xXx
The crowd applauded; a few shouts and whistles, mostly clapping as the warm-up band finished their set. Backstage, Tandy and Peter exchanged a glance, and Tandy looked over the rest of the band.
"Time to perform," she said seriously. "We are better than we know. We have nothing to fear." She smiled, and they all felt warmed by the moment. Then she turned, and watched as No Quarter came off the stage. The ragged grungy musicians left their gear, and the stage hands came out to switch configurations and so forth.
"Good show," Tandy murmured to them as they filed past. The last one in line couldn't have been older than eighteen; he stopped, turning to Peter.
"Dude, autograph?"
"Sure," Peter grinned, and he took the sharpie and whipped his name across the 'Eyes Open' playbill. The drummer clutched his prize.
"Awesome, dude," he breathed, and he jogged to catch up with the rest of his band.
Less than ten minutes. Eyes Open composed themselves as the crowd milled and chattered, but they could feel the anticipation swelling even from backstage.
"This is gonna be big," Mary Jane breathed. "You feel that out there? They want to see us."
The stage manager scampered up to them. "On in three," he whispered.
Tandy nodded, and looked to Tyrone.
"M-Mary h-h-hh-had-dd-d a l-ll-litt-tt-le l-lamb-b," Tyrone managed, choking on the words, his hands trembling with nerves.
"Whose fleece was white as snow," Tandy grinned, eyes lit up.
"And everywhere that Mary went," Mary Jane said, clutching her hands together, washed out pale with fear and excitement.
"Her lamb was sure to go," Peter nodded. "Let's do this thing."
Then the lights came up, and the announcer blared at the crowd to give it up for Eyes Open. Over five hundred people packed into the club, and the roar they put up was almost tangible. The band took their places; Mary Jane and Tyrone ducked into their guitar straps, Tandy settled her stance behind the keyboard, Peter perched on the drum stool and whirled his sticks around and around.
Tandy laughed, and it was a joyful sound. The rest of the band couldn't help but grin as that laugh pushed some tension off their nerves. Then she hit a chord, and they nodded to each other.
The band blazed off down 'Winter Wonderland', swinging it with almost dangerous abandon, then they slung straight into the Carol of the Bells. Mary Jane harmonized with Tandy as Peter propelled the wild off-balance rhythm, and Tyrone's guitar fired through the verses with agility his voice could never match.
Sweat flowed from the musicians as the hot lights flared down across them, and the pulsing energy of the crowd surged like a mighty tide around and through them. Under the heat of the lights, on the anvil of the stage, hammered by the crowd, a strange bond was finalized between them as each poured everything they had into the music they shared.
Peter closed his eyes, his senses alive with the performance and the rhythm; he took it to the edge, and he was barely aware of what the spider ghost was doing with the drum set. His head felt oddly clear, and awake, and he was alive. Truly alive. He opened his eyes, and as though he was dreaming, he saw his wife in her midriff baring shirt and low-slung jeans, crimson hair askew, jamming for all she was worth. Tandy, glowing under the lights as though she radiated her own light. Tyrone, who didn't have a care in the world as the guitar threw up a barrier between him and everything else he worried about.
With a rattle and a crash, the Carol of the Bells swirled through the last verse and came to a graceful, balanced halt. The crowd went wild, and the band took a moment to sip water bottles and check their instruments.
"Okay, gang," Tandy said so only the band could hear. "I want to do 'Waiting.' Any problem with that?"
"D-do it," Tyrone said with a grin that showed off all his teeth.
Peter remembered back through rehearsals, remembered her tinkering with the song. He shrugged. He made it all up as he went along anyway. Mary Jane's eyes widened, and she was on board.
"Okay. With me," Tandy said, and she tilted the mike back in front of her. "Listen up," she said, and the crowd's noise shimmered off a magnitude, still deafening. "We're going to step away from carols for a minute. I got something special cooked up for you all tonight. And those who are here tonight and ready for this song are going to hear it in a way that no one else can. You all ready for something different?"
Apparently, they were.
Tandy glanced down at the keyboard, and she touched at the keys with a fluid certainty. Tyrone let her get through the first iteration of the tune; it was minor, haunting, urgent. The guitar slid into the gaps in the tune, and Mary Jane pinned down the base with her chords. Peter simply tapped at the drum heads as Tandy took her time, working out the theme, working out the tune, laying the groundwork.
I feel you waiting, she sang. I feel the chains that swaddle you, I feel the light that fills your eyes, I feel you dimming through. There's nothin in the world, nothin in the world that can beat you, defeat you, but they can close the windows to, your soul.
Tandy leaned back and jammed on the keyboard as the song kicked it. Peter felt the moment coming, like a storm building, and he was ready. The drums took off, a percussive thunder woven from a dozen strikes. Tandy caught the moment, and rolled into the refrain:
There's time for waiting, but while you do you hold, your breath. There's time for waiting, just so long as you don't go to sleep. There's time for waiting, but not if waiting eats you, brings your death. When it hurts to move, then sometimes you gotta rest; but if you're waiting, waiting, wating… you gotta know, gotta know, what you're waiting for.
The awareness, the sense of being fully alive swelled in Peter, leaving him vulnerable. He could feel his fellow musicians through the medium he was tied into. He felt their abandon, their escape into this moment from the doubts they carried. And he felt something inside him swell, and a lump grew in his throat as he felt free of his doubt and fear and pain. And as the sensation shocked through him, he realized how cramped he had gotten wedged in the middle of all that.
Hurts to move, hurts to breathe hurts to walk, hurts to stand. So you're waiting, waiting, waiting to understand. Here's the trick, it's life, life, never gonna make sense, too dense, you just get one so get off the fence.
As Tandy soared into the refrain, Mary Jane ducked at her microphone and crooned harmony, and Peter punished the drums. He could see. He could see under the lights, he could see the crowd. His senses were absorbed in the music, in the drums, but they didn't need him for that. And he saw the listeners.
Here and there in the crowd, there were men and women who were caught utterly flat-footed by the song, transfixed, their eyes open and their mouths slack. Some had tears pouring down their faces.
And Peter saw Brilhart, sitting at a table, holding a cigarette, at a loss. Tearing his eyes from what he saw in Brilhart's face, Peter glanced over to the balcony box seat where Richard Fisk watched, bemused. Behind him, Ebony leaned against the wall, eyes dark, amused as he watched Peter's drumsticks dance and twirl.
I bring you hope, Tandy sung as Mary Jane dropped out and tended to the baseline. There is a world, a world you forgotten. There is a world, a world you used, used to belong to. And like a birth, like a curse, like the greatest gift you never got, this pain can see you through, till you see through, and the world you left behind? Bust wide open, you come back, you come back, you never left and it's more than you imagined.
Peter gave it his all, and the drums thrummed and rattled with the oddly unbalanced tempo of her song as he felt the whole tone shift to a dissonance that was not her style. For a long moment the spider ghost had its hands full with the rhythm and distance of the song as the words of the chorus held, but the music veered into a shadowed half-remembered elaboration of the theme.
You are not alone in this thing, Tandy crooned, oddly subdued. And neither are those around you. They have you, you have them. And you choose to say what that means. But in the empty dark, the silence, the cold night of the soul; there is a light, a light that shines in us, a light that's deep in your soul. When you can't look out, can't look up, your neck is half broken; you still have time, and room, space to breathe, if you dive to the bottom. No prison is complete, no prison, is, complete, no prison is complete. And the keys you need, are in the eyes, of those…. around you.
The song almost halted right there; it hung in the air, just luminous and beautiful and breathtakingly sorrowful and hopeful. Peter's eyes blurred with tears as that moment perched, hummed; he saw Tandy turn to him, her eyes touching his for just one moment, and he knew what he had to do.
He rattled a thrust across the drums that turned the moment into momentum, and the band blazed through the refrain twice more before closing out the song.
The crowd went berserk.
Tryone leaned back, squirting his face with the water bottle, and Mary Jane perched on a stool and tried to catch her breath, her eyes vulnerable and open, her whole body slick with sweat. Tandy sat back on her stool, taking a drink, running her hands through her hair. Peter touched at the drums with his fingers. Still the crowd roared, surging at the barriers. Security stepped forward, arms outstretched.
"Okay," Tandy said. "Okay, people, settle. Settle down. We're not done yet." She smiled, a warmth to her that could melt ice at twenty paces. "You all ready for something different? Tell you what. We got some more Christmas carols coming right up."
Peter played through the rest of the set, but he barely felt a thing.
An hour later, the band was finished. They wrapped up the third encore, Frosty the Snowman as he had never rocked before. Cramped and aching, Peter extracted himself from the drum set and bowed with the rest of the band, then they trooped offstage, utterly spent.
Cheering and clapping and hooting met them backstage, too; they were quickly surrounded by techs, groupies, and resourceful fans who had found their way through security. After a flurry of signing, Tandy led the charge as they headed out the back into the crisp December night.
"We can sign everything that's flat another night," Tandy said. "God, I'm worn out."
"Hell, I'm worn out," Peter agreed.
"Does that even happen?" Mary Jane teased, exhaustion clearly printed in her features.
Tyrone had nothing to say as he leaned against the wall and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. Tandy looked them over.
"I talked to Fisk, he'll hang on to our stuff and we can pick it up tomorrow. Good work, people. We had something special in there tonight."
"Yeah," Peter said. His senses took her in; the strength and vulnerability that wove through her, filled with her own light. And as they made eye contact, he didn't need her to tell him who she had been singing to. "This is why you wanted to get together a band, isn't it," Peter said quietly. "To touch people. To bring them hope. I know, it's what you said. After you became the Eye. But… I guess I didn't understand what it could mean." To me, he added silently.
She pulled him into a hug, and he didn't resist. He held her tightly for a long moment, feeling tears threaten again. Because she understood. And she gave him his space. But he could no longer wait for Peter Parker to heal on his own.
He let her go, and she smiled at them. Then she turned her back and walked through the dusting of snow that sifted down in the deep night. Tyrone fell in step beside her, glancing over at her, just waiting for the word to slip through the city faster.
Peter turned to Mary Jane, his eyes luminescent. "I'm sorry," he murmured, gesturing, unspecified. He licked his lips. "I have to go out," he said.
She smiled at him, oddly solemn, and she touched the side of his face. "So go," she said softly.
Turning, he moved with the energy of decision, glancing both ways and crossing the street. Mary Jane watched him go, then she shook her head and went home.
Sunday, December 19, 2004
The clocktower had just finished tolling midnight as Peter found himself in the cemetery. He easily vaulted the fence and navigated the twisting paths until he spotted police tape.
Moments later he stood by a plot with two headstones, surrounded by yellow tape that fluttered in the chill wind. The dusting of snow concealed nothing from Peter's senses as he let them play across the disrupted grave.
No equipment had done this. He saw the handprints. There was no doubt in his mind that some supernaturally powerful… man who was buried had pushed his way out. He couldn't quite grasp it.
A bloody handprint was smeared on the smaller headstone next to the broken grave. Adam Fawks, the son. Peter wondered if… if perhaps there was an undead killer roaming the streets of New York.
"I could call in Strange," Peter murmured, unconvinced.
It's been too long, there's too much distance, whispered a familiar voice in the back of his mind. And Peter realized it had been a long, long time since they had talked to each other. The spider ghost rustled, and Peter blinked as he wondered if the spider ghost had been silent… or if he had.
The tree over the grave shifted slightly, and Peter looked up to see a crow perched in the branches.
The crow gazed at him, as though curious. And the Darkstone taint in Peter recognized something… something was different about the bird. It wasn't entirely an animal.
The crow launched from the branch with a hoarse croak, and Peter followed, jogging after the elusive shadow as it threaded through the night. The crow picked up the pace. Peter found himself jumping and springing through the graveyard, and the light from the moon filtered down, trapped in the snow, so the darkness was oddly luminescent. Peter almost fired web out to swing after the bird, but his sleeves were clamped over his wrists. His feet had only normal traction. Peter skidded to a halt as he realized he couldn't pace the bird. Not like this. Not as Peter Parker.
The bird seemed to understand that, somehow. And it left him behind.
Shivering slightly, Peter left the graveyard.
xXx
Peter Parker slipped through the window on the second floor, and glanced around the junk shop. It only took him a moment to find what he was looking for.
He slapped the hat off a child mannequin, and he picked it up. As he tucked it under his arm, he sighed to himself.
"Okay, Chuck," he said to the dummy. "Let's go get you dressed." He tossed a twenty dollar bill on the counter where he found the mannequin, then he was gone.
xXx
Peter set the dummy up on a table in his study. He pulled a can of black spray paint out of a drawer. Picking up one of the cardboard boxes left over from the move, Peter tore a box leaf off and cut two ovals the same size out of it.
Then, Peter rolled up his sleeves as he regarded the dummy. He glanced at the clock. Shortly after two in the morning. Fine. He prodded at the long puffy scars on his wrists. They were oddly meaty, and they ended in little scabbed pits. He flexed his forearms. There wasn't much web… He squirted at the dummy, and the atrophied spinnerets struggled to comply. Webbing spat out, mixed with a hint of blood. His forearms began to itch.
"What's going on?" Mary Jane asked from the doorway. She wore a houserobe, and her hair was mussed from the pillow.
"I'm trying to make a suit of mesh," Peter said, glancing at his forearms ruefully. "I guess it's been a while. By noon tomorrow I should have enough mesh to do the job."
"Is this about Brilhart?" Mary Jane asked. "His case?"
"Yes and no," Peter said, regarding the innocent mannequin. "I mean, yeah, he had a case, and I'm checking it out. But I wasn't going to." He turned and looked Mary Jane in the eye. "Waiting. Quite a song. I never really, really listened to it before."
"Maybe it wasn't speaking to you," Mary Jane shrugged. "Tandy. She's something else, isn't she."
"Yes," Peter said. "She takes my breath away." He smiled at Mary Jane. "But you give it back, Mary Jane."
She left the doorway, walked up to him, pulled him into a hug. He wrapped his arms around her, felt her warmth. Realized he had missed it.
"It must be weird, for Brilhart to call on you."
"It's weird," Peter agreed, not willing to let her go just yet.
"You going to involve Strange?" she asked. "Or his people?"
Peter sighed. "It's been too long," he said. "I gotta have a look at this one myself. While I'm thinking things over. I don't want to give Strange the wrong idea, like I'm ready to work for him."
Mary Jane had nothing else to say, but she didn't let him go, either.
He didn't mind a bit.