Something moved, low along the ground like a slinking dog, hissing and scuttling at the edge of the town square. Then it disappeared into the mist with the thin noise of static.
Laguna shuddered. "What happened to this place?"
"What happens to any place?" Sukaru was unconcerned. "Something. Maybe it was a war. Maybe people just didn't want to live here any more. Maybe it was the monsters."
"Those monsters--" Laguna's eyes followed the edge of the square, where visibility finally faded into fog. "What are they?"
"Monsters. Nothing special." Sukaru kicked a stone, sending it skipping across the ground. "They get into the city now and again, and no one's here to fight them off. All the men went off to war, and they never came back. They're all dead now--or they wish they were. Sleeping somewhere quiet. Somewhere far away."
"I saw a soldier here--" Laguna began.
"There aren't any soldiers any more." Sukaru shot him a significant look, but said nothing more. An uneasy silence fell, and Sukaru looked away.
Laguna's stomach rumbled, and he put a hand to it. "It's been so long since I ate anything," he remarked. "I'm getting hungry."
"Then why don't you eat?"
"Eat? What's there to eat in this place?"
"Don't you know? There's a bar up by the Town Square." He turned back, staring at Laguna with intent eyes.
Laguna did know. It was the same bar above which Raine had lived, and he could still remember the food that came from behind that counter. "Yeah, but--"
"But what? You said you're hungry, aren't you?" Sukaru poked his nose forward again, scrutinizing Laguna's face.
"It's just--is it all right?"
"Why wouldn't it be? No one's here." Sukaru jammed his hands into his pockets and walked off, leaving Laguna to follow him.
"The woman who used to live in that bar--"
"Was your Raine? Yeah. I know."
"How? Did you know her?"
"I knew of her."
"How?" Laguna was hurrying not to lose him--Sukaru was shorter than he was, but he made good use of those legs. "How did you know her?"
"I knew of her. What's the matter? You think that's uncommon in a town like this?"
Everyone knew Raine. Everyone loved Raine, and that made it so much easier for everyone to hate him. "...no, I guess not."
"Come on. Keep up."
"I'm coming--I'm coming." Sukaru was at the door and through it before Laguna had crossed the square--fighting an irrational twinge of fear, Laguna sprinted the rest of the way.
Sukaru was already at the cupboards, opening them and closing them in a search for dishware. "They say the best food comes from places like this," he said. "The very best."
The door at the top of the stairs was swinging loosely on its hinges.
Laguna stared up at it, Sukaru all but forgotten. Raine's room--our room...
"I'll be right back," he said, pushing away from the table as Sukaru rummaged behind the counter, bringing out boxes and cans with a deftness that shouldn't have come so naturally to him. "I just-- I have to see something."
Sukaru grunted an acknowledgment.
Laguna walked up the stairs, and they groaned and protested beneath him. Even the noise Sukaru made on the floor below seemed to fade away to nothing as he approached the door.
The bolts had been removed, but with impossible skill--there was neither rust nor hole to show that they had ever been there. The door moved slightly, a soft breeze tickling past it and brushing against Laguna's collar. With a hesitation he wished not to feel, he reached out, opened it, and stepped past.
The room was empty, and he looked around it with a disappointment that bit deeper than he would have expected.
"See anything?" Sukaru called up--and, halfhearted, Laguna mumbled a reply. Sukaru likely couldn't hear it. Laguna didn't have the presence of mind to notice or care. The room was too silent, too empty.
There was a red dress--a red dress with red-ribbon straps lacing up and down the space where shoulders should have been--and it was hung so perfectly against the window that it danced as if it was alive when the breeze came in.
The fog was so thick outside that window that it was hard to see over to the next house, let alone any further. It wound into the room, spirals and tendrils, and disappeared.
Faint afterscents of perfume lingered, on the very edge of fading.
The back window was shut, though the glass was cracked. There was a chair by it, angled precisely to afford the best view out and across the modest back yard.
--the window that overlooks the garden--
He walked to it.
The wind was howling outside the window, but the fog curled with no more speed or purpose than funereal incense. The garden was invisible, cloaked in an infinity of grey.
His thigh bumped into an endtable as he looked in vain for something, any visual interruption in the fog. Jumping, he turned to it.
The table was covered in newspaper clippings--dusty, fragile and yellowed with age. With the utmost care, he picked up the first clipping in the file and blew across it. The dust billowed upward, mingling with the humid air.
It was an obituary--a monthly one, noting dates and causes of deaths through the month, whatever month it had been. There was no indication. Very few of the names were names he recognized.
Too many people had died that month. It didn't take him long to realize that. One on the third, one on the seventh, three on the ninth, eight on the tenth... the numbers grew and grew, skipping through the later days. And next to each one was written a word he could almost make out--Buchubuchu or Bunbun--that tugged at his memory but lead it nowhere.
He put the article down. It was torn off at the end, just like the letter--half of the last name was visible, and began Suk--. A part of him didn't want to know what followed after it, though he couldn't quite explain the fear.
His hand accidentally brushed against the chair, and he paused.
The seat was warm--faintly, the sort of lingering temperature that clung to things recently abandoned, reminding of pliant skin and the warm blood beating beneath it.
His hand began to tremble.
There was an old, old phonograph Raine had purchased from an antique shop on the bed, tarnished and cracking. It had never worked, and he was trying not to believe it was whispering static.
His hand wouldn't stop shaking.
He began to back away, scanning the room for a danger he couldn't place, couldn't name. He backed into the door as a gust of something swung it open, snapping against his shoulders like a whip's sharp reproof--he spun, and his hand caught its edge sharply. A splinter broke loose and dug in, tearing across the skin and spilling bright blood.
He took the stairs two at a time, collapsing on the last one as the door slammed shut behind him. Only when he had caught his breath, gulping the dusty air, did he notice that Sukaru was gone.
-
There were only so many places in the old house to hide. Sukaru had never come up the stairs--that was obvious. And he wasn't in the bar or the food closet, and the door to the cellar was jammed as tightly as the door to Raine's room had been bolted--though no bolts, suspicious or innocuous, graced this door, and even the lock seemed to be missing. But the front door was open and creaking.
Sukaru had set the table before he had vanished--it was a picture-perfect setting, as if he had torn it from a dishware magazine. For a moment Laguna thought that he had gone out to collect something--some ingredient that they were missing--but the thought was quickly dismissed as ludicrous. Where would he get it from? Why would he say nothing before leaving?
He walked to the door, staring out into the fog. "Sukaru?" he called, and his voice echoed in the moisture without anyone to answer it. Hesitating, he stepped out into the fog.
It curled around him, pulling him in as he moved. Unwilling to move from sight of the familiar doorway, he made a pitiful half-circuit around the square--seeing nothing that could be a human form. With another fruitless hail he gave up and stepped back inside, pulling the door shut with a shudder and a sigh.
The one companion he had found in this dreary place had vanished. No trace of him remained.
One of the place settings had been smashed into fragments on the table.
With a kind of weary numbness, Laguna stepped carefully to it, but there was no indication of what had happened so suddenly. The fine china was ruined, far beyond repair.
It seemed like everything was falling apart, these days...
He made his way to the counter, picking up the boxes and tins Sukaru had left out and carrying them to the table. He sat and ate in silence, and the food had the flavor and consistency of dust.
-
-
The food, for all its shortcomings, was filling and heavy, and Laguna found himself drifting off as he finished it. His head was growing heavier and heavier, and it seemed like someone had shut off the controls to the muscles in his neck--they relaxed and his head lolled forward, all without his conscious volition. He had to keep pulling himself back from the edge of sleep, and it crept like mist around him--like the pale patterns of light and lesser light on the butcher's paper covering the windows, like the slow creak of the ancient door. He could imagine sunlight filtering in through the windows, motes of dust hanging too lazy to fall. Honey-golden and warm. Not like this.
He remembered falling asleep on days like that at the table by the windows, with a pencil and a pad of paper, cobbling something together for submission to something or other--scratching it out and beginning again, over and over until the warmth of the day caught up with him and lulled him to sleep. He remembered watching the sun slip away, fading everything through brittle amber light into darkness. He remembered going up the stairs, barely awake enough to pull back the covers and tumble into bed with--
He jerked himself back up. For seventeen years he had been given an overabundance of time to wait and reflect, now was the time to do something. Search. The letter--
The letter was safe in the pocket of his jacket, and he was so inexplicably tired. And the world was silent--easily silent enough for sleep.
"I see you didn't wait for me."
Laguna's head snapped up, and he gaped at the person coming in through the front door. "Sukaru! Where have you been?"
"It doesn't matter." Sukaru stared at the smashed place setting, frowning despondently. "...it doesn't matter. Was the food good?"
Laguna glanced away self-consciously as Sukaru settled into the chair across from him, folding his arms across the sharp bits of china. "...I think it would have been better if I knew how to cook."
The halfhearted jest didn't elicit anything from Sukaru. "I see."
"Sukaru?"
"Yeah?"
Laguna glanced at him, searching his face one more time. How many times had he dreamed about a face just like that one? "What are you doing, here?"
"I'm looking for my parents," Sukaru said dispassionately.
Laguna suppressed a shudder. "What were they like?"
"Tell the truth, I don't really remember them. One died a long time ago, and the other I never knew." Sukaru shrugged it off, pale eyes staring into the distance. "It's all right, though. I don't think they really loved me, anyway."
"Nonsense!" Laguna rubbed the back of his neck, distinctly uneasy. "How ever heard of something like that?"
"Did your parents love you?"
"Of course they did! I remember this one time--"
"I don't need to hear about your past," Sukaru snarled, startling Laguna into silence.
There was silence for some time.
-
-
It was nearing evening when Sukaru suggested that they go to the Mausoleum.
Laguna was only half-listening, absorbed in his own thoughts, and he hadn't been expecting Sukaru to speak. As a result, he didn't really hear what had been said until Sukaru nudged his shoulder. "Laguna."
"Hm? Wha?" Laguna started and blinked, shaking off the torpor that seemed to be seeping into him. "...sorry. What?"
"I said we should go to the Church," Sukaru repeated, flat gaze looking all too lifeless in the ambient light.
"Why?"
Sukaru looked tired. "Because you want to know what happened here," he said. "They keep records there. Prayers and sermons and births and deaths. You might find something there."
Laguna nodded, killing time more than considering. "Think you'll find anything?"
Sukaru looked away, shrugging with one shoulder. "Nah. ...I don't think there's anything for me to find, really."
"Then why are you here?"
"Why are you here?"
Laguna looked down. "...oh. Yeah."
"Yeah."
"...which way is it?"
Sukaru stood. "Follow me."
With the fog and the gathering dark, the threat of losing Sukaru was a very real one--Laguna hurried to keep up as Sukaru walked, without needing to look or check his way, through quiet streets and weed-choked paths. The scuttle of unseen monsters--a familiar noise, now--sounded sporadically about them--sometimes behind, sometimes before, sometimes just off to the side where faint shadows and shapeless forms sat sullenly in the mists. Sukaru never wavered.
They walked what seemed to be too far a distance, and Laguna began to wonder where it was that Sukaru was leading him.
But finally, when the only glow that reminded of sun was beginning to sink from the air, Sukaru stepped up a few stairs and pressed one hand into the banded wood that composed the church's door. "Here," he whispered, voice low with reverence, and pushed it open to slip inside.
The church was old and decrepit. Someone had made a valiant effort to patch it up, keep it going, but it was still old--the wooden slats of the pews were warped by the elements, the glass of the windows was fogged and uneven, and the dried flowers in the bouquet at the altar lent only a faded brush of color to the tired palette of the room.
"You'll want to go down," Sukaru said, pointing toward an alcove behind the altar. The first few steps--marble-plated--were visible even from the door.
"Why? What's down there?"
"Death records."
Laguna swallowed. "A--all right. ...are you coming with me?"
Sukaru didn't respond immediately, and Laguna couldn't figure out why. He glanced back at his guide, not knowing what to expect.
Hesitation was stamped plainly on Sukaru's face, a look stealing elements from fear and reluctance but imitating neither--he regarded the doorway with a sad wariness, distrust hazing over his features.
"...you don't have to," Laguna said lamely, wanting nothing less than to be left alone in this place. "I mean, if you don't want to."
"No." Sukaru took a breath. "No. I'll come with you. Follow me."
He stepped forward, crossing the floor quickly and starting down the stairs. Laguna, once again, rushed to keep up--Sukaru moved quickly, and Laguna didn't see how exactly he managed it. He was paying more attention to going quickly that for a moment he neglected to watch where he was going--and before he knew it, he was engulfed in darkness.
"Whoa!" He ground to a halt, hand out to the wall. It was slick and clammy with thick condensation that did nothing to smooth away the roughhewn unevenness of the stone. "S--Sukaru!"
"I'm here."
Laguna dropped his hand, wiping it on one pant leg and willing his eyes to adjust. "It's... why is it so dark?"
"You see it, too?" Sukaru's voice was faint and faraway, and nonetheless caused Laguna to jump. "Don't you know? It's always dark."
"Where are we?"
"The Mausoleum. A lot of these old churches have them."
Laguna felt for a wall, and his hand came in contact with something smooth and dry and curving outward against his palm. "What's a Mauso--muzzo--what's that?"
"It's always like this for me," Sukaru said, and his voice was fainter than ever. There were footsteps in the darkness.
"Wait!" Laguna pushed away from the wall, running uneasily over the broken ground. "Where are you going? Wait for me!"
Footsteps, but no other sound.
Laguna hurried faster, hands out in front of him to feel his way. There was nothing now, only himself and the darkness. Not even a wall interrupted his stumbling progress.
"Sukaru!"
No sound except his own footsteps and his own breathing.
He stopped, held his breath. There was no sound except the rushing of his own blood.
"Sukaru..." he breathed into the silence, and only the silence answered him.