Night comes, and Craig's mind had all but been made up. Despite what he had told Kenny, he still wanted to go to the town hall and get any possible clues from there. Which is why when he and Kenny parted earlier that day, he said he wasn't feeling well and for Kenny to skip coming over that night. And why he was now packing a small bag of gear and dressing in all black.
When it reaches close to midnight, Craig carefully sneaks out of his house, not wanting to explain where he was headed at such a late hour, or why he looked so suspicious either.
Craig makes his way through the empty night streets and arrives at the town hall. He walks along the outside of it and makes his way to a side window. Once he reaches it, he sets his bag down and opens it, pulling out a crowbar that he took from the garage. As he gets ready to open it with the bar, the sound of nearby bushes causes him to stop and panic a little. But when he sees that it's just a small raccoon passing by, he lets out a sigh.
"What are you doing?" a sudden deep voice asks from behind him.
Craig just about has a heart attack, before he quickly turns around and is met with a pair of bright blue glowing eyes.
"Uh, hey," Craig greets awkwardly.
"Didn't I say not to come here?" Kenny asks, his tone sounding hard.
"I know, but," Craig lets out a sigh, "look, the security here for the most part isn't too bad, because of the public affairs of the townsfolk coming in and out of this place. So I thought that as long as I'm careful and avoid the few cameras set up in there, I should be good. Besides, I brought a mask," he explains, "So no need to worry about being recognized."
He hopes it sounds convincing enough for Kenny to buy it, but by the way his gaze seems to harden, he guesses not.
"Craig, go home," Kenny tells him.
But Craig instead, pulls out a black mask and pulls it down over his head as an act of defiance to those words and pries the crowbar under the window.
"Craig—" Kenny is cut off by the sound of the window cracking open. And as Craig goes to push it up, he grabs his arm to stop him. "Go home," he repeats.
"If I go now, you may never get the possible answers hidden here because you're too afraid of the risk," Craig says and looks at him, "But I'm not afraid to take it, if it means helping you." Kenny's gaze softens and he slowly lets go of him, "You can wait here if you're worried about being spotted on camera," Craig says as he opens the window. "It should be okay for me though, even if I am seen, because my face will be hidden from it."
"I'm going with you," Kenny says.
"You don't need—"
"I'm going." Kenny states, "If I can't change your mind, then I'm coming with you."
Craig gives a small nod as he grabs his bag and puts the crowbar away.
"Then let's go," he says, before hopping through the opened window. "How did you know I was here anyways?" he asks quietly, as Kenny climbs in next to him.
"When you said you were sick so suddenly. I had a feeling," Kenny replies.
"Oh."
"That and your scent…"
"Huh?" Craig says confused.
"I said it was strong before, didn't I?"
"Well, yeah, but…" Craig trails off, unsure of how to even finish his response.
As they make their way down a long dark hall, they eventually come across a set of large wooden doors.
"Here," Craig says, shining his phone light on it, "I'm sure this is the room. At least from what I remember from an old school field trip anyways."
He carefully places a hand on the knob and turns it. Whether or not there was an alarm connected to the room, he was about to find out. As the door opens with a quiet creak, he holds his breath preparing for the worst, but when nothing happens he slowly lets it out.
"No alarm," he says under his breath, but quickly hides behind the door frame when spotting something. "Shit. There's a camera right there," he tells Kenny.
"Where?" Kenny asks.
"Right in the corner of the room, facing the door," Craig replies and points to the location it's in.
Kenny's quiet for a moment, before he looks at Craig's bag.
"Hand me your bag," he says.
Craig is confused, but does as he asks. Kenny then opens it once it's handed to him and takes out the crowbar.
"What are you going to do?" Craig asks.
Kenny doesn't reply and instead peers back into the room, his arm extends back and in one quick motion it moves forward and hurls the bar right at the camera. It shoots straight through it and lodges itself into the corner of the wall, completely destroying it.
"Well, that works I guess," Craig says, now opening the door more and entering the room. "It's a good thing there's no one patrolling, or night security, or anything, cause they would have probably heard that." he adds and looks around, "Alright, lets get searching and see what we can find."
The two make their way into the room and search. Craig's gaze falls onto a computer resting on an immaculate wooden desk. He walks towards it, around the desk, and turns it on.
"If anything is hidden, it's sure to be on here." the screen lights up and the first thing to appear is a password window. "Of course," Craig mutters.
He starts to think of what possible passwords it could be. He tries the simple ones, like 'password', and '1234', but neither work and he curses to himself trying to think of what it could possibly be.
"What could an official in charge of the town possibly have as a password?" Craig thinks aloud.
He glances around the darkly lit room again and his gaze travels over a bookshelf, photos and some awards hung up on the wall. There's a photo in the center of them all, of the mayor shaking someone's hand and wearing a sash with the word 'MAYOR' in big bold letters on it. He stares at it for a few more seconds before he looks back at the screen with a new thought. He then types in a new set of letters to spell out the word 'Mayor' in the bar. Some part of him thinks it's a dumb idea to type this, but when he presses enter and the password window disappears and is replaced by the computer's desktop home screen, he can't help but let out a small snort in amusement.
"Can't believe that worked," he says and Kenny walks over to him. "A bit of a narcissistic password, but whatever, I'm in." he quickly scans the desktop icons for anything, but finds that nothing seems suspicious on it. "Hmmm, nothing seems to stand out," he murmurs, "what if…" he clicks on a folder icon and scrolls through the window. A few clicks later and he finds something. "What's this?" he thinks aloud and clicks on a folder titled, 'Disclosed'. As soon as he does, a bunch of files and windows open. Most of which are old pictures of writing and photos. "What is all this?"
His eyes land on an old photo of some kind of circle drawn on the ground and people in cloaks. Then another photo of a man from behind, holding a staff. The next photo then shows the staff that the man had held in the previous one, now with a bunch of text next to it, like something from a book. As he continues to scan some more photos, one in particular catches his eye, one that he can't quite explain at all what he's seeing, as it looked as if there was some kind of weird white bright light of a tear ripping through the actual fabric of the space around it and removing it completely, but Kenny pulls his attention away from it, when he points to one of the other photos on the screen.
"That photo…" he says and Craig clicks on the partially hidden photo. When he does, it reveals the image of a group of people tied to posts in a big circle, with a symbol on the floor and the word 'Thieves' written under it. "That man…" Kenny continues, "he was my father."
"What?" Craig's eyes widen as he examines it.
The old photo made it hard to make out the features, but he looked human to Craig.
"This must have been taken right before the ritual happened," Kenny says, almost as if reading Craig's thoughts, "But I can tell that's him."
As Craig continues through the disturbing photos, he comes across one, where the people tied to the posts were all now vastly different in appearance. Their features seeming to be much more grotesque than before.
"Jesus…" Craig utters.
The man that Kenny had pointed to before, saying it was his father, now had an elongated arm, pointed ears, sharp teeth and the flesh on his face looked torn. He definitely had features similar to Kenny's, but seeming much worse than his in some aspects.
"Did his eyes glow too?" Craig asks.
"Yes, but they were yellow. Caused by the transformation. All of the turned ones were, so they were easily spotted in a crowd if disguised," Kenny explains.
Craig starts to wonder if that's so, then why weren't Kenny or Kevin's eyes like that as well? He clicks on another image of the staff, this time now in a case somewhere.
"Where is this?" Craig asks, the area around the case was dark, and couldn't be made out exactly what environment or place it was in.
Just as Craig is about to click the next window, red and blue lights flash into the room. Craig quickly looks behind himself through the curtain window and swears.
"Fuck the police, but why—" Craig lets out an aggravated sigh, "must have been a silent alarm."
He starts to close the windows as fast as he can then, and Kenny stands behind one of the curtains as he watches a figure make its way to the building. As Craig shuts down everything and glances around the room one more time, to make sure they got everything, he spots the crowbar still lodged into the corner of the wall in the broken camera.
"Fuck, I forgot about that," he groans.
"I'll get it," Kenny says and goes over to it.
Craig wonders just how in the hell he's going to get it, until Kenny jumps up to it, grabs it, places two feet on the wall and pulls it out. He pushes back off the wall so that he does a backflip, lands and hands the bar over to Craig. The sound of a door opening in the distance is heard a few seconds later. And just as Craig puts the bar away, the broken camera falls to the floor with a loud crash.
"Who's there?!" the voice of the officer shouts.
It causes panic in Craig and his thoughts start to rush on what to do, so that they won't get caught.
"Get on my back," Kenny says, crouching down in front of him.
"What? Why—" Craig is cut off by the sound of footsteps now echoing down the hall.
"Craig," Kenny urges.
Craig does as Kenny asks and quickly hops on his back, wrapping his arms and legs around him. Kenny supports him up and peers around the doorway. It's still dark in the hall and Craig wonders what he's planning. Suddenly, everything is whooshing by him in a blur as Kenny rushes down the hall. Just as they near the still remaining opened window, a light shines on them from behind.
"Hey!" the officer shouts.
"Put your head down," Kenny instructs Craig, just before he jumps through the window with him.
Kenny lands on his feet and hurries off into the nearby woods with Craig. Craig can't see a damn thing as Kenny rushes through the pitch black woods, but he can certainly feel the wind rush at his face. Eventually, Kenny comes to a stop in a clearing and lets him down, which he then takes off his mask right away to breathe better.
"Should be safe here," Kenny tells him.
Craig looks around more clearly now and realizes that they're at Stark's Pond, which surprises him, because of how far away it is from town hall.
"You run much faster than I thought you did," Craig says and sets his bag down.
"Let's wait here for a bit before you go home, just to make sure," Kenny suggests and Craig gives a lazy wave of the hand.
"Sure," he sits down then and leans forward, "how did you not run into anything?"
"I can see in the dark much better than in the daytime," Kenny replies.
"Oh," Craig says. As he removes his black sweater, Kenny sits next to him. "Well at least the moon is out and it's clear enough for me to see here," he adds and tosses the sweater to the side. "We learned quite a bit tonight."
"Yeah."
"I had a feeling it was dark stuff, but not that dark," Craig says, the images still fresh in his mind. "The ones who performed the ritual are the real monsters," he adds. Kenny stays silent and Craig decides to move onto the next subject, "Well at least we know the staff is real, it's just a question of where now."
"Yeah, and it won't be easy to get either, not after what happened," Kenny says.
"If you're saying that it's too dangerous for me to help you now, stop, cause it's not going to change my mind," Craig tells him.
"I know," Kenny replies, "you've already made up your mind."
"Yeah," Craig nods, "I'll help you, and I guess your family as well, to break the curse."
"My family…"
There's a look in Kenny's eyes that is unreadable to Craig but it's gone before he can ask about it.
"I'm actually kind of curious what the rest of your family is like, aside from your brother," Craig says.
"You are?"
"Yeah, I hope I can meet them one day."
"Why?"
"Well," Craig pauses, feeling a bit embarrassed, "I'm curious about them, and uh… I want to also meet them to better understand you in a way, I guess? Just like how life is for you all."
"I see," Kenny says, his gaze now on Craig, "I'll… have to think about it."
Kenny looks away and Craig can't help the small excited bump from the possibility to meet the others. He was very curious about them, ever since Kenny told him about them, but didn't want to push it, because he knew how on guard Kenny was about the subject.
"Anyways," Craig says getting back on track, "we should go over everything we learned and try to think of what the next step should be."
Kenny gives a small nod and the two go over everything they learned that night.
A few hours pass and they head back to Craig's. Craig by this point was exhausted, so Kenny offers to carry him back, which Craig declines at first, until he nearly trips over his own foot from yawning. He agrees to it then, when realizing how far was left to go, and Kenny carries him on his back again.
There was some sort of strange comfort he found while lying against Kenny's back as his eyes drew more weary from each footstep's sway. And Kenny carrying him as if he weighed nothing, his hands interlocked underneath his butt to support him up and some aspect of Craig's mind that told him that if he weren't so tired, he'd feel a bit embarrassed at where they rested right now. But at the same time, he didn't mind it.
He didn't mind it, because it was Kenny.
At some point during the walk back, Craig passes out, and when he comes to, he's in his room lying on his bed and it's daytime. He wonders for a moment how he got there, until he remembers that night. When he looks to his window, it's open. Craig had shut it last night, but didn't lock it, he guesses that was probably a good thing in the end though. Some part of him had wished that Kenny stayed until he awake though. It seemed to be growing with each day he awoke to see Kenny gone now. Like he wanted to wake and see Kenny first thing before his day began. Craig turns to his side table and picks up the small plastic ring he had placed there before leaving that night.
He closes a hand around it and places it close to his chest, as he continues to lie in silence.