Family Reunions

The young man holds a large thermos full of good black coffee and a small stack of disposable coffee cups. Aunt Gen had been insistent he get Rosary's Coffee but Darel had to explain, twice, that Rosary wasn't open when the crows were asleep. He had his husband, Timothy, make coffee, instead. Good coffee wasn't why Darel married him, but it is a perk.

No pun intended.

Taking a deep breath and fighting all the urges in the world to look back into the parking lot, he uses the thermos to knock on Room 107. He can see through the window the light is on and that's a good sign. If this is a goose chase of the wild variety, it is less likely he will be shot by some random stranger. Not zero, mind.

He hears a couple of voices and cottons immediately that one sounds just like the uncle he was sent to fetch. Once his dad, retired cop and forever-marine, had tracked the car as having been in the parking lot, Darel got called. Make nice with Sally at the front desk. Uncle Up was, well, up to something. Uncle Up to Something. Darel wishes he had come up with it sooner.

After around forty-five seconds, the door opens, latch on, and Uncle U2S is looking at, fighting back a smile. He and Darel did tend to get along.

"Darel! What are you doing here? It's late, son."

"I know, Uncle Upton. Dad and Aunt Gen sent me. I brought coffee. Can I come in?"

"You alone?"

"What do you think?"

"Parking lot?"

"Exactly."

"Ok, then, we'll make it quick. By the way, did you bring your car?"

"Bring my car, why..." Darel shushes as soon as he sees Torey. Only he doesn't know Torey. He just sees his uncle sharing a room with a nineteen-year old short and stocky white kid. One who looks really nervous. Darel resists the urge to try and figure out if the kid's clothes look like they were hastily put on or not.

When the people at the park said a young black woman had gotten out, reckoning her to be around twenty, the family didn't jump to that conclusion. Hell, they kept their minds shockingly blank. Upton failed to show for work, failed to call any family, and then a day later his car shows up and someone they don't know is driving it. Darel had kind of thought maybe his uncle was helping someone out. Or maybe sending a grand/daughter out to party so he could have some alone time with the grand/mother.

Now he hates the word "thruple" has just popped into his head. Especially since the combined ages of numbers two and three would still wear young on Upton's years.

"Unc?"

Upton Reece turns around and sees Torey and gets around half-way there.

"Nah, Dare. This is Torey, he's the asshole who punched me."

"Punched you?," Darel steps up and makes a barrier between his uncle and the kid, "Uncle Upton, you need help?"

"Yes, I need a car. We have to go pick someone up."

"You need to tell me what is...no, scratch that. You need to tell Aunt Gen what is happening. I need to get back home to Timothy and enjoy the rest of my Sunday."

"I don't have time to spend talking to Gen for hours. Folks might need my help and I need a way to get them. They are out at Green Heart."

"You know none of this is going to work on me."

Torey steps up and Darel actually raises his fist like he'd be in any good in a fight. He doesn't even handle playful slaps in the bedroom.

Then the kid starts telling him one hell of a story...

"You two aren't lying to me, are you?"

"Dare..."

"No, no, I get it. I'll go talk to my dad. Let him talk to Aunt Gen. Then we'll go get this friend of yours."

Cat and Mouse at the Bonfire

"You remember the plan?"

This is Maria to Billy. She has stepped out of the car and pulled an outer shirt off so is now wearing a lacy undershirt. Her tattoos on display, the curly hair, the nonchalant smoking. Billy feels the urge any young man would feel while looking at her. The only reason he doesn't feel guilty is because he knows if Lanette is here she'd be joining in on the staring.

"Find the tall nordic guy that looks like a ballet dance and give him the code word while you run distraction."

"And the code word is?"

"We lose ourselves in this song like a drowned rose."

"Good lad."

Jayson is looking at the crowd, barely visible through the thick fog, mostly just a series of drunken sounds, with a facial expression bordering on disgust. He is clearly regretting all of this.

"And they will give us something that you need?"

"Maybe. A lot of random factors are at play, here."

"If they don't?"

"Improvise. Remember, wait one minute after I walk forward. This party is clearly beyond the numbers of the Terranauts so there are a lot of folk here by word of mouth. No one should blink at a couple of others joining up out of nowhere."

With that, she undergoes a slight shift of stance and mood and to Billy it seems like the semi-serious woman he has just met has been replaced by a younger, more vapid party girl. She walks away and does a little wave behind her back and Billy really wishes she hadn't held her hand so close to her butt because now he is stuck staring for a moment. At least until the fog swallows her whole.

"Is she flirting?," Jayson asks, like Billy would no anything about such things.

"Let's go," Billy says and then walks around a few cars so they seem to enter from a different direction.

Billy does not look in Maria's direction. He does not have to. He can feel her talking to a guy. Leaning on him. The psychic threads coming off the guy are jagged. Bad. Violent. Otherwise Billy might feel bad for him.

"Fuck."

"What?"

"Jayson, there's a person near Maria watching the two we are looking for. Ignoring Maria. I'm going to need you to do a second distraction."

"I don't think I'm the man for this task, Billy."

"Improvise."

"Where is she?"

Billy points and Jayson sighs deeply. He really hates this. He runs in the rough direction Billy pointed and then starts arcing slightly away from the fire to pull attention away from Billy.

"Ouch, fuck! Fire ants! Ants...in...my...pants?"

Some of the drunk party-goers run up to help Jayson out, laughing and trying to get his pants off at the same time. He is miserable. It at least pulls most eyes off Billy and he hopes it is enough.

Billy sees the person he senses is the right one. He approaches the man. Next to him is a shorter woman (about the same height as Torey) with white-woman blonde dreads. They take their eyes off the sounds that Jayson and his crowd of supporters are making and stare at Billy approaching them. The man is tall enough to be even taller than Billy, which is pretty rare for him.

"We lose ourselves in song like a drowned rose."

"What in the hell is..."

"She sent you?"

The nordic man stops talking as soon as dreads starts and Billy gets the vibe that this is a pair of people who work on a level most couples do not reach.

"Yeah. She said you have..."

"What's this, now?"

Billy feels the hand clamp down on his shoulder and looks into the face of a fat, red-faced man that looks like the kind of person who will lie about why he was cut from the local football team for the rest of life.

"Henry...," Nordic starts, cautiously.

"Claus said you two might be up to something. HEY, CLAUS..."

Billy looks the man in his eyes and says, firmly, grasping the man's various twisting and weak threads, "You need to have a lie down."

The man called Henry blinks, and then starts to spread out in the dirt like he suddenly needs a nap. Only, across the bonfire, Billy hears a scream and knows that it is Maria. He starts to run towards her when...

...the bonfire suddenly explodes upwards into many times its expected size. The smell of burned flesh and the sound of more screams shows that folks are caught up in it. Billy reaches out to try and find the source and realizes...someone has set a bomb to go off. This is deliberate.

"Fucking Claus," Nordic shouts. Then grabs Billy by the same shoulder Henry had just pulled, and yanks back hard enough that Billy tumbles into Dreads. "Go, Erzse, get this one to what Maria needs. I'm going to try and stop Claus."

Claus. The name registers to Billy as the man near Maria. The one he can now feel holding Maria by her hair as others gather around him. His psychic face is twisting. Joyous in the suffering. Billy can feel the death spreading out as flames consume more people. Jayson is...

...is stumbling around in the smoke as the bonfire continues to burn bright. Alive, but suffering.

"JAYSON!"

The shouts are too loud. Jayson is too hurt. Billy has to go for him. Dreads is trying to pull Billy towards the woods but he is stronger.

"I have to get my friend. He'll die!"

Dreads sighs and shouts back, "These people are dangerous. We have to leave. Try real quick but we have to get away. Berg is..."

Billy notes she is crying.

Billy nods and dashes into the smoke as fast as he can run, which is much faster than he realizes. He zeroes in on Jayson and gets ahold of his friend and gently pulls the heavily burned man with him.

Erzse's tears only increase when she sees Jayson but she helps Billy direct him back into the woods away from the chaos.

Billy looks back one last time.

He can feel Nordic giving it his best but the small handful of people around Claus are doing better. Maria remains locked in a painful grasp as Berg falls down and others start stomping him. He can't get a clearer picture than that because there is too much pain. Billy's head starts to spin.

Suddenly has the image of a man as tall as a mountain and as thin and bright as a ray of sunlight stepping through the woods towards them. Laughing a laugh approximating the sound of children learning fear for the first time.

He chokes back the vomit that threatens to slow him down. Then Dreads, Jayson, and himself are into the dark fog as the screams echo through the woods.

The Crown of Bones

At the same time Lanette suddenly tenses and starts to sag into grief, the communication sigil near my ear pings. Nurse wants to talk. I reach out with my left hand to comfort her while activating it with my right.

"Demontongue, Johnny, you have to get out of there right now. Something bad is coming, very...," and Nurse is cut off with a squeak like old school electronics. Not that psychic connections should ever do that. Unless someone is fucking with me. With us.

"Lanette, what's wrong?"

She shakes her head at me and continues to cry. Quiet sobs turn into loud gasps for air. Even I, who tends to ignore all psychic warning signs, can pick up on it. Somewhere not very far from here, something bad was completed. Something was awoken.

"Can you get up? We might need to run."

She nods and starts to stand and right then and there I know it was too late. I hear the giggle behind me. Giggles. Plural. All around the wrecked structure of the building, a number of children are clinging to walls, sticking heads through cracks, climbing out of furniture. And behind them, though the hole in the ceiling, something large and made of bone is moving against the dark sky, shrouded in fog. Made of it? Or something much worse? Large enough it towers over the trees.

"Hey, mister," a little girl says. Half of one. Her other half would seem to be stuck in a rusted air vent. She has oozed through the slats in a way I cannot contemplate. Somehow still whole while broken down into pieces. Correction, ways I absolutely refuse to contemplate.

"Yeah?," I ask because I seriously have no idea what to do. I could run, but then I'd be leaving Lanette behind. I don't even know if it would work.

"He likes you. Says you are a funny little kitty. I like kitties. He wants to give you this."

Another kid, this one a starved young boy crawling out of the shadows to my left, is holding a crown. Only less a crown and more a small child's ribs twisted around each other into the shape roughly matching a diadem. With teeth where jewels might be.

The girl again: "You should take it, he says it will help."

I find myself reaching out to grab it but Lanette slaps down against my hand.

"It's ok, mister. Let me tell you a joke. It'll make it all better. He likes jokes."

And every time she says "he" I can hear the capital letters so tall they touch the edge of space.

"What did the cat say to the crow?"

"I don't know, what?," I ask. Only the little girl is gone and there's a black man in a nice shirt, holding a flashlight (not at me, bless him), staring at me like he waiting for an answer.

"What? I just said if I was as cute as you, I'd go without a shirt, too. Though now I'm closer you look beat up. You ok, man?"

"I? Think? So?" Each word a question I don't know the answer to.

I look over at Lanette and she seems just as out of it as I feel.

"You are Order. What are you doing out here?"

The "o-word" helps me to snap back into the present. "Official business. Trying to keep her safe."

"Well," the young man says, seeming unsure, "I think you mostly succeeded. My uncle has been very worried about her. Will you come with us? My Aunt Gen is pretty good with tending wounds."

I nod. As I do, I get the feeling that something is in my hair. Like walking into an old dusty building full of cobwebs. It is not pleasant. As I reach up to brush it off, I catch Lanette staring. At my head. Like she is trying to uncross her eyes and see what is there. What I should be feeling only nothing is there.

"Sorry, I just...," I start to say to her but my mind is elsewhere and I don't know what I was going to say.

She smiles broadly, her face snapping back to happy and the tears still on her cheeks forgotten. "It's ok, let's get rescued together, Secret Agent Man."