The Culprit, Revealed

or alternatively: No Rest for the Wicked or Anyone Else

For reference: What Tucker and Sam know.

Frankie Young: age 11, supernatural affiliation unknown. Found March 15, 2019 (Ides of March) in Chicago suburbs. Likely killer: Nikolai Technus.

John "Johnny" Mallory: famous motorcyclist, supernatural affiliation unknown, suspected demon or other contract enabling superhuman feats. Found April 30, 2019 (Walpurgisnacht/Beltane Eve) in Chicago. Likely killer: Nikolai Technus.

Miyuki Ainara: mother of Kwan Ainara, supernatural affiliation unknown, suspected witch. Found June 21, 2019 (Litha/Summer Solstice) in her home in Amity Park. Likely killer: Nikolai Technus (no criminal record, no ghost (?), rule of 3).

Nikolai Technus: probably committed at least two ritual sacrifices, specific supernatural affiliation unknown. Stole millions in digital funds, serial killer. Found July 4, 2019 (13 days after Litha and 66 days until Walpurgisnacht) in a field in Amity Park. Killer: unknown.

Amber McClain: Vodun/voodoo dabbler. Dealt drugs to high schoolers. Found August 1, 2019 (Lughnasadh) in her apartment in Amity Park. Killer: unknown.

Tristan Moreland: Tucker's maternal cousin, psychic. Once arrested on mistaken eyewitness testimony for assault, later cleared of all charges. Attacked September 8, would likely have been found September 9, 2019 (significance unknown). Only known survivor, due to Tucker's intervention. Attacker: unknown, almost definitely the same as the killer of Technus, McClain, and Schulker.

Victor Schulker: supposedly a wechuge. Accused of murdering and cannibalizing two hikers in the Canadian Rockies. Found September 13, 2019 (Friday the 13th) in the tunnels behind Pins and Needles Bowling Alley in Amity Park's Westside Mall. Killer: unknown.

Last time on TFatLAotPU: At exactly 2:03 a.m., Danny sat up straight, yelped "Fuck!" and, accompanied by the sound of smashing glass, blipped out of existence entirely.

Sam and Tucker stared for a silent moment at the spot Danny had just ceased occupying. "...What?" said Tucker.

The living room was totally still. The lights were off but light from the TV penetrated fairly well into the corners. The slightly crushed pillow Danny had been leaning against was slowly regaining its form. Blue sofa, blue chairs, beige carpet, dark mahogany stairs. There was the door to the kitchen and the light switch on the wall. Tucker crossed to the switch quickly and flipped it on, and warm yellow light took over for the TV's dim blue in illuminating a perfectly ordinary living room, not a ghost to be seen. Which was the problem, really.

"Did...did he just get summoned?" Sam proposed hesitantly.

Another moment of silence.

Tucker's mental gears turned one notch clockwise with a devastating click. "...Is the ritual-whatever-thing happening tonight?!"

"Oh my god! What–what?!"

Tucker slapped himself in the face. When that didn't make things make sense, he slapped himself again, harder, and the realization that he probably looked ridiculous doing this jolted him out of his shock. "Shit, okay, we need to do something right now!"

"Like?"

"Uh, we–can we summon him back?"

Sam looked hopeful for half a second. "Wait, that's actually–oh, no, we don't know his runes. We'd need his blood for that."

"He was bleeding a ton! Did it get on the couch at all?"

They both set to studying the couch cushions intently. Some distant region of the surreal floaty space in Tucker's head quietly informed him that this, too, looked ridiculous.

It quickly became clear that there was no visible blood on the couch. Tucker groaned. "And he was holding onto the wet wipes–there's gotta be dried blood all over your house but Paulina–"

"And I don't even know any proven rituals for summoning something with blood. This is pointless."

Tucker was the strangest combination of tensed to the limit and very, very tired. With effort and some bouncing on his heels, he rallied. "Okay, alright, groovy. So do we know where they would have summoned him? Oh–Danny said it's easier in places where something supernatural already happened, they're like...charged or something."

Sam nodded, her eyes unfocused. "Yeah, I figured that. Well, there's the mall where they did it before, where they did the Schulker ritual too."

Tucker nodded slowly. "Yeah, that's probably, like, supercharged because the green-apocalypse came from there."

"Wait–but didn't the news say that's a no-go zone? It's too active, most of the remaining ghosts are, like, concentrated there. It's too dangerous for people. Plus, if I were doing a ritual, I wouldn't want to be somewhere where a bunch of ghosts could interfere."

"Okay, so probably less likely. Where else? Where did they do the other murder-ritual things?"

Sam frowned and pulled out her phone. "Well, there's Amber's apartment, which is still being treated as a crime scene, and...so's the field where they found Technus, I guess. Both of those were pretty close to Casper, actually."

"But aren't those murders kinda old? Does that charged significance thing, like, wear off, do you think?"

"I would think, but I don't know how long and anyway I'm completely guessing. I–is there anywhere we're missing?"

Tucker had a lightbulb moment. "Wait, Danny's a portal, right? Before the green-apocalypse wasn't he yacking up ghosts on the daily?"

"Oh! So his house would actually have more recent supernatural portal-y activity than the crime scenes!"

"I dunno, but…."

"It's on our way to school, right?"

"Yeah, we can go there first and then hit the crime scenes."

"Okay!" Sam clapped her hands briskly, halfway to the front door already. "...We don't have a car. Shit."

"There's bikes in the garage! You should be able to use Mom's." They reversed course.

It was in the garage that they noticed their next problem. The silhouette of a head passed the high windows set into the garage door, then another one, and it took a moment for Tucker to process before he registered even more movement beyond the heads and pulled Sam down to crouch against the garage door, below the sightline of anyone peering in. He said very calmly, "Sam, I think Paulina's back."

"Really? Shit!" Tucker could see the impulse to stand up and see for herself warring with the consciousness of how bad an idea that would be on her face. She settled for turning around to watch two anonymous head-shaped shadows moving and pausing through the light cast by the windows onto the concrete floor. The garage had room for two cars, as the Foleys actually shared it with the next apartment over. At the moment, however, neither family's vehicle was in, leaving a vast, empty space with nowhere to hide and a fringe of bikes, leaf blowers, exercise equipment, and assorted knickknacks lining the walls. Tucker supposed that was one reason to be grateful for the last remnants of the green sky effect–it made the nights murky in a way they rarely were otherwise, swallowing the moonlight that usually turned this garage into a stark, well-lit bluish wasteland. The darkness now was denser, more enveloping and soft.

"What is she doing here?" Tucker hissed.

"Why did we think she'd given up in the first place?" Sam retorted.

Tucker thought for a moment. Then he felt like dramatically slapping his hand to his forehead; he settled for massaging the bridge of his nose. "Oh. Of course it's not just random escalation; she chose tonight because she's trying to keep us occupied until the ritual is over!"

"She was probably also trying to confirm Danny's location before he got summoned, and keep everyone who saw him disappear under control after," Sam added thoughtfully, lowering her volume even further when one of the shadows moved in a vaguely suspicious way. "'Cause even if someone else knew what was going on and had an interest in stopping it, they wouldn't know it was happening tonight unless they knew Danny got yanked. It's not an occult holiday."

So the enemy was actually planning ahead.

Wow, they were really screwed, weren't they.

The shadow was moving again. Very quietly, Sam whispered, "Your backyard has a side exit, right?"

It took Tucker a second to realize what she was implying. "It–yeah? But–"

"Can we get onto the next street from there? Cut through your back neighbor's?"

"...We'd have to hope there's no one on the next street, it's–not terrible, I guess, but how are we going to get the bikes into the house without them noticing?"

Sam, crouching so her face was just below his head height, snorted quietly and offered him a wry smile. The barest hint of moonlight caught the tips of her stray hairs and glinted off the whites of her eyes, and her whisper wavered with self-deprecating laughter. "I mean, what can we do, besides just go for it?"

Tucker started to run a hand over his hair, but the motion turned into rubbing his drooping right eye instead. Then, realizing that telegraphing tiredness was only making him more tired, he slapped himself on both cheeks, very lightly and quietly. Where was his beret? He'd feel much more up to businesslike if he had it with him. "I mean, we could–" He scanned his surroundings once again. The garage remained just as empty. "Shit. Yeah, I guess–" there really wasn't any clever way to accomplish this. "Okay. Okay, let's do it."

"Are we gonna run? Or just walk fast so they won't notice sudden motion?"

Tucker considered for a minute, ignoring the way he was starting to feel his heartbeat in his chest again. He was getting used to the sensation, almost, and yet somehow he hated it more every time it happened. "...I vote walk, but quick. Stick to the wall, try really hard not to bump the bikes into anything. You know which one's my mom's?"

"White, leather handlebars?"

"Yeah." He breathed in deeply, eyeing his own objective with narrow eyes. Leaning against the wall in front of his mom's bike was his own blockier green one. Both bikes were facing the garage door, so they'd have to grab the handlebars, kick up the kickstands, and wheel them 180 degrees into the middle of the garage to face the door to the Foleys' apartment. One of the two of them–Sam, probably, her bike was closer to it–would open the door, and then they'd both have to get their bikes up the two small steps into the house as quickly and quietly as possible. While at any moment, any one of the people outside could idly glance in the windows of the garage and notice them standing in plain view inside. This was going to be nerve-wracking.

He eyed Sam questioningly. Was there anything else to figure out? After a moment, it became clear that neither of them could think of anything, and for another moment they hesitated. Then Sam nodded, and Tucker nodded back, and they broke cover and started toward the bikes.

Far too slowly, they eased the kickstands off the ground, Tucker cursing in his head when his shoe slipped off twice to no effect. Far too slowly, they wheeled their bikes in a semicircle, cringing at the soft and regular clicking sounds of the wheels, and Sam made sure Tucker had a steadying hand on her bike's back wheel before she let go to pull open the door to the apartment proper. Luckily, they'd left the lights off, so all that could give them away was the motion. Neither of them had looked at the windows this whole time. There was no point. If anyone happened to look, that was it.

Wrestling the bikes up the small set of steps was an ordeal in itself. Tucker's heart stopped momentarily when he thought his handlebars wouldn't fit through the doorway, but then he remembered that turning them to the side was a thing bikes could do; it just made everything harder, and he had to lift the front tire a few inches off the ground to make it in the end. The back tire bounced off the steps in a way that jostled his whole body and seemed, to his ears, unbearably loud. But he did it, and wheeled his bike around the corner of the short hallway, and then he speedwalked back to hold the door for Sam in turn. Halfway through her struggle up the steps he realized she wouldn't be able to get past with him standing inside and holding the door that opened outwards, so he had to squeeze around the bike to get back into the garage and hold it from the other end. It was, to summarize, the most stressful absolutely mundane task Tucker had ever performed.

Sam lifted her front tire and dragged her bike up the rest of the stairs. Bump, bump, bump.

Hope started to bubble up between Tucker's ribs, ticking whatever gland triggered the slightly manic laughter reflex. Were they actually going to get away with this? Just before guiding the door all the way closed behind him, he snuck one final peek at the garage door windows.

The tops of three heads were visible through the dim, blurry glass. He thought he saw the side of Paulina's face. No one looked.

Tucker shut the door and restrained himself from whooping like his uncle watching a really exciting football game. He settled for punching the air and running the last couple of steps down the hallway to Sam, whisper-yelling, "Fuck yeah!"

"Let's go!"

~(*0*)~

Through the house to the back door they wheeled the bikes, wincing at the pale grey tracks they left behind on the carpet in the living room. The glass sliding door revealed that there was no one in the small backyard, shadowed upon shadow by tall rooftops and the neighbors' trees. They were out and sliding the door closed behind them before their eyes could really adjust, the grass crunching softly beneath their feet as they fumbled to the back fence and the latched gate that was set into it. Or they tried to find the gate, anyway. It should have been right across the lawn in the left corner, Sam knew from long experience, but she patted the fence for a full thirty seconds before realizing she was in the wrong area entirely, the right side of the yard. She traced her way along the fence to the left, further than she'd thought she'd need to, and then felt a jolt of unease when she looked up and realized that she was in the left side yard? Somehow? But she didn't remember turning the corner….

"Sam?" Tucker spoke up from behind her. "Uh, what are you doing?"

"I know where the gate is, Tucker!"

"You just walked right by it, though," he said slowly. He walked closer to the fence. "And it looks kinda...weird? Woah." He staggered a step back, putting a hand to his temples. "The heck...Is there some kind of spell going on?"

Sam squinted, but she still couldn't make out any dark hinges. Tucker seemed to know exactly where the gate was, though. Huh. Apparently his second sight didn't just apply to ghostliness. "Maybe Paulina put some kind of ward up around the house, since we snuck away last time…."

"Do you know how to get rid of it?"

Sam was abruptly reminded of how she really hated pop quizzes. Her gut churned at the unexpected pressure. "Uh, I—I do know a couple simple spells for getting rid of boundaries? But I think they're meant more for, like, metaphorical boundaries."

Tucker reached toward the fence again and then retracted his hand, wincing. "Yowch. Well, you might as well try."

Sam stepped forward hesitantly, mind racing. Should she use the invocation one? What should she call on? Did she even remember that one right? She also knew some spells for countering curses. Could a ward be a curse? What was the technical definition of a curse?

Well, the worst that could happen was it not working. Or, y'know, she could accidentally sell her soul or something. Anyway, if it was about belief, didn't she just have to delude herself hard enough to succeed? Sam's experience faking it until she made it, until it became true, was the stuff of legend. She tossed a pinch of sage at the fence and recited, approximately, the first spell that came to mind.

And there were the hinges on the gate, clear as day. From the other side of the house, there came a shriek and a thud. "Paulie?" someone's voice could be heard saying faintly, sounding concerned. "Are you okay? Paulie!"

Tucker and Sam exchanged a wide-eyed look.

"...Seriously? I got that one off Yahoo Answers."

~(*0*)~

Tucker really hoped Sam hadn't just murdered a girl with sorcery. It seemed unlikely, at least; all she'd done was take down a barrier. Tucker tried to grin reassuringly at her as he pushed open the gate and they wheeled their bikes out into the alley between the two houses directly behind the Foleys' apartment. "Looks like Paulie underestimated your memory for dumb stuff you found on the internet," he joked quietly, throwing a leg over the seat. They started pedaling, wheeling around almost-invisible potholes in the dark.

"She should've tried harder to jump me into her little coven in middle school," Sam said with a smirk.

"'Jumped into' a coven? Is that the proper sorcerous terminology, O Mighty One?"

"Can it, my glorified magician's assistant."

"That's fair. I could absolutely pull off a leotard."

"Sequins?"

"Even better."

A pause. "What are we even doing, Danny could be being sacrificed to the death gods or something right now," Sam exclaimed in tones of wonder.

"Agreed." They picked up speed, and further conversation was lost in unsynchronized panting.

This did not, however, stop Tucker's mind from drifting from his pedaling to two particularly urgent themes. For one thing, how the hell was Sam so fast; he could keep up without, like, dying, but every few minutes he was jolted out of his thoughts by the realization that she'd pulled a few yards too far ahead and he had to put on a burst of speed to close the gap back to a reasonable margin. At least the exercise helped him bury the steady, buzzing panic deeper and deeper under his esophagus with each new push.

Additionally, Tucker couldn't stop returning to all the things that were unclear or uncertain about this whole situation. Eventually, they sort of clumped together, coalescing in his thoughts under broader and broader headings, until he was looking at four major questions with a multitude of spindly, branching possibilities wriggling out from each and knotting it together with the rest. Four fundamental mysteries.

First, and most obviously, who was the killer Tucker had met in the library? This one was at the center, tangled hopelessly with all three of the others.

Secondly, how were they able to summon Danny without his runes? (Did they know him from Chicago? Did they somehow have his blood? Were they just a better occultist than Paulina, Sam, or Danny and knew another way to do it? Was there some other ghost helping them do it? If so, had the Amitypocalypse summoning really been an accident or distraction, or had they been summoning inhuman help? Were they even human? They'd seemed human in the library, but Tucker's senses in this area, while more finely tuned than most other people's, had certainly failed him before.)

Thirdly, how had they gotten Paulina to help Amber's murderer?

Last of all, why had they ended up choosing those four victims?

This final one felt the most pressing, because even if Sam's criminal record theory was true, the victims varied wildly in the nature and degree of their crimes. Schulker and Technus were both serial killers, and if Tristan had done what everyone had thought he'd done it would've been serious, but as far as anyone knew Amber McClain had just sold drugs, and usually not even hard drugs. Then, of course, there was the question of how the killer had even known about those four specifically. The only obvious connection between them was that Amber and Tristan had both gone to Casper. Schulker didn't even live in the U.S., although one of the articles about him said he'd made similar visits to the one he'd met his demise on often, for hunting. Apparently he'd belonged to some sort of club thing.

The questions piled on questions, but there was no answer except the burning in Tucker's thighs and the indifferent night air in his face. His train of thought circled and circled like the pedals beneath him. Finally, it was derailed by a sharp yelp from Sam when he almost ran her over as she slowed down ahead of him. They had made it to Danny's place.

Tucker noticed two things in rapid succession.

First of all, the lights were on, and there were voices coming from inside the house, faintly audible even out here on the street. Two or three voices, and only one of them male–the distinctive rumble of Danny's dad, recognizable even though Tucker had only heard it once over the phone. The Fentons, who Danny had given the impression had rarely been home since the start of the greenout, were in. It seemed unlikely anyone was doing covert blood sacrifices in the bathroom while Mrs. Fenton gestured wildly with a coffee cup in front of the kitchen window curtains.

Second of all, the thing that used to be Amber McClain was standing just outside the light cast by a streetlamp, six feet beyond where Sam had brought her bike to a standstill.

It moved, and the fine hairs on the back of Tucker's neck that he'd thought sweat had plastered down stood up again. What he'd taken for the sickly combination of lactic acid buildup and anxiety was swiftly reinterpreted, with unfortunate clarity, as his nightmare sense yelling at him for the last five minutes.

"Heh, I didn't actually think about what we would do if they were actually home. Do we just...skip it, I guess?" Sam said, nudging down her kickstand with her eyes on the lit windows, oblivious to the distorted thing walking very quietly closer and closer to her on the sidewalk. "Tucker?"

Tucker made a strangled little noise. Sam whipped around to regard him over the back of her bike, just as what used to be Amber McClain stepped right by her, no more than two feet away. "Tucker, what's wrong, is there something here?"

In an instant, as if they'd just been waiting to be signalled by the suppressed hysteria in her tone, Tucker's nebulous fear, anger, and instincts all coalesced under his shoulder blades and rushed as one up his spine to his brain. He shoved his hand into his pocket and snatched out a clammy fistful of sage, holding it out at arm's length. "Don't come any closer!"

He almost didn't believe it: The thing stopped dead.

Tucker sat stunned for a minute, and then hurriedly pulled his leg over the bike to dismount, not moving his eyes off the thing or his arm from its warding position. In his haste, his lower leg got caught on the seat, forcing him to hop backward awkwardly and ultimately let the whole thing fall to the asphalt with an uncomfortably loud crash. He kept moving back with the momentum, putting the bike and a few more steps between him and the silent girl-like thing.

Only when there were a good ten feet between them did he stop moving, eyeing the thing while staying on the balls of his feet. In his peripheral vision, he could see Sam backing away as well, though not at quite the right angle and dragging her bicycle with her. She couldn't seem to decide between watching Tucker himself and searching the air in the general direction of his gaze.

He let out a shaky breath. This was one of the murderer's victims; this one should be on their side. But then, by that logic Schulker should've been on their side, and that theory had been rigorously disproven. And this one had attacked him in his own home and left him propped up on the couch with the Channel 8 News, a new fear of dark hallways, and a terrifying gap in his memory.

He stared, heart pumping, senses screaming. The ghost just stood there, looking like a woman in her early twenties, wearing a tank top and ripped denim in October and the angriest eyes he'd ever seen.

"...What do you want, Amber?" he gritted out shakily, when it became apparent the ghost was not going to initiate conversation. Danny had said ghosts were weaker if they still thought like they were living human people, right? Did that mean if he reminded it of its living, human name, he could make it act more human, think more clearly? If it could actually think?

The ghost raised its hand idly to waist level, and Tucker flinched. It looked like it was concentrating, as its lips moved normally at first, then increasingly erratically, until they blurred and for a moment juddered out of existence entirely. It whipped its hand to the side and made an irate chainsaw noise that made Tucker extremely queasy.

Sam was asking him a question, but he couldn't afford to let his focus drift for a moment. His arm was still straight out in front of him, trembling with the effort. "A-are you trying to tell me something? Can–can you write it, or something? Sam, get behind me."

It didn't show any sign of understanding his suggestion, instead taking a quick step forward that he immediately matched with a step back. At this point it was standing over his bike, abandoned in the middle of the street, and he was most of the way to the opposite sidewalk and the thick trees beyond, soon joined by Sam holding her own handful of sage and a–was that the copper wire evil eye? From the car? Don't look away.

The ghost didn't seem capable of answering him. Like before, she mostly seemed...frustrated. So incredibly, inexpressibly, all-consumingly, unquenchably, unimaginably frustrated and angry.

Tucker paused.

...What had she wanted last time? Had she gotten it, or accomplished it? He tried to think back, to the awful night she'd stolen six hours from his recollection as well as his sense of safety in his own home. She'd been able to talk then, after some effort. What had she said back then?

You

will

re

r

me

"I do!" he burst out, wrenching himself out of that memory as quickly as possible. "I remember you! We know who you are! You're Amber McClain! There was an obituary, there were articles, you–we're trying to expose whoever made you like this!"

No response. She wasn't looking at him, instead shifting and blurring in place with little cracking flowing movements, head moving like she was talking to herself. A low humming frequency began to tickle the insides of Tucker's lungs.

Okay, he reasoned, breathing heavily, so that's not what she needed. So there's something else. What–she talked before that, didn't she? He cast his memory further back, before that final rush across the screaming, twisting, dislocated space. She'd talked normally, for a moment. Almost human, even closer to the natural tones and cadences of the living than Danny in his ghost form. What did she–

"You have to remember. You need to remember me."

Huh.

Those were two different requests, weren't they? One personal and desperate, warped with longing and the terrible, terrible fear of doubled oblivion. Of ceasing to exist in the minds of others, as well as in the flesh. It had overwhelmed her, pulled whatever tattered trail of cognitions she was capable of off course. But what about the first request?

Slowly, Tucker lowered his fistful of sage. Beside him, Sam gave him an incredulous look before retracting her arm as well, but only to her chest, not all the way down to her side. He took a deep breath. "What else do you want me to remember?"

Amber's eyes, which had been looking somewhere over his shoulder, suddenly snapped down to meet his. Red, red rims. She looked like all she did was cry.

And then she closed the distance between them in an instant, too fast to see, too fast for any alarm to even process in his brain. She looked straight into his eyes from three inches away, her own eyes dark brown and serious and far too human for the shifting, indistinct pseudo-flesh that surrounded them.

Softly, with only the slightest phone-line distortion in her voice, she whispered, "Remember."

And Tucker did.

~(*0*)~

(Who could've known about Danny's abilities, and been able to summon him without his runes?)

"I've been almost caught like eight times since I got here. There was Mikey, there was that blonde girl and the Asian guy from my Chem class, there was the actual janitor…"

"I cut my hand on a broken beaker in Chem and bled all over my lab partner. I hope he was able to find a change of clothes."

(Who attacked Tristan in the library?)

"...definitely seemed taller."

"The guy was built like a linebacker."

(Who could've convinced Paulina to help Amber's murderer?)

Discomfort. She'd seemed unsure of herself.

Amber opened, Paulina opened the opened the door and smiled.

(Who had possible connections to all four victims of the second killer?)

"I was—good friends with Amber McClain. The, the fifth victim. She was my assistant coach in club soccer, and she got me and my friends into parties…."

"Uhh, Foley. We just wanted to say...sorry about what happened to Tristan. He's a pretty great guy, and he's thrown some epic parties."

"Kwan and Star's dads are both part of like, a hunting club."

(And Technus was the man who murdered his mother.)

~(*0*)~

…

…..

Tucker breathed slowly. In, out, assimilating the information, questioning it, turning it upside down and inside out and still inevitably coming to the same conclusion. He almost didn't notice as Amber's ghost took her fingertips off his temples (hadn't even noticed her putting them on), stepped back, and disappeared entirely. The pinging sensation in the back of his head chimed steadily onward.

"Holy shit, Sam," he said, wide-eyed. "I think it's Kwan."