Four Young People Waiting By the Road for Reasons

Billy Lug sniffs the air a few times and then points south-by-south-east. “My gut is telling me we need to go this way.” Billy is a big guy both tall and round. He has a big mouth and manages — without much effort — to sound pompous. His friends respect him a lot, though, and given enough time he tends to drift towards something like a leadership position in any social group. He just gets teased for it, all the same.

“You got enough of a gut that it must be quite loud!,” says the the only one taller than Billy. This is Jayson Pool. At nineteen and seven months, he’s the youngest of the group and looks like a bean stick with a particularly prominent nose. Despite seeming half starved, he can be shockingly strong. Jayson was abandoned by his folks once his powers started manifesting and learned to live largely on his own, mostly by sleeping nine hours a night — waking up early is part of the reason for his grumpy state — and by letting others do the hardest work. It triggers a bit of an anti-social streak. Despite the teasing, though, he is locked in on following Billy as the rest. He just isn’t as good as controlling what his mouth says.

“Jayson, stop being so rude! You know Billy has lost a ton of weight since showing up at the Farm!” This is Torey Toutsie. Short and wide but devilishly quick. The main thing to know about Torey is that he is always signing up for a good cause. One time he choose helping some other kids out as his cause and only later found out just how many laws they were breaking. He practically volunteered to spend time on the Farm to make up for his oversight.

“If this is Skinny Billy,” Jayson starts, ready to get Torey’s goat and toss Billy under the bus in the process, “I’d hate to…”

“Hush, you two,” commands an unfazed Billy, “Car is coming…”

And just like that, the two listen. Lanette Jemson, Billy’s girlfriend and the fourth of the quartet, is nodding. Part of the reason that her and Billy work as a couple is she is as flashy physically as he is mentally. This is why she takes lead on stepping out to flag the car down.

The car’s driver is Upton Reece. Aged 60. Currently upset. He’s not sure what upsets him, most, though. He’s on his way drive a forklift in Wales after taking some time off to visit his sister up in Montgomery. He should have left the night before but Celia’s girl Rashel had taken ill. He was going to take the whole week off to celebrate the Fourth with family but his boss offered double pay to work over Independence Day to meet quota and the money is too good to pass up working in a half-empty warehouse. He’s upset about cutting the trip short even if it was his call. He’s upset about the kids flagging him down before the sun is even properly up. And a part of him is especially upset to see a young black woman up to no good with a strangely mismatched group of white dudes.

Upton grew up in a segregated Florida when folks like him weren’t able to sit down in diners but always took the blame when something went wrong. Despite The GLOW’s weird effect on the demographic data of the region, he still feels a bit of ire whenever he sees a fellow black person get too chummy with folks who might have threatened to lynch them for ordering ice cream at the wrong counter.

All three things come crashing out of his mouth as he jumps out of his car with the phrase, “Damned fool, youngun…” That’s as far as he gets before one of those white boys, the short one, moves fast as the wind and punches Upton right in the face.

In the aftermath, Billy looks down at the older black man and feels a bit of regret. Does it really come to this? Carjacking someone just living their life without even at least trying to just talking, first? Still, the Tongue is a relic that could destroy The GLOW in the wrong hands and Billy feels it is going to be in the wrong hands very soon.

Torey is obviously just waking up to what he has done. “Oh shit, did I kill him?”

Jayson bends down and feels for a pulse. At least he imitates what he has seen on shows. The old man is breathing and Jayson nearly calls that good but feels his own psychic energies stirring and can feel more than just breath, he can feel the Soulburn shaping around the man. He’s just out of practice enough he can’t tell what that means. “I think he’s fine…” The brash cockiness is distilled.

Lanette giggles a bit, but it’s a deeply uncomfortable sounding giggle. Like Torey, her powers are being slow to come on board. There is a certain line of thinking in the psychic community that a more powerful psychic can essentially cast shadows in the matrix. If she had paid attention to her training, she’d realize just how much Billy is starting to dominate the four. And, even more than Billy, a person like Finley Estevan is practically like Jupiter sweeping through the asteroids.

Billy, whose psychic powers have been growing steadily since the removal of the Tongue, feels along the path ways to see the old man’s future and to confirm he has one. He gets a glimpse of the old man in a hotel room, tied up but listening. And other glimpses. A pale kid. A dark-haired man who is as dangerous as he is kind. Screaming. It’s hard to sort through the flashes starting overwhelm him just a tad.

“Put him in the trunk, we need to go.”

Traps within Traps

I come awake in a overly hot space that smells of red clay, old wood, stale tobacco, and fresh weed. Not in that order. Opening my eyes, slowly, I am first greeted by the view of my own bloody head. Directly in front of my chair is a chifferobe from the 1920s fronted by a mirror cracked down the center. Splitting me open. Despite this visual effect, the crack in my head is all too real. Damned cook could have gone a bit lighter on the hit. I most likely need a nurse of the non-psychic sort but currently I am just trying to suss out the situation.

Speaking of the cook, he’s over in a corner of the room and is the source of the thick marijuana smoke. Apron has been replaced by a deep red robe that looks homemade and well used — and a perfect color to hide blood stains — and none of that is good. He’s looking right at me but gives no indication or reaction to me lifting my head up so I take that as an invitation to keep looking around.

To cook’s right is the big guy who came up to threaten me in the hotel room, standing nervously. Maria called him Cash. He’s looking to my right. Beside him is a woman of roughly the same age with bleach blonde hair and a sour disposition. She’s sitting on a couch that looks around half the age of the chifferobe. Dust particles float around her head and she glares in the exact same direction as Cash. Turning my head that way, I see Maria, leaning against a wall and looking at me. Unlike the others who seem hellbent on pretending I’m a ghost that is not haunting them, she gives me an almost sheepish grin. Gods, she is hot.

I give my arms a tug and am unsurprised to find they are tied down. The chair I’m in makes a very loud creaking noise as I move and I can feel flecks of peeling paint near my numb hands. Another piece of old furniture. The wrecked wallpaper and cracked wood panelling paints a picture of room left a long time to swelter in the Florida elements.

Glancing down at myself, I am a bit surprised to find my shirt and jacket gone. My Order Sigils are on full display to the world. Ah well, I was doing a terrible job of finding a cover story, anyhow.

Cash, showing a surprising knack of guessing my thoughts despite not actually turning away from watching Maria, chimes in with, “You didn’t tell us you were Order.” Only he pronounces that last word like Oi-dur. A strange inflection in his stark Southern drawl that suggests Cash is from somewhere else up north and playing local.

“Well,” I fish around with a tongue that feels a dry as a sponge left in the desert, “I…,” and can’t get much else out. Something between a cough and a groan is the only sound I can make. Fresh blood drips past my scalp and falls on my leg.

Cash actively ignores my distress. “See, Don, I told you we could trust Maria.” Like a dog owner showing off a trick.

The blonde laughs rudely and Cash looks nervous. Whoever she is, she has power over the man. Wife. Ex-wife. Boss. No clue.

The cook, “Don” either being a name or a mafia-esque title, takes one last puff off his joint and then stub it into the floor. “Cash, shut up. I told you I trusted Maria. So did this fool,” nodding towards me, “so do a better job than him with keeping your trousers on.”

Maria scoffs loudly and starts to protest before Don cuts her off and she listens.

“Tell Estevan we got the rat off his back. He owes us,” Don says.

“Fin knows. Already said he’d help. He’s not a liar.”

“The Codex should be here. In this house. I need Estevan to tell me who removed it and where.” I can hear the capitcal-C in the way he says Codex and that triggers alarm bells.

Don starts rolling another joint and the group stays quiet and gives him space. He is clearly in charge of the room with blonde likely second in command. Cash and Maria are somewhere down the ladder. I’m at the bottom.

Don: “And that makes me wonder, why are you here, Suit?” Meaning me. Fool. Rat. Suit. Trying to needle me or just confident, I don’t know. But Donny boy has made a mistake. Taking my gun makes sense but they also took the Tongue. This means my sigils are slowly powering up. I just need to buy time.

I make a cough sound a few times until Maria gets the hint and brings over a glass of water and pours it into my mouth. Gently enough but the coughing fit that results causes my head to ache. I owe Don one. When I get my voice back, I begin weaving a tale. “We had reports of a giant, talking alligator in the swamp. Three kids went missing and are suspected to be victims. I’ve had experience with kaiju duty, so I was a natural. Figured it would be child’s play but was hoping Estevan could help me locate the beast to speed up the assignment.”

Don, Cash, and the blonde actually look at loss for words. It’s clear nonsense but I have enough power back now to tap into that part of a person’s mind that wants to believe in stupid things like talking alligators.

“So, if you can just let me go, I can get back to it. These gators are no joke and I am trying to handle it before a panic breaks out. Negative Energy attracts bad spirits.”

I may have pushed it too far, because Cash pulls out a switch blade and asks if he can cut me. Don agrees. “Make it especially bloody.”

Too bad for Cash that he is just a man and I am a specialist trained in moving faster than the kind of monsters that abuse Soulburn to all sorts of strange effects. As the blade comes down to stab me in the chest I have kicked the chair up and angled my entire body so the slice hits the knot holding me down, instead. Cash blinks to try and catch up with his pot-dulled brain but I am just getting started. Pushing myself faster than human reaction speed, I grab the chair and toss it towards Don. Air resistance pushes back like I am tossing it through water and the chair starts to splinter as I am heading sideways towards Maria. I see her blink in slow motion as I hit the glass fast enough that it essentially melts at my touch. I make it a dozen feet into the air before gravity starts catching up with me but land cat-like and am moving across summer-bleached grass and away without looking back. I hit the tree line — a blend of pine and water oak — before I hear the first shout.

I glance back and see a late-nineteenth-century manor house that screams cotton picking and slaves and screams a need to be demolished. Maria has turned to look out the window on the upper floor where I was being kept but to her eyes it looks like I have simply vanished. It will be a few seconds before she even contemplates I have moved a couple of football fields of distance before she could turn around.

I have no gun. No shirt. No Tongue. Only the latter really bothers me but it also feels good to get it all back. It’s like cutting through trees and letting the weeds underneath get sunlight for the first time in years. It is almost too much power flowing over my sigils. I pat my pants pocket and my badge and wallet are also gone. That’s also bad. But a piece of paper has been put in my back pocket. It has the word “Tanya” at the top, a phone number across the middle, and the strange phrase “Hamburger Helper” across the bottom. I’ll have to figure this out. I’m guessing it’s Maria’s handwriting but it’s not like I was given any samples to judge by. Another trap? Maybe.

I tap the sigil near my ear and am thrilled to hear a familiar voice in my head screaming at me like Jiminy Cricket having a bad day. “Nurse, hush up a minute, it has all gone South…”

The Candlestick Quartet Make Good

Upton Reece woke hours ago to find himself tied up in a soft chair in a hotel room that smells of stale smoke, old socks, and years of motel-room sex. The sound of snores greeted him in the darkness and when he realized he was tied up, rather loosely, with motel towels he first took it as a sign he should escape. Only the big guy was there. The one with the black girl. And big guy said some things. Showed him things and for the exact reasons Upton should be trying to flee, he finds himself actually playing along. Even when the big guy untied him, Upton stayed.

Because the big guy — Billy — showed him images in the Soulburn of something old and terrible called the Forked Tongue. And some fool has stolen it. Maybe for good reasons but the whole balance is off. And Billy can feel something. Like a terrible speck of light. Something massive and tiny and dark and bright. Something walking right for them all and that something is going to kill a lot of people. Unless Billy can find the Tongue.

Upton knows he’s a fool for even entertaining any of this. He should have got out, called the cops, and had these stupid kids arrested. Only something in the way they talk, he knows that deep down they are the good guys. In a way that good guys aren’t supposed to exist, anymore.

Just about as soon as it was light, the four kids went out to get supplies — taking Upton’s money, he might add — and they left him behind. Maybe to give him yet another chance to leave. Or to stop them. Or because they are too damned stupid and too damned trusting. So Upton did the dumbest thing possible: He sat on the bed and waited for them to come back.

He’s watching Star Trek on the room’s TV when he hears voices out the door and the four of them come walking inside. The tall and surly one has been asking questions that Billy seems to have been answering for a good minute.

“I told you, Jay, I can’t tell you where the Tongue is. I just get a sense where it has been. Don’t you feel it? Like the air is…cut. Like something sliced right through the fabric of reality and we can feel the scars.”

The surly one, Jay, looks around and shrugs. The short one that looks like a underfed quarterback is nodding like he has any idea what Billy might mean. Upton heard Lanette — the young black woman is the only one besides Billy to introduce herself — call the sucker punching bastard “Tor.” Upton can think of several words that rhyme with “Tor” that he’d rather call the bastard.

As for him, he hasn’t the foggiest but he finds himself trusting Billy. Even if the four kids have showed up with hiking gear, food, and a pair of rifles. Where they got these things at 6am he does not know. Probably got Tor to hit someone else just trying to do his job.

“The slice goes that way,” Billy says, pointing off in the general direction of the swamp, “but it was here next door to us at one point. Torey, get inside room 109 and let’s do a reading.”

Tor/ey nods and heads off. Upton is curious if he is going to break down the door, pick the lock, or steal a key. But he does not ask. He simply trusts and nearly kicks himself for trusting.

“Are you doing ok, Mr. Reece?,” Lanette asks. Upton nods. She is only a bit older than his granddaughter. She might be part of why he is letting himself get caught up in it. She doesn’t seem to be a bad sort. Just misguided. And deeply in love with the big guy. Upton has a sneaking dread that he is helping her to her death. Maybe his own.

“I’m doing fine, Laney. You sure you know what you are doing?”

“Not in the slightest. But here’s to saving the world.”