“Oh! So his house would actually have more recent supernatural portal-y activity than the crime scenes!”

“I dunno, but….”

“It’s on our way to school, right?”

“Yeah, we can go there first and then hit the crime scenes.”

“Okay!” Sam clapped her hands briskly, halfway to the front door already. “...We don’t have a car. sh*t.”

“There’s bikes in the garage! You should be able to use Mom’s.” They reversed course.

It was in the garage that they noticed their next problem. The silhouette of a head passed the high windows set into the garage door, then another one, and it took a moment for Tucker to process before he registered even more movement beyond the heads and pulled Sam down to crouch against the garage door, below the sightline of anyone peering in. He said very calmly, “Sam, I think Paulina’s back.”

“Really? sh*t!” Tucker could see the impulse to stand up and see for herself warring with the consciousness of how bad an idea that would be on her face. She settled for turning around to watch two anonymous head-shaped shadows moving and pausing through the light cast by the windows onto the concrete floor. The garage had room for two cars, as the Foleys actually shared it with the next apartment over. At the moment, however, neither family’s vehicle was in, leaving a vast, empty space with nowhere to hide and a fringe of bikes, leaf blowers, exercise equipment, and assorted knickknacks lining the walls. Tucker supposed that was one reason to be grateful for the last remnants of the green sky effect–it made the nights murky in a way they rarely were otherwise, swallowing the moonlight that usually turned this garage into a stark, well-lit bluish wasteland. The darkness now was denser, more enveloping and soft.

“What is she doing here?” Tucker hissed.

“Why did we think she’d given up in the first place?” Sam retorted.

Tucker thought for a moment. Then he felt like dramatically slapping his hand to his forehead; he settled for massaging the bridge of his nose. “Oh. Of course it’s not just random escalation; she chose tonight because she’s trying to keep us occupied until the ritual is over!”

“She was probably also trying to confirm Danny’s location before he got summoned, and keep everyone who saw him disappear under control after,” Sam added thoughtfully, lowering her volume even further when one of the shadows moved in a vaguely suspicious way. “‘Cause even if someone else knew what was going on and had an interest in stopping it, they wouldn’t know it was happening tonight unless they knew Danny got yanked. It’s not an occult holiday.”

So the enemy was actually planning ahead.

Wow, they were really screwed, weren’t they.

The shadow was moving again. Very quietly, Sam whispered, “Your backyard has a side exit, right?”

It took Tucker a second to realize what she was implying. “It–yeah? But–”

“Can we get onto the next street from there? Cut through your back neighbor’s?”

“...We’d have to hope there’s no one on the next street, it’s–not terrible, I guess, but how are we going to get the bikes into the house without them noticing?”

Sam, crouching so her face was just below his head height, snorted quietly and offered him a wry smile. The barest hint of moonlight caught the tips of her stray hairs and glinted off the whites of her eyes, and her whisper wavered with self-deprecating laughter. “I mean, what can we do, besides just go for it?”

Tucker started to run a hand over his hair, but the motion turned into rubbing his drooping right eye instead. Then, realizing that telegraphing tiredness was only making him more tired, he slapped himself on both cheeks, very lightly and quietly. Where was his beret? He’d feel much more up to businesslike if he had it with him. “I mean, we could–” He scanned his surroundings once again. The garage remained just as empty. “sh*t. Yeah, I guess–” there really wasn’t any clever way to accomplish this. “ Okay. Okay, let’s do it.”

“Are we gonna run? Or just walk fast so they won’t notice sudden motion?”

Tucker considered for a minute, ignoring the way he was starting to feel his heartbeat in his chest again. He was getting used to the sensation, almost, and yet somehow he hated it more every time it happened. “...I vote walk, but quick. Stick to the wall, try really hard not to bump the bikes into anything. You know which one’s my mom’s?”

“White, leather handlebars?”

“Yeah.” He breathed in deeply, eyeing his own objective with narrow eyes. Leaning against the wall in front of his mom’s bike was his own blockier green one. Both bikes were facing the garage door, so they’d have to grab the handlebars, kick up the kickstands, and wheel them 180 degrees into the middle of the garage to face the door to the Foleys’ apartment. One of the two of them–Sam, probably, her bike was closer to it–would open the door, and then they’d both have to get their bikes up the two small steps into the house as quickly and quietly as possible. While at any moment, any one of the people outside could idly glance in the windows of the garage and notice them standing in plain view inside. This was going to be nerve-wracking.

He eyed Sam questioningly. Was there anything else to figure out? After a moment, it became clear that neither of them could think of anything, and for another moment they hesitated. Then Sam nodded, and Tucker nodded back, and they broke cover and started toward the bikes.

Far too slowly, they eased the kickstands off the ground, Tucker cursing in his head when his shoe slipped off twice to no effect. Far too slowly, they wheeled their bikes in a semicircle, cringing at the soft and regular clicking sounds of the wheels, and Sam made sure Tucker had a steadying hand on her bike’s back wheel before she let go to pull open the door to the apartment proper. Luckily, they’d left the lights off, so all that could give them away was the motion. Neither of them had looked at the windows this whole time. There was no point. If anyone happened to look, that was it.

Wrestling the bikes up the small set of steps was an ordeal in itself. Tucker’s heart stopped momentarily when he thought his handlebars wouldn’t fit through the doorway, but then he remembered that turning them to the side was a thing bikes could do; it just made everything harder, and he had to lift the front tire a few inches off the ground to make it in the end. The back tire bounced off the steps in a way that jostled his whole body and seemed, to his ears, unbearably loud. But he did it, and wheeled his bike around the corner of the short hallway, and then he speedwalked back to hold the door for Sam in turn. Halfway through her struggle up the steps he realized she wouldn’t be able to get past with him standing inside and holding the door that opened outwards, so he had to squeeze around the bike to get back into the garage and hold it from the other end. It was, to summarize, the most stressful absolutely mundane task Tucker had ever performed.

Sam lifted her front tire and dragged her bike up the rest of the stairs. Bump, bump, bump.

Hope started to bubble up between Tucker’s ribs, ticking whatever gland triggered the slightly manic laughter reflex. Were they actually going to get away with this? Just before guiding the door all the way closed behind him, he snuck one final peek at the garage door windows.

The tops of three heads were visible through the dim, blurry glass. He thought he saw the side of Paulina’s face. No one looked.

Tucker shut the door and restrained himself from whooping like his uncle watching a really exciting football game. He settled for punching the air and running the last couple of steps down the hallway to Sam, whisper-yelling, “f*ck yeah!!”

“Let’s go!”

~(*0*)~

Through the house to the back door they wheeled the bikes, wincing at the pale grey tracks they left behind on the carpet in the living room. The glass sliding door revealed that there was no one in the small backyard, shadowed upon shadow by tall rooftops and the neighbors’ trees. They were out and sliding the door closed behind them before their eyes could really adjust, the grass crunching softly beneath their feet as they fumbled to the back fence and the latched gate that was set into it. Or they tried to find the gate, anyway. It should have been right across the lawn in the left corner, Sam knew from long experience, but she patted the fence for a full thirty seconds before realizing she was in the wrong area entirely, the right side of the yard. She traced her way along the fence to the left, further than she’d thought she’d need to, and then felt a jolt of unease when she looked up and realized that she was in the left side yard? Somehow? But she didn’t remember turning the corner….

“Sam?” Tucker spoke up from behind her. “Uh, what are you doing?”

“I know where the gate is, Tucker!”

“You just walked right by it, though,” he said slowly. He walked closer to the fence. “And it looks kinda...weird? Woah.” He staggered a step back, putting a hand to his temples. “The heck...Is there some kind of spell going on?”

Sam squinted, but she still couldn’t make out any dark hinges. Tucker seemed to know exactly where the gate was, though. Huh. Apparently his second sight didn’t just apply to ghostliness. “Maybe Paulina put some kind of ward up around the house, since we snuck away last time….”

“Do you know how to get rid of it?”

Sam was abruptly reminded of how she really hated pop quizzes. Her gut churned at the unexpected pressure. “Uh, I—I do know a couple simple spells for getting rid of boundaries? But I think they’re meant more for, like, metaphorical boundaries.”

Tucker reached toward the fence again and then retracted his hand, wincing. “Yowch. Well, you might as well try.”

Sam stepped forward hesitantly, mind racing. Should she use the invocation one? What should she call on? Did she even remember that one right? She also knew some spells for countering curses. Could a ward be a curse? What was the technical definition of a curse?

Well, the worst that could happen was it not working. Or, y’know, she could accidentally sell her soul or something. Anyway, if it was about belief, didn’t she just have to delude herself hard enough to succeed? Sam’s experience faking it until she made it, until it became true, was the stuff of legend. She tossed a pinch of sage at the fence and recited, approximately, the first spell that came to mind.

And there were the hinges on the gate, clear as day. From the other side of the house, there came a shriek and a thud. “Paulie?” someone’s voice could be heard saying faintly, sounding concerned. “Are you okay? Paulie!”

Tucker and Sam exchanged a wide-eyed look.

“...Seriously? I got that one off Yahoo Answers.”

~(*0*)~

Tucker really hoped Sam hadn’t just murdered a girl with sorcery. It seemed unlikely, at least; all she’d done was take down a barrier. Tucker tried to grin reassuringly at her as he pushed open the gate and they wheeled their bikes out into the alley between the two houses directly behind the Foleys’ apartment. “Looks like Paulie underestimated your memory for dumb stuff you found on the internet,” he joked quietly, throwing a leg over the seat. They started pedaling, wheeling around almost-invisible potholes in the dark.

“She should’ve tried harder to jump me into her little coven in middle school,” Sam said with a smirk.

“‘Jumped into’ a coven? Is that the proper sorcerous terminology, O Mighty One?”

“Can it, my glorified magician’s assistant.”

“That’s fair. I could absolutely pull off a leotard.”

“Sequins?”

“Even better.”

A pause. “What are we even doing, Danny could be being sacrificed to the death gods or something right now,” Sam exclaimed in tones of wonder.

“Agreed.” They picked up speed, and further conversation was lost in unsynchronized panting.

This did not, however, stop Tucker’s mind from drifting from his pedaling to two particularly urgent themes. For one thing, how the hell was Sam so fast; he could keep up without, like, dying, but every few minutes he was jolted out of his thoughts by the realization that she’d pulled a few yards too far ahead and he had to put on a burst of speed to close the gap back to a reasonable margin. At least the exercise helped him bury the steady, buzzing panic deeper and deeper under his esophagus with each new push.

Additionally, Tucker couldn’t stop returning to all the things that were unclear or uncertain about this whole situation. Eventually, they sort of clumped together, coalescing in his thoughts under broader and broader headings, until he was looking at four major questions with a multitude of spindly, branching possibilities wriggling out from each and knotting it together with the rest. Four fundamental mysteries.

First, and most obviously, who was the killer Tucker had met in the library? This one was at the center, tangled hopelessly with all three of the others.

Secondly, how were they able to summon Danny without his runes? (Did they know him from Chicago? Did they somehow have his blood? Were they just a better occultist than Paulina, Sam, or Danny and knew another way to do it? Was there some other ghost helping them do it? If so, had the Amitypocalypse summoning really been an accident or distraction, or had they been summoning inhuman help? Were they even human? They’d seemed human in the library, but Tucker’s senses in this area, while more finely tuned than most other people’s, had certainly failed him before.)

Thirdly, how had they gotten Paulina to help Amber’s murderer?

Last of all, why had they ended up choosing those four victims?

This final one felt the most pressing, because even if Sam’s criminal record theory was true, the victims varied wildly in the nature and degree of their crimes. Schulker and Technus were both serial killers, and if Tristan had done what everyone had thought he’d done it would’ve been serious, but as far as anyone knew Amber McClain had just sold drugs, and usually not even hard drugs. Then, of course, there was the question of how the killer had even known about those four specifically. The only obvious connection between them was that Amber and Tristan had both gone to Casper. Schulker didn’t even live in the U.S., although one of the articles about him said he’d made similar visits to the one he’d met his demise on often, for hunting. Apparently he’d belonged to some sort of club thing.

The questions piled on questions, but there was no answer except the burning in Tucker’s thighs and the indifferent night air in his face. His train of thought circled and circled like the pedals beneath him. Finally, it was derailed by a sharp yelp from Sam when he almost ran her over as she slowed down ahead of him. They had made it to Danny’s place.

Tucker noticed two things in rapid succession.

First of all, the lights were on, and there were voices coming from inside the house, faintly audible even out here on the street. Two or three voices, and only one of them male–the distinctive rumble of Danny’s dad, recognizable even though Tucker had only heard it once over the phone. The Fentons, who Danny had given the impression had rarely been home since the start of the greenout, were in. It seemed unlikely anyone was doing covert blood sacrifices in the bathroom while Mrs. Fenton gestured wildly with a coffee cup in front of the kitchen window curtains.

Second of all, the thing that used to be Amber McClain was standing just outside the light cast by a streetlamp, six feet beyond where Sam had brought her bike to a standstill.

It moved, and the fine hairs on the back of Tucker’s neck that he’d thought sweat had plastered down stood up again. What he’d taken for the sickly combination of lactic acid buildup and anxiety was swiftly reinterpreted, with unfortunate clarity, as his nightmare sense yelling at him for the last five minutes.

“Heh, I didn’t actually think about what we would do if they were actually home. Do we just...skip it, I guess?” Sam said, nudging down her kickstand with her eyes on the lit windows, oblivious to the distorted thing walking very quietly closer and closer to her on the sidewalk. “Tucker?”

Tucker made a strangled little noise. Sam whipped around to regard him over the back of her bike, just as what used to be Amber McClain stepped right by her, no more than two feet away. “Tucker, what’s wrong, is there something here?”

In an instant, as if they’d just been waiting to be signalled by the suppressed hysteria in her tone, Tucker’s nebulous fear, anger, and instincts all coalesced under his shoulder blades and rushed as one up his spine to his brain. He shoved his hand into his pocket and snatched out a clammy fistful of sage, holding it out at arm’s length. “Don’t come any closer!”

He almost didn’t believe it: The thing stopped dead.

Tucker sat stunned for a minute, and then hurriedly pulled his leg over the bike to dismount, not moving his eyes off the thing or his arm from its warding position. In his haste, his lower leg got caught on the seat, forcing him to hop backward awkwardly and ultimately let the whole thing fall to the asphalt with an uncomfortably loud crash. He kept moving back with the momentum, putting the bike and a few more steps between him and the silent girl-like thing.

Only when there were a good ten feet between them did he stop moving, eyeing the thing while staying on the balls of his feet. In his peripheral vision, he could see Sam backing away as well, though not at quite the right angle and dragging her bicycle with her. She couldn’t seem to decide between watching Tucker himself and searching the air in the general direction of his gaze.

He let out a shaky breath. This was one of the murderer’s victims; this one should be on their side. But then, by that logic Schulker should’ve been on their side, and that theory had been rigorously disproven. And this one had attacked him in his own home and left him propped up on the couch with the Channel 8 News, a new fear of dark hallways, and a terrifying gap in his memory.

He stared, heart pumping, senses screaming. The ghost just stood there, looking like a woman in her early twenties, wearing a tank top and ripped denim in October and the angriest eyes he’d ever seen.

“...What do you want, Amber?” he gritted out shakily, when it became apparent the ghost was not going to initiate conversation. Danny had said ghosts were weaker if they still thought like they were living human people, right? Did that mean if he reminded it of its living, human name, he could make it act more human, think more clearly? If it could actually think?

The ghost raised its hand idly to waist level, and Tucker flinched. It looked like it was concentrating, as its lips moved normally at first, then increasingly erratically, until they blurred and for a moment juddered out of existence entirely. It whipped its hand to the side and made an irate chainsaw noise that made Tucker extremely queasy.

Sam was asking him a question, but he couldn’t afford to let his focus drift for a moment. His arm was still straight out in front of him, trembling with the effort. “A-are you trying to tell me something? Can–can you write it, or something? Sam, get behind me.”

It didn’t show any sign of understanding his suggestion, instead taking a quick step forward that he immediately matched with a step back. At this point it was standing over his bike, abandoned in the middle of the street, and he was most of the way to the opposite sidewalk and the thick trees beyond, soon joined by Sam holding her own handful of sage and a–was that the copper wire evil eye? From the car? Don’t look away.

The ghost didn’t seem capable of answering him. Like before, she mostly seemed...frustrated. So incredibly, inexpressibly, all-consumingly, unquenchably, unimaginably frustrated and angry.

Tucker paused.

...What had she wanted last time? Had she gotten it, or accomplished it? He tried to think back, to the awful night she’d stolen six hours from his recollection as well as his sense of safety in his own home. She’d been able to talk then, after some effort. What had she said back then?

You

will

re

m e m b e r

me

“I do!” he burst out, wrenching himself out of that memory as quickly as possible. “I remember you! We know who you are! You’re Amber McClain! There was an obituary, there were articles, you–we’re trying to expose whoever made you like this!”

No response. She wasn’t looking at him, instead shifting and blurring in place with little cracking flowing movements, head moving like she was talking to herself. A low humming frequency began to tickle the insides of Tucker’s lungs.

Okay, he reasoned, breathing heavily, so that’s not what she needed. So there’s something else. What–she talked before that, didn’t she? He cast his memory further back, before that final rush across the screaming, twisting, dislocated space. She’d talked normally, for a moment. Almost human, even closer to the natural tones and cadences of the living than Danny in his ghost form. What did she–

“You have to remember. You need to remember me.”

Huh.

Those were two different requests, weren’t they? One personal and desperate, warped with longing and the terrible, terrible fear of doubled oblivion. Of ceasing to exist in the minds of others, as well as in the flesh. It had overwhelmed her, pulled whatever tattered trail of cognitions she was capable of off course. But what about the first request?

Slowly, Tucker lowered his fistful of sage. Beside him, Sam gave him an incredulous look before retracting her arm as well, but only to her chest, not all the way down to her side. He took a deep breath. “What else do you want me to remember?”

Amber’s eyes, which had been looking somewhere over his shoulder, suddenly snapped down to meet his. Red, red rims. She looked like all she did was cry.

And then she closed the distance between them in an instant, too fast to see, too fast for any alarm to even process in his brain. She looked straight into his eyes from three inches away, her own eyes dark brown and serious and far too human for the shifting, indistinct pseudo-flesh that surrounded them.

Softly, with only the slightest phone-line distortion in her voice, she whispered, “Remember.”

And Tucker did.

~(*0*)~

(Who could’ve known about Danny’s abilities, and been able to summon him without his runes?)

“I’ve been almost caught like eight times since I got here. There was Mikey, there was that blonde girl and the Asian guy from my Chem class, there was the actual janitor…”

“I cut my hand on a broken beaker in Chem and bled all over my lab partner. I hope he was able to find a change of clothes.”

(Who attacked Tristan in the library?)

“...definitely seemed taller.”

“The guy was built like a linebacker.”

(Who could’ve convinced Paulina to help Amber’s murderer?)

Discomfort. She’d seemed unsure of herself.

Amber opened, Paulina opened the opened the door and smiled.

(Who had possible connections to all four victims of the second killer?)

“I was—good friends with Amber McClain. The, the fifth victim. She was my assistant coach in club soccer, and she got me and my friends into parties….”

“Uhh, Foley. We just wanted to say...sorry about what happened to Tristan. He’s a pretty great guy, and he’s thrown some epic parties.”

“Kwan and Star’s dads are both part of like, a hunting club.”

(And Technus was the man who murdered his mother.)

~(*0*)~

…

…..

Tucker breathed slowly. In, out, assimilating the information, questioning it, turning it upside down and inside out and still inevitably coming to the same conclusion. He almost didn’t notice as Amber’s ghost took her fingertips off his temples (hadn’t even noticed her putting them on), stepped back, and disappeared entirely. The pinging sensation in the back of his head chimed steadily onward.

“Holy sh*t, Sam,” he said, wide-eyed. “I think it’s Kwan.”

Chapter 20: A Final Confrontation

Chapter Text

A Final Confrontation

or alternatively: The Situation Gets Out of Hand(s)

“Kwan? Really?” Sam was watching both him and the empty air in front of him with wide, wary eyes.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense!” Tucker proceeded to enumerate his more logical reasons for coming to this conclusion. “Plus, Amber kinda told me, and it...sounds right, I guess.”

“I—but I mean—I’ve known Kwan. For like, eight years, since we were little kids, I just...how?”

“I guess you said it before, that’s what people always say in interviews and stuff. ‘He was such a normal guy,’ and all that. God….”

“But why is he doing this? What would prompt a random high school kid who’s always been—well, not mean, at least, to stab or bludgeon multiple people to death?! There’s his mom, yeah, but plenty of people lose people to violent crime, and they don’t…I mean, Technus I understand, but Amber? Your cousin?”

Tucker shuddered. He was still struggling to reframe the library attack in his mind to accommodate the fact that he knew the person who’d attacked him. He supposed that connection was why the guy hadn’t just shanked him and been done with it. “Well, there’s this ritual he’s doing, we can’t forget that. So either he’s seriously, 500% off his rocker, or he thinks the ritual, like, justifies it somehow. Right?”

Sam sighed long and hard and pinched the bridge of her nose. Then she moved her thumb and finger up to press into the hollows under her brow bone, the heavy-duty headache reliever. “Right, the ritual. So we’re essentially back where we were before, right? Same plan, find the ritual and interrupt it?”

“Yeah, so we still need to go to Amber’s apartment or the field where they found Technus.”

“Any idea which? Last time this happened, your nightmare sense led us right to it.”

Tucker held still for a moment and felt as hard as he could. Unsurprisingly, this accomplished nothing. “No supernatural urges, I just...feel like we’re missing something. You do too, right?” He mentally shook himself. They didn’t have time for this, they so didn’t have time for this. “The field is closer, it’s that one near school, down Borden.”

Sam was tapping her agitation out on the handlebars of her bicycle. One, two, three taps. Stop. “What about the school itself?”

Tucker started. “Casper?”

“You know, Danny was always upchucking ghosts in the closet.”

Ding. “...That would be more recent paranormal stuff happening than either of the other places, right? And not a crime scene, so….”

“So should we try there first?”

Tucker retrieved his bike from the asphalt, wheeling it in a wide semicircle to face the right direction and slinging a leg over the seat. “Lead the way.” He winced as he started pedaling and heard a quiet shush-squeal of metal rubbing on metal: Something had gotten bent out of alignment on the wheels.

The moon was cold, and the pedals were heavy, and the grating sound mingled with Tucker’s own breath in his ears. Their surroundings held perfectly still as they passed; they rode onward through a silent, unwavering night.

~(*0*)~

The chain on the school fence was broken, the gate listing sideways as it hung ajar. Kwan didn’t seem to be worried about being noticed. They rode right through, then left their bikes lying mournfully at the bottom of the stairs so they could sprint up to the main entrance. The right front door of the school was cracked open too, although it was unclear how Kwan had gotten through that one. Inside, it was totally dark.

They paused just inside, panting, long enough for Tucker to attempt to call the police while Sam called Tucker’s parents. Neither of the calls went through; it appeared that the ritual was already underway and interfering with their cell service. Or it could have been completely unrelated—the service at Casper kind of sucked even on good days.

“Should we ride back down the road to call?” Tucker started to whisper to Sam, but she was already stuffing her phone in her jacket pocket and taking off down the hallway. Tucker swore under his breath and started after her, trying not to blink after losing some of his night vision to the light of his phone screen. If there was ever a time when he needed to see in the dark, it was now.

Their feet pounded dully on the old, thin carpets as blacks became greys and greys became lighter greys, to the point where Tucker could see details like the shapes of posters on the walls without too much difficulty, though he still couldn’t read them.

They were halfway to the janitor’s closet already—this was a much shorter trip than the journey through the tunnels in the Westside Mall. Darkness turned the familiar hallways somewhat alien, but not unrecognizable. They had just passed Tucker’s French classroom. They just had to turn that corner and the janitor’s closet would be in sight. sh*t, were they doing this? He wasn’t ready! They turned the corner. The janitor’s closet was now only twenty feet away, with its door propped wide open; faint blue light spilled out of it and softly illuminated the opposite wall. Beyond that stood a hulking rectangular shape—the shelving unit from inside? But there was no time to ponder because Sam wasn’t stopping and his feet weren’t stopping and suddenly they were standing in the doorway of the closet, in full view of whatever was inside.

In the first split second of frozen mutual discovery, Tucker was able to take in more than he would have expected.

The interior looked significantly bigger without the shelving unit or jumble of mops and brooms. Danny was standing on the right side of the closet, looking mostly fine and mostly human—no gaping wounds, and only a little bit blurry around the edges—but hunched over with one arm out in front of him. Kwan, in the back left corner, glanced up at them with startled eyes. He looked incongruously normal. A cell phone lay facedown by his feet with its flashlight on, throwing foreground details into stark relief while bloating their shadows into huge dark balloons on the ceiling and walls.

The next split second gave all four people the chance to deliver on their first real reaction.

Danny looked up at them.

Kwan said, “What?”

Tucker registered that the floor of the closet was covered in dark markings—a summoning circle centered on Danny, creating the barrier he was supporting himself against with one arm. But the lighting was wrong for paint, were the runes...gouged into the floor?

And Sam, for her first reaction, dashed through the doorway and straight for Danny, aiming to pull him out before Kwan could fully process their arrival. This was not a terrible plan: Using the element of surprise to extract the hostage before the aggressor realized they even needed a hostage did make sense. However, it was still a really bad plan for multiple reasons. For one thing, they had no idea what weapons Kwan had or what the floor carvings did besides summon things. For another thing, could Danny really be considered a hostage in this scenario? As in, could he genuinely be killed when he could just decide to become incorporeal at any moment? Could Kwan do it with magic somehow?

The most important reason this was a bad plan, however, was that Danny was trapped in a summoning circle intangible to anything or anyone but him, so when Sam grabbed his arm and tried to pull him out of the room at full tilt, the result was that he hit an invisible wall and stopped moving abruptly with a surprised “Oof—eurgh!” and Sam fell back hard into the wall on her own momentum as his weight was ripped out of her hands.

The spike in Tucker’s terror at the thunk and yelp of her hitting the wall very nearly drowned out the outraged exclamation in the back of his mind of isn’t she supposed to be the witch here?!

Tucker hesitated in the doorway as Sam groaned and began pulling herself to her feet just inside to Tucker’s right, and Kwan was finally shocked into action. He hurriedly, clumsily pulled something from the pocket of his bulky jacket. Knife. sh*t. “I’ll kill him!”

“You step in this circle and I’ll f*cking eviscerate you,” Danny stated with zero hesitation in that half-staticky voice, sounding much more angry than afraid. Kwan took what was probably an accidental step back before refocusing. He switched the knife between his hands, almost dropping it in the process, and then placed his free hand on the invisible barrier. “I’ll fry him, I mean!”

At this, Danny looked a little more put out.

“Kwan, what are you doing?” Tucker kept his voice as calm and flat as possible, choosing his words carefully and slowly. “You know us, okay? We don’t want to hurt you, we just wanna understand what this is for.”

Kwan gave him a look like “ Isn’t it obvious?” “I’m bringing back my mom.”

~(*0*)~

Step very carefully, Tucker Foley.

“…Kwan, your mom’s…passed away, isn’t she?”

The bluish light from the downed phone flickered once. Kwan replied in a surprisingly earnest tone. “Yeah, I’m not stupid, I know. But the thing is, if ghosts and magic and sh*t are real, then there’s no real reason why I can’t bring her back, right?”

Oh. Tucker...didn't actually know enough about magic to really respond to that. Luckily, Sam was here. She cleared her throat, straightening up very carefully while keeping her open hands in view. “Listen to me. Kwan? If you’ve done any research at all, you know that anything that says it can bring back your mom is lying to you. If actually, fully, no-consequences bringing back the dead was a thing people could do, we would all already be doing it.”

He vigorously shook his head. Tucker realized with some faint hope that he was opening up his body language, turning toward them. “No, that’s the thing, I wasn’t contacted by some demon or something, okay? I got instructions. And I know they work. I saw it.”

Sam went very still and tense in his peripheral vision. “...You saw someone come back from the other side?”

“I swear I did.” Kwan’s voice was already thick and heavy as he began, “It was only like a week after Mom—” His voice broke, and he paused for a moment before continuing, softer. “I came home from a Fourth of July party late, really drunk. My dad wasn’t home. And he was there, the–the guy that k- killed Mom, in the middle of her living room. Waving a knife around. He didn’t notice me.

“So I’m watching, kinda confused, and this guy reaches out and cuts the air in the middle of the summoning circle he’s got on the ground, and it makes a rift right there!

“And–and I wouldn’t have known who he was, obviously, except Mom’s familiar was just sitting there on the stairs above him. Looking at him, e-expectantly. And all of a sudden I knew it was him, who did it. So I–” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I grabbed the bat we keep by the door and I–” He broke off again, fist drifting compulsively to his mouth. When he spoke again, his voice sounded slightly choked, and tightly controlled. “But just before he...just before the rift closed, I saw a hand reach out of the portal. A human hand.

“And then there was this paper he had out on the ground.” With jerky movements, Kwan pulled a folded, crumpled piece of printer paper out of his back pocket. Tense on his feet, Tucker considered tackling him while his hand was off the summoning barrier, and a glance at Sam told him she was thinking the same thing. But they likely wouldn’t accomplish much with Kwan armed, and even if he weren’t they might do little more than knock the wind out of him. He had at least four inches on both of them. Before either could decide to make a move, Kwan was brandishing the unfolded paper and the moment had passed. Tucker squinted; at this distance it looked a little bit like a printout of an online recipe.

“It’s instructions. For bringing someone back. All you gotta do is…is make an exchange.”

Well, sh*t. There it was, then.

The air was starting to hum, that horribly familiar electrical feeling from the ghost fight in Sam’s house trickling upward through Tucker’s veins. A glance at his watch told him it was 2:57 p.m. Three minutes to the witching hour. How far along was the ritual, and did it have to happen exactly at three? Should they rush or stall? sh*t, he didn’t know how to rush!

“Okay, well, you already made all three sacrifices, right?” Sam picked up the conversational thread, apparently having made the same blind man’s calculation. “You don’t need to hurt Danny, you don’t need to hurt anyone else!”

Oh no, Sam, that was not a deescalating tone. Kwan’s response was just a touch more hysterical than the last, and his body closed back off as he turned threateningly toward the barrier. “Yeah, sure, I wouldn’t need him if I hadn’t lost the f*cking portal knife! That was your fault, Tucker, the police got it when you interrupted me at the library.”

At that, Tucker couldn’t quite manage a deescalating tone either. “You were stabbing my cousin!”

“And that doesn’t give you the right to do this to Danny, he never did sh*t to you!” Sam piled on.

“He’s a f*cking death portal, he’s been portalling here like twice a week for months, he’ll be fine!” They were all yelling now. (Except, conspicuously, Danny, who was sitting with his head between his knees and looking very, very queasy. Damn it.) “sh*t. sh*t, why am I–I don’t have to make excuses to you! I barely even know you!”

“Are you f*cking—it’s because you feel guilty!” Tucker yelled over the persistent, intensifying hum of nearness to the other side.

“I don’t, I— no, okay?!” Kwan finally swung back around to face them, clearly struggling to articulate what he wanted to say with tears dripping from his chin. “What have I done that’s made things worse? Technus and Skulker were both murderers, the world is better off without them! That’s not even like a question, they were gonna kill more innocent people! And Amber’s...I mean, she’s the one who gave Kelsey those bad pills, she was–it wasn’t a seizure, it wasn’t, we all knew it.”

“And my cousin?”

Kwan visibly winced at that, but then he took a steadying breath and made eye contact with Tucker, face hard as marble behind the tears. “He was only one guy. And Mom was worth more than some druggie trying to pick up drunk freshman girls at parties.”

“But he was innocent!”

Kwan wasn’t listening anymore. “You don’t understand, Mom was such a good person! She made everyone’s life better, and she still died for no! Reason!”

The hum reached a fever pitch. “She deserved a better world than the one she got. And she can still have it.” He turned back toward the center of the summoning circle, apparently dismissing them.

The alarm on Tucker’s phone dinged once. 3:00 a.m.

Danny made a quiet noise halfway between retching and an unidentifiable swear word and curled into an even tighter ball as something dark and difficult to focus on started to appear in the air above him.

Something suspiciously like a slit in the barrier between worlds.

Abruptly, Tucker’s nightmare sense went crazy, and he pushed off the doorframe and sprinted into the hallway outside.

~(*0*)~

Tucker couldn’t see straight. He couldn’t even think straight. His every nerve and neuron was consumed with the deeper-than-instinctual need to not let whatever was on the other side of that portal near him or anyone he loved. How could he stop it? How the f*ck did they close the portal now?

Widdershins? Did he need a lemon? He would’ve laughed if he hadn’t needed all his breath for hyperventilating. About ten feet down the hallway it got a bit easier to breathe, though not much, and he was able to not only stop and actually register what was around him again. He searched wildly for inspiration.

Wall, wainscotting, corkboard, carpet. Thumbtacks? It was harder to see in the dark after a few minutes depending on Kwan’s phone flashlight. Other wall, other wall—

The hatchet! There was a fireman’s hatchet in the case on the other wall.

He could try to use the firehose to blast Kwan away from the summoning circle, possibly break a few ribs and incapacitate him, but he wasn’t sure if the hose actually turned on automatically when the glass was broken or if the fire department had to turn on the water. Plus, he had only a vague idea how to wield a firehose and would probably hurt himself or Sam as well as Kwan. Better bet was the hatchet; he’d never used one of those as a weapon either, but it was pretty self-explanatory, wasn’t it?

Oh, god, wait, could he actually kill a guy?! Maybe he could bluff. Anyway, whether he ended up using the hatchet or not, breaking the glass would almost certainly set off the fire alarm and notify the authorities. Not that the authorities could do much against what was coming, but it was still a priority in this situation, Danny’s secret notwithstanding. Okay. Tucker had a plan, sort of.

He approached the red-lined glass case. There didn’t seem to be one of those mallet things that were usually attached to “break in case of emergency” boxes. How did people do this in movies?

Tucker tore off his sweatshirt, wrapped it around his fist, and punched the glass.

And abruptly stumbled back, cradling his hand with a hiss, because damn that was painful! The glass glinted mockingly. Tucker kicked it.

The glass shattered, and immediately an alarm rang out deafeningly loud from the school loudspeakers, one of those layered whooping and jangling ones that resonated horribly with the omnipresent humming. The glass was probably designed to shatter blunt, not sharp, but Tucker kept his sweatshirt over his hand as he shoved shards out of the way and reached in to grab the hatchet.

And then stood there in the darkness, panting. He had a weapon. Now what?

…He didn’t have an answer to that. Oh. They were all going to die, weren’t they?

There was a twinge of sickness in Tucker’s gut.

“Oh, honey. Would you like some gravy with that?”

Tucker turned around slowly. The lunch lady was standing behind him.

~(*0*)~

Kwan watched with a heartbreakingly hopeful smile as four pale, trembling fingers wrapped themselves around the edge of the rift.

Then, on the other side, four more.

Then four more.

A grasping hand, identical to the others, pushed through to the wrist. Kwan stumbled back with nervous eyes as the rift was filled with twitching fingers.

“…Mom?”

One of the hands slid out further, past the wrist, then another wrist, bending the other way….

“Kwan, that is not your mother, we cannot let that thing through!” Sam yelled, loud enough to be heard over the alarms.

“No, I didn’t…I couldn’t, she….” He walked backward until he hit the wall and jolted as if it had startled him.

This was not good, not good, so not good. Oh god, oh god— The whole seam in reality was lined on both sides with hands now, and they seemed to be pushing it further open.

What the f*ck was this thing?! What was Samantha Manson supposed to do in the face of that?! Sam abruptly realized she was crying.

Well that just would not do at all.

Sam pulled out her phone, opened her notes app, and scrolled to the strongest protective spell she had written down.

And then she proved once and for all that she was, in fact, a real goddamn witch. (Take that, Paulina. )

~(*0*)~

It was unmistakably her, even though Tucker didn’t remember what she’d looked like the last time very well. Little kids didn’t tend to take in the details, already having to look so far up to see adults’ faces. She was shorter than she should be, barely reaching his chin. He remembered her eyes, though. Her eyes were the same. This was a literal ghost from his past.

If Tucker could have tensed up further, he would have. She had appeared between him and the closet, backlit by the dim glow from the phone flashlight. He couldn’t hear what was going on in there over the alarm. “What do you want?” he whispered as quietly as he could while still being audible, backing further down the hall.

She lifted one hand, made meaningful eye contact, and dragged her nails down the wall between them. Tucker flinched. “I want you to close the freezer door before you let all the cold air out, dear.”

He stopped. Processed. Rebooted.

“You…want me to close the portal?”

She nodded, a satisfied gleam in her otherwise flat, dead eyes. Though she didn’t speak loudly, somehow he had no trouble hearing her over the alarm. “Yes, dearie.”

“How?!”

She reached out one pallid finger and gently tapped the blade of the hatchet.

Was she suggesting he…close it the way Kwan closed Technus’ portal?

No. That couldn’t be it. She protected children, right? And he— think harder. What if she wanted him to scratch out the circle itself?

Tucker had considered that, but hadn’t had any way of knowing if it would work. Sam had certainly wiped out the runes to end past summonings, but you couldn’t exactly erase a figure carved into cement (or more likely gross grey porcelain or something, given that Kwan had managed to carve it in the first place) the way you could a chalk drawing. “Can I scratch it off and destroy it?”

“No, we don’t have meatballs; you’ll have to change your order.”

“… What?!”

“Order something else.” She pointed behind her at the closet and raised her eyebrows.

...

Ah. Huh. That…that could actually work.

Tucker wouldn’t say he’d learned a lot about summoning in the last few months, but there were a few practical tips he had retained. One was that, unfortunately, the runes of the Elder Futhark alphabet had a lot of common lines and were very easy to mix up.

The lunch lady’s eyes were still doll-like and still, but she smiled close-mouthed, and something clicked, and for a moment Tucker had the unique, startling, somewhat unnerving feeling that he was looking at a person, with her own thoughts and feelings and a whole vast and complex inner life that he was not privy to and could never even fractionally comprehend.

He blinked. She did not. The feeling passed, as feelings tend to do.

“Thank you,” Tucker said. The lunch lady smiled and stepped gracefully aside so he could trudge back into his nightmare.

~(*0*)~

Sam seemed to be okay, if kind of sweaty and very panicked. She had backed to the doorway so she could beat a quick retreat and was shouting continuously under the noise of the alarm: probably some sort of spell, possibly delaying the opening of the rift. (It could also have been just a string of increasingly creative insults. It was impossible to tell.) Kwan was still standing in the corner, apparently in some sort of shock. Danny was both there and not there simultaneously in a way that Tucker’s brain both intimately understood and refused to turn into a visual image. The portal…?

He could tell, with every fiber of his being, that something was coming out if it. Anything more than that, he simply could not process. Distantly, he realized he should probably be grateful.

The alarm shut off suddenly, as if the speaker system had shorted out, but the hum of the otherworld was so strong in Tucker’s ears that he barely noticed. He ducked back out around the doorway and took two (difficult) deep breaths. What were those runes Sam had almost gotten switched, when she’d had him check her work during their first summoning? He’d thought it was mildly interesting; he supposed the computer geek part of him just really liked languages. It was something like ehwaz, and it looked like…. God, where were ghost-augmented memory tricks when you needed them? He tried to recreate the way he’d felt when Amber’s ghost had brought all those snatches of conversation back into his conscious mind.

Īsa and eiwaz! He set his teeth and pulled himself back in around the doorframe, trying his absolute hardest to ignore the portal and just search the floor.

Right...there, the one second nearest to him even, was īsa, the rune for ice or just plain “I”, a single vertical line. And eiwaz was...he didn’t remember what it meant, but it was the vertical line with little diagonal lines added at the top and bottom, right? Like a tilted, backwards Z. Or was it just a tilted N, with the lines on the other sides? Which would just be a forward Z. Oh god….

No, he was pretty sure they went the other way. Pretty sure.

Something juddered in the air and Sam broke off her chanting to yell an expletive over the hum.

Tucker scrambled to his knees next to the rune. He switched his grip on the hatchet, holding it near the head. The floor was gritty under his palms.

He scratched the floor, and it shrieked. Another pulse. Tucker was thrown backwards. Something cracked as his wrist bent against the wall.

Sam’s chanting faltered and became shrill. She was being pushed, slowly but surely, back into a corner. Something was happening to the flesh on her upraised arms, raised to protect her face.

Again, Tucker threw himself forward.

He managed another score from the top of the rune before hitting the wall again, feet-first this time. The hatchet handle bit into his palm. Deep enough, it had to be. Right?!

All he needed was one more line. Just one more strike!

The light from the cell phone flickered and went out, plunging them into pitch darkness.

But what did that matter? Tucker was psychic.

He reached forward and scraped the edge of the hatchet as hard as he could against the floor.

And everything stopped.

~(*0*)~

Tucker lay on his stomach on the floor, soaked with sweat and breathing heavily. The room was silent except for the sound of quiet panting.

Noiselessly, the phone light flicked back on. Heart in his throat, Tucker dragged himself upright to see what he’d summoned.

Floating menacingly in the center of the circle that had just been used to tear a hole in the fabric of death itself—a circle paid for with the drying blood of three human beings, a circle that was now only one rune away from summoning something so incomprehensibly horrible that simply knowing it had the potential to exist made Tucker feel like he was about to lose his mind—yes, floating in the center of that circle was…

…a small man in overalls.

The ghost didn’t say much, just stared at them all balefully for a moment before unceremoniously atomizing and drifting out the door, settling among the boxes of extra cleaning supplies shoved against the opposite wall.

…Huh.

“Huh,” Sam echoed Tucker’s internal monologue. She stumbled over and collapsed at Tucker’s side, leaning against the wall. Her voice was hoarse. “What rune did you change it to?”

“Uh, eiwaz. What’s that one mean?”

“...Wood. Or, well, actually, yew.”

“Me? What about me?”

Sam punched his shoulder hard for that one. He swayed slightly.

Tucker could hear sirens in the distance. Considering how deep they were in the school building right now, emergency services had probably already arrived on campus. He reluctantly staggered to his feet. Kwan was still in the corner, looking dazed and absolutely gutted. While Tucker worked on lifting a partially conscious and now conventionally visible Danny to his feet, Sam edged forward and retrieved Kwan’s knife from where it had fallen on the ground a few feet in front of him. She started to walk away, back toward Tucker. Stopped.

“Kwan?”

He looked up.

Sam’s voice was quieter than Tucker had ever heard it. “I understand. What you feel, I think. What you did wasn’t…wasn’t right, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Kwan nodded once.

The police were just coming down the hallway as Tucker, Sam, and Danny limped out of the closet, letting the door swing silently closed behind them.

Chapter 21: In Conclusion

Chapter Text

In Conclusion

or alternatively: Yep, It’s the Epilogue

On the second day after Kwan’s arrest, Amity Park’s city-level quarantine was lifted. Tucker, Sam, Danny, and Tucker’s parents were in the small crowd at the border when the hazmat guys took down the orange barriers.

Tucker hung back and witnessed Sam’s reunion with her parents from a distance. Her mom sped up and pulled her into a tight hug, folding over a bit to account for their height difference. Sam’s body language was uncomfortable, but she hugged back, if loosely. Then Pamela stood to the side and dabbed her eyes with a tissue while Mr. Manson said something to Sam in a low voice, something that made her eyes widen. He hugged her, and she reciprocated with a fierce grip, trembling.

After a while she rejoined the Foleys, dry-eyed, and led the whole group of them away from the borderline, pushing through the crowd and into the open street behind it. Tucker’s parents and the Mansons exchanged slightly stilted pleasantries as Tucker went in for his own hug with Sam and Danny stood to the side, smiling. (His parents were absent. Tucker knew they’d called, at least.)

After a moment’s hesitation, Sam also quickly hugged Danny. “Hey, I’m gonna head home and enjoy my mom’s first reaction to the front window. Call me!” And without further ado, she headed off toward her parents’ car, Doc Martens clomping on the pavement.

“I guess I’ll head out, too.” Danny sidled casually in the direction of the nearest building, presumably planning to go invisible and fly home as soon as he turned the corner. Tucker absolutely intended to wheedle, beg, and/or blackmail Danny into taking him flying sometime soon, despite the slightly worrying reaction he’d had to being turned intangible the night before last. (Wow, that had been less than 48 hours before?) “See you at school?”

“Yeah!” Tucker smiled.

Halfheartedly. It faded. He felt…weird.

For the second time in a row, that night (although this time without any snoring piles on his floor), Tucker went to sleep at 10 pm and slept for a full ten hours, with the lights on. (The next day, he would find a new night light in his room, already plugged in and assembled.) He FaceTimed Sam and then Danny in the morning over breakfast, since his dad had taken time off work and could drive him to school. He fidgeted in class, his eyes drawn in English to an empty desk. Two empty desks; Paulina wasn’t at school. Star wasn’t wearing makeup, and had deep bags under her eyes. Dash was quiet.

The school as a whole was quieter, really. The janitor’s closet, Danny reported over lunch, was roped off, door plastered with police tape, but no explanation had been given to the student body at large.

Sometimes, when he was at school and his parents were out of sight, Tucker caught himself feeling nervous. When he was home with his parents, he worried about his friends. It diminished, though. Slowly.

~(*0*)~

The trial was held two weeks later.

The minimum sentence for homicide under Illinois law was 20 years. Since Kwan was older than 16, he was automatically tried as an adult. His role in the murders of Schulker and Technus couldn’t be proven, so Kwan ended up with a 25-year sentence for the murder of Amber McClain and the aggravated assault and attempted murder of Tristan Harris. He wouldn’t be leaving prison until his early forties. Tucker wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He decided not to think about it, for a while.

None of the three of them had to testify. They had managed to get past and out of the school without the police seeing them, and all the school’s security cameras had been mysteriously on the fritz since an hour or so before they showed up, when Kwan began drawing the circle that so conveniently resembled the one Amber McClain’s body had been found in alongside a fair amount of not-successfully-washed-away blood, filled with no-longer-unidentified DNA.

It didn’t necessarily feel good. It wasn’t nice. But remembering the look in Amber McClain’s living eyes, watching Tristan wince as he stood up off the couch…it felt more right, at least. Some dislocated bone had been wrenched back into place; the ache remained.

It hurt, Tucker realized. It hurt to know that justice felt like this. It ached like a growing pain.

~(*0*)~

“Your dad really hasn’t asked about the window?”

They were at lunch, two days after the trial. “Oh, yeah,” Sam said in a disinterested tone. “Well, I told him I’d tell him the whole story next time we go ice skating. He said he can wait.” She waved a negligent hand. “Of course, I’ll edit out all of Danny’s various issues.”

“Hey!”

“And then he said he’s gonna help me, uhh, translate for my mom.” She shrugged, looked kind of uncomfortable. “Uh. Yeah. We’ll see.”

She clearly hadn’t started out intending to share that much. Like the absolute best friend ever he truly was, Tucker jumped in to change the subject.

“So what are y’all’s plans over the long weekend?” Parent-teacher conferences delayed from early November meant that they would have a much-needed mini vacation.

“Not much,” Sam conceded lazily. “Hang out with you guys, hopefully. Play Doomed?”

“I’m not doing anything either,” Danny shared. “Or, I guess my sister—oh, hey, wait, you guys can meet Jazz!” He abruptly brightened. “She’s my sister, she’s kind of awful. In college, right now. But she knows about the ghost stuff, and she’s coming home this week, and like, she can probably explain stuff way better than I can.”

“Wait, someone else knows about the ghost stuff?!”

Danny went shifty around the eyes. “Heh. Yeah, actually, I was…kinda trying not to mention it in case you got, like, interrogated by the government or something and she lost her plausible deniability.” Sam raised an eyebrow. Danny went slightly green, which Tucker took a minute to realize was probably his way of looking embarrassed. “But hey, I guess I have faith you can withstand moderate amounts of torture now. You guys should be flattered.”

“...Just moderate?” Tucker scoffed. “Please, have you heard Sam’s driving playlist? Two years of carpooling! Her taste has not improved!”

Sam elbowed him pointily. Danny snickered. Any tension dissipated into the blue sky.

“I think this weekend I’m gonna ask my aunt to teach me some more stuff, actually. Like, psychic stuff,” Tucker admitted after a pause.

It wasn’t that Tucker particularly wanted to get involved in more ghostly situations. But if it was going to happen regardless, he might as well be prepared. That said, after the baptism of fire of the last two months or so, he honestly felt pretty good about his chances against the sorts of things his aunt had described facing in the past, just putting ghosts to rest through small favors rather than having to track down and punish someone for paranormal misdeeds. Plus, in the end, Amber and the lunch lady had just wanted help, and to help in turn. And Tucker did like making people happy.

“Oh, that’s cool! I’m actually gonna take a break from the occult, I think,” Sam offered with a smile, surprising Tucker. He’d thought she’d want all of the details of his aunt’s stories. “Present company excluded, of course.”

Danny groaned. “Wish I could do that.”

Tucker opened his mouth to reply, and then the bell rang to signal the beginning of second period. Ugh, French. At least Danny had to suffer with him.

As he walked down the halls with his friend, from the corner of his eye, Tucker spotted a small grey fox, sitting primly beneath the water fountain. The legs of students passed busily in front of it, revealing and obscuring it in turn like rush hour traffic. It looked at him with limpid black eyes, bowed its head once, and trotted off in the opposite direction.

Tucker glanced at Danny. His friend was staring with intent at the opposite wall, a glint of green in his eye. In the distant cafeteria, something chuckled lowly.

Yes, maybe it ached. But only some of the time. Given the circ*mstances, in that moment, Tucker found he was remarkably happy.