[July 1907, New Orleans]
Louisiana was a melting pot unique to the South, comprising inter-marrying settlers of an especially wide range of races and ethnicities. Compared to neighboring areas, laws allowed much broader freedoms to citizens of different heritages and genders. Many houses on the main drag in New Orleans, for instance, were owned by women, both white and black. This culture was rejected by baffled newcomers from the American states. Gradually, following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the region's laws and social practices restructured to match the more stringent class system dictated by race and gender that was entrenched elsewhere.
The cultural shift occurred over decades, yet felt like a sudden shock of cold water in the face. Just like that, the culture familiar to Bert and Camille's grandparents no longer existed. Although they hadn't quite lived it, both heard stories and retained vague childhood memories evidencing the tail end of this era. Particularly for Camille, this created a powerful, enraging sense of being wrongly disinherited.
Their rejection of the injustice influenced questionable decision making. In their defense, it was entirely out of love. Why had Bert expected his wealthy socialite family to tolerate this union, just because it was marginally more accepted two generations ago, or that his own status could outweigh deeply-embedded prejudice? Why had Camille believed she could evade the stress inevitable to this relationship, just because her black mother and white father had managed slightly more easily decades ago?
At least she still had her beloved childhood home—a large boarding house Camille inherited from her strong-willed, free immigrant grandmother and mother, who'd lived through the war in Haiti. They'd been so grateful to find a better life, only to encounter the devastation of the Civil War, which ruined nearly everyone. There was a heart-breaking number of homeless, and you couldn't attract renters from a pool of people who couldn't afford rent. At the tail end of their mortgage, when they struggled with final payments, the bank hovered mercilessly like a vulture, ready to reclaim the property. Bert's family had essentially paid him to go away. It was a large severance sum, but not infinite, and he spent a chunk paying off Camille's house. Of the money's possible uses, ensuring they had a home and rooms to rent was a good one.
But if long-term tenants were already hard to find, they also grew harder to keep because of intensifying family drama. The financial situation looked dire.
The overall turn of events was harder for Bert to cope with. Grittier Camille had come up on low to average means and had braced herself for things getting worse. Plus, even through hard times, she had the unwavering support of her relatives. Bert, meanwhile, had just been dropped out of a skyrise into a dumpster, and to be clear, much more painful than being disinherited was being disowned. In theory, finding work shouldn't have been difficult. He was a skilled engineer who'd partnered in his family's immensely successful business on the cutting edge of advances in farm equipment. But there wasn't a huge job market for engineers in the half of the country driven more by farming than industry—outside of farm equipment manufacture, over which his estranged family held a near-complete regional monopoly. What he could find, he struggled to keep. Raised to place too much value on status, Bert assumed others were judging him even when they weren't, and couldn't manage his temper if anyone did dare laugh at him, his wife, or his son. His frequent outbursts made it hard to hold a job for long.
While Bert often succumbed to despair, Camille remained the bull-headed, hard-working, yet everlastingly quick-to-laugh, mischievous nymph he loved. Her resilience was impressive. She suffered a bout of melancholia for a few months after the birth of her son, then seemed to bounce right back into shape. For a while. They had problems. Bert had become embittered, and often seemed as though he'd grown to resent Camille. They fought more and more frequently. Then he drank so he could forget the fighting. Then, of course, he'd get too drunk and start another fight. Rinse, repeat. It took its toll on both, but Camille must have hidden her pain until it boiled over.
A slow, insidious deterioration occurred over the following four years that Bert failed to notice in his boozy haze, but from his perspective it seemed that overnight all the light left her eyes. She couldn't sleep at night, and fell into microsleeps during the day, murmuring nonsense as she dreamed with her eyes open. Absent for unexplained periods of time, she'd reappear seeming exhausted. She loved her son immeasurably, yet Camille now barely had the energy to look at her child, let alone engage.
Reportedly, Al was the one to find her with her head in the oven. He was told this, but didn't remember, although he should have been old enough to retain the memory, at 4.5 years. Only 3 years ago. He just...couldn't. Actually, he barely remembered anything before her death, neither the bad nor the good. Perhaps that was best. He'd rather not imagine how he'd feel otherwise, judging by his father, who wallowed in guilt and grief after his partner's suicide.
Despite being crippled by negative emotions, Bert seemed on high alert for any signs of unhappiness from the boy. Understandable, after failing to notice his wife's fatal depression. Unfortunately, he only expressed anxiety by irritably heckling his child. 'If you let yourself look sad, the bastards know they've won!' was a favorite. The double standard wouldn't have bothered Alastor so much had Bert pretended there wasn't one, but nope. Al was expected to be perpetually cheerful for Bert, but his father barely cracked a smile once a week. Eventually, Alastor stopped regularly trying to get his father to smile or interact, reverting to the bare minimum that seemed polite.
Once in a blue moon, he exerted more effort. Like today—his parents' anniversary. To help with Bert's likely hangover, Al turned up that morning with coffee in hand.
"Where did that come from?" Bert asked.
"Brazil?" his son responded, grinning. No laugh was earned. "I made it."
Bert thought of the cups of water Alastor sometimes left out for his dehydrated drunk ass, for which Bert was always too embarrassed to thank him. He should at least graciously accept the coffee, even though he had no idea how this would taste. He accepted the mug and sipped, mouth immediately puckering. Ahhhh, well, maybe super-concentrated espresso was exactly what he needed. Bert politely drank, mildly wincing.
Al looked out the window. "It's a nice day. You should go outside. You haven't gone hunting in a while." Bert had taken it up more regularly, since it saved on grocery bills. He enjoyed taxidermy as well, but no new animal pieces had appeared on the shelves in a long time. More importantly, there wasn't much meat left over from the last hunting trip. But mostly, Al aimed to trick his father into leaving the house to ameliorate the doom spiral. "Maybe we could go?"
"Didn't think you were interested."
Al shrugged. "Haven't gone yet." Silence. "Well, you should go outside for something."
Bert looked out of the corner of eye and just barely smirked. "Yeah? Maybe I'll...go out to get milk. I may be a while." This was one of Bert's favorite jokes, and as soon as Alastor was old enough to understand, he genuinely laughed sometimes. Bert was stunned at first. Maybe the kid didn't really get it? But no. The bright little boy appreciated all sorts of complex humor he shouldn't have been able to yet, particularly that sad things and mean things could still be funny. Seeing they were both amused, Bert kept telling the joke. If the boy was laughing, what was the harm?
"What about the radio?" Al asked.
Bert shrugged. "Eh. Not much to pick up."
The new invention had sparked Bert's interest. When he had nothing better to do (read as: unemployed) and could summon the energy, he worked on building the ham radio system on the back deck. Alastor normally sat with him while he did this. It was one of few things in recent memory that made his father smile, and he was curious about it. A few weeks ago, they'd finally gotten it up and running, but mostly it received dispatches from ships and trains. Commercial broadcasts weren't yet a norm. Some ham radio enthusiasts broadcast more interesting things, but there weren't many of them. Most folks lacked the patience or access to parts to build a system.
Al retired to the kitchen to regroup, then returned for one last try. He cartoonishly rose slowly from behind the side of his father's armchair. Sipping coffee, Bert miserably eyed his son's eager grin, wishing there was some price he could pay to prevent an impending horrible joke. "Oh, Jesus."
"Hey, dad. What do you call a flower before it opens?"
Bert's eye ticked slightly. "What?"
"What do you call a flower before it opens?"
Bert braced himself. "A bud."
"I LOVE IT WHEN YOU CALL ME BUD!"
Half sarcastically, half seriously, Bert cried, "For god's sake, get out!" This child either had no social skills or else was so good at reading people that he knew exactly how to annoy them; Bert wasn't sure which. He wanted to be entertained just as badly as Al wanted to entertain him, but everything sucked, and he couldn't contain his irritation through the pounding of his head.
"You know," Alastor wheedled. "You could smile occasionally."
"Why should I, when I'm stuck with you?!" The line delivery was intended to mimic 'Maybe I'll go out for milk'—more of a legitimate mean joke than a barb. But passing through the filter of Bert's headache tinged it with hostility.
Alastor was silent. Bert was silent.
Al raised his eyebrows, harrumphed, and walked angrily back to his room to grab something. The child was determinedly looking up toward the ceiling with only his eyes, without tilting his head back— a trick Bert himself had learned as a small child to keep from crying. Crap. He sat back in the armchair, sipped more coffee, then sent the cup hurtling to the ground with a smash in a sudden spike of frustration. The back door slammed to match the intensity of the mug's shatter. Crap!
Anyway.
If Bert's heckling trained a habit of perpetual smiling into Al, other factors cemented it. He was desperately afraid of sadness, too, although he couldn't verbalize that. To keep his smiles genuine, he became an expert at entertaining himself. Alastor also noticed most folks found his default smiling expression unsettling, which had the unplanned but appreciated side effect of people leaving him the hell alone. Which was usually ideal. Usually. It would've been nice to have one friend.
He appreciated the stray cat. It was mangy and sometimes moody, but it ate the mice that would otherwise nibble Al's food, and when the cat felt amicable, Al enjoyed its head buts, gentle play-biting, and stints of sitting alongside him while purring. Plus, it gave him a face to talk to. Otherwise he talked to himself—mildly embarrassing.
Currently, Al sat alone on the back deck on the humid summer day, near the radio system. Whatever voices he could find were better than none, and best of all, he could turn them off whenever he wanted.
Alastor also used this time to examine something curious he'd found in his mother's belongings. At some point she'd developed the hobby of making the dolls. It was around the same time she'd gotten more heavily into the voodoo...and the folklore...and started hanging the crucifixes, although she'd been mildly religious at best. The first few things had seemed fueled by intellectual curiosity and artistic appreciation. The last was clearly bizarre, drawing attention to the others having become inexplicable, rabid obsessions. Since Camille had fallen so ill and seemed worried about tragedy lurking around every corner, Alastor's father suspected the dolls were protective gris-gris.
Al could access the materials she'd used to make them and the books she'd used to research. Could he create a Camille doll and try to conjure or communicate with her? While sifting through boxes and drawers, a smaller, locked box in a large trunk distracted him from the goal. Alastor leaned into the wave of curiosity. He certainly had nothing better to do; this would be a fun little project. A while later, he stumbled upon a key mingled in with some items in a jewelry box. It fit. The smaller box contained a doll replica of himself. It was larger than the gris-gris, which were tiny enough to fit in a pocket. Maybe it was intended as a gift? She must have made it shortly before she died, when he was an older toddler, because it looked remarkably like he did now. More curious still was what it wore looped on a string around its neck—another key, with a button-shaped head. Alastor suspected the key was the most important part of the gift, but hadn't yet figured out what it unlocked.
He was trying to solve this mystery when the black cat appeared. Al pss-pss'ed and held out his fist for head bumps, which he received. He petted it, and noticed the cat was fixated on something nearby. A bird or mouse? Nope. It pounced on the doll.
"Hey! No! Bad! My mother made that!" The cat's tail bristled, but it wasn't deterred. Hissing through closed teeth, it continued dragging the doll by the leg, with the apparent goal of hoarding it under the house. Alastor's eyes narrowed. He and the cat watched each other, perfectly still, before the little boy pounced. The cat tried to turn, but the doll slowed it down. Al yanked its tail, causing it to yowl and flee into a bush. "You forced me to play dirty! Go hunt something that makes sense!"
This. Day. Al leaned against the side of the house near the radio with a flat expression. Suddenly, the system popped and crackled. A train coming in?
Garbled voices emerged. A male voice narrated: "...radio has told us... behind the moon... cares not for our affairs." Garble, garble. Now a female voice, in French, said, "J'ai peur de sa puissance. Cela peut nous détruire tous." Garble, garble. The little boy listened, fascinated, as, years before commercial broadcasts, the ham radio played snippets of songs in unfamiliar styles. Broken, inconsistent in volume and clarity, and intermingled with heavy warping and static—as if too far away—came segments we'd recognize from 'Bad Romance,' 'Lone Digger,' 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,' 'Mister Sandman,' and 'Jeepers Creepers.' Then 30 long seconds of nothing, but Al waited patiently, eagerly, for another miracle.
She was satisfied with the reaction. This achieved the intended effect. Her ability to pull data backward and forward in time was limited and flawed (as Alastor noticed, she often couldn't get a good connection), but she loved using music that hadn't yet been written. It was more attention-grabbing, and sometimes created the false impression that she'd written it herself.
Finally, a new song played, and the connection stabilized. Clear as a bell now was a woman's smooth, hypnotizing voice singing in French. We'd recognize a jazz arrangement of 'Someday My Prince Will Come,' but to Al it was completely novel. Bits of French were strewn in deliberately. She knew it would feel familiar, perhaps even comforting, because he'd heard it as a child, but that he'd understand only pieces, building intrigue. The song changed again to a big band arrangement of 'Once Upon a Dream.' Although he couldn't make the connection himself, she couldn't resist using these songs, knowing he'd read those fairy tales so many times.
Al lied on his back, looking up with a peaceful expression at the upside down image of the radio system. Part of him knew he should be unsettled, even worried about hallucinating, but the music was so beautiful...
[X]
Of the many prey she stalked near many doors around the world, this child gave Mother the highest hopes for a fun challenge and a big prize.
As a creature that required respect as sustenance, a few variations sufficed. Fear kept her going and was the easiest to come across but the least nutritious. Deference or awe was an improvement, and ideally, she'd have liked proper worshippers, but it seemed less and less likely as years passed. (How offensive—even those despicable cat vermin had worshippers once!) The best, most sustaining food was love.
Mother could play a short game and a long game.
She could feed on reactions of respect or terror, but those were scraps. An improvement was terrorizing a victim and eating their whole fearful soul quickly. Still not ideal—it was short term fuel. It was better to entrap, so as to continuously farm fear and deference long-term. She trapped souls by taking the eyes. Feeding on fear long-term was fine. However, further symbolically covering the eyes—buttons worked, with the added benefit of being cute!—helped sustain minimal amounts of more positive emotions, like affection or awe, for as long as possible by emotionally 'blinding' prey to the abusiveness of her behavior. This second method allowed her to consume souls slowly, sometimes storing them for years in case of dry spells. She called these her 'rations.' Often she housed a strange mish mosh of newer and older rations because she ate them not in order but based on how much love or fear they had left to give. Only when they provided no more nutrition than meager scraps of fear, spoiling to hatred, did she dispose of them for good.
Mother had played this way for an immeasurable amount of time because the best version of the long game always seemed out of reach. Attempts at a sustained, positive relationship with a living human always ended in abysmal failure. That, in theory, was the dream—keeping a victim alive for long periods of time after earning their genuine affection. This provided the best nutritional value with added food security, due to the possibility of grandchildren. Plus, added bonuses of a hunting buddy and actual company. It also created a challenging game with a lot of complexity, which Mother craved; she was intellectually deteriorating in this void. If this situation were possible, Mother thought, she'd be thrilled to find a candidate from this time period. If her ability to pull data from the future hadn't failed her, this was around the time the humans started making things she'd unironically be willing to put up on the fridge.
The piano played itself in the drawing room as one of Mother's simple duplicate puppets set the table in the dining room and a second, conscious puppet—powered by a ration called Echo—assisted her in her bedroom. A conscious entity was needed for this task, which required a second set of 'eyes.' Mother was trying to mold her corporeal form into this outrageous corset contraption the humans invented. She cheated by redistributing her body mass, but it remained complicated to pull off in a realistic-looking way. This spoke volumes, she admitted, about the determination of mortal females. "Do I look like that Cliffords woman yet?" she wheezed, referring to the popular Gibson Girl model, as the puppet tightened the corset.
Echo was the soul—so old as to be of indeterminable sex or gender—of an adult victim who'd bought itself time by agreeing to act as a servant. It may have preferred a more androgynous puppet body, but bending to its mistress's preference, usually undulated between a puppet maid or butler form. Echo usually told Mother what she wanted to hear and and accepted her bullshit in stride, or made recommendations extremely gently, meagerly rebelling only through sarcasm and passive aggression. "You are vying to be this boy's mother, correct?"
"Quit that now."
"Quit what?"
"I don't have to turn around to know you're looking at me like I'm some kind of sordid pervert." Mother swiftly kicked backward, hitting the puppet in the chest. "Listen, Echo, Mother is every little boy's first love. I need to look beautiful."
It was challenging sometimes to take statements like this seriously, but Echo had seen Mother's methods lure prey time and again. Catching prey was another story, but at luring she was undoubtedly talented. Right now, Mother zoned in on this child's susceptibility to music, which suited her just fine. Music was one of her great loves as well. This selection of songs should make it clear that someone was calling him, and he only had to find them.
"How long do you think it'll take him to figure out what the key fits?" Echo asked.
"Honestly, not long at all, which is why you need to hurry it up."
As a woman who'd originally been hesitant about the idea of children, it was ironic that they were now her primary prey. But it just made sense. They were easier to entice and manipulate and were more able to love unconditionally, at least for a while. This being the case, she'd learned a lot about them, through observing a large number of test subjects and by using her power to pull data from books that would eventually be written on child development. This child was the result of breeding done right. Exceedingly clever, surpassing most major cognitive milestones of the average 7.5-year-old by a long shot.
"He's not only bright, he's very bored. He'll start searching any time now to entertain himself."
"I suppose I see why he's bored. How many times can you read the same set of standard fairy tales?"
Mother huffed. "They aren't boring, they're my scriptures."
"I still don't understand why you call them that, ma'am. They don't exactly portray you in the most flattering light."
"You know, it's funny, I've noticed other things' scriptures don't always portray them in a flattering light, yet they still have followers," Mother noted bitterly.
Preoccupied by mortals' religious texts, she'd allowed the word-of mouth legends to persist. This spoke to her need for attention by any means necessary, Echo thought, since the tales were initiated by escaped prey. (Mother's success to failure ratio was quite low—many escaped—but not for all the humans knew, she reassured herself.) Consequently, the stories caricatured her harshly. This was tolerable, as they also impressed or frightened listeners with dramatic descriptions of her miracles and schemes. Plus, some instances of false reporting became blessings in disguise. One pair of humans spreading the stories were lawyers, who inevitably portrayed her making well-defined deals and adhering to the rules. How kind, leading others to assume she'd play fair! No one had put together that the fairy godmother character and child-abductor character were the same. Fabulous. She still had the element of surprise!
Mother enjoyed finding individuals she thought would make good breeders, playing matchmaker, and offering them unprompted favors—unasked favors so huge and kind they seemed the work of a purely benevolent entity, leaving recipients babbling with gratitude. When she returned for their children, explaining this was her payment, they often felt too shocked or indebted to resist. She'd guilt-trip to her heart's content until they obliged. In rare cases, she'd collect by force. She liked doing this to the females best, deriving special joy from illustrating human mothers weren't the perfect, self-sacrificing saints they were fabled to be. Sometimes she harassed them all the way through their labors (that kind of pain created enough resentment for her to leverage). She didn't always return right away. Sometimes (like now, in fact) she came back more than one generation later, after years of meddling—when possible, deliberately crossing breeding lines—created something she was exceedingly enthusiastic about.
At a certain point, unsettling changes appeared. The tales only grew in popularity, but the focus shifted away from frightening children into docility and more toward encouraging children to buck unreasonable demands and 'defeat evil.' Even the focus on good manners became less pronounced, to her dismay. The girls were less compliant. The boys were more observant. Some adults took the children seriously? And the caricatures of her became too insulting for fear to outweigh; so ridiculous that instead of feeling fearful, children started laughing. Wait. No. Stop. What are you doing?!
A related concerning pattern: Choose any stock villain, and the only major difference from her was they were now good and dead. Mother secretly found this rather threatening. She was scarcely able to have fun playing with her food like she used to, for fear that if she let down her guard, she'd become another statistic in fairy tale lore—another dragon slain, witch cooked, pirate devoured by a crocodile.
These gradual cultural shifts probably explained why prey of all kinds became noticeably harder to trap, and why doors around the globe were being closed off. It made Mother uneasy, but they weren't in that short supply yet, and moreover, she didn't rely on doors for her own egress. Her preference was to lure prey into her den, but she was able to leave. (In fact, she'd once captured 130 prey in a single outing in Germany. A pretentious messenger cherub appeared on her doorstep while she was salting the meat to lecture her and try to slap her on the wrist for violating the 'Endangered Species Act.' Apparently it was considered 'in poor taste' to kill that many healthy breeders during a plague. She ate him, got a power boost, and mounted the wings above her fireplace.) The doors were necessary for the humans to enter.
Her so-called 'Endangered Species Act' violation occurred around the time the keys were instituted by the Heavenly buzzkills. Seemed the intent was reducing the number of humans who could be easily lured through her doorways by ensuring they actively chose to do so. This implied offensive things. One—the asshats were smugly confident that few would choose her, when they had a perfectly good Father to turn to for love. Second, with no concurrent effort made to confine her to the den, they were rubbing her own preference to stay inside in her face. Like they thought she was scared.
Admittedly, she found the way Earth was organized to be mentally taxing. In her home, she still had to accommodate the humans' sensory perception, but she could get more loosey-goosey and also deconstruct the moment they left, if she liked. She also found herself overexcited and distracted by the large world outside the den. This frequently ended with her accomplishing nothing, after too many toys captured her attention and a once simple plan quickly became too complex of a system that crashed around her. (For this reason, Echo was tasked with managing paper trackers of mortal dealings to keep her plans moving and focused.)
Another, more embarrassing, reason for hunting from indoors intensified over time. She wanted to be around people, craved their attention. But roaming amongst humans, her mind wandered to all the people who weren't looking at her—who, more specifically, looked at each other. Seeing the way the parents and children looked at each other, the way brothers and sisters, good friends, husbands and wives or lovers did, made her ache with ravenous hunger but also made her want to...retreat…in...discomfort. This strange, perplexing discomfort that felt hot, compressing, twisting, stabbing—
Her unpleasant rumination was interrupted by Echo, who remarked of Mother's dress, "I don't think she would wear this…"
"True, but I can't stand not to dress Camille above her class level. Just look at her. Such a beauty."
Slight embers of envy were reignited in Echo. It drowned them out and clarified, "I think even if she'd been wealthy she wouldn't have worn this."
"That's not important. I'll be stunned if he actually thinks I'm her. He's brighter than that. I just need to be fabulous."
It was based on various things she'd seen the Cliffords girl wear. A forest green dress with an off-the-shoulder bloused top, cinched tightly at the waist over a skirt with an even deeper green diamond pattern. From the dipped shoulders of the blouse, long ribbons wrapped like ballet laces down her arms. Echo had convinced her to dial it back from the full-blown evening gown it once was. The puppet servant regrettably couldn't break Mother of this bizarre habit—all the formal wear and cocktail dresses to meet the children, like she was going on a date. Blegh.
"You're sure he'll come on the same day?" Echo asked.
"You know I am. ...Oh!" Mother suddenly exclaimed while observing the progress in her mind's eye. "He has company!"
[X]
The rock missed Al's hand but hit the cat—which had concernedly returned to the boy's side, evil-eyeing the radio—hard. It yowled and ran beneath the house. Alastor guessed the culprit before looking up. Only one person nearby was such a casual jackass—the 9-year-old neighborhood bane, Billy.
"Why are you listening to static?"
Al wisely chose not to ask if he'd heard any music, opting to process this mystery later. "Why shoot cats? Shoot the mice, not the thing that eats them for you." 'Billy, you dipshit,' he finished mentally. Alastor considered maybe one of the neighbor kid's parents was as unpleasant as his own father, and torturing the stray cat—and usually Alastor—was Billy's outlet. The possibility didn't make Al feel more charitable. If the other boy were run down by a trolley, he'd frame the local news story on his bedroom wall.
"Guess it figures the crazy voodoo witch's kid is crazy, too. Is that one of the dolls?" The dolls, by now, were infamous.
"I don't know."
"I heard there were child sacrifices."
This was so silly Alastor couldn't even be offended. "If she was never caught, I guess she was crazy like a fox, huh?"
Annoyed that the younger kid seemed way smarter than he had any right to be and was brushing off the harassment too easily, Billy got fired up. The grating creep performed an over-the-top impression of a bayou witch, complete with an exaggerated replication of the Haitian accent Camille had picked up from her mother and grandmother. Al wore roughly the same expression Bert had during Alastor's bad jokes. It wasn't difficult to tolerate this offensive behavior as long as Billy looked like a certifiable idiot doing it—that could be amusing.
Until the last bit. Billy incorporated into his ridiculous impression that the best way for children to defeat a fairy tale witch was cooking her in the oven.
It was after incidents like this that Alastor figured he retained the memories after all...he just couldn't call them back when he wanted to. Instead, they ripped their way out of him like a rabid racoon at their whim. Al sprung up and hurtled at Billy so hard they both tumbled off the deck. Alastor would grow to an impressive height one day, but regrettably, now he was a runt and overpowered easily by the older child. Easily enough that he worried he'd take a serious beating, so he reflexively grabbed a stick within arm's reach. Seeing the intent, Billy stepped on him. Through the painful distraction, Alastor cracked the stick against the neighbor's head like a baseball bat. It wasn't an exceptionally large or strong stick—not like a club—but it certainly hurt and left a mark.
As the other boy scrambled back—teetering, with a few lacerations on the cheek and the first signs of a good shiner—Alastor hoped Billy's fear was mostly performative. As gratifying as fear on the neighbor's face was, he wouldn't enjoy the consequences. He dropped the stick. This was not a good look. Al raised his hands in an 'I'm done, let's both walk away' signal.
The intense eye contact between the two children housed a surprisingly mature, dark subtext. Vying for power, sounding disgustingly confident, Billy uttered simply, "I could kill you, and no one would care."
The line did some damage. But for as much rage and anxiety prickled in Alastor's chest over the implicitly racist terroristic threat, the worst feeling was choking down sadness deep in his throat as he considered his personal life and decided...it might be true. He let rage crush the other emotions, glaring daggers. "Good to know that's the game we're playing."
Billy thought he'd claimed the final verbal blow. Now his face drained white with shock at the deadly seriousness of Alastor's tone. But he couldn't let the little mutt intimidate him. The bully looked out of the corner of his eye at Al's house and resumed smirking, deciding he'd let the drunk next door finish his job for him. As Alastor finally turned, having nothing else to say to the despicable neighbor brat, Billy jeered, "Have fun tonight!"
[X]
Alastor retrieved the doll from the porch, then slipped in the door and to his room as quietly as possible. Shit. 'Don't start fights and give the bastards another reason to kick you while you're down.' One of the only remotely reasonable things his father said (although Bert never followed his own advice). He just couldn't allow Billy to disrespect Camille. Al was willing to pay the tax to get even an ounce of justice. Depending on the severity of Billy's parents' reaction, and the domino effect on his father, the tax would entail Alastor slinking around like a mouse for hiding places for a while. Undignified. Defeated. He sat on his bed and sighed.
A slight smile re-emerged. There was a supply closet in the cellar they'd have liked to use but had never been able to open. Obviously the answer was to break down the door and erect a new one, but try motivating Bert to do that. Al looked down at the doll in his lap. If this were the key to that closet and he hid in there quietly, he'd go undetected for a while because his father wouldn't think to try and open it. Good gift, mom! Ten out of ten! Alastor crept down the stairs, tried the key in the supply closet. Success! As he closed the door behind him, he heard stomping and door-slamming upstairs, tensed up, and reflexively shut his eyes. No follow-up, to his relief. Oh. It wasn't anger signals, just his (probably already drunk) father having no concept of what a noisy clod he was.
Al reopened his eyes to an unfamiliar shape on the wall, unclear in the darkness. He nearly jumped, but it was simply another door. It must have been there before, but why a closet in a closet? Eh, who cared? The more barriers the better! No keyhole in this one. Al opened it slowly to avoid a loud creak. Bafflingly, inside was another door inside another comparably-sized closet. Even more absurdly, a light shone underneath the door, when only empty basement should lie behind. If he closed the latest door and moved on to quench his curiosity, it would be black except for that low sliver of light. Bah, why fear a dark room when he was the only thing in it? Al proceeded.
The light had vanished. It now shone beneath the door on the other side of a short hallway. Not only should there be no light, there should be no more basement. Hadn't he reached an outside wall of the house? Had he found a secret tunnel? Where did it connect? Al leaned into the mystery, opened the next door. Another hallway and door. And another, and another. Each hallway slightly longer, each door gap promising a light that was never delivered.
Al's heart thumped. Things nowdiverged between 'exciting' and 'scary.' If this was really happening, it was much too strange. Why would a hidden tunnel have so many doors in the way? These things existed so people could flee emergencies, right? So, it wasn't happening. He'd worn himself out fighting, sat in a dark place, and fallen asleep. Duh. There was nothing to fear, and he should continue onward if only to prove he wasn't so boring he dreamed about doors. He wasn't boring. He'd reach something entertaining, eventually. Alastor felt a surge of pride when light hit his face as he opened the latest door...before realizing he was back in his own basement.
Damn! Al stewed in outrage over the fact that none of those hallways had curved, and he knew it. He couldn't have gone in a circle...so he was still dreaming? About a basement that was slightly neater with a better-functioning lamp but otherwise identical? Al may have conceded that he was secretly boring after all if not for the smell of food wafting down the stairs, or the distant sound of a piano playing more of that delightful, foreign-sounding music.
[X]
'Good to know that's the game we're playing.' Incredible—maybe love at first sight did exist. "Echo…" Mother's foot tapped a mile-a-minute. "I may wing it today."
"Sorry?"
"I may see what happens if I just...talk to him."
Echo swallowed, 'You mean be yourself?' and replaced it with, "You don't want to stay cautious on the first visit, ma'am? I know how much you want to play with this one."
"Did we just watch the same thing?" Mother whisper-hissed.
"I'm only encouraging you to protect your own happiness." Mother sat at the piano and let her fingers craft a melody, in swing time a few years too early, improvising beautifully, enough to make the puppet servant want to dance, but it restrained itself to foot-tapping. "What are you doing?"
"Giving him something to follow," the beldam explained, sensing Alastor's progress through the hallway.
Once certain he was downstairs, they waited for a few minutes.
"I'm not sure he's going to come up," Echo said. "He may just go back."
Mother animatedly spun around on the bench, while the piano continued playing itself behind her. "I know that's happened a few times, but never at this door, recall. This is my favorite door. Remember why?" Mother drum rolled on her knees. "It's the only one located in a basement."
"But it...must attract the fewest children?"
Accurate. In fact, the last use of this door happened long enough ago that Echo forgot about it. Mother's mouth wobbled with barely-withheld laughter as she realized she'd deliver the punchline to a fresh audience. "What's the fastest way to get a small child to run up the basement stairs?" The doll creature clapped twice as if in a cheesy Clapper commercial from the future.
Under the cellar door, the warm glow from downstairs vanished. The basement had been plunged into darkness, with the nearest trace of light upstairs. There was a hint more delay than expected, but soon, little footsteps pattered up the stairwell, stopping at the landing as the child calmed down and entered a state of hesitation again.
But not for long. Terri produced one of her extra arms and mischievously waved the handless appendage at Echo. The handy dandy needle hand had already spidered away. With exceptional silence and stealth, it snuck behind Alastor as he peered down a hall that mimicked part of his home's first floor. Defying physics, it walked straight up the doorframe, hopped to grip the cellar door handle, and as if pulled by puppet strings, yanked it shut. The child skittered another yard or so down the hall as the extra hand crept up to the ceiling and hid, trotting on its fingers as if performing a victory dance.
With her two main hands, Mother slapped her knees. "Favorite door! They always run up the stairs! It's incredible!" She paused, button eyes glinting. "You know… When I was young, I used to run for the basement stairs as soon as the candlelight blew out. But now," she said, melodramatically draping a hand over her forehead, "I don't even bother to chase them." She descended into a fit of giggling at her own cliché joke.
The puppet servant wished it still had the ability to roll its eyes. "Certain you're not terrorizing him too much too early?"
"Ah, this child can take some ribbing, Echo. He's a good sport." She produced few more peeps of laughter as her hand managed to return to her unnoticed.
Echo shook its head and decided to leave for the kitchen before the boy scraped up the courage to say hello. "I'll leave you here to enjoy yourself, ma'am."
[X]
Why had he run up the stairs like an idiot? How embarrassing!
Al meandered slowly through the rest of the hallway. From what he could see, the house mirrored his own with only minor variations, just enough to imply it was someone or something else's home. Should he make himself known? No one in his home played the piano; who knew what he'd find in the drawing room. Should he try leaving through the front door? Alastor navigated there, creeping past the drawing room without looking in yet, and rose on tiptoe to peer out the door's upper glass pane. Nighttime. Full moon. Sky full of stars you normally couldn't see through city pollution haze. Nothing past the front lawn, as if the house were floating in space.
Al turned and slid down the door, gently hitting the back of his head against the wood. "Why are we like this?" he whisper-hissed at the doll. "We're bored every other day, we could've gone on being bored today." The doll was silent, obviously. "I'm not clear on why I would dream this. I already know I feel stuck here, I don't see why that was necessary." Al pointed emphatically over his head through the window at what presumably was psychologically-manufactured symbolism. "I guess it's an adventure." Silence. "We're going to die young." Silence. "Right, I suppose we won't die boring."
With intermingled anxiety and intrigue, Alastor finally entered the drawing room, toward the music and humming, and encountered the mysterious player. She seemed not to hear him for a moment, but soon stopped, rose from her bench, and turned with a smile. Al swallowed a gasp. A few feet from him stood a caramel-skinned, lithe black woman of average height with piled up chocolate curls, an oval face with a few dark freckles dotted across her upper cheeks and bridge of her gently sloping nose, and a slightly gap-toothed smile. It'd be fair to add she had honey-colored eyes if the eyes in questions weren't buttons.
"You arrived! Did you find your way easily enough?" Alastor didn't know how to answer the creature. "What's the matter, mon étoile?" she asked in a voice that seemed too familiar. Al couldn't remember hearing it but knew it was his mother's voice because this was supposed to be his mother's face.
Some children might assume this was the spirit of their dead mother, but Al wasn't that far off in the weeds. He asked, politely but insistently, "Who are you?"
As expected, Plan A wouldn't work. Mother steered smoothly into Plan B. "I'm your Other Mother, darling. I hoped I'd get your attention soon." She trotted in place, light on her feet. "I'm so excited to finally meet you!"
Alastor shot her a cocked-headed, squinty-eyed look of disbelief. She couldn't be trying to say 'fairy godmother?' "I don't understand."
"Your Other Mother," the woman said confidently, as though reminding him that the sky was blue. "It's quite common."
Maybe she meant 'guardian angel,' which struck Alastor as more ridiculous. But he wouldn't dispute this yet. Didn't want to rock the boat too hard until he could at least guess what was happening. Al settled on small talk. "What's your name?"
Mother was pleasantly surprised. Most children were too greedy or impolite, or too awed or terrified, to bother asking this. He had read a lot of fairy tales—could he want to learn her name to gain power over her? Nah, because he'd read so many he understood supernatural entities rarely offered their true names to humans. He was actually being polite, she decided. (Alastor was 150% trying to gain power over her. Never hurts to try.) "I go by Terri."
How anticlimactic. "Terri?"
"Terese." As many people living in a foreign country do, she'd taken a name to use amongst the humans. It derived from 'hunter.' Or 'harvester.' If you averaged them, 'reaper.' She softened it by adding a fake surname. Humans liked surnames—they suggested you came from someplace, which was much more comfortable than admitting you one day spawned casually from nothing. "McGyver. Terri McGyver."
Alastor repeated it in his head. Terri McGyver? She sounded like something that stepped out of an Irish fairy circle, bolstering his suspicions. He'd better go on being polite. "I ended up here accidentally. I'm glad I didn't startle you, but...why were you expecting me?"
The woman pointed at the poppet in his hand. "I was told to."
She suggested his mother left him this with the intention of sending him here? You know what—Alastor didn't have the attention to devote to this mystery yet. He'd rather spend mental energy on not taking his eyes off the fairy(?) creature.
"Get in a scuffle?" Terri pointed to his dirty shirt and a bruise slowly darkening on his face.
"Oh. Maybe?"
"Mayyybe?" she imitated him, teasingly. "Not suspicious at all. Do you need any ice?"
"I'm fine."
"Who started it? Did you win?"
"He provoked me, and I hit him. I guess I won." He omitted that 'winning' entailed hiding all day.
"Splendid! Does he look worse?"
Despite the overarching wrongness of this situation, Alastor was...pleased. He doubted his father would ask who started it, or congratulate him. "He looked awful before I hit him," Alastor let the joke slip out, and the mysterious fairy doll giggled an unwelcomely cute giggle.
Although ice had been declined, another woman came out of the kitchen and silently handed Terri some ice in a towel before leaving the room again. Servants? She must be wealthy. That seemed right. This house was in better condition and had a few nicer or altogether different items in it. The piano was one.
Terri handed him the ice and touched his cheek. "Would a kiss make it better?" Al shot her a look that clearly communicated, 'Aren't I a little old for that?' Reading his face loud and clear, she asked, "How old are you, sweetie?"
"Almost eight," the child responded, nose upturned, straightening in an effort to look more dignified.
This. Child. Terri swallowed laughter and said mock-seriously, "Oh! My mistake." How amusing that he thought himself too old for affection. Though, to be honest, the little cutie was so small she'd fleetingly forgotten his age. "You may need a better diet, dear. Would you like anything to eat?"
"Oh… Thank you, but don't trouble yourself." Weren't you never supposed to eat fairy food?
Terri sighed and wilted dramatically. "It's not poisoned. Or cursed. I'm not trying to fatten you up. And you won't starve to death because nothing else will satisfy you. Phht. You need to learn how to have fun!"
The accusation landed perfectly—the child was clearly miffed. "I'm plenty fun. I just don't know you."
With a puckered-mouthed smirk, she clicked her heels together and giggled, "But I know you."
Terri ushered him toward the dining room. Al didn't resist. He had no idea how dangerous the thing was or what his options were. Perhaps he shouldn't have judged the children in fairy tales as painfully naïve. Maybe they weren't gullible at all, but playing along until they figured out what the hell to do. In the dining room, a new red flag stuck out. One of few details here that didn't mirror his home was the fireplace décor. That ledge was where his father displayed the taxidermy, but here there were ambiguous framed silhouettes, some appearing to depict children.
"Have some Cornish hen?" Terri asked, uncovering one of many dishes set on the table. Al looked interested but not as much as she'd have liked. "Ah, well, more for me. What have you been eating? Venison and rabbits?"
"I think they're alright."
"Certainly, if prepared well, but I doubt your father's much of a chef. Not from what I smell on my side of the house, anyway. Well. How would you like it?" She snapped her fingers, and several puppets emerged from the kitchen carrying trays. "Venison steak? Meatloaf? Stew?" She sniffed the air. "Mmmn. The slow-cooked one smells divine. We should have that. What about rabbit dumplings? It's also amazing buttermilk fried."
The child's eyes grew 100% wider. As if by magic, all concerns were wiped from his mind by the delectable smell wafting toward him.
"I considered making some jambalaya today, but I didn't quite feel like it. I'll make it next time. Promise." She never cooked their favorite meal the first time—that was a valuable tool with which to lure them back. Terri pointed at the spread. "You will have to eat some vegetables to have dessert." If she aimed to keep this one around, she probably shouldn't feed him the diet of infinite junk food she did the others.
This rule didn't bother Al one bit. It all looked cooked to perfection and there were plenty of options—roasted mixed vegetables, sautéed brussel sprouts, green bean almandine, mashed potatoes and gravy, salted and buttered corn on the cob, stuffed mushrooms. He looked light-headed, even before the dishes levitated on their own, circling the table as if on an invisible lazy susan to display the full menu.
"I think you may need to even out your blood sugar, sport," Terri commented, tilting him upright.
"I'm dreaming," Al decided.
"What great news!" Terri gasped theatrically with a little clap. "That means you can eat as much as you want!"
Al gave in. It had been so long since he'd scraped together a standard-sized meal, let alone a feast. This was more a product of his father failing to go out to buy enough food than outright poverty, although they certainly seemed on that track. It helped that this food was incredible.
"Dessert?" Terri asked. Al made a noise that sounded probably defeated but maybe interested, depending upon what it was. He was not a big fan of sugary things, but Terri was well aware and had prioritized savoriness and spice over sweetness. "Hot chocolate?" she offered. "It's extra-dark, with chili powder and espresso in it. Pumpkin or sweet potato pie, with extra cinnamon? I know there's a controversy, but I prefer sweet potato myself. More flavorful. Pumpkin's creamier, though. Have an opinion?" Somehow, the dessert fork in front of him knew what he favored, somersaulting through the air and sticking a perfect landing in the slice of sweet potato pie.
By the end of all this, he really was ready to faint. "Wish my dates were that woozy over me," Terri said. "I guess it's true that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach—it's much too difficult to stab through the chest." She wrinkled her nose in lieu of a wink. The little boy coughed and—just as she grew concerned he'd choke—successfully swallowed and uncontrollably giggled. Huh. That went better than expected!
Terri was pleasantly surprised by how overwhelmingly adorable she found Alastor. Ideal—she didn't want to have to pretend long term. This boy was so precious she genuinely wanted to get nearer to him. So she would. In the other room, the piano started playing, although she was nowhere near it. Already in a daze induced by the impending food coma, Al followed her to the couch. He thought, sleepily, the song may have been one his mother sang in a barely-accessible memory, but we'd recognize it as 'Deep in the Dark.' The couch was so soft and his eyes were so heavy…
An indeterminable amount of time later, Alastor grasped at consciousness again, emerging from a thick fog. "Awww. Little one," said a stranger's voice as a hand patted his head. Al promptly entered a panic, bolting up and scrambling to the other side of the couch. "I didn't poison you. You went into a food coma, darling." Had he seriously been dead asleep with his head resting on that pillow in her lap? Crap, more idiot points awarded to him, Al thought. "I think you were having sweet dreams," Terri commented. "You were smiling. I like your smile. Do you usually knock out like that?"
"...No."
"Thought not. Did you have a good nap? Are you ready for some after dinner entertainment?"
"I need to go. My father...will be offended if I walk out on him for long… It's best to keep him happy." And it was an extremely high priority to escape ASAP. How had she suckered him into eating enough to pass out on a stranger's couch?! This was absolutely witchcraft.
"Is he keeping you happy?" Terri asked, and was met with uncomfortable silence. She gave him a look, both caring and concerned and strangely invasive, like she was reading his mind. "Before you came here, you were hiding from something." Alastor tried not to let shame show on his face. "Don't be embarrassed. It's smart to choose your battles. Why do you think you stumbled upon me today? You want someone to help you, right? Protection?"
"I can look out for myself," the little boy blurted, sounding offended.
"I believe you. You do quite well. Still...I know you hate hearing this," she said, judging by the last time she'd pointed it out, "but you're so very small. I don't like considering what could happen if your luck runs out." She played a few broken chords and something happened. He could feel the notes as she informed him in a soothing, musical voice that the sweet smile on his face made him look like easy prey, and until he was old enough to defend, perhaps he should let her be his friend.
A reasonable-sounding tip Alastor had absorbed from fairy tales—if someone randomly started singing at you, either they were spellcasting or crazy. Probably both. His mind felt slow and relaxed, drifting along with the music as though down a calm river, any time she played or hummed or sang. Al resisted by finding excuses to interrupt her. "If you're not a predator yourself, why do you have those right where my father keeps the taxidermy?" He pointed at the mysterious framed silhouettes.
Terri seamlessly pivoted. "Sweetie, I meant I'm not a threat to you. Not that I pose no threat at all. How useful of a fairy godmother could I be if I couldn't mince your enemies like onions?"
"Oh?" said the boy. He tried projecting skepticism, but Terri saw his adorable little ears pricking up with intrigue. Bingo.
"Of course. Those are what I hunted for or with my children…" That hypnotic voice returned. "My eyes see far and wide, wherever your enemies try to hide, and I assure you that they never blink. My nose is keen and wise. You'll never fall for a villain's lies because I promise that I'll know the stink. What sharp teeth I have—the better to shred and carve and stab at the ogres who beat you, and dragons who cheat you, and ignorant villagers who mock and mistreat you. Baby, I don't think you get me—I'd protect you if you'd let me, but if you won't let me get near, then it's useless I fear." Turning a rhyme about slaughtering enemies into a comforting lullaby was a hard sell, but Terri was pulling it off.
"And there will be sirens. Worse. Still," she warned dramatically. "But they can't out-sing me. I'll send them right back into the watery grave they try putting you in." The boy looked more interested than before but not necessarily more convinced. "You still think of me as a predator who will prey on you, not for you," Terri acknowledged.
She kept comparing herself to a wild animal. Why expect he could tame her? Even if so, she could snap at a moment's notice. His family's own dog had because the poor old mutt simply got too old and confused. Al still had the scar on his leg where it bit him before his father had to put it down. "And what if you turn on me?"
"Don't give me a reason to. In every fairy tale you've ever read, haven't entities like myself rewarded good children and punished bad ones?"
There were exceptions to that rule, but that wasn't what he chose to call out. "They were written by humans. After years and years of being told different ways. That's why Mama didn't feel sure about the Bible."
Terri shrugged. "All right, point made. You know what I know is a fact, though? Plenty of predators make excellent mothers. Lions. Tigers. Bears (oh my). Wolves. Even some spiders—very self-sacrificing critters, you know… I have such a lonely heart and such a big, blank space, so let me share a part—"
There was a crash from the windowsill as a potted plant toppled. Terri cut herself off as she whipped around in surprise, looking for the goddamned cat. Meanwhile, Alastor shook the fuzziness out of his head. Once snapped out of the trance, he reacted to the degree with which he was enticed by the music and the voice with proper awe. She didn't have a technically excellent voice, but it was affecting. Compelling. "Your voice," the little boy uttered.
"Excuse me?"
Transfixed, almost aggressively, Alastor said, "I want it."
"Haha, well now. This seems a little bit backwards, buuuuttttt if I get a charming little prince out of it, I'm game!"
"How does it work?"
"You only need to think about the reaction you want. No particular trick to it. Listen, Button, why don't you try it and see how you like it?"
"For?"
"For fun," Terri responded with a sparkling smile.
Al fought the urge to roll his eyes and specified, "In exchange for?"
"Free sample. But, if you want more, you'll have to come back," she sing-songed, booping him on the nose for effect, resulting in the child wrinkling his nose in distaste and backing away quickly. "Ah. It's quite alright," she said, taking a step back. "I don't like to be touched either. Seems I need to remember my manners." Then she grinned widely and thrust out her hand. She was not normally a fan of rigid deals. But humans liked the comfort of a deal, and making the child feel comfortable at this stage was key, or he'd never return. Dangling the carrot of a prize to win if he did was also critical. "Let's shake on it. I let you take it for a spin. If you want more, come back."
"Why do you want me to come back?"
"I want to spend time with you. I told you I've been waiting." She did. The child was every bit as bright as she had expected, given the parents. (Bert, she understood, had been a pretty brilliant engineer before frying most of his brain cells. And Camille had been a witty jokester and riddle-solver.) He needed to loosen up, but that wouldn't take much effort. She could feel the same aura of chaos prickling around him as she'd felt from his mother.
"Why are you so…?" Even with a vocabulary that exceeded that of most 7.5-year-olds by a mile, he struggled to find the right word. 'Honest' or 'straightforward' wasn't right...she almost certainly wasn't those.
"Why aren't I sugar-coating as much as you would expect?"
Alastor nodded.
"You're...unique. I'm responding to that. But. I appreciate it, Button." She smiled with warmth that wasn't entirely fake. "Quite a bit."
Terri accompanied him to the basement landing and he mentioned, "Your basement light's out, ma'am."
With a sheepish smile, she snapped her fingers and the light returned. "I may have been impatient." As annoying as that was, Al was charmed. She was funny and wily.
Terri offered him a covered dish of leftovers. "How am I supposed to explain these?" he asked.
"You'll devise something. Please don't waste it. I worked hard on it."
Al remembered his manners. "Thank you. It's delicious."
"I'm so glad. ...Why are you hesitating?"
Al was afraid of sounding crazy (which was hilarious after some thought), so he didn't mention the long hallway with the doors.
"Would you like me to walk you home?"
It was one thing to be in that darkness knowing he was the only one there, but with this creepy stranger? No thanks. "I'll be okay. Thank you for offering."
Terri still politely walked to the bottom of the stairs with him and opened the door, revealing a gentler-looking hallway. The doors weren't in the way, the full length seemed shorter, and it now seemed to be twinkling with something like stars. "I'll see you soon, little one," she said before sending him off, smiling after him. As cautiously quiet as he'd been, she'd picked up a wealth of information from his nonverbals and the emotions she could smell with her very sensitive nose. He was so interesting.
The beldam heard more clattering overhead and darkened. Was that rotten vermin in her house? Scowling, she marched upstairs. "Hey! Can't you keep your fuzzy ass out of things for once?" She saw the tip of a black tail disappear over her window ledge and groaned. "You realize you benefit from me, right? You come in and out of my doors, going on grand international hunting adventures. You have about 20 human families feeding and petting you," she added, hints of envy tinging her voice. "Why pick fights with me over these children?"
"I expect you think this one will be different?" the cat, Pluto, chuckled from outside the window. "He's unusual, I'll give you that. But not that unusual."
"I don't expect anything. I'm cautiously optimistic because being positive is a virtue." She disappeared from the window and reappeared behind the cat outside, causing it to skitter aside. "I need to keep my spirits up somehow. There's shockingly little variation amongst these human children. You'd hope one or two would be creative thinkers, but no," she huffed, crossing her arms.
She characterized accepting her deranged processes as 'creative thinking?' Phht! "They don't all behave alike because they're a boring species. The common thread is you."
Terri had waited patiently for the opportunity to snatch his tail. Mercilessly, doublehanded, she spun him in a circle and hammer-threw him into the air, launching the yowling animal into one of the small rips between worlds like something out of a Loony Toon. She cackled victoriously, but somehow, within seconds, a tail brushed against her legs.
Though his fur was very bristled, Pluto picked up where he left off. "He's unwilling to engage with anything suggesting he's losing mental stability, or that might lead to it… So he'll flee you within days, even if he does believe you're real," the cat snickered. "That aside, I find he's pretty reserved in general… and that's coming from a cat."
"Please. He's a little boy. He's smart, but not that sophisticated. He has no one. If desperate enough, he'll reach out for anything that responds."
"Why do you think he threw all those doors up?"
"He was creating more barriers between himself and his father."
"He was creating more barriers between himself and anyone," Pluto said smugly. "If it makes you feel any better, for once it's not about you specifically. He'd shut out anybody. You wanted a challenge? You've got one."
[X]
Alastor hesitated to test the voice. Did he want to tempt himself into returning to a glaringly obvious fairy tale villain's lair? Terri was amusing but undoubtedly sinister. He simultaneously appreciated and shuddered at her on-the-nose instinct to lure him with promises of glorious vengeance, on top of the wealth of other knowledge she'd gathered about him. She'd been spying somehow, and he did not appreciate that.
That said, Alastor was a naturally adventurous soul with few opportunities for good entertainment. He had to give the voice a whirl, at least once.
His first use of the siren power was benign. Al successfully cajoled his father into leaving the house to take him hunting. To their mutual pleasant surprise, both enjoyed themselves and got along well.
'Well, that backfired,' Echo thought as her boss fumed. Terri reminded Echo and herself, "He does still have to come back to do it again," then reconsidered. "...I'll give him one more opportunity to get creative. He's capable of something more interesting than this." Her heel clicked impatiently. "I'm positive."
Indeed, Alastor's second use of the siren voice was spectacular, a work of art—at least in Terri's opinion.
The same day, Alastor and Bert ran across Billy and his father while returning from their hunting trip. When no fallout resulted from their fistfight, Alastor had assumed Billy was too embarrassed to tattle, having been bested by a smaller kid. But the two boys had matching bruises, so their fathers quickly did the math. As Bert came to the same conclusion as Alastor, inferring his own son won, he struggled not to look snicker and failed. Billy's dad was unamused. Confirming Alastor's earlier suspicions, he smacked his boy hard in the ear, demanding to know why he'd said nothing, before entering a shouting match with Bert.
The boys wandered off. Billy would not be ignored. He threw a horseshoe from the game he and his father had been playing, narrowly missing Alastor. It landed on the tracks for the trolley that passed by their houses. "We'll see who wins this round." Billy nodded his head at the two men in the distance. "No matter what, I think you lose later."
Al had a few thoughts. One was very emotional, despite having been securely corralled by good sense—Billy needed to die. The others regarded Terri. He knew she was watching him, and she'd alluded to her high kill count. Could Alastor deter her by behaving as ruthlessly as her, suggesting he'd put up a more strenuous fight than other children? Alastor had no desire to hurt anyone who didn't deserve it. But he considered how the neighbor boy had talked about his mother, threatened him, beat on a much smaller child, was cruel to the cat. Billy, Alastor concluded, was the kind of person who might grow up to do...bad things...if he didn't prevent it from happening.
Yes. This was understandable. Alastor was the good guy here.
He heard the trolley approaching. Alastor looked Billy dead in the eye, at the horseshoe, back at Billy, and instructed in the compelling siren voice, "Go get it."
"What?" Billy seemed to fight it at first, but whatever Terri had provided Alastor with was strong stuff.
"Go get it."
After a moment or two, Billy didn't even faintly question the wisdom of this. The timing was perfect, and the cr-ACK and spl-AT undeniably, indescribably satisfying. Alastor felt grateful the trolley car was red, though—that was probably better for the witnesses' morale. He didn't want to upset anyone else. After all, Alastor was, in general, a sweet, considerate little boy.
From a projection cast from Terri's mind's eye, the beldam and her servant watched the murder in in awe. Echo clapped its hands over its mouth as Terri whispered, "Oh. My. GOD." She rarely invoked the name of a 'god' unless extraordinarily surprised.
Terri regretted ever questioning whether this child would cut it. Look at the glint in his eye. That smile. So still, so serene while watching the horrific scene, with the exception of a pleased—pleased!—little twitchtwitchtwitch of his precious nose as he struggled not to laugh! That child. That. Child. She must have THAT CHILD!
"Echo… I need that child."
Terri's expression was even more unnerving than Alastor's. "Ma'am?" The boss often embarked on melodramatic vision quests, but she seemed particularly gung-ho. Oh dear.
"This one is different, Echo! I knew the breeding would work eventually!"
"Please don't get invested too quickly."
Ignoring Echo entirely, Terri ranted, passionately, "I need his ridiculous little suspenders and his tiny bowtie. I need his eyes. I need his nose. I need his evil, evil smirk and his nefarious giggle. I need his faint little freckles. (Did you know he has freckles? You can see them if you look really close.) I need his whole insidious face, Echo, or I will die."
"Ms. McGyver, I applaud your enthusiasm, I only worry for your health. You too quickly labeled some others as 'different,' and I remember how hurt you were later."
Regrettably, Echo had a point. The thought of replacing those warm honey brown eyes with simple black buttons was grim. Then, another thought filled her with relief. "I won't have to do it this time. I won't have to forcibly trap him. I'm positive."
"What makes you so certain?"
"That child may be a prodigy. There's a drawback to that. People that smart...well, they can invent viable-sounding explanations or rationales for anything, convince themselves of things that are patently false. You see how he did that, right?" she asked, pointing. "How he convinced himself killing that boy was the 'right' thing to do? You can't convince me that didn't run through his head. And he so dislikes negativity…" One of few truths Terri regularly told the children was her assertion that 'she knew them.' She studied up, watched closely, learned their body language, until she could infer thought patterns with ease.
"Where are you heading with this?" Echo asked.
"No need to blind someone who's willing to blind himself. I need only spin a justification here and there, nudge him in the right direction, and encourage focus on the positive. He'll do the rest." Terri was so eager to be properly loved and admired, her mouth actually watered. "My little one," she declared, confidently claiming ownership, "will think I'm perfect...FOREVER."
[X]
Note: I'm assuming the Other Mother, like Alastor, is a fan of dumb jokes like this because of the whole 'I put my mother in her grave and when I saw her try to crawl out I kicked her back in' bit in the novel. Also, not sure why people take that as evidence of her having once been human...pretty sure she was just being sassy. If you're wondering where the seemingly-random wolf stuff came from, I recall watching a commentary once where the film version's writers proposed that she might take on characteristics of any predator animal a child is afraid of. I think her preferred predator appearance probably is a spider, but Alastor is afraid of dogs, so...