Darkness.
Holt woke to darkness. For years, that darkness was the night, but then it became blackouts—or "black-ins." The haze would reveal a starry night sky or a bass-thumping party. His vision did a shit job of clearing it now. May as well make the most of it.
He pumped his fist in the air and opened his mouth to a lungful of smoke. Coughs racked through him. He knelt with both hands on the hard floor and heaved. He squinted but, still, nothing.
"Holt? Where are you?"
Prickles raked up his spine at her voice. "Over here!"
In seconds, the stitched ghoul pawed at the floor in his direction. She nearly passed him by, and he tapped the back of her hand.
Her neck bolts sparked. "Holt! There you are." She let out a series of coughs and groaned. "We have to get out of here."
"What happened?"
"Not now"—she coughed—"we can't be in here."
Holt rose to his feet and held out his hand, but she stood without taking it.
Frankie squinted as she looked around, then she held her hand over her mouth and pointed at their way out. She pushed open a large, round golden door and their lungs found relief.
He collapsed onto the floor outside the smoke-filled room and freed a few coughs. "What's going on?"
She paced, silent; her head faced the floor as the smoke wafted out.
"Frankie."
She moved back and forth… back… and forth. Back and—
Holt rose to his feet. "Frankie." He caught her arm as she passed, and she lurched to a halt.
She faced him, but her eyes were clouded; distant as if she looked right through him. Her face paled.
He loosened his grip on her arm, and she slipped free. "What's going on?"
Her shoulders hefted as she let out a heavy sigh. "This… is a lot to take in." Frankie stumbled over her words, and her voice was low, "I'll show you."
Holt held his tongue and put his hands in his jacket pockets. "Alright."
She gave him a stiff smile, then lead him down the catacomb halls to an elevator. Frankie avoided his gaze, so there was no point in saying anything on the ride up.
When they stepped out, the graveyard was weirdly bare of tombstones. And the school…
He jolted backward. "This a new paint job..?" The sky swirled.
Frankie made that I'm-sorry-but-I'm-nice-so-don't-hate-me face. Her breath shook as she spoke, "We're in the past."
Holt raised an eyebrow.
She cringed. "Maybe about… two hundred years in the past." An apologetic smile plastered onto her face.
Heat warmed his palms. "Mind telling me how we got here?"
Frankie picked at the seams on her arm. "I'll tell you, but let's head back down the elevator. We shouldn't be out here, anyway." She reactivated the elevator and they stepped in.
The hairs stood on the back of Holt's neck, and he reflexively reached for his headphones to raise the volume. His fingers swiped at empty air. Holt rested his hands on his neck, pulse thundering beneath them.
No headphones.
No music.
Not a sound.
Yet he was awake.
Holt let out a trembling breath. "Frankie..." He rubbed both hands on his neck. Either music was around here somewhere… or the trigger finally changed, just like the doctor had said in Jackson's dorky diary. Volatile nature of fire elemental side + Hyde heritage + being a teenager = constant change. Guess change had finally come knocking. "Do you know why I'm out with no music?"
The elevator shuddered to a stop, and Frankie darted toward the lab as Holt jogged to keep up. She kept her eyes ahead. "Jackson tampered with the time teleporter," she said. "That's why we're in the past."
"So, that time machine thing made our trigger change or something? 'Cause it can't be music now." What else could it be? The weather was kinda warm, and he'd sweat like crazy in the smoke-filled lab. Had it changed to heat? Jackie would be out the second it cooled down, then.
Frankie looked down, and they slowed to a stop right outside the lab's opened door. She sat and motioned for him to join her. "Remember when some of the ghouls fused together?"
Holt leaned back on the concrete wall and crossed his arms. "Heard about it."
"Right." She remained seated. "The time teleporter fused some ghouls together and then defused them later. So, apparently, this week Jackson made adjustments with the time teleporter and, well, he succeeded."
"At what?"
She nodded and said nothing more. She finally looked at him, staring up with her round blue and green eyes.
Holt ducked his head away. What was with that look of sympathy? His heart hammered in his chest. You'll understand soon. "So, Jackson got rid of me for good, huh?" He looked back.
There were those round eyes of hers again. "I'm sure Jackson didn't mean to send you to the past," she giggled half-heartedly. "But it looks like he separated you two."
He tried to focus on the weight leaving his shoulders, but his racing heart made it nearly impossible. "So why are you here?"
Frankie picked at her arm stitches. "I'm here because I tried to save you. The time teleporter was malfunctioning, and it looks our journey here broke this one, too."
Holt couldn't stop his grin. "You wanted to save me?"
"Yes," Frankie said, expression unwavering. "But now we're both here in the past."
Huh. He shifted from side to side. That was a lackluster reaction from her. No sparks, nothing. At least that would bring some sorta familiarity here where, past the opened door, the time teleporter looked less like a time machine and more like a scrap heap. It still reeked of smoke. His jaw clenched. "How do we get back?"
"We need to find Hexiciah Steam." Frankie rose to her feet. "He's the one who built the machine. He's the one who can repair it and send us back."
Holt sighed and stood straight. "Alright."
She was still; her eyes were glued onto him.
He went rigid. Humans looked at him that way once. He could only stare back behind the bars of his cage. An animal in a zoo. It was the last damn thing he needed along with the thick awkwardness sludging between them. Holt gestured toward the exit, and Frankie snapped out of her trance. He trailed behind her and her clacking heels, hands in his pockets.
They spent another quiet ride up the elevator, and Holt squinted at the sunlight. Sixteen years without it and it was still taking some getting used to. But that didn't make it any less awesome the few years since, especially with how it made his fire elemental side feel.
Frankie took a few steps ahead and placed her hands on her hips. "We'll have to go into the school," she said. "Hexiciah is a teacher, and I know where his class is." She looked over her shoulder. "But these monsters don't know fashion like ours, so we have to lie as low as we can."
Holt chuckled. "No problem."
She turned around and lead the way to the school's looming entrance.
He popped his jacket collar and followed.
One step into the school, and it took a second to realize it wasn't some black and white old-school film. No rocking colors, just dull, dull, and duller. Not like the outside was any better. Maybe monsters couldn't afford a paint job back in the 1800s and the normies hogged it all. Or maybe there weren't bright enough paint colors two hundred years ago. Or maybe both.
"Looks like the construction's done..." Frankie mumbled. "Guess it's later than 1814 then. But the fashion looks about the same..."
Bummer. Not like it couldn't have been any better than this. Swaths of gray clustered together and stared at them with wide eyes.
She grabbed his arm. "Come on, let's stay a little more out of sight."
"I remember you."
A slender purple-skinned ghoul approached them, her white hair tucked tightly beneath a bonnet. Her collar was so high that Holt loosened his tank's collar.
Purple Ghoul eyed Frankie up and down. "You're that prostitute ghoul. How long has it been?" She sneered. "Where is the rest of your disgusting entourage?"
"What?" Holt wrung Frankie's hand off his arm.
Choking-herself-with-her-own-collar Ghoul shot him a disgusted glance. "You, too?"
His hands heated up, and he clenched them, taking a step forward. "You—"
"Holt." Frankie rested a tentative hand on his arm. "Let's go."
He opened and closed his fists, then shrugged her hand off and followed her down the hall. "What the hell was that?"
"They're not used to fashion like ours," she said monotonously. "And control yourself."
Holt groaned. Not the damn temper lecture, especially from the ghoul who hadn't talked to him in months. "Yeah, whatever."
"No, Holt." Frankie stopped them right outside a classroom door. "Back there... your hair looked like it was heating up."
He raised an eyebrow and ran his hand through his hair. Cool as ever. "Like Heath?"
She shook her head. "Kind of. It just... brightened, I guess. Maybe sparked? I felt the heat from where I stood, too. It could've gotten worse."
Holt flexed his hands. Glowing hair wasn't new, but the most "fire elemental" it'd been was a one-time spark-show in a corn maze. Could it burst into flames now? What more had the separation changed?
"We'll figure it out when we get back to our time." She tilted her head to the nearest door. "Come on, this is Hexiciah's classroom."
He followed her in, and they made themselves comfortable in the back of the spacious lecture hall. Other monsters gave them weird looks, and Holt grinned back. Their glares deepened, and his grin widened.
Frankie elbowed him. "Ignore them," she hissed. "Please."
Holt rolled his eyes, and he noticed a pale hand toward the front of the class. He leaned over to Frankie and whispered, "Didn't know they let normies in so far back."
Sparks let loose from her bolts, and Holt jumped, his thoughts scattered as they prickled warmth across his skin.
"Sparky!" She whisper-shouted, but the normie only lifted his nose out of his notebook. Frankie repeated herself as he looked over his shoulder, eyes widening.
He shut his notebook and scurried up the stairs. Crouching over their desk, he whispered, "What are you doing here?"
The normie had slicked-back, almost greasy black hair with a singular, thick white stripe of hair in the center. A triangular monocle was attached to his belt. Why not wear the thing? One eye was blue, the other was green. Heterochromia.
Holt looked to Frankie at his left. No way was that a coincidence. "You know this guy?"
"He's my grandfather," she said, not missing a beat.
He leaned back in his chair. So this was the Victor Frankenstein? The guy even wore a lab coat to class.
Victor looked at him, tense. "Who is this?"
"This is my friend, Holt. We need to find Hexiciah."
He sighed, and his fingers twitched at his notebook's spine. "He isn't here."
"He's not?" Frankie exclaimed. She lowered her voice. "When is he coming back?"
Victor's grip tightened on his notebook, and some papers threatened to fall out. Undecipherable scribbles, just like any mad scientist would have on hand.
Monster society usually kept hush-hush about their human predecessors, but in a part-human family, Holt had access to fascinating legends. It was a fuzzy memory, but the name "Frankenstein" was on the spine of one of his mom's old books. There was also a book on Dracula, the Wolf-Man, and more. He was too young to understand most of the words back then, but the pictures were clear as day. Living on the street of legendary monsters was like a dream, not like he'd admit it. When he found out about Jackson at sixteen, he retreated to their mom's library. The story of Jekyll and Hyde was nowhere to be found. Besides some calling it a "curse" and "evil", Holt had known little of what it meant to be a Hyde until his scaritage project. Since learning what his grandfather did and what his mom's transformation was like, Holt had one takeaway:
Hyde always came second to Jekyll.
"Look," Victor hissed through clenched teeth, "this is the last class of the day. I'll meet you outside the school in thirty minutes. Don't go anywhere else." Spit flew out his mouth.
Holt wiped his jacket and sat up from the chair. "Sounds good to me." He jerked his chin at Frankie.
She rose from her seat. "Thank you, Sparky. See you there."
Holt followed her out the door and strode into the incredibly empty hallway. He chuckled under his breath. "So, Sparky?"
"That's his nickname," Frankie said.
"But why doesn't he just go by Victor?" he asked. "Ain't he kinda a big deal?"
"Not yet."
They made it out of the school and leaned on one side of the stone railing. Frankie seemed to want to avoid the long grass, so Holt waited beside her on the stairway. Insects swarmed nearby. It was too quiet. Quiet and hot.
Holt picked black polish off his fingernails. "Sparky ain't a firecracker like you, right? No sparkage?"
"No," Frankie said with an awkward giggle. "It's what the other students call him."
"You mean what the monsters are calling the one normie who goes to their school?"
"I—" She wrung her hands together and looked away. "Yeah. Exactly."
Holt huffed. Jackson had this kind of attitude before. It took giving Manny a taste of his own medicine to keep him from messing with the kid. But leave it to Frankie to turn a demeaning nickname into a cutesy tagline. What made the guy "spark" anyway? And wasn't he supposed to be across the country? What did the guy's granddaughter really know about him? "I thought Victor Frankenstein was from Switzerland."
She faced him, brows drawn. "How do you know that?"
"My mom has a book. S'far as I know, Doc Frankenstein's some Swiss dude who creates his monster, your dad."
"Well, he doesn't leave for Europe until 1818," she said. "I don't know why he's at Monster High—I didn't think I'd run into him while I was here last time. But my dad said that they didn't get along at first, so he doesn't know what else he did in his life."
He scoffed. "How'd you do your scaritage project?"
"I talked about how my grandfather created life and then about my parents' lives," she said matter-of-factly. "They lived about 200 years of it. And I got an A+."
"Congratulations." Holt's mind wandered. Frankie was a grade below him. "How's your major project coming along?"
She snapped her gaze away. Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times. She bit her lip. "I waited until last minute. I'm not as ahead as I'd like."
His eyebrows raised. Even he had worked on his project during the summer. Granted, it was at the constant nagging of Operetta so that they'd get into Booliard together, but still. "Didn't figure Frankie Stein'd be one for slacking off. What gives?"
"Is there a reason you want to talk to me so much?"
Her tone struck a chord. Holt gathered his thoughts. "Listen, I'm just tryna make conversation. 'Sides, it's too quiet."
Frankie crossed her arms. "Not when you're tapping your foot like that."
He looked down and froze. His foot was tapping this entire time? Guess the lack of music was getting to him.
Holt shoved his hands in his pockets. The expanse of the campus was full of greenery and nearby woods. He peered closer. The path couldn't be much different. There had to be a way to—
Frankie shifted on her feet.
Right. Frankie.
She kept her gaze toward the same mass of trees.
Holt stuffed his fists in his pockets as the silence held fast between them.
Students flooded out the doors. Sparky broke from the crowd and ushered them away from the staircase and into the grass.
He sighed deeply, hand fidgeting with his book bag strap, a chalky black slate slung beside it. "Hexiciah is in Europe. He's unlikely to return any time soon, so I'm afraid that he can't help you, at least not for another few months."
"Months?" Frankie looked ready to jump out of her skin. Her breath shook. "The time teleporter is destroyed, Sparky. Hexiciah is our best shot at getting home."
Sparky's jaw clenched. His words were stilted, "I'll help you. But you two will have to stay out of sight, agreed?"
Frankie nodded, and Holt scoffed under his breath. She looked at the guy with such adoration, so what was up with his reluctance? There couldn't be any bad blood between them unless she was more naïve than he gave her credit for.
"Follow me," Sparky turned his back to them, "I'll walk you back to my home for the meantime." He had walked well ahead of them with very deliberate and particular steps.
Holt and Frankie stumbled behind. Funny that they found it more difficult treading through the grass than a 200-year-old man.
"Grandpa?" Frankie raised her hand slightly.
Holt held his laughter when Sparky looked over his shoulder at her.
"Yes?" he said with a tight nod.
"Um, what year is it?"
He turned ahead and continued walking. "1815. I assume it's 2015 back where you're from?"
She shrugged. "Close enough."
"Aren't you from Switzerland?" Holt interjected. Straightforward answers meant straightforward questions.
Sparky stopped in his tracks. He turned around with a tight-lipped smile. "Yes, I am. But if you want to be technical about it, I was born in Naples." He took a step toward him. "I don't think we've been properly introduced. You're Frankie's..." He paused and looked him up and down. "...friend?"
Holt grabbed his jacket lapels and ran his hands up and down the zipper. There was that zoo animal look. His fingers tensed. "You can say that."
"We're just friends, Sparky." Frankie stumbled between them. "It's nothing more than that."
"We were friends." Holt faced her. "You can't avoid someone for a year and still call them a friend after."
He expected her to stare back, either with those big zoo-tourist eyes or a fiery look of defiance. She always had that at the ready.
But Frankie looked to the ground.
Holt swallowed and glanced away. He looked at Sparky. "Well, let's get a move on."
Silence reigned throughout the walk aside from the hum of cicadas. Any less and it would've been too much.
Sparky picked up the pace, and Holt peered past him. A house. Kinda. It was small and it looked like it had gone through a hell of a lot, but it looked sturdy, at least. Sparky opened the wooden door, and they stepped in behind him.
Holt stopped in his tracks. The place looked cozy. A fireplace sat at the home's center beside a coffee table atop a brown rug. To his left was a kitchen and, to his right, a dining table with four wooden chairs surrounding it.
He shrugged his jacket off onto a chair and plopped onto the loveseat beside the coffee table. Lounged on his back, he heard Frankie and Sparky pull out the dining chairs and discuss their situation. Holt tuned it out, closing his eyes. A faint whine in his ear sounded, and his right leg bounced.
Jackson did it. He separated them. Now, the two could live separate and full lives of their own. It was what they always wanted, even before they knew about one another. Of course the kid wished to be apart from Holt, but never did he think ol' Jackie would actually go through with it.
And without telling him, too.
Holt scoffed. Thanks, Jack. If only he could have him live his full life in the present day. Real helpful.
He opened his eyes and looked at the dining table. Frankie looked like she'd leap out of her seat speaking to her grandfather. Holt had heard little about what happened when she and her friends traveled to the past, but he heard about Frankie's death. It scared him like hell at first, but when he brought it up to her, she acted as optimistic as ever. But something was off. He recognized her same expression from the mirror. Holt felt it every Halloween. He used that same feeling to write music the past few years. The experience struck her and stuck with her, just like it had him.
Holt had wanted to help her somehow; make her smile, even if it had been a while since he had taken her on a date. He was DJ-ing a big party, and he planned a surprise in a secluded room in the catacombs. Her favorite movie and a scary sweet midnight picnic spread. Sure, maybe he had been coming on a little strong, but if that's what it took to lighten her spirits, why not?
But when he approached her at the party, she rejected his advances. Because someone else had already swept her off her feet. Not like he expected an actual date, he just wanted to help.
But that didn't stop the obnoxious tears from pricking his eyes in the hallway.
Holt squeezed his eyes shut.
He had shut off his headphones and let fire and darkness wash over him, hung up over a ghoul that wasn't his.
Now, stuck in the past for who-knows-how-long with the ghoul of his dreams had him feeling offbeat. Their times together flashed through his mind, and he shook his head. She hadn't looked at him like a zoo animal, Jackson's rowdy half, or a crazy partier, but him—Holt Hyde. Back then, with her, he felt like himself.
Now? Everyone barely knew him beyond a rocking DJ. Which he was. He was a decent student; he helped plan plenty of school events. Operetta was one of the few people who knew him beyond that, and Frankie… she was almost there.
Maybe Jackson got to him. Maybe Holt wanted to be seen as more for once.
He was loud. He was wild. That's all everyone thought. Maybe that was why Frankie fell for Neighthan; why she made things serious with him. He wasn't reckless. He wasn't wild. Holt, Jackson, Neighthan… How many other guys had Frankie fallen for? Maybe she could fall for anyone. Did that make her naïve or open-minded?
Holt had been apart from Frankie for too long to tell the difference.
Frankie and Sparky's voices itched at his scalp like the sound of an untuned guitar. He jumped to his feet and strode to the door.
"Holt!" Frankie shouted.
He stopped, one hand on the doorframe, and looked over his shoulder. "Yeah?"
"Where are you going?"
"Out."
"But it's dark—!"
He slammed the door behind him. Holt breathed in and pushed onward, skimming for familiarity in the trees. Only one place would calm him down.