Pale: 9.11 - Avery

Shaking Hands – 9.11 | Pale
The compass, tied to the friendship bracelet, dangled, swaying uncertainly.  It was a pen, painted with a sword in white-out, painted over with red marker, which stood out against dark gray, and it couldn’t find its target.  Before, it had been at its worst when they’d been in the southeastern corner of Kennet, about a twenty minute walk from the furs.

Now it was acting up, still.  Not because they were close to it, but because it was close to them.  They’d been in contact with it and it was muddling the signal.

There was nothing that quite drove home the notion of being stuck in the middle of all of this like experiencing all the little side effects crashing together.  Being ‘bloody’ in a way that confused the signal.  Her spiritual antler having enough to it that the actual antler could float there.  Verona’s mask hadn’t stuck, apparently.  She wasn’t sure what that was about.

She wasn’t sure what Verona’s whole thing was about.  Except to go back to her earlier thinking about needing to find Snowdrops in the darkness.  Verona liked the dark, joked about it with Snowdrop.

She desperately wanted to talk about it with Lucy but there were other priorities.

The pen that pointed toward the bloodiest things was still swaying.

“Not working?” the voice was harsh.

Avery, standing on the rooftop, turned.

It was Ramjam, the goblin with a gaunt, skull-like head and spiraling ram’s horns that stuck out to either side.  He looked more like a little demon than anything, honestly, and only the child-size shorts and lone sock he wore made him appear more ‘goblin’.  He only came up to Avery’s hip when standing straight, and his head and horns were heavy enough he rarely stood straight.

“It’s working slowly,” she noted, a little nervous that he’d connect the dots.

“Is back that way,” Ramjam pointed.

“I know.  I’m just checking,” Avery said.  She glanced over the edge of the roof, tracking Lucy.  “We’re going to see if we can talk to Melissa.  Get her to back off.”

“It would be tempting, but no, I probably won’t.”

“The world needs more headbutts.”

“You may be right,” Avery said.  “Is that your thing?  When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail?”

“I’ve got hammers too, if you need.”

“Sure, alright, Ramjam.”

“If you need to break stuff, headbutt it or hammer it.  If you need to put stuff together, use nails.  And spit.  You’d be surprised at what you can get done.”

“Don’t get Snowdrop to headbutt any nails, okay?  I don’t want you guys peer pressuring her into that.”

Avery put her hands on her hips.

“For a minute.  Then it would be sad,” Ramjam said.

“For way longer than a minute,” Avery said, looking back Lucy’s way.

“Snowdrop’s great,” Ramjam said.

“You guys just take care of her, okay?  And we’ll try to stay cool and take care of you guys?”

“If she ever needs first aid, I’ve got ya.  Nails and spit.”

“Maybe uh, exhaust all other options before you go that route.”

Ramjam nodded and he was top-heavy enough he nearly faceplanted in the process.  He approached the lip of the roof and peered over the edge.

The downtown area was not extensive or very tall.  The tallest buildings were pretty much four or five stories at most, and a lot of those were government buildings.  The movie theater, Arena, and town hall were the largest buildings.  The town hall was visible from a lot of Kennet, with the way its little dome-topped clocktower added another twelve feet to the top.  There were clocks on all faces of the tower, illuminated a dull orange-red, surrounded by corroded copper roofing.  The same clock faces that had overlooked their first experience with the full Hungry Choir.

It was summer and it was warm out, and for that reason, traffic wasn’t very heavy.  It was late in the afternoon and the streetlights had come on prematurely, even though the sun hadn’t yet started to set.  All of Kennet seemed to run on the schedule of its peak time, in winter, when the tourists came in.  Christmas holidays for those who needed to get away, and March Break, especially.  Kennet sported the advantage of being just far enough away from Thunder Bay and other bigger cities that it could be an escape for the teens and twenty-somethings there, without being so far away it was impossible.

Not that Kennet did terrifically.  It was probably not in the top ten destinations even for people in the general area, though Avery was willing to admit she didn’t know and could be surprised.

She looked around, at the mountains, grass-covered, ski lifts motionless.  At the overcast sky, with its slices of blue, on its way to sunset in the next hour or so, and at Kennet itself, which felt like it had taken on a red tint suiting sunset, even though she could see that blue overhead.

A glimpse of sun reminded her of that bright spot of Ruins, of Verona.

She wanted to talk to Snowdrop and sound things off of her friend, to get that reassurance and that feedback which was grounded enough in the simple things that Avery could think about more complex stuff.  It was, she supposed, a good thing that she missed Snowdrop, since they were supposed to do the familiar ritual soon.

Or did they postpone that until Verona was better?  Or something?

She didn’t know.  She’d called her parents and told them what she could and they didn’t know either.

“What do you do to fix a broken heart?  Or a broken spirit, or a broken mind?”  She looked down at the horned goblin.

Ramjam looked at up at her.  “Nails and spit.  Or spit and nails.  Swapping spit for broken hearts, sometimes.  And there’s that thing, accupressure?  Accupuncupressure?  Puntupressure?”

Avery turned her head to look down at the street.  Lucy was talking to a woman.  Avery didn’t see a watch, but that didn’t rule out other possibilities.

“I should go catch up to Lucy, Ramjam.  Be safe while you’re helping track down the invader, okay?”

“Pressurepuncture?  Puncturepuncture?  There’s lots of punctures.  We can use nails for that,” he said, lost in his train of thought.  “I like nails now that you brought them up.  Thicker, meaner.  You don’t have to do it the wimpy way either, with only the very ends stuck in.  You can slam them in all the way.  Bam!  Feel better yet!?  Still thinking about that girlfriend of yours with the two tongues, Wormhole?  Want more puncturepressure!?  Are you over her yet!?  I’ll anklepuncture you to the wall if you want!”

She gave him a pat on the head, stepped out around him, and black roped her way down to the street, picking a doorway that nobody had a good view of, then stepping out onto the sidewalk, jogging over Lucy’s way.

The woman was wearing a t-shirt, tied in a knot at the bottom, set off to the side, exposing her belly, and she had shorts on.  She looked like one of the women who they’d seen near the motel while surveilling it for Brie, except in the ‘daytime’ clothes, and maybe a bit older.  Retired?  She was a weird mix of tired and agitated.  It made Avery think of talking to her parents after coming back from school.  Where she’d been ready to collapse into her bed and sleep off the two weeks of anxiety, but in the before and after of that conversation she’d been too amped up about coming out and overthinking every exchange that she hadn’t been able to sleep easy.

The woman was like that, brown hair tied back in a ponytail, t-shirt tied off to the side, nervous-tired.  Her clothes could have been the nicest clothes of the poorest end of downtown, or the ‘taking it easy’ clothes of the nicer end of downtown.  With that connection, Avery had a sense of who it was.  One of two people.

“Hey, Ave,” Lucy said.

The woman nodded her greeting, chewing her lip for a second, leaning back to glance around the corner.

“Meet Nettie,” Lucy said.

“You related to Ken?” Avery asked.

“He’s my dad, I guess,” Nettie said.  “I’m the offshoot.  We figured we’d scatter, cover more ground.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you.  I like the name Nettie,” Avery said.  “Now I’m wondering what the others are called.”

“Nettie’s a bit of an old woman name,” Lucy said.

“I was technically born in 1935,” Nettie said.  “Or Ken was.  Small company town, small company man, until we expanded into our niche.  Literally.”

She indicated the mountains and hills on either side of Kennet.

“Nettie was saying Melissa’s in one of the apartment buildings,” Lucy said.

“I was also commenting about gifts,” Nettie said.  She glanced over her shoulder.  “Asking Lucy for ideas for her.”

“Sure,” Avery said, frowning a bit, concerned.  “You okay?”

“A bit exposed.  Goblins are lurking to keep an eye on me, but it’s not perfect.”

“You should go, then.  Be safe,” Lucy said.

“Yeah, soon.  Avery, I’ve got your gifts here.  I had a few ideas, so I bundled them together.  They complement one another.  Sorry it’s not something you can get much use out of tonight.”

“That’s fine.  Thank you.”

Nettie pulled a page out of her back pocket, and handed it over.  It was folded into quarters and pinned shut with what looked like a chintzy little badge that might have been sold in a gas station, one of the government buildings, or a ski lodge.  Metal, with a skier set against a backdrop of a mountain, ‘Kennet’ along the bottom end, and inset plastic bits with color to fill in sections.

“There are two roads you can do down with city magic.  Or location shamanism, whatever you want to call it,” Nettie said, with the demeanor of someone who’d given a Christmas gift they weren’t sure would be liked, and was talking their way through the thought process. “You can focus on the location part, but for you I thought that would be too samey.  Or you can do the part where you deal with the spirits and locations.”

Avery undid the pin, checked it over, then looked at the paper.  Special ‘city’ additions for diagrams, drawing on city spirits, and an explanation of the little badge.

“The runes and constructions are for bigger rituals.  The stuff that takes time to draw.  If you do a ritual normally, the city or place you’re in pushes back a bit.  With this, you can make it the opposite.  Target a street or neighborhood, or have practice roll down the road like you just touched a match to a trail of gasoline.”

“Takes time and prep though,” Avery said.

“Sorry,” Nettie said.

“No, no, it’s okay.  This is good.  Works for me.”

“Good.  The pin will help you with the prep.  If you’re in a place for a while, it’ll change.  Tells you when you’re attuned to a place, when you can ask the city spirits things.  There are ones smaller and vaguer than me.  Neighborhood spirits, street spirits.  You’ll usually need to do things for them, even picking up litter or something, before they’ll do something for you.”

“Pick up litter, befriend spirit, have them… stand in a part of the diagram?” Avery asked, checking the paper.

“There’s more to it,” Nettie said.  “But…”

“There’s no time to get into that?” Lucy asked.

Nettie nodded, glanced around, then leaned in a bit.  “Nobody’s listening, so I can tell you Verona’s claimed her gift.  She called, another part of me answered.  I’m meant to forget after I’ve told you two.”

“Do you know what she picked?” Avery asked.

“I’m not supposed to say.”

“Do you know what she’s doing next?” Lucy asked.

Nettie shook her head.  “No.”

“Okay,” Avery said, checking with Lucy.

“Was she okay?” Lucy asked.

“Are any of us?” Nettie asked, back.

“Some are better than others.  It’s not black or white,” Lucy said.

Nettie nodded, frowned a bit, then said, “She seemed sad.”

“Should I pass anything on to Matthew and Edith, or the Faerie?”

“No,” Avery said, as Lucy said, “She’s having a rough time with her dad.”

Nettie brought her thumb to her mouth, and there was an audible click as she bit her thumbnail.  “I won’t raise the subject, maybe?  And if someone else brings it up, I can say that, about her dad.”

“I’ll do that then.  I should go, they’re calling the third time.  Pick your gift, Lucy.”

Nettie turned, touched the wall, and opened it.  It was very similar to how the Brownies had moved through the Blue Heron, like everything was a secret door.  On the far end was a street Lucy didn’t recognize, that felt very ‘Kennet’.

Avery startled a bit as a goblin jumped down from high above, landed hard, then followed Nettie through.  Bricks meshed back together and the wall closed up as if it had never been a door.

“I like her, kinda,” Lucy said.  “More than Ken.”

“She’s the downtown slice of Ken?”

“Something like that.  I think she’s got a drug and alcohol problem, but I still like her just fine.”

“This way, to Melissa?” Avery asked.  “I’m not changing the subject, but I figure we should go, right?”

They walked.  A man crossed the street ahead of them, walking their way, and Avery stepped out onto the road to give him a wider berth.  No watch, and he didn’t resemble the kid from the station.

Avery was still holding the pen compass, she realized.  She checked nobody was looking, then dangled it.

No noticeable difference.

The apartment complex that Melissa was supposedly in was at the head of downtown, not that far from the town hall.  Here, the old-style homes with quaint exteriors were mixed into things, with some of them bearing signage outside, for a vet’s office, for a dentist, for a tailor.  Many of the signs were nice, maybe all made by the same place.

“I bet you’ve run into more addicts and alcoholics than you realize,” Lucy said.

“People who’ve acted weird or funny that you ignored because you were a kid.”

“My mind keeps wandering away from stuff we’re supposed to be focusing on and over to parents and the sketchy situations that happen when we’re not aware of it.  I’m thinking back about the weird parents and family situations that came up in the past and if there’s anything I can relate to.  Figure this out.”

Avery thought back to the homeschooling families, and the stuff around the hockey and soccer teams.  She would’ve liked to pull on her baseball experience but she’d been young then and memories dissolved into a mess of defining moments and frustrations when she went that many years back.

They hurried over, pausing as a car tore down the road with tires squealing, then crossing the road.

“Homeschool and team stuff really brought out the nuts.  Or maybe the nuts are always there and they’re just more around?”

“Yeah.  At school, parents mostly only turned up if they were chaperones or doing events,” Lucy said.

“At homeschool, there was this mom, Mrs. Magnuson.  She praised her kids a lot, like it was really important to her, you know?”

“It drove us all crazy but she was the one who was on point with leading a lot of the events and arranging stuff for the homeschool network, I think.  She’d say her children were so smart, they got such good grades, they were so on top of chores, they volunteered, they went to three countries in Asia and picked up languages so fast.  But mostly it was them being smart, you know?“

“I already dislike her.”

“Then they came to our house for one event, because we had to take turns and it didn’t matter that we didn’t have a lot of room.  And David Magnuson, a little younger than Declan, went upstairs to our bathroom, and he somehow missed the toilet with number one and number two.”

“Like, little turds slid from the seat, down the side and settled on the floor beneath.  And missed like guys do, but more.  And then he left it like that, went downstairs, I sorta connected it was him and found my mom cleaning it up.  She didn’t say a word, but when I brought it up later, my brothers and sisters were joking about it, laughing.  Ha ha, kid’s that smart according to his mom and can’t use a toilet?  We must be geniuses, ha ha, that sort of thing.  And I laughed too but-”

“Yeah,” Lucy said, so quickly after the but it was almost an interruption.

Not that Avery had known how to follow up on it.

They approached the building, stopping just outside.  Lucy glanced at the plate on the outside, with uneven slips of paper behind a glass pane with buttons built into it, corrosion around the edges of the buttons where metal was exposed to elements.

Avery talked while Lucy looked over the list.  “I’ve seen angry parents and strict parents and even whiny parents but that never sat right with me,” Avery admitted, after a bit, “and when I think of Verona and her dad I think of that first, and I don’t know why.”

“Verona can use a toilet,” Lucy said, giving Avery a look.

“I know!  I know.  That’s not what I meant.  I meant, like, when I realized the chairs in the living room were stuck to the floor because they hadn’t been used and then went upstairs and got the vibe of their relationship from like, fifteen feet away, I felt like I did after seeing David on the stairs and then seeing my mom cleaning the mess in the bathroom.  And the way my mom didn’t say anything.”

Lucy nodded.  “Okay, that makes some sense.  Weirdly.”

“I’m not sure how this helps Verona though.”

“I don’t know what to say, or what to do.  I don’t have any reference, I don’t know what to compare to.  I called my mom, just so you know.”

“I called my parents too.  They’re going to call your mom.”

“I feel helpless.  And really, really worried that Verona’s making moves like talking to Ken or a subset of Ken without running it by us.”

“When things go really wrong my mind kind of shuts off,” Avery said.  “I’ve had thoughts before that it doesn’t work like that for Verona.  I don’t think she’s making dumb moves.”

“I think she can be very smart and have almost no common sense when she’s like this.”

“Loads of uncommon sense.”

“I don’t want her taking some property from Ken and doing a demesne ritual without us there, or anything.”

“Trust,” Avery said.  She looked at the list of names.

“I don’t know who to buzz for access,” Lucy said.

Susan & Dave Humphreys.  Emma Dortch.  Gina Lyons.  Steph + Howie Perry.  Fran, Daniel, & Brayden Black.  There were more names, but her eye stuck on Brayden’s.  It looked like the residents wrote on the slips, because some had handwritten it.  Brayden’s name was in barely illegible characters, like he was trying to do something stylized.

“Classmate,” Avery noted, tapping the nametag.

Lucy snorted.  “Hey, Brayden, do you mind letting us in?  We’re trying to track down a random classmate you’ve probably never said ten words to.”

Avery scanned the list.  Marge, Tam, & Kyleigh Miller.  She tapped that.  “Kyleigh knows Melissa.”

“Would she talk to her friends, the way they’re going?”

“It’s more likely, and we can ask her, at least.”  Avery hit the button.  Her heart pounded.

Scary Others, goblins, body snatchers, a heist of some ancient spirit judge’s furs?  That was one thing.  But buzzing a classmate she barely knew for weird reasons, then having to improvise an explanation?  Augh.

“Hello?” the voice was buzzy, coming through the call box.

“Hey, it’s Avery from class.  This is a weird question, but is Melissa there?”

“Melissa can go to hell.”

“Is that a yes?” Lucy asked.  “Was she there?”

“She was here.  Distracted and nervous.  When I tried to be a human being to her she got bitchy.”

“We’re worried about her, and what she’s doing,” Avery said.  “How long ago did she leave?”

“I dunno.  I was starting a TV show when she called, paused it, it’s partway over now.  Twenty minutes?  Take my word for it, Ave, you’re right to worry about her, but it’s not worth it.  Let her go.”

“Do you have the ratfink key?” Lucy asked

Avery shook her head.  “I have the centipede card.”

She glanced around, first with regular eyes, then with Sight, to make sure nobody could see them breaking in.

Turning off the Sight alerted her to something.  She looked back at the list of people to call, and checked the names with her Sight active.

Steph + Reagan + Howie Perry.  It was only visible with her Sight.  She tapped the name.

Lucy used her Sight.  “I don’t see it.  There’s staining on some of the buttons though.”

“Steph and Reagan Perry,” Avery said.  She hit the button.

There was a pause, then an answering voice, “Hello?  This is Steph.”

Lucy, Avery was thankful, did the answering, “Is there a girl named Melissa there?”

“There is,” Steph replied, before muffling the end of the phone.  It sounded like she was saying something to Melissa.

Lucy covered up the microphone.  “Break us in if they don’t let us in soon.”

Avery nodded, getting out the centipede card.

“I asked if she knew you and she says only if she gets answers.”

“Thanks, can you let us in, then?” Lucy asked.

The door buzzed, mechanism clicking.  There was the plexiglass door and then the regular front door, and they slipped through both, the plexiglass banging noisily behind them, the front door heavy.  The door shut with a thud behind them.

“Apartment sixteen,” Avery murmured.

The downstairs area was wide, with a high ceiling, and it was fairly open, with two apartments to the right before the staircase started, more ground-level apartments at the left.  The staircase had a wooden railing and much-abused carpet running down the center of it, with metal on the edge of each step for traction.  Old lights in old housings and yellow paint on the walls where there wasn’t dark wood for every doorframe, baseboard, and railing all made it feel very old.  The aroma of the place had that ‘old building’ feel too, mingled with the underlying scents that came up when different apartments flooded the building with aromatic cooking, smoke, or human smells and traces of them piled in together.  It was .01% of each smell that stuck around and evaded being wiped away with custodial staff or building managers doing their cleaning, accumulated over the decades.

No security cameras.  Avery took the black rope into her hand and ducked low and behind Lucy, emerging from the railing at the second floor, while Lucy climbed the stairs.  Air conditioning hummed in the background, but it wasn’t that cool.  Mostly taking the edge off, maybe.

She found sixteen, and was waiting for Lucy to catch up when the door opened.

Steph resembled Reagan, the one-eyed girl from the Hungry Choir ritual, but was obviously a fair bit older.  The hallway that led from her front door to her living room was long and narrow, in part because the apartment was long and narrow, and Melissa sat on the couch on the far end.

“I’m getting a lot of odd visitors today,” Steph said.  “Not that it’s unwelcome.  Do you-”

“Do you both want to come in?” the mother asked, frowning.  “I have to admit, I’m a free-range sort of mom, so I couldn’t tell you where my son is.”

“What about your daughter?  Reagan?” Lucy asked.

There was a moment, a terrifying moment, where Steph smiled, and it was like a light had come on and she’d remembered her own daughter’s name.  “Yes.”

They had to slip past her to leave her to close and lock the door.    The apartment was smaller than the ground floor of Avery’s house, with the bathroom right by the front door, then the sole bedroom, and then the kitchen, which had two big doors at either corner, and an open window that looked out on the combined living and dining room.

One bedroom.  Even with two or three people living here, Avery imagined it would feel as cramped as her house did.  Maybe even as chaotic.

They sat on the couch, with Melissa making an obviously aggrieved effort at scooting over to make room.

“What the heck is this?” Melissa hissed, as Steph stepped into the kitchen.

“I’ve got snacks,” Steph called out.  “I keep forgetting it’s just me.  I haven’t had a boyfriend for too long.  I keep buying for two.  Some of these I don’t even like, and my son doesn’t like either.  It’s dumb, isn’t it?  Impulse buying when paycheques are tight.”

“Are you buying it because you’ve got a daughter?” Melissa called out.

“Of course, yeah.  But she’s always traveling, hanging out with friends.  The senior year doesn’t matter much if you’re not going to university,” Steph said.  She leaned over the open window-counter area, holding up some snacks.  “Bonky Donks?  Cookies?  Whizzbangs?”

“No thank you,” Avery said.

“You’d be doing me a favor.  If you eat this, then my son and I won’t.”

“I’ll have a Bonky Donk,” Melissa said.

“Please.  Anything works.”

“Nothing for me, thank you,” Avery said, again.

Steph stepped away to rummage and sort things out.

“What is this?  Did you guys do this to her?”

“No,” Lucy said.  “How did you even find this place?”

“I’m a loser with no friends and a lot of free time over the summer.  My stuff got taken and I’m not sure if you guys had anything to do with it.  I thought about trying to call you and ask but it wasn’t worth it.  I went back to try to track down the other stuff I’d found.  Our missing classmate.  Talked to his mom.”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Avery said.

“What else am I supposed to do?”

“Not walk into this,” Lucy said.  “Go easy on her.”

“It’s like dementia but I feel like I’m the one losing it,” Melissa whispered.

Avery quickly glanced around the room with her Sight.

Pictures on the wall were arranged differently when she had her Sight active.  There were pictures of Reagan.  There were papers here and there, signs of life, even clothes strewn about.  Reagan had been a messy teenager.  Kind of like Sheridan, but strewn over the entire apartment, instead of just their room and a bit of the bathroom.

There were clothes stowed beside the couch, which could have been a fold-out.  The clothes disappeared when the Sight went off.  Reagan’s?  Was Howie sleeping in the same room as his mom?

When she turned off her Sight, there was a moment of static and flickering as things disappeared.  Like they were here, just… a partial step removed from it all.

Steph emerged from the kitchen, with a plate with a bonky donk on it, another plate of cookies, and a soda.  She set down a pair of empty glasses.  “I’ll go get the pitcher of water.”

“You don’t have to,” Lucy said.

“It’s hot and the air conditioning in the building is old.  Let me go get the pitcher.  I have to say, it’s nice having young company.  I wanted a daughter.”

“You have a daughter,” Melissa said.  She was tense, but that didn’t stop her from reaching for the Bonk Donk.  Priorities, Avery supposed.

“I couldn’t tell you when she’d be back.  She’s a good daughter, but I do miss the days when she was your age.  It’s refreshing,” Steph said.  She smiled, then went to get the water.

There was an aspect to her demeanor that was sort of geriatric, like some of Grumble’s friends, except the woman was forty-something, not eighty.

The sound of the tap hissed in the other room.  Ice rattled.

“Why does this feel off?” Melissa asked.

“I’m still confused on how you got here,” Lucy said.

“I went to the house, because that felt wrong and I asked Mrs. Necaise how she was, and she invited me in, like this.  She was weirdly welcoming.”

“Filling a void,” Lucy said, quiet.

“People went missing.  Even from memories.  But she’s still a mom,” Avery said.

“Keep explaining and maybe we dish out more details,” Lucy said.  “We have to be careful, and you need to tell us as much as you can-”

“So you can raid my room and steal my stuff?  Delete more stuff off my phone and home computer?”

“How did you get here?” Avery asked.

Steph re-emerged, carrying the pitcher with two hands.  “Can I pour?”

“Thank you,” Lucy said.  “Appreciated.”

“I was telling them that I did some detective work.  Mrs. Necaise had a storage room with a spare bed and it was filled with junk piled into boxes.  Teenage stuff, but she never had a kid, she said.  She said it must have been from when a family member stayed with her, she said I could take any of it.  But it was all skinny guy stuff.”

“I… see?” Steph asked.

“I tried getting into this before and you forgot it all, so I’m betting I can say whatever and it won’t matter?” Melissa asked.  She sounded annoyed.

“Go easy,” Avery said.

“I found a notebook and there was a bunch of stuff, pretty incoherent, about an urban legend, and from there I found a website and on the website it said more teenagers had gone missing and they were supposed to be from here.  And that something big had happened in the center of town?”

“I heard about the three missing boys,” Steph said.  “I like to think of myself as a pretty tough woman, but I sobbed, thinking of their parents and what they must be going through.”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “I’m gonna break it to you, Steph, but you might be a good person.”

“Thank you for saying so, but I’m a nobody.  I dropped out of high school, got a crap job and now, twenty years later, I’ve still got a crap job.  I serve meals with a smile and try to make nice small talk, scrape by on tips, and I hope I can get my child-” Steph glanced toward the television, and the game console below.  “-motivated enough that he achieves something better.  Go to school, you three.  Get good grades.”

“Where is Howie right now?” Avery asked.

“Howie?  He’s out.  It’s a good thing.  He’s been strangely morose for the past while.”

“And your daughter?” Melissa asked, like she was losing her cool.

“She’s- she’s out.  She only stops in when she isn’t out with her friends.  Which is the way it should be, isn’t it?”

“Is she with Howie?” Lucy asked.

“She’s- they’re together,”  Steph said, looking momentarily agitated.  “What’s wrong?”

Lucy shook her head.  “I think Avery and I might go and try to catch up with her.  You should come, Melissa.”

“It’s better than staying here and bothering Steph.”

“I’m not bothering anyone.”

“Come on,” Avery said, quiet.  She gave Melissa a pointed look.

“What’s going on?” Steph asked.  She rose to her feet.

“It’s fine,” Avery said.  “Your daughter was really cool to us when things got really hairy, and I’m really grateful for that.  You raised a good daughter.”

“Why even tell her if she’s going to forget?” Melissa asked.

“Because it’s important,” Avery said.  Maybe if I say it again, “Reagan was cool.”

“Helped us make sense of a lot of bad crap,” Lucy said.

“You guys are being really vague,” Melissa said.

“Quit it,” Avery hissed.  “We’ll talk after.”

“I’m not sure I love all the secrecy,” Steph said, still standing.  “How exactly did you know my child?”

They could remind her of her daughter’s name, but that barely stuck.  Then it was just ‘my daughter’ or a vague ‘she’, stuttering, which became a vague ‘my child’ and then her son was an only child.

Like trying to pour water into a pot with a hole in the bottom.  Which was maybe for the best, but…

“Reagan helped us out.  Saying more would break confidences,” Lucy said.  She glanced at Avery, then over her shoulder, and nudged Avery’s arm.

“We should go,” Avery said.

“You can stay if you want, Melissa, we don’t really have the time to drag you with us, but I’m going to be blunt, on a seriousness scale of clown to terminal cancer, I’d rate this a multiple stab wound,” Lucy said.

“What are you even talking about?” Melissa asked.

“How did you think this would end?” Avery asked.  “How many times do we have to warn you not to stick your nose into this stuff?  To back off, let it go?”

“It’s not a good warning if you don’t explain anything!” Melissa raised her voice.

“Please calm down,” Steph said.  “We’re all fine, we can talk this out…”

“Sorry for the hassle,” Lucy said.

“Your daughter was a big help, you did a bang-up job, as far as I can tell,” Avery said.

“Past tense?” Melissa asked, quiet.

Those words seemed to shake Steph.

“Go,” Avery told Lucy.

Lucy led the way, reached for Avery’s arm, and pulled her after, whispering, “Staining’s creeping in.  Badness.”

Avery nodded, a tight gesture, and looked back at Melissa, who wasn’t following, and Steph, who looked stressed out but had no outlet.  Avery crossed her fingers that she’d forget the stress when they left.  That Melissa would let her.

For right now they needed to get out of harm’s way.  Avery pulled out her phone and started texting.  If the staining was creeping in, they might need backup.

They reached the front door of the apartment, stepped out, and had a view over the railing of the stairwell and some of the lobby area.

They were down there.  The composite, with a nine year old boy holding his hand.  The Composite Kid’s blond hair was messy, sunglasses were pushed up to the hairline, and one of the two eyes was only a cataract white, scarred over.  Androgynous, wearing a hoodie despite the heat, gender neutral clothes, middle-teens in age.  The tattoo on one arm stood out.  A brawny gorilla on a skinny arm.

Avery sent the message.  At least one of them’s here.

Howie had dark hair, a t-shirt in four colors with an image on each quarter, and a backpack with the end of a toy sticking out.

The Composite Kid pulled Howie closer to him, looking up at them.  The two of them stood at the raiilng, looking down.

“Saw you at the police station,” the Composite Kid said, looking up.

“Police station?” Howie asked, looking up.

Melissa seemed to sense something was up and stomp-limped her way down the hall.

“Are you the guy in charge?” Avery asked.  “Are you a guy?  Or do you prefer-”

“I’m a guy and no, I’m not in charge.  Not really.  But you know, I inherited a heck of a knack for strategizing, giving my all.  An edge of desperation,” he said.  “That’s my contribution.”

“The people who contributed to you, they all got taken,” Lucy said.  “They lost.”

“You calling me a loser?”

“No,” Avery said.  “Listen, can you let Howie go to his mom?  Can we talk?”

“I don’t know.  Can we?  You’re a pretty scary bunch.”

“Hi, Melissa,” the Composite Kid said.  “Did you talk to one of my moms?”

“One of?” Howie asked.

“Shhhh,” the Composite Kid shushed him.  “It doesn’t matter.  You’ll forget most of it.  Melissa here talked to Mrs. Necaise and stirred up a whole lot.  Then, while I’m figuring out what happened and who’s digging into it, spending time with one of my siblings, I start feeling like something’s wrong.  A bit of a tug, a bit of a jarring feeling.  Didn’t really know that was a thing I could feel.  Not until you started talking to Steph, I guess.”

He advanced up the steps, keeping a tight hold on Howie.  It wouldn’t take much for him to throw Howie down the stairs, and there was a vague menace to how he held himself that suggested he could or even would.

“What the heck?” Melissa asked.

Down the length of the hallway, pictures were taking on that static and changing.  Vibrating like the moon had vibrated in the sky.

Reagan’s things were appearing in the apartment.

“We don’t have to be enemies,” Avery said.  “We might even be on the same side as you, if you’re upset about the circumstances in which you came to exist.”

“What?” Melissa asked.  She kept looking back at the stuff that was coming into existence.  “What circumstances?”

“Hey, Mel,” Lucy said.  “Remember what I said about this being a multiple stabbing on my seriousness spectrum?  Be quiet.”

Melissa, to her credit, shut up.

“Hey, Howie, go to mom?” the Composite Kid suggested.  He ducked his head down and looked down the stairs.

Avery and Lucy backed off, moving down the hall, giving Howie a clear route.

“You should go too, Melissa,” Lucy said.  “Go to Steph and Howie, keep them back and out of the way.”

“Was he the one who made them all disappear?  Collins, Reagan, and the Necaise kid from our class?”

“I’m not going,” Melissa said, stubborn.

“I didn’t make them disappear,” the Composite Kid called out.  “I’m the Frankenstein’s monster that got put together from the scraps that were left behind.  A bit of the backfill that’s smoothing over the holes they left, so the universe can heal and move on.  I was a confused jumble of a bunch of people’s memories, at first, and then I put myself together.  It was excruciating.  Tying knots in two ropes that are being pulled in opposite directions, over and over again.  I don’t think I’m very long for this world.  When the universe has smoothed it all out, I’ll be the bumpy bit that gets scraped away.  Probably.”

“Can we help?” Avery asked.

“Can you?” he asked.  He stopped at the top of the stairs, hands on two different sections of railing.  “You don’t sound certain.”

“Did McKay and Bridge sound certain?” Lucy asked.

“They had ideas.  Just gotta… dig a fresh hole.  One that fits me.  Howie’s too small, but if I can find another body…”

“Tall order,” Lucy said.  “Intact body that suits you, that’s just there for the taking, unoccupied.”

The Composite Kid nodded.  “It’s doable.  If you can’t afford dinner, one option is to go out with a fishing rod and a hook, or a hunting rifle.  Forage, fish, hunt.  It helps if you’re a bit unethical.”

“Would you come with us?” Avery asked.  “We can talk to others, people who’ve figured out a similar circumstance.  People who are intimately acquainted with the Choir.  You don’t have to be unethical.”

“In their notes, in my memories, it’s the Devouring Song.”

“That’s the urban legend, yeah,” Avery said.  “The people in the know call it the Hungry Choir.”

“McKay and Bridge have a solid game plan.  Pick a body I want, drive out the occupant, then slip inside.  Depending on the fit, I should be able to hang out for a few decades.”

“What does it even mean, to drive out the occupant?” Lucy asked.

“Hurt them, mentally, physically, until there’s no Self?” the Composite Kid asked, shrugging as he asked it.  He met Avery’s eyes and then looked away.

“I don’t think Reagan or Gabe were that evil,” Avery told him.  “I don’t know about Collins, the tattooed guy.  But I don’t think he was like that either.”

The Composite Kid hesitated, licking his lips, doubt crossing his features.

“Sometimes the right path isn’t the easy one,” Lucy said.  “Come with us.”

“That’s not even the right path, it’s a non-path.  Do what Bridge and McKay suggested, or… hurl myself at your mercy, for a maybe.”

“If Reagan was as cool as I think she was, and if Gabe had any decency, then I think any fit you found that involved hurting people that much, stealing their lives… it wouldn’t be a good fit.  It wouldn’t last,” Avery said.  “Your Self would fall apart.”

“Maybe I’ll change.  Maybe the parts that can’t deal with that will wear down to nubs.”

“I think that sounds like a huge maybe,” Lucy said.

“I don’t think you understand,” the Composite Kid said.  That aura of menace was falling away.  He swallowed hard.  “They were so desperate.  All of them.  It wasn’t just those three.  They bit, they clawed, they screamed, they hurt.  In their last moments they stood on the edge of oblivion.  More of them gave their all than gave up.  That’s the space I’m occupying.  Those are the Frankenstein pieces I’m made up of.  They were barely even human.  They were scared and savage.  They were torn to shreds and I’m the shreds that didn’t get eaten.”

“But they were human,” Avery said.  “Were you playing with Howie?”

“I thought it would be good cover.  I tried to enjoy myself, but it was hard.  Whether I only exist for another few weeks or I find a body to live in I don’t want to be on edge all the time.  So I tried.  I’ve been getting money, trying to find fun stuff to do.”

“I think the bad feelings would be way, way worse if you had to take lives every few decades to exist,” Avery said.

“Yeah, but isn’t that, at least, better than not existing at all?”

“You’d be making a lot of people not exist, if you went the way those other two are going.”

“I don’t think you realize what it means, for me to be made up of people who were like these guys were right at the end.  Doing anything to keep going.  Even eating vomit, clawing at a friend’s arm, begging…”

“We’re trying to find the people who set that ritual into motion.  I think you could do a lot of good if you helped us.”

He shook his head slightly.

He drew into himself a bit.  It felt like he was at that edge he’d talked about, and something senseless could follow.  Avery had no idea if he’d do like she did and freeze, or if he’d lash out, or if he’d get cunning.

She thought of Verona, on the edge in her own way.

She wished she understood more about why.  Maybe if she’d figured it out, she could relate here.

“Composite Kid,” Avery said.  He gave her a funny look.  “Gabe.  Collins.  Reagan.  You’re not just those moments at the end, you know.  I think they left a deep impression, but there’s so much more.  If there wasn’t… then you wouldn’t be linked to-”

She pushed past Melissa, who was hanging back.  Into the apartment, where Howie was with Steph, who looked guarded.

She reached for a photo on the wall.  One that was still fuzzy.  She pulled it free, then returned to the hallway.

She held it out.  A picture of Reagan with a guitar, tongue sticking out of one side of her mouth.

“-to this,” Avery told him.  “You wouldn’t make this reappear.  If you were just that ugliness and desperation and violence then you’d be making that happen, instead.  It’s fine to be scared and to not be okay.  But it’s not all of you.”

He swayed on the spot, and then he approached.

He took the picture, and it fuzzed a bit.  His outline fuzzed a bit.

“They had other qualities, like teamwork,” Lucy said.

“Yeah,” the Composite Kid said.  “I think you guys should run.”

“No.  I called the cops and signaled Bridge.  They’re sending officers.  Bridge will be one of them.  And the Bathos is already outside, waiting.”

“Bathos?” Lucy asked.

At the end of the stretch of flooring that overlooked the stairwell and part of the lobby and provided access to the apartments on the northern side of the building was a window.  Avery hurried there, followed by Lucy.  Melissa crowded in behind them, looking.

It was such a problem that Melissa was here, hearing all of this, but getting the Composite Kid to cooperate was so much more important.

There was a car out there, on the opposite side of the street.  It was black, sleek, and had a minimum of trim.

Was that the car that had sped by them earlier?  Had it spotted them somehow?

Or tracked them by the traces of the Carmine Blood?

“It’s a shapeshifter?” Lucy asked.

“An Abyss Beast.  A bottom feeder in primordial chaos.  Yes, it’s a shapeshifter, and it’s worse things.”

Avery checked her phone.  There were replies from Matthew.

The compasses were still pointing to the top floor of one of the buildings downtown.  They’d surrounded it.

“Are there more than one?” Avery asked.  “Some of the others we were with at the police station tracked it somewhere else.”

The Composite Kid shook his head.

“Then why are our tools telling our friends that it’s somewhere else?”

“I think that would be the nest.  And the creature’s spawn.  Young, babies.  We- the idea we were debating was… we’d spread enough raw chaos that the universe wouldn’t be doing any paving over for me.  McKay would have more people with their lives in shambles to steal from, and Bridge would maybe be able to pull more Self together.  If anything can survive the Abyss and its chaos then it tends to get bigger, tougher and stronger.  Bridge wants that.  We’d bring in help… and turn this place into a hub.  A home base to come and go from.  Already kind of protected against intrusion.”

“What?” Melissa asked.

“I think we’re upgrading from my multiple stabbings rating to terminal cancer,” Lucy said.  She turned to the Composite Kid.  “That’s a terrible idea, you know, and I don’t know much about the Abyss.”

“We were debating it.  I guess she had her spawn in the meantime,” the Composite Kid said, looking nervous.

The police car came without a siren.  It didn’t pass in front of the building, but pulled into a driveway to the side.  Avery had only a glimpse of it.

If there were two cops inside, one of them headed around back.

The black car pulled out of its spot.

“It’s moving,” Lucy said.

It turned a corner, disappearing out of sight.

And a matter of a second or two later, a black dog started sprinting directly for the front door.  An officer waited for it.  Watch on his wrist.

“Go,” Avery said.  “Run.”

“It reshapes its environment, so don’t let it get close.  It’ll close off your escape routes,” the Composite Kid said.  “Want me to stay?  I can delay them.”

Avery hesitated, then shook her head.

They still needed friends.

“Come.  You’ll be safer, you can tell us more,” Avery said.  “Come, Melissa.”

Something hit the door outside.  It was the plexiglass one, and Avery remembered how it had rattled in the same way.  She looked back, looked forward-

Parts of the railing were broken, cracked, and wobbly.  Broken posts stabbed up like short spears, waiting for someone to fall on them.

And the door to Reagan’s apartment was gone, replaced with damaged wall with peeling paint.

It hit the front door, and the impact reverberated through the building.  Blood splashed like someone had been hit with an axe, streaking paint, which faded from its bright yellow, and more of the apartment doors were wiped from existence, extending two apartments ahead of them.

Verona would have studied a bit of this stuff.

They didn’t have Verona.

“Should I call John?”  Avery asked.

Lucy paused, then nodded.

“I’ll go ahead.  He’ll be right here, with any luck.”

Lucy nodded.  “Wishing you’d taken my advice, Melissa?”

Help was on its way.  They weren’t alone.

But trouble was on its way sooner.