Me and Miss Spider

by wantedthehighway

Alastor's relationship with his mother is nothing like what anyone had imagined; Charlie's philosophy is tested by her incredibly trying new client; the troupe tries not to be duped while caught in a face-off between two known con artists; and surprising family secrets come to light in a Hazbin Hotel story with some very special guest stars. (CW: abuse, racist/sexist behavior)

5. The Name of the Game

Content Warning: emotional invalidation, depiction of racist attitudes/behavior. As emotionally abusive people often do, Terri sneaks microaggressions in between bits of cute fluff. Child Al's desire for companionship compels him to look past some big red flags and focus on the positives.

[X]

[Summer-Fall 1907, New Orleans]

Another two weeks went by, and Miss Terri had remained as quirky and mildly creepy as usual, but benign. So far she'd done nothing but chat, play games, watch shows at the theater with him, and help him learn magic, as promised. When hunting was proposed, she accepted his hesitation and didn't force it, seeming confident that she could get him interested eventually. (After all, no one had made him hunt the neighbor boy, so there must be genuine, underlying interest, Terri reasoned.) Alastor had to admit, she wasn't bad company.

Still, not long enough had passed yet to make him certain she wasn't just waiting patiently for a meal. Alastor remembered times when his father was so miserable and easily agitated that he had waited long periods of time to pass through the living room into the kitchen to sneak some food back to his room. He knew Miss Terri was a strange and powerful entity, so surely she could wait a long time between feedings.

After a few more weeks passed by without major incident, though, Alastor decided he could stand to grow more comfortable with asserting boundaries. The first to tackle would be her appearance.

"Now, what would make you happy today, Button? Anything I can do?" Terri asked one day. She was expecting a recommendation of what they might do together that evening, but that was not what she was about to hear.

Alastor looked down and to the side, unsure if this was a safe request. He decided to stick to his principles regardless. "I...would like it if you didn't appear as my mother anymore."

"Oh… Doesn't it make you more comfortable?"

"No. Sorry. It just makes me sad."

"Ah. Well, that won't do." This was very different, but doable. She also sensed a feeling within her, creeping very quietly underneath layers of suppression, that she might like to differentiate herself from his birth mother. "Who would you like me to look like?" She transformed into the latest Gibson Girl by default. "I can imitate anything you want."

"What do you really look like?"

Another question she didn't normally receive. She already knew this child was brighter than the others, but was he also exceptionally polite, or were the others just rude little heathens? "Oh… It wouldn't make any sense to you." Even her spider-like form was not her 'true' form. "It would just look like...nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Like...a dark closet, or a cloudy night sky, or a deep well. It would be like an inkblot floating around. Totally ridiculous."

"What do you prefer to look like as a human?"

She didn't care to admit that she couldn't create an entirely original form, but she could think of one she had seen before that she thought was pleasing. Almost too quickly for him to comprehend the gradual transformation, she now presented with long, wavy mid-back length hair that was a very dark mahogany brown and tied at the end, fair skin with a pointed nose that was just long enough to be quirky-cute, and dark blue button eyes. She started out taller and thinner but couldn't resist redistributing to be just a little bit shorter and curvier than the original model. Her dress became a blue deep enough to match her eyes, with a pattern of what at first appeared to be delicate white flowers but actually seemed, at second glance, to be more similar to snowflakes. "Acceptable?" she asked, spinning once.

Al found himself smiling again and nodded affirmatively. It was rather cute. But his attention was drawn back to her eyes, which he noticed had remained buttons. Hadn't she said she left the den and interacted with humans discreetly sometimes? "I'm...curious," Al began. "When you go outside, do you…?"

"Do I what?"

How did she avoid drawing attention to herself? "Well...your...erm...your eyes."

"Ah." With a snap, she glamoured a pair of eyes onto her face.

"Whoawhoawhoawhoa!"

"Hmmn?" Terri hummed, raising an eyebrow.

"I...um…" Alastor coughed. "So I'm just wondering, Miss Terri, if you can do that, why do you use the buttons?"

Terri seemed genuinely baffled. "Children...find dolls charming...don't they?"

The buttons... were... an aesthetic decision? It was almost impossible for Alastor to keep the amusement at her expense from bubbling out of his brain and onto his face. He would not tell her otherwise- he had to know how long she would go on believing this! "Yes. Yes, they do," he said, nodding seriously. "But when you're trying to blend in, is this what you do?"

"Yes, but in recent years I've still pretended to be photosensitive so I could wear dark glasses, because eyes are tricky to get right. Take a closer look." He began to see her point. At first glance, the fake eyes provided a better feeling of normalcy, but upon closer inspection they were unsettlingly flat. By the taptaptapping of her hand on the countertop, though, she didn't need expressive eyes to show she was just a tad suspicious. "Do you wish I had eyes?"

"Um…I would prefer it, to be honest." She was so difficult to read without them, and he was sure that this was a deliberate reason for the design choice.

It was completely deliberate, and she had a feeling he was trying to find ways to make her easier to decode. Terri shrugged and tried to deflect. "Sadly I don't remember where I put them."

WaitwaitwaitwaitWAIT. "Excuse me?" Al asked as politely and calmly as possible.

"I don't remember where I stored them after I put them out."

Alastor inhaled deeply and tried his best to process this ungodly sentence. "Please start from the beginning, Miss Terri."

Terri had a feeling he already knew the reason. "...All right, you caught me. I don't much care to go about with people able to see...in." Plus, if anyone were ever going to trap her soul, it would be herself, goddammit. That was the reason that actually required them being kept elsewhere. To make her facial expressions ambiguous or appeal to children's fondness of dolls, she could simply glamour a pair of buttons over her own eyes, but to keep her own soul safe and her emotions locked up, it was best to keep her eyes in storage.

"Aha!" Al exclaimed, remembering her lecture on emotional control from a few days earlier. "So you're cheating!"

Terri stared down the smug child. "Explain yourself."

"Can you really ignore your emotions that well, or are you just hiding your feelings behind those buttons? I want to know that I'm taking the advice of an expert."

Terri huffed. "I do not cheat."

"How do I know that? I can't tell when your expressions are sincere."

Terri's mouth twisted in annoyance. "Well. If you find them, I'll show them to you. Live. But you won't." The smile on Alastor's face was record-breaking. "I've finally made it interesting enough for you to play a game, eh?"

Alastor tried to appear as though he was just excited by the challenge, but she had revealed a clear weakness. If he could find the eyes, surely she would be more vulnerable. "Shake on it?"

Terri grimaced at him and finally shook, qualifying, "Big if, young man. Don't get your hopes up." Al hopped to his feet and looked ready to speed away immediately. "Now wait, wait. What do I get if you can't find it?"

Oof. Perhaps he would regret his decision. Was it possible for this to end well? "What would you like that we haven't already agreed to?"

Terri playfully spidered one hand through the air toward his shoulder. "You know I'd love for you to call me Mother," she sing-songed as he flinched away. Ugh. This again? He had literally asked her to please stop presenting as his late mother mere minutes ago. "What about Aunt Terri?" she tried. Maybe she could go with the slow boil method. Al had no qualms about that one. They shook on it.

No one ever said it was against the rules for Ferdie to assist, but even with the two of them searching, they couldn't find any promising leads. Eventually, the only place they hadn't checked was Terri's 'trophy room,' but Alastor questioned why she would keep them there- it seemed like they weren't something she was proud of. He was still willing to look, but he felt niggling hesitation before he opened the mirrored door. He already knew what was behind it- that information couldn't be unlearned. But he found that he...didn't want to think about it. They had been getting along so well, he couldn't deny that a part of him wanted to trick himself into forgetting what she was, so that the happy facade could continue…

No. Alastor was firm with himself. In fact, this made it an even higher priority to win the game. He had to find some trick to increase her vulnerability and make her easier to decipher, because he was clearly losing his grip on reality and allowing her to win him over. It had to stop.

He interrupted his own thoughts with a small gasp when he saw the room. It was no longer the stereotypical dragon's lair filled with bones that had appeared to him at first viewing, but instead what he suspected was the real trophy room. Bones arranged in broken pieces like mosaics. Blood-stained glass windows, painted with a pattern of falling rose petals. An entire chandelier-like hanging ornament composed of eyes preserved in amber, hanging on beaded strings. The few slain ones she had preferred to the others, beautifully replicated as dolls, dressed in finery. (She'd have taxidermized them, but sadly she needed the bodies for the protein, which helped her maintain a corporeal form.) There weren't many of these; sadly, more of the favored ones tended to escape simply by virtue of being left alive longer.

This was the second big red flag for Alastor. Why had the room changed? Was its appearance influenced by the viewer's perception of the owner? Did this imply that he no longer saw her as a predator? Well...no, no, he assured himself. She was still clearly a threat. As artfully as the remains were displayed, they were still the remains of the human hunted. Then he noticed the gifts. Depending on how you interpreted it, it was either sweet or somehow even more horrifying that some artwork, dried flowers, and other miscellaneous gifts made by the dead children were included alongside the other artifacts and clearly treasured. There was even one scribbled stick figure image that must have been drawn by a 3 or 4 year old.

The presence of the gifts both confirmed some of Alastor's worst suspicions and raised new questions entirely. He turned to Ferdie. "...Why...did she keep these? Do you know?" The fox-like shadow creature silently cocked his head and gave no answers. Al noticed that his heart rate had picked up. He could now be certain of two things: She had liked some of them, and she had killed them anyway. Or, he hoped, some of them had escaped. Still, it meant whether or not she was lying about wanting love- and it was starting to appear that she wasn't- was now a moot point, because that would not be enough to keep him safe. But then, another, warmer thought enticed him away from the frightening revelations- did this mean her affection wasn't all an act? Some of the things she said and did for him…could she mean it?

Alastor tried to snap himself out of it. He had to find the eyes. If he could more easily tell which facial expressions were genuine, it would be that much easier to answer these questions. He realized now what made the trophy room an ideal hiding place- the chandelier with the hanging amber-preserved eyes. If her eyes were intermixed with those, they might be a challenge to identify, especially since he didn't know what to expect. He hoped they would be unusual enough to leap out at him. But how to get up there? A few feeble attempts revealed that Ferdie could neither lift nor levitate him, and there was nothing sturdy that he could stack high enough. Alastor sighed- here was hoping she wouldn't be a poor sport.

"Miss Terri?"

Terri hummed brightly and giggled, "I think I hear the sound of my victory!" She stuck out her tongue playfully. "No worries, dinner will cheer you up."

"I haven't found them yet," Al prefaced, "but I have an idea. It's just somewhere I can't reach." Terri was suddenly faced with a pair of wide, honey brown puppy dog eyes.

"Allllright." She begrudgingly followed him and was surprised when he led her to the mirrored door. "What can't you reach in here?" When he opened the door, it struck her. "Dear...what do you see right now?" The child gave a perfect description of her trophy room, the way she had designed it and, to her knowledge, as only she had ever seen it. It was at this moment that Terri realized- emotionally, in the pit of her stomach, rather than just logically- what a threat it would be to wear her eyes again, not just to her deceptive ability but to her dignity. Because right now she would be wearing a perfectly-readable expression of shock and awe and...hope...and...bashfulness. Could he see those drawings?! Thankfully the enchanted rose wasn't in the original Beauty and the Beast story, or she'd have humiliated herself with that window design. Why was he able to see this?

Al pointed to the chandelier. "I'll bet they're in there with the rest. Let me look, please?"

She knew he was clever, so she was less surprised by the correct guess than she was by the fact that he could see the chandelier at all. The question now was, would he recognize her eyes? She doubted it, but at the same time, she hoped. It was an exciting experiment, if nothing else. "Fair's fair, Button. Have a lift."

Beneath his feet, the 4x4 foot square of tiles immediately under the chandelier slowly rose up from the ground with a seemingly infinite supply manufacturing themselves underneath, until the column was high enough for him to closely examine all of the eyes on display in the multilayered structure. He was standing at its center, which was a chillingly beautiful place to be as the moonlight bounced off the eyes through the stained glass window. Human eyes were quite lovely things, even when they did just stare blankly. It took him easily 10-15 minutes to scour the whole thing, unwilling to give up. No, no, no, no, maybe, no, maybe, maybe, no, no.

"Ready to admit defeat, darling?" He heard the click of Terri's heels as she returned from checking on the oven. "You did your best. I'm impressed you got this far!" She sounded like she was genuinely trying to be complimentary, but she couldn't hide the note of smugness in her voice. She did love to win, even if it was petty, and even when it was against children.

Al hummed in frustration. No, no, no, maybe, no, no, maybe, maybe, no, no- there! He froze, beholding a pair of eyes so dark they could almost have been mistaken for shark eyes, if it weren't for the way the light was hitting them, revealing the fact that the irises were not black but a deep, deep, rich blue, with the brightest little flecks, almost like stars sparkling in the light. "These might be yours!"

Terri sharply inhaled. She had felt a mixture of irrational hope and swirling anxiety that he might find them, but it still came as yet another surprise. They probably weren't the right ones. "Tell me."

"They're really dark, but really blue. One of them is a little bit lighter than the other one."

Holy. Shit. "I think you're right, Button! Pull them off, will you?" Alastor bent open the clasps that connected the amber to the strings, and the tile column descended. When he held them up to her, Terri took the chance to savor her ability to easily fake nonchalance while it lasted. "What do you know. Well done." She sighed, sounding mildly irritable. "I don't suppose we can have dinner first? I'm going to need to get my energy up for this little venture."

"Oh?"

"It's not difficult to get these off and put those in," she explained, tapping a button eye and the amber in turn, "but taking them out and sewing the buttons back on will be a trial."

Alastor had not considered this. Partly out of true sympathy and partly out of the desire to keep her vulnerable for longer, he suggested, "Could you leave them in for a while?"

"Phht. I'm no stranger to pain, boy, I can take it."

Huh. Now Al felt guilty enough to at least offer, out of politeness, "You don't have to do it. I don't want to-"

Terri waved him off. "No, nonononono, no, tricksy one." She wagged her winger. "I know just what you'll do. If I dishonor a small deal, you'll claim I'm untrustworthy and try to nullify the other one."

"Seriously?" Alastor uttered, deadpan.

"Can you honestly say it would be out of character?"Alastor briefly felt affronted by her accusation, then found himself giggling. "That's what I thought," she said.

They ate dinner, and then Terri clapped her hands together and wrung them ever so slightly. "I'll go get your special present. Could you get us some tea and go out to the porch swing, please?" Alastor obeyed. She returned looking uncharacteristically uneasy, facing slightly down and to the side as she sat. "Well?"

Al waved his finger in a circle. "Switch sides?" She had gravitated toward the side that fell less under the porch light. Grumbling, she switched. He took her hand and she jolted a bit, as this was the first time he had ever reached out and touched her himself, unprompted. "Don't be-" Alastor stopped short of 'scared,' concerned about the consequences of offending her, and leaned in closer. She reflexively closed her eyes. "Ah, ah!" the little boy chastised her and she reopened them.

As soon as he got a good view of them, all thoughts of victory and manipulation were temporarily erased from Alastor's mind. The effect was jarring. It was like looking at a piece of outstanding art that you could swear you had already seen in a dream; it was beautiful in part because it was somehow familiar. The deep indigo blue irises, grey flecks twinkling, looked like galaxies. The pupils, as impossibly dark as they were- blacker than black, seeming almost not to reflect light- strangely did not seem cold. It was the warm, cozy black of a deep, dreamless sleep in a soft place where you were perfectly safe-

Concerned about being hypnotized, Alastor snapped himself out of it and sat back a little on the porch swing. But she didn't seem to be actively spellcasting in any way. In fact, the eyes really did make a large difference in what he could see of how sincere she was being and what her emotions were. Right now she looked like she was nervously awaiting a judgment, but to a certain degree she also looked pleased and wanting...wanting.

She really did want love. It wasn't a lie.

"I like them," he said. "Why do you want to hide them?"

"Easier."

Alastor chuckled and briefly debated with himself before remarking out loud, "If you want to lay traps, you should leave those things in."

"Oh?" she asked. Her voice had the same inquisitive, playful energy as usual, but again, it was different with the eyes. In fact, it was downright adorable. Crap!

"Yes, ma'am."

"Do you think you're in a trap?" Silence. "Am I in a trap?" she asked with mock intrigue, waggling her eyebrows. She knew exactly what he was up to, but clearly the precious little star of her show had walked into his own ditch. How convenient. Terri felt victorious, but she also felt strangely warm. This was more challenging than it should have been...but that was good. She couldn't remember when she had genuinely had this much fun. Since it was apparently allowed now, she took his hand and said, winking, "You know, I really like this game you've made up."

"...So do I." The fact that they were both actively acknowledging their cat-and-mouse game out loud should have been horrifying, and yet it wasn't. Alastor was invigorated by her statement, far from ready to surrender, and like her, also somehow having more fun than he'd ever had in his life.

They were up a level now. He knew what the next move should be and prepared himself to play hard ball. Before he could talk himself out of it, Al bounced up and administered a peck on her cheek. Terri automatically swatted the spot with her hand like she was going after a gnat, stupefied. Al gave her the same sweet and spicy look he gave her when she asked him to call her 'mother' and he said he'd consider it. "I'll still call you Aunt Terri... if you leave them in."

[X]

Terri knew the second she saw this child that he would light up her life. Despite acting deliberately intimidating during their first few interactions in order to gain the upper hand, and maintaining her facade of emotional impermeability as the visits went on, as soon as the child left, she would melt into a sentimental puddle the likes of which Echo had never witnessed. Food insecurity, understandably, is enough to make anyone unpleasantly irritable, so it made sense that taking steps toward resolving this would improve Terri's mood. But this was beyond that. Most of the time, Miss McGyver was faking her enthusiasm over any given child, or at least exaggerating it, and she made little pretense about her true feelings once the visit was over. Now, Echo watched in amazement as Terri's good mood continued well past each visit's end, and how its master's formerly erratic temperament began to balance more and more with every visit from the little boy. Terri had always been musical, but for years this part of her personality rarely emerged unless it was part of a luring scheme, or while she was venting one of her spikes of outrage or despair through the medium. Suddenly, Echo noticed, Terri was humming and singing upbeat tunes again, unprompted. Echo would have no way of recognizing 'We've Got Annie,' but as the sound of the piano playing it filtered through the house, the overall vibe was clear. The puppet servant braced itself for the devastating crash that would occur after the relationship's impending doom. Yet more weeks were passing- more than Echo ever remembered passing before. Could this really be happening?

Meanwhile, Al had no reason to be nearly as optimistic as Terri was at first. He had never expected her to bring him joy or comfort. That first week or so had been so ominous, he felt certain as he was shaking her hand that he had just made a terrible mistake. But as weeks and then months went by, he was tempted to believe that he had been wrong. So much time had passed without her making any threatening moves, and instead she brought him…music and theater. He would never have even known he loved these things so much if she hadn't given him so much exposure to them. Even when she was busy, she offered no shortage of things to do. Observing the curious patterns of activity of the insect-powered puppets and furniture; or investigating the completely novel species of plant life in her garden; or pondering how the plant life persisted or what light the moon reflected in a pocket of space that seemed to have no sun was fascinating all by itself.

On top of all that, she had made some very creative alterations to the house. Alastor began to notice that there were more ways in which the house was not a perfect duplicate of his own. At first he had assumed that the temperature was more comfortable in the Other House and it was fitted with more electric features due to Terri's magic, but it was not quite so simple. When he got to exploring more while she was busy, Alastor saw that she had altered certain architectural features of the house to promote better natural cooling and had strategically placed a series of fans to assist the airflow. Without any neighbors in the way, she had the space to construct some feat of engineering that drew water from the well and passed it through a turbine for electricity. After passing through the turbine, some of the water was used on a terracotta honeycomb-like structure she had fitted in the kitchen window, which seemed to be for the purpose of cooling down the kitchen (by evaporating the water) to keep it from overheating the rest of the house. All of the water appeared to be continuously recycled, sent back down the well to begin the process again. When asked about its cleanliness, she insisted that she boiled it from time to time. He would go on to learn that she used similar methods for heating, like pellet stoves. In fact, almost every material in the Other World seemed to be continuously recycled. She explained that this was because she had limited materials at her disposal and had been forced to become an expert, the implication being either that she could only create a limited amount of material at a time or that she had limited power with which to create it.

Despite the limitations on her power this suggested, Alastor was still impressed, but also intimidated, by her intellect, which he realized could be one of the most dangerous things about her. He complained to Ferdie in dismay, "She's a genius, isn't she? I'm doomed, aren't I?" Terri, who had simply replicated the approaches of others with the detailed data she was able to pull, was thrilled that the little boy felt this reflected so strongly on her own intelligence. If he thought she was a genius, he may give up on trying to outfox her! And, of course, it may get him to respect her more and like her better. (To be fair, it was still impressive that she was able to understand well enough to copy these approaches, but Terri was unduly hard on herself over the fact that she had not invented any such methods on her own. Her inability to do more than imitate or, at best, creatively alter pre-existing things was something she was privately quite sensitive about.)

Incidentally, Terri's handiness with this type of thing worked out well for an additional reason. Early on, Terri had decided that she would include no Other Father character for this little boy and would instead play both the father and mother roles herself, as one character. (She could see Alastor disliked his father enough that simply providing an 'improved' version would not win him over enough to be a worthwhile use of her time. The more important reason, however, was that she wanted no competition for this child's affection, not even from a fake person.) Here was where some of her own commonalities with Bert began to come in handy, in that she had already enacted or was able to enact some things Alastor imagined his ex-engineer father may have managed had he not been drunk most of the time. Terri only wished Bert could see it- she'd have loved to rub this in his face!

From the cupola on the roof, they were able to watch the stars. Terri seemed rather fixated on stars for some reason, but Al didn't mind; it was interesting to hear her talk about them. These conversations were also the first to reveal another fixation she had- with ends, deterioration, taking things apart. It was one of the only modes by which some underlying anxiety seemed to leak out of her. Once she expressed, with resigned sorrow, that it was a shame how even the brightest, most beautiful stars had to supernova and ultimately end their existence as a void, but it was the way things had to be, she insisted, to maintain balance in the universe. "Everything has to be taken apart eventually…" She nudged his hand with her hand. "Hopefully not us...for a while yet." The boy still did not abide hugs, but lately he would sit much closer to her and sometimes let her hold his hand, as he did now.

"Don't think about it," Alastor encouraged her and jokingly mimed crushing the 'badness.' This earned a chuckle, but she still seemed more morose than usual. "Why are you worried about the ending?" he asked gently.

"...The story might end before I can change it." It was a cryptic reply, but he thought he understood what she was getting at. It had to do with that shrine of gifts he had seen in the 'trophy room.'

"Aren't you good at making alterations?" he remarked, referring to the fact that, amongst her many abilities, she seemed to be a talented seamstress.

Terri smiled at him, feeling encouraged. "True."

Eventually, she realized he wasn't going to school. She had to remind herself- there were public schools by now, correct? He didn't want to talk about how he didn't fit neatly anywhere, socially or legally. He didn't want to bring up his father's attitude about it, either. The long and the short of it was that, were Bert still a wealthy socialite, he'd probably still be more likely to get in a fistfight with the headmaster of the white children's school than whip out his checkbook for the underserved colored children's school, and he didn't seem to understand why that left a bad taste in Alastor's mouth.

Anyway, Bert let him 'homeschool,' but he lost interest in helping once he realized his kid was bright and could read well. Not only was it unreasonable to expect the child to educate himself, but he also simply didn't have the materials. (He'd picked up a lot with what he had, but it could only go so far.) Terri, on the other hand, had the means to obtain immense amounts of information, and there was no way she was going to let a child of Camille's go uneducated. (Or even a child of Bert's for that matter- the man had been quite a wizard before he fried half his brain cells. That was why she had selected him as a breeder to begin with.) Especially not one this savvy. And, hey, she knew this story- she'd give him a library. She was brusque about it, but he could tell she cared. "You can read well above your age level. Go make sure you can do basic math and read about anything you think would help with the job you might want. Not that you'll have to work if we continue to get along. I expect you in there 4 hours a weekday." Al began to wonder how she had accumulated the information, a lot of which seemed current but some of which seemed...for lack of a better word, advanced. And she had seemed so fatigued for days afterward. But like any time he asked what she was or how she did anything, she gave one of the same vague, generic answers: 'I'm your Other Mother.' Or 'Just call me Queen.' Or 'I told you I'm a goddess.' None of these answers seemed to be anything but meaningless grandiose drivel.

Hunting was also far better than Alastor had expected, in part because of an unintended side effect- he got to travel. Like any bright serial killer, she tried to spread out her hunting grounds as much as possible, and Terri had the means to get a much wider spread than the average joe. When she explained that she had doors everywhere, he was not only skeptical at first but also wasn't sure how this helped him. Although she used them herself for energy conservation purposes, she didn't technically need the doors to transport herself. But as far as Alastor knew, he did, and most of them were located in houses inhabited by people. Untrue, she explained. Many of them were, but not all, and even the ones that were in houses had a 'back door.' She opened one, and the immediate vision was of an impossibly long tunnel with an opening at the end revealing what appeared to be a night sky full of stars. What was she going to do, jettison them into space?! No, no, she explained, it was just because of how far down they were. He was looking up from the bottom of a well.

"So they're all built around wells? Is there a reason?"

"Things like me," she said, pointing at the red hourglass-like shape on the back of her dress, "like dark, damp places. Haven't you read anything about spiders in all of those books I gave you?"

Al saw a golden opportunity. "Don't see how it affects me, ma'am. I'm not a spider," he quipped.

One of the few things that continued to bother him about Aunt Terri was how disinterested she was in how being mixed race affected his life. She would normally shrug it off with, "I'm not a citizen of your country, so I can't offer an opinion," or, "I don't concern myself with human politics." So he got quick jabs like this one in whenever he had the chance, hoping that one day she'd take the bait and actually listen to what he had to say, but so far she hadn't. Although he expressed his dissatisfaction mostly through quick jabs, deep down, it disappointed him terribly that she could offer him an escape from so many other unpleasant features of his world but not from this sort of invalidation, especially when she claimed to care about him. But Alastor liked Aunt Terri so much in other ways that he resolved to keep trying, and tried to pretend it didn't feel as bad as it did.

(Future Alastor would go on to wish he had pushed back more against her insensitivity, but he could also see the forces that had pressured him to tolerate it. Due to how he was socialized, his bar for acceptable treatment back in the early 1900s had been far too low. And in any case, he had been so lonely he would have taken any friend he could find, even a tacitly racist one, which was a very fair description of Terri. Although she did not view any one group of humans as superior to the others, it also didn't bother her if one group marginalized or mistreated another based on race or sex. If it didn't affect her, or if she benefitted in some way, she wouldn't buck the trend. Furthermore, her interest in adopting this child very concerningly did not seem to have convinced her that she should take an interest in this issue. The only way to make this more disappointing to future Alastor was the knowledge that, even back in 1907, Terri had been exposed to many progressive ideas due to her abilities, and yet this had made no dent in certain racist- or, as he would notice later, sexist- undertones that were often present in her behavior; it seemed she had simply adopted the more futuristic, two-faced manner of expressing them.)

No such luck this time. Terri ignored his joke and then asked, sweetly, "Do you trust me?" as she held out her hand.

"Phht. No!"

Seeing that he was resistant to leaping into what she insisted on referring to as 'rabbit holes' for fun, she shrugged and pretended to try to come up with an alternative- and then pushed him. She leapt in behind him so quickly that she was able to wrap her arms around him before he was ripped away. It felt like being sucked into a vacuum-sealed package and looked, he admitted, like falling down Alice's rabbit hole, but in reverse. But it didn't last long. Soon they were at the foot of the well on the surface of the Earth again, somewhere, and she was ruffling his hair. "See? That was fun, wasn't it?" He had to admit, it was incredible. After that, it was a breeze. The feeling of free-falling through the dark, knowing everything would be okay in a few moments, while she held him tight, was beautiful. An adult had never made him feel that secure in a typical situation, let alone an actually dangerous one.

The first hunt occurred in France. She waited near a seedy alley, and finally she hissed, "There! Him!" supporting Alastor's suspicions of the man lurking a yard or so behind the woman. "People like that," she whispered, "do things like this because some woman hurt them, and they don't know how to deal with it. But what that means is, not only do they have it coming to them-" She grinned broadly, and her teeth, he noticed, had sharpened into fangs. "-but they're all the more afraid when I show up."

"Are you going to-?"

"We should wait. What if we're wrong? Don't want to hurt someone innocent, do you?"

He had the distinct impression that she was using his ethical code to acquire free entertainment for herself. "Aunt Terri!" he hissed in disgust. "Help her!"

Ah, Terri understood now (so she told herself). It was a game. He wanted to play vigilante; they were super special spider buddies who save the world by eating up the pests. Cute! This was similar to when she had played pirates with the others. At least this time she'd get to play the role of one of the good guys- that might be nice for a change.

While Alastor was chastising his aunt- who, he correctly suspected, was radically misunderstanding how seriously he took vigilantism- the man sprung into action. Terri saw the look on the little boy's face had changed. He was remembering something. Not cognitively- it wasn't accessible. Emotionally, he was remembering something he had heard long ago. He looked up at her pleadingly. She waited no longer.

"Hello!" called the completely ordinary-looking woman down the alley, as Alastor hid. She marched forward, fearlessly, exuding the attitude of an irate governess. "I'm going to have to ask you to play nice." She was deliberately as annoying as possible, hoping to garner the exact reaction she received.

In equal parts disbelief, disgust, and hatred, the assailant barked, "Stay out of his, b****!" and took her by the throat.

And. Then. She. STRETCHED.

The man dropped her, fell back. The woman ran, screaming in even greater terror than before. The being that stood before the assailant was still basically humanoid, but intimidatingly tall and very, very strong, as indicated by her grip when she picked him up by the throat.

" 'I moved on him like a b****. When you're their Mother, they let you do it,' " Terri jested, and not caring that she was the only one who could derive amusement from the reference, she unhinged her jaw and swallowed the criminal whole.

Alastor knew he should be afraid. Why wasn't he? Despite being monstrous in this manifestation, Aunt Terri somehow seemed quite regal. She noticed him staring, transfixed, and cocked her head back at him with her long, long neck, without changing back yet. "You're very powerful," he whispered, awestruck.

Terri's sweet little giggle left the creature's mouth. It was such a disorienting thing. She changed back, almost too quickly for his brain to register the gradual changes, and booped her nose against his. "Do you want to be just like auntie when you grow up?"

His emotions were hard to explain. It had something to do with that feeling he had when he heard the woman's scream, but he didn't have the memories or the words to put it together. He just knew that the punishment Terri had delivered filled him with feelings of delight and...strangely...relief that he hadn't known he needed. He nodded at her emphatically. "...I...would! Yes!"

When they were done, she would show him around. At first he was shy, since he had barely been around much of his own home city. But trip by trip, he became more confident. New experiences were a delight and nothing intimidated him anymore- he had a pet monster to protect him.

[X]

Even though hunting and traveling brought more excitement than he could ever have imagined, he was just as pleased by the more typical day-to-day things they did together. In a way, it was almost as thrilling, because he had never done many of these regular things either, at least not with someone else.

On Halloween, they were carving pumpkins. Terri privately hoped this pumpkin had never been anyone he knew.

"I can't remember ever doing this," Al admitted.

"You've never carved a jack-o-lantern?"

"Maybe we did it when my mother was alive, but I can't remember."

"Wait 'til you taste the seeds when I bake them! And the soup!"

Terri was learning a lot more recipes now. She was a good cook, but she rarely had a reason to exert the effort. Now that she regularly did, she was starting to understand why it made him so happy. Mostly she derived enjoyment from the scent, but she took tastes now and again. While not ready to venture into cannibalism just yet, he was intrigued by her non-human food sources, too. Although it did nothing to keep the real her- what the humans might call a 'soul'- sustained, proteins were needed to maintain the corporeal form, so she'd eat most kinds of meat and frequently snacked on insects. She had gotten him curious enough to try a chocolate-covered cockroach once with the promise that it tasted like and had the consistency of nuts. She could have pissed herself laughing when he realized it was still wriggling in his mouth. Oh, was it important that they were dead already? She wouldn't have thought! He was angry for a solid two minutes, but eventually he laughed his special laugh along with her.

"What do you normally do on Halloween?" Terri asked.

Al was quiet for a few moments. He didn't want to talk about how he had a hard time making friends and had never had anyone to trick-or-treat with. "My dad and I read the horror pulps," he finally answered.

"Phhht."

"What?"

"Nothing. You just amuse me. You like being scared, do you? That explains some things."

"My father likes trying to scare me, but I'm not scared. They're just fun."

"Not scared at all?"

Alastor grinned at her and stuck out his tongue.

"You know what, I believe you," Terri said. The insidious part of her immediately commenced trying to think of a story that would genuinely scare the little boy. Well, what was the child's biggest fear? Sadness? ...Oh no, Terri, that's in poor taste… But the idea only tempted her more. While trying to organize the story in her mind, she suggested, "Come in, Button. Let's put these seeds in the oven." They prepped the seeds and began to boil and stir the pumpkin guts.

"What about you?" Al asked. "You seem like you'd enjoy a good scary story."

Terri was indeed a lover of future horror films, both serious and satirical. "Very true. But I'm a lot like you. They don't scare me, they're just fun. It's hard to be frightened by horror stories when you don't have any natural predator," she explained further. "Every fictional monster or horror villain is based on the threat of an existing predator. I can't identify with that fear quite so much."

As much as Al had grown to enjoy Terri's company, he liked to be prepared, so he was always on the hunt for her weaknesses. "You don't have any predators?" he asked.

Terri feigned nonchalance and shrugged. "Technically everything has predators. Sometimes the predators and the prey can invert, though, if they're both strong enough. I think I'm one of the ones who could turn the tables. What do you think? You wouldn't try to take me, huh?"

"Are you afraid of any of them?"

Terri wagged her finger. "No point in admitting to fear. You can only act to solve problems when you get to them."

"Have you fled any of them?" Alastor clarified, enjoying her rhetorical games.

Terri offered a theatrical gasp of offense. "I have always fought."

"Then I guess you always won!" Al congratulated.

Terri was briefly caught off guard, but she quickly redirected. "You know what? I do know a ghost story I think is good! You know." She smirked. "Narratively. As a work of art. Even if I'm hard to scare."

"Tell it!" Al dared her, hoping to try and read her face.

"Hehehe. It is a very scary story," she said, nonverbally raising him a double dog dare.

Al donned his war face. "Do ittttt."

Well, he was asking for it! Terri knew of just the sort of conceptual monster that would frighten this child. She removed the seeds from the oven to cool and lowered the soup to a simmer and guided him over to the couch. If she was lucky, she might earn a cuddle. She could hardly bear to admit it, but every time he came, she wanted even more and more desperately for him to love her.

"Once upon a time, a family of three was having an unhappy Christmas. They were not as close as they had once been. The husband and wife's marriage was struggling after an affair. Their increasingly moody teenage daughter cast them both as villains and distanced herself from both. Even the dog was unhappy, now that the little girl was all grown up and spent less time playing with it and more time brooding alone in her room. The girl found herself wishing she could be just far enough away from her parents that she could no longer hear their voices shouting down the hall. If only the house were bigger. And that was when she noticed the door.

"A door that had not been in their hallway before. Right next to a coat closet. A door that led, as far as she could tell, to nothing. It led down a dark ashen hallway, but at the end of that hallway was another hallway, and at the end of that hallway was another. Not falling for the trap, she exited quickly and alerted her parents. Both laughed at her until they saw it. For the first time in months, they clutched each other. This was a make-or-break moment. They could reunite and work together through their fear. Or. They could investigate the hallway.

"That is what people will tell you to do, after all. The professionals. They'll suggest things will remain unresolved if you don't. You have to go inside. So they went inside.

"They stayed together for four hallways, five, six, seven, eight, nine. But soon something arose from the darkness- the first stimulus to break the unending pattern of flat ashen grey. In the darkness was a low, coarse grrrrrrrrowwwwwwwwwwwwwling."

Terri privately enjoyed how the little boy had crawled gradually closer to her until leaning against a pillow that laid directly against her, in lieu of cuddling Terri herself.

"The sound approached like a wave, first a mild tremor in the distance, then a flooding rush down the black, vacant halls, escalating to a thundering roar that shook the floor and walls. They ran in a flash of panic. As they did, the air which had been so unnaturally cold in the dark hallway suddenly felt strangely humid, and they slipped on the suddenly damp floor. In their mad scramble, they became separated. The roar gradually diminished and finally ceased after a period of strange, grating griiiinding, and the air reverted from too hot to once again being too unnaturally frigid. The shocking sudden drop in temperature left them trembling, and so did the realization that they were each now lost in a completely featureless labyrinth of indeterminable size.

"For the very first time, the girl was glad to hear the sound of her parents' voices, which were amplified by echoes, and tried to follow the sound. But she would never hear anything but an echo ever again. They had already grown too far apart, and unable to access one another, the process could not be reversed. In the dark, endless corridors of the maze, they could at first hear the echoes of one another's calls, but it was such a vast and directionless space that it was impossible to determine the source, and they often turned in the wrong direction. In the end, they wandered so far apart that they could no longer hear one another calling over the volume of their own echoes. Each one feared they would die alone, cold, in the dark of starvation and thirst. But they would have to wait no longer. They would be spared this painful, drawn-out fate.

"BECAUSE. THEN. THE. Terriblegrowlingthinginthedarknessswallowedthemdownthelongblackhallwaythatwasitshorriblethroatanddissolvedtheirpatheticsoulsinitshorrible gastricjuicescomposedofthehideousscaldingtragedyoftheirownfailingsandagonizingloneliness!"

Alastor gave her a wide-eyed look and then unexpectedly burst into laughter. It was tough for the child to articulate what precisely was so funny. Part of it was the dramatic tone shift at the end, but funnier still was the reason he had pegged for the dramatic shift. "You fled!" he teased her.

"I'm not understanding you."

"Why'd you get silly at the end?"

Ah. 'You fled.' She had laughed off the miserable ending. Oh, but that wasn't the ending! She motioned with her head toward the nearest closet and mouthed, "Can't let that thing know you take it seriously."

Al's laughter became a bit weaker.

"Shhhh," Terri hissed, glancing side to side. "You see," she mouthed secretively, "that's my predator."

"Hmmn?" Alastor was trying to tell if she meant this literally. The him from a few months ago would have dismissed such a notion out of hand, but current Al had seen some weird shit and was open to the possibility of pretty much anything.

"The growling, echoing thing in the dark," Terri confirmed. "The Hungry Thing."

Al decided she wasn't entirely joking. "What is it?"

"It's a thing that's attracted to loneliness. When it finds something lonely, it gets ravenously hungry. I live in a void, so it watches me a lot and waits for me to let down my guard. That's why I smile so much."

Through his entertainment and intrigue, Al betrayed a small amount of sympathy. This type of monster was indeed familiar to him.

"But I'm not lonely anymore. So I'm safe," Terri assured him, patting his head. "My friend is here."

"You're serious?" Alastor asked.

"What do you think?" Terri replied playfully.

Al would have thought it was definitely a joke if he didn't remember that inexplicably long hallway with all those doors… He let the thought go as they lit up the jack-o-lanterns, ate the seeds and the soup, and drank her special hot chocolate. But when it was time to go home, the uneasiness set in again.

Seeing him hesitating, Terri asked, "What's the matter, Button?"

"...Was it just a story?"

She didn't answer. "Why?"

"...When I first came here...I had to get through a long hallway with a lot of doors. I was worried it would grow forever."

A sudden horrible weight of dread descended coldly on Terri's shoulders. She was telling him this stuff to spook him for fun, but...there was the chance that the Thing was already sniffing him out. She hadn't interpreted it this way back when she'd discussed the doors with the cat- she'd assumed the hallway was just acting as it often did, responding to the unique psychology of whoever entered it. She'd had no reason to expect that it would start to misbehave so quickly, but now she had to wonder. "Well, you're not lonely anymore either, are you? So there's no cause for concern," Terri told Alastor, in part trying to console herself. "Neither one of us has to be lonely ever again."

Too proud to lean in for a hug, Al nudged his foot against hers, comforting himself with the contact.

"...Would you like me to walk you home?" Not waiting for a response, Terri took his hand, opened the door casually, fearlessly, and walked with him through the very average-sized, softly-glowing astral hallway he had been walking through ever since the second visit. "See?" She motioned around. "Nothing to be afraid of!"

Alastor was not entirely sold. Her expressions were often unreadable, but he had heard that taptaptaptapping of her hand earlier when he mentioned the long hallway with the doors. He whispered, "It's not just a story, is it?"

She didn't answer, yet she did. "Neither of us is in any danger now. Get a good rest, darling." Showing respect for his dislike of physical affection that was too familiar, she didn't directly kiss him on the cheek. Instead, she kissed her hand and pressed it to his cheek. He smiled as she patted his face, took her hand, and kissed it before he left.

As soon as he shut the door behind him, every one of the twinkling lights fizzled out with a poppoppoping sound that almost resembled the ticking of a clock. Even her own subconscious was rude to her- unbelievable. Terri dialed up her sarcasm. "Hilarious. You should do stand-up." The nature of the low growl emanating from behind the walls on either side of her- as though many mysterious shapes were shifting, growing, reshaping behind them- sounded remarkably like laughter as she tread just a bit too quickly to her own door and slammed it shut.

[X]

The next day, Terri checked early, hours ahead of when the boy normally arrived, to see if anything untoward was going on. And of course, two thirds of the way through the hallway, there was now an additional door. Terri inhaled sharply through gritted teeth. "Now, friend. You've evolved me for a reason," she lectured her animalistic subconscious. "I'm the one with the good long-term decision-making ability, remember?"

The hallway was silent.

"We've been waiting for an opportunity like this for a long time. You can't just eat anything. This could bring us long-term food security. Remember? This took years of effort and planning. It's our life's work. Impulse control, friend!"

The hallway was silent.

Terri scowled and opened the door. She expected to see a large anteroom, but instead she saw only a short hallway with another door. Sun and moon, the thing had learned- it had learned the child might enter if the first few corridors seemed unthreatening. She knew behind that door there were probably three or more additional hallways of slightly longer length, with their own doors, and finally, the wide anteroom would appear- so wide and so dark that if you got midway into it, it could take more than an hour to find your way out- and then the stairs and then the maze.

She slammed the door shut ragefully. "You need to watch it," she hissed. "Disassemble that immediately!"

The hallway was silent.

It didn't matter, Terri thought. He wouldn't go in there. Her bright little star would be too suspicious. But who was to say the Hungry Thing couldn't switch the doors around? Or create other confusing layouts to trap the child? She would simply compress the hallway. Yet when Terri tried, she had no such luck. Gasping with exertion, she felt crushing anxiety. The Thing had not bucked her dominion like this in a long while. Was its need for immediate gratification really this strong? If so, why did Terri even exist? She reminded it once more, "I'm here to make good long term decisions. And you need to listen!" About 30 seconds went by, agonizingly slowly from Terri's perspective, and then at last the extra door vanished.

Terri decided she would still stand close to her door to listen for him around the time he normally came. The Thing could not be trusted, it appeared. Terri tried to quell the panic. She shouldn't need to be afraid of something so primitive when she was the brains behind this operation. "You need to remember, we're in this to survive, and this will help us do that. You will mess it all up. So don't take him." She didn't like how much emotion she had betrayed, but it was still true. After all, emotions evolved to tell you when something was good for you, right? "Don't take him," she pleaded again. The doorway did not reappear. But she would remain watchful.

Why would the Thing do this? There didn't even seem to be distance between them now! Was one of them hesitating? Could she be responsible for the new door spawning? 'Preposterous,' Terri told herself, but had Echo witnessed this event, it would have had some theories. First, it would have despaired over Terri's failure to recognize that she made the little boy feel disrespected- invalidating his experience of being marginalized and treating his personal beliefs and aspirations like a game- and why that would foster hesitation. Secondly, Echo would likely have pondered whether Terri was growing fearful of how emotionally invested she was in the child. One of the few things Miss McGyver feared was rejection; she feared that like death itself.

[X]

Alastor believed in Terri's story about the Hungry Thing in part because of what he remembered about that strange hallway, but he had additional reasons.

There were a few times when he had shown up in the basement and stopped, remained silent, and staked out as he listened to her upstairs, just playing the piano and crying. He wouldn't have known the songs 'I Dreamed a Dream' or 'When Somebody Loved Me' or 'Hurt' or 'Creep,' but he got the point. Sometimes she sang, but she always dissolved back into weeping. Accentuating the presumptive degree of suffering was the fact that he was never caught. In his experience, Aunt Terri had always known when Alastor was about to show up, so the fact that she didn't notice him could only mean that she was completely absorbed in her pain. This wasn't hard for him to believe because, like anything else musical she did, it pulled him in like a force of gravity or a strong tide and surrounded him, creating the impression of being trapped underwater, every movement impeded, escape prevented as waves crashed heavily on the surface. He could feel what she felt, and it was awful.

At first, Alastor couldn't explain to himself why he didn't immediately leave during these events. His typical approach would have been to give the person space and privacy. Not only that, but his own fear of negative emotion should by all means have driven him to run as fast as he could for safety. Eventually, Alastor realized he was emotionally affected by the sound (and feel) of her sorrow, and the way she expressed it secretively, in a way that was not altogether painful because...he identified with it. Alastor had essentially no one else he identified with in any way, so he derived something special from these instances. It made him feel more bonded to her, and also intensified how much he wanted to make this terribly lonely woman smile.

Furthermore, Alastor could tell that it wasn't an act meant to garner sympathy, despite the fact that Aunt Terri was clearly a decent actress. One of Alastor's first clues that Echo was not mindless, like the other puppets, was the time it had walked downstairs- possibly because it had been ordered away, or because it had decided to give Terri space itself, or maybe even because it was attempting to flee the pervasive misery in the atmosphere- and saw him. They froze and regarded each other silently for a moment. Then the puppet servant approached Alastor, put a hand on his shoulder, and gently guided him back toward the door. It opened it for him, patted his shoulder softly, then held a finger to its lips and 'shhhh'ed before it waved a friendly goodbye and closed the door. Based on the philosophy of keeping things light that Terri herself had voiced to him, Alastor had already assumed this, but Echo's behavior certified it. This was something Terri would not want him to know about; therefore it could not be a manipulation.

Another less extreme thing Al had noticed was the way Aunt Terri accepted gifts. Perhaps he should not have been so surprised, having seen that shrine the day he tried to find her eyes. Any time he brought her something, she would do her best to pretend it was expected. She always behaved as though everyone around her (although most of them were technically insects) thought she was a celebrity. But he could read the slight pauses or the brief taptaptap of her foot or fingers on a surface, showing she was sincerely pleased and excited, no matter how small the offering.

Once he tried to bring her flowers, but soon learned that Earth flowers wilted more quickly in the Other World. "Should I be concerned?" he asked, semi-jokingly, semi-seriously.

"You'll be fine," she assured him. "It's partly because they were technically already dead." Alastor wasn't sure how satisfied he was with this answer, and his eyes said so. "You're only here a few hours a day. You're fine, I promise." He was even less satisfied with that answer, but he didn't feel ill at all, so he let it go for the time being.

Alastor focused instead on the fact that Aunt Terri had, just for a moment, seemed quite forlorn at the sight of the wilting flowers, as though they symbolized something to her that he couldn't understand. She brushed it off by reminding him that she had plenty of flowers in her own garden, so this was sweet but largely unnecessary. This casual dismissal of his gift attempt only made Alastor feel challenged to improve upon it. He remembered the dried flowers he had seen in the trophy room, which had been loose, scattered, but decently preserved in their dried form. The next time he brought her flowers, he had dried them in his room already and carefully arranged and pressed them in a notebook in the form of a bouquet. When he showed them to her, her nose pricked up, and he assumed at the time that she had picked up on the smell of the flowers, which still retained a lot of their scent when dried; in fact, she had detected an unprecedented amount of affection. Terri's movie star routine noticeably lapsed. She had such a dazed, confused expression on her face and seemed breathless. But this only lasted a few seconds. Soon she was back, telling him he was a sweetheart, patting him on the head with a semi-dismissive attitude, pretending it was nothing or that it was expected. But he had seen it. No one could have missed it. When he snuck into the trophy room a few days later, out of curiosity, he saw that she had already framed it in glass...and he liked that. He really, really liked that.

Alastor also couldn't help but notice that Aunt Terri's world was so small and so dark. When he asked why, she explained that she didn't have the energy to build much more. She seemed concerned that he was bored, but he was worried about her. She assured him she had lived just fine this way for centuries, but that certainly didn't make him any happier. The thought he kept coming back to, hard as he tried to expel it, was the 'princess in a tower' motif. At least, he thought, when he offered to take her outside, she was happy to go as long as he was with her, unlike Bert. That being the case, he tried to get her to go out more often, hoping it would be good for her. He didn't like her staying inside her den in the dark so much of the time.

All things considered, there was no doubt in Alastor's mind that his Aunt Terri was lonely enough for the Hungry Thing, if such a beast existed, to consider her a favorite prey animal, so it was very lucky indeed that he had shown up. He knew she was the one who had pledged to protect him, but Alastor preferred things to be evenly balanced and fair when possible, and with each passing day, more and more of his determination to remain rational and self-preserving deteriorated when pitted against his growing fondness for the lonely sorceress. In fact, he was spellbound. He would never admit it out loud, but he was worried that she had won her game already, because Alastor knew, deep down, that he was willing to protect his Aunt Terri from anything.