Happy Halloween!
Hi everyone - to keep with my personal tradition - a new BJ Halloween fic.
This one was kind of inspired by the wonderful Miss Miko. I'm not sure it's quite what she had in mind, but I hope you enjoy.
It's set in the Homecoming!future 'verse - a couple of years before Leaving Home and Changing Roles.
Gus has just turned sixteen. Danika (short version - Justin and Daphne's daughter - long version, read the above) is about to turn three.
Enjoy!
Trick or Treat
“But, Da-a-ad …”
Sometimes Brian was ready to swear that in their complicated family dynamics, Gus had somehow managed to absorb some of Mikey’s genes.
“She’s your sister, and she wants to go Trick or Treating with you so suck it up.” As always, Brian showed little inclination towards diplomacy.
Justin, appealed to, was more sympathetic. “Gus, I know it’s a pain, but you only have to go to a few houses. She just wants to feel like she’s one of the big kids and spend time with her big brother on Halloween. You could take her round for half an hour or so and then bring her home. You’d still have plenty of time to do stuff with your friends.”
Gus sighed. The heavy, heartfelt sigh of a put-upon teenager. How the fuck was he going to explain to the guys that he couldn’t pick them up as early as planned because he had to go trick or treating with a fucking baby? It wasn’t like Dani was even old enough to know what Halloween was all about. She wasn’t even three years old yet.
It just wasn’t fair!
His friends were relying on him because he had the best car. Well, he really had the only reliable car. His friends’ cars were pretty much rubbishy heaps. His had been his present from Dad and Dus for his 16th birthday and it was okay. Not the really hot model he’d secretly lusted after, but pretty cool just the same - way better than most of his friends had anyway.
The problem, he acknowledged to himself, was that it wasn’t like they were real friends. Not like his Dad and Dus had Emmett and Ted and Daphne. Those guys had been friends for years and had gone through heaps of shit together and really had each others’ backs. These guys were just, well … people who made his social life easier. The fucking ‘rents might delude themselves about how much things had changed and how lucky he was to be living in more tolerant times and all that shit.
But from where he stood they were seriously kidding themselves.
There were only three other kids at his school that he knew of who had openly gay parents, and he was the only one of them that was gay himself. That made him doubly different from the herd and one fucking thing hadn’t changed at all since Dus had been bashed at his Prom - being different from the mob meant that you were singled out for special attention; and not, as his Dad would say, in a positive, life-enhancing way.
Having these guys onside meant some kind of acceptance, and that made his life a Hell of a lot easier than it would have been without them.
Gus sighed again.
Brian gave his own version - an exasperated huff that was so close an echo of his son’s that Justin had to stifle a laugh. But he was a past expert in dealing with the Kinney men.
“We can have Dani ready by five,” he said calmly. “It will be getting dark by then anyway. You can bring her back here around 5.30. Then you can go off and do whatever you’ve got planned with your friends.”
He avoided Brian’s eye after the last line.
Brian, he knew, had considerable concerns over these “friends” of Gus’s.
But they were in agreement that Gus had to be trusted, and allowed to make his own mistakes - at least to some extent. It was the limit of that extent that was a subject of some debate between them, and even greater debate between them and Lindsay. Mel, thank God, wasn’t in the picture at the moment. Well, she was, but not directly. She and Lindsay were supposedly together but Mel was working on some big case that meant she was spending most of her time in Harrisburg. Justin could only feel grateful that they didn’t have to deal with her on a daily basis. Mikey and Linds were suffering multiple phone calls daily checking on every detail of JR’s life but, as usual when her priorities were put to the test, she was showing little interest in how “her” son was doing; as long as she didn’t have to deal with him, and wasn’t made to feel she had to compete with Brian over him, Gus pretty much wasn’t on her radar.
Brian’s tongue in cheek smirk suddenly made an appearance as he ruffled his son’s hair - “Cheer up, sonnyboy, at least we’re not making you take the monster munchkin with you.”
Justin frowned at him, but didn’t say anything. The truth was, he couldn’t really blame Gus - or Brian either for that matter - for not liking JR very much at the moment. She’d inherited some fairly undesirable traits from both her parents - Mikey’s whininess, Mel’s stridency, and a general tendency to sulk and walk around with a chip on her shoulder believing herself to be particularly hard done by. It had been bad enough when she was smaller, but combined with the usual sturm and drang of the onset of puberty, she’d become pretty hard for any of them to take except in very small doses. Even Deb was fast losing patience with her endless whining and general bad attitude.
But still, she was Gus’s sister and it wasn’t her fault that she’d been over-indulged since birth by both her parents, as well as by her doting grandmother and, of course, by Lindsay whenever she and Mel were back together. Because Linds wouldn’t dare correct or attempt in any way to discipline JR for fear of triggering one of Mel’s more vitriolic outbursts; instead she’d always bent over backwards to placate Melanie and so JR had pretty much got away with everything. Any bad behavior was, of course, blamed on Gus by both JR’s mommy and daddy.
No, Justin couldn’t really blame Gus for not wanting to spend any more time than he absolutely had to with his other sister.
But he did feel a bit hurt that Gus was so resistant to spending a little time with Dani. He was doing his best to remember what it was like at Gus’s age, and to understand that a teenage boy didn’t want to have to be seen with his kid sister, but he knew how much Dani adored her big brother and he couldn’t help but feel bad on her behalf.
Gus, not nearly as much a tough-ass as he would have liked everyone to believe, realized that Dus wasn’t happy with him and flushed.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’ll be fine. Like you said, I can catch up with the guys later.”
He crossed his fingers and hoped that was the case, that the guys would be prepared to wait for him. But he was rewarded with a big smile from Dus and by his father squeezing the back of his neck in a typically understated gesture of approval and affection, and knew he’d done the right thing.
He wasn’t so sure when he actually arrived on Halloween to collect Danika though, because she was practically jumping out of her skin with excitement.
Dus smiled an apology at him. “She somehow managed to get her hands on the frosting for the Halloween cookies and before I realized she’d eaten about two handfuls”, he said with his twisted grin. “She’s on a total sugar high now, but the good thing is she’ll probably crash even sooner. You might have to carry her home, though.”
That wasn’t a problem, thought Gus. She was only a tiny little thing. How hard could it be to carry her for a couple of blocks?
So they set out.
Dani was dressed as a Holly flower fairy. She wore green leggings with a warm windcheater and over that a thick dark green cloak that had bunches of red berries sewn all over it and bands of white holly flowers round the neck and bordering the edge of the hood. Diaphanous wings protruded from the back of the cloak. She looked cute, but not so cutsie that it made you want to puke, like the little kids dressed as kittens and teddy bears and stuff. And at least she’d be warm. Some of the kids wandering down the street were already looking slightly blue around the edges, because their costumes were kind of skimpy and the evening air was really cold - almost like it was going to start snowing soon.
Gus himself was wearing a cool kind of mad monk’s costume. At the moment that just consisted of the cassock and hood because he didn’t want to scare Dani; later when he joined the guys he’d add the bloodied tonsure, the pointed teeth, the blood stained nails and the crucifix also dripping with fake blood. He was glad that the cassock was made of thick microfibre and that he could wear his jeans and a warm jumper underneath.
They’d made their way down the hill, visiting a few houses on the way, and were just crossing the road to turn the corner and do the next street when Gus heard the stupid fucking horn of one of his friends’ cars. Gus had grown up with his father’s caustic comments on the inadequacies - sexual and otherwise - of people who felt it necessary to announce themselves with novelty car horns and would rather have lived permanently with Mel and JR than ever inflict such a thing on his own car. Talk about lame!
He drew Dani close beside him and waited for the car to pull up. Just his luck … Steve, Tony and Ray were all in there, pointing and laughing at the sight of him with the small fairy hanging onto his hand.
“Hey, Gus-man!” Ray yelled. “What the fuck are you doing with the rug rat? It’s time to party, man.”
Gus frowned. He didn’t like people swearing in front of Dani. Even Dad tried not to do it.
“We’re twrick’n twreeting,” Dani asserted firmly with her slightly rolled ‘r’s.
“Hell, Gus. How much longer are you going to be?”
“Not long,” Gus assured them. “We’ll just go down this street.”
“Ah, that’s lame,” Steve said. “You should take her to the house over on Mulberry. It’s all set up with zombies and ghosts and …”
“We’re going down this street,” Gus said firmly. If he took Dani somewhere really scary Dad would boot his ass.
He clasped Dani’s small hand in his and started off down the street. To his surprise, the three guys in the car spilled out and followed them, they were bitching about it, but they still followed along.
It was getting dark by then and suddenly the street lights flickered and went out. Gus paused. He didn’t like the look of this. Hardly any of the houses in the street had any lights showing and those that did looked kind of … weird.
But Dani was tugging his hand and trying to drag him up the path to the first door.
Even as the door opened, he knew it wasn’t right, and turned to get Dani out of there, but before he could get the guys crowding behind them to shift their ass, there was a kind of swirling before his eyes and a whoosh in his ears and then he wasn’t standing on a porch in a street near his home any more, he was in an alley, high walls looming either side and no lights to tell him which way he should move. Dani, was still with him and he didn’t know whether to be thankful for that, or sorry. He wished she was safe at home, but failing that he figured at least she wasn’t lost somewhere on her own.
He picked her up and started to move down the alley, only then realizing that the guys were with him as well. He was confused and scared, but he tried to look confident so that Dani wouldn’t get scared too, and just concentrated on getting out of there to somewhere where there were people so they could figure out where they were and maybe get help.
He stopped dead when he heard the noise. It started low and soft and got louder and more shrill, a high-pitched keening that wound around them, seeming to come from all directions at once.
Then he saw the … what? Creature? It was tall and gangly, with attenuated limbs; a stick insect figure from a nightmare. It reached towards him with one of those limbs, long taloned claws flexing as if it wasn’t exactly sure of the distance.
He heard one of the guys … Ray? scream, and realized that there were other creatures, that they were all around them and just then, suddenly, the keening stopped.
Into the silence stole a sound that was soft, but somehow terrifying. Gus knew somehow that it was the clicking of those taloned claws as the creatures inched slowly closer and closer.
He gulped, and held Dani tighter. He had to figure a way to get her out of there. Still holding his sister, he freed one hand and felt frantically in his pockets. There had to be something he could use. His fingers clutched the cheap cigarette lighter he’d bought because Tony had promised to steal some of his brother’s weed and they were going to try it tonight. Not believing it would do any good, but having nothing else to try, Gus pulled it from his pocket and somehow managed to get it to light one handed.
The effect was immediate. The creatures halted and the terrible clicking stopped.
For a long moment they all stood frozen. Gus thrust the lighter forward and the creature in front of him seemed to give way a little, but he sensed the ones at his back making ready to jump him. He turned slowly in a circle, wanting to keep them all at bay, but afraid that a sudden movement would make the small flame go out.
Suddenly he had an idea. He took firm hold of Dani and thrust her at Steve. “Hold her!” he ordered.
Then he handed the lighter to Ray. “Don’t let it go out!”
Both boys blinked but did as they were told, Ray holding the small flame high over his head.
Quickly, Gus pulled apart the velcrose fastenings of his cassock and slipped it off. He took the lighter back from Ray and held it to one corner of the material. The creatures gave a shrill susurration of alarm and Gus sensed them getting ready to spring. He held the lighter high again and they froze once more.
Then he looked down at the garment in his hands. One corner was well alight now, and he blew on it a little to encourage it. The flames grew.
He handed the lighter back to Ray, and taking the garment in both hands he began to wave it furiously in front of him like a flaming standard.
The creatures shrilled again and moved back. He said quickly, “Follow me, and move your fucking asses!”
Then he whirled, keeping the circle of space around them, but moving them steadily down the alley way towards the end of the buildings. Hopefully there was a street down there or something.
They were nearly there, when, with a sudden flare the garment in his hands took fully alight.
“Fuck!” he screamed and threw the burning rags at the nearest creature and, grabbing Dani from Steve, joined his friends in a frantic run towards what he hoped would be safety.
To his horror, he collided with a dark figure who seemed to have materialized from nowhere.
“Easy, kid,” the figure said. “You’ve done well to hold them this long, but we’ll take over now.”
He saw another man step forward, and he, Dani and the guys, were moved firmly out of the way as the first man turned back towards the creatures.
Gus knew this couldn’t all be really happening.
He’d known it from the time he’d suddenly been transported from a porch in Pittsburgh to this alleyway in fuck knows where.
But what totally made him certain that this had to be some weird-assed dream or something was that he knew the man he’d crashed into - and his friend too for that matter. He’d pretty much grown up with them - one of them tall, and dark and wearing a skin tight costume that was torn across the chest, and the other, shorter, darker, his costume equally tight with a sigil on the right shoulder. So he wasn’t really surprised when a third figure, slim and blond, appeared and took Dani, who was scared now and beginning to cry, from him, cradling her against his chest and whispering to her softly till her tears stopped, and she started to laugh the silly gurgly sort of laugh she’d inherited from her mother.
Then a sudden outcry in the alley drew his attention and he watched as the creatures started to writhe in apparent agony, although as far as he could see nothing was touching them - well, nothing except a sort of faint shimmer of flames which seemed to be lapping around them, although there was no heat and no smell of burning or anything.
Gus supposed it figured. Rage’s special power was mind control, after all. He was probably making them see and feel the flames in their minds.
It didn’t last long really.
The creatures, whatever they were (Zephyr mumbled something about ‘dungeon dimensions’ and ‘preying on innocence’, but Rage summed it up simply with ‘fucking creepoids’), disappeared with a final wailing shriek, and immediately after that the four boys and Dani found themselves once more standing on a porch in a street where the street lights were just flickering back into life.
They all looked at each other. Dani started to cry again, and Gus picked her up. The others hovered round them, trying to outdo each other and be the first one to make her smile again. She sniffled a little longer, but having the undivided attention of her brother and his friends was more than enough to banish any lingering fears, and she insisted on being allowed to visit at least three more houses to replace the candy which must have fallen somewhere in that alleyway.
So Gus was a little later bringing Dani home than he’d planned and his fathers were both surprised and a little relieved to find his friends tagging along with them. Somehow along the way they’d all lost their taste for partying further that night, and when Justin asked if they’d eaten and would they be interested in pizza for dinner, they were all happy enough to pile into the media room and stuff themselves on pizza and soda and allow the memory of what had happened to quietly slide out of their minds, like the tide ebbing slowly out over the sands, leaving them smooth and unmarked.
Rather like the costume which turned up safely on the doorstep next morning. It was unharmed, in fact it looked brand new, although strangely enough it seemed to have grown a little larger overnight. Brian and Justin figured Gus must have taken it off to "match" his friends and left it stashed on the porch.
Only Gus for a while retained a hazy sort of image of a figure who’d looked so much like his Dad, but somehow harsher, without the laugh lines that crinkled round his father’s eyes and mouth.
But starting from that Halloween, Gus began to realize that maybe he did have real friends after all, because now he felt like the guys did have his back; like they really liked him; maybe even respected him - not just because he had cool Dads and drove a hot car, but just for him, Gus. Even years later, when he looked back on it, it seemed to him that for some reason that was the best Halloween ever, and definitely the real beginning of friendships which lasted right through his life.
But, although he was never sure what made him feel that way, he always had the sense that there was something more to it, something he just couldn’t quite remember.
Maybe because every time he went into Uncle Mikey’s shop and saw the framed Rage comic on the wall, he felt a prickle down his spine.
And, for a long time afterwards the sight of a cigarette lighter made him want to start screaming.
Happy Halloween!
.
This one was kind of inspired by the wonderful Miss Miko. I'm not sure it's quite what she had in mind, but I hope you enjoy.
It's set in the Homecoming!future 'verse - a couple of years before Leaving Home and Changing Roles.
Gus has just turned sixteen. Danika (short version - Justin and Daphne's daughter - long version, read the above) is about to turn three.
Enjoy!
Trick or Treat
“But, Da-a-ad …”
Sometimes Brian was ready to swear that in their complicated family dynamics, Gus had somehow managed to absorb some of Mikey’s genes.
“She’s your sister, and she wants to go Trick or Treating with you so suck it up.” As always, Brian showed little inclination towards diplomacy.
Justin, appealed to, was more sympathetic. “Gus, I know it’s a pain, but you only have to go to a few houses. She just wants to feel like she’s one of the big kids and spend time with her big brother on Halloween. You could take her round for half an hour or so and then bring her home. You’d still have plenty of time to do stuff with your friends.”
Gus sighed. The heavy, heartfelt sigh of a put-upon teenager. How the fuck was he going to explain to the guys that he couldn’t pick them up as early as planned because he had to go trick or treating with a fucking baby? It wasn’t like Dani was even old enough to know what Halloween was all about. She wasn’t even three years old yet.
It just wasn’t fair!
His friends were relying on him because he had the best car. Well, he really had the only reliable car. His friends’ cars were pretty much rubbishy heaps. His had been his present from Dad and Dus for his 16th birthday and it was okay. Not the really hot model he’d secretly lusted after, but pretty cool just the same - way better than most of his friends had anyway.
The problem, he acknowledged to himself, was that it wasn’t like they were real friends. Not like his Dad and Dus had Emmett and Ted and Daphne. Those guys had been friends for years and had gone through heaps of shit together and really had each others’ backs. These guys were just, well … people who made his social life easier. The fucking ‘rents might delude themselves about how much things had changed and how lucky he was to be living in more tolerant times and all that shit.
But from where he stood they were seriously kidding themselves.
There were only three other kids at his school that he knew of who had openly gay parents, and he was the only one of them that was gay himself. That made him doubly different from the herd and one fucking thing hadn’t changed at all since Dus had been bashed at his Prom - being different from the mob meant that you were singled out for special attention; and not, as his Dad would say, in a positive, life-enhancing way.
Having these guys onside meant some kind of acceptance, and that made his life a Hell of a lot easier than it would have been without them.
Gus sighed again.
Brian gave his own version - an exasperated huff that was so close an echo of his son’s that Justin had to stifle a laugh. But he was a past expert in dealing with the Kinney men.
“We can have Dani ready by five,” he said calmly. “It will be getting dark by then anyway. You can bring her back here around 5.30. Then you can go off and do whatever you’ve got planned with your friends.”
He avoided Brian’s eye after the last line.
Brian, he knew, had considerable concerns over these “friends” of Gus’s.
But they were in agreement that Gus had to be trusted, and allowed to make his own mistakes - at least to some extent. It was the limit of that extent that was a subject of some debate between them, and even greater debate between them and Lindsay. Mel, thank God, wasn’t in the picture at the moment. Well, she was, but not directly. She and Lindsay were supposedly together but Mel was working on some big case that meant she was spending most of her time in Harrisburg. Justin could only feel grateful that they didn’t have to deal with her on a daily basis. Mikey and Linds were suffering multiple phone calls daily checking on every detail of JR’s life but, as usual when her priorities were put to the test, she was showing little interest in how “her” son was doing; as long as she didn’t have to deal with him, and wasn’t made to feel she had to compete with Brian over him, Gus pretty much wasn’t on her radar.
Brian’s tongue in cheek smirk suddenly made an appearance as he ruffled his son’s hair - “Cheer up, sonnyboy, at least we’re not making you take the monster munchkin with you.”
Justin frowned at him, but didn’t say anything. The truth was, he couldn’t really blame Gus - or Brian either for that matter - for not liking JR very much at the moment. She’d inherited some fairly undesirable traits from both her parents - Mikey’s whininess, Mel’s stridency, and a general tendency to sulk and walk around with a chip on her shoulder believing herself to be particularly hard done by. It had been bad enough when she was smaller, but combined with the usual sturm and drang of the onset of puberty, she’d become pretty hard for any of them to take except in very small doses. Even Deb was fast losing patience with her endless whining and general bad attitude.
But still, she was Gus’s sister and it wasn’t her fault that she’d been over-indulged since birth by both her parents, as well as by her doting grandmother and, of course, by Lindsay whenever she and Mel were back together. Because Linds wouldn’t dare correct or attempt in any way to discipline JR for fear of triggering one of Mel’s more vitriolic outbursts; instead she’d always bent over backwards to placate Melanie and so JR had pretty much got away with everything. Any bad behavior was, of course, blamed on Gus by both JR’s mommy and daddy.
No, Justin couldn’t really blame Gus for not wanting to spend any more time than he absolutely had to with his other sister.
But he did feel a bit hurt that Gus was so resistant to spending a little time with Dani. He was doing his best to remember what it was like at Gus’s age, and to understand that a teenage boy didn’t want to have to be seen with his kid sister, but he knew how much Dani adored her big brother and he couldn’t help but feel bad on her behalf.
Gus, not nearly as much a tough-ass as he would have liked everyone to believe, realized that Dus wasn’t happy with him and flushed.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’ll be fine. Like you said, I can catch up with the guys later.”
He crossed his fingers and hoped that was the case, that the guys would be prepared to wait for him. But he was rewarded with a big smile from Dus and by his father squeezing the back of his neck in a typically understated gesture of approval and affection, and knew he’d done the right thing.
He wasn’t so sure when he actually arrived on Halloween to collect Danika though, because she was practically jumping out of her skin with excitement.
Dus smiled an apology at him. “She somehow managed to get her hands on the frosting for the Halloween cookies and before I realized she’d eaten about two handfuls”, he said with his twisted grin. “She’s on a total sugar high now, but the good thing is she’ll probably crash even sooner. You might have to carry her home, though.”
That wasn’t a problem, thought Gus. She was only a tiny little thing. How hard could it be to carry her for a couple of blocks?
So they set out.
Dani was dressed as a Holly flower fairy. She wore green leggings with a warm windcheater and over that a thick dark green cloak that had bunches of red berries sewn all over it and bands of white holly flowers round the neck and bordering the edge of the hood. Diaphanous wings protruded from the back of the cloak. She looked cute, but not so cutsie that it made you want to puke, like the little kids dressed as kittens and teddy bears and stuff. And at least she’d be warm. Some of the kids wandering down the street were already looking slightly blue around the edges, because their costumes were kind of skimpy and the evening air was really cold - almost like it was going to start snowing soon.
Gus himself was wearing a cool kind of mad monk’s costume. At the moment that just consisted of the cassock and hood because he didn’t want to scare Dani; later when he joined the guys he’d add the bloodied tonsure, the pointed teeth, the blood stained nails and the crucifix also dripping with fake blood. He was glad that the cassock was made of thick microfibre and that he could wear his jeans and a warm jumper underneath.
They’d made their way down the hill, visiting a few houses on the way, and were just crossing the road to turn the corner and do the next street when Gus heard the stupid fucking horn of one of his friends’ cars. Gus had grown up with his father’s caustic comments on the inadequacies - sexual and otherwise - of people who felt it necessary to announce themselves with novelty car horns and would rather have lived permanently with Mel and JR than ever inflict such a thing on his own car. Talk about lame!
He drew Dani close beside him and waited for the car to pull up. Just his luck … Steve, Tony and Ray were all in there, pointing and laughing at the sight of him with the small fairy hanging onto his hand.
“Hey, Gus-man!” Ray yelled. “What the fuck are you doing with the rug rat? It’s time to party, man.”
Gus frowned. He didn’t like people swearing in front of Dani. Even Dad tried not to do it.
“We’re twrick’n twreeting,” Dani asserted firmly with her slightly rolled ‘r’s.
“Hell, Gus. How much longer are you going to be?”
“Not long,” Gus assured them. “We’ll just go down this street.”
“Ah, that’s lame,” Steve said. “You should take her to the house over on Mulberry. It’s all set up with zombies and ghosts and …”
“We’re going down this street,” Gus said firmly. If he took Dani somewhere really scary Dad would boot his ass.
He clasped Dani’s small hand in his and started off down the street. To his surprise, the three guys in the car spilled out and followed them, they were bitching about it, but they still followed along.
It was getting dark by then and suddenly the street lights flickered and went out. Gus paused. He didn’t like the look of this. Hardly any of the houses in the street had any lights showing and those that did looked kind of … weird.
But Dani was tugging his hand and trying to drag him up the path to the first door.
Even as the door opened, he knew it wasn’t right, and turned to get Dani out of there, but before he could get the guys crowding behind them to shift their ass, there was a kind of swirling before his eyes and a whoosh in his ears and then he wasn’t standing on a porch in a street near his home any more, he was in an alley, high walls looming either side and no lights to tell him which way he should move. Dani, was still with him and he didn’t know whether to be thankful for that, or sorry. He wished she was safe at home, but failing that he figured at least she wasn’t lost somewhere on her own.
He picked her up and started to move down the alley, only then realizing that the guys were with him as well. He was confused and scared, but he tried to look confident so that Dani wouldn’t get scared too, and just concentrated on getting out of there to somewhere where there were people so they could figure out where they were and maybe get help.
He stopped dead when he heard the noise. It started low and soft and got louder and more shrill, a high-pitched keening that wound around them, seeming to come from all directions at once.
Then he saw the … what? Creature? It was tall and gangly, with attenuated limbs; a stick insect figure from a nightmare. It reached towards him with one of those limbs, long taloned claws flexing as if it wasn’t exactly sure of the distance.
He heard one of the guys … Ray? scream, and realized that there were other creatures, that they were all around them and just then, suddenly, the keening stopped.
Into the silence stole a sound that was soft, but somehow terrifying. Gus knew somehow that it was the clicking of those taloned claws as the creatures inched slowly closer and closer.
He gulped, and held Dani tighter. He had to figure a way to get her out of there. Still holding his sister, he freed one hand and felt frantically in his pockets. There had to be something he could use. His fingers clutched the cheap cigarette lighter he’d bought because Tony had promised to steal some of his brother’s weed and they were going to try it tonight. Not believing it would do any good, but having nothing else to try, Gus pulled it from his pocket and somehow managed to get it to light one handed.
The effect was immediate. The creatures halted and the terrible clicking stopped.
For a long moment they all stood frozen. Gus thrust the lighter forward and the creature in front of him seemed to give way a little, but he sensed the ones at his back making ready to jump him. He turned slowly in a circle, wanting to keep them all at bay, but afraid that a sudden movement would make the small flame go out.
Suddenly he had an idea. He took firm hold of Dani and thrust her at Steve. “Hold her!” he ordered.
Then he handed the lighter to Ray. “Don’t let it go out!”
Both boys blinked but did as they were told, Ray holding the small flame high over his head.
Quickly, Gus pulled apart the velcrose fastenings of his cassock and slipped it off. He took the lighter back from Ray and held it to one corner of the material. The creatures gave a shrill susurration of alarm and Gus sensed them getting ready to spring. He held the lighter high again and they froze once more.
Then he looked down at the garment in his hands. One corner was well alight now, and he blew on it a little to encourage it. The flames grew.
He handed the lighter back to Ray, and taking the garment in both hands he began to wave it furiously in front of him like a flaming standard.
The creatures shrilled again and moved back. He said quickly, “Follow me, and move your fucking asses!”
Then he whirled, keeping the circle of space around them, but moving them steadily down the alley way towards the end of the buildings. Hopefully there was a street down there or something.
They were nearly there, when, with a sudden flare the garment in his hands took fully alight.
“Fuck!” he screamed and threw the burning rags at the nearest creature and, grabbing Dani from Steve, joined his friends in a frantic run towards what he hoped would be safety.
To his horror, he collided with a dark figure who seemed to have materialized from nowhere.
“Easy, kid,” the figure said. “You’ve done well to hold them this long, but we’ll take over now.”
He saw another man step forward, and he, Dani and the guys, were moved firmly out of the way as the first man turned back towards the creatures.
Gus knew this couldn’t all be really happening.
He’d known it from the time he’d suddenly been transported from a porch in Pittsburgh to this alleyway in fuck knows where.
But what totally made him certain that this had to be some weird-assed dream or something was that he knew the man he’d crashed into - and his friend too for that matter. He’d pretty much grown up with them - one of them tall, and dark and wearing a skin tight costume that was torn across the chest, and the other, shorter, darker, his costume equally tight with a sigil on the right shoulder. So he wasn’t really surprised when a third figure, slim and blond, appeared and took Dani, who was scared now and beginning to cry, from him, cradling her against his chest and whispering to her softly till her tears stopped, and she started to laugh the silly gurgly sort of laugh she’d inherited from her mother.
Then a sudden outcry in the alley drew his attention and he watched as the creatures started to writhe in apparent agony, although as far as he could see nothing was touching them - well, nothing except a sort of faint shimmer of flames which seemed to be lapping around them, although there was no heat and no smell of burning or anything.
Gus supposed it figured. Rage’s special power was mind control, after all. He was probably making them see and feel the flames in their minds.
It didn’t last long really.
The creatures, whatever they were (Zephyr mumbled something about ‘dungeon dimensions’ and ‘preying on innocence’, but Rage summed it up simply with ‘fucking creepoids’), disappeared with a final wailing shriek, and immediately after that the four boys and Dani found themselves once more standing on a porch in a street where the street lights were just flickering back into life.
They all looked at each other. Dani started to cry again, and Gus picked her up. The others hovered round them, trying to outdo each other and be the first one to make her smile again. She sniffled a little longer, but having the undivided attention of her brother and his friends was more than enough to banish any lingering fears, and she insisted on being allowed to visit at least three more houses to replace the candy which must have fallen somewhere in that alleyway.
So Gus was a little later bringing Dani home than he’d planned and his fathers were both surprised and a little relieved to find his friends tagging along with them. Somehow along the way they’d all lost their taste for partying further that night, and when Justin asked if they’d eaten and would they be interested in pizza for dinner, they were all happy enough to pile into the media room and stuff themselves on pizza and soda and allow the memory of what had happened to quietly slide out of their minds, like the tide ebbing slowly out over the sands, leaving them smooth and unmarked.
Rather like the costume which turned up safely on the doorstep next morning. It was unharmed, in fact it looked brand new, although strangely enough it seemed to have grown a little larger overnight. Brian and Justin figured Gus must have taken it off to "match" his friends and left it stashed on the porch.
Only Gus for a while retained a hazy sort of image of a figure who’d looked so much like his Dad, but somehow harsher, without the laugh lines that crinkled round his father’s eyes and mouth.
But starting from that Halloween, Gus began to realize that maybe he did have real friends after all, because now he felt like the guys did have his back; like they really liked him; maybe even respected him - not just because he had cool Dads and drove a hot car, but just for him, Gus. Even years later, when he looked back on it, it seemed to him that for some reason that was the best Halloween ever, and definitely the real beginning of friendships which lasted right through his life.
But, although he was never sure what made him feel that way, he always had the sense that there was something more to it, something he just couldn’t quite remember.
Maybe because every time he went into Uncle Mikey’s shop and saw the framed Rage comic on the wall, he felt a prickle down his spine.
And, for a long time afterwards the sight of a cigarette lighter made him want to start screaming.
Happy Halloween!
.