In celebration of it being my birthday and the new episode, dropping so enjoy this new chapter. Also, I wouldn't mind some reviews for birthday presents :)
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Harry woke from a deep, death-like slumber with a bang. He was so startled and disoriented by his surroundings that he fell off the bed with a loud thunk - it might've also been the fact that his last memory had been that of being consumed completely by shadows, and his instinct had been to recoil - an instinct that had kicked in suddenly, misplaced, the moment he woke up.
He looked around him to try and gather his bearings, and as he did, he started to recollect being in the Guills' house, in the same room he had taken a nap in the previous day. The dim light that came through the window was lazy and tired, and he felt sure it couldn't be any later than six in the morning.
He had banged up his right shoulder and head pretty bad in the fall and was now rubbing at them as he sat up. His head throbbed horrendously, and it wasn't just because he had fallen off the bed. Though his body had reacted instinctively to the shadows' attack, he couldn't immediately remember everything that had happened the previous night.
He rubbed at his eyes, finding his glasses on the bedside table, and put them on, expecting them to be grimy with dirt. He expected himself to be filthy on second thought, but when he looked down at himself, he found he was completely clean, his torso naked and sleeping only in the clean underpants he had brought with him yesterday.
In fact, he smelled exceptionally clean, not at all like he had taken a sweaty trek through the wilderness and then bathed in transpiration the whole day. Then he questioned exactly why he had expected to be covered in dirt, and the events of the previous evening flooded into him like a wave in slow motion.
His brain started remembering everything that had happened to him, and he felt he was being kicked in several places as he recollected what had occurred.
He set himself down on the bed ever so slowly, holding his pounding head in his hands and trying to make sense of the ordeal. He remembered wading in the swamp that was not the swamp, the Cormiers' heads swallowed as if they'd been buried sloppily in the ground - he himself being sucked into the earth, then resurfacing in the living room, where other people were acting incredibly strange, and though everything that had happened was disturbing and hard enough to make sense of, the thing that lingered most in his mind was that elongated, red-eyed shadow that had smiled at him as if it knew him.
As if it was him. He shook his head as if that might dismiss the experience, and though he tried to shake it from his mind and justify it as a very intense, drug-induced dream, he couldn't help but feel like it meant something more. Freud would have a blast analyzing him for just one session, he reckoned.
He wondered whether the people that had been with him the previous evening were ok - he was especially worried for the Cormiers because the whole drug trip had seemed so unbelievably real that he was convinced he would go out and be informed that they had actually been buried yesterday at midnight.
He recalled having seen Mrs. Cormier - was she rocking herself on the floor, or had that been Adelaide? He didn't know, but he put on as many clothes as he could considering the stifling heat and went out.
He briefly pondered how he had gotten to the bed and when he had had the time to take off all his clothes: the last thing he could remember was being attacked by the shadows. Had he passed out, and someone else carried him to bed? He was embarrassed to even think of it.
Maybe he had done things he couldn't even remember, and yet that was even worse. What did he have to be held accountable for? When he stepped out of the room, he found the rest of the house stirring despite the early hour (but maybe in these regions, people generally woke up incredibly early). He heard something brewing in the kitchen and muffled footsteps coming from different closed doors.
Still, most people weren't out of their rooms yet and, desperate for an indicator that not everyone was dead and that the footsteps didn't only belong to restless ghosts, he wandered to find Mrs. Guills, in a flimsy nightgown, making coffee, her hair tied up in a kind of scarf.
She jumped a bit when she saw him. "Oh, Alastor," she greeted through a sucked-in breath, and when she eyed him up and down, she looked more than a little startled, and it wasn't just the shock of his sudden appearance. It was as if she feared him.
He had collapsed when the shadows had taken him, right? How much of what had happened was real? How far had he gone into his own brain, and how much had occurred in the real world? They were scary thoughts to have, but Mrs. Guills' reaction had set him ill at ease.
What reason could she have for being so afraid? "M-morning," Harry greeted back, realizing his throat was horribly raw as if he had been screaming. All at once, he felt the urge to ask her what had happened last night, at the risk of sounding insane. Of one thing he was sure of - he had been drugged heavily. Surely they couldn't blame him for how the drug had made him act? What if he had said something aggressive or offensive? It made him sweat just to think about it.
The heat wasn't helping. "You look much better, now," she said, her shoulders relaxing a bit around him. "What do you mean?" Harry asked, alarmed. It was an awfully impotent feeling, not knowing what he had even done. "Oh, just ravings, ya know? Think you got closer to the spirits more than the rest'af us, actually," she murmured to herself, doing something weird and seemingly intricate to filter the coffee.
Harry started smelling something blissful, like a bakery, but he couldn't let his desire for breakfast get the best of him. Besides, his stomach was in turmoil. "I- I don't remember anything about last night," he admitted, but it was mostly a plea so she would tell him what she knew.
Mrs. Guills looked at him for a second, quite seriously, her lips pierced, her fully awake eyes lidded. "Well, first time's always the intensest," she said, as if that were an explanation, "think it best if Molly told you what you was goin' on about, anyhow. Ion knows how that woman do it - I can't even get myself outta the couch these nights, and the woman cleaned you! Bah! Strong head, that one," she said, tapping her temple, now mostly talking to herself as she opened the cupboard, "strong mind, strong mind." "I'm sorry, did you say cleaned me?" The woman looked at him like she was halfway between laughing but also pitied him. "Why, yes, boy, Ion know when you got outta the house, but you musta been diggin' and diggin' out there, 'cause the next time I saw you, you was covered head to toe in dirt." Harry blushed profusely and look down at his feet, ashamed.
Mrs. Cormier had had to bathe him? Seeing his embarrassment, and clearly, over her initial fear (whatever had been the cause of it), she went over to him and stroked his arm comfortingly. "Nothin' ta be ashamed of, we all did some weird crap some time or annuther. That's why we do it together. Now, go to the table. I'll get you sum fruit or somethin' in a second," she said, waving him out of the kitchen.
Harry followed her instructions dutifully, his head, though surprisingly clear despite the heat and the drugs, seeming to swim with everything that had happened, information and misinformation weighing him down. The lack of it was what upset him most, however.
He arrived at the dining room after one or two wrong turns - really, it wasn't that hard to find, but he was out of it - and by the time he got there, the sun was already lending the world a pink, almost apricot hue, though he couldn't see the sun yet.
He was deep in thought, nearly stumbling over his feet, and that was why he didn't immediately realize that Guidry was sitting at the dining room table, fully dressed in last night's clothes, and, for some reason, Harry got the distinct impression that he had never gone to bed.
Again, the feeling of displacement overtook him: how much time had passed since the shadows had consumed him? How long had he been digging in the swamp, and how much time had passed since Mrs. Cormier had bathed him and put him to bed like a woozy child? It might have been two hours or eight, and he wouldn't have been able to say. Still, despite the shock of Guidry's grim appearance, he knew that both Cormiers were both alive and not buried out in the swamp.
The dark man, who was unusually pale, didn't look up at him as he approached, and he didn't even seem to notice his presence. He held his hands before him, folded, and he was staring at them intently as if they were the only constant thing in an ever-shifting world. "Guidry?" Harry asked timidly from the entryway, dreading interrupting Guidry's thoughts but also reluctant to step any further lest he should frighten him.
Guidry looked up at him leisurely, and Harry noticed how large his eyes looked, how protruding the bags beneath them were, and how he seemed to have lost five pounds in the space of a couple of hours. Harry felt Guidry's gaze bore into him, and he had a horrible urge to look away because his look was laden with something peculiar, something foreign.
Something like anger, fear, like he didn't recognize him. He didn't say anything for a second, but just when Harry was about to cave from the oddness, he spoke. "Who's your shadow, boy?" He asked, the redness of his eyes poking out. Harry swallowed.
He was taken aback by the question. The shadow with the red eyes, the yellow grin? Could Guidry have seen it? Was he even there? How could it be that what he had thought had been a drug-induced illusion had also been seen by foreign eyes? He choked on his spit before he spoke. "I-I-" he began without any clear thought as to how he wanted to end that sputtering sentence, only with an urge to answer Guidry's desperate question.
The man brought his fist down on the empty table, and it shook with force in the mostly silent house. "Got-dam-it! You know even less than I might," he sputtered, running a ringed hand through his weary face. He then stood up and walked over to Harry, looming over him with a dark expression.
Had he grown taller? Harry shrunk back, suddenly afraid. He wanted to scream at him that he hadn't been the shadow, that he didn't know it, that he had nothing to do with it, and yet… and yet Guidry's eyes told him not to lie and expelled any untruth that might come from his lips. And Harry couldn't say any of those things without lying. "You got a shadow, Harry," he said softly, using his real name for the first time in that house, "darkest one I have ever seen." Harry's bottom lip quivered, and despite the ominous and somehow sensical words that Guidry was spouting, he knew that the man wasn't in his right mind.
He was probably still under the influence of the drug that they had taken as well as sleep-deprived. "Guidry Cormier," came a commanding, smooth voice from behind him. "Get yo' ass to sleep this second," said Mrs. Cormier. And yet, Guidry's face still seemed unmoved. However, a second later, throwing another dark, even menacing look at Harry, he sidestepped him and left the dining room. Harry looked back at him and saw that he didn't even glance at the steeled figure of Mrs. Cormier as he slipped away to their room.
She was looking at him not like a scolded child but like a dangerous prisoner she had to keep in check, and when he disappeared down a doorway, her stance and features slackened and revealed how tired and preoccupied she was. "Alastor, darling, you feelin' alright?" She asked, walking over to a very pale-faced Harry. He nodded weakly. "Come, let's sit," she said, taking his hand gently and guiding him to the table.
At least she wasn't afraid of him - and yet (and he didn't know whether he had imagined it) when she had first addressed him, he had noticed some trepidation to her voice. Mrs. Cormier sat beside him, her body turned to face him completely, both his hands in her own as she looked him full in the face with a grievous expression. "Alastor, d'you know what happened last night?" She asked.
Harry started to shake his head, but then he decided to tell her. "We took… drugs-" but she shook her head at him. "They wasn't no ordinary drugs, they was a form of communication." "Communication with what?" "With the spirits, with the shadows, with the spirits of the shadows - to whatever might be there that we can't see with naked eyes," she said. "Now the others… they might write it off as some intense first experience, but Alastor, what did you see?" She asked, almost pleadingly.
Harry took in a sharp breath and started telling her everything that he remembered, from finding the living room empty to wading in the smoky swamp. He even told her about the red-eyed demon of his own shadow and how he felt it had been him. The only part he omitted was her and Guidry's buried faces in the dirt.
Somehow, he felt that that part he had to keep for himself. She listened to him attentively, as if everything he told her was real and not some drug-induced fantasy, and the more he spoke to those around him, the more he got the impression that his initial idea of the evening had been very wrong. Could it really be that they were… communicating with something? It was too much for his overworked brain to handle. "So you don't remember anything after the… shadows had you?" Mrs. Cormier asked when he was done. "No, I just woke up in bed, or falling out of it, actually," he said, rubbing at the back of his head. "But, what happened, Mrs. Cormier?" He asked, and she began nervously chewing at her lip, eyes skittering about the room as if debating whether to tell him or not. "Please, Mrs. Cormier, I need to know." Mrs. Cormier gave him a resigned sigh and then started her own tale. "You came into the room, sometime near one - right when I started getting my bearings, looking around me with my unveiled eyes. It can be a lot - you open your eyes and realize you'd been in full darkness 'til now.
The sight can be overwhelmin'. You was all dirty, even scared, like. I ain't pay much mind to you though I oughtave, but you know what kinda state of mind you in - don't have thoughts you usually would. I was sittin' on the couch, as I had been since the whole thing started, and I was in my own thoughts, eyes shut when I heard you scream.
It was hard for me to know it was you that was screamin'… it didn't sound like your voice, it didn't. Or, more like, it had started out as your voice, but by the time the scream had ended, it was someone else's. I don't know, and regardless I walked over to you, dizzy 's I was. But I can tame myself these nights by now.
You was lying on the ground, face down, like you was the oddest kinda dead. I shook you by the shoulder and asked whether you were fine, and when you turned ya head to look back at me…" now she hesitated. "I can control my senses alright by now - I know how the communication works, but I can't say how much of it was my own reflection, my own sight, and how much of it was real, you understand me, Ally?" She asked him. Harry assented, thinking he understood what she meant.
Not even she knew drug from reality. With a sigh, she continued, "at first, your eyes'd turned yellow, but then the more you looked at me, the redder they got, like blood was getting into 'em. You wasn't yourself that I'm sure you wasn't. Your face was all… twisted, like. It ain't look human, like some doll put over the fire, the smile and eyes melted," she said with visual discomfort. Harry couldn't even begin to imagine what a sight that must've been. "When I asked if you was ok, you wouldn't even answer me, you'd just smiled, and your teeths were too big… your mouth bigger than it'd ever been, like a cut all over your face. I tried not t'be frightened, and I asked why you was all covered in dirt. You said… you said you'd 'buried me.' You gave me a bad scare, Ally.
I still don't know what that meant. But it wasn't you, and it wasn't your voice. You didn't have none of that English thing you got now. It was almost like mine, but not, and like something crackling, something not altogether human. Doesn't matter, but I was scared. In my time, Ally - and a long time it's been - I heard of terrible happenings when you communicate when you're very attuned to the spirits, they speak through your mouth, they look through your eyes.
They become your face. Some call it a miracle to have a connection so deep to the otherness of this earth, but what I saw last night… there was nothing miraculous about it, my boy. "I couldn't leave you face down, choking'n all that dirt. I picked you up, and for the most part, you ain't fight me on it, rather looked at me like I was somethin' funny, and that was even worse. Ren watched us, but he was too outta it to do nothin', and Adelaide ain't even see what was going on. I got you to the bathroom, holding you though you wasn't walking wrong.
You seemed almost… taller, longer. "When we was going to the bathroom, Guidry stopped us, and he took one look at you - I thought I was the only one who could see it, but turns out everyone could, too, and started screaming at you, calling you a demon, all angry, like. You may not know a lot about these gatherings, Ally, but screaming like that… it don't bring anything good brings people out of their speakings to darkness.
But you ain't care about his screaming, and you were… you were laughing. It was a burst of terrible laughter. It was, like nothing I ever heard, like nothing here that's good or holy. Rose came to see what we was on about, but she took one look at you, and I thought she woulda fainted right there. I asked her please t'get rid of Guidry, and Guidry to save her, and they both left thinkin' they was waving the other - and they was, in a way. "Thankfully, there was water, and I got you to sit down, but I couldn't look at that twisted face a'yours, Ally, it was too terrible.
I told you to take off ya clothes and get in the tub, I scrubbed under nails and your hair, and still, it felt like it was you that was gettin' me naked. And… you said some weird things while I was bathing you." Harry horrified by Mrs. Cormier's accounts, barely able to put it into a dimension, finally found his voice at this. "What kind of things?" He asked her, eager lest she should blow over it. Mrs. Cormier shook her head at him, and though she had been looking like she was on the verge of tears, now she looked positively confused. "Oh, just gibberish, Al. I couldn't even make out half'a the words.
You was talking about raids, narratin' some chase, like one of those men that scream out the news to get you to buy them, but if you heard them through a metal can. Anyhow, I thought it had gone on forever, and I was scared to leave you alone, but I think I was even more scared of that terrible smile of yours, Ally, and I left you in the room. I was sure you'd come out n'attack someone. That look on your face had nothin' to do with sanity, I'll tell you that, and why would… why would a demon, like Guidry said, pay any mind to an old woman like me? I'm surprised you ain't do anything else," she concluded, and now Harry could see the glassy tears forming in her eyes.
They both sat back in silence, mulling the information over. Harry was appalled, horrified that that might have been his own behavior while heavily intoxicated, but he thought it was an even worse thought that some sort of demon had gotten hold of him and possessed his body. It was something right out of a movie, something that couldn't be grounded on anything real or factual - it all had to do with the drugs, and that was that. Gripping firmly to this conclusion despite his heart and everyone around him telling him otherwise, he braved the day.
It made him struggle to see how Mrs. Cormier and all the others clearly held what had happened not so much as an odd, bad trip but like something that held at least a lot of truth. Thanks to the clock mounted on the dining room wall, and Harry saw that the hour had just struck six when all the others leisurely came shuffling in to get their coffee, their eyes puffed and red. Adelaide was missing, however, and Harry thought it made sense since she was a permanent resident of the house and could afford to sleep in.
Or maybe she had been badly spooked by something last night and didn't want to come out and see them. Guidry didn't join them until they had all finished, and even then, he only took a cup of coffee before returning to his bedroom sulkily. He didn't look at Harry or Mrs. Cormier in the eye a single time. Ren barely looked at Harry, surprisingly - Harry would've thought he would be the first one to brandish a cross against him and banish him from the house. Breakfast was a quiet and droll thing, and they all ate in clenched-stomach silence, their eyes skittering nervously or remaining stuck on their food fixedly. Just before seven, Mrs. Cormier plopped Harry's hat back on his head, gave him a much lighter bag than he had carried coming, and they all made their way out, giving the Guills many thanks.
The old man was basically dying of exhaustion, and Harry thought no one would mind if he had just stayed in bed, but he was ever so cordial. Ren didn't offer any goodbye, and Mrs. Cormier told the Guills to give Adelaide hugs and that they would see her soon. With that, Guidry still not bearing to look at either of them, they made their way into the still-cool bare morning light.
The trek was not so horrid this time because the sun was tucked away in some dense, bad weather-forecasting clouds that pooled over their heads. It made for even stuffier weather, but it was definitely better than walking through the wilderness with the full blare of the sun on their heads.
They hadn't spoken much the first time they had gone through these paths, and they weren't about to do it now when things were so awfully tense. Harry was deeply immersed in thought, and though he had determined to deny everything and set his mind to believing everything had been a weird, collaborative drug trip, certain things dwelled in his mind, and it didn't help that it had all felt so real, much more substantial than any dream could've been, and his mind lingered on the swamp scene for so long that he was occasionally surprised to find the Cormiers, very much alive, walking beside him. They arrived at their little town a little after midday, and Guidry went straight to his room without sparing a glance at either of them as if angry.
Harry didn't know exactly what he was angry about, but he understood his general apathy towards Harry, at least. When he had left, and Harry and Mrs. Cormier were left alone in the kitchen, Mrs. Cormier gave a deep, tremulous sigh, leaning against the table, exhausted. "D'you need anything, dear?" She asked him. Harry shook his head. "I can get some water. You should go rest," he told her, and she nodded wearily. She was about to leave before she stopped and turned back to him. "Don't you worry about Guidry, Alastor? He'll come around," she said, squeezing his arm.
Harry didn't even bother to correct the name as she left. Left to his own devices, Harry found that he hadn't much else to do, and so he went into his little cupboard of a room, turned on the light, took off his shirt, and sat on the heap of blankets and pillows that served as his bed. Of course, the first thing he did was to check his pillowcase for the portkey, which was, much to his relief, still there.
He produced it and held it in his palm, that same dark energy that it throbbed with seeming to pulse into his hand. He didn't mind it, somehow. He thought it didn't look so much midnight black anymore, as the lack of color that a shadow has. He watched it, entranced. Before, it had been some alien, evil object, the main cause of his undoing: coming to this town. But now, despite the coldness and simultaneous searing heat that it gave off, he found it to be almost comforting.
Maybe it was because it was one of the few items he had that he felt belonged to his world. Maybe it was something else. Regardless of the reason, he held it close to him and shut out the light. Despite the darkness, it seemed to be sucking in light. Harry didn't even realize when he fell asleep, the orb tightly clutched in his pale hand.
When he awoke, he was drowsy and felt incomprehensibly wrong. He wiped the drool from his face, put on a shirt, and, without thinking too much about why he did it, pocketed the black ball, wanting to keep it close to his person.
He left his room to see a bleak afternoon shining through the windows, and though he could see neither of the Cormiers, he could barely hear them somewhere. The noises came from downstairs, and, from the tone, they seemed to be having a fight. Unable to help his curiosity, Harry lingered by the top of the stairs to listen closer - whatever argument they were having, they clearly hadn't wanted Harry to listen into it: why else would they go down to the shop to have it? "-made a promise to that boy. We can't just turn him out!" Came Mrs. Cormier's voice.
It seemed to Harry like she was trying to keep the volume down but couldn't help her agitation. "I'm telling you, Molly, that boy is just bad news. He gon' bring something bad on us, I just know it," Guidry replied coldly and yet agitated.
Though not as much as Mrs. Cormier, who sounded like she was at her wit's end. Harry's blood froze as it ran. "How do you know it, Guidry? He's been nothing but kind to us!" "It ain't about that. You saw the same thing I did yesterday, and he got evil in him." "He had evil in him. He ain't evil. He- he-" "You trynna tell me he was possessed, or somethin'? I have seen that kinda thing, and it wasn't like that, that was him alright." "You gon' lecture me on spirits, Cormier?" Mrs. Cormier said coldly, with authority to her tone that even made Harry shrink. "No, Molly, I know, but you bein' blinded for affection to that boy! You know he gon' do us no good." There came a long, uncomfortable silence, and every muscle in Harry's body was tensed, near to the point of shaking.
He was so concentrated on the conversation that he couldn't even begin to imagine what he would actually do if they turned him out - through all the situations that had happened, it had still almost remained something distant in his mind. Finally, after a nerve-wracking silence, Mrs. Cormier spoke. "You know I can't leave, Guidry Cormier, but if you turn that poor boy out, I'll never forgive you," she said, and her voice was so dark and heartbroken that it finally brought Harry out from his haze. Without a second thought, he went down the stairs to face the two weary-eyed people. "Alastor-" Mrs. Cormier began, and he could see the slight glaze of building tears in her eyes. "No, it's alright, Mrs. Cormier, I understand, really," he said, and then he looked at Guidry, whose fury had now subsided into something that looked a little bit like shame, and yet he seemed grounded in what he believed.
He wasn't the type of man to back down on what he genuinely thought, of that Harry could be certain. He took a deep breath before saying what he felt he had to. "You two have been very kind to me, and I don't want to cause any problems for you. Despite what happened yesterday, I'm not sure that the whole thing with Carmelita wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been here," he said that looking at Mrs. Cormier, and as he spoke the words, he knew it to be true. "I don't want to be a burden to you or cause any more trouble, and I don't want to make you feel guilty. I'll be fine going on my own, finding some other place to stay, the only thing I want to ask is for help to get back home, and you can let me go with an easy conscience," he told them, and then he let out a hard breath. He didn't feel like he had much right to ask them for anything, but he still had to include the last part - it was his only chance to go back home.
When he was done, he was certain that either of them or both were going to say something immediately, but they just looked at him, stunned. They looked to one another with a shared look of guilt that Harry couldn't quite understand given the situation, and with a huff, Guidry went off to his study.
Mrs. Cormier and Harry watched him go, wondering what he was doing, and when he returned, he had a thick, massive leather-bound volume in his hand. It didn't even have any writing on the cover.
He plunked it into Harry's hand without a word and then stomped upstairs. Harry didn't understand what had just happened, but Mrs. Cormier went up to him and stroked his arm. "You'll stay, Alastor. Go study, now."