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Simon opened the door to his room and froze. Something was off. Something. His finely-trained Night Vale senses quivered.
It was... Cecil's nest. Cecil's nest on top of his bed. Normally, the nest was fairly static. He'd hear a soft snoring, or the sound of flipping pages, or there'd be a flat, empty spot if Cecil was wandering around the house or something. But something else was going on. The lump under the top few layers of blankets was much larger than his skinny little brother. It was kinda squirming back and forth. It was making weird sounds, too, like animal grunts and wheezes.
Simon didn't know for sure what was under the blankets, but he wasn't going to take any chances. At the very best, it was a couple of possums fighting. At worst? Well, who could even tell how bad that could be? Some strange things crawled out of the darker corners of the house from time to time.
Simon crept into the room. He got to the closet and reached inside for a weapon. There was nothing deadly in reach, but he did find an old field hockey stick. He tiptoed to the bed, then raised the stick over his head. He took a deep breath, then brought it down, hard, on the squirming lump.
"AAUGH!" The lump stopped moving, and the blankets parted to show the disheveled head of Cecil, followed closely by the fiercely-blushing face of Earl Harlan, who was sporting a rather vivid hickey on his neck. Neither boy seemed to be wearing a shirt, and Simon wasn't interested in looking any closer.
"Oh, my Gods..."
Cecil cleared his throat and reoriented his glasses on his nose. "Uhhh..."
Simon took a step back. "Oh, my Gods, Triclops, are you using our room for a nerd orgy?"
Earl sobbed and ducked back under the covers, and Cecil pursed his lips. "Wouldn't an orgy have more than two people?"
"GODSDAMNIT, WHO CARES?" He wanted to slap Cecil upside the head, but he also didn't want to get any closer to him than necessary. He settled for shaking his fist at him. "Does Mother know you're diddling your boyfriend in here?"
A flutter of sadness passed over Cecil's face. "I don't know where she is. I guess she's here; her bicycle's still in the garage. But she wouldn't come out, and you were gone for days! I was so lonely!" He patted the shape under the covers that corresponded to Earl's head. "Earl came over to keep me company."
Simon snorted. "Yeah, if that's what you call it." He started to gather up his pillow and blanket.
"Where are you going?"
"Ugh, I'm getting out of here. Don't let me interrupt your circle jerk."
"You don't have to leave! We'll behave, won't we, Earl?" Earl sobbed again from somewhere in the nest.
Simon shivered. "Nope, too late. It reeks like dork sex in here." He slammed the door behind him and stalked down the hallway.
Gross.
Gross, gross, gross.
And unfair. How on earth was Cecil getting laid when he wasn't? He was older, cooler, and better-looking. He shivered. Gross, nasty, horrible. He wasn't going back in that room, not any time soon. He might have to burn all of his stuff for even being in proximity of that kind of action. No, he'd have to find somewhere else to sleep.
He started down the hall. There were doors on either side of him, but as he tried the doorknobs, they were locked. The crazy fucking bitch probably swallowed the keys thinking they were her babies or something.
Finally, he found one doorknob that turned. He opened it warily, in case a rabid raccoon jumped out after him. (It wouldn't have been the first time.) There was none. He flung the door open. There was a smell of old people and neglect.
Oh.
Grandmother and Grandfather's room.
Simon remembered the old buzzards. Cecil didn't. All he knew was that he loved Grandfather's clothes. He'd play around with the bow ties and sweater vests and all, even wore them to school sometimes. He didn't remember how they were. Didn't remember how the old asshole had called them vermin. Didn't remember how they called Cecil "It."
It.
Cecil was a lot. He was a nerd, a dork, a jerk, a geek, a big homo gaywad, but he was no 'It.'
Sometime after, the grands had gone away. Grandmother had been as yellow as a highlighter, and Grandfather had been as pink as a foursquare ball. And then they weren't there any more. There wasn't a funeral or anything, they just weren't there.
And then the shit had hit the fan, for real. Mother had always been weird, but she'd really lost it, which was strange because he couldn't remember her being any too fond of Grandmother and Grandfather. But they'd died or whatever, and she'd lost her shit completely. There'd been no breakfast. No lunch. No dinner. No Mother, half the time. He and Cecil, sitting in the dark, scared and lonely.
Simon took a deep, shuddering breath and pushed the thoughts away. Some things weren't good to think about. Some things were forbidden to think about. Some things were gone.
He looked around the room in the dim glow of the bulb set in the wall. He expected it to be scary, but it wasn't. It was just... empty.
Simon slung his backpack against the floor, then stripped off his clothes and lay down on the dusty duvet and sheets in the bed, making sure that little metal box was near him. He hated to admit it, but he couldn't sleep without it nearby, for some reason.
Had he really been gone for days? It was possible. He and Simone and Steve had scored some acid from some NVCC kids and gone out to the scrublands to get wasted. Well, he and Simone had gotten wasted, Steve had been the babysitter, as usual.
It had been really fun, at first. They'd sat around, talking about everything and nothing, and it had all been so -- deep. Really spiritual. He'd felt so close to both of them.
After a few hours Steve had fallen asleep and he'd gotten to spend some quality time with his best girl. They'd been making out, and for once Simone wasn't telling him to stop. It was going to happen, finally.
And then Simone had ruined it. For some reason, she started babbling all that Old Faith bullshit about the gods beyond the stars. How do you go from getting your tits played with to dead things sleeping under the ocean? It made no sense. But that's what had happened, and Simon had let it kill the mood completely.
He cussed under his breath and punched the pillow, releasing a cloud of disintegrating feathers. He should have just blocked it out, but he'd actually started to listen, and it had freaked him out, and then his own stupid brain had taken over. What if Simone wasn't human? What if she was one of those gooey elder gods? What if he stuck his dick in her and something inside of her bit it off? He'd screeched and jumped away from her, gone completely soft.
She'd been all confused and hurt. She'd hovered over him, flittering and prodding at him, and it had only freaked him out more. He'd shouted at her to leave him alone, and she'd started crying. The commotion made Steve wake up, who had tried to smooth things over, like he always did, but that had only made Simon more paranoid.
He's one of them, too, a voice whispered in his head. And that's when he'd run off.
After that, things got blurry. He remembered sitting alone for hours, staring at the box, looking at the colors that were coming out of it and painting the inside of his skin. He remembered the sun coming up, and looking for shelter. He remembered climbing a tree. He remembered eating eggs out of a bird's nest and a bug he'd found.
It didn't make any sense. Acid trips didn't last for days. He shook his head. No, he must have dreamed the sun, and the tree, and the bug and the eggs. It had to be the same night, still. Cecil exaggerated a lot. There was no way he was gone for that long. At any rate, he'd come back to his senses in a ditch, a thorn bush poking into his back. Simone and Steve were nowhere to be seen, so he'd picked himself up and hitchhiked back to town.
He rolled over. All his muscles hurt, and he was exhausted. He clutched the little metal box in both hands and fell asleep.
He dreamed of his house, but it was not the house he'd known all his life. It was clean and bright and beautiful. The walls were intact. The windows were uncracked. There were no insects or rats or lizards creeping around. No strange shapes twisted in the corners. It didn't smell like rot and sadness.
Someone cleared their throat behind him. He turned to find a man, elegantly-dressed and somehow familiar-looking. The man held out his hand.
"Simon, my boy. Finally, you're here."
Simon eyed the man suspiciously. "Who the fuck are you?"
The man tutted. "Language, please. Ambrose Palmer. Of the Night Vale Palmers."
"What, are you supposed to be my great-grandfather or something?"
"Great-great-uncle, actually. The last Palmer to make something of himself. Until you, of course."
"Oh, yeah, I'm a huge success. I'm failing, like, half my classes, my friends are huge losers, my mom's a whackjob whore, my dad's probably some hobo she found at the gas station, my brother's a freak who's gonna lose it too, I can feel it, I've got NO money, and my girlfriend won't let me lay into her. Everything's comin' up Simon!"
"All those things are just obstacles keeping you from the greatness that is your birthright, nephew. Here, let me show you around." He gestured to Simon, and began to walk away. Simon hesitated for a moment, then shrugged and followed him.
They were in the long hall downstairs. The walls were covered in portraits. "We Palmers are an illustrious family, Simon, though recently, through... ill-advised breeding we've fallen on dark times. But you are the one who will bring our former glory back. Observe." He walked along the hall, pointing out the paintings as he did.
"Seymour Edwin Palmer. Second son of a baron. His brother died in a hunting accident, and he inherited the entire estate. Seymour was the only witness to the unfortunate accident." He moved along.
"Cyril Theophilus Palmer. He was the first Palmer in America. He lived in Boston, and parlayed the family estate into a very lucrative business insuring slave ships. His wife became a Quaker and an abolitionist. She objected strenuously to the family business, so he cast her out into the street. She died of syphilis in a brothel." He passed a few more portraits, stopping in front of one showing a thin, hollow-eyed man.
"My father, Jehosophat Courage Palmer, the man who brought the family to the desert. He founded Palmer Buggy Whips. It was formerly Palmer-Astrexos Buggy Whips. He fathered me and your great-grandfather with his partner's wife. Drove him to suicide, actually. Then the business was his, solely. I take after him, my twin took after our mother."
Ambrose strolled past his own portrait. "Here's yours truly. I foresaw the end of the buggy whip industry and was in negotiations to sell to that idiot Cornelius Vansten for a HUGE profit when I died, choking on a pearl in an oyster. My brother, the sentimental fool, decided not to go through with the sale. That's when our illustrious line began a sharp descent into mediocrity, ending in the squalor you suffer through today. But hark!" He took a step to the right. There was an empty frame. He pointed toward the name plate. Simon leaned in and peered at it. It read "Simon Cole Palmer."
Ambrose looked at him, smugly. "That's right. You're next. If you can... divest yourself of certain encumbrances, that is."
"I'm listening."
Ambrose chuckled. "I have three pieces of advice for you." He held up a kid-gloved index finger. "One. Note whose portraits do not hang on the wall. Two. Find the room beyond the veil. It holds the past. Three. Blood and fire cleanse better than soap and water."
"And what the fuck is that crap supposed to mean?"
"You're a bright boy, you'll figure it out. In the meantime, I suggest you get used to taking what you want. Asking is for suckers." Ambrose nodded and gave Simon a slight bow. "And now I must take my leave. I'll see you in glory!" He straightened up and vanished, leaving behind a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke.
Simon woke with a start as the metal box fell from his hands and onto the floor. He grabbed it hastily, then rolled over, Ambrose's words echoing in his mind. He lay awake for the rest of the night. He had a lot to figure out.