2A/N: I know it's been eons since I've posted anything, but I have been writing a lot and this is the first thing I've done that I'm willing to post. I wrote this story for a friend, thinking it would be short and sweet, but needless to say it turned into a monster. Try not to be too overwhelmed by the multitude of characters; many of them play only minor roles at this point and will be elaborated later. Part one is mostly introducing the different story lines, but it will all make more sense with the later parts, so just bear with me for now please. Sorry again to all of you that were waiting for "Waxen Bones"; I'm afraid I just lost interest and I didn't plan enough in advance, but I'm pretty sure that this one will actually be finished (I know I say that every time, but I have a lot of hope this time, I promise!) Also, just be forewarned, there's a lot of nasty cursing in this particular section so if that bothers you, I would advise that you read no further. Hope you enjoy! Please leave feedback; it's been a while.
When King Laugh Comes
- Part 1: The Giant and the Wolf -
Kyle doesn't know who "Mortimer J. Eisenberg" is, but he makes himself comfortable in his dirt regardless. He registers his conscience like a fleeting memory, entertaining the moral possibility that using a stranger's grave as his nighttime refuge might not be entirely ethical, even if bouquets of dead flowers do substitute as acceptable pillows.
He settles against the headstone, nestled conveniently under a huge and intimidating oak tree to shade him a little from the rain, and takes a bite out of the cheap hamburger he bought with money begged off a fussy, sympathetic old lady. He pulls his jacket around him like a shield as he chews, hiding from the smoky, dull-orange light that bleeds from the rusted street lamp just behind the iron-wrought cemetery gates.
He is thinking about Mortimer ('did he have children? A job? Did he die happy, did he die on time?' And for one, guilt-sick second, 'what valuables might be buried with his bones?') when he sees it – a flicker of the street lamp, the sound of footsteps interrupting rain-damp brick, the squelch of shoes on wet moss. An impossibly tall shadow stretches over the grass, broken where a tree branch intercepts the moonlight, bent sporadically by headstones. But it is so long, swimming silently over the grass, fitting jaggedly to make room for more graves and more trees. The shadow folds suddenly at the waist, and Kyle realizes the figure has sat down.
Moments later another shadow appears, this one a little shorter, but sporting a wild tangle of hair that looks as if it's trying to make up for the lost distance. It follows the taller shadow, and folds identically after it.
Kyle can hardly breathe, paralyzed with his hand still clutching his half-eaten sandwich. If it is the police, he will probably be okay; he will just offer his wateriest doe-eyes and his most pitiful smile ('Morty's my grandfather, officer, I'm sorry, sir, please just let me stay here for a little longer…I just really miss him sometimes, y'know?'). If it's other homeless people, he's fucked. He's small, he's defenseless, and he has food, and the dirty yellow-green smear across his cheekbone throbs just thinking about it.
He barely dares to turn his head, straining his eyes as far left as they'll go. He sees two pointy shoe-clad feet and he quickly lowers his eyes, enclosing the remainder of his food in the wrapper as quietly as possible. He stows it in his jacket, curling his bony knees tighter to his body to make himself as small as possible.
Kyle looks again, turning his head further. It is two men, he realizes, and even though they're both sitting down, he can tell that they are uncommonly tall, bizarrely, really. Both sport wild mops of hair obscuring their faces, pointy shoes for their long feet, and skin-tight, pinstriped pants, clinging to their too-long, spindly limbs like water. The giant-sized man's legs are stretched for miles in front of him, while his wild-haired, wolfish companion sits cross-legged, his head resting on the giant's shoulder, a display somehow more menacing than any nightmarish illusion Kyle could conjure in a dream. He can't even see their faces, but he can just imagine how demented they must be, with their spider-leg limbs and elephantine height. He imagines them wearing wicked smiles with sharp little teeth, flashing dangerously as they lie in casual companionship with death.
He watches the rustle of shadows in the grass, the giant and the wolf. Kyle hears a cackle and cringes, fine tremors skirting over the gooseflesh of his frail, starved arms. The giant's laugh rumbles, like it's a creature of the earth, while the wolf's hyena howl echoes, bouncing menacingly over headstones and settling in the pit of Kyle's stomach – a hungry, evil seed.
Kyle's tongue sweeps his mouth for the last vestiges of food, desperately thinking that if he's going to die by these freaks, he's going down full.
A boy is discovered at 7 o'clock Saturday morning.
The police find him behind an abandoned theatre, half-naked, feverish, and freezing. After many minutes of coaxing, petting, and coddling, the boy spits out his name in a mess of tears, disease, and tripping, nonsensical syllables: "Alex Caruso."
Alex Caruso has a mousy brown mullet, pale basset-hound eyes that stare wetly up at the police officers at every inquiry, and a hoarse, watery voice that could make a sweet croon if he ever found the courage to sing. His small frame bears only a pair of dirty plaid boxers, with curious black scarves decorating his wrists and throat. Even more curious, however, is the boy's makeup – elaborate twirls of frosted blue paint and gold, swirling ribbons across his eyes, dusted with glitter, run ragged and smudged in places most likely from tears.
The police don't know what to make of his story, which emerges in clumps of disordered, scattered phrases, tear-broken and injured by the demons he can't seem to put into words. The police can understand "sharp teeth" and "blood" and "I di-didn't, I d-didn't want to—" but beyond that, the boy's stuttered language is painfully foreign.
After stowing him safely away in a shelter downtown, where he's kept under strict orders not to leave until the investigation for his kidnapper is completed, the police find a Missing Persons report that was filed ten months prior to his discovery. Alex Lambert, age 17, Caucasian male, reported missing two days after neglecting to return home from school. Divorced parents, under the custody of his single mother. The father is a traveling musician. His file contains several harassment charges, so the police claim him as prime suspect number one.
They tell the news to tell parents to tell their children to watch out for kidnappers. But who are they really kidding? What's one more villain?
It is soft jazz music and the smell of cigar smoke that finally puts him to sleep – a lone, sweet saxophone and a smoky crooner's song from a bar down the street – and sirens that wake him up. It's dawn, maybe 7 o'clock, and the grass under him is wet and sparkling with dew. The clouds have cleared, and the sun is making its slow crawl from behind the trees, pale yellow and sleepy.
He blinks himself awake, immediately remembering the haunting figures of the giant and his wild-haired wolf friend, and he whips his head around to their tree. The spot, however, is empty, just strewn with damp pine straw and grave markers. He breathes, not quite relieved, and stumbles to his feet. It was dangerous to be seen in the cemetery during the day, so he stuffs his cereal box under his jacket and clamors over the fence onto the street. There's a playground a little ways down with a sturdy swing set he likes to haunt in the daytime, so he heads that way.
It's early still, no kids yet. He collapses onto a swing, kicking gently at the woodchips, dead leaves folding wetly around his ankles. From this spot, he has a perfect view of the convenience store across the street. He daydreams about strolling in through the double doors, elbowing through the strong glass like it's gauzy paper, cocking his pistol at the little Middle Eastern man behind the register if he dares to protest, then taking his stolen goods like conquests, brushing the lint off his finely-tailored suit while the door swings shut behind him, defeated. His hair would be slicked back, decorated by a crooked fedora, with a cigar hanging from his lips like Al Capone.
He's not Al Capone. His name is Kyle and he's just a kid.
He doesn't have a gun, and if he did he shit his pants before he grew the balls to use it, let alone hold it, let alone lay a goddamn finger on one. Besides, he just wants cereal. Cereal, and maybe some soup cans, something that he can eat cold that won't parish in a week or so. One of those big water bottles, something he can re-fill easily enough, and maybe a Hershey bar because he's a kid for god sakes and his sweet tooth fucking aches for a little affection.
His daydream falters when he hears the creak of a slide. He doesn't bother to turn his head. The kids don't usually come this early, but it is summer, he supposes, and without school to occupy them, they'll probably start coming earlier.
It's the cackle, though, that makes his heart stop. No child he knows ever laughed like that.
He feels a little shiver of cool air blow across the back of his neck, and he bites into his lip, horrified. He whips his head around, expecting the wolf, or perhaps the giant, but all that greets him is chirping morning birdsong and a pretty pastel sunrise.
"I'm thinking of a number between one and twenty."
"Three."
"Seven."
"Nineteen."
A pause. "You're all wrong."
"I thought the game goes whoever gets closest to the number wins."
"Wrong."
"…Bitch."
"What was that?"
A longer pause. "…Nothing."
"You said something."
"Look, Megan, I think we're all too bored to function right now, just lay off for a while. Please?"
Megan fixes Kate with a cold blue stare.
"What's for dinner?" she asks softly, delicately licking the blood off her fingers.
When the sun begins to return to its sleepy hollow behind the cemetery gates, Kyle retreats back to his tree. He inhales cereal from a box he eventually stole from the convenience store – though the actual thievery was much less eventful than the scene he conjured in his daydream – and curls up with Mortimer's bones.
Two police officers eye him from the gate. They finally approach, standing over him imperiously. Kyle has a ten-second debate with himself, deciding whether or not to go with the tough-street-kid act, or pitiful, doe-eyed orphan. He chooses the latter. The men look soft.
"Don't you think you should find a safer refuge, kid? There's a kidnapper on the loose, you know."
They don't ask why he wasn't at home; his threadbare coat and ragged jeans make it abundantly clear that his home is whatever meager mercies and refuges the city offers.
"Grandpa Morty's keeping me safe, sir," Kyle smiles precociously.
"You sure you're alright here, kid? Look, why don't you let us drop you off at the shelter down the street? Get you a nice warm bed down there, yeah?"
No. There are thieves at the shelter – thieves and rapists and murderers and enemies, old enemies that he'd rather not see, he's better off alone, he's better off fending for himself, he's better off.
"Very kind of you for offering, officer." Kyle's eyelashes flutter, just barely. "But I'd really like to stay here with my grandpa."
"Alright, s'long as you don't get into any trouble," the officer mutters, waving his friend over to leave.
Kyle smiles at their retreating backs. "Oh no, sir, no trouble at all," he murmurs to himself, "no trouble at all."
Without warning, twin shadows pass over his secluded bed of dirt, and any sense of pleasure at his small victory over the policemen is sucked out of his conscience like a crumb sacrifice to a vacuum. His blood runs cold, shivers crawling over his flesh, mocking the tremors gripping his spine.
His eyes slide to the left again, just like the night before.
It's the giant and the wolf, pointy-shoed steps reverberating like thunder cracks on the dead leaves, who settle at the same tree as before.
Kyle gathers all his courage and turns his head to observe them completely. They're closer than he thought. Kyle's mind runs furiously, desperately trying to convince himself that they're not so scary at all – in fact, they're probably horribly misunderstood, being so tall and so alarming in appearance – when all they really want to do is mourn a dear, deceased relative, just as Kyle pretends.
But then the wolf's smile spreads into a sick, wicked thing, pouty child's mouth splayed around the quick, prickly spokes of his teeth. He winks, right at him, and if Kyle hadn't relieved himself in a café toilet just moments before, he would have surely wet his pants.
"Adam, please –"
"Paul, the discussion has ended."
"Please, just – look, I'm all asking for is—"
"Your insolence is showing, darling, put it away before—"
"Reagan has the flu, and you know Merlin is allergic to all sorts of things, please – if you just—"
"Would you like to feed Megan again? Because I would be more than happy to shut you up that way—"
"Just one quick stop – a gas station, convenience store, anything, all I need is—"
"My patience has officially worn thin. I give you so much – so much of my time, energy, and money to help you get back on your feet, and this is how you repay me? With bothersome nagging and petty complaints? It's just bad manners, Paul. If there's one thing I will not tolerate, it's a lack of proper gratitude." Adam twirls his top hat on his baton, tipping it back onto his glossy black coif with a flourish.
"Please—"
The van sways, and Adam slips into the seat right behind Paul's, leaning in close to his ear, shushing his petty pleas. "Remember how I found you?" he whispers silkily. "You were a ghost, a nobody." His lips run along the back of Paul's neck. "An unwanted, pale, forgotten thing, drowning in your monk robes, pretending to be Christ's good little soldier – self-flagellating for a priest who promised to atone you for all your wicked sins, who promised to forgive you –for what, existing?"
Paul's breath betrays him, hitching suddenly, nauseous with shock, but that's all the sound he dares to make.
"He promised to love you too, didn't he?" Adam continues, ruthless and quiet. "But little priesty never told you – your Christ was just another love-desperate faggot, a pretty little prostitute for every pathetic fuck looking for more meaning beyond a hand on his cock." His mouth closes over a faded scar, just visible where his shirt falls over his shoulder blade. "A useless cause – baby, what could be better than this?" Adam's hand snakes over Paul's bare chest and lands it in his lap, squeezing at his dick under the frayed black denim. Paul shivers, head bowed, white-blonde hair curtaining his drawn face, the edges of his mouth tightening.
Adam bites down on his shoulder. "I saved you, remember?" His silky whisper rottens in this throat, turning harsh and bitter. "I saved you – what would you be now if I weren't here? Dead, bleeding from your back in a gutter, a ghost on Earth and a ghost in Hell." Paul's head jerks violently, like he's saved himself from reacting in just the nick of time.
Adam smiles giddily, and a cold sweat slicks Paul's teeth. Adam kisses behind his ear, cooing:
"Here, you're special, Paul. You're so, so special."
Rocco may be a wild man, but he knows what it means to assume responsibility. The boss has assigned him a job – find a new boy. There aren't many requirements – homeless, preferably – they'd learn that lesson the hard way. Steal a pretty mama's boy and the feds come looking, quick. He should be small – something malleable, easy to control. And he should be pretty, and that was self-explanatory enough.
Nicky is the one who finds the boy; he generally has a good eye for a fresh piece of meat. They study him in his sleep. He has a mop of hair the color between wheat and chocolate and a face made of delicate lines and childish angles, blurred into smooth continuity as if by a smooth, wet paintbrush. The mouth is too red and too full for a boy, pouty and quietly devastating in the natural downward curl of his lips. Paper-thin skin hides the color of his eyes, but Rocco thinks he caught a flash of blue when they stuttered open in a nightmare. A skinny, reptilian scar cuts across his face, over his eyebrow and down to the apple of his cheekbone.
Rocco and Nicky watch the boy all day. No one comes to him but policemen and charitable old ladies. He waits for no one. He has no home and no name and no place in the world besides a statistic. He's perfect.
"Hey, kid."
Kyle nearly jumps out of his skin, his sleep interrupted by the presence of a stranger. The stranger is a blur of beaded hair and scraggly beard, like it was drawn-on with a permanent marker in drunken stupor. But his cheekbones are sharp and his eyes don't blink, and Kyle thinks that maybe he should be scared.
"I said 'hey, kid" – you deaf? Huh, you ignorin' me? Think your better than an old drunk, eh?"
"Look, I'm sorry, y-you just surprised me –"
Without preamble, the drunk's face breaks into a toothy smile, mouth curling into a demented shape somewhat reminiscent of glee. He has a few black teeth, like a checkerboard gone wrong. "It don' matter!" He says, still smiling, though his eyes remain cold and black. "Hey, can I have a spot?"
"A what?"
The drunk's smile immediately evaporates, turning ugly like his mean, impenetrable eyes.
"A spot, you fucking idjit – can you spare some tree?"
He doesn't wait for Kyle's response, plopping himself down in the grass beside old Mortimer's grave a little ways down from Kyle, leaning back against the same tree trunk. There is complete silence, and Kyle holds his breath for what seems like all of two minutes.
"Got any food?"
Kyle's tongue darts out to lick his lips, tasting cheap cereal from a cardboard box, shifting carefully. The box under his jacket rustles. "N-no."
"Liar!" The man spits, saliva flecking Kyle's cheek. He's no longer three feet away from Kyle but pressed right against his side, his breath a rank, poisonous smoke in Kyle's ear. He shoves his hands – wet and brown and tobacco-stained – under Kyle's jacket and snatches away his box. "Nasty, lying cunt," he hisses darkly.
"What the fuck, man – give that back you motherfucker, I'll—" Kyle protests wildly, fists flailing at the bastard's face, but the man just catches his wrists in an iron-grip like it's nothing, like he's some feather-light thing to pull on a string.
"You'll what?" The man chuckles lowly, the sound a rumbling devil's thunder that Kyle feels all the way down to his bones. Goosebumps break out over his skin, blood freezing. That laugh sounds awfully familiar. Suddenly the man spins him around, roughly planting his face into the tree. Bark claws at his face and dirt swims in his teeth, his mouth wet with sweat and effort. He struggles madly, screaming into the wood, thrashing while the man's laugh rattles at the back of his neck, taunting.
"You motherfuckin' bastard, you filthy cocksucking cunt—!" He howls into the tree bark, throat raw with tears and exertion, and his only response is that laugh, diabolic and diseased.
Meanwhile the man's other hand is a snake on his thigh, slithering to his crotch and squeezing ruthlessly. Kyle's jaw unhinges in a scream distorted and stifled and torn apart by the tree, which snags on his skin, dragging blood across his cheeks into his wide-open mouth.
Kyle's hands try to latch on to the man's arm, pulling with all his strength, struggling violently but the man's grip is vice-like, and the hand moves to his neck, throttling him with jagged, filthy nails biting into his skin, and he chokes on his own blood.
"No, no, no…!" He is screaming in his own ears but nothing comes out but the rattle of his breath and all he can hear is that laugh, that laugh –
A crash. A crash and a scream and then his head is all silence.
"They did it. They've got him," Paul announces quietly, face washed clean with moonlight. He brushes the fire off his palms and onto the pit of logs. Smoke makes his eyes dark.
Jared breaks a log over his knee with a resounding crack; Joshua flinches beside him. Merlin's eyes dance gold and Roman watches him, face stone-impassive and cold, protective. Tara and Reagan's heads bow together, mouths trembling, and Kate slips her long arms around them, shaking.
Megan watches the cluster around the fire, eyes half-lidded and predatory, wine-red mouth glistening in its slow journey to a smile. Rhys's spider fingers twirl her hair, and Frankie sleeps on her shoulder, weary from the day's drive.
The sea crashes to the sand with a sound like a whipcrack. The spray of candy-striped circus tents on the dunes sway violently in the wind. Adam fingers the long cigarette at his lips and thinks of a conductor's baton. His top hat never budges in the gust of wind.
"I did it." A quiet thought sings at his throat, and he wants to shout. Instead, he whispers. "I've got them."