A/N: Finally, an update! This one took a while. This is such an information heavy chapter, and for that I apologize, but I think it really puts the reader into Tim's shoes here, which is why I didn't divide and disperse into later chapters. A huge thanks to gallefreystands on tumblr, for going back and forth with me on this one. As she can confirm, this chapter ended up miles from the first draft I showed her, and it's for the better. Her input was invaluable!
I need some sleep, I need some sleep,
It can't go on like this.
I tried counting sheep
But there's one I always miss.
Everyone says I'm getting down too low,
Everyone says you just gotta let it go.
You just gotta let it go,
You just gotta let it go.
Time to put the old horse down.
I'm in too deep,
And the wheels keep spinning 'round.
Everyone says I'm getting' down too low,
Everyone says you just gotta let it go.
You just gotta let it go,
You just gotta let it go.
- I Need Some Sleep, Eels
An hour later they are settled into a hotel room near the north of the city as close to the highway as they can find. Bile rises in his throat as he walks into the room with two beds and places his bag onto the one nearest the door. It's an automatic action, an old habit he thought had died along with his previous companion, and it tastes like a bitter pill.
He considers offering to help Allison bring in her things, but she brushes off his half-hearted offer with a small "I can manage it" and a wave of a hand. She insists on getting their dinner delivered rather than his suggestion of rummaging through any of the local gas station offerings; says something about bad food jinxing their luck. They eat their probably gourmet po' boy sandwiches in near silence as Allie flips through the news channels with the closed captioning on, searching for news of the diner and Lafayette. They see nothing, and when Tim pulls Jay's laptop from his bag and begins searching, he finds nothing there as well. The absence of gossip especially from a town that small is notable.
"They're probably trying to keep it quiet," she theorizes, frowning. "Thinking that if they don't release information they might find the killer that way." Her head finds the crook of her arm. "His poor mother. She'll never know what happened."
Tim doesn't know what to say.
Don't think of the collateral damage, don't think of Jay's parents, of Alex's parents, of Brian's sister, of Seth, of Sarah, of Amy, of the countless people who lost loved ones who'll never know never get an answer who'll always be wondering what happened what went wrong where did they go why did they leave did we not love them enough did we not support them enough who took them who hurt them who's fault
Itsyourfaultitsyourfaultyoukilledthemyoukilledthemallsomanylivesruinedbecauseof you
Every labored breath is a heavy achievement. He hates it. Grappling for some semblance of control he drops his arms to his knees and leans forward, waiting for the attention of the woman across the room from him, fighting her own grief.
"Look, I know you're probably pretty tired," he starts once she finally makes eye contact, his voice hoarse with his own exhaustion, "but I need to know what you know. We need to be on the same page here. We need to have a plan, because we really didn't think this through too much did we? We just kind of… took off in a hurry."
The expression she gives him is strangely without fire. "You mean I didn't really think this through too much, don't you?"
"I know that it seems that I'm blaming you for all of this but I really –"
"No, it's okay, I get it – "
"No, really, Allison, I'm not – "
She closes her eyes, scrunches up her nose, and holds her hands out for him to stop. "Timothy, please."
He shuts his mouth.
"I get it, and I don't – I get it, okay? Let me just…" She draws a heavy breath, taking a moment to gather herself. "I've got some things to show you." She stands, crossing to the crate she'd retrieved from Luna's shop and returns to place it on the bed alongside the military duffle bag she'd packed before they left. She rummages inside the latter, retrieving the smaller dust-covered box Tim had noticed before. As she brushes it off she sends him a pointed look. "So, you already met my great-great- Grandmere Luna. I know she seems a bit young to have that many "greats" before her name, but remember that we're Cajun, she's like ninety, and that our family in particular have short life spans."
A twitch of his eyebrows tells her to go on. Opening the crate, she begins searching the insides, pulling out large dusty tomes alongside smaller more home-bound materials. "Luna's lived the longest out of anyone in my family. No one knows how she's done it, really, but we pretty much just go with 'She's a traiteur' as our best theory and leave it be. But the rest of us… Well, most of us are lucky to hit thirty."
"Why?" Tim knows the stereotype of inbred redneck Cajun country, knows the jokes about "cousin' lovin,'" the results that typically follow, and the myth of widespread risky behavior. He finds it unlikely that in this day and age that sort of thing is the norm, and that Allie's family in particular suffers from it.
"We're…sick," she tells him hesitantly, stroking the binding of one particular tome carefully.
"What does that mean?"
"It's like a code for us – a way to talk about it without actually saying the reality of the situation."
"Which is?"
"That…thing. The one that followed you, and Alex, and Jay? The thing that killed Lafayette? It's been following my family for generations. We've known about it for hundreds of years. Some of us have been trying to figure it out – what it is, how it works, why it does the things it does, how it does those things. We do that because it's been killing us for so long. It's like a disease, that's been slowly eating away at our family tree."
Tim reaches for the pills in his pocket, struggling to fathom such a thing. He's tempted to take two, but his subconscious warns him that he may have to start being careful of his supply again. Wishing he had a camera, he surreptitiously reaches over to Jay's laptop as Allison begins digging through the dusty box again, pulling out old musty drawings that remind him of the ones Alex used to make. Tim turns on the webcam. He needs to record this information. To keep it, not just for the sake of his own memory, but to have proof, hard evidence of what's being said.
"It's not consistent by any means," she continues. "I know the way I put it makes it sound like it's every single one of us, but it's not. Select members of select generations, but it goes back so far. It's so prevalent in our family that it would be idiotic to pretend it's not something important. So, we write down and keep what information we have. Try to stay alive as long as we can."
Allison reaches over the gap between beds to pass the papers over to him. Among the drawings are handwritten notes in differing penmanship. The words have faded with time; they're difficult to read.
"Not everyone studies it, though. My cousins don't. They ignore it and pretend that its just folklore passed down through the generations. A convenient ghost story to explain things with, to scare the kids, like Papa Legba."
"But you don't think that."
"No."
She hesitates, reaches over again, this time to hand a book over to him. On the inside, spanning across the blank space of both covers, a penciled-in family tree is drawn. Some of the names are circled, highlighted. He assumes these must be the "sick" ones Allison and Luna spoke of. At the bottom of the tree is Allison herself, as of yet unmarked, though the truth now is known to be different. Above her, her father is circled in dark rings. Beside him, her mother, the markings penciled in much more lightly.
"Your parents are…sick?" He confirms, glancing up at her. She nods. Tim returns his gaze to the book, his eyes sweeping through the myriad of names, dates, and symbols he doesn't recognize.
"What's the difference in the markings?" he asks.
"Hmm?"
He points. "Your dad, it looks like it isn't just pencil here, what is that – ink? But your mom, the circles are lighter… It's the same for some of the others. Is the difference in how the circles are drawn just different people using different writing utensils or does it mean something?"
Allie bites her lip. "It indicates severity." She begins fidgeting with her nails. "My Pa, he had it worse than my Ma did, you could argue. It…followed him around much longer. Since he was a kid." Tim looks up at this, startled.
"My mom though, she'd never seen it before she met him. She was already knocked up with me by the first time she saw it. I mean, they were pretty young, but still… " She trails off, her voice small.
"What happened?"
"Happened?"
"To your parents. I mean, are they okay? Where are they? Should you give them a call?" It sounds false to his ears, the pretend hope he tries on for size.
"I dunno. They're dead. I can't really ask if they're okay or not. They won't answer me."
"Sorry."
He needs something to do with his hands. He rises from the creaky bed, shoving a hand into his pocket to pull out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Sliding the window open he perches on the sill, glancing back at Allie who watches him closely.
"How… " he starts.
"The more that thing stuck around, the more sick she got. She wouldn't leave him, despite him trying to reason with her. He didn't want her and the baby to deal with it – wanted to run. But she got really sick, really fast, and her symptoms got worse than his, and then before they knew it I was born months early and she was just dead."
"She died in childbirth?" he asks before placing the roll of paper and chemicals between his lips. His heart feels strangely heavy, his throat oddly dry.
"Yeah." Her voice cracks with bitterness. "Turns out they didn't really need to worry too much about Tall, Dark, and Faceless after all." Her tone raises its pitch as a bitter smile takes over her features. "I ended up being the thing that killed her."
Tim cups his hands around the green lighter before sparking it to life and leaning down to set the tip of his cigarette ablaze. "I don't think that's the right way to look at the situation."
She gives him a look that makes him think that she couldn't give two shits about how he thinks she should look at it. "Don't." She runs a hand through her hair. As she moves Tim pretends that he can't see the tension in her shoulders, the hard clench of her jaw. "Just don't."
It's not exactly a white flag, but Tim pulls out another cigarette and holds it out to her. She hesitates. Tim gets the bad feeling that she didn't smoke habitually until he'd shown up. He supposes he shouldn't encourage her, but he doesn't have any other coping mechanisms to offer and if she's half as stressed as he is, she needs something about now.
He feels slightly better after she joins him by the window, leaning in so close he can just barely smell her cheap perfume as he lifts the lighter and sparks it once more. He sees orange. He takes a deep breath at the same moment she does, her chest rising along with the comingled smoke. He watches as she closes her eyes.
She takes a moment before continuing, plays with the cigarette between her fingers, examining it closely. Tim has an irrational moment when he thinks she's studying him based upon his cigarette brand of choice.
"After that Pa stuck around. Felt bad. Didn't want to run and leave me alone. He didn't want Luna raising me, and there was no one else around, so..." She looks around for an ashtray, doesn't find one. It's probably a non-smoking room. The paper cup that sits by the coffee maker – the one always wrapped impossibly in plastic – becomes the substitute. Tim gives her a nod of thanks as they both tip their ashes into it.
"That thing disappeared after a while, and he stayed until I was about fifteen or sixteen. So, that was pretty cool of him I guess."
"But then he left? Why?"
She shrugs. "Maybe he started seeing that thing again. Didn't want it around me. Maybe he kept seeing my mother when he looked at me. I guess I look like her."
"Do you know he's dead for sure? Maybe he's just… out there somewhere?"
She snorts, the action odd given the topic. "No, he's dead. A cop in Oregon called me when I was 18 to tell me he'd been murdered. Dismembered, like Lafayette. Welcome to adulthood, right?" The words are wry on her tongue. It's unsettling.
Tim frowns, baffled. "What's with that? I've never seen that thing do anything like that before. I've never seen it do anything really, other than just stand there." All of the physical damage that he's seen has only ever been caused by human hands. Sure, the pull of that monster may have been what drove them on, himself included, but beyond simply taking people, it's never been caught on camera even touching anyone.
"It's part of the cycle. It gets more desperate towards the end of it."
"It's cycle?" His voice sounds incredulous to even his own ears.
She drags a hand down her face, wincing. "This is so hard to explain."
"Try."
"I am trying, Timothy. It's just so complicated." She waves an agitated hand back to the materials spread across the bed. Her words come out in a rush. "There's so much information, and not all of it makes sense. It's like we have a thousand piece puzzle, but some of the pieces are warped and distorted, and they're missing parts of themselves and we have no idea what picture we're trying to end up with! I mean, yeah, we know a few things for sure, and we can guess on some of the rest of it, but there's still a lot that we don't know."
"And let me guess, memory loss runs in the family? So nobody can just tell somebody else what's going on. Early on-set Alzheimer's maybe?" Tim's sarcasm barely earns him a raised eyebrow.
"It's not even that! Remember, we write it all down, after all." She tosses her hands up. "It's just, every time we think we have something figured out, something else happens that ruins the current theory. It's like, we take a couple steps forward and run a marathon back."
It would be unfair to say that he doesn't know the feeling. He's spent his whole life going in circles looking for answers; Jay almost a half a decade. Even Alex, as much as it chagrins Tim to admit it, had spent more time than he'd like to consider trying to find answers, only to come to the wrong solutions.
oraretheywrong?
"Do you know Lovecraft?"
"What?" The question takes him by surprise.
"H.P. Lovecraft. He was a horror author from the 20s. Call of Cthulhu?"
Tim shakes his head.
"Of course not, that would have made this easy." She sighs. "Okay, so Lovecraft wrote a lot of short stories, and a bunch of them took place in like, the same universe, okay? So Call of Cthulhu is tied into The Dunwich Horror, which works with Dreams from the Witch House, and so on. You with me so far?"
He nods. "Sure."
"Part of that mythos included something called the Necronomicon. It was like this big, giant, book of evil. Aliens and cosmic horrors and all sorts of crazy stuff. It was basically lore and folk tales and information not fit for humans to understand."
"What does it have to do with –"
"I'm getting to that." She rolls her eyes at his impatience. "That's what all of this is – my family's version of the Necronomicon, only it's about Big, Bad, and Faceless rather than Cthulhu."
Tim takes a moment to really process just how many books the crate contains, wincing internally at how hilariously uninformed Jay, Alex, and himself had been if she's right. If he allows himself to dwell on it, he'll probably cry – there has to be at least fifteen hand-bound books all told, which doesn't include all of the loose papers floating around. If there's this much information from just one family on this thing, how much else is out there?
"So all of these are lore, like this Necronomicon, about that thing that's been following us around?" he asks, slightly hopelessly.
"Not necessarily. Some of them are diaries I think. Others are just random thoughts, and notes. I don't know if all of this will be useful – or any of it for that matter."
"You haven't read them all?"
"Lord, no!" She gives a small, bitter laugh. "Luna wouldn't let me. She eventually told me enough so that I knew the basics, but I think she was always afraid that I'd just go after it full time, rather than trying to do anything else with my life. Thinks I'd be out for revenge or some other bullshit, like I'd actually stand a chance against that thing on my own. I had to fight her tooth and nail for every scrap of information I have now. She may be the toughest person I know, but that thing still scares her."
He has to repress a sigh. This is getting so much larger than he had ever expected. He feels completely overwhelmed. "So you don't really know anything about it, do you? Nothing useful?"
Allie crosses her arms. "I didn't say that."
"Then what do you know?"
"That Lovecraft wasn't too far off?"
It's Tim's turn to put his hands in the air. "What does that mean?"
"The Cthulhu mythos is based around the idea of the Great Old Ones – cosmic entities that defy human understanding who once ruled the Earth, but are now sleeping, waiting for the right conditions to return, to awaken again, and pretty much take over and cause chaos and strife. Demons, if you will. Big, scary, fucking demons that will, quite literally, blow your mind."
"You have got to be kidding me." She's out of her mind, Tim concludes. Absolutely batshit crazy. Why is he still listening to her? Is she really going to start comparing their situation to something she read in a book once?
"So – and mind you I don't have all the details here – somehow, one of these demons is awakened before any of the others, and it comes in contact with humanity or something, and this cult forms around it. And some guy gets involved, only it goes totally wrong, because he ends up being a victim and becoming something he shouldn't. He becomes some kind of go between for the Old Ones and humans, and he gets warped and distorted and before you know it Tall and Faceless is one of these Big Fucking Demons, and he's, I dunno, pissed about the whole thing, and starts playing some game with humanity or something. And this doesn't sit well with the Old Ones, so they try to imprison him, because he's like ruining all of their plans."
Tim blows a puff of smoke out into the night. The orange glow of street lights look sinister, but so far haven't revealed any unnatural shadows. "You really have a gift for storytelling, do you know that?"
She gives Tim a withering glance.
"They try to put him in like, inter-dimensional jail. But this only pisses him off even more, so he tries to bust out every so often. Only it's not easy. He's weak. He tries to get stronger in cycles – a 'periodic testing of his hell-bound boundaries' if you will. The bindings of ancient gods that keep him in shackles. Towards the end of these cycles this thing gets more desperate and more violent."
"Hence the dismemberment."
"Exactly."
Tim thinks for a moment. "How long are these cycles? How does it get stronger? How strong does it need to be to…"
"To move fully back into our dimension for long periods of time, or even permanently?" She shrugs. "I don't know. Yet. That's what these are for. We've got researching to do. There has to be more in here, or at least something in here that helps us look elsewhere." She pauses. "I'm positive that the 'spooky ghost story' Alex told Jay in the woods ties into all of this somehow. I just…don't have that piece of the puzzle yet."
He pinches the bridge of his nose. "This is insane."
"It is," she agrees. "But I'm not saying that that's exactly what is going on or happened or whatever. I'm just saying it's a possibility – it's the theory my family has been working with for generations. So, take it with a grain of salt if you wish, or take it seriously. I choose to take it seriously."
Tim tips his ashes into the cup again. The cigarette is feeling very small in his hand. "I'm just having a hard time with the idea that I'm supposed to be believing this."
"Really? After everything you've seen? After everything you've been through? I don't know if you've noticed or not Timothy, but there's some weird shit in the world."
"Yeah? And how much of that is real and how much of that is some… " He waves his hand in the air generally. "…hallucination?"
"Are you referring to entry sixty-six?"
He can only give her a blank-stare.
"When you took Jay to the hospital and told him that you used to be a patient there? When you admitted that you had hallucinations as a child and had no idea if that thing was one of those hallucinations or not?" She stops to regard him for a moment, lifting her smoke to her lips, taking a drag, and pointing it in his general direction. "Don't doubt your memories, Tim. You lived through those things – you didn't imagine them. They happened. I'm sorry about that, really, but that's reality for you. You can't just pretend that it all came from your mind. I know that on some level that must feel like it might be easier to comprehend or explain, but that really does a disservice to all you've been through."
They are silent for a moment, the only noise the background hum of the television, which Tim had muted earlier, and the soft whirr of the fan in Jay's laptop, which still records their voices, if not their faces.
It's weird to have this stranger talk about his life to him. To tell him of his own memories. She's right – some days he wonders if all of the things he thinks he remembers happening actually did occur. Some days he's surprised he doesn't wake up inside the hospital again, surrounded by nurses with pitying faces and doctors with cold, impersonal hands.
Hejustwantswarmthandsoftnessandcaringandrealemotionrealconnectionnotfearnotangerjustgentlenessand—
"Did you grow up with hallucinations? With seizures?" Tim asks, trying to stop his wandering, racing thoughts.
"I did. Not nearly to the same extent you did, it seems, but it was enough to make my Pa worry. Add in my hearing troubles and the poor man went grey in his late twenties."
"But you didn't get sent to a hospital?"
"No." Her reply is careful, measured.
"Because he knew what was really going on?"
"Because he knew what was really going on." She gives him a sad smile. "If it's even the smallest consolation though, I did grow up with Luna and her friends around. People take traiteurs at their word around here. They had me convinced my hallucinations and seizures were all a part of some voodoo thing they were doing – a side effect. I ran around thinking that I could see visions and do magic tricks until I was ten. It wasn't until I told my Pa that I thought I had made friends with a really tall, really sharp dressed spirit that he got worried. I guess he tried to convince Luna that I needed to know everything, but she wouldn't hear it. They argued over it. Pa probably would have told me himself, but I guess he just couldn't bear the thought of having to explain it to me alone. I didn't know really anything about any of this until after he had left. I just thought everyone saw weird stuff too. "
Tim stubs out his cigarette, and Allie follows suit. "What's a traiteur?" he asks.
"It's what we call a spiritual healer in these parts. Lots of catholicism meets voodoo and hoodoo and folk superstition and modern medicine. They're pretty important community leaders, and most people think they're holy – kinda like priests. They cure a lot of colds and help make a lot of miracles happen. Pretty diverse job. "
He doesn't know what to ask next. He has a thousand questions swirling around in his mind, but the need for sleep is growing on him. He finds that his focus is wavering and that Allie is rubbing her eyes more often in an effort to keep her vision clear so that she can continue to understand him. He closes his own eyes and leans his head back against the side of the window. "I guess we have a lot of research to do," he ventures after a minute.
"I guess we do. Please, tell me it can wait until tomorrow though?"
He gives a small snort. "Yeah, it can wait for tomorrow."
It's odd, sharing a room with Allie. Despite how long he's been alone at this point, part of him still expects the other person in the room to follow Jay's comforting routine – check YouTube, check Twitter, scan through footage, edit footage, render, shower, upload, attempt sleep. Instead, their conversation finished, Allie disappears into the bathroom (as Tim surreptitiously ends the webcam's recording), changes into clothing more suitable for sleeping, seems to consider taking out her hearing aids and then decides against it, and crawls beneath the covers. There is no clicking of a mouse late into the night. There is no camera set up to record their slumber. There is only the gentle glow of the TV screen to keep them company.
He feels uncomfortable. He can't shake the feeling that this is all wrong, no matter how many times he rolls over. At one point, he rolls over onto his side facing into the room and chances a glance at his new companion. She lies on her back staring up into the ceiling, her face unreadable. Her hands clutch the blankets tightly.
"Are you okay?" He whispers sleepily into the dark.
She turns her head to face him, eyebrows high. Dark, he thinks dully, repeating his question, hoping that the bright infomercial lights up his face enough for her to see.
"I miss my dog." She mumbles after a moment, turning back to the ceiling and frowning.
Tim falls asleep not too long afterwards.
