"Excuse me."

He paused from the sound of the girl's voice, halting in his steps and turning around slowly to face her and her brother. He marveled at how much she resembled their father, and he their mother. He briefly remember their comings into the world and found himself nostalgic. It was sad what had happened to them.

What's been happening.

"You said we had "much to discuss" but you're not talking." Ah, she even had his personality. A bit impatient but nothing too blunt. Such a tragedy the man never saw her grow up into himself.

He would have loved it.

"Can you please tell us why we're here? And maybe who you are?"

His attention turned towards the male of the duo, looking down into the emerald jewels that he had the priviledge of calling eyes. Could he remember the last time he had seen their mother's eyes? It had been many years. When she was still young he was able to see them.

He almost loathed their father for her eyes turning black and solid.

Enough reminiscing. He had to get back to problems at hand here.

I am known by many people by many names. But to you two, I am known as a friend.

He could feel their confusion as they looked at each other and back at him. It was the boy who spoke again.

"Why is all of this happening now? What did we ever do?"

They hadn't done anything. Really, nothing at all. It was the fact that they were alive in general that brought upon them this situation. It saddened him to see them so lost and scared. Normally he wouldn't have cared, but given who they were, he couldn't help but reach out to help.

There is much that you two have yet to learn. About yourselves, and your parents.

Now they have really begun to look skeptical. Why wouldn't they? Believing they were orphans their whole lives and that their parents had given them up for a better life.

They couldn't be further from the truth.

"We already know about our dad..."

He bent down and tilted his head, scrutinizing the girl in front of him carefully.

Speaking of your father, you have his eyes.

She reach up one tentive hand and placed it just under her eyesocket, blinking as she took in the information.

He turned to the boy.

And you've your mother's.

His face shifted to painful thanks, averting his gaze and ducking his head as he mumbled.

I understand you two think very poorly of your father as of the moment. But there is more to this story than either of you two realize.

He stood back up and turned around, falling back into his long strides with knowledge that they would follow.

If I were brutally honest, you two should never have been conceived. I knew you would never be truely safe.

"Safe from what?" The girl asked. It only made him let out a silent sigh and stop again, looking back to them.

Do either of you know what you are?

It was an odd question, yes. One he didn't believe they would answer correctly based on the confused expressions on their faces.

"Teenagers?"

"Twins?"

"Humans?"

The Tall Man shook his head at every answer. When they remained in silent expectation he spoke once more.

First, you must now what we are. And that is Paranormal Abnormalites Seeking The Adolescent's Souls.

He could see the gears grinding in their minds before the boy asked slowly,

"Pastas?"

Why humans called them such things he would never know. Still, he nodded just the same.

Indeed. Pastas. And there are ways to become one. You are either turned into one by another, you undergo a tramatic incident that turns you to one, or-

He slowly bent down very low and very close to them, his expressionless face seen in the reflections of their scleras.

-you are born one. However, it has been many a millenia since a pasta has been born. Only because I adviced against such actions.

"What does that have to do with us?" She asked quietly, eyes wide and unable to look away from is face. It still shocked him that they could look at him and not feel the dizzying affects of his presence.

Because I tried to warn your father about what would happen should he do such things as conceive his own. He was still young then and didn't bother to listen. You two are the end products of that choice.

"So..what you're saying is we're not even human?" She asked, something in her voice he couldn't quite name. He only knew that it was painful.

The Tall man shook his head as he straightened again. He figured they wouldn't understand at first.

No, of coarse you are human. You've yet to fully undergo your change. You don't have the aura around you.

"Aura?" The boy asked to which The Tall Man nodded.

Yes. You're still untouched by the Mark of a Pasta. You would have probably remained so had Jeffrey not gotten involved.

The boy gained a look of shock, confusion, and for a moment, fear.

"What did I do?"

Oh, that's right. Of coarse he would give his only son his name. That's what he liked to do.

No, no. Not you, boy. I mean your father.

That was the moment when they froze and he should have been expecting this. With what they've been through he was sure they have just about heard all they wanted about their father.

But now it was time for them to hear the other side of the story.

The Tall Man continued walking as they followed close behind, speaking again in that reverberating tone of his that seemed to come from everywhere.

You two have been lied to by the person whom you've been told to trust. The past week you have been experimented on without realizing it. Do you remember those pills they asked you to take?

He could tell they were nodding.

They are specialized drugs made to manipulate the thoughts and actions of anyone they choose Those dreams you are having? It is them learning your darkest fears so that they may use it against you. Your fear of drowning. Your fear of clowns. It is them inside the deepest parts of your consciousness. Even now, they are working away to learn everything about you two.

The wind had picked up again, throwing leaves into the air and making it coat tails follow. He could not keep them for much longer. The agents would become suspicious.

"I don't understand," The girl said, her voice soft and full of hurt. "Why are you telling us this?"

He stopped. And for a very long moment, he remained perfectly still, muscles stiff under his suit before he slowly turned and looked down.

Because you two are in the midst of something-much, much bigger than either of you would have hoped. This is revenge twenty years in the making, and it's plotter has been waiting for a chance to strike. I fear one of us has been collaborating with him, leading him to you through your father.

I fear that a deal has been made. One life for two, and now you are in grave danger.

He could see their expressions slowly turning to horror. They had every reason to.

I fear the time will come-when you two will perish.


This had been her fifth coffee in the last hour. She couldn't sleep, she didn't dare sleep. She would not allow herself to rest until Jeff and Emma were found. A bitter taste was on the back of her tongue from the mere mention of the name, to the point where she had to remind hersel that it was not the psychotic maniac who only had that name. It also belonged to the sweet boy who played soccer and liked to joke and laugh and be with his sister and friends.

Anne sighed as she rubbed her temples with her index and forefingers, feeling another migraine coming on. This would make it third in the last day. She was stringing herself down to the wire worrying over where the twins were and trying to track them down as well as a demon from hell itself. She was going over everything; every single scrap of evidence in all of Jeff's cases was being picked through with a fine toothed comb. She even sent twenty-some year old x-ray's back to Glen to see if he could find anything the Pathologists back then couldn't. Glen was best in his field and she trusted him with her own daughter's autopsy (though she prayed that day would never come).

What bugged her was the lack of reason as to why Jeff would the kids. She wanted to run DNA tests to see if what he had said was true; if Emma and Jeff really were his. But there was no blood splatter, hair fiber, fingernail, or skin flake of Woods that they had. There was plenty collected from the twins' rooms back in the orphanage, however.

Woopty doo.

Her phone ringing made her jump and she answered it when she recognized the number as the Autopsy Lab's.

"Glen?"

"Annie! Come down here now! I think I found something!"

That was all she needed before she was out of her chair and in the elevator, pressing the button and letting the door closed. Her stomach churned at the thought of what Glen could have found. Was it good? Bad? Did it even help them at all? Before the doors were all the way opened, she already had a foot out.

"Glen, tell me you having something."

He got up from his desk and brought her over to his work station, putting up a film sheet and turning on the light to reveal the images imprinted on it.

"Alright, these are x-rays of Randy Shaul's tibulas. What do you notice about them?"

She looked at the film, squinting to focus under all the harsh lighting. It was hard but she was able to make out the slight hairline fractures.

"Fracturing. Perimortem?" She asked.

"Postmortem," He corrected her. "I looked at them, and the left tibula shows signs of having been broken, snapping under a lot of weight very quickly."

"His leg was crushed? That's not like Jeff at all..," She mumured.

"Exactly, which is why I looked closer." He brought up a magnified image of the x-ray and pointed. "These fracutres happened before Jeff began turning up bodies. At least two or three years."

"Glen, this doesn't tell me anything."

"Hold on! It will when I tell you this! These are soccer injuries." Anne cocked an eyebrow.

"Your point?"

"Not done yet. The knife that killed this boy wasn't Jeff's." Now this got her attention.

"Wait what?"

Glen nodded. "I checked and rechecked and then re-rechecked. The angle is wrong, the curve is off, and it's too long. The knife used here is thinner than Jeff's usual, but it's longer. Jeff's knife is sixteen centimeter is we're assuming he's using standard cutlery. The blade on the knife that killed this boy, I measured it to be twenty-three centimeters long."

"...too long to be Jeff's," She said quietly. Glen nodded, but he still was not finished.

"Another thing, I was looking in Randy's files; school records, police records. Anything we had on him. I found something else." He pulled her to his laptop and brought up two images, one was of a school's soccer team, another was Randy's school photo.

"You see that boy all the way to the left?" He asked, pointing.

"It's Randy," Anne said.

"No. It's not. I checked the list of names on the soccer team. Randy's name wasn't there. It was never there. That boy is Erin Miles."

Anne's eyes widened, whites seen all around the hazel of her iris as she began to slowly piece together the puzzle in front of them.

"They're identical."

"Uh huh. And guess what? Erin went missing almost twenty years ago."

The Chief of Police looked back to the x-rays still being illuminated by the light projector, her voice low as she spoke, "That's when Randy was killed."

"Anne.."

She turned her attention back to Glen as he stood.

"I ran dental records on the recovered teeth." He looked at her.

"They were a complete match to Erin Miles."

The red head felt like she was going to be sick, her mind reeling and the room feeling like it was swaying. Or what that just her? Either way, she gripped the edge of the desk so she wouldn't fall, trying not to vomit in her mouth as she stuttered.

"S-So..what you m-mean to tell me is..-?" She looked at him.

"These are not Randy Shaul's x-rays."

Anne swallowed hard, sweat dripping off her brow as she forced herself not to black out from shock. She managed to get herself into his chair, gripping the armrests tightly before the words were tumbling out of her mouth.

"Randy Shaul isn't dead."