Who: Lonely boy What: Reveals When: Early morning Warnings: Language
His bear.
He’d left the bear behind. Had to leave it, hidden there in the rotted leaves and the far-flung remnants of gore that had burst from the banshee’s eye sockets and sprayed all over the forest floor. It was his only shot to get away from the dead-thing, okay? So he turned tail and then he ran like a pathetic little coward. Away from the dead-thing and his hollow eyes. Grinning mouth dripping with blood, full belly and a hollow chest that heaved with the exertion of his kill, teeth and tongue and rolling eyes that looked down like the boy was something puny to be crushed under a thumb or a cigarette butt.
Don’t look? Yeah, right. As if that had ever worked on any little boy. And as he spun away from his nightmare and crashed through the trees with his heart pounding in his throat, he wished that he’d been stronger. Braver. Sometimes it’s braver to do what you’re told. The words filtered up from the back of his mind, years forgotten. His brother’s voice, whispered hoarsely in his ear as the boy crouched on the fire escape outside their apartment window. He’d cried then, begging to be let back in, insisting that he didn’t want to hide. He wanted to be brave and fight. But instead he had been made to choke down his terror and scramble down thirteen flights of rickety, iron stairs and wait in the darkness for the bad man to go away.
The little boy shuddered like he was freezing cold, though the night winds were warm and tepid sweat trickled down the back of his neck. It was a familiar, creeping sensation that sent the shivers down his spine. Like he was being watched in his hiding place at the edge of the woods. The beasties and the ghouls were all around him. They were in the air he breathed and hidden in the leaves. And even then it was strange, thinking about the forest at night and the dark things that lived there, like it was something that his brother would have laughed at over his brown glass bottles, calling him stupid. A pussy. A coward.
“I’m not a fucking coward!” He screamed the words at the canopy of trees and the big old house and the stars in the sky until his voice cracked and his mouth tasted like blood. He would prove his brother wrong by the end of the night, even if the monsters found him and gobbled him down bravery-first. So he turned to retrace his steps back to the bear, and it was in that moment that he felt the compulsion tugging at him from the inside. Even as his forehead was creased with a child’s determination, each careful step was somehow managing to take him further and further away from the woods.
He was falling, but it wasn’t into the arms of a dead-thing with fangs and claws and thirst. He fell through the hotel door and staggered out into the hallway, one hand still clutching at his side where the knife had bitten. And though no blood spilled from his fingers, he could swear that it still hurt. Fuck, but it fucking hurt. He held his ribs all the way downstairs and out to the sidewalk, where he managed to hail a cab and crumple into the back seat.
“Wells Fargo, Las Vegas Boulevard,” he muttered, sliding down against the leather and letting out a weary sigh. The trip was a blur of lights that he couldn’t help but imagine as the neon-striped trunks of trees, and each breath was a labor that sent shards of pain into his lungs. A crumpled fifty thrust at the driver was far beyond the fare, but all that mattered was getting through those doors and shoving his bankcard at the nearest teller. The vault that held the safety deposit boxes was through a door to his left. Number 1603.
And there it was, on the table before him. His hands shook with a violent uncertainty as he inserted the key and lifted the lid. Please.
A tuft of brown fur.
“Jesus Christ,” he breathed out, reaching up to wipe his mouth with the back of one hand. The bear. Whole and safe and just as he left it, threadbare as ever, clean of a wild woman's blood and brain matter. For a moment he fantasized about grabbing the stuffed teddy and lifting it to his nose to inhale, imagining that he might pick up on the lingering scents of Pall Malls – home. Mama. But his hands shook, and he couldn’t do it.
“Thanks,” he muttered to the teller who stood at a respectful distance outside the door, shoving the key deep into the back pocket of his jeans. He couldn’t push through the outer doors fast enough. Out. Get me out.
“Have a great day, Mister Morgan! See you again soon!” She called out to his retreating back. Seven doubted very much that he would be coming back in the foreseeable future. He needed a bottle of the finest cognac and he needed a pretty boy in his lap, and he needed to forget – however temporarily – that he was, in fact, alone.