T. Oso (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
campkilkare) wrote2009-11-26 09:18 am
campkilkare) wrote2009-11-26 09:18 am
Entry tags:
3.1-3.4
3.1
In the house in Morningside Heights, Alice takes Vanessa aside to talk about what happened; Zora, in silent choreography, takes Simon into the kitchen. Feeding people in a crisis is an instinct. (Really, it's Alice's, but these things are contagious.)
Elsewhere, the house is filling up with allies; in the living room, it's cool and quiet and dim. 'Nessa settles on the edge of the couch, twisting anxiously at the bracelets on her right wrist. Simon's silver; Laura's steel. "I-I don't really remember anything," she says. "I'm s-sorry. I wish I--I want to help." She's on the verge of tears again, and Alice makes quiet soothing noises.
She fishes out her wallet; slips something free. "Let's just talk about it," she says. "Just try to relax." She walks the coin across the back of her fingers, easy and dexterous, ignoring the grumbling in her joints. "Take a breath. Good."
In the kitchen: "I don't know how much 'Nessa's going to be able to tell her," Simon says. "She didn't remember very much." He's got coffee, going cold.
"How did Laura figure out who it was?"
He shudders. "The--the tape. I was recording. The reception and the ceremony. When 'Nessa couldn't talk about it, Laura had me play the tape. We could see it in the background. I--" He shakes his head. "I missed it somehow."
"There was a clown. A clown at the table with her. How do you miss something like that?" He runs his thumb over the bronze cuff on his wrist; the steel chain tangled in his fingers. "He was talking to 'Nessa--"
"It was Ihsan," 'Nessa says; her eyes, at first fixed on the tumbling coin, are now staring into the middle distance. Alice's hand is still now. So is her face. "I didn't understand why she was there. She sat down at my table and she started talking. She started saying..." Pain crosses her face, like a ripple on a pond. "Terrible things."
"They talk for a while," Simon says. "And then Eddie comes up and joins them, and 'Nessa kind of... switches off. And then Eddie leaves the table with the clown, and they... I don't know. Leave the frame." He presses his fingers to his temples; looking green. "I'm sorry, is there a, a bathroom I can use?"
"She said she was dead," 'Nessa drones. A tear slips down her face, silent and unregarded. "I don't know if it was true. I loved her and I don't know now if she's dead or alive now."
"What came next?" Alice says.
"She told me things. She said there are things the dead know. Things they've been keeping back." There's a fey and awful light in her eye. "She told me."
Simon is in the bathroom. The camcorder is on the table.
Zora can't help herself.
It's just like he said; they get up and they walk out of frame. Out of the world. Hardly anything passes between them; a handful of words, and then Eddie goes with him. Why? Why wouldn't--
From the top of the frame, a gloved hand settles on the edge of the screen, and a terrible painted face pops into view, tiny but in perfect resolution. "Hey hey! Whaddya say!"
She feels her heart lurch in her chest; her knees buckle. Oh God, she thinks. I'm old. I really am old.
The camcorder hits in the ground with her; the screen cracks. The clown squeezes out through the crack. She can feel the pain up and down her arm, just like the doctors talk about; cold and crushing.
"My name's Little Billy Grey." At one and the same time, the clown is three inches high and very very tall. "How do you do?"
In the living room: "Then what did Eddie say?"
'Nessa's voice is flat; her Brooklyn accent is just gone, replaced by Eddie's Manhattan prep school voice: "She's not the one you want."
"Here's a little tip." The clown ties a balloon to her wrist; she watches her hand float up towards the ceiling. She feels like someone particularly heavy has shoved her in a sack and sat on her chest. Printed on the balloon are the words:
ALL THAT YOU LOVE WILL BE CARRIED AWAY
"Those little girls are mine now. They belong to me. We're going to have... so much fun. Down in the dark. We all float down there, Zora. And if you want, you can come float away with me. But what I'd really like is for you to stay and pass this message onto your girrrrrlfriend in the other room."
"The girls are mine. Say it." His gloved fingers wrap around the balloon. "I've got your heart in the palm of my hand, you lousy dyke, so I want to hear you say it: The girls belong to Pennywise."
"Trust me, bitch: you don't want me for an enemy."
"Okay, 'Nessa," Alice says. "In a minute you're going to wake up. But before that happens I want you to do something for me. I want you to take all those bad things It told you and put them away, all right? Put them behind a door, and lock the door. Okay?"
"Okay."
"Now I want you to give me the key. What's the key, 'Nessa?"
"The key is ataba."
"Good. Give it to me now." 'Nessa holds out her hand; Alice takes it. There's the illusion of weight passing between them. "What's the key, 'Nessa?"
"I don't remember," she says. "You took it."
"Good." One more burden to carry. "Good. Time to wake up now."
Zora's lips move in a pale face.
"What was that?" the clown says. "I couldn't hear you."
"You were my enemy," Zora growls, "from the minute that girl came into my house. She is mine. They are mine and they always will be. So why don't you go take a flying fuck--" The words are spit out between trembling lips. "--at a rolling donut, you happy asshole? Why don't you go take a flying fuck at the moon."
"Oh, you bad little--" His hand tightens on the balloon, and that's when Simon cracks him in the skull with the coffee pot. There's a stench of ozone, and a flash of blue light; for a moment the light hangs around the bracelets, crackling like electricity, and then it's gone. So's the clown.
"Mrs. Bailey? Zora?" He's shaking, as he hits his knees; so's she.
"Doctor," she whispers. "My heart."
"...alice"
"Somebody!" Simon screams. "Somebody help!"
2
The blonde woman in the cape and mask bounces her off the vertical beam of the cross; her nose gushes blood.
"I'm sorry," she says again; the woman kicks her in the chest, knocking her to the ground. "I'm sorry, I thought I had to choose. I'm sorry."
The woman settles on her chest like an incubus, reaching for her throat; Laura struggles against her hands, wrapped in black gloves with serrated edges. "No one remembers me now," she says, cold and empty. "No one but you. I'm nothing now. No name. No face. It's your fault."
You wouldn't tell me! Laura thinks. Wouldn't show me. I'm sorry. The hands settle on her throat. "I loved you." There are screams coming from the corn now; the wails and shrieks of the damned.
"I don't care."
If she could, Laura would nod now. As if to say: that settles it. Then she reaches up with a struggling hand and tugs off the mask. It's just a small, black bat-shaped domino.
There's nothing there behind the mask; no weight on her chest. She coughs, and sits up, wrapping her hands around her knees. Breathes, even if it's the awful corn-scented air of Kansas.
X comes out of the corn. Her claws are smoking. "Batgirl," she says impassively. Her dress, for the wedding, looks as bad as Laura's. "Not the one I knew."
"Yeah." Laura looks at the mask. "She got--whaddyacallit. Retconned. She never existed. She used to come to Milliways."
X sniffs the air. "I do not think she was real."
"No," Laura agrees. "Just guilt." To no one in particular: "I was young." She crushes the mask in her hand and tosses it aside; it turns to smoke and blows away. "God, I hate this place."
X comes closer. "Why are there children in the corn?"
Laura's face is a steel vault. "There was a town in Kansas. They worshipped this... demon. Killed their parents. Anyone over 18. For... generations."
"You killed them."
"Some of them," she agrees. "The others killed themselves. Or each other. It was my fault." She shakes her head. "God. I was only nineteen myself."
"Fault is not relevant," X says gently.
"No. Of course not. Somebody had to do it." She smiles; it's not a very good one. "And I'm somebody."
You're nobody 'til somebody loves you. Not a cover she's ever done. X retracts her claws; holds out a hand.
"It is time to come home."
3
Wren floats. She's not dead, but it's like being dead. Like rehearsal for being dead, or like someone--
here here she is i think this is here
--someone putting a cloth over a caged bird. False night; instant sleep.
yeah i'd recognize that hair anywhere way to go stan the man
She floats with all the others, a million miles away from her useless body and her useless life, and waits with utter passivity for whatever comes--
can you wake her up
yeah i got it see how she likes this
next
There's a sound like a rocket blasting off, and an utterly foul taste fills her lungs; like camphor and dogshit. Wren Edwina Bailey hacks and gasps for breath; tries to orient herself.
She's outside. There are two people here. Two boys her own age, which is apparently eleven.
Eleven means rail-thin and stick-like; three years of Alice's cooking and X's exercise meeting a bubbling metabolism and a growth spurt winching her higher and higher. Shin splints and envy, as Laura, two years older, fills out and she stays straight up and down. Why eleven?
"Where am I?" The bigger boy, the one with the book, says: "The sewers," just as the other says, "The Barrens."
Where ever here is, it's neither smelly or barren; it's green and sunlight, all primary colors. There's a stream.
The boys look at each other. "Inside your head, anyway," says the smaller boy. He's carrying something like a plastic spray bottle; he tucks it into his shirt pocket. "It put you in here. To keep you out of the way, I guess."
"Why didn't It just kill me?" she wonders.
The taller boy shrugs. "Dunno."
But she does, she thinks. She thinks so. The answer is in the past.
"Who are you guys, anyway?"
The answers are always in the past. The bigger boy smiles; it's an oddly adult smile on that young face. "I guess you could say we're the namesakes."
4
"We're not asking you to get involved," Allen says.
"Good. Because my grandmother would kill me, if you guys don't get me killed."
"Trust me, Dr. Tam," Julia says wearily. "No one wants you to get killed." I'm supposed to be on my honeymoon right now, she thinks.
"Well, obviously nobody wants anybody to get killed," he says with maddening logic. "But it does have a tendency to happen, doesn't it? I just... don't want to get involved."
Julia is not yet forty, but she can see it on the horizon. She's got her father's lanky scarecrow physique and hair; her mother's disdain for things like cosmetics and pink and tendency to speak her mind. She'd long since resigned herself to a life alone; the idea of a man, let alone a man like Allen, was laughable.
He's gentle, and he's intelligent, and he thinks before he speaks. He loves her. He's absurdly attractive, dangerous in a sexy and understated way; younger than her. And he loves her. If there's someone else in love with him--if maybe he was in love with someone else, and came out to Taos to run away from it--well, people come with baggage. This is a good as it's going to get, and it's pretty damn fine.
But if Eddie dies--if Eddie dies today, on their wedding day--she'll lose him. You can't compete with a dead woman. And all altruistic motives aside (and they're there, sure; people without them don't join Tet Security) Julia is like the Baileys in at least one way: she doesn't like to lose.
"Look," she says desperately. "All we want you to do is get a message to your great-aunt, or one of your cousins."
"I don't really have contact with them."
"But you know how if you need to," Allen presses.
"Welll..."
The door to the bar opens; Vanessa bursts in, the tear tracks still drying on her face. "We need a doctor! It's Mrs. Bailey! Please, someone!"
Doctor Tam looks around at them and shakes his head; sighs, and grabs his medical bag. "My grandmother was right about you people."
In the house in Morningside Heights, Alice takes Vanessa aside to talk about what happened; Zora, in silent choreography, takes Simon into the kitchen. Feeding people in a crisis is an instinct. (Really, it's Alice's, but these things are contagious.)
Elsewhere, the house is filling up with allies; in the living room, it's cool and quiet and dim. 'Nessa settles on the edge of the couch, twisting anxiously at the bracelets on her right wrist. Simon's silver; Laura's steel. "I-I don't really remember anything," she says. "I'm s-sorry. I wish I--I want to help." She's on the verge of tears again, and Alice makes quiet soothing noises.
She fishes out her wallet; slips something free. "Let's just talk about it," she says. "Just try to relax." She walks the coin across the back of her fingers, easy and dexterous, ignoring the grumbling in her joints. "Take a breath. Good."
In the kitchen: "I don't know how much 'Nessa's going to be able to tell her," Simon says. "She didn't remember very much." He's got coffee, going cold.
"How did Laura figure out who it was?"
He shudders. "The--the tape. I was recording. The reception and the ceremony. When 'Nessa couldn't talk about it, Laura had me play the tape. We could see it in the background. I--" He shakes his head. "I missed it somehow."
"There was a clown. A clown at the table with her. How do you miss something like that?" He runs his thumb over the bronze cuff on his wrist; the steel chain tangled in his fingers. "He was talking to 'Nessa--"
"It was Ihsan," 'Nessa says; her eyes, at first fixed on the tumbling coin, are now staring into the middle distance. Alice's hand is still now. So is her face. "I didn't understand why she was there. She sat down at my table and she started talking. She started saying..." Pain crosses her face, like a ripple on a pond. "Terrible things."
"They talk for a while," Simon says. "And then Eddie comes up and joins them, and 'Nessa kind of... switches off. And then Eddie leaves the table with the clown, and they... I don't know. Leave the frame." He presses his fingers to his temples; looking green. "I'm sorry, is there a, a bathroom I can use?"
"She said she was dead," 'Nessa drones. A tear slips down her face, silent and unregarded. "I don't know if it was true. I loved her and I don't know now if she's dead or alive now."
"What came next?" Alice says.
"She told me things. She said there are things the dead know. Things they've been keeping back." There's a fey and awful light in her eye. "She told me."
Simon is in the bathroom. The camcorder is on the table.
Zora can't help herself.
It's just like he said; they get up and they walk out of frame. Out of the world. Hardly anything passes between them; a handful of words, and then Eddie goes with him. Why? Why wouldn't--
From the top of the frame, a gloved hand settles on the edge of the screen, and a terrible painted face pops into view, tiny but in perfect resolution. "Hey hey! Whaddya say!"
She feels her heart lurch in her chest; her knees buckle. Oh God, she thinks. I'm old. I really am old.
The camcorder hits in the ground with her; the screen cracks. The clown squeezes out through the crack. She can feel the pain up and down her arm, just like the doctors talk about; cold and crushing.
"My name's Little Billy Grey." At one and the same time, the clown is three inches high and very very tall. "How do you do?"
In the living room: "Then what did Eddie say?"
'Nessa's voice is flat; her Brooklyn accent is just gone, replaced by Eddie's Manhattan prep school voice: "She's not the one you want."
"Here's a little tip." The clown ties a balloon to her wrist; she watches her hand float up towards the ceiling. She feels like someone particularly heavy has shoved her in a sack and sat on her chest. Printed on the balloon are the words:
ALL THAT YOU LOVE WILL BE CARRIED AWAY
"Those little girls are mine now. They belong to me. We're going to have... so much fun. Down in the dark. We all float down there, Zora. And if you want, you can come float away with me. But what I'd really like is for you to stay and pass this message onto your girrrrrlfriend in the other room."
"The girls are mine. Say it." His gloved fingers wrap around the balloon. "I've got your heart in the palm of my hand, you lousy dyke, so I want to hear you say it: The girls belong to Pennywise."
"Trust me, bitch: you don't want me for an enemy."
"Okay, 'Nessa," Alice says. "In a minute you're going to wake up. But before that happens I want you to do something for me. I want you to take all those bad things It told you and put them away, all right? Put them behind a door, and lock the door. Okay?"
"Okay."
"Now I want you to give me the key. What's the key, 'Nessa?"
"The key is ataba."
"Good. Give it to me now." 'Nessa holds out her hand; Alice takes it. There's the illusion of weight passing between them. "What's the key, 'Nessa?"
"I don't remember," she says. "You took it."
"Good." One more burden to carry. "Good. Time to wake up now."
Zora's lips move in a pale face.
"What was that?" the clown says. "I couldn't hear you."
"You were my enemy," Zora growls, "from the minute that girl came into my house. She is mine. They are mine and they always will be. So why don't you go take a flying fuck--" The words are spit out between trembling lips. "--at a rolling donut, you happy asshole? Why don't you go take a flying fuck at the moon."
"Oh, you bad little--" His hand tightens on the balloon, and that's when Simon cracks him in the skull with the coffee pot. There's a stench of ozone, and a flash of blue light; for a moment the light hangs around the bracelets, crackling like electricity, and then it's gone. So's the clown.
"Mrs. Bailey? Zora?" He's shaking, as he hits his knees; so's she.
"Doctor," she whispers. "My heart."
"...alice"
"Somebody!" Simon screams. "Somebody help!"
2
The blonde woman in the cape and mask bounces her off the vertical beam of the cross; her nose gushes blood.
"I'm sorry," she says again; the woman kicks her in the chest, knocking her to the ground. "I'm sorry, I thought I had to choose. I'm sorry."
The woman settles on her chest like an incubus, reaching for her throat; Laura struggles against her hands, wrapped in black gloves with serrated edges. "No one remembers me now," she says, cold and empty. "No one but you. I'm nothing now. No name. No face. It's your fault."
You wouldn't tell me! Laura thinks. Wouldn't show me. I'm sorry. The hands settle on her throat. "I loved you." There are screams coming from the corn now; the wails and shrieks of the damned.
"I don't care."
If she could, Laura would nod now. As if to say: that settles it. Then she reaches up with a struggling hand and tugs off the mask. It's just a small, black bat-shaped domino.
There's nothing there behind the mask; no weight on her chest. She coughs, and sits up, wrapping her hands around her knees. Breathes, even if it's the awful corn-scented air of Kansas.
X comes out of the corn. Her claws are smoking. "Batgirl," she says impassively. Her dress, for the wedding, looks as bad as Laura's. "Not the one I knew."
"Yeah." Laura looks at the mask. "She got--whaddyacallit. Retconned. She never existed. She used to come to Milliways."
X sniffs the air. "I do not think she was real."
"No," Laura agrees. "Just guilt." To no one in particular: "I was young." She crushes the mask in her hand and tosses it aside; it turns to smoke and blows away. "God, I hate this place."
X comes closer. "Why are there children in the corn?"
Laura's face is a steel vault. "There was a town in Kansas. They worshipped this... demon. Killed their parents. Anyone over 18. For... generations."
"You killed them."
"Some of them," she agrees. "The others killed themselves. Or each other. It was my fault." She shakes her head. "God. I was only nineteen myself."
"Fault is not relevant," X says gently.
"No. Of course not. Somebody had to do it." She smiles; it's not a very good one. "And I'm somebody."
You're nobody 'til somebody loves you. Not a cover she's ever done. X retracts her claws; holds out a hand.
"It is time to come home."
3
Wren floats. She's not dead, but it's like being dead. Like rehearsal for being dead, or like someone--
here here she is i think this is here
--someone putting a cloth over a caged bird. False night; instant sleep.
yeah i'd recognize that hair anywhere way to go stan the man
She floats with all the others, a million miles away from her useless body and her useless life, and waits with utter passivity for whatever comes--
can you wake her up
yeah i got it see how she likes this
next
There's a sound like a rocket blasting off, and an utterly foul taste fills her lungs; like camphor and dogshit. Wren Edwina Bailey hacks and gasps for breath; tries to orient herself.
She's outside. There are two people here. Two boys her own age, which is apparently eleven.
Eleven means rail-thin and stick-like; three years of Alice's cooking and X's exercise meeting a bubbling metabolism and a growth spurt winching her higher and higher. Shin splints and envy, as Laura, two years older, fills out and she stays straight up and down. Why eleven?
"Where am I?" The bigger boy, the one with the book, says: "The sewers," just as the other says, "The Barrens."
Where ever here is, it's neither smelly or barren; it's green and sunlight, all primary colors. There's a stream.
The boys look at each other. "Inside your head, anyway," says the smaller boy. He's carrying something like a plastic spray bottle; he tucks it into his shirt pocket. "It put you in here. To keep you out of the way, I guess."
"Why didn't It just kill me?" she wonders.
The taller boy shrugs. "Dunno."
But she does, she thinks. She thinks so. The answer is in the past.
"Who are you guys, anyway?"
The answers are always in the past. The bigger boy smiles; it's an oddly adult smile on that young face. "I guess you could say we're the namesakes."
4
"We're not asking you to get involved," Allen says.
"Good. Because my grandmother would kill me, if you guys don't get me killed."
"Trust me, Dr. Tam," Julia says wearily. "No one wants you to get killed." I'm supposed to be on my honeymoon right now, she thinks.
"Well, obviously nobody wants anybody to get killed," he says with maddening logic. "But it does have a tendency to happen, doesn't it? I just... don't want to get involved."
Julia is not yet forty, but she can see it on the horizon. She's got her father's lanky scarecrow physique and hair; her mother's disdain for things like cosmetics and pink and tendency to speak her mind. She'd long since resigned herself to a life alone; the idea of a man, let alone a man like Allen, was laughable.
He's gentle, and he's intelligent, and he thinks before he speaks. He loves her. He's absurdly attractive, dangerous in a sexy and understated way; younger than her. And he loves her. If there's someone else in love with him--if maybe he was in love with someone else, and came out to Taos to run away from it--well, people come with baggage. This is a good as it's going to get, and it's pretty damn fine.
But if Eddie dies--if Eddie dies today, on their wedding day--she'll lose him. You can't compete with a dead woman. And all altruistic motives aside (and they're there, sure; people without them don't join Tet Security) Julia is like the Baileys in at least one way: she doesn't like to lose.
"Look," she says desperately. "All we want you to do is get a message to your great-aunt, or one of your cousins."
"I don't really have contact with them."
"But you know how if you need to," Allen presses.
"Welll..."
The door to the bar opens; Vanessa bursts in, the tear tracks still drying on her face. "We need a doctor! It's Mrs. Bailey! Please, someone!"
Doctor Tam looks around at them and shakes his head; sighs, and grabs his medical bag. "My grandmother was right about you people."
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