There were lockers aplenty to search through here in Midwich Elementary, stored along the halls, decorating classrooms, and providing hidden possibilities in abundance.

To Harry's chagrin, they'd nearly gotten halfway down the hall when he remembered they ought to check the cabinets in the room they'd just left. So they backtracked, making a short, jading sweep of unwilling metal doors. However, there was a singular, regular door at the back of the room that had them in its favor, and gave way to the discovery of its connection to the neighboring class. This second room was as informational as the first (and that is to say, hardly at all), though they did take a minute to scrutinize the picture on the wall of Jesus levitating amongst heaven's clouds.

"I didn't know this was a religious school."

"I don't think it is. Or maybe it is."

"Mm."

"I guess it'd make sense, though."

"Why?"

"Well, think about it: small town, big church.. small town people tend to be the Christian kind. We might find a small, tiny little synagogue tucked away somewhere, but I highly doubt it. Christianity is always the big ticket."

"And front."

"Yep. The Order works behind everything."

"Hm."

"You ever practice any religion?"

James snorted. Harry chuckled. "That answers that."

"I think we've had that discussion, too."

"Eh, we can have the same discussions again sometimes. Who knows? Maybe the answer changes."

James watched him go check out the construction paper art on the walls. "Why would it change?"

"Oh, you know," Harry breezily mused. "Maybe someone's shy about being religious or uncomfortable with giving out some other information at first." He looked back at James. "Right? I thought we'd kinda learned that about each other already."

He grunted. "Don't know about that. You've either said what you've wanted to right off, or gave anything else on your own accord. What you didn't tell me, I read."

Harry scrunched his face and pensively squinted off to the side. "Hm.. well, maybe so, but—"

"You talk a lot."

He glanced up. "Funny, usually people tell me I'm really quiet."

His green shoulders lifted and fell. Harry scoffed. "Meanwhile, it's like I gotta use the jaws of life for getting anything out of you. But haven't we been over that a thousand times, too?" he added with a shrug of his own, returning to the hall and holding the door open for James. "Potato, potato. We're a couple peas in a pod; our own Penn and Teller. Groucho and Harpo. Laurel and Hardy."

The odd frown he gave Harry made the latter smile. "What's the matter now?"

"You're supposed to say 'potato' differently."

"Tomato, tomato."

James went flat. "Seriously?"

Mock concern wrinkled his brows. "What? Did I do it wrong again?"

Last but not least were the bathrooms at the end of the corridor. Harry took the initiative in poking his head in for a quick look-around from the threshold. Nothing unusual caught his eye in either one, but when he pivoted for the set of doors to the next hall, he got a good jump scare out of coming chest-to-chest with the man who could not learn. Harry exhaled hard, glowering right into James's face.

"Hi."

"Hi."

Leaning his head back, Harry put the center of his palm into his cohort's shoulder and slowly extended his arm, pushing him back. "Save room for Jesus, James. Jesus Christ, speaking of, what's with you and invading my personal space?"

James backtracked as forcibly requested. "I was looking."

"Wh— why would you—? Nevermind. If Silent Hill doesn't give me a heart attack, you will if you keep doing that."

Sidestepping him, he collided with the push bar on the door and swung into the next section of the school. A kick kept the entry open for James to pass through without issue. The first closed off room was one he remembered very well (blood on ivory keys that sometimes appeared on his piano at home when he was running on fumes), though its door knob wouldn't turn. Gazing down at his hand on the brass-plated ball, he distractedly picked the key slot with his thumbnail. He had a good - or bad - feeling that they'd need to get back in there, and before his ruminating could go too far, the noise of a firm attempt at opening a barred door hooked him back to reality.

James tapped the wood and stepped away. "Locker room."

"Fitting, the locker room being locked."

"Mm."

"Here's the music room," he mentioned, also knocking his weapon upon the door. "We'll probably find our way back here again, if the usual pattern's anything to go by."

"Mm."

"How many keys do you think we'll pick up while we're here, eh? We haven't added to the ol' keyring in awhile. Heh. We could probably start using it as a weapon, y'know. Tie or hammer it onto a stick somehow and start swingin'." He grinned. "Not too bad of an idea, huh? It'll at least make them useful, since they're probably useless now, for the most part."

To that, James shrugged. There was a pause in which Harry hoped he'd get a verbal answer, yet none came. Harry shook his head.

The open-air balcony overlooking the courtyard drew him to the sill, peering into the fog and drift. There were two separated sections for visitors and scholars to admire the grounds, and the men each occupied a side. James searched the grey up high, and Harry the ground below.

Off in the far corner stood the clock tower, a guardian of the school and keeper of time. It was no more than a vague shadow behind the clouds. Like Harry had remarked about the music room, James was certain that it'd be of use to them sometime soon.

As though he were reading his mind, Harry spoke. "How much you wanna bet that clock tower is gonna be a part of whatever we do here?"

It'd been awhile since they'd seemingly been in each other's heads. James was marginally amused. "A lot."

"Yeah, I guess it's a pretty big 'no duh.'" Harry drummed his fingers on the ledge. "What'd I write about that, do you remember?"

As a matter of fact, he did. In rereading the Midwich portion of the memos the past couple days to prepare for their quest, James rediscovered the haphazard and frankly unreadable scratches in some of the pages. However, there'd been one page that read 'clocktower' and was underlined hard.

And that was it.

"Nothing." James looked over at Harry. "You didn't write anything."

"Hm." The wayward father looked off into the distance. "Bummer."

James considered the shrouded pillar in the courtyard until he was summoned by the clack of a push bar giving way to the corridor. Once slipping through the doorway, he joined Harry in checking lockers as they came across them. Orphaned jackets and notebooks found homes in some of these lockers, but lacked anything that appeared important. The classrooms on this side produced nothing of interest in the cabinets, but James did find something nostalgic in a student's compartment desk.

He turned to Harry with his thumbs and forefingers stuck underneath the four cones of a child's paper fortune teller. "Hey. Harry."

Delight lit up the author's face. "Hey! Cool!" he exclaimed, giddily peering at the numbered tabs. "A fortune teller! Nice. You know how to do this?"

"No," he admitted, letting his companion have the thing instead. "No idea how it works."

"Aw, c'mon, really? I used to make these things all the time. Cheryl and Heather loved these. Much easier to play than MASH," he said, wedging his large fingers into a craft a bit too small for them. James frowned softly.

"M*A*S*H ? That's a show."

"Yeah, it's also a fortune game. It stands for, uhh.." Harry squinted hard at the ceiling to help him recall. "Marry.. uh.. no, it's 'mansion, apartment, shack, house.' You're supposed to make a list of how you figure your life's gonna go, like how many kids, where you wanna live, shit like that," he explained. "Then you go and count numbers..? I dunno. It's been awhile. Cheryl tried to predict my life a couple times," Harry muttered, examining the pyramid. "Not even Heather could get close. Heh."

James watched his ward roll his shoulders, and with them, did away the sad old memories. "Anyway, so!" Harry grinned, holding it aloft. "Pick a number, any number. One through four."

"Uh.. three." He watched the mouth open horizontal, vertical, then horizontal again.

"Okay, let's see.. you've got four other choices in there. Pick one of them."

"Um.. twenty-one."

Harry frowned and double checked that it was actually written there. "Twenty-one. Damn. Okay." The ritual repeated until the maw held open for the next choice. James evaluated his options.

"Two."

It shuffled again. "And now, a final number for your fortune."

"Four."

Harry picked open the triangular tab, frowned, and pulled it in closer to read. " 'After this week, you will be popular for the rest of the year.' Congratulations, James!" he beamed. "After this week, you can sit at the cool kids table. Just gotta tough it out a few more days."

James didn't look as thrilled with the good news as a grade schooler may have been. "Cool."

Chuckling, Harry pried open the rest of the game to read the others. "Ah, James," he sighed. "I'd kill for your 'fuck 'em' attitude towards whether or not people like you."

He had nothing for him. But Harry's brows furrowed while he read, rotating the page as he went. James's grunt was questioning.

"Some of these other ones read weird," he distractedly replied. "Like.. hm."

More silence meant 'I'm waiting.' Clearing his throat, Harry tried to straighten out the deeply creased paper with a firm tug, then read aloud. " 'She cursed you last period.' 'Mrs. M— thinks you're special. Yay!' 'You'll win at courtyard keep away this week.' 'You'll flunk the math test at eleven-thirty.' 'You're gonna be —-a's best friend. Gross!' 'At one o'clock you can unlock the treat box.' Huh."

James looked impassively at the unfolded fortune teller. "Sounds interesting."

"You think? We better watch the time." Harry flipped it to check the back and did a double take. Between the lopsided cracks of the folded squares were letters, and unfolding the origami game revealed a verse that they could have missed without Harry's natural curiosity. "Oh. Wait. There's something else:

"'One is the neighbor and friend of two; four is company, but also a crowd; three stands alone, waiting on the side. Together they're a family, though one always goes missing; we do our homework, but never learn a thing.' "

He fingered the page, wrinkling the corner of his nose. "Hm."

Tilting his head, James stared banally at the wealth of clues. Harry completely unfolded it, folded it again, and stuck it in his inner pocket. They stood quietly, the father chewing on the riddles, and the widower calmly awaiting the next move.

By the way Harry's frown turned troubled, he could tell there was something else on his mind. The silence yawned until Harry stuck his hand into his pocket and took his uneasy eyes to James. "'She cursed you last period.'"

He raised his brows. Expecting him to go on, James held their stare; Harry looked more fraught the longer he turned his assumptions over in his head. "They have to mean Alessa. You've covered Alessa already, right?"

"Yeah. A bit."

"Yeah," he echoed, averting his eyes to the floor. "Poor thing. That was a whole fucked up situation."

A lull briefly followed.

"Damn. I'd kind of forgotten about her and Midwich. You know, the first time I saw her was in the boiler room here. She was a ghost. And she looked older , like a teenager. I guess I still don't quite understand that still. Tch. Welcome to the Redundancy Department of Redundancy," Harry snorted, mocking himself for the flub. He spent another stretch of seconds lost in himself, then sighed, rubbing the heel of his palm into his eye.

"Ooh, Silent Hill," came a world weary groan. "God.. dammit. I mean, I knew Alessa would be unavoidable; we'd have to find something about her, or do something with her, or.. ugh." His palm drove slow circles into the socket. "No matter how much a guy can try to prepare for shit like this, the truth is that you just can't. You just can't. .. god. That poor girl," the author mumbled low. "She didn't deserve any of this."

Harry shook his head once again and dropped his hand, blearily focusing on James. "Welp. We've got a lot of stuff to go on already. We best get to it," he told him, sweeping his arm out to direct his cohort to the door. "We can use our thinkers as we need 'em. Let's try to find 3B and that locker."