Archive of Our Own

The bitter cold presses in on him from all angles. Brian wakes slowly, feeling blood and drool dripping from his bottom lip as he struggles to open his eyes. His body feels—heavy, weighted down, some pressure on his back keeping him where he is. And it’s—

Cold.

It’s so cold.

His eyelids threaten to close again as he tries to force himself into consciousness, tries to find the energy to lift his hand. He’s on his stomach. Face down against—asphalt? Feels like asphalt, doesn’t smell like asphalt. There is no scent at all, in fact, just the piercing sensation of cold that makes it unpleasant to breathe too deep. Brian closes his eyes again.

It’s not terrible, he guesses. Strangely enough he doesn’t feel uncomfortable, just… heavy. Too heavy. Like he’d run a marathon and then been hit by a truck, if he had to guess, but even that doesn’t feel like enough to explain it; it feels like his body’s becoming part of the floor he’s lying on, like the asphalt is reaching up and pulling him down into it.

It might be, he thinks, with the way the pebbles underneath him are digging into his cheek and his weighted palms and how hard it is to open his eyes again.

Still, the sensation of something watching him is enough to keep him awake, if not enough to make him open his eyes.

A prickling at the back of his neck makes him aware that there is something in the darkness that surrounds him, and the desire to know what it is is more pressing than the thought of going back to sleep with his face pressed into the asphalt beneath him. Gathering up his strength, Brian allows himself to breathe deeply—the cold pierces his lungs—and forces himself to open his eyes, following the moment of motivation in order to move his arms upright, palms into the asphalt and then shove himself up again.

Big mistake.

The heaviness makes one of his elbows buckle and he lists to one side with a curse, followed by a series of coughs. Ugly coughs, too, the chesty and painful kind that makes him almost choke on phlegm as he doubles over again and spits, feeling drool gathering in his mouth and dripping onto the ground beneath like he’s about to vomit.

Why’s it so fucking cold?

He shoves himself again, forces his legs to move even though it feels like his bones are grinding against the ground with every movement of his body. He sits back on his haunches and tries to take another deep breath, but the end result is even more coughing, his face shoved into his elbow as he struggles to breathe. The heaviness lessens the more he gets up off the ground, and that much is a benefit—but now comes the awareness that the cold itself seems to be even more of an invitation to lay back down. It was bad when he was on the ground but know that he’s kneeling and struggling to his feet the cold feels like all he can think of, the kind of cold that makes no sense for an Alabama winter, let alone an Alabama summer. Brian grits his teeth against it and feels himself shivering as he settles on unsteady feet.

The coughing has made his throat sore. A trembling hand lifted to his cheek brushes away dirt and stray pebbles that had come up with him. Rather than allow the cold to continue to freeze his lungs, he makes his breathing come a little bit shorter—each and every exhale fogs up the air in front of him, and with the dark around him, it’s something of a surprise he can see it to begin with.

He swallows another set of coughs and wipes his mouth, lifting his head to look around as he hugs himself, tugging on the light jacket that doesn’t feel thick enough to deal with his surroundings. The slower breaths let him focus and the heaviness now is centered only at his ankles, in a way that feels like shackles, like a ball and chain attached to him to keep him still.

Above him is a light.

Brian tilts his head up slightly and squints against the brightness. A light above him in a halo, illuminating a wide circle around him. A streetlamp, he realizes, slowly. With the asphalt under his feet that would make this a road. He woke up in the middle of a street. So maybe he did get hit by a car, he thinks with a moment of amusement, flattened to the street like in the cartoons—

A quick examination proves no broken bones, and he’s not about to press his luck.

He still feels eyes on him as he squints up at the source of the light again, the brightness burning his eyes in a way that suggests he’s been in the dark for a while, but it’s not a deterrent as he catches sight of gleaming metal that shows him the source of the light. It’s dim, but it’s enough to follow with his eyes, and then with his feet, moving gradually from the illuminated circle and to the edge so he can press a hand against the streetlamp and steady himself. He’s shuffling, sort of, like he can’t entirely lift his feet. The distance feels longer than it should on top of that, so by the time his palm presses against the (nearly frozen) steel he’s leaning on it heavier than he should be, feeling halfway winded.

The thing in the dark has shifted, he thinks, moved either closer or further away or maybe there’s not really that much of a difference. The metal beneath his hand isn’t the silver he’d been expecting, and the way the streetlamp hangs over his head doesn’t seem to have changed all that much. No, it’s inky black, reflecting light only by nature of being made of a material that would, and it’s just as cold as the air around it as Brian tries to gather his thoughts. The eyes on him from the shadows linger on, prickling at the back of his neck no matter which way he turns, and a lump forms in his throat.

He’s awake enough to think now.

He wasn’t in the middle of a street. They were nowhere near a road, especially not one of this size—he still feels like he’s too close to the middle even when he knows the streetlamp isn’t in the middle of the road.

He and Alex were at that abandoned building. What’d he call it? A doctor’s office? A burned-out shell of a place that he had been wary to set foot in to begin with because he’d known they didn’t belong there. It was a strange sensation, pervasive wrongness, a sense of impending doom—

There are a lot of conditions where a sense of impending doom is an adequate warning; he likes to think he remembers a textbook explanation or two, or some lecture of one of his upper level professors. Anxiety disorders and bipolar disorders, depression, he’s familiar enough with them and their symptoms to know not to ignore the sense of impending doom, as rationally as possible for someone who doesn’t have to deal with them. But what would happen if it were only him and Alex? Half the time the sense of impending doom was just an indication that something was wrong, and when that wrongness was fixed, it would go away.

It comes creeping in again, slowly and insidiously as the thing in the shadows shifts again and he catches it this time, a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye that isn’t there when he turns to look at it.

What was there to worry about if it were just him and Alex? They were trespassing, sure, but it was an abandoned building off the edge of Rosswood Park. There weren’t any signs of habitation when they were poking around between shots. Nobody went there, nobody squatted there, nobody was using it. The building was just an empty place and was probably good enough for some dramatic scene in a movie that Alex was looking for. The sense of impending doom had been tied to the building, he thinks, but now he’s almost not sure. His thoughts are muddled and messy and it’s a sickening feeling because all he can remember clearly is walking up and feeling uneasy. Alex had been reassuring that there was nothing wrong. The worst he was imagining was a police officer, or some guard with a shotgun. But something else had happened, clearly, because the weather wasn’t nearly this cold and he wasn’t alone. And there was not a street nearly so big as this close enough that he could walk to it and decide to lay down in the middle. On top of that, where was--?

“Alex?” Brian croaks, and his voice echoes through the darkness. It hurts to speak in a way, like he’s gone a long time without talking. The hand not against the streetlamp comes to his throat as he furrows his brows, swallowing.

“Alex?” He calls again, louder this time, and winces as there’s a sudden jolt of pain in his head, like a spike had just gone through his skull. From behind. Brian presses the heel of his hand into his eye and grits his teeth. Nothing answers him but the echo, and the thing in the darkness shifting again.

Something had happened. He can remember that much as he tries again to straighten himself against the pain in his head and the stinging in his throat. That sense of impending doom he’d been trying to talk himself out of hadn’t been wrong. Something had happened and his body remembers more than his mind does because that’s why his head hurts suddenly, like he’d been hit from behind with something heavy—

Like—

hold on.

Something had happened. Some jolt of static and sound and a sensation of sickness and Alex had been gone. Further into the building. Right? Think. Think. He was there, it happened, he knows what happened, why can’t he think clearly? It’s the bad way, too, not the comfortable way that made him want to eat and take a nap after a smoke, but the sickening way of piercing cold and head trauma.

“… Son of a bitch.”

It’s not a concrete answer, but his body knows what his head does not. Physically, at least. Alex is to blame for something, and if he had to guess, it’s the pounding headache and the heaviness around his ankles. As he breathes in again the cold sears his lungs and he breathes out slower yet, grinding his teeth together and trying to focus. It’s impossible to set the events in order, he realizes. He knows what happened, but when he tries to put them all in order—

Something cracks when he tries harder to remember.

Alex takes four shots of him and he imagines the railroad, the pathway, the hospital, the apartment pool in tandem. All at once. Brian breathes in, shorter this time, holds it. He can’t separate the events. Alex with his camera in four angles and four versions of Brian standing in front of it with each and every one of them following different stage directions at the exact same moment and the piercing headache gets worse, like something’s building behind his eyes. Sunset, sunrise, nighttime, through the building, through the complex, through the hallways, in the empty rooms. It is incongruent and yet all Brian can think is that they’re happening, happened, going to happen. All at once.

All at once.

So, what happened next?

His head is against a pillow, against the streetlamp, against a wall, against a doorway. He is alone, he is with Tim, he is with Alex, he is with Jay and the rest of the crew. He says something stupid, he says something affectionate, he says something joking, he doesn’t speak at all—the pressure behind his eyes mounts again and this time Brian puts both hands at the streetlamp and the icy cold black metal, putting his forehead against it and being shocked at how relieving the cold has become instead of uncomfortable as he breathes deep again. He’s still shivering.

Separate the events. They didn’t happen all at once because there’s only one of him and he can’t be everywhere at once, let alone everyone else—

Hospital. He grounds himself by imagining sinking his fingers into the events and holding them still, so they don’t overlap with the others anymore. Him in front of the camera and alone with Alex Kralie. That particular version of Alex in the instant matters, too, so he digs his fingers into that, shuts his eyes against the light making his head hurt even more than it already does and tries, tries, tries to focus.

What was there to worry about, if it was just him and Alex?

Focus. Focus. Focus.

Brian yelps at the sudden sensation of something bursting behind his eyes, and so the events come together all at once: Alex Kralie behind the camera and Brian Thomas in front of it, following stage directions and still trying not to be uncomfortable, to accept that they were treading on the ground of old ghosts and would never have been welcome in the first place. His knees buckle but his hands, white-knuckled as they grip the streetlamp, keep him upright where he holds on tight. Alex has (had) been acting weird for (always?) a long time now, and Tim has been missing for (days) (weeks) (months) (years?) long enough to feel wrong, Sarah and Seth have been (missing) gone (dead?) unreachable for just as long and here he is walking into the jaws of the monster like it doesn’t matter because he trusts (trusted) his friend, and he knows, he knows, he KNOWS—

The second jolt of pain against the back of his head takes the form of some heavy metal object, a pipe (or a stray piece of rebar) hitting him hard enough to lay him flat and only by a small miracle not knocking him unconscious or crushing his skull. Tim had been there, too, he remembers, that ugly chesty cough that mimics his own in the instant as his grip loosens and he slides unceremoniously down to the ground again because of how much it hurts. He’s on his hands and knees. He’s lying on his back. Asphalt digs into his palms as he bows his head forward and coughs, spitting blood and phlegm and drool onto the darkness below him. He is motionless and heavy, he is running, he is running, he is falling, he is motionless and heavy. Alex had struck him in the back of his head when he’d been looking for him because something else had been there, something neither malevolent nor full of malice, something empty and wrong that carried a sickening presence and something that Brian knows knows knows he has seen before.

Bile joins the blood and phlegm on the ground beneath him and Brian coughs a few more times before the mess is finished, an uncomfortable shudder moving through him.

The thing in the shadows shifts nearer again, Brian feeling its eyes on him from multiple directions and now distinctly aware of it in a way he hadn’t been previously. The hard part is being certain which direction it is currently staring at him from, considering how many of his thoughts are crashing in on him—he’s still struggling to focus and think clearly, to understand the separation of events and the passage of time and—

The sound of boots on gravel, the something in the shadows slinking closer to him inch by inch and Brian doesn’t look up, breathing heavy and shivering against the cold. It is a noise outside of him and a sensation other than cold, so it gives him an anchor, and despite himself he reaches for that thought and clutches onto it as tightly as he can.

The approaching thing stops close by to him, and Brian tilts his head slightly to the side as he catches his breath, trying to get past the sickening taste in his mouth. Worn brown boots. Denim pants. His eyes don’t focus quite right as he looks up from there, into the eyes of—

“Tim?” He rasps, in some surprise, forcing himself to sit up instead of remaining on his hands and knees.

Tim, but not quite.

He is standing above him, his posture slightly hunched forward, his arms almost wrapped around himself. The way he holds himself reminds Brian partially of a prey animal ready to bolt, like there’s some unseen threat close enough that staying still is dangerous. He’s shifting, too, his weight moving from foot to foot, fidgety and visibly uncomfortable. It wouldn’t be that strange, exactly, were it not for the fact when Brian manages to look up into Tim’s face he is met with such an oddity in his eyes he’s halfway thinking he might be imagining things wrongly.

Tim’s eyes are pitch black. Ink black illuminated only by the light above them reflecting off the darkness, with a slit pupil in the center flicking back and forth between Brian on the ground and the shadows around them, pure white against the black. With the way he shifts and the way the lighting changes, however, the movement means his eyes reflect the light above them back in certain moments—a reddish glow that Brian recognizes as most similar to the times the family dog would linger in the backyard when he was a kid, just out of sight of the porch light. An animal’s eyes.

His face hasn’t changed, though, the recognizable sideburns and the slightest tilt of his head as he looks down at Brian, the expression intimately familiar. Brian knows that face, that expression Tim always made when he was faced with something challenging, some problem he knew how to fix in his work somewhere but wasn’t sure exactly what to do. He’s seen it before during midterms and finals and the occasional music project and now he’s seeing it with eyes that don’t match his face, with the two of them surrounded by darkness.

In the silence that stretches on—how long? – Tim looks away from him, into the shadow, and Brian is aware now as he watches his partner look left and right that the light they’re underneath is not the only one here. In Tim’s fidgety gestures he guides Brian’s eyes towards other circles of light, close enough to this momentary refuge from the shadow to be reachable but far enough apart that the yawning gap of darkness serves to be intimidating—for a reason that Brian does not know.

He’s slow as he makes to stand despite the heaviness settling into his body again, and as he rises, Tim’s attention jerks from their surroundings back to him, fixating upon him with those odd eyes with slit pupils blown wide.

He’s scared, Brian realizes, slowly.  The body language is enough when he already knows so much of how Tim acts when it’s only the two of them. He’s still curled in on himself, his fingers digging into his arms and his jacket, looking at Brian as he stands and hunched over to make himself seem smaller than usual. Scared of what? Not of him, surely?

“Tim,” He says, gently, “It’s okay. It’s just me.”

There is no reply but those animal eyes boring into him.

And then, all at once, those animal eyes turn away into the dark again, fixating on something in the distance that Brian—can’t see when he turns his head to look the same direction. Something far in the distance that sets a tightness in his chest, the smallest interruption in the endless line of streetlamps in the form of a place where the shadow begins again.

The light above them flickers.

A sudden wave of nausea strikes him again and Brian winces, tilting his head away from Tim as he covers his mouth and swallows. Seeing more of this place has an adverse effect, he supposes, because as quickly as he’s aware of the rest of the streetlamps on this empty road the sensation of sickness and wrong settles back in over his shoulders. It’s cold. His head is still pulsing in pain. Though he should feel comforted by Tim’s presence, he’s not sure he feels much of anything at the moment—

He hasn’t seen Tim in a week (or longer?) and to see him again, in one piece, albeit seeming slightly off, should be a relief. There’s nothing like that, though, just some uncertainty that what he’s seeing is real in the first place. It was out of the ordinary to not wake up from a text or two from his boyfriend, and a week of radio silence was certainly out of the question. But he’d been there, when Brian had been looking for Alex, curled up and struggling to breathe in a way that had warned of a coming seizure in the past—

He’d been in front of him when Alex had hit him in the head.

Bait, he realizes, and feels a jolt of anger—

It passes as quickly as it came.

Tim’s not the one he’s angry at.

“Where have you been?” The question is firm, frustrated, but he doesn’t mean it to be. He was worried, intensely worried, because it wasn’t like Tim to just disappear. It’s a stupid question to ask when he doesn’t know where he is now in the first place, he realizes, but there’s something keeping him from lingering on that. “You go off location scouting with Alex and just up and disappear, why did—”

Tim snarls in reply.

Brian’s expression turns to one of surprise, because that noise does not belong in a human mouth. That’s the noise of an angry dog, not a frustrated person, and Brian steps back from him on reflex. It’s becoming—harder to know what to think.

A jolt of pain in his skull.

An influence, a presence, that thing in the distance that Tim had been looking towards, something neither malevolent nor benevolent but something that simply is and was and will be and as Brian sucks in a breath and tries to focus back in on the here and now it’s becoming harder just to clear his vision.

“Okay,” He says, fumbling over the word. “We’ll talk about it later.”

He should feel comforted with Tim here, but he doesn’t, not with the way Tim is standing and fidgeting like he’s prepared to bolt at any given moment and the fixation on something in the distance that Brian can barely see. There is no feeling of relief or comfort, just the anxious tension in his chest as his eyes remain on the man in front of him. There isn’t any feeling at all, he realizes, slowly, just the pain in his head and a tension in his shoulders that he knows is the lingering anger that he’d been trying to dismiss. He’s not angry at Tim. He has no reason to be, especially not with the way his partner is seeming to shrink before him every time he looks towards him—is he scared of him? —and Brian’s not about to lash out at someone who doesn’t deserve it.

Is this really Tim, though?

He didn’t want to talk about where he’s been, but maybe something else would get him to say something.

“Do you know where we are?” Brian’s attention drifts back to the one standing in front of him, the cautious question presented in a way that suggests he’s alright with not getting an answer.

There is no snarl, this time, Tim blinking at him with a slight tilt to his head and a furrow to his brows. Those dark eyes meet his own and Brian is uncomfortable just to look at those animal eyes, like looking into them too long makes his skin crawl. He shifts nearer and Brian resists the urge to shift away, tightening his jaw as Tim jerks his head in one direction, away from the way he had been looking in the first place.

He wants him to look?

There is nothing there but the appearance of another streetlamp and Brian exhales sharply through his nose in frustration, tugging on his thin jacket in an attempt to ward against the cold again with no amount of annoyance. The circles of light stretch on into the distance until they shrink to the size of a pinprick and there’s no interruption, either, no sign of anything but the long and empty road. Tim jerks his head that direction again and makes some kind of noise, something between a whine and a growl that reminds Brian of his dog once again, and the frustration mounts.

“Tim.” He says, stiffer than he means to. “Say something. Use your words.”

There is no reply, and Brian lifts a hand to rub at his face. So he doesn’t want to talk. Silent treatment is new. He’s not a fan. There’s ways enough to deal with somebody who’s gone nonverbal, as far as he can remember off the top of his head, but that has a lot more to do with someone with dementia or specific disorders for children, and he’s never known Tim to be anything that fits into any of those categories in the first place—

Tim snaps again, the sound of gnashing teeth, and jerks his head in that direction again. He takes a few steps towards the edge of the light and sinks lower to the ground in a way that makes Brian think he’s about to run on all fours, or else throw himself at one thing or another; Brian breathes out, slowly, and lets the exhale mist his face.

That’s not a gesture for look, he supposes, that’s a gesture for follow.

He takes a step closer to his companion with no small amount of agitation and again something sparks, something grinds against something else in his head and he is hand in hand with Tim on the way out of the film building on their campus with Tim lamenting, I can’t believe you talked me into that, suddenly he is kneeling and holding Tim against his chest and talking him slowly through breathing and grounding himself again, wondering for one long moment what is happening to him but knowing Tim wouldn’t appreciate the analysis, you’re okay, you’re fine, I’m here, suddenly he is lying on his couch with a splitting headache, something that feels like someone took an axe to the top of his head and split it in half, looking up through his eyelashes at Tim offering him medicine and water and I can cancel, if you want, we can wait for you to feel better.

His whole body jerks and the heaviness strikes him again, making him stumble as he and Tim both step nearer to the threshold of shadow. These things happen all at once again, images overlapping in his head and he coughs hard, covering his mouth with his wrist and trying to breathe deep. The pain lingers like a railroad spike in his skull and he feels halfway blind as he straightens himself up again, tasting blood on his tongue and bile burning his throat and being aware of the way it feels like his lungs rattle when he inhales. He looks back in the direction Tim is, the other halfway in the shadow and halfway in the light, those animal eyes glowing a soft shade of red and concealing the inky black sclera. Brian steadies himself, breathes in again and winces against the sharpness in his chest, and takes a few more steps forward to join him as Tim retreats into the dark.

Following him on the empty path down the street is as natural as stepping from the driveway to the sidewalk—

or.

It would be, if he hadn’t gone from asphalt beneath his feet to the familiar squeak of his running shoes on the wooden floor of his house. It’s only disorienting when he realizes it, really, and he guesses if he hadn’t noticed then maybe he’d have walked right through the front door and out the back door without so much as a pause. Brian stops in the center of the hallway and looks up and down the pathway, sucking in a shaky breath as he blinks against the darkness of his home, eyeing the living room carpet at one end and the open door a short distance behind him. Dark. Dark, like he’d stepped inside without turning the lights on or else the power had gone out and he was on his way to the kitchen to find his lighter for the candles or or—or? Or?

He turns on his heel, aware of something shifting in the darkness behind him (that Something that he supposes must have been Tim, because that’s the only presence he can pin down) near the living room as he feels for the wall near the open doorway and fumbles for the light switch as he looks out the open door. His neighbor’s house across the street. He remembers them from when he’d moved in, a young couple (still older than him) with a daughter that he’d offered to babysit once or twice. When it got dark, they left their porch light on because the neighborhood was nice, spotted with trees that were too old or too pleasant to cut down and so the streetlamps were obscured sometimes. The only time he can remember seeing the porch light off was during power outages that took the whole neighborhood down in those unpleasant summers, sitting on his driveway with some lemonade and watching the kid and her friends ride their little bikes up and down the street—

The light switch under his fingers clicks. On, off, on, off, on, off. Not a sign of light from the bulbs above him. His across-the-street neighbor’s porch light is off. Power outage. Except there’s no more streetlights, either, just yawning darkness up and down the street, outlines of houses and trees and for a moment he wonders how his eyes have adjusted to the dark so quickly and so well. There’s no sound anywhere, no distant hum of electronics through his home or the fan upstairs that he left on out of habit and tended to creak.

The sound of the creaking springs of his couch a short distance behind him is contrasted against the silence that surrounds him like a blanket, the kind of quiet that he’d associate with—fresh-fallen snow, cool breeze, cracking ice, why is it so fucking cold when he pays his god damn heating bill—

Some instinct tells him to shut the door, and so he does. That doesn’t make it any warmer.

Brian lifts his hand to his mouth as he shuts the door and locks it on reflex, coughing hard into his palm and pulling it away from his mouth at the feeling of something warm dripping between his fingers. His breathing is slow and ragged, a sharp pain in his chest making him hesitant to breathe too much deeper. He hears in the silence the creaking of the couch springs again and looks over his shoulder to the movement in the shadow—

(What’d you see that scared you so much?) Movement in the shadow and Brian holds his breath against the stinging in his lungs and the sharpness in his throat and the taste of blood on his tongue. He feels rooted to the spot. There is something in his house. (Nothing, it wasn’t anything, I—) There is something in his house, something in his home, something watching him beyond his partner perched on the arm of the couch with his feet pressing into the fabric. He hears claws digging into the worn fabric and feels like he should do something about it. There is something in his house. (No, it’s okay, you don’t have to lie to me. I’m not going to judge you. I want to help.) He is aware of Tim with his head tilted towards him and something else, something else, something else that will not allow itself to be seen and he is between the instinct to run and the knowledge that the door behind him is closed and locked and it will do nothing to help him.

Something else in his house besides him and the thing that he doesn’t think is really Tim and the coughing gets worse. The warmth in his hand is already cold when he presses it to his face again and stumbles back, an aborted attempt to dash away interrupted by the way his knees buckle. (It was—It was just. Just something I saw. Nothing was there.) The hacking cough hurts, a sensation like he’s been stabbed somewhere under his ribcage and he feels that warmth again, splattered between his fingers as he doubles over. He wheezes and chokes and coughs and coughs and coughs, and he hears the creaking of springs once more as Tim drifts closer to him.

It doesn’t improve things. (I know you’re not doing well, let me help.)

There is something else in his fucking house and he can’t breathe.

Brian reaches out without thinking and shoves away and his hand makes contact with something, with the sturdy chest of his partner and the feeling of the smooth surface of Tim’s favorite jacket and he shoves him back, hears boots scrape against the wooden floor and hears an inhuman hiss and that thing is still there. That thing is still there. That thing is still fucking there. (I’m fine.) (Are you?)

It should be fear that courses through him as his bloody hand is clutched against his face and he stumbles for the side towards the stairs. It isn’t. It’s rage, it’s anger, it’s cold-hearted fury pulsing through his veins with every choke and sputter. (I’m fine.) He breathes in short gasps and presses himself against the carpet.

Footsteps up against the wooden floor. Something and someone clattering to the ground. Someone else shouting. Something standing at the end of the hallway. Coughing that isn’t his. Coughing that is his. A red light blinking away in the darkness and a pool of light against the wood and something moving through him, someone sat curled against the front door with their head slumped against their shoulder and staring vacantly off into the darkness—

A splatter of blood on the carpet and Brian drags himself upright again, breathing heavy and keeping his hand pressed over his mouth as he gags.

This is his house, still his house, so he knows which direction to go to drag himself into the bathroom instead of vomiting on his carpet and staining it bloody. He has to lean heavily on the wall and more or less force himself upright, aware of Tim and the Something standing at the bottom of the stairs and watching (can it watch? It must,) him ascend to the landing. Brian’s hands press against doorways and doorknobs and carpet and tile and he hears footsteps up the stairs. Tim, must be, because that Something has moved now, he can feel it like a ringing in his ears and like a radio tuned to a station that’s just slightly off, sound through messy noise struggling to get through.

He slams his hands down on either side of the sink and doubles over it, vomiting blood and bile into the porcelain and coughing hard as he does. These things happen all at once, he guesses.

Tim standing behind him and peeking in with a face white as porcelain, jolting back and jerking himself away when he turns to look, someone standing beside him with a blinking red light cupped in their hands and looking down into his blood-coated sink, Something reaching for him through the ringing noise in his ears and leading his attention elsewhere. He is standing upright and looking into the mirror with a camera over his shoulder, he is standing upright and choking on his own blood as he spits it up into the sink, he is lying on his back with his face towards the sky and aware of shaky hands clawing at his pockets. He is standing in his bathroom, he is standing before a window, he is standing outside the college in front of his car, he is standing in the woods, in a tunnel, in the light, in the dark, in the dark dark dark dark dark—

These things happen all at once.

Time passes in some way.

He is shivering from the cold by the time his brain lets him root himself again, barely breathing and feeling his whole body shake as what remnants of warmth he was holding onto are pulled from his very bones.

Anger still pulses through him as he bows his head and makes to wipe his mouth on the sleeve of his windbreaker. He’s furious—at Alex, at the dark, at the long street outside, at Tim and the thing lurking over them both, at himself. At the pulsing headache that won’t seem to leave him and the white noise in his head. It’s cold and he’s angry and in pain and the taste of blood on his tongue is thick. He can’t see himself in the mirror either when he looks up at it, just the shadow and the slight reflection in the mirror of Tim’s animal eyes.

Brian spits into the sink. His breathing is heavy and uneven and the mirror isn’t reflecting him back at himself. It seems almost like another doorway, like he could reach through and grab the pale face or the stranger standing beside him and on top of that, on top of that there’s the overwhelming urge in the back of his head that he has to, that he should be grabbing onto them and showing them something, show them SOMETHING that he doesn’t understand yet and can’t process—

He coughs again, flinches against the rawness of his throat, and covers his mouth as he takes a few steps back, out of the bathroom and into the hallway. He expects to bump into Tim as he does. He doesn’t.

The anger remains in the dark, away from the mirror, but the cold is a more pressing problem. If this is his house (it isn’t) then his things should still be here (they’re not) and he can deal with the cold this way. The windbreaker isn’t enough when the air on his cheeks even just existing there feels like knives across his skin, and he can see his breath when he manages another unsteady exhale. Like catching your breath during running, he thinks, the stitch in his side and the pain in his throat, forcing yourself to breathe deep and steady, inhale down to the stomach and it will stop being so difficult to keep going. Brian inhales deep, holds it, counts to ten, lets it go. The heat of his exhale mists his cheeks, and part of him imagines it crystalizing and falling to the ground like snow.

Tim is crouched by the doorway to his bedroom when he tilts his head to look. The door is open, wide open like it’d been slammed open, and Tim and his animal eyes are hunched near the doorway, just inside. His cheek is pressed against the doorframe, looking up at Brian with an expression that is unreadable, lips parted and breathing coming in slow pants. He doesn’t seem bothered by the cold. His jacket is thicker.

Brian brushes past him without so much as a thought.

He’s not concerned with Tim. Not right now, not when he knows this aimless anger which should be pointed somewhere is currently feeling like he’s got a gun in his hand just looking for an excuse. Breathe deep, hold it, count to ten, let it go. Someone else on the ground before him, not Tim, someone beaten black and blue and bloody and it’s satisfying, a pleasure unrivaled by anything in the pit of his stomach with his finger on the trigger, broken glasses and zipties and oh, that feels better. That feels much better. There’s a face in his mind’s eye that he can’t quite center in on again, but the helpful pain in the back of his head is going to lead him there anyway. He knows. He knows.

He’s pretty sure, at least.

Tim is watching him still as he moves into his bedroom, holding his breath as he goes through the doorway because part of him thinks it’s going to be the open, empty street again. There’s his mattress. The sheets still disheveled in the way that makes him slightly frustrated at himself, a moment’s annoyance that he forgot to make his bed before he left this morning (but this isn’t his house, so it’s not his bed) that is quickly dismissed in favor of going to the closet door. It sticks when he makes to open it, and Brian pauses. That Something is still in the house, and monsters tended to gather in certain places, didn’t they? He shifts as his hand wraps around the closet doorknob and clenches his jaw.

He should be more worried about the fact he’s coughing up blood than the thought of there being a monster in his closet. But he can’t have it in him to be afraid. With his hand on the (ice-cold, too) doorknob and his eyes fixated on the door in the darkness, he isn’t afraid. There’s nothing there at all that even feels like it’s trying to be fear, just anger, gathering in the pit of his stomach and making him grind his teeth together in agitation. Were it hot anger, maybe he’d be less bothered. Maybe he’d feel less like shit if the heat of it were spreading through him instead of just adding to the cold, instead of making his shivering that much more intense as his knuckles go white on the doorknob. He should be scared, he thinks, but instead he has an aimless rage boiling away in his stomach, in his head, somewhere in his chest. Boiling the way liquid nitrogen does at room temperature, condensing everything else into vapor that he exhales through parted lips. Nothing left over.

He opens the door without another pause and stares blankly at the interior of his closet, like he’s almost disappointed there wasn’t anything to be found. Just various articles of clothing hanging from their hangers like he left them, but all of it looks more worn than it should be. Older. Frayed at the edges. Brian puts a hand to his mouth to stifle another cough and another wince against the stinging in his throat. Poking through, he yanks an old hoodie off of its hanger; it’s thicker than the windbreaker and the best he has, given the fact he lives in fucking Alabama and the necessity for heavy winter coats was about as necessary as a set of snow boots and sled dogs.

Shedding the windbreaker, he pulls the hoodie on over his head and adjusts it around his torso. It doesn’t do much for the cold. Somehow, he’s not surprised. It’s more comfortable, at least.

Tim makes a low noise from where he’s crouched by the door, dragging Brian’s attention to him like a petulant child.

“You don’t want to be here, do you.” It’s not entirely a question, he realizes, even though he knows he’s still guessing at what Tim is trying to communicate. If he’s trying to communicate at all. Being nonverbal came along with developmental disorders and dementia disorders, but Brian has no knowledge off the top of his head of what the hell kind of disorder would come along with animal eyes and the refusal to stand up and stand still.

Tim stares up at him still from where he’s low to the ground, crouched and almost curled in on himself, his teeth bared in a soundless snarl, and Brian doesn’t know what to do.

“We’ll leave.” He mutters. “This isn’t my house, anyway.”

The thing in the dark seems inclined to agree with the prickling still lingering at the back of his neck and the way Tim is edging significantly closer to the stairs, still prepared to run but unwilling or unable to leave Brian on his own. That part doesn’t bother him much.

Brian moves past Tim cautiously, halfway expecting to be grabbed or lashed at with the way those animal eyes are fixated upon him and the way the teeth bared at him in the dark seem sharper than he’s used to seeing from his partner. He’s not scared of it, still, something in the back of his mind assuring him that this is his Tim, only just barely. He doesn’t know why he knows, only that he does, and the question of why Tim is here and what happened to him to make him seem so odd is something to be investigated another time.

He descends the stairs and hears the soft sound of Tim’s boots and coat, fabric moving against fabric and soles on carpet as his partner follows him down, slightly behind. They stop together on the ground floor, Brian taking those next few steps into the hallway where he’d realized the change around them and stopping in the exact spot. He holds his breath, as if expecting it to change again, and takes the last step forward.

The house remains motionless and silent around him.

He doesn’t know if that’s a relief.

Brian glances back again to see Tim slightly behind him still, his eyes not focusing between a pale face that doesn’t seem to fit right and the pathetic, almost frightened expression. He’s scared. He’s still scared. Maybe that’s where all of Brian’s fear has gone.

Should he apologize?

Brian looks instead to the living room ahead of him down the end of the hallway and starts walking. The front door is locked and part of him gets the feeling that if he goes through it again it might lead him right back to the circle of light in the empty street. It would be smart to test that theory, of course, but he’s got a hunch he’s correct anyway and sees no point in retreading his steps just yet. The other option is to keep moving forward in the direction and see how many doorways it takes to find his way out of the dark, and it seems like a better idea than walking in circles between the street and the empty house and hoping something else will come up eventually.

His living room seems to be in pieces when he walks into it. Or at least, his brain is giving him multiple pictures at once and he’s struggling again to separate the events; Tim is standing slightly behind him, Tim is sitting on the couch and staring at him, the couch is overturned with the cushions thrown across the room. His eyes burn as he tries to focus enough to tell what he needs to step over and what isn’t there at all on his way towards the back door—newspaper and magazines, paper ripped to shreds and thrown across the carpet, droplets of blood splattered on the mess and a shell casing, from one of his own guns, half-hidden among the mess. Pills on the counter. A soft noise behind him settles him back into where he’s supposed to be and Brian doesn’t look over his shoulder this time, knowing it’s only Tim being unsettled as Brian fails to take another step forward.

His back door isn’t usually locked. Or at least, he doesn’t ever remember if he’s locked it or not—the sliding door sticks, most of the time, and nobody used it unless he had it open to deal with the summer heat and dead air conditioning. Brian approaches it slowly and nudges the blind aside cautiously, an attempt to be sure he’s going to see what he expects to when he opens it. His backyard. Not fenced in and open to the next-door neighbor’s yard. Trees dotting the back. He expects a breeze, to hear some sort of commotion or something else in the dark than the all-encompassing silence and cold, but there is not a sound except the movement of his feet and the sliding door being pushed gently aside in its track.

He should hear the wind rustling the leaves on the trees. Hear the neighbor’s conversations or the barbecue grill. Kids screaming as they run up and down the street in front of the house. Instead there is only silence and still air.

Brian breathes out slowly.

He crosses the threshold.

The sensation of movement is still there, but even though he knows he did not blink the yard changes with a spike of pain through the back of his head and a burning sensation in his eyes—

This is not his yard.

This time he was prepared for a change and so he stands still in the grass and underbrush as he gathers himself, hearing the crack of fallen branches somewhere nearby and knowing automatically his companion is still with him. The trees have multiplied. Standing like sentinels that reach for the sky there are no leaves on these trees, no wind to rattle the branches, dark wood and spindly fingers grabbing at the light above them—

Light. Moonlight.

The grass and trees are just more black on black with the environment around them but there is a light coming from somewhere, now, a light coming from above and some indescribable source as he looks up. It must be moonlight, but he cannot find the moon through the branches and the angle seems wrong every time he turns to look a different direction. There is nothing behind him and where he came from but the forest. (And Tim, of course, halfway behind a tree, digging nails like claws into the bark.) He can see clearer in the shadow thanks to the light, but it is a cold comfort as he exhales again.

He’s familiar with the forests around where they live, at least enough to know how to get home from them. It came with growing up and going to school in the area; getting lost meant less time enjoying yourself as a kid, and more time spent worrying your parents. Nausea shakes him as he breathes in and out again, ignoring the stinging in his throat and taking a few more steps forward like he expects it to change.

There isn’t a shift, this time. There is only silence and moonlight and the trees around them.

He expects the crack of branches under his feet to echo, but they remain muffled when the leaves and branches creak and crunch and he begins to walk softer because the thought of making so much noise in an environment like this seems—like a very poor idea indeed.

Tim behind him doesn’t seem to have the same thought, messily dragging his feet and occasionally making another displeased noise and Brian’s getting more and more annoyed that he won’t say anything by the minute.

A few more steps.

They feel longer than they should, like he’s traversing a great distance faster than he should be able to, but in the same moment his breaths feel slower. Like an inhale and an exhale don’t match right; he inhales normally and the exhale feels so much longer, slower, like the fog that makes it hard to see if the trees end anywhere is simply the breath lost in the constriction of his lungs.

A few more steps.

Suddenly, the trees have leaves again.

It breaks the light back into shadow and it is neither relief nor agitator; Brian simply stops in his tracks and looks up again, swallowing the taste of blood in his mouth and the aching in his head. There are no pinpricks of light through the leaves.

He can feel it. That thing nearby again, something outside of him and outside of Tim, and ugly Something that’s making the ringing in his ears louder and louder by the moment. (Tim is whimpering, somewhere.) It reminds him of the pacing creature that had been circling the light he woke up in, but different in a way he cannot name. Motionless eyes. The replacement to the wind in the trees and he clenches his jaw.

Watching.

He’s felt it watching him since he woke up, he realizes, because it’s not only Tim looking to see where he goes.

So why hasn’t it done anything to him?

The coughing starts again as he stops in his tracks and feels the heat of another body drifting near to him, his companion hunched over and trembling as he looks up at him, those animal-eyes wide and fearful. The thing nearby is still watching them. He doubts it will stop any time soon. Something in the back of his mind tells him it’s done a lot more than he’s prepared for it to do, but that voice seems—faraway and pointless, hard to listen to and focus on, and so he doesn’t.

The liquid nitrogen anger keeps boiling away in his stomach, making him feel nauseous as he takes a few more steps forward and feels Tim bump into his back. He shoves again, without thinking, and his companion steps back without a word in response.

The tree line comes, eventually, after the two forests have merged into one or else all the leaves have fallen off and grown back again or else after the moonlight fades and he and Tim are stepping out into the back of a neighborhood, a long stretch of identical or nearly identical houses backed up against the forest. A new development, Brian’s hazy mind supplies, something that had only been put in because the small-town Alabama that they were used to was getting bigger and more popular and people needed places to live. These were the kind of houses that could be put up quickly and taken down even quicker if they had to be, with windows that wouldn’t lock properly and back doors that creaked in cooler weather and they were remarkably easy to slip inside by way of a swift thwack wherever an opening was supposed to be—

Why does he know that?

He shouldn’t know any of that.

He should feel surprised at himself. Bothered, maybe, or else uncomfortable, because he’s not the sort of person to consider burglary as an option. But there is nothing there still, no fear or shock or anything but that cold anger in his stomach and the vapor that passes through his clenched teeth when he breathes out. Mist in his face.

The difference is, however, that the house directly ahead of them has its lights on. That’s what allows some modicum of emotion other than anger, because he wasn’t expecting anything like that; the back door is ajar and there is a light in the window, dim and flickering like fire but a light nonetheless. Tim is standing too close to him again, and he can feel his heated breath on his shoulder as they both peer through the trees towards the light. It spills out onto the grass before the back porch and shows a splash of color there, too, turning the inky black shadow that the grass is into something green and vibrant. The light inside flickers, like candles, like fire.

Tim recoils from it. Brian elects to step a little closer.

He emerges from the trees and the light doesn’t get any clearer. It’s smudged, somehow, he thinks—Like looking at the light through a foggy window, instead of at the actual light source. When he steps further into the yard—

someone steps past him.

He jerks, reflexively, because the only thing he knows are with him is Tim and whatever that Something in the dark is. Brian stops in his tracks and tenses, hesitating to look as someone steps past him towards the forest. Not Tim. And certainly not whatever that thing is, too short (although taller than him) and shaky, like something in the shadow is glitching. Like the video recorded wrong and the figure is being split multiple ways.

Static rings in his ears as he turns around and looks.

The sight is Tim, crouched with his body pressed against a tree, those animal eyes glowing red in his direction. He is halfway in and halfway out of the forest, staring intently at Brian (or at something standing behind him) and whoever had moved past him is gone, or had never been there in the first place. Nearby to Tim, close enough for him to reach out and touch if he wanted, is the body lying in the grass.

Brian freezes and the rush of sudden emotion that moves through him is not anger, or grief, or anything at all but confusion.

Something in the back of his head aches again, warmth dripping down the back of his neck as he stifles a cough.

There’s a body lying in the grass, pale white outlined in shadow, the darkness of the grass a cradling embrace around them. Tim is staring intently at it as Brian approaches. There’s a body lying in the grass, its hands on its abdomen and its head tilted towards the forest. The angle is awkward, halfway pointed towards the darkness of the woods with its feet still in the direction of the house. It looks purposefully placed, and the sensation of someone moving past him is impossible to shake as Brian closes the distance to give a closer examination.

Nobody just falls in a pose like that. Eyes wide open and pointed towards the tree line. Nobody just falls on their back after death (because she’s dead, she’s very dead, there’s no rise and fall of her chest) and daintily places their hands on their stomach to make sure whoever discovers their corpse finds something nice to look at. She was laid here by someone or Something, the grass brushing against a pale cheek and open eyes and still simply cradling her in this windless emptiness. He recognizes this woman, instantly, and holds his breath.

“Sarah,” He says, like that might wake her up.

He knows she is dead. He doesn’t have to look too closely to know that, either, the knowledge existing without him having to linger too long on the thought. There is a ring of bruises around her neck. Brian kneels beside her and listens to Tim shifting back again with a noise low in his throat that sounds more like a whimper.

A ring of bruises around her neck like a necklace, dark and ugly on her too-pale skin. (These lines are so stupid.) Her eyes wide open and staring in the direction of the forest and the pose itself feels unnatural, because it seems like she should be reaching out towards him, or Tim, or the woods, or something. There is no blood on her clothing at a cursory glance and the pounding headache has centered itself in the middle of his skull. (Yeah, but it means a lot to him. Don’t be mean.) (It’s not mean! It’s commentary.) His hand is trembling—from the cold? —when he reaches out to rest his fingers tentatively against her cheek. (Since when is calling something stupid commentary?)

He is about to ask What happened to you? when the picture itself creates it for him. A shadow emerges in the window where the flickering firelight emerges from and Brian withdraws his hand to look towards it. Two people in the window. (Constructive criticism, duh.) A conversation overwhelmed with static and sound and white noise or else simply just too far away for him to hear. (Why say it to me and not him, then?) He is still and silent and hears claws against the wood of the nearest tree, scraping bark away against the noise as his eyes fixate on the silhouettes in the window. (Y’know, he’s… Weird, lately.) Alex and Sarah, he knows, automatically. (Weird?) They’re talking to each other. He cannot hear what they’re saying. (Angry. Short tempered. You know.) This is her house. Her backyard. She let him into her home.

The rage builds.

(Yeah, I know.)

(You should talk to him.)

His mind provides what they were doing, because he knows these things, now, he supposes: the conversation he can’t hear is something about the lines for that stupid student film that Alex cared so much about and Sarah is being polite because she can’t reasonably say no to one on one scenes and he’s only not there despite being in the fucking scene because he was busy or because he wasn’t invited or more likely because Alex wanted them to be alone.

He wanted it to be just him and Sarah because Brian had offered to show up and Alex had told him, in no uncertain terms, that it would be better if it were just him and Sarah to make sure it would be genuine. It wouldn’t be genuine if you were there. It wouldn’t be genuine if she could look at you during this. It’s supposed to be emotional, meaningful, blah blah blah.

Fuck that.

Brian stands up and clenches his hands into fists.

do something do something do something DO SOMETHING DO SOMETHING DO SOMETHING

It stops again, or things shatter, or his mind realizes something his body doesn’t and Brian is rooted to the spot as he watches the shadow that is Alex wrap his hands around the throat of the shadow that is Sarah and squeeze. He cannot see her face but he knows what it looks like anyway, the expression of fear and shock because she trusted him, because they all trusted him, because he was their friend and now here he is with his hands wrapped around her throat and squeezing.

Tim behind him whimpers again, and some part of Brian wonders how much he can see as he watches Sarah slump against Alex’s chest, watches Alex stare right at the two of them with his fingers still tight around her throat. Their eyes meet and Brian looks at him with a sensation prickling at the back of his neck and the fury building in his chest as his nails dig into his palms and the rage makes him shake more than the cold does.

“I saw that.” Brian hisses through clenched teeth as the shadow that is Alex remains still. “I saw you.”

Alex does not react, because he isn’t there. He moves away from the window. He picks up his camera. He pulls Sarah into his arms. He’s gentle in a way that makes Brian sick to his stomach, cradling her against his chest like he cares about her. Brian does not move as Alex steadies himself and moves away from the window towards the back door, ajar and allowing more of the flickering firelight out. He watches Alex step carefully out the door, watches his movements become shakier and even more unsteady and watches him try his hardest to keep his grasp on Sarah steady as he approaches the tree line.

Alex comes closer and closer and Brian’s eyes fixate on his face. This has already happened. There is no stopping it. This is a was and not a will be regardless of how much he wants to stop it—Sarah was not gone because of a family emergency, Sarah was the fucking family emergency, and it was all the fault of Alex Kralie.

The pain at the back of his head gets worse, but this time he can ignore it. It’s blood down the back of his neck. He doesn’t mind it in the slightest.

Alex drops the camera somewhere in the grass and Brian knows it is recording still. Which means he was recording this whole thing, this whole fucking thing where he murders a friend of theirs for some godforsaken reason and lies to the rest of them about it. There would be missing posters sooner or later, if her body was here and not wherever he’d truly left it. Speaking of leaving it—

Brian watches Alex come to within touching him. Watches the bastard lay their friend down gently in the grass at his feet and look at her with tears in his eyes, like he was something pitiful and tragic instead of a killer, instead of a murderer, instead of a liar and a monster. He has the audacity to cry over his actions.

The image shatters before it finishes, but Something makes its appearance, and Brian knows that that Something is what brought her here.

Brought him here, too, he thinks. He knows. There isn’t a question. Alex tried to do the same thing to him. Might have succeeded, but one sharp breath is enough to tell Brian he sure as hell isn’t dead yet.

Something happened after that, and maybe Brian knows what it is, but the pieces don’t come together in his head as he steps away from the corpse in the grass and towards where the camera had been dropped. He doesn’t expect to find it, because he assumes Alex picked it up when he left; wouldn’t do to leave behind evidence of your crimes, after all. He kneels in the grass and feels for it regardless, on the off chance that he could pry a tape out of it and have proof beyond whatever the fuck is happening in his head, but all that remains under his numb fingers is the sensation of grass in the dark.

Tim whimpers again. The noise is exceptionally grating, but Brian doesn’t say a word.

He stands up and looks towards the house. Doorways seems to set it off, one way or another, or at least just traversing some distance would change what was around him. If he turned around, he doubts he’d make it back to his own house or even back to the forest he’d ended up the first time he’d stepped out of his back door, let alone any chance to find his way back to the empty street and endless lines of street lights. There are eyes on him that aren’t Tim’s animal eyes and the sensation of being watched has become as familiar as anything else. Thresholds. It moves him with thresholds and doorways and the forest was some kind of exception, he thinks, like it wanted him to understand that there was movement without really letting him go anywhere in the first place. Or it was like a game, loading in the environment around him as he moves because he was going somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be.

Thresholds and doorways. He doesn’t know which direction Alex went after that, but he does know how to move through here—three times is enough. Can he manipulate it? Think hard enough, maybe, and have it bring him right to wherever Alex is or was or will be or should be?

The back door to Sarah’s house remains ajar, only partially open to the outside and still flickering with firelight as he approaches. The grass rustles behind him as Tim follows. Brian places a hand on the cold surface of the heavy door, breathes in—pushes it open further. Sarah’s kitchen. Her living room to the left. The table where Alex murdered her under the window. He does not cross the threshold.

He breathes in, holds it. Thinks hard, focusing on Alex, on Alex fucking Kralie, on that murderous bastard who lied to him and lied to their friends and tried to kill him, on the glint of his glasses that that pathetic set of tears, takes a step forward—

and enters a shack in the woods.

There’s a thud and a growl against the shack outside as Tim bumps into the doorway and stumbles in behind him.

One test does not an incorrect theory prove. Brian looks around a moment—the shack is derelict and uncomfortable, but with the way Tim has relaxed slightly, it seems like a place he knows well enough. There’s one door on either end, windows opposite each other like picture frames of the darkened forest. Brian curses sharply under his breath, exhales another bit of vapor, and stalks towards the other door, focusing again on Alex, on the man he has to find, now, on the man who has to answer some fucking questions for him, on a liar and a murderer and—

emerges into a tunnel.

A drainage tunnel.

Lights on either end, sunlight. Tim is pressed a little bit closer to his back now, and Brian squints against the sudden light. There are trees visible through the white noise in his vision, sort of, and that is not a thought that he likes. Before he’d found Sarah there had been two forests, the one shrouded in moonlight and the empty leaves in the dark, mashed together—would this be a third? Would it simply be one of the ones he’d already gotten himself lost in?

Fine. Thresholds and doorways. It doesn’t want to cooperate with him, so he may as well just keep moving.

Tim bumps into him again, and Brian reaches back to put a hand against his head and push him away from him for the umpteenth time.

“Not so close.” He snaps, sharp.

Tim whines at him in reply.

Brian releases another breath he’d been holding and looks up and down the length of the tunnel. The ways don’t look any different from where he’s standing. His back had been turned one direction, though, and if any part of his theory holds true then turning around wouldn’t matter, but there’s still—an instinct in the back of his head. An uncomfortable itch and pressure (to go with all the blood, of course) telling him that he may as well just keep moving forward instead of back. For a moment, it feels like there isn’t anything on him but Tim’s animal eyes. Is that a comfort?

No feeling but the anger.

Turning back seems like a bad idea—symbolism, or something like it. He’s not going to find Alex if he doesn’t move forward. And that, now, seems like the best thing to be doing; find Alex, find out what the hell was going on, maybe find out where the hell he ended up in the first place and find. Answers. Find answers. Answers to questions he doesn’t think he knows yet. He breathes in, breathes out. Takes a few steps forward.

The sound of his footsteps echo off the sides of the tunnel. He steps in a puddle at some point and looks down at it, sees red and brown and black and blue altogether and his eyes don’t focus once again, overlapping and overexposing pictures. Too much white noise. A pulse in his head. Brian lifts a hand to his temple and makes an effort to steady himself as he stops walking, hearing Tim trailing along behind him like a lost dog.

He needs to focus. He knows why he’s here. He knows what happened to put him here. He was supposed to be dead. Alex was trying to kill him, undoubtedly; it may be just a small miracle that he failed. (The trickle of blood down the back of his neck makes him think maybe he didn’t.) Alex has killed Sarah, and he has a hunch it isn’t just himself who was on the receiving end of Alex’s—what, plans? Sarah’s death seemed premeditated at the very least, and in the back of his mind he remembers excuses for Seth and Tim, too, something conjured out of the rest of Alex’s bullshit excuses to keep them from worrying—

“Did Alex do this to you?” Brian questions, suddenly.

Tim seems surprised to be acknowledged when Brian turns to look at him. Those animal eyes (red in the dark) look at him with an expression that’s almost unreadable, Tim tilting his head to one side and looking at Brian with… confusion? Surprise? That fear is still there, the way he holds himself, curled in on himself and ready to bolt. A lip pulls back in half of a snarl, and Brian feels like he should be surprised at the sight of sharp teeth.

“Tim,” He repeats himself. “Did Alex do this to you?”

Head trauma could do some weird shit. Hit someone hard enough on the skull and if their brain suffers enough for it… could it lead to something like this? Nonverbal. That still wouldn’t explain his eyes, or the teeth, or the claws digging into his jacket, but it would explain something.

There isn’t a response, though. Further silence, the sound of a panting dog, Tim recoiling from him like he expects to be struck or yelled at or threatened, or something along the lines of that. It’s not an answer.

Annoyance spikes through him—but he’s starting to think it doesn’t matter much in the first place, because Tim hasn’t said so much as a syllable since they’ve been together again.

He’d been so worried when Tim had just up and vanished. A week of radio silence from his boyfriend and no information at all from the last person who had seen him. Of course, since the last person who had seen him had been Alex, he supposes he shouldn’t be surprised. Alex didn’t know Tim well enough to construct a believable lie to the person who loved him. So he left that at Brian’s feet, assuming he’d fill in the gaps.

“Fuck you, Alex.” Brian mutters under his breath, turning back towards the direction of the tunnel he’s walking in. Thresholds and doorways. Time to find out if the sunlight would cut out just as well as the moonlight had earlier.

He doesn’t hold his breath this time as Tim tracks red down the rest of the tunnel behind him

and stops at the top of a set of stairs.

Unsurprisingly, it’s dark again.

He can hear shuffling footsteps and dim conversation somewhere below, in the dark. Tim is pressed up against the wall now, curled up and trying to make himself small in the corner like he’s been here longer than Brian has. Brian doesn’t bother to acknowledge him—now’s not the time. He’s not safe here, of course, but neither of them are. There are eyes on them again.

Brian descends the steps cautiously. His eyes are well-adjusted to the dark by the time he reaches the bottom—they hadn’t seemed so steep, standing at the top, but the story changes by the time his foot reaches the bottom. He stumbles, like he’d been prepared for another step, steadies himself and opens his eyes again.

The room before him is large. A wide, open space in the darkness, shot through with the occasional support pillar or derelict machine. For what purpose, he couldn’t identify or cannot guess at, but some back part of his mind tells him this is a basement. No windows and stairs down and up from that landing he’d been standing at with Tim curled up behind him; this is a basement, long and wide and dark, and he can see flashlights in the distance.

Another spark of rage.

This is Alex again, he knows. Alex and—Alex and Seth. So that answers that. He’d seen what happened to Sarah and now it is time to see what happened to Seth, a ghost in the middle of the scene, though he hopes Alex knows he’s got something angry watching him.

“I saw you.” He hisses through clenched teeth, taking a few steps forward in the dark. They’re further ahead of him, too far for him to catch up at a slow walk. “I saw what you did.” Brian’s a runner, though, track star in middle school and high school and it’s nothing for him to get closer. He can see it in their body language, watch the camera and flashlight shift in the dark.

This time it isn’t shadows in the dark, like it had been at Sarah’s house. It’s figures illuminated in dim light of the flashlight, there and not there at once, like ghosts passing through walls. He can see the glint of Alex’s glasses and the soft blinking red light of Alex’s camera in Seth’s hands, pointed at red on the wall. His throat itches and his mouth tastes of blood and his hands are shaking in his furor as he comes nearer and nearer and—

they move further away from him.

“I saw what you did.” He says, sharper this time. “I saw you!”

He watches Seth turn around towards him. Their conversation means nothing to him, even if he could hear it in the first place. He watches Seth lower the camera. Watches Alex turn towards them.

“Alex!” Brian shouts his name, snarls it, “I SAW YOU!”

Alex’s fist collides with the back of Seth’s head. Brian tries to rush forward again, a mindless intention, grab the bastard by his collar and strangle him the way he did Sarah, break his neck and break his face, stop him from hurting anyone else and make him answer for what he did. They move further away from him again despite the fact they’re standing perfectly still as Alex kicks Seth to the ground and raises the heavy flashlight in his hand.

Seth’s head caves in with a sickening crunch as Alex brings the flashlight down and Brian sees red.

These are his friends. His good friends, his loved ones, the people that mattered to him. They were college students, friends, a dumb group of kids out to make something good for fun, something that ended up being more bonfire nights and booze and making fun of the script. They were his friends. They were his friends and Alex Kralie killed them. Alex Kralie killed them for—for what? For what? WHY? FOR WHAT?

A gun in his hands. (You did this.) A pipe in his hand. (You did this.) Standing above Alex and looking down at him, bloody and battered and bruised. (I saw you.) Hands in his hoodie and Alex’s crazed face looking into his, broken glasses and wide eyes. (You did this. I SAW you.) Satisfaction and anger and fury and pleasure mixing together, disgust and pity and hatred and hatred and HATRED AND HATRED AND HATRED—

Brian doubles over, vomiting into the river at the bottom of the shallow ravine.

Static rings in his ears as he spits, breathing heavy and watching red and black mix together in the water as they drip from his lips and the water carries them away. He’d expect sound, but there’s still nothing, just the empty white noise and the darkness around him as he tries to gather himself.

There’s a presence.

It had been there when Seth had been killed. Had been there when Sarah had been strangled. Had been there in the tunnel, even if Brian was trying to ignore it, or else thinking elsewhere. It had been there because Alex was there. He knows this, and does not know how he knows this, but he does. He knows. It’s Alex’s fault, and the thing that’s following him now is Alex’s fault.

He can feel it, looming behind him somewhere, motionless and fixated. It’s making it hard to breathe and his hands dig into the damp mud underneath him as he coughs again, as he spits and chokes and vomits once more, feeling the whole of his body lock up as black goop and too-red blood are carried away by the river.

He won’t look at it. He won’t give it the fucking satisfaction.

There’s a presence that had been part of this and which knows that he sees it now, he thinks, something in the dark that isn’t something he knows but is something he is aware of and there is no fear. There is no fear. There is no fear, there is only anger and fury, ice cold and intense in every prickling sensation on his skin as he forces himself to his feet. It’s Alex’s fault. It’s the fault of this thing that had been following him and he knows it, knows it better than he should, because it’s familiar.

Brian is unsteady as he stands and wipes his mouth, looking at his fingers. Sticky black like tar and blood mixing together and repelling each other all at once. Oil and water.

He stands up and makes to turn around to give the fucking thing a piece of his mind and

catches himself from falling down the stairs again, clutching at the bannister and feeling an intense pain in his chest to match the agony in his head

and pushes himself out of a pile of leaves and mud with a snarl

and presses his cheek against the wood of the shack, breathing in and out, steady, steady, breathe deep and try to FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS

He isn’t afraid.

cool linoleum of a school building

fire licking at his feet and his hands and ash above his head and he isn’t afraid

he isn’t afraid as he tucks a tape under debris and isn’t afraid as he sits in the darkness in a school building, watching a video render and upload, staring intently at something in the shadow, he isn’t afraid as he

watches something come down the stairs, cradling a stranger

watches Alex from behind, a weapon in hand and a camera on the ground

sees it. Sees it. Sees it watching them, watching him. He isn’t afraid.

hand in hand with Tim again, that sheepish smile, that nervous smile, that smile that made him hungry to kiss him and reassure and

a camera in front of him. (That is my full name.)

a camera in hand.

the sharp sensation of sinking, of falling, of FALLING—

The brick underneath him is a familiar sensation when he comes to again, but when he opens his eyes this time it’s not to the street but to a driveway, a small stretch of pavement and a silver car parked in the center. The porch light is on as he drags himself to his feet. He coughs again, spits the mix of tar and blood to the ground and tries to take the environment around him in, quickly, before the scene changes and he’s dumped god only knows where again. He knows this place. He’s been here before, a couple times, he thinks, nights to drink and talk about the script and hang out because Alex’s roommates were never around—

Alex’s house. Alex’s driveway.

Not Alex’s car.

The reflex is to go towards the front door. The lights are on inside, so Alex might very well be home, but the darkness that stretches on around him makes him doubtful that that’s really a decision. After all, it’s dead silent. He can see in multiple windows and the ajar front door and there is not a soul inside, not so much as a movement of a shadow in the light. No wind through the trees a short distance away. This isn’t really Alex’s house, as much as he might wish it would be—would certainly make things a fuck of a lot easier.

His body feels heavy. It’s a struggle to stand up, let alone stand up straight, like something heavy is trying to pull him back to the ground and back to sleep. It would be easy. A ringing in his ears like he’d been too close to a gunshot makes the aching in his head hurt and the light makes his eyes sting, forcing him to turn away from the house and towards the driveway and the silver car.

He knows this car.

“Jay?” He says it aloud, croaking it, naming the owner because he needs to know if his voice still works. It does, and so comes with a stinging sensation through his throat and chest. Jay’s car. He remembers driving to set (though it feels so long ago now) and the occasional ride home from something far too exciting for a college weekend and knows in a moment that Jay is still here.

House?

The light burns his eyes but Brian turns towards it regardless, because he expects to see something else there. The lack of sound in the woods and the fact that the car looks halfway like it’s been sitting there for a while but the house has it’s lights on makes him think that the thing—whatever it is—wants him to see something there.

Or else is baiting him. It could just as easily be trying to make things worse.

He doubts he can really guess at its intentions.

He’s squinting against the light after so much time (how long?) in the dark and it makes it more difficult to approach than it should be, one hand lifted in half of an attempt to shield his eyes as he takes a few more steps closer to the house. The door is wide open and there is not a soul inside from what he can see but that doesn’t mean that the bastard isn’t here, somewhere, hiding out in some corner to be dragged out (and SHOT) to face what he’s done.

Thresholds and doorways and when he steps inside he’s taking the final step up the stairs to the attic, looking down at bags full of tapes tucked into the corner and hearing the sound of movement and commotion beneath him. He knows where he is. Alex’s attic. That’s Alex’s voice downstairs. So these tapes are—

The Marble Hornets tapes, he assumes.

Brian kneels beside the bag. His frozen fingers poke through them steadily, furrowing his brows at the sight of—so many of them completely unlabeled. Some in containers, some not, some looking slightly damaged and most looking perfectly intact. The sound of conversation downstairs is quiet and distant and means nothing to him or would mean nothing to him even if he could understand it through all the white noise, so Brian settles onto sitting cross-legged beside the bags of tapes and begins to look.

He doesn’t know what he’s looking for. He does know what he’s looking for. He knows he’ll know it when he sees it, mostly, some fractured and angry part of his brain knowing that nothing here is really going to be any use to him in the first place but there is still—a need to look. A need to find. A need to do something in retribution or in vengeance or just because and there is something in these bags full of tapes that he needs to get his hands on. It ends up being at the bottom, too, after the sleeve of his hoodie has been pushed up by plastic and forgotten pieces of cases and his hand has been scraped by the edges. A single tape, labeled AUD-1 on the side and he knows what it is. In an instant, he knows what it is, though not why it matters so much for him to have it.

He breathes out, slow. The static won’t stop.

There is the sound of the conversation coming nearer and Brian doesn’t think he’ll be seen, after Alex failed to hear him shouting about Seth and how every attempt to get nearer was thwarted by this Thing dragging him around for its entertainment, but he stands up anyways. He holds the AUD-1 tape tightly in one hand and steps back slowly until he can place himself in the dark corner just behind the bags of tapes to watch as Alex Kralie emerges from the light below into the darkness of the attic.

Alex looks at him. Looks past him, he thinks, or is seeing something else entirely, but Brian only sees Alex. Alex Kralie, the killer, the liar, the traitor. His vision blurs again in his rage, but he focuses in this time, forces himself to center it as Alex steps closer and closer and closer.

Inches away.

Alex kneels to pick up the bags of tapes and is trembling as he does, his eyes distant and vacant and looking right past Brian even as they make direct eye contact and Brian can feel his breath on his face.

“I saw you.” Brian says, his voice low and hoarse and painful, the words clawing their way out on his tongue as he looks Alex directly in the face. “I know what you did.” The reflex is to reach out. Wrap his hands around Alex’s throat and squeeze the way he did to Sarah. Take something heavy and crush his skull like he did to Seth, like he tried to do to him. Show him the consequences, because there are consequences.

He doesn’t get to win.

Alex turns away from him with no indication that he’s been heard or seen or even acknowledged in the first place. And Brian knows: This has already happened. This is not a going to happen or a might happen, this is a has happened and nothing he can say or do will interrupt the sequence of events. But something comes after.

“Did you see me?”

Something does come after.

Kralie descends the stairs to the attic to bring himself back down to the first floor with his arms full of tapes and Brian catches the cadence of Jay’s voice and knows. Alex gave him the tapes. All of them—not all of them. Alex kept some, hid some, held onto some, but which ones he doesn’t know, because he doesn’t know why he knows that that wasn’t all of the tapes in the first place. The information is simply there in the center of his vision, something to focus on or ignore, if only it were his decision to see it. As Alex leaves the attic, Brian trails after him slowly, sliding the tape in his hand into his back pocket before descending as well, his feet silent on the floor. Alex moves down the hallway back towards the front of the house. Brian follows.

Third verse, identical to the first two:

Alex hands Jay the tapes and Jay shows him affection, and Brian bites his tongue to hold back his disgust. Alex’s posture has grown stiff and uncomfortable and as Jay leaves, Brian watches the whole of his body seem to tense and jerk, eyes narrowing as he watches Alex walk as if pulled on strings right to the camera.

He doesn’t have any interest in watching it happen, but Brian is an unwilling bystander as Alex throws one good punch to put Jay on the ground, and another series of strikes are enough to knock the poor little bird unconscious and bleeding on the ground. Alex’s chest is heaving, his body trembling, his glassy eyes shedding tears and Brian feels nothing. No pity. No sympathy. Just anger, anger boiling away in his bones as Alex picks Jay up and cradles him, cuddles him against him, and carries him towards the woods. He remains in his place by the vehicle as Alex’s jerky motions lead him towards the tree line and feels nothing. No disgust or grief but anger, fury, rage clawing at the inside of his chest and his mind and as he grinds his teeth he knows. Not everything, not yet, but more than he should, more than would be reasonable for him to know, but Alex is the center of this and Alex is the one who has to answer for this and the presence looming over the both of them drifts a little bit closer.

No sound around them as Alex lays Jay down at the tree line. No sound around them as Alex bows himself forward and sobs like a child and Brian feels nothing.

Nothing left over but anger.

Though he doesn’t want to, by the time Alex vanishes (there one moment and not the next), he knows he should investigate the body. It seems pointless and necessary in the same instant as his feet carry him towards the bloody mess that is left of Jay and Brian looks down at him with his head tilted slightly to one side and his brows furrowed, eyes narrowed. Getting rid of everyone left of the Marble Hornets cast, he thinks.

Sarah was the first. She was first because she had the most excuses to be alone with Alex, thanks to her shooting schedule and the nature of the character in the first place. The first one Alex killed and the only bloodless death, if the dripping warmth down the back of his neck is enough to tell him that. Brian can only guess as to why Alex would care enough about her to be gentle. The lie would be easy enough; a family emergency, because that would brush away why she was unreachable.

Seth was the second. Brutal and harsh because Alex did not like Seth, and likely never had liked Seth, but then, thinking back on what he’s seen, Brian wouldn’t be surprised in the first place if Alex hadn’t intended to kill either of them. The tears with Sarah and Jay were one giveaway, and Seth being put on the ground had seemed like nothing more than an impulse decision.

Tim must have been the third. Brian pauses a moment to look around, expecting to see the animal eyes in the dark. Nothing greets him but the light from the house, much more distant from where he stands over Jay’s corpse. Tim must have been the third, that week before Brian had been slated for death. The hospital where he’d been lured had been where Tim had hidden himself away—so Tim had survived, and been brought here, same as him. Right? (It doesn’t feel right, but his head hurts too much to focus.) Alex was a shit liar and Brian would never believe him over Tim, and so the game was up just as soon as he tried to spend any time with an excuse, therefore there wasn’t one.

Brian, after that. The fourth. Because he was the star of the show and had the most scenes in the film and his absence would be missed the most keenly. He scoffs, and kneels.

Jay was the last because Alex loved him. It’s a pitiful thought as he looks down at Jay now, his nose and face mostly broken, his head pressed into the grass and eyes shut, red blood and bruises decorating his face. Jay was the last because Alex loved him and that confirms some hunch in the back of Brian’s head that there was something else, some other influence—he thinks of the odd way Alex had been moving,  the jerky puppeteer movements, and he knows. He knows. He doesn’t like that he knows.

He reaches out for Jay’s face and

feels weak breath against his fingertips.

Jay is still alive.

The second figure in his bathroom, he realizes. The second figure in his house, the thing that wasn’t Tim and wasn’t the Something. A stranger in the woods looking for answers, following a trail laid by something and somebody and nobody at all, a fool sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong, somebody who needs his help and somebody who he can

who he can

DO SOMETHING DO SOMETHING DO SOMETHING DO SOMETHING

Tim collides with him just in the same instant as the pain in his head mounts and explodes all at once and Brian yelps as he’s thrown back and away from Jay, scrabbling against the grass and the body on top of him to throw his assailant off of him. It’s a fight to even try to detach himself from him, Tim’s claws sinking into his hoodie and the skin underneath—Brian throws a sharp punch against his jaw and Tim barks like a dog and lets go enough for Brian to shove him off and get to his feet. He stumbles back and struggles to breathe.

The pictures don’t line up with each other. The forest behind Tim as he crouches low to the ground, snarling and drooling, ready to lunge again, a feral animal struck with some unknown fury. Behind him, somewhere, Something in the tree line, something impossibly tall and thin and staring, staring, staring—

Another jolt of pain in his head and Brian just barely manages to avoid it as Tim lunges a second time, barreling past him and ramming right into the ground when his target is missed.

That’s it, he realizes. That thing. That’s the presence.

He turns his head to look at Tim again, to watch his companion twitch and jerk and tremble. There is fear there, still, those animal eyes wide and terrified despite the fact his posture is anything but. The static in Brian’s ears picks up again and again until it’s all he can hear even despite the racing of his heart and the anger in his veins. Tim turns as if dragged by something that neither of them can see and snarls, slack-jawed, his maw dripping with saliva and what must be blood or ichor as claws dig into the dirt and grass.

His partner lunges for him a second time, pushed or yanked and Brian’s head collides painfully with a concrete floor as Tim’s greater weight knocks him to the ground, but he will not go down without a fight, and he drives his knee into Tim’s stomach in response. There is a splatter of blood from where his head had hit the floor when he manages to roll over and force himself to his feet once again, knowing that Tim is at the very least winded—

“You don’t want to do this!” Brian snarls, though speaking has only become painful. Situational awareness. A long empty hallway in the dark with windows open to the woods. He can still feel it, feel eyes on him, feel the presence and he knows, he knows, he KNOWS, even though he’s not supposed to and it feels like cracked glass on the inside of his head, shards and pieces of a broken window to match the environment around them—“Tim!”

The thing that was his partner whirls and picks itself up, lopsided, hands curled into fists and head jerking to one side, eyes wide and fearful and hissing, hissing at him as Brian steadies himself for another impact or else—

He attacks first this time, another sharp punch to the face. He feels Tim’s nose break under his fist and thinks he should apologize for it, but self defense leaves no time to do so. Tim yelps and stumbles back, but otherwise seems hardly bothered, going right back into that stance and a jolt of ice through him, a rush of pain, a sight of

falling

his fist in his face in his hair knuckles against his jawline

fire

fire

falling and fire

Brian has Tim by the collar of his shirt, gnashing teeth and wide eyes looking at him and his hand raised to strike again. Blood coats the front of Tim’s shirt from his broken nose but there isn’t any pain in his companion’s face, just fear, an intense and unadulterated agonized horror as claws dig at Brian’s clothing and Tim writhes in his grasp.

He lifts his hand to strike again

coughing

blood and tar and static

lights in the woods guidance and trap

Teeth dig into his wrist and break the skin, blood coating his hoodie sleeve as Brian wrenches his arm away from Tim’s mouth and kicks hard to get his assailant away from him. The pain is there and not there at the same time, enough to tell him that damage is done but not how severe, not what to do about it.

He knows a lot more than he should now, though.

Too close.

Tim spits a wet chunk of flesh and fabric to the ground and growls at him and Brian—

Well, responds.

“You don’t want to do this.” He says again, clutching at the wound in his wrist. He’s bleeding. He should feel dizzy. He should feel anything. Anything at all. Something besides seeing red. “It’s controlling you.”

Another spike of pain in his head to detract from the pain in his wrist and Tim is flinching away from him, shaking his head with the whole of his body—an attempt to refuse. An attempt to resist, he thinks, an attempt to do something against what he can hardly understand. And he knows—he doesn’t understand. Alex put him here and did this to him and he lost his mind in the dark and he can hardly be blamed for that. Right? (Right? That’s what happened. Alex did this.) Alex fed him to this thing like he was trying to do to Brian, this controller, this puppeteer—

(Operator?)

There is a noise like a roar from the animal that was his friend and Tim dives for him again and Brian just barely avoids it, ducking to the side and feeling claws ripping at his side in the same instant that he presses himself against the wall and

his house again. Tim collapsed into the carpet. Talons ripping carpet and papers to shreds and Brian can’t see straight, can only see red, the tape in his pocket is what he needs the tape in his pocket is the revelation and the curse all at once, the tape in his pocket is—is—

“Tim!” He snaps again, and this time when he lunges for him he is—ready. Because he knows the way he is going to try to attack him and knows how he should respond to it. Instead of striking Tim in the face (as would be the easiest way) he jerks himself to the side and hits him hard in the throat, listens to the animal yelp and collapse onto the wooden floor and dig long furrows into it.

Brian plants his boot on his back, between his shoulder blades, and struggles to breathe as Tim begins to cough hard into the floor beneath him.

do something do something you have to do something you have to do something YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING

He leans forward. Presses Tim into the ground more, trying to gather his thoughts and trying to process it—the information is coming all too quickly, bits and pieces of certainty and confusion wrapping themselves up in his thought process. He drops, his knee digging into Tim’s back instead of his foot, his breathing ragged. He tastes blood again and the urge to vomit is overwhelming, but he has to do something, or else—

Or else what?

Or else Alex kills somebody else.

Or else Jay dies here the way Sarah and Seth did.

Or else Tim commits an act he will never be able to live with.

He reaches down and wraps his hands around Tim’s throat and squeezes hard.

knuckles against his jawline claws digging at his fingers and blood down his hands a black eye on his face and and do something do something do something

soft voices and gentle hands become talons become sharp teeth become snarls and empty words and a sickness, it’s a sickness, it’s a sickness, Alex did this and it’s a sickness, cauterize the wound and clean away the blood and the infection festers beneath still and

dark.

too dark.

it’s too dark these days.

Time passes, he supposes. Or he drops off and wakes up again somewhere else or things change around him again because when Brian opens his eyes again he is staring at the ceiling of his living room, his head resting against a couch cushion and his head pulsing with the sort of headache that he would consider a result of a bad hangover. There is light on his torso from the blinds on the back door and his body feels painfully heavy as he tries to lift his head.

The power’s out. He leaves his fans on because it gets too hot in the house in he doesn’t and he can’t hear the dim sounds above him, but he can hear the neighbor’s kids outside, and a bird chirping in the trees out front, and knows that this doesn’t matter.

Brian eases himself slowly onto his hands and knees, looking down at himself. No blood and no ripped clothing. He hears something shift nearby to him and does not look, because he knows it’s Tim, asleep where he left him in the empty hallway. Time passes or things change around him again and the sunlight through the blinds is warm on cold skin and aching bones and he knows. He knows this isn’t going to last. He knows this doesn’t matter, in the long run of things, because the problem is there and is still going to be there unless somebody does something to fix it.

The urge to lay down and sleep is strong.

He stands on unsteady, weak legs, and looks towards the front door and the back door. Thresholds and doorways. This is temporary. This is temporary because of—

Tim moans, a soft and pitiful sound, with his face pressed into the ground.

Brian does not move to comfort him.

His head is pounding, but when he reaches back to feel for the blood on the back of his skull there is nothing. If there had been a wound there, it wasn’t any longer. A part of him is hopeful he might have imagined it. Had a rough night and had a nightmare. Like he’d find his phone or look at the clock or the calendar, have a missed text from Sarah or Tim would sit up and complain about how much they had to drink last night, or Alex (piece of shit) would call and check in about shooting for the day. Like nothing had changed. Like nothing at all had been any different.

Thresholds and doorways.

Brian looks down the hallway to the front door. That was where the long, empty street had been, the circles of light stretching on ad infinitum and serving as an illuminated pathway to god knows what. He could lay down and go back to sleep. Tim would wake up properly at some point and they could get something to eat, rest well and recover from this imaginative ordeal and pretend that nothing had changed at all. The darkness had something else to hide and had more that was worth knowing about, however, and that doesn’t change the fact that—

He knows what he saw. Knows that it happened. And knows that Alex hasn’t answered for it.

Thresholds and doorways.

Brian steps slowly over the body lying in the middle of the hallway, looking down at him with an empty expression. He feels nothing. Nothing at all. Tim looks more than a little bit pathetic, half curled into the wall and drooling, his eyes open but vacant and unseeing, in the space between awake and unconscious and Brian supposes he should be grateful that Alex’s attempt to kill him hadn’t worked. That at the very least, someone he cared about was still breathing.

He could lay down and go back to sleep. He could, if he wanted to. And maybe that would be alright. Maybe if he does, everything would fall back into place and he could sleep off this sickness and things would pass right on, the way snow never hit the ground in Rosswood, Alabama because it melted in the atmosphere. Lay down, close his eyes, go back to sleep.

Brian rests his hand on the doorknob of the front door, looking to the sunlit street through the clouded glass.

He could, if he wanted to.

He opens the door.

FROM: [email protected]
TO: [email protected]

Hi Brian,

I know this is kind of a roundabout way of trying to talk to you, but I don’t really have your phone number anymore I guess. Have you heard from Alex any time recently? He gave me his tapes from his project and just kind of disappeared off the face of the planet and I know you two were pretty good friends so I was wondering if you’d heard from him. I had a couple questions to ask him about what I found on the tapes, so… Get back to me, if you can?

Thanks!

Jay