[Summer-Fall 1907, New Orleans]

Another two weeks went by, and Miss Terri remained as quirky and mildly creepy as usual, but benign. She did nothing more than chat, play games, watch shows at the theater with him or play them from her radio, and help him learn magic, as promised. When hunting was proposed, she accepted his hesitation, confident that she'd ignite his interest eventually (after all, no one made him hunt the neighbor brat). Alastor had to admit, she wasn't bad company.

Still, not enough time had elapsed to convince him she wasn't waiting patiently for a meal. Alastor remembered times when his father was so easily agitated, he'd waited long stretches to dart to the kitchen and sneak food back to his room. Miss Terri was a strange entity that could probably last between feedings.

When a few more weeks passed by without major incident, Alastor felt secure enough to experiment with boundaries—first, regarding her appearance.

"What would make you happy today, Button?" Terri expected him to recommend that evening's activity.

Al fought his impulse to look away, willfully making direct eye contact. "I...would appreciate it very much if you didn't appear as my mother anymore."

"Doesn't it make you more comfortable?"

"No. Sorry. It only makes me s—miss her."

"Ah. Well, that won't do." This was very different, but acceptable. Part of Terri even craved differentiating herself from his birth mother. "How would you like me to look?" she asked, transforming into the latest Gibson Girl by default. "I can imitate anything you want."

"What do you really look like?"

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

"Nothing?"

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

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

The beldam didn't care to admit she couldn't create an entirely original form. There was her very first humanoid form, she supposed...but reverting to that would stir up unhappy memories. Instead, she recalled a different good-looking woman. Too quickly for Al to register the gradual transformation, Terri now presented with long, wavy mid-back length hair in a reddish, medium mahogany shade, fair skin with a pointed nose just long enough to be quirky-cute, and deep indigo button eyes. She started out taller and thinner but couldn't resist redistributing to be shorter and curvier than the original model. Her dress adjusted to a shade that matched her eyes, with a pattern of finely-detailed, complex snowflakes. "Acceptable?" she asked, spinning once.

Al smiled and nodded affirmatively. It was rather cute. Next, he asked a question that had been on his mind. "I'm...curious. When you go outside, do you…?" Hadn't she said she left the den and interacted with humans discreetly sometimes? "How do you, um, handle your eyes?"

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

"Whoawhoawhoa!"

Terri hummed, raising an eyebrow.

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

"Children...find dolls charming...don't they?"

The buttons were an aesthetic decision? Alastor struggled to keep amusement at her expense from bubbling onto his face. He would not tell her otherwise—he had to know how long she'd go on believing this. "Yes. Yes, they do," he said, nodding seriously. "But what about when you're trying to blend in?"

"I use the glamour, but recently I've also pretended to be photosensitive and worn dark glasses, because eyes are tricky to get right. Take a closer look." He saw her point. At first glance, the fake eyes provided more normalcy, but upon closer inspection they were unsettlingly flat. Her rapid finger drumming on the countertop illustrated Terri's suspicion even without expressive eyes. "Do you wish I had eyes?"

"Um…I would prefer it, to be honest." She was so difficult to decode without them, probably by design.

Correct—it was completely deliberate. Terri shrugged and deflected. "Sadly I don't remember where I put them."

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

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

Alastor inhaled deeply, processing this ungodly sentence. "Please start from the beginning, Miss Terri."

Terri had a feeling he already understood. "All right, you caught me. I don't much care to go about with people able to see...in." Plus, if anyone were ever going to trap her soul, it would be herself, dammit. To make her facial expressions ambiguous or appeal to children's fondness of dolls, she could simply glamour on a pair of buttons, but to keep her own soul safe and her emotions concealed, it was best to keep her eyes in storage.

"Aha!" Al exclaimed, remembering her lecture on emotional control. "So you're cheating!"

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

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

Terri's mouth twisted in annoyance. "If you find them, I'll show you. But you won't." Alastor's smile was record-breaking. "Aha, you'd like to play a game, then?"

Alastor was excited by the challenge itself, but she'd also revealed a clear weakness. If he found the eyes, she'd be more vulnerable. "Shake on it?"

Terri shook. "Don't get your hopes up." Al hopped to his feet and looked ready to speed away immediately. "Wait, wait. What do I get if you can't find them?"

Oof. Perhaps he'd regret his decision. "What would you like that we haven't already agreed to?"

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

No one said it was against the rules for Ferdie to assist, but even searching cooperatively, they found no promising leads. The last place to check was Terri's 'trophy room,' but Alastor questioned why she'd keep them there—she didn't seem proud of them. He also felt niggling angst before opening the mirrored door. He knew what was behind it but...didn't want to think about it. They'd been getting along so well, part of him wanted to forget what she was, so that the happy façade could continue… No. Alastor was firm with himself. Winning the game was a top priority, as he was clearly losing his grip on reality. It had to stop.

Al softly gasped when he saw the room—no longer the stereotypical dragon's lair he'd seen earlier, but instead what he suspected was the real trophy room. Bones arranged in broken pieces like mosaics; blood-stained glass windows, depicting a pattern of falling rose petals; an entire chandelier-like hanging ornament composed of eyes preserved in amber, hanging on beaded strings; the few slain prey she'd favored, beautifully replicated as dolls, dressed in finery. (She'd have taxidermized them, but needed the bodies for the protein, which helped her maintain a corporeal form.) There weren't many, since more favored ones escaped simply due to living longer.

This was a huge red flag. Was this room's appearance influenced by the viewer's perception of the owner? Had he stopped acknowledging that she was predatory? No, he assured himself. As artfully as these were displayed, they were still the remains of the human hunted. Then Alastor noticed the gifts. It was either sweet or triply horrifying that some artwork, dried flowers, and other miscellaneous gifts made by the dead children were displayed alongside the other artifacts and clearly treasured. There was even one scribbled stick figure image that, chillingly, must have been drawn by a 3 or 4 year old.

Alastor turned to Ferdie. "...Why...did she keep these? Do you know?" The fox-like shadow cocked his head and gave no answers. Alastor grimaced, now certain of two things: She'd liked some of them, and she'd killed them anyway. Or, he hoped, some escaped. Still, whether she lied about wanting love was a moot point if it wasn't enough to keep him safe. Then, a warmer thought: Did this mean her affection wasn't all an act? Her kindness to him…could she mean it?

Stop! He had to find the eyes. If he could see which facial expressions were genuine, he could more easily answer these questions. Alastor saw now what made the trophy room an ideal hiding place. If her eyes were intermixed with the ones in the chandelier, they might be challenging to identify, especially not knowing what to expect. Al hoped they would be unusual enough to leap out at him. But how to get up there? A few feeble attempts revealed Ferdie could neither lift nor levitate him, and there was nothing sturdy to stack high enough. Alastor sighed—here was hoping she wasn't a poor sport.

"Miss Terri?"

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

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

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

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

Would he recognize her eyes? She doubted, yet she hoped. It was an exciting experiment. "Fair's fair, Button. Have a lift."

Under Al's feet, a 4x4 foot square of tiles level with the chandelier's center rose with seemingly infinite supply manufacturing beneath, creating a column high enough to closely examine all eyes on display in the multilayered structure. This was a chillingly beautiful place to be as moonlight hit eyes through the stained glass window. Human eyes were quite lovely things, even staring blankly. It took him easily 10-15 minutes to scour the whole thing, unwilling to give up. No, no, maybe, no, maybe, maybe, no, no.

"Ready to admit defeat, darling?" Alastor heard the click of Terri's heels as she returned from checking on the oven. "You did your best. I'm impressed you got this far!" She tried to be complimentary, but couldn't hide her smugness. The beldam loved winning, even if it was petty, and against children.

Al hummed in frustration. No, no, maybe, no, maybe, maybe, no, no—there! He beheld a pair of eyes so dark they'd be mistakable for shark eyes, if not for how the light hit, revealing the irises were not black but deep, rich blue, with bright flecks, like stars sparkling in the light. "These might be yours!"

Terri sharply inhaled with a mixture of irrational hope and swirling anxiety. They probably weren't the right ones. "Tell me."

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

Holy. Shit. "I think you're right, Button! Pull them off, will you?" Alastor bent open the clasps connecting amber to string, and the tile column descended. When he presented them, Terri savored her ability to easily fake nonchalance while it lasted. "What do you know. Well done." She sighed, sounding mildly irritable. "Don't suppose we can have dinner first? I'll need energy for this."

"Oh?"

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

Alastor hadn't considered this. "Could you leave them in a while?" he suggested, motivated partly by sympathy, partly by desire to keep her vulnerable.

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

"You don't have to do it."

Terri waved him off, wagging a finger. "Oh, no, tricksy one. If I dishonor a small deal, you'll claim I'm untrustworthy and try to nullify the other."

"Seriously?"

"Can you honestly call it out of character?" Alastor briefly felt affronted, then giggled. "That's what I thought," she said. After they ate, Terri clapped her hands together, wringing them slightly. "I'll go get your special present. Could you bring some tea to the porch swing, please?" Alastor obeyed. She returned looking uncharacteristically uneasy, facing down and to the side as she sat.

Al waved his finger in a circle. "Switch sides?" She'd gravitated toward the side that fell less under the porch light. Grumbling, she switched. To her surprise, he took her hand, for the first time, unprompted. "Don't be—" Alastor stopped short of 'scared,' concerned about offending her, and leaned in. The beldam reflexively closed her eyes. "Ah, ah!" the little boy chastised her and she reopened them.

Once he got a good view, victory and manipulation were erased from Alastor's mind. The effect was jarring, like looking at a piece of outstanding art you could swear you'd seen in a dream, beautiful because it was familiar. The dark irises, grey flecks twinkling, looked like galaxies. The pupils, blacker than black, strangely didn't seem cold. It was the warm, cozy black of deep, dreamless sleep in a soft place where you were perfectly safe...

Concerned about being hypnotized, Alastor reoriented himself and leaned back on the porch swing. But Miss Terri didn't seem to be spellcasting. With her eyes in, Al could read that she nervously awaited a judgment, but she also looked somewhat pleased and wanting...wanting. She really did want love. It wasn't a lie. "I like them," Alastor said. "Why do you want to hide them?"

"Easier."

Alastor chuckled, "If you want to lay traps, you should leave those things in."

"Oh?" Her voice's playful energy was compounded by the eyes. In fact, it was downright adorable. Crap! "Do you think you're in a trap?" Silence. "Am I in a trap?" she asked with mock intrigue, waggling her eyebrows. Terri knew exactly what Alastor was up to, but clearly the precious Star of her Show had conveniently walked into his own ditch. She felt victorious, but also strangely warm. This was challenging...but that was good. She couldn't remember when she'd last had this much fun. Since it was apparently allowed now, she took his hand and said, winking, "You know, I quite like this game you've made up."

"...So do I." Acknowledging their cat-and-mouse game out loud should have been horrifying, but it wasn't. Alastor was invigorated, far from ready to surrender, and like her, having more fun than he'd ever had in his life. They were up a level now. Al knew what the next move should be and prepared himself to play hard ball. Before he could talk himself out of it, the little boy bounced up and pecked her cheek. Terri automatically swatted the spot as if going after a gnat, stupefied. Alastor wore the same sweet and spicy look he had when she'd asked him to call her 'Mother' and he'd promised to 'consider it.' "I'll still call you Aunt Terri...if you leave them in?"

[X]

Terri knew the second she saw this child that he'd light up her life. Sure, she'd been deliberately intimidating during their first few interactions to gain the upper hand, and maintained her façade of emotional impermeability as visits went on. But the moment the boy left, she'd melt into a sentimental puddle the likes of which Echo had never witnessed. Food insecurity makes anyone irritable; certainly resolving this would improve Terri's mood. But usually, Ms. McGyver faked enthusiasm for the kids, or at least exaggerated it, offering little pretense about her true feelings once the visit ended. Now, Echo watched in amazement as Terri's good mood continued after each meeting and its master's formerly erratic temperament balanced.

Terri had always been musical, but for years it rarely emerged unless part of a luring scheme, or while venting spikes of outrage or despair. Now Terri casually hummed and sang upbeat or sentimental tunes. Echo had no way of recognizing 'We've Got Annie' or Doris Day's 'Again,' but as the sound of the piano playing them filtered through the house, the overall vibes were clear. The puppet servant braced for the devastating crash that would occur after the relationship's impending doom. Yet more weeks passed than Echo ever remembered passing before. Could this really be happening?

Meanwhile, Al had never expected Terri to bring him joy or comfort. The first few weeks were so ominous, he'd felt certain while shaking her hand that he'd made a terrible mistake. But as months flew by, he was tempted to believe he'd been wrong. He no longer felt threatened, and she'd brought him music and theater, which he wouldn't have known he loved so much otherwise.

Aunt Terri could replicate exaggerated, even more colorful, boisterous versions of New Orleans ballrooms he couldn't view, or festivals and parades he'd barely experienced in person since his father rarely brought him, right down to the delectable smells of food in the air, every crisp drumroll and brassy horn note. She took Alastor fishing on a moonlit swamp in a wooden boat with an advanced outboard motor and the curious name 'Laughingstock' calligraphy-etched into its side. There, they watched large Other Mosquitos elaborately swordfight with their noses, backlit by a sea of fireflies and scored by an orchestra of humming cicadas, while waiting to catch enormous fish, after which point Terri dramatically 'tug of war' battled for their catch with a gator. Al marveled even at simpler creations, impressed that she could assemble and puppeteer cute, playful jumping mice from the meagerest scrap materials. Even while busy, Miss Terri offered no shortage of things to do. Al observed the curious activity of the insect-powered puppets and furniture; investigated her garden's foreign plant life; pondered how plants persisted or what light the moon reflected in a pocket of space without sun.

Alastor wondered how she'd made all of this. Perhaps it was...all her? Once, while Al was clopping too forcefully while chasing Ferdie, a carpet ripped out from under his feet, tripping him, repeating several times until his step lightened. It occurred to Al that he'd annoyed Terri by stepping on her too hard, raising several implications. First, he'd probably get caught doing anything sneaky in here—every mischievous little kid's worst-case scenario. Damn! Another made him even less inclined to stay in the bedroom she'd prepared for him. It resembled a cute little hunting lodge, including (since she could expend extra energy making it cool while he was around) the coziest fur blankets imaginable and its own fireplace. What did this mean? Any time he laid on that mattress or wrapped that blanket around him, she gave a stealthy hug? The part of his brain saying, 'I guess that's sweet,' was overwhelmed by the part yelling, 'Yikes, invasive, no way!' And what about that trick she'd shown Alastor with the radio? Was she willing to set her body parts on fire to amuse him? That felt...uh...complicated. The little boy promptly made himself forget about it.

The creator and creation seemed suspiciously like one, so she must have powered the pocket universe, yet it appeared she'd tire too easily unless she used her power wisely. Al noticed Terri used self-sustaining human strategies for things like heating, cooling, and energy sourcing and combined them with her magic so she could reserve strength. She could change the temperature herself at will—could change things here right down to the atomic level, it seemed—but manually dictated her world only for specialty purposes. For everyday purposes, she'd altered architectural features of the house and strategically placed fans for cooling in the faux-Louisiana climate. To non-magically supplement power for her extra electrical fixtures, she drew water from the well and passed it through a turbine. The Other World's every material seemed continuously recycled, implying she could only create a fixed amount of material or had limited power to create with. So she deliberately built things that ran themselves. Not bad.

Despite the limitations on her power this suggested, Alastor was still impressed and, honestly, worried by her cleverness and resilience, which seemed to be two of this creature's deadliest strengths. Who cared if you weren't the most technically powerful thing around if you tricked opponents into thinking you were weak before you struck? Surely anyone this gifted at living in hostile conditions could outlast their enemies...or patiently wait for a meal? Al complained to Ferdie, "She's a genius, isn't she? I'm doomed, aren't I?" Terri, who'd simply replicated inventions she'd investigated with her data pull power, was sensitive about her inability to do more than imitate or creatively alter things. She was privately delighted that Al thought it reflected on her own intelligence. If he thought she was a genius, he may give up on trying to outfox her!

From the cupola on the roof, they watched the stars. Terri fixated on stars for some reason, but Al didn't mind; it was interesting to hear her talk about them. These conversations revealed another fixation—with ends, deterioration, things falling apart. It was one of few modes by which anxiety leaked out of her. She expressed that it was a shame how even the brightest, most beautiful stars supernova'd and ended their existences as voids, but that was the way of things, to maintain balance in the universe. "Everything has to be taken apart eventually…" She nudged his hand with hers. "Hopefully not us, for a while."

"Don't think about it," Alastor encouraged, and jokingly mimed crushing the 'badness.' "Why are you worried about the ending?"

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

"Aren't you good at making alterations?" Amongst her many abilities, she seemed to be a talented seamstress.

"True."

Eventually, Terri realized Alastor wasn't going to school. There were public schools by now, correct? He didn't want to talk about how he didn't fit neatly anywhere, socially or legally, or his father's attitude about it. Were Bert magically a wealthy socialite again, he'd probably still be more likely to fistfight the headmaster of the white children's school than whip out his checkbook for the underserved colored children's school, and he didn't seem to understand why that left a bad taste in Alastor's mouth. Anyway, Bert let Alastor 'homeschool,' but lost interest in helping upon noticing his kid was bright and read well.

Not only was it unreasonable to expect the child to educate himself, he simply didn't have the materials. Terri, however, could obtain immense amounts of information, and wouldn't let such a savvy child go uneducated. Hey, she knew this story—she'd give him a library. Terri was brusque about it, but Al could tell she cared. "You read well above your age level. Go make sure you can do basic math. Read anything pertinent to the job you might want. Not that you'll have to work if we continue getting along. I expect you in there 3 hours per weekday." How had she accumulated this? Many books seemed current but some, Al noticed immediately, seemed...uh...advanced? And she seemed fatigued for days afterward. Like any time he asked what she was or how she did anything, she insisted, "I told you I'm a goddess," which, forgive him, seemed dubious.

Hunting was also better than Alastor had expected due to an unintended side effect—travel. Like any clever serial killer, Terri spread out her hunting grounds, and had the means to enable a wide spread. The beldam successfully used the lure of travel to entice him into accepting an invitation to hunt, mimicking city town centers from around the world and asking if Al would like to see how the real thing looked. When she explained that she had doors everywhere and could bring him, he was puzzled. Weren't they in houses inhabited by people? Nope. Even those in homes had a 'back door.' She opened one, revealing an impossibly long tunnel into a night sky full of stars. What was she going to do, jettison them into space?! No, no, she explained, it was because of how far down they were. He was looking up from the bottom of a well.

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

"Things like me—" She pointed at the red hourglass-like shape on the back of her dress. "—like dark, damp places. Have you read nothing about spiders in all those books?"

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

Aunt Terri's disinterest in how being mixed race affected his life bothered Alastor. She'd shrug it off with, "I'm not a citizen of your country, so I can't offer an opinion," or, "I don't concern myself with human politics." (Exposure to progressive ideas via her abilities hadn't impacted tacitly racist and sexist undertones in Terri's behavior. She'd simply adopted the more futuristic, two-faced manner of expressing them. The beldam didn't philosophically agree, per se, with such ideas, but wouldn't buck the trends. Humans mistreating segments of their own benefitted the scheming creature—the disenfranchised were easier to lure.) How disappointing that she offered an escape from every unpleasant feature of his world but this one. Al pretend it didn't hurt and employed jabs like this one at any opportunity, hoping she'd one day listen, but so far no luck.

Terri ignored his joke, then asked, sweetly, "Do you trust me?" as she held out her hand.

"Phht. No!"

Seeing his resistance to leaping into what she called 'rabbit holes' for fun, Terri shrugged and pretended to consider alternatives—before pushing him. She leapt in behind Al, wrapping arms around him before he was ripped away. It felt like being sucked into a vacuum-sealed package and looked, he admitted, like falling down Alice's rabbit hole in reverse. Soon they were at the foot of a well on Earth's surface, somewhere, and she was ruffling his hair. "See? Wasn't that fun, darling?" Alastor conceded, it was incredible. After that, it was a breeze. Free-falling through the dark, knowing everything would be okay in a few moments, while she held him tight, was beautiful. An adult had never made him feel that secure in a typical situation, let alone a dangerous one.

The first hunt occurred in France. They waited near an alley close to a pub, and finally Terri hissed, "There! Him!" at a man harassing a woman walking in front of him. She repeatedly smacked him, trying to put distance between them, to no avail, and he grew considerably more aggressive in his pursuit. There were no other witnesses.

"Is he enough of a pest to satisfy you, Spiderling?" Terri liked this game. Super special spider buddies save the world by eating up the pests! Similar to how she'd played pirates with the others, but this time she played one of the good guys. Odd, but doable.

"Yes, quite," Alastor agreed with a nod, queasy and wondering why Miss Terri hadn't acted yet.

"What I enjoy about these ones—" Terri grinned broadly, and her teeth, he noticed, had sharpened. "—is they're often especially terrified of me."

"Are you going to—?"

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

Alastor had the distinct impression she was using his ethical code to acquire sick entertainment for herself, and he was correct. Terri didn't feel much solidarity with mortal women. As something stronger than most things she encountered, she lacked emotional understanding of problems they faced, like this one, and viewed them mostly as breeding tools. She watched this like a soap opera. "Aunt Terri!" Al hissed, "help her!"

While Alastor chastised his aunt—who, he correctly suspected, radically misunderstood how seriously he took vigilantism—the man sprung into action. Had Al heard something like this before? His mind didn't remember, but his heart did. Alastor looked up at her pleadingly. She waited no longer.

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

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

And. Then. She. STRETCHED.

The man dropped her, fell back. The woman ran, screaming in greater terror than before. The being standing before the assailant was basically humanoid, but intimidatingly tall and very, very strong, as indicated by her grip when she picked him up by the throat. "'I moved on him like a b****. When you're their Mother, they let you do it,'" Terri jested, before unhinging her jaw and swallowing the criminal whole.

Alastor knew he should be afraid. Why wasn't he? While monstrous in this manifestation, Aunt Terri seemed quite regal. She noticed him staring and cocked her head back at him with her long, long neck. "You're very powerful," he whispered, awestruck. Alastor was glad to be distracted from how disgusted he'd been with her minutes ago. Perhaps he'd misunderstood her intentions? Yes, that was it... They were both enthusiastic about vigilantism, he stubbornly pretended. His powerful spider aunt was a super(anti)hero!

Terri's sweet giggle left the creature's mouth. She changed back and booped her nose against his, silently devouring the delicious pride and adoration directed at her. "Do you want to be just like Auntie when you grow up?"

Terri's punishment filled him with feelings of delight and relief that Al hadn't known he needed. It had something to do with the powerful emotions he'd felt when he heard that woman's scream. He nodded emphatically. "...I...would! Yes!"

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

[X]

Hunting and traveling brought more excitement than he could've imagined, but Al was just as pleased by mundane things they did together. Underwhelming as they were, he'd had no one to do them with before. On Halloween, they carved pumpkins. Terri privately hoped this pumpkin had never been anyone he knew.

"I can't remember doing this," Al admitted while they worked on the deck.

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

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

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

Terri's brain already contained a veritable cookbook, but she hadn't enjoyed the benefits herself before now, not needing the food for nourishment and having only...short-lived guests. Now she savored the scent and took tastes, and got even more creative than before.

Unready to venture into cannibalism just yet, Al was intrigued by Terri's non-human food sources, too. While she relied on respect to truly feed, she'd eat anything containing proteins utilized by humans, including meat and insects, so she could build a body capable of leaving the den. She'd interested him in trying a chocolate-covered cockroach once with the promise that it tasted like nuts. She could've pissed herself laughing when it kept wriggling in his mouth. Oh, was it important that they were dead? He was angry for only 30 seconds. Then he laughed his special laugh along with her.

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

Al didn't want to talk about having a hard time making friends, having no-one to trick-or-treat with. "My dad and I read the horror pulps," he finally answered.

"Phhht."

"What?"

"You like being scared, do you? That explains some things."

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

"Not scared at all?"

Alastor grinned at her and stuck out his tongue.

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

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

Terri was indeed a lover of future horror films, both serious and satirical. "Yes, but like you, they don't scare me, they're just fun. See, every fictional monster or horror villain is based on the threat of an existing predator. I can't identify with that fear quite so much," she explained.

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

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

"Are you afraid of any of them?"

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

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

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

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

Terri was briefly caught off guard, but quickly redirected. "I do know a good scary story! You know. Narratively. As a work of art. Even if I'm hard to scare."

"Tell it!"

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

Al donned his war face. "Do ittttt."

Well, he was asking for it! Terri knew precisely the monster that would frighten this child. She took the seeds from the oven to cool, lowered the soup to a simmer, and sat him on the couch. Perhaps she'd earn a cuddle! Every time he came, she wanted more and more desperately for him to love her.

"Once upon a time, a family of three was having an unhappy Christmas. They weren't as close as they'd once been. The couple's marriage struggled following an affair. Their moody teenage daughter cast them both as villains and distanced herself. Even the dog was unhappy, now that the girl had grown and spent less time playing, brooding alone in her room. The girl wished she were just far enough away from her parents that she couldn't hear their voices shouting down the hall. If only the house were bigger.

"That was when she noticed the door. A door that hadn't been in their hallway before, right next to a coat closet. A door that led, as far as she could tell, to nothing. There was a dark ashen hallway, then another, and another. Not falling for the trap, she exited and alerted her parents. Both laughed until they saw it. For the first time in months, they clutched each other. This was a make-or-break moment. They could reunite and work together through their fear. Or. They could investigate the Hallway.

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

"They stayed together for four hallways, five, six, seven, eight, nine. But soon something arose from the darkness...a low, coarse grrrrrrrrowwwwwwwwwwwwwling."

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

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

"For the first time, the girl was glad to hear the sound of her parents' voices, amplified by echoes, and tried to follow the sound. But she would never hear anything but an echo ever again. They'd already grown too far apart, and unable to access one another, the process could not be reversed. In the dark, endless corridors of the maze, they at first heard echoes of one another's calls, but the space was so vast and directionless space it was impossible to determine the source, and they often turned in the wrong direction. In the end, they wandered so far apart they heard only their own echoes. Each feared they would die alone, cold, in the dark of starvation and thirst. But they'd be spared this painful, drawn-out fate.

"BECAUSE. THEN. THE. Terriblegrowlingthinginthedarknessswallowedthemdownthelongblackhallwaythatwasitshorriblethroatanddissolvedtheirpatheticsoulsinitshorrible gastricjuicescomposedofthehideousscaldingtragedyoftheirownfailingsandagonizingloneliness!"

Alastor gave her a wide-eyed look and then unexpectedly burst into laughter. It was tough for the child to articulate what precisely was so funny. Partly the dramatic tone shift, but more specifically the reason he'd pegged for it. "You fled!" Alastor teased.

"Hmmn?"

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

Ah. 'You fled.' She'd laughed off the miserable ending. Oh, but that wasn't the ending! Terri ticked her head toward the nearest closet and mouthed, "Can't let that thing know you take it seriously." Al's laughter weakened and petered out. "Shhhh," Terri hissed, glancing side to side. "You see," she mouthed secretively, "that's my predator." Alastor couldn't tell if she meant this literally. The him from a few months ago would've dismissed this notion out of hand, but current Al had seen some weird shit. "The growling, echoing thing in the dark," Terri confirmed. "The Hungry Thing."

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

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

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

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

"You're serious?" Alastor asked.

"What do you think?" Terri replied playfully.

Al would've assumed she jested if he hadn't remembered the extended, dark hallway filled with doors. He dismissed the thought as they lit the jack-o-lanterns, ate the seeds and the soup. They wandered an apple orchard she'd constructed, picking apples destined to go in a pie, and she teased him with grasping, sentient spooky tree branches and swooping puppet bats that weren't remotely as frightening as her story was. After they drank her special hot chocolate on the back deck and it was time to go home, the uneasiness set in again.

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

"...Was it just a story?"

She didn't answer. "Why?"

"When I first came here...I had to get through a long hallway with a lot of doors."

A horrible weight of dread descended coldly on Terri's shoulders. She told him that story to spook him for fun, but...there was the chance that the Thing was already sniffing him out. She hadn't interpreted it this way back when she'd discussed the doors with the cat; she'd assumed the hallway was behaving as usual, responding to the unique psychology of the inhabitant. She'd had no reason to expect it would misbehave so quickly, but now she wondered. "Well, you're not lonely anymore either, are you? So there's no cause for concern," Terri consoled Alastor, and herself. "Neither of us has to be lonely ever again."

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

Terri offered to accompany Alastor home. At the door in the cellar, she took his hand, swung it open casually, fearlessly, and walked him through the average-sized, softly-glowing astral hallway he'd seen since the second visit. "See?" She motioned around. "Nothing to be afraid of!"

Alastor wasn't entirely sold. Even with eyes, Terri could maintain a good poker face, but he'd heard that taptaptaptapping of her hand earlier when he mentioned the hallway. He whispered, "It's not just a story, is it?"

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

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

The next day, Terri checked early, hours ahead of when the boy normally arrived, for anything suspicious. Of course, two thirds down the Hallway was an additional door. Terri inhaled sharply through gritted teeth. "Now, friend. You've evolved me for a reason," she lectured her animalistic subconscious. "I'm the one with the good long-term decision-making ability, remember?" The Hallway was silent. "We've been waiting for an opportunity like this for a long time. You can't just eat anything. This could bring us long-term food security. Remember? This took years of effort and planning. It's our life's work. Impulse control, friend!" The Hallway was silent.

Terri scowled and opened the door, expecting a large anteroom but finding a short hallway with another door. Sun and moon, the thing had learned the child might enter if the first few corridors seemed unthreatening. She knew behind that door were probably three or so additional hallways of slightly longer length, leading to the wide anteroom—so wide and so dark that if you got midway in, it took more than an hour to find your way out—and then the stairs and then the maze. She slammed the door shut ragefully. "You need to watch it. Disassemble that immediately!" The Hallway was silent.

It didn't matter, Terri thought. Her bright little star would be too suspicious to go in there. But might the Hungry Thing switch the doors around, or create other confusing layouts to trap the child? She'd simply compress the Hallway, Terri thought, but tried without success. Gasping with exertion, she felt crushing anxiety. The Thing hadn't bucked her dominion like this in many years. She reminded it once more, "I'm here to make good long term decisions. And you need to listen!" Thirty slow seconds dragged by before the extra door finally vanished.

Terri decided she'd stand close to her door to listen for him near his usual arrival time. The Thing couldn't be trusted. Terri tried to quell the panic. She shouldn't need to be afraid of something so primitive when she was the brains behind this operation. "You need to remember, we're in this to survive, and this will help us do that. You will mess it all up. So don't take him." She didn't like how much emotion she had betrayed, but it was still true. After all, emotions evolved to tell you when something was good for you, right? "Don't take him," she pleaded again.

Why would the Thing do this? There didn't even seem to be distance between them now! Was one of them hesitating? Could she be responsible for the new door spawning? 'Preposterous,' Terri told herself. She failed to recognize she made the little boy feel disrespected by invalidating his experience of being marginalized and treating his personal aspirations like a game. It was too embarrassing to consider her own anxiety about growing emotionally invested in Alastor, since she feared rejection like death itself.

Most importantly, Terri discounted that she and her 'subconscious' had competing interests. The Hallway was not a team player. It pretended to play a cooperative game, but it actually played it's own game, against Terri. And it continued, by varying methods, to eliminate her teammates, one...by...one.

[X]

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

A few times, he'd arrived in the Other Basement and stopped, remained silent, and staked out as he listened to her upstairs, just playing the piano in an anguished way. He didn't know the songs, and she rarely wept (from the sound of it, she'd trained herself out of it because having no eyes to produce tears led only to sinus congestion; he'd have laughed if he didn't feel sorry for her). But the tone and aggressive hammering were clear. Plus, like anything else musical she did, it pulled him in like a force of gravity or a strong tide and surrounded him, creating the impression of being trapped underwater, every movement impeded, escape prevented as waves crashed heavily on the surface. He could feel what she felt, and it was awful. Accentuating the presumptive degree of suffering was the fact that he was never caught. In his experience, Aunt Terri had always known when Alastor was about to show up, so the fact that she didn't notice him could only mean that she was completely absorbed in her pain.

Furthermore, Alastor thought this was not an act to garner sympathy, although Aunt Terri was a decent actress. His first clue that Echo was not mindless, like the other puppets, was the time it had walked downstairs—perhaps ordered away, or to give Terri space, or even to flee the pervasive misery in the atmosphere—and saw him. After freezing and regarding him silently for a moment, the puppet servant approached Alastor, steered him gently by the shoulders back into the doorway, then held a finger to its lips and 'shhhh'ed before waving a friendly goodbye and closing the door again. Based on Terri's previously-stated philosophy of keeping things light, and certified by Echo's behavior, this was something Terri wouldn't want him to know. It couldn't be manipulation.

At first, Alastor couldn't explain why he didn't immediately leave during these events. His usual instinct was to give someone space and privacy, and his own fear of negative emotion should've sent him running. Eventually, Al realized he was emotionally affected by her sorrow, and the secretive way she expressed it, in an unpainful way because...he identified with it. Alastor had essentially no one else he identified with. This made him feel more bonded to her, and also intensified how much he wanted to make this terribly lonely woman smile.

Another less extreme thing Al had noticed was the way Aunt Terri accepted gifts. Perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised, having witnessed her trophy room shrine. Any time he brought her something, she did her best to pretend it was expected. She always behaved like she considered herself a celebrity. But Alastor could read the slight pauses or the brief taptaptap of her foot or fingers on a surface, showing she was sincerely pleased and excited, no matter how small the offering.

Once he tried bringing flowers, but learned Earth flora wilted at an exaggerated pace in the Other World. "Should I be concerned?" he asked, semi-jokingly, semi-seriously.

"You'll be fine," Terri assured him. "It's partly because they were already dead. You're only here a few hours a day. You're fine, I promise." Alastor found this answer entirely unsatisfying, but he didn't feel ill at all, so he let it go for the time being.

Alastor focused instead on how forlorn Aunt Terri had momentarily seemed by the wilting flowers, like they symbolized something secret to her. She brushed it off by reminding him she had her own garden, so this was sweet but unnecessary. Her casual dismissal of his gift only challenged Alastor to improve it. He remembered the dried flowers he'd seen in the trophy room—loose, scattered, but decently preserved. Al's next attempt entailed drying flowers in his room and carefully pressing them in a notebook, arranged like a bouquet. When he presented them, Terri's nose pricked up. Alastor assumed she'd picked up the smell of the flowers, which retained their scent when dried; in fact, the beldam had detected an unprecedented amount of affection. Terri's movie star routine noticeably lapsed. She wore a dazed, confused expression on her face and seemed breathless. But only for a few seconds. Soon the movie star returned, telling him he was a sweetheart, patting him on the head with a semi-dismissive attitude, pretending it was standard. But Al had seen it. No one could've missed it. When he curiously snuck into the trophy room a few days later, he saw she'd already framed it in glass...and he liked that. He really, really liked that.

Alastor also couldn't help noticing Aunt Terri's world was so small and so dark. When asked why, she explained that she didn't have the energy to build much more. She seemed concerned that he was bored, but he was worried about her. She assured him she had lived just fine this way for centuries, but that didn't appease him. Hard as he tried to expel it, Al's mind always returned to the 'princess in a tower' motif. At least, he thought, when he offered to take her outside, she went, unlike Bert. He tried enticing her to leave the den more often, didn't like her always staying inside in the dark.

All things considered, Alastor didn't doubt that Aunt Terri was lonely enough for the Hungry Thing to consider her a favorite prey animal, so it was very lucky indeed that he'd shown up. With each passing day, more of his determination to remain rational and self-preserving deteriorated when pitted against his growing fondness for the lonely sorceress. In fact, he was spellbound. Al worried the witch had won her game already. Although she'd pledged to protect him, Alastor knew, deep down, he was also willing to protect his Aunt Terri from anything.

[X]

Note: The Hallway 'character' originates in 'House of Leaves.' Terri's story covers the basics about the Hallway. It's a continuously-shifting maze that interacts with the psychology of those who enter it. It's both attracted to and tends to sow relational tension, and (not mentioned but useful to know) it appears to be a force of entropy, eroding/disassembling anything after a period of time.