SPN Fic: The Naughty List (1/2, Gen, PG13, Pre-Series)
So this is how these things happen:
Around mid-January, my bud Dotfic posed me an intriguing challenge. I was busy bemoaning, to some degree, the fact that I'd chosen to take the obvious road in answering the question "Where was John during the events of A Very Supernatural Christmas?" with my fics Keep Going and its sequel, The Truth About Lies by going to the "he's hurt" place rather than the "he was saving someone so you missed a holiday celebration so they could LIVE" place instead. I was pointing out that, in some ways, it is almost a cop out to John's complexity and the gut-wrenching choices he must make on a daily basis to play such a simplistic, heroic card (I was stumbling through the snow, trying to make it home) in response to that opportunity rather than going with the harder answer, greyer answer of "A stranger's loss was more than yours, so I chose saving them over being there for you." And in choosing the simple "he's a hero so love him" answer over the harder "he's a hero and his sons suffer for it" one, I almost felt like I'd let John down, painting him with too simple a brush, so I was going to have to rectify that some day by taking on the other scenario for my own peace of mind.
Entre Dotfic, saying "Here's Double-Edged, the after-the-hunt story I wrote about that exact scenario ("A stranger's loss was more than yours, so I chose saving them over being there for you."); but I have no idea what kind of monster John was actually taking on while he was gone. Write that, but do it from the perspective of the person he was saving."
Hmmmm.
So I did. She gave me a couple rules to live by to make the stories dovetail as true companions: John can't get hurt AT ALL (dammit!), he's fighting eight monsters, he saves someone else's father, he shows up late on Christmas night in a snowstorm with no presents, and you can't crawl inside John's head AT ALL (double dammit!).
So that's how these things happen. And along the way, yes, since you asked, I did write a 33,000 word story only to find out it was 14,000 words too long. (Or two different stories, if you'd prefer to look at it that way). But thanks to the awesome ficwriter and her fantabulosity, I figured out it was 14,000 words too long so I trimmed a little.
And here you have it.
Thanks to the maaaaavelous dotfic for her initial challenge and her most awesome beta; and to the fantabulous ficwriter for her big-ass Rambo-sized editing shears and fearlessness in weilding them without regard to all that weeping and wailing and wordy bleeding all over the place. This one wouldn't exist without the former, would bore you shitless without the latter, and would have a lot more freakin typos and loosy-goosy dialog than it does without the former again.
And I'd like to dedicate this story to John, whose selfless heroism and tireless dedication to his children and all the other helpless people of the world have inspired me to ... heh. Yeah, right. I'm not THAT much of a freaking girl, y'all.
Title: The Naughty List (1/2)
Author: Dodger Winslow
Genre: Gen, Pre-series
Word Count: 18,800
Rating: PG-13 for language
Spoilers: A Very Supernatural Christmas
Companion Piece: Double-Edged by Dotfic
Disclaimer: I don't own the boys, I'm just stalking them for awhile ...
Summary: John smiled a little. The look in his eyes was at least twice as scary as anything Randy’d yet seen when he said, "There’s some crazy shit out there in the dark, Randy. Most of it would sound vaguely familiar if someone tried to tell you about it."
A/N: For some reason, as I was writing this, it became oddly important to me to construct monsters that later, upon John regaling Dean with tales of the hunt, would prompt his twelve-year-old pain-in-the-ass to look at him askance and say, "So, basically, you're saying you missed Christmas because you were hunting elves?" I have no idea why that became important to me, but it did. Without the amusement supplied by that singular line to use as creative fuel, I never would have finished this one.
The Naughty List
Randy Quinn wasn’t quite sure how this happened to him. He couldn’t really make any sense of how this could be, how these kind of things could actually exist in the world he’d known for the last thirty-two years of thinking he knew how the world worked.
"Dad?" Adam whispered. He sounded scared. He should be scared.
"Yeah, bud?"
"Do you think we’ll make it home in time for Christmas?"
Randy closed his eyes, tried to imagine sugar plums dancing in his head. Fuck. He wasn’t even sure what sugar plums looked like. Candy canes, maybe. He could conjure up candy canes to dance in his head if he concentrated … concentrated hard enough to forget where they were and what was out there in the dark, coming for them any time now.
Fucking Christmas.
"I don’t know, bud," Randy answered, doing his best to split the difference between outright lying and admitting he didn’t think they were going to make it home at all, let alone by a specific deadline. "Wouldn’t rule it out. Stranger things have happened." He couldn’t believe this was happening, couldn’t believe this was happening to him.
Adam huddled in a little closer, asking, "Stranger than this?"
Randy laughed. He’d never felt less like laughing in his whole life; but he laughed anyway … had to laugh just to keep from crying. So he did: he laughed. "Good point, bud. Maybe not stranger than this."
"I’m scared," Adam said.
Randy had to work not to laugh again, had to work not to start laughing and just never stop. "I’m kinda scared myself," he admitted instead. "But we’ll get through this, okay? We’ll get through it. We’ll figure out some way to get through it, I promise."
Something rustled overhead, and Randy’s heart jumped, tried to crawl out his mouth and run away to someplace safe. Anyplace safe. Like his own house, maybe. Like his own living room.
He wanted to laugh again, but he didn’t. There was nothing funny about this; nothing at all. He’d always thought his own living room was safe. He’d always thought he could lock the door against the night outside, and his family would be as safe as anybody ever was in this day and age of crazy people doing crazy things.
Who knew crazy people doing crazy things wasn’t what he really needed to worry about?
"Did you hear that?" Adam whispered. His toes were curled in fear, digging into the top of Randy’s thigh like they were looking for a better grip as he jammed himself against Randy’s chest so hard they were practically sitting inside the same skin. "They’re coming again. They’re coming, Dad. They’re coming."
Randy could feel the same panic twisting in his gut that he could hear in Adam’s voice; but he did what he could to control it. He was the adult here. He had to be the one who was old enough to keep his imagination from running away with him. Or barring that, he had to at least sound like he was that one; because if he sounded even half as scared as he actually was, his ten-year-old was going to come apart at the seams.
"I think it was just the wind," Randy lied, doing his best to sound convincing. "It’s okay, Adam. Don’t be scared; I think it’s just the wind."
What a crock of shit.
Who was he trying to kid? Adam didn’t buy that. He might be ten, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew as well as Randy did that it wasn’t the wind. It was those things coming back again. They were coming-they were coming-and there wasn’t a damn thing either one of them could do about it.
Tied up at the bottom of a hole in the middle of God-knows-where, up to his hipbones in icy, fetid water with his kid cowering in his lap, looking for protection he couldn’t give, Randy felt like the failure of all failures. "I think it’s just the wind," he said again, helplessly.
"It’s not the wind, Dad. It’s them. I know its them."
God, he sounded so scared. His pain-in-the-ass, I-know-everything-and-you’re-just-a-piece-of-shit kid sounded so. Damn. Scared.
Adam hadn’t been scared of anything since he was five. He hadn’t not known the answer since he was seven. He hadn’t thought his dad was worth the effort of anything more than an eye roll and the occasional disgusted grunt in response to unsolicited advice since he was nine. And here he was at ten, cringing in the near-total blackness at the bottom of a well, shivering against Randy’s body and begging him to have the answer not because he thought Randy actually did, but rather because he was just that damned scared.
Randy wasn’t quite sure how this happened to him, couldn’t really make any sense of how this could be.
"It’s okay, son," Randy whispered. "Everything’s going to be okay. Get behind me and hunker down, okay? Stay as quiet as you can." He wished he had something better to offer; wished he had something more comforting to say, something more dad-like that he could do. "Don’t say anything," he added like that was going to make any difference at all. "Just hold really still and be really quiet, okay?"
Adam didn’t argue-Adam always argued-he just did what he was told. Scrambling off Randy’s lap with a slither and a small splash, he didn’t even complain about the water this time, didn’t say a word about how cold it was, or how much it made his feet ache. Tucking himself in tight between Randy’s elbow and the muddy wall, he crowded up close to Randy’s side, hid as best he could in the sheltering bulk of his dad’s much bigger body.
"They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?" Adam’s breathing was short, labored, terrified. His heart was hammering so hard Randy could feel every beat of it against his bruised, aching ribs.
"No," Randy lied. "They aren’t, Adam. I won’t let them." News reports flashed through his head even as he spoke. The gruesome details of rumors circulating around the office were more vivid in his imagination than if he’d actually seen the mutilated bodies for himself. "I’m not going to let anything happen to you, son. Everything will be okay. We’ll get through this. I know we will."
The leaves rustled again, closer this time. Adam hid his face in Randy’s shirt, sobbed, "I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry."
"It’s not your fault, son," Randy said again. "You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not your fault."
A shadow passed overhead: a quick darkness that moved across the wan glow of the full moon for less than a second before it was gone again. Oh, God. They were coming again. Randy’s whole body went numb. His gut clenched to a knot, his heart hammering as hard against the inside of his ribcage as Adam’s was against the outside of it.
They were going to kill him, kill his son, and there wasn’t anything he could do to stop it. I’m sorry, son. I’m sorry. I am so sorry. I’m sorry. Randy turned his face to one side until his cheek was pressed against the chill of the mudded walls. He couldn’t face seeing them again; couldn’t face the belly-clenching horror of watching those things defy gravity as they skittered down the vertical well walls like so many goat-horned, dog-sized spiders, their red tongues flicking in and out like hungry snakes, their tails whipping around them in an escalating frenzy of excitement.
They’d come down his chimney the same way, swarming into the living room and down the hall like something out of the bible: a plague of locust invading his home, something Ramses might have suffered for enslaving the wrong damn tribe of divinely protected people. He’d thought it was a dream at first. He’d thought he was experiencing a grotesque, gastronomical penalty flag thrown for eating too much pizza, too late at night, and then falling asleep on the couch instead of going to bed with Karen.
But it wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare, and he was wide awake when he had it.
"I’m sorry, Dad," Adam whispered again. His voice was almost as muffled now as it had been then, crying out in terror from inside the filthy sack that kicked and twisted and writhed and sobbed behind the swarm of things dragging it back down the hallway, across the living room and into the fireplace.
The sack was in the process of being shoved up the chimney when Randy realized that, whatever was going on, it was happening to his son and it was real; so he lurched off the couch, got in a tug of war with something straight out of a Cronenberg movie. He’d almost won, too … would have won if they hadn’t had the advantage of those whiplash tails.
They’d tried to thrash him away at first: half a dozen Indiana Jones bullwhips cracking and snapping at his arms and legs, his neck, his face. When that didn’t work, they’d cinched his wrists and ankles together and brought him down like Gulliver in the land of Lilliput. Once they had him face first on the carpet, they’d trussed him up tighter than a luau pig and dragged his ass up the chimney right along with Adam’s.
He still had no idea how they’d managed to accomplish that. He was a big guy (a hell of a lot bigger than he’d been before he sat in a windowless office for twelve years, crunching numbers eight hours a day, five days a week); but even so, they’d pushed and pulled and squeezed him up the chimney and out onto the roof somehow, then shoved him into his own sack and took them both God knows where, because Randy sure didn’t.
Who even had wells anymore instead of just tapping into the city water lines?
He didn’t know of a single one in the area (like he’d know about them even if there were a hundred of them), but that’s still where they ended up, dumped headfirst into some kind of moldy old well; lucky as hell that, even though it was dried up, there was still enough muck and mire under the stagnation of three or four inches of standing water to cushion that long fall, just bruise them up a little instead of splitting them open like melons dropped off a balcony. And even more lucky that he’d landed first, and then Adam, instead of vice versa.
But that’s where their luck ran out. They’d been here every since (hours now), freezing their asses off in the darkness, huddled up against one another for warmth and comfort, wondering what happened, how it happened, and why it happened to them.
It was supposed to snow all night-a real blizzard by Christmas morning, the weatherman said-but it hadn’t. If push came to shove, he’d probably have to concede they were lucky in that, too. He was sleeping on the couch when those things showed up, so all he had on was a flannel shirt and jeans. He wasn’t even wearing any shoes, just red and green reindeer socks Karen bought him a couple years ago as a joke. And Adam was still in his pj’s. They were warm pj’s, as pj’s go; but still, his feet were completely bare, and he was so cold his lips and ears had started to turn blue.
Randy’d done what he could to keep Adam out of the water, but he’d been sitting in himself it all night long. He could barely feel his feet, they were that cold and that numb; and he wouldn’t be surprised to find out his ass was nothing but one big ice cube. And his balls? Ah, hell, his poor balls were MIA big time. They’d pulled up so far up inside him he’d be lucky to ever hear from them again. Probably eventually get a "wishing you were here" postcard from his colon, if he lived long enough for the Post Office to find him.
For anybody to find him.
Please, God, let somebody find them.
As bad as the cold was, though; it wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that he couldn’t even feel his arms any more. Whatever those damn things were, they’d left him bound up like some kind of Wiley Coyote cartoon. Wrists tied together and arms crossed over his own chest, he was wrapped up so tight from shoulders to waist in some kind of woven rope that he’d lost all sensation in his hands within minutes, and was numb as a post all the way to his neck inside a couple of hours.
And not numb in a warm, fuzzy, I’ve-had-a-little-too-much-to-drink way. Much more numb in the I-hit-my-crazy-bone-and-this-hurts-like-hell way.
They’d tied Randy’s knees and ankles together, too; but they hadn’t tied Adam up at all. Probably figured they didn’t need to, and they were right. He was free to move around as much as he wanted, but he didn’t have any place to go, and his feet got so cold from walking around in the water that he could only take it for a couple of minutes at a time. He’d done his best though. Poor kid clawed his fingers bloody trying to first, untie those impossible knots and then, climb the mudded walls of a well that had to be a good fifty feet deep if it was five.
The darkness rustled a third time, and Adam literally whined where he was hiding against Randy’s side. He was trembling like a leaf, as scared as Randy had ever seen him.
Randy closed his eyes, muttered a prayer to himself, keeping it short, keeping it sweet. Dear God, don’t let him suffer was the gist of it. And if you have anything left over, quick for me, too, please. Amen.
But even in the darkness behind his eyelids, he couldn’t escape the sight of those deep, gouging claw marks on the well walls that had been there long before Adam started trying to climb out. His imagination went wild with what those kids must have looked like when the cops found them, gutted and stuffed full of trash and debris, if the rumors were even close to the actual truth.
Randy shivered; tried to tell himself it was the cold even though he knew it wasn’t.
The night was quiet to a fault. The silence seemed to be waiting on something. It was almost watching them, it was that heavy, that dense, that … expectant.
The last thing he expected was light-bright, glaring, white light-but that’s what he got. Randy’s eyes popped open. He squinted up into the near-blinding brilliance of what looked like a flashlight shining down on them. A really, bright, glaring white-light flashlight.
"Well, fuck," someone said, his voice grim and irritated.
Randy caught his breath, tried not to let hope run away with him. "Fuck" didn’t sound like something those scarabesque, scrabbling son-of-a-bitches with the tails and the tongues would say … if they said anything, that is; which so far, he hadn’t witnessed them doing. All he’d heard was a little hissing (okay, a whole lot of hissing): no talking, no words, no profanity. And he couldn’t really see them using a flashlight either. Or needing one. They seemed as much (if not more) at home in the dark as they were in the light; didn’t have any trouble skittering half way down those vertical walls every couple of hours or so to watch him and Adam with those beady little eyes glowing red in the dark like half a dozen Aunt Patty portraits flashed to devil-eyes by Karen’s cheap-ass pocket instamatic.
"You hurt?" the voice called down, reassuringly human in how it sounded, reassuringly un-monsterlike in both tone of voice and choice of words. "Anything broken?"
Randy closed his eyes for a beat, then opened them again. It was as much as he could manage just to keep from pissing his pants with relief as he yelled back, "No. We’re okay. Just bruised I think. We need help though."
The man chuckled like he thought that was funny. It wasn’t funny-was damn unfunny, in fact-but Randy decided to hold off on pointing that out for the time being. Criticizing the guy with the flashlight (and, God willing, a rope) didn’t seem like it was in either his or Adam’s best interests right now.
"Alright," the guy said, relieving Randy’s eyes of the glare that was making them tear up. "Hang on. I’ll be down in a minute."
The guy’s intention to come down himself rather than pulling them up knotted Randy’s gut with dread. He was no expert on things like this, but it didn’t sound like a very good idea for all three of them to be at the bottom of the well with nobody left up topside to do the rescuing. Especially not if those things came back … when those things came back.
"Uh … maybe you could just throw us down a rope or something, and we could climb up," Randy suggested, doing his best to sound helpful rather than critical or dictatorial. Then, just in case this guy didn’t already know as much, he added, "There are … things … running around out there. Really nasty … things. Beady eyes, big teeth, horns. I know that sounds a little crazy; but there are a bunch of them, so it might not be, you know, the best idea for you to come down here, too."
The man snorted. He flashed the light down on Randy again, said, "Tell you what, friend. How ’bout I do the rescuing, and you just sit there, all tied up. How’s that strike you as a plan?"
Randy squinted up at him again, said, "Okay. Sure. Whatever you think’s best." As answers go, that was his second choice. His first was "whatever, asshole," but that seemed more like an I-have-the-flashlight-and-you’re-at-the-bottom-of-the-well kind of answer, so he stashed it away for future reference, just in case that ever came up.
The light disappeared a second time, and several seconds later, a coil of rope dropped down the side of the well, slapped into the water within inches of his left leg. Still buried as deep into Randy’s side as he could get, Adam flinched, then whined again in that gut-deep, wordless fear.
"It’s okay, Adam," Randy soothed. "It’s just a rope, bud. Someone’s here. Someone’s here to rescue us."
"Maybe it’s one of them," Adam whispered. "Maybe they’re trying to trick us."
Randy frowned a little. That was a pretty pessimistic worldview, coming from a ten-year-old. "There’s no real reason for them to do that, son," he said after a moment.
"Maybe they don’t need a reason," Adam said. "Maybe they’re doing it just to be mean; just to make us think we’ve been rescued so they can laugh at the look on our faces when we find out we’re not."
Randy’s frown deepened. He was really going to have to stop letting his kid watch bad horror movies. And maybe quit hanging around other kids, too; because God knows kids were experts at being mean for no better reason than just being mean. Kind of like bosses … and IRS auditors.
"I don’t think that’s the case here, Adam," Randy said as a second coil of rope dropped down beside the first, making him flinch this time, too. "And besides," he added just for good measure, "those things don’t need flashlights. And they can’t talk either, right?"
"Yes, they can," Adam said. There were tears in his voice when he added, "I’ve heard them talk."
"What? You mean all that hissing? That’s not talking, bud. I know it can sound a little like words sometimes; but that’s just your imagination playing tricks on you. Hearing words in white noise is like … like seeing shapes in clouds, you know? Or seeing Jesus’s face on a piece of French toast. You remember that lady on TV who saw that? You remember how hard you laughed; and how much you kept begging your mom to make French toast every morning so you could try and find somebody’s face there, too? It’s the same thing here, bud. Same thing, only with noise instead of French toast."
Adam shook his head vehemently. His tone was absolutely certain when he clarified, "No it’s not. I heard them, Dad. Before. In my room."
"Those things … spoke to you? You mean they actually said something to you?"
"Yeah. When I first woke up. One of them was sitting on my chest. That’s what woke me up: it sitting on my chest. And it told me I was on their list. It said I’d been a bad boy, and that-" he hesitated, stopped.
"And what?" Randy prompted.
Adam didn’t say anything for a couple seconds, then finished, "And that nobody would even miss me when I was gone."
Randy felt his gut clench up with anger. Not fear. Anger. "What?" he demanded. "It told you that?"
Adam nodded, his head bumping against Randy’s ribs with the motion.
"Well it’s a liar," Randy announced, furious. "First off, you are not a bad kid. Not a bad kid at all. You’re a good kid. And number two, it’s full of shit if it thinks your mom and I wouldn’t miss you. And Bethy. And Jill. And all your friends. And Aunt Patty, too. And Grandma and Grandpa. We’d all miss you, Adam. And nobody thinks you’re a bad kid. Nobody."
"Mister Nicolo does," Adam whispered. "He said I was rotten to the core just last week."
"Well fuck Mister Nicolo," Randy snapped. "And who the hell is that anyway?"
"The new principal."
"At your school?"
He felt Adam nod again. It was an indication of how scared his son was that the answer wasn’t something along the lines of "well, duh, Dad" or "no, Dad, the principal of Bolivia." That was how Adam would have normally responded to a question that was, granted, pretty self evident, now that Randy thought about it.
Adam was a lot like he’d been at that age. The kid could be a real smart aleck sometimes; and he had a hell of a sarcastic mouth on him these days. Mister Watch-Your-Attitude was what Karen called him more often than not. And yeah, he could be a bit of a bully sometimes-especially to his little sisters, or to kids he considered math nerds like his old man-but even so, fuck Mister Nicolo for calling his kid bad. Adam wasn’t bad; he was just … ten.
"Well, I don’t give a damn who he is," Randy said. "You’re not a bad kid, and he can kiss my ass for saying that. In fact, once we get out of here, I’m going to go have a talk with this Mister Nicolo; tell him what I think of him saying something like that to you. That is completely out of line. Completely out of line, Adam. And not true, either."
Adam crowded in a little closer, murmured, "Thanks, Dad."
Randy started to say something else, but stopped when several small chunks of debris rattled down from above, landed on his shoulders, muddied up his hair. When he looked up, he was surprised to see the guy with the flashlight already better than half way down the rope. He’d expected some kind of flashy, GI Joe commando repel; thought the guy would drop out of the night sky like a rescue hero on TV or something. But instead, he looked like he was coming down one of the ropes in a controlled, hand-over-hand descent. It took a lot of strength to do that. Took a lot of practice.
When he touched down, he didn’t even make a splash, just sank into the water in silence, fell to an immediate crouch at Randy’s side. He flicked his flashlight on again, pressed two fingers against the ropes twisted around Randy’s body, testing it in three or four different places, each time in close proximity to a knot. It was like he was reading the rope by feel; like he could tell how the bindings worked by just touching them the way Sherlock Holmes could tell you who murdered the countess just by sniffing what Watson had for breakfast.
"What’s your boy’s name?" he asked, his voice calm, quiet, almost casual.
"Adam."
"He hurt?"
"No. He’s okay. Just cold and a little scared is all."
The guy nodded. "Good." He pulled out a knife Rambo would consider overkill, and Randy couldn’t help it: he flinched. The guy met his eyes, said, "Relax. I’m on your side here."
Randy swallowed hard, nodded. "Yeah. Right. Okay."
He cut Randy’s ankles and knees free first, then went to work on the more intricate twist of knots and bindings wrapped around his torso. He worked with a precise economy that was both quick and efficient. There was no hesitation to any move he made, not even the smallest indication that wielding a blade that big within a hair’s breadth of someone else’s skin made him anywhere near as nervous as it made Randy.
Of course, it was Randy’s skin.
He flinched again when the knife slipped in under a knot near his throat, put significant pressure on his collarbone with cold metal that obviously wasn’t a cutting edge. The guy glanced at Randy, said, "Not a real good time to be wiggling around."
Because he couldn’t have spoken to save his life at that moment, Randy started to nod to indicate he understood; but decided against it at the last moment under the assumption that nodding would probably constitute wiggling. Instead, he concentrated on holding as still as he could, not even breathing until the guy had finished cutting through that knot and moved on to the next.
The moon crawled out from under the cloud cover as the guy worked, easing the dark just enough for Randy to get a clear look at a man who showed up out of nowhere like saving people from monsters was what he did, nine-to-five, the same way Randy crunched numbers to make the boss’s books balance. He only had maybe ten years on Randy, but he looked like he’d lived them all at full tilt. Six two, maybe a little more; but built solid, like one of those muscle cars with an engine that pisses the neighbors off just on general principles, or by waking them up in the middle of the night as he drops their daughters (or wives) off with a satisfied smile and their panties in their purse. He had a hell of a scar on one cheek and several more peppered under the half-beard he wore like he had more pressing things to do than shave; but it was the quick flick of hard, dark eyes that made it clear he was the kind of guy who could walk into any biker bar in the country in ballet slippers and a tutu without ever having to worry that anybody would give him a moment’s crap about it.
By the time their rescuer had cut through the last twist of rope and slipped his knife back into a sheath on his belt, Adam had stopped trembling and was peeking around Randy’s arm, trying to get a better look. It was only then that the guy glanced at him, smiled with the same easy, casual indifference in his voice and said, "So, Adam, huh? My name’s John." He picked up one of Randy’s arms, began rubbing it vigorously, massaging the dull numb of it back to life in a way that did not feel good at all. "What’s your dad’s name, Adam?" he asked as he worked.
When Adam hesitated, John looked at him again, lifted an eyebrow in a way that could be taken as either encouragement or expectation.
"Dad," Adam answered in the kind of awed tone he hadn’t used since he met Ronald McDonald when he was four.
John nodded, kept rubbing Randy’s arm until it started to burn. "Dad, huh? Good name. So how old are you, Adam?"
Adam responded immediately this time. "Ten."
"Ten? Really?" John let Randy’s arm drop back to his side and started in on the other one. "I have a son that age, too. Ten exactly, in fact. His name is Rufus." He looked at Randy, asked, "You feel that burn, Dad?"
Randy nodded.
"That’s what you want," John told him. "Hurts like a bitch, I know; but it means the blood is pumping again, and that’s what we need if we’re going to get you topside." He surrendered Randy’s arm back to him. "Keep rubbing them, as fast and as hard as you can take. More it hurts, faster you’ll recover. Faster you recover, faster we’re out of here."
Randy did his best to comply as John shifted his attention back to Adam. "What? You don’t have anything to say about that, Adam? Nothing to say about me naming my ten-year-old son Rufus Herman?"
"Rufus Herman?" Adam repeated like he wasn’t buying that for a moment.
"Well, Rufus Percival Herman, if you want to get technical. I call him Hermy for short, but his brother, Sebastian? He prefers Percival. What do you think of that?"
Man, John wasn’t kidding. His arms burned like somebody’d put a match to them; but he could feel his fingers again, and he could move them, too, which he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to do again with as numb as they’d gone, like two slabs of dead wood hinged to his body at the shoulders.
"I think you must be lying," Adam said. "Either that or he gets beat up a lot at school."
Randy glanced down and smiled. Now that sounded more like his kid. Adam had inched out a little from where he was hiding, was watching John from behind Randy’s elbow now.
"You are absolutely right," John said "I am lying to you. So tell me something: how are you at climbing ropes in school, Adam?"
"I suck," Adam admitted readily. "I never even get past the halfway mark."
John glanced at Randy. "How are those arms doing, Dad?"
"Better. I can feel my hands now at least."
"Good." John turned his attention back to Adam. "You know what the best part of having your own rope is, Adam? You can cheat." He reached out, took hold of the second rope that was dangling down the side of the well. "You see these knots every two feet? Know what that means? It means you can climb this sucker easy as climbing a ladder. Think you can do that for me, Adam?"
Randy half expected his son to make some smart-ass remark about John wearing his name out; but instead, Adam just looked up, studied the mudded wall all the way up to the top before venturing, "Um … I don’t know. That’s a long way up. What if the … if the things come back?"
"You let me worry about them," John said, his voice comfortingly confident. "All you need to worry about is climbing. You think you can do that part?"
"Uh …maybe. But what about my dad?"
"You let me worry about your dad, too. All I want you to concentrate on is climbing. How are you feet? Do you have any feeling in them?"
"Yeah. They feel cold. Really, really cold. And they ache like he-heck."
"I’ll bet they do." John held out one hand, expectant, certain. "Come on over here, Adam," he ordered, and Adam obeyed. No argument. No debate. He just obeyed. John handed him the rope, then patted his own thigh and said, "Crawl up here for a minute. I want to check out those feet for you. See if they’re half as blue as your ears are."
"My ears aren’t blue," Adam said. But again, he obeyed without objecting to the fact that somebody was presuming to tell him what to do. John checked Adams ankles, his heels, pressed down on his toes and asked, "Can you feel that?"
"Yeah."
"What about that?"
"Yeah." Then he added, "I said I had feeling in them."
"Curl your toes up for me," John instructed. When Adam did, John nodded his approval. "Okay. Good enough. Looks like you’re all set to go." He grabbed hold of the rope again, brought it in so the first knot was right beside his thigh. "Step over on the knot for me, Adam, and get a good grip with your hands right above the next one."
Adam looked up at the dark, cloudy sky again. His faced twisted. "But what if they’re up there waiting for me though?" he asked.
"They won’t be," John said. But what his tone said was: They wouldn’t dare be because I said they won’t be. He shook the rope a little, said, "Come on. Hop to it. Just like climbing a ladder."
"I don’t know if I can do it," Adam said, pulling away from the rope a little rather than moving toward it.
"Sure you can," John said. "The knots make it easy. Just move your hands one at a time so you don’t lose your grip, and make sure you bring both feet up at the same time because it’s easier that way."
"What if I fall?" Adam asked.
"You won’t fall. Make sure you get both feet situated squarely on the knot before you start moving your hands again. And take your time. This isn’t a race."
Adam didn’t say anything.
John have him several beats to respond, then asked, "Got it?"
Adam nodded. "Yeah."
"Good. You head on up; your dad and I will be right behind you."
"But-"
"No buts, Adam," John said firmly. "Start climbing."
Instead of doing what he was told, Adam looked back at Randy. "Dad?" he asked like he was looking for direction.
That threw Randy a little … threw him a lot, actually. Adam only asked his opinion these days so he could do exactly the opposite. Or asked for his approval by … well, by nothing. There were times Randy could swear Adam actively did everything he could just to avoid accidentally earning his dad’s approval.
"Um, I think we’d better do what John says, buddy," he allowed after a beat of stunned silence. "Sounds like he knows what he’s doing here."
"But what about you? Are your arms okay? Are you going to be able to climb, too?"
"Yeah," Randy lied. "They’re fine. Just like new. Now hop on that rope and show me how fast you can get to the top, okay?"
Adam glanced at John, then looked back to Randy. "I don’t want to leave you though."
"I’m fine, son," Randy assured him. "I’ll be right behind you. Promise."
Adam surprised the hell out of him for the second time by splashing down off John’s leg and throwing his arms around Randy’s neck. He hung on for dear life, giving Randy the kind of hug Jill and Bethy were both prone to giving their daddy at every possible opportunity, but his son hadn’t given him for three or four years now. "I’m sorry, Dad," he said into Randy’s neck. "I’m sorry I got us into this."
"You didn’t do anything wrong, Adam," Randy told him again.
"I got on the list," Adam said.
"That’s not your fault. Whatever kind of list that damn thing had, it’s not your fault you were on it."
Adam’s grip on his neck tightened.
Randy would have liked to return the hug; but his arms felt like they were made of lead, so he had to settle for a quick pat on the back instead. It was all he could manage before his muscles gave out and dropped his arm back into his lap. He figured his son would remember who he was hugging any second now and bail, but he didn’t. If anything, Adam actually held on tighter, held on so tight he didn’t look like he was going to ever let go at all.
"Time’s ticking, Dad," John said. His voice was still calm, but his tone was a low warning.
Randy nodded. He gave Adam a moment longer, then said, "Okay, bud. I love you, but it’s time to hop to it now, okay? Show John what you can do for me."
"I’m scared," Adam whispered.
"I know you are," Randy agreed. "I am, too. But we’ve gotta hang tough here. We’ve gotta do what John says, okay?"
"Okay." Adam held on a moment longer, then let go and pulled back. He stared at Randy, his face scraped up and streaked with mud, his eyes full of tears. "I’ll see you up at the top though, right?"
"Absolutely." Randy gave him a confident grin. "Last one there’s a rotten egg."
Adam nodded. He turned to the rope, looked up at the sky again. "Are you sure they won’t be up there waiting for me?" he asked John.
"I’m sure."
Adam took a big breath. "Okay. I sure hope you’re right." He grabbed the rope directly above the highest knot he could reach and climbed on, started inching up the rope, using the knots as handholds and footholds, just the way John told him to.
John held the rope steady until Adam had a good start, then let it go, turned back to crouch at Randy’s side. "Alright, Dad," he said. "Your turn. Think you can make it up that rope on your own, or do we need a plan B?"
Randy glanced up to the round at the top of darkness and winced. Wasn’t a chance in hell he could make that. He had a little feeling in his arms now, but they burned like a bitch and weighed better than a ton each. He couldn’t even clench either of his hands to a complete fist yet; he could barely feel his feet, and his knees were locked in place like rusted hinges. He wasn’t sure he could even stand up without help; let alone climb a rope like some kind of evolved chimpanzee.
"I’ll try," Randy said. "Give it my best shot."
John studied him for several seconds in silence. He didn’t have to say anything. His gaze was critical; his assessment, less than charitable. "How long have you been trussed up like that?" he asked finally.
"I don’t know. Several hours, maybe? I crashed around ten, eleven, so … since around midnight?"
John’s expression didn’t so much as twitch, but even so, it seemed to get a little grimmer … which was a bit like saying black got a little blacker. He nodded, said, "Okay then. Let’s get you on your feet and give it a shot." He didn’t step in to help though, just watched from a two-step remove while Randy struggled, tried in vain to make that happen on his own.
After what seemed like forever flopping around like a grounded fish, Randy settled back into the sticky layer of muck he’d stirred to a foul stench soup and said, "Little help here, John?"
"Try to do it yourself," John returned. There was no malice in his gaze, but no encouragement either. There was just nothing. A calm, casual, indifferent nothing.
Randy took a moment to catch his breath, then tried again. He did better with his second attempt, fought his way upright by wedging both shoulders against the mud-slick wall and digging near-numb stocking feet into the soft ground below them, forcing his body up the wall by powering his knees straight. He almost made it to a full stand despite the stacked deck of half-frozen feet and a half-frozen ass and screamingly half de-numbed arms.
Almost.
He lost his balance without warning. He slipped to one side, expected to fall hard; but John was there, one smooth move to an easy catch. Wedging a shoulder under Randy’s armpit, John propped him upright until he’d re-established his own balance, then eased his shoulders back to a stable lean against the wall before stepping away again.
"Lift your arms for me," John said.
Randy tried. He managed to get them almost to shoulder height before his muscles gave out, turned to Jell-O and dropped his hands back to his sides.
John nodded like he’d expected as much. "Okay," he said. "Plan B it is."
Reaching over to grab the rope he’d come down on (the one without knots, the one Adam wasn’t climbing, almost twenty feet off the ground now and still going strong), John reeled in the extra ten feet or so of length that was soaking in brackish water at their feet. "So here’s how this plays," he said. "You’re going up the hard way. I’ve got a car topside with a V-8. We’ll rig you up, use her horsepower to hoist you out." He stepped in close, started wrapping the excess rope around Randy’s waist as he talked, passing it down between his legs, under his butt cheeks, and back around his waist again. "It’s not going to be easy or fun, and you’re probably going to get banged up some; but I’ll go as slow as I can without losing traction. Your part of the deal is going to be keeping yourself oriented, keeping your feet between your ass and the wall all the way up. If you lose them, it’s going to get damn uncomfortable, damn quick. You with me so far?"
"Yeah," Randy allowed. "I think so."
John wove the rope in on itself, started knotting up something that looked disturbingly like a macramé diaper. He jerked on a knot hard, cinching Randy’s legs together tight enough at the high thigh to make him belatedly grateful his junk was iced to a near-numb.
"You know what you’re doing there?" Randy asked.
John glanced at him, said, "Sure hope so," with just a ghost of a smile.
"You and me both," Randy agreed. Then, because he wasn’t quite sure what else to say to a man who was being more intimate with his anatomy than anyone who wasn’t a woman had ever been, he added, "My name’s Randy, by the way. Probably ought to know that, I guess … all things considered."
John chuckled. "What happens at the bottom of a well stays at the bottom of the well, Randy."
Randy grunted. He watched John work for several more seconds before asking, "So … I take it you know something about those things that dumped us down here?"
"You mean the furry bitches with the tails and tongues?" John asked without looking up.
"Yeah."
"We’ve met."
Randy nodded. Waited. Then, when John didn’t offer anything more, he asked, "So what in the hell are they?"
"You’re better off not knowing," John said.
That answer pissed Randy off. Pissed him off more than it probably should have, given how much John had already done for them. But he was better off not knowing what invaded his house and tried to steal his kid? Fuck that.
"Those things crawled down my chimney and grabbed my kid out of his own bed," Randy pointed out tersely. "I think I’ve got a right to a few answers, don’t you?"
The corner of John’s mouth pulled to a small smile that had nothing to do with humor. "Good luck with that," he said, jerking another knot hard enough to almost knock Randy off his feet.
"You’re not going to tell me?"
"Kinda looks that way, doesn’t it?"
That answer pissed Randy off significantly more than just a little.
"Look here, you s-" he started, then cut himself off mid-word, clenched his jaw to keep from saying the rest of what he wanted to say.
John flicked him another glance. "Good save," he said.
Randy took a deep breath. "Look, John," he revised, using his you’re-the-boss-but-I-don’t-have-to-like-it tone. "I’m just trying to protect my family here. If you know what those things are, I’d appreciate it if you told me." He looked up, checked on Adam’s progress. His son was still inching up the rope, slow but steady, concentrating hard enough on the task at hand he probably wouldn’t have noticed a belly dancer at the bottom of the well. Nonetheless, Randy lowered his voice a little when he said, "I have two more kids at home, and a wife. Those things were in my house, for God’s sake. I need to know what they are, and why they were there."
"They were only after Adam," John said calmly. "The rest of your family’s safe."
"How am I supposed to know that?"
"Because I just told you."
Randy swallowed his first response and asked, "Why Adam?" instead.
John finished tying several knots more complicated than third-year calculus and stood. "Because he’s on their list."
"Their list? What the hell is that? Their list?"
"Doesn’t matter." He checked the knot at Randy’s waist, tugged it hard enough to make sure it would hold, then looked up, met Randy’s eyes with a quiet cold that was unnerving, to put it mildly. "I’ll take care of it," he said.
"He’s my kid," Randy argued.
"And he got himself into a spot of trouble," John said. "Caught the attention of something he shouldn’t have; got himself put on a list nobody wants to be on. That’s unfortunate, but it happens sometimes."
"It happens?" Randy was incredulous. "Like, shit happens? This isn’t somebody snaking a parking spot out from under me at the mall, or giving me the wrong order at the drive-thru. They took my damn kid, John."
"And you made enough noise about it they felt a need to take you, too," John allowed. "Adam’s lucky in that. Most kids who make the list don’t have someone to do that for them. Someone who will do that for them. But you did. That’s enough. Leave it alone now; let me take it from here."
"Just forget what I saw? Pretend it didn’t happen? I can’t do that, John. Maybe you could, but I can’t."
John snorted, shook his head.
"Whatever these things are," Randy added, "just knowing they’re out there changes everything. I can’t just close my eyes and hope for the best here. I may not be the toughest guy on the block, but I can’t just bury my head in the sand when my kid’s life is at stake."
"You willing to change your life over it?" John asked.
"If that’s what it takes, then yeah. Adam’s my son. I’ll do whatever I have to do to protect him."
"What about your daughters? Your wife? You willing to change their lives, too?"
Randy hesitated for a moment, then said, "We’re a family. We’ll do what we have to do."
John considered that. "The list is Nicolo’s list," he said abruptly. "These little bastards work for him. His pets, I guess you’d call them. Or slaves. Or lackeys. But whatever name you want to give them, it’s their job to take care of him all year long, and he takes care of them in return. Gives them a shopping list once a year: the Naughty List. Eight kids they can have. And your kid was on it."
"The Naughty List?" Randy repeated, wondering for a moment if John was technicolor insane or just plain ole black-and-white crazy as a loon. "Like naughty and nice? Like Santa’s naughty and nice? He knows when you’ve been sleeping? He knows when you’re awake? That list?"
John smiled a little. The look in his eyes was at least twice as scary as anything Randy’d yet seen when he said, "There’s some crazy shit out there in the dark, Randy. Most of it would sound vaguely familiar if someone tried to tell you about it."
"This is crazy," Randy said. "This is insane."
"Yeah? Well. What can I say? We’ll talk again after you’ve tried to explain to the cops exactly what grabbed your kid and shoved him up your chimney; and how they managed to get you up there, too."
That statement hit Randy hard, stunned him cold. John was right. They’d have him committed if he tried to tell them what really happened, what he really saw. Or didn’t see, being tied up in a sack at the time.
"Crazy is relative," John said grimly. "Compared to what came after my boys, this isn’t much more than just a blip on the radar."
"Something like this came after your kids, too?"
John’s eyes went dark, got reflective like he hadn’t realized he’d said that until he heard it repeated back to him. "We’re not talking about them; we’re talking about Adam. But if you’re serious about wanting to know the truth, then I’ll tell you what I can. Be sure you really want to know though, because once you hear something like this, you can’t un-hear it again."
Randy shoulders tensed. His jaw worked to keep from saying something that would get him decked by a man who could beat him to a smear on the cement without breaking a sweat. "I’m serious about wanting to know," he said finally. "What are they, and how did Adam get on their list?"
"Nicolo put him there."
"Nicolo … Mister Nicolo? Adam’s principal, Mister Nicolo?"
John grunted. "Yeah. Nice, huh? But you don’t have to worry him anymore. He retired earlier today. Permanently."
Randy hesitated. "You … killed him?"
"The important thing is that he’s gone," John said. "And after tonight, his krampuses will be, too."
"Krampuses?"
"Your furry friends. The one who talked to your kid? That’s Krokus. He and his mate, Perchta, run a pack that feeds once a year between the Twelfth Night and the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Always kids, always hand-picked by Nicolo, himself. Eight troublemakers who won’t be missed; who won’t stir the community to outrage when they disappear."
"Adam’s not a troublemaker," Randy said.
John’s expression didn’t change at all. "He made the list," was all he said.
Randy just stared at him. "Are you serious?" he asked finally.
"Dead serious. The serial killer you’ve got working in this area? The one on the news?"
"You mean The Straw Man?" Randy ventured.
"Not a serial killer," John said. "That’s what krampuses do. They eat the viscera, stuff the body cavity with straw and stones."
Randy gut pitched. He swallowed hard to keep his gorge where it belonged. "You said eight? But there’ve only been three-"
"They’ll find two more," John said. "A fourteen-year-old, another ten-year-old. Adam would have been number six."
Randy couldn’t answer that. He couldn’t process it, couldn’t make it anything more than just a collection of random words inside his head.
"The condition of the bodies are how I tracked them here," John said, watching him carefully. "How I knew they were hunting your area."
"Tracked them?" Randy asked after a long beat. "You tracked them here? Are you saying you do this for a living or something?"
"I do this to keep others from living through what I lived through. What I’m still living through." John glanced up again, saw Adam half a dozen feet from the top of the well. "You want more than that, it’ll have to wait. I don’t want Adam up there alone any longer than necessary. They can’t feed until Nicolo shows, but that doesn’t mean they can’t kill." He gave the harness he’d rigged around the lower half of Randy’s body another good, hard tug, then said, "Okay. You’re set. Remember what I said about keeping your feet on the wall. That mud’s slick as hell so it’s going to be a little tricky to accomplish; but if you slip up, you’re going to be banging against the wall every couple of feet all the way to the top. That happens, you’ll be lucky to get out with bruises instead of broken bones … or worse."
Randy just looked at him for a moment, then said, "Thanks for sugar-coating it for me, John."
John smiled. "Not much use for sugar in my line of work. Salt, on the other hand, comes in damn handy on occasion. See you topside."
He started up the second rope, moving fast, like he climbed ropes for fun. Or maybe for survival. It only took a couple of minutes for him to make it to the top. He actually beat Adam there, was already in place, ready to reach down and haul Adam out of the well as soon as he got to the last knot on his rope.
Randy could hear the mutter of voices above him, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. It sounded like an argument. Adam raised his voice a little, said something loud enough for Randy to catch the actual words: "I don’t care. I’m not leaving my dad down there. Period."
On one hand, it made Randy proud as hell to hear his son say that. On the other, it almost scared him into pissing his pants again. Was John really planning to leave him here? Good God, had he just let some stranger take his kid away from him, leave him standing at the bottom of a well in a rope diaper, thinking he was going to be rescued when all he was really going to be was left?
Maybe they don’t need a reason. Maybe they’re doing it just to be mean; just to make us think we’ve been rescued so they can laugh at the look on our faces when we find out we’re not.
Randy’s heart started to pound. He broke into a cold sweat, felt like somebody’d lit his skin on fire even though it was still colder than shit, and both his feet and ass were just about frozen solid. The night seemed overly dark all of a sudden, overly silent.
The echo of John’s words rang inside his skull: You know the serial killer you’ve got working in this area? The one on the news? Oh, God. Oh, God. They’ll find two more. A fourteen-year-old, another ten-year-old. He started to hyperventilate, felt himself going weak, getting dizzy. What happens at the bottom of a well stays at the bottom of the well, Randy. Crazy is relative. He listened as hard as he could, but he couldn’t hear a damn thing. Couldn’t hear his son’s voice; couldn’t hear John’s voice.
Staring up from the bottom of a well at the pockmarked moon floating like a watchful eye in the darkness above, Randy found himself praying again, but without words this time, without anything but the cold purity of absolute terror. How could he have done this? How could he have let this happen?
The silhouette of Adam’s head popped out over the rim of the well. There was just enough light reflecting off the wet stones below to make out his grin as he yelled down, "Here we go! Hang on, Dad!"
Randy’s knees gave. Had John not used all the rope’s slack to rig the harness knotted around his lower body, he would have fallen on his ass in the muck as the low, sonorous grumble of a V-8 engine kicked to life, breaking the night’s still with the kind of muscle car growl Randy imagined John to be: all power and no need for finesse.
Despite Adam’s warning, Randy was too busy being sick-to-the-point-of-passing-out relieved to be ready for that first jerk, to be ready to get yanked off the ground and left dangling in mid-air, spinning. He slammed against the muddy wall; tried to right himself, catch his balance, but only managed to bounce off the wall a second time.
The rope hoisted him a couple more feet, knocking him into the wall a third time. The impact wrenched his back, scattered his senses with a sharp smack to the temple.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait!" he heard Adam calling though the ringing in his ears. "Wait, wait, wait!" The herky-jerk ascent stopped. He hung in darkness, dangling, spinning.
"You okay, Dad?" Adam called down. "You got your feet yet?"
It took a second for Randy to gather his wits, to shake off the stun of being hiked into the air and battered against mud and stone. Figuring better late than never, he did what he could to follow John’s instructions, to get his feet planted squarely against the well wall so he could keep them between that wall and his already-battered, still-half-frozen ass.
That was a hell of a lot harder than it sounded.
Even with a good portion of his butt and legs still numb from hours of soaking in icy water, the harness John rigged up was still incredibly uncomfortable. The bind of rope cutting down between his legs, under his ass and around his waist again was using his own weight like a weapon against him. He felt like some poor, un-credited, underpaid schmuck getting chopped in half the hard way during the first ten minutes of a horror movie.
Like there was an easy way to get chopped in half in a horror movie.
But still …
"Dad?" Adam yelled again. "You okay down there?"
"Hang on a minute," Randy yelled back. Kicking like a kid in a twisted up swing, Randy jerked on the rope so hard and so many times that he managed to give himself some major league rope burns; but he finally got his body where it needed to be, got his feet placed flat against the wall. Once he was positioned to half-way resemble someone in a comedy sketch about mountain climbing, he gave Adam a thumbs up and yelled, "Okay. I’ve got it, son. Go ahead."
He made a point to hold onto the rope this time, to be more prepared for the jolt of motion that followed the audible gunning of that finessesless engine put to the gas pedal. Once they got going again, he progressed up the well in a slow pull punctuated by sharp, jerking heaves. He almost lost his footing twice, but managed to keep it right up to the very end.
He was only a couple of yards short of safety when one numb foot slipped on the muddy wall. His knee twisted hard and then gave, slammed him hip-first into the wall with enough force to rattle his teeth to the tonsils. The rope kept pulling, relentless progress that bounced him off the wall three more times before he hit the stone lip, got one leg wedged under it tight enough to keep him from popping out of the well to the ground above the way John no doubt intended for him to do.
Oh, shit.
The car didn’t seem to notice he’d stopped moving. It was still trying to drag him out of the well, still intent on accomplishing its objective even if it had to break him in two to do it. The pressure escalated incrementally. It was more than relentless now: more like inexorable. Pitiless. The rope cut in under his thighs. An excruciating pain bloomed through his body from knees to ribcage. His legs twisted, bending awkwardly.
"John!" he bellowed. "John! John!"
The car growled louder. The pressure just kept increasing.
He’d seen movies like this. It was usually westerns, sometimes gladiator flicks; but there were always two horses going in opposite directions, and one man tied between them.
It never ended well for the man tied between them.
Continue to Part 2
Around mid-January, my bud Dotfic posed me an intriguing challenge. I was busy bemoaning, to some degree, the fact that I'd chosen to take the obvious road in answering the question "Where was John during the events of A Very Supernatural Christmas?" with my fics Keep Going and its sequel, The Truth About Lies by going to the "he's hurt" place rather than the "he was saving someone so you missed a holiday celebration so they could LIVE" place instead. I was pointing out that, in some ways, it is almost a cop out to John's complexity and the gut-wrenching choices he must make on a daily basis to play such a simplistic, heroic card (I was stumbling through the snow, trying to make it home) in response to that opportunity rather than going with the harder answer, greyer answer of "A stranger's loss was more than yours, so I chose saving them over being there for you." And in choosing the simple "he's a hero so love him" answer over the harder "he's a hero and his sons suffer for it" one, I almost felt like I'd let John down, painting him with too simple a brush, so I was going to have to rectify that some day by taking on the other scenario for my own peace of mind.
Entre Dotfic, saying "Here's Double-Edged, the after-the-hunt story I wrote about that exact scenario ("A stranger's loss was more than yours, so I chose saving them over being there for you."); but I have no idea what kind of monster John was actually taking on while he was gone. Write that, but do it from the perspective of the person he was saving."
Hmmmm.
So I did. She gave me a couple rules to live by to make the stories dovetail as true companions: John can't get hurt AT ALL (dammit!), he's fighting eight monsters, he saves someone else's father, he shows up late on Christmas night in a snowstorm with no presents, and you can't crawl inside John's head AT ALL (double dammit!).
So that's how these things happen. And along the way, yes, since you asked, I did write a 33,000 word story only to find out it was 14,000 words too long. (Or two different stories, if you'd prefer to look at it that way). But thanks to the awesome ficwriter and her fantabulosity, I figured out it was 14,000 words too long so I trimmed a little.
And here you have it.
Thanks to the maaaaavelous dotfic for her initial challenge and her most awesome beta; and to the fantabulous ficwriter for her big-ass Rambo-sized editing shears and fearlessness in weilding them without regard to all that weeping and wailing and wordy bleeding all over the place. This one wouldn't exist without the former, would bore you shitless without the latter, and would have a lot more freakin typos and loosy-goosy dialog than it does without the former again.
And I'd like to dedicate this story to John, whose selfless heroism and tireless dedication to his children and all the other helpless people of the world have inspired me to ... heh. Yeah, right. I'm not THAT much of a freaking girl, y'all.
Title: The Naughty List (1/2)
Author: Dodger Winslow
Genre: Gen, Pre-series
Word Count: 18,800
Rating: PG-13 for language
Spoilers: A Very Supernatural Christmas
Companion Piece: Double-Edged by Dotfic
Disclaimer: I don't own the boys, I'm just stalking them for awhile ...
Summary: John smiled a little. The look in his eyes was at least twice as scary as anything Randy’d yet seen when he said, "There’s some crazy shit out there in the dark, Randy. Most of it would sound vaguely familiar if someone tried to tell you about it."
A/N: For some reason, as I was writing this, it became oddly important to me to construct monsters that later, upon John regaling Dean with tales of the hunt, would prompt his twelve-year-old pain-in-the-ass to look at him askance and say, "So, basically, you're saying you missed Christmas because you were hunting elves?" I have no idea why that became important to me, but it did. Without the amusement supplied by that singular line to use as creative fuel, I never would have finished this one.
The Naughty List
Randy Quinn wasn’t quite sure how this happened to him. He couldn’t really make any sense of how this could be, how these kind of things could actually exist in the world he’d known for the last thirty-two years of thinking he knew how the world worked.
"Dad?" Adam whispered. He sounded scared. He should be scared.
"Yeah, bud?"
"Do you think we’ll make it home in time for Christmas?"
Randy closed his eyes, tried to imagine sugar plums dancing in his head. Fuck. He wasn’t even sure what sugar plums looked like. Candy canes, maybe. He could conjure up candy canes to dance in his head if he concentrated … concentrated hard enough to forget where they were and what was out there in the dark, coming for them any time now.
Fucking Christmas.
"I don’t know, bud," Randy answered, doing his best to split the difference between outright lying and admitting he didn’t think they were going to make it home at all, let alone by a specific deadline. "Wouldn’t rule it out. Stranger things have happened." He couldn’t believe this was happening, couldn’t believe this was happening to him.
Adam huddled in a little closer, asking, "Stranger than this?"
Randy laughed. He’d never felt less like laughing in his whole life; but he laughed anyway … had to laugh just to keep from crying. So he did: he laughed. "Good point, bud. Maybe not stranger than this."
"I’m scared," Adam said.
Randy had to work not to laugh again, had to work not to start laughing and just never stop. "I’m kinda scared myself," he admitted instead. "But we’ll get through this, okay? We’ll get through it. We’ll figure out some way to get through it, I promise."
Something rustled overhead, and Randy’s heart jumped, tried to crawl out his mouth and run away to someplace safe. Anyplace safe. Like his own house, maybe. Like his own living room.
He wanted to laugh again, but he didn’t. There was nothing funny about this; nothing at all. He’d always thought his own living room was safe. He’d always thought he could lock the door against the night outside, and his family would be as safe as anybody ever was in this day and age of crazy people doing crazy things.
Who knew crazy people doing crazy things wasn’t what he really needed to worry about?
"Did you hear that?" Adam whispered. His toes were curled in fear, digging into the top of Randy’s thigh like they were looking for a better grip as he jammed himself against Randy’s chest so hard they were practically sitting inside the same skin. "They’re coming again. They’re coming, Dad. They’re coming."
Randy could feel the same panic twisting in his gut that he could hear in Adam’s voice; but he did what he could to control it. He was the adult here. He had to be the one who was old enough to keep his imagination from running away with him. Or barring that, he had to at least sound like he was that one; because if he sounded even half as scared as he actually was, his ten-year-old was going to come apart at the seams.
"I think it was just the wind," Randy lied, doing his best to sound convincing. "It’s okay, Adam. Don’t be scared; I think it’s just the wind."
What a crock of shit.
Who was he trying to kid? Adam didn’t buy that. He might be ten, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew as well as Randy did that it wasn’t the wind. It was those things coming back again. They were coming-they were coming-and there wasn’t a damn thing either one of them could do about it.
Tied up at the bottom of a hole in the middle of God-knows-where, up to his hipbones in icy, fetid water with his kid cowering in his lap, looking for protection he couldn’t give, Randy felt like the failure of all failures. "I think it’s just the wind," he said again, helplessly.
"It’s not the wind, Dad. It’s them. I know its them."
God, he sounded so scared. His pain-in-the-ass, I-know-everything-and-you’re-just-a-piece-of-shit kid sounded so. Damn. Scared.
Adam hadn’t been scared of anything since he was five. He hadn’t not known the answer since he was seven. He hadn’t thought his dad was worth the effort of anything more than an eye roll and the occasional disgusted grunt in response to unsolicited advice since he was nine. And here he was at ten, cringing in the near-total blackness at the bottom of a well, shivering against Randy’s body and begging him to have the answer not because he thought Randy actually did, but rather because he was just that damned scared.
Randy wasn’t quite sure how this happened to him, couldn’t really make any sense of how this could be.
"It’s okay, son," Randy whispered. "Everything’s going to be okay. Get behind me and hunker down, okay? Stay as quiet as you can." He wished he had something better to offer; wished he had something more comforting to say, something more dad-like that he could do. "Don’t say anything," he added like that was going to make any difference at all. "Just hold really still and be really quiet, okay?"
Adam didn’t argue-Adam always argued-he just did what he was told. Scrambling off Randy’s lap with a slither and a small splash, he didn’t even complain about the water this time, didn’t say a word about how cold it was, or how much it made his feet ache. Tucking himself in tight between Randy’s elbow and the muddy wall, he crowded up close to Randy’s side, hid as best he could in the sheltering bulk of his dad’s much bigger body.
"They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?" Adam’s breathing was short, labored, terrified. His heart was hammering so hard Randy could feel every beat of it against his bruised, aching ribs.
"No," Randy lied. "They aren’t, Adam. I won’t let them." News reports flashed through his head even as he spoke. The gruesome details of rumors circulating around the office were more vivid in his imagination than if he’d actually seen the mutilated bodies for himself. "I’m not going to let anything happen to you, son. Everything will be okay. We’ll get through this. I know we will."
The leaves rustled again, closer this time. Adam hid his face in Randy’s shirt, sobbed, "I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry."
"It’s not your fault, son," Randy said again. "You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not your fault."
A shadow passed overhead: a quick darkness that moved across the wan glow of the full moon for less than a second before it was gone again. Oh, God. They were coming again. Randy’s whole body went numb. His gut clenched to a knot, his heart hammering as hard against the inside of his ribcage as Adam’s was against the outside of it.
They were going to kill him, kill his son, and there wasn’t anything he could do to stop it. I’m sorry, son. I’m sorry. I am so sorry. I’m sorry. Randy turned his face to one side until his cheek was pressed against the chill of the mudded walls. He couldn’t face seeing them again; couldn’t face the belly-clenching horror of watching those things defy gravity as they skittered down the vertical well walls like so many goat-horned, dog-sized spiders, their red tongues flicking in and out like hungry snakes, their tails whipping around them in an escalating frenzy of excitement.
They’d come down his chimney the same way, swarming into the living room and down the hall like something out of the bible: a plague of locust invading his home, something Ramses might have suffered for enslaving the wrong damn tribe of divinely protected people. He’d thought it was a dream at first. He’d thought he was experiencing a grotesque, gastronomical penalty flag thrown for eating too much pizza, too late at night, and then falling asleep on the couch instead of going to bed with Karen.
But it wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare, and he was wide awake when he had it.
"I’m sorry, Dad," Adam whispered again. His voice was almost as muffled now as it had been then, crying out in terror from inside the filthy sack that kicked and twisted and writhed and sobbed behind the swarm of things dragging it back down the hallway, across the living room and into the fireplace.
The sack was in the process of being shoved up the chimney when Randy realized that, whatever was going on, it was happening to his son and it was real; so he lurched off the couch, got in a tug of war with something straight out of a Cronenberg movie. He’d almost won, too … would have won if they hadn’t had the advantage of those whiplash tails.
They’d tried to thrash him away at first: half a dozen Indiana Jones bullwhips cracking and snapping at his arms and legs, his neck, his face. When that didn’t work, they’d cinched his wrists and ankles together and brought him down like Gulliver in the land of Lilliput. Once they had him face first on the carpet, they’d trussed him up tighter than a luau pig and dragged his ass up the chimney right along with Adam’s.
He still had no idea how they’d managed to accomplish that. He was a big guy (a hell of a lot bigger than he’d been before he sat in a windowless office for twelve years, crunching numbers eight hours a day, five days a week); but even so, they’d pushed and pulled and squeezed him up the chimney and out onto the roof somehow, then shoved him into his own sack and took them both God knows where, because Randy sure didn’t.
Who even had wells anymore instead of just tapping into the city water lines?
He didn’t know of a single one in the area (like he’d know about them even if there were a hundred of them), but that’s still where they ended up, dumped headfirst into some kind of moldy old well; lucky as hell that, even though it was dried up, there was still enough muck and mire under the stagnation of three or four inches of standing water to cushion that long fall, just bruise them up a little instead of splitting them open like melons dropped off a balcony. And even more lucky that he’d landed first, and then Adam, instead of vice versa.
But that’s where their luck ran out. They’d been here every since (hours now), freezing their asses off in the darkness, huddled up against one another for warmth and comfort, wondering what happened, how it happened, and why it happened to them.
It was supposed to snow all night-a real blizzard by Christmas morning, the weatherman said-but it hadn’t. If push came to shove, he’d probably have to concede they were lucky in that, too. He was sleeping on the couch when those things showed up, so all he had on was a flannel shirt and jeans. He wasn’t even wearing any shoes, just red and green reindeer socks Karen bought him a couple years ago as a joke. And Adam was still in his pj’s. They were warm pj’s, as pj’s go; but still, his feet were completely bare, and he was so cold his lips and ears had started to turn blue.
Randy’d done what he could to keep Adam out of the water, but he’d been sitting in himself it all night long. He could barely feel his feet, they were that cold and that numb; and he wouldn’t be surprised to find out his ass was nothing but one big ice cube. And his balls? Ah, hell, his poor balls were MIA big time. They’d pulled up so far up inside him he’d be lucky to ever hear from them again. Probably eventually get a "wishing you were here" postcard from his colon, if he lived long enough for the Post Office to find him.
For anybody to find him.
Please, God, let somebody find them.
As bad as the cold was, though; it wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that he couldn’t even feel his arms any more. Whatever those damn things were, they’d left him bound up like some kind of Wiley Coyote cartoon. Wrists tied together and arms crossed over his own chest, he was wrapped up so tight from shoulders to waist in some kind of woven rope that he’d lost all sensation in his hands within minutes, and was numb as a post all the way to his neck inside a couple of hours.
And not numb in a warm, fuzzy, I’ve-had-a-little-too-much-to-drink way. Much more numb in the I-hit-my-crazy-bone-and-this-hurts-like-hell way.
They’d tied Randy’s knees and ankles together, too; but they hadn’t tied Adam up at all. Probably figured they didn’t need to, and they were right. He was free to move around as much as he wanted, but he didn’t have any place to go, and his feet got so cold from walking around in the water that he could only take it for a couple of minutes at a time. He’d done his best though. Poor kid clawed his fingers bloody trying to first, untie those impossible knots and then, climb the mudded walls of a well that had to be a good fifty feet deep if it was five.
The darkness rustled a third time, and Adam literally whined where he was hiding against Randy’s side. He was trembling like a leaf, as scared as Randy had ever seen him.
Randy closed his eyes, muttered a prayer to himself, keeping it short, keeping it sweet. Dear God, don’t let him suffer was the gist of it. And if you have anything left over, quick for me, too, please. Amen.
But even in the darkness behind his eyelids, he couldn’t escape the sight of those deep, gouging claw marks on the well walls that had been there long before Adam started trying to climb out. His imagination went wild with what those kids must have looked like when the cops found them, gutted and stuffed full of trash and debris, if the rumors were even close to the actual truth.
Randy shivered; tried to tell himself it was the cold even though he knew it wasn’t.
The night was quiet to a fault. The silence seemed to be waiting on something. It was almost watching them, it was that heavy, that dense, that … expectant.
The last thing he expected was light-bright, glaring, white light-but that’s what he got. Randy’s eyes popped open. He squinted up into the near-blinding brilliance of what looked like a flashlight shining down on them. A really, bright, glaring white-light flashlight.
"Well, fuck," someone said, his voice grim and irritated.
Randy caught his breath, tried not to let hope run away with him. "Fuck" didn’t sound like something those scarabesque, scrabbling son-of-a-bitches with the tails and the tongues would say … if they said anything, that is; which so far, he hadn’t witnessed them doing. All he’d heard was a little hissing (okay, a whole lot of hissing): no talking, no words, no profanity. And he couldn’t really see them using a flashlight either. Or needing one. They seemed as much (if not more) at home in the dark as they were in the light; didn’t have any trouble skittering half way down those vertical walls every couple of hours or so to watch him and Adam with those beady little eyes glowing red in the dark like half a dozen Aunt Patty portraits flashed to devil-eyes by Karen’s cheap-ass pocket instamatic.
"You hurt?" the voice called down, reassuringly human in how it sounded, reassuringly un-monsterlike in both tone of voice and choice of words. "Anything broken?"
Randy closed his eyes for a beat, then opened them again. It was as much as he could manage just to keep from pissing his pants with relief as he yelled back, "No. We’re okay. Just bruised I think. We need help though."
The man chuckled like he thought that was funny. It wasn’t funny-was damn unfunny, in fact-but Randy decided to hold off on pointing that out for the time being. Criticizing the guy with the flashlight (and, God willing, a rope) didn’t seem like it was in either his or Adam’s best interests right now.
"Alright," the guy said, relieving Randy’s eyes of the glare that was making them tear up. "Hang on. I’ll be down in a minute."
The guy’s intention to come down himself rather than pulling them up knotted Randy’s gut with dread. He was no expert on things like this, but it didn’t sound like a very good idea for all three of them to be at the bottom of the well with nobody left up topside to do the rescuing. Especially not if those things came back … when those things came back.
"Uh … maybe you could just throw us down a rope or something, and we could climb up," Randy suggested, doing his best to sound helpful rather than critical or dictatorial. Then, just in case this guy didn’t already know as much, he added, "There are … things … running around out there. Really nasty … things. Beady eyes, big teeth, horns. I know that sounds a little crazy; but there are a bunch of them, so it might not be, you know, the best idea for you to come down here, too."
The man snorted. He flashed the light down on Randy again, said, "Tell you what, friend. How ’bout I do the rescuing, and you just sit there, all tied up. How’s that strike you as a plan?"
Randy squinted up at him again, said, "Okay. Sure. Whatever you think’s best." As answers go, that was his second choice. His first was "whatever, asshole," but that seemed more like an I-have-the-flashlight-and-you’re-at-the-bottom-of-the-well kind of answer, so he stashed it away for future reference, just in case that ever came up.
The light disappeared a second time, and several seconds later, a coil of rope dropped down the side of the well, slapped into the water within inches of his left leg. Still buried as deep into Randy’s side as he could get, Adam flinched, then whined again in that gut-deep, wordless fear.
"It’s okay, Adam," Randy soothed. "It’s just a rope, bud. Someone’s here. Someone’s here to rescue us."
"Maybe it’s one of them," Adam whispered. "Maybe they’re trying to trick us."
Randy frowned a little. That was a pretty pessimistic worldview, coming from a ten-year-old. "There’s no real reason for them to do that, son," he said after a moment.
"Maybe they don’t need a reason," Adam said. "Maybe they’re doing it just to be mean; just to make us think we’ve been rescued so they can laugh at the look on our faces when we find out we’re not."
Randy’s frown deepened. He was really going to have to stop letting his kid watch bad horror movies. And maybe quit hanging around other kids, too; because God knows kids were experts at being mean for no better reason than just being mean. Kind of like bosses … and IRS auditors.
"I don’t think that’s the case here, Adam," Randy said as a second coil of rope dropped down beside the first, making him flinch this time, too. "And besides," he added just for good measure, "those things don’t need flashlights. And they can’t talk either, right?"
"Yes, they can," Adam said. There were tears in his voice when he added, "I’ve heard them talk."
"What? You mean all that hissing? That’s not talking, bud. I know it can sound a little like words sometimes; but that’s just your imagination playing tricks on you. Hearing words in white noise is like … like seeing shapes in clouds, you know? Or seeing Jesus’s face on a piece of French toast. You remember that lady on TV who saw that? You remember how hard you laughed; and how much you kept begging your mom to make French toast every morning so you could try and find somebody’s face there, too? It’s the same thing here, bud. Same thing, only with noise instead of French toast."
Adam shook his head vehemently. His tone was absolutely certain when he clarified, "No it’s not. I heard them, Dad. Before. In my room."
"Those things … spoke to you? You mean they actually said something to you?"
"Yeah. When I first woke up. One of them was sitting on my chest. That’s what woke me up: it sitting on my chest. And it told me I was on their list. It said I’d been a bad boy, and that-" he hesitated, stopped.
"And what?" Randy prompted.
Adam didn’t say anything for a couple seconds, then finished, "And that nobody would even miss me when I was gone."
Randy felt his gut clench up with anger. Not fear. Anger. "What?" he demanded. "It told you that?"
Adam nodded, his head bumping against Randy’s ribs with the motion.
"Well it’s a liar," Randy announced, furious. "First off, you are not a bad kid. Not a bad kid at all. You’re a good kid. And number two, it’s full of shit if it thinks your mom and I wouldn’t miss you. And Bethy. And Jill. And all your friends. And Aunt Patty, too. And Grandma and Grandpa. We’d all miss you, Adam. And nobody thinks you’re a bad kid. Nobody."
"Mister Nicolo does," Adam whispered. "He said I was rotten to the core just last week."
"Well fuck Mister Nicolo," Randy snapped. "And who the hell is that anyway?"
"The new principal."
"At your school?"
He felt Adam nod again. It was an indication of how scared his son was that the answer wasn’t something along the lines of "well, duh, Dad" or "no, Dad, the principal of Bolivia." That was how Adam would have normally responded to a question that was, granted, pretty self evident, now that Randy thought about it.
Adam was a lot like he’d been at that age. The kid could be a real smart aleck sometimes; and he had a hell of a sarcastic mouth on him these days. Mister Watch-Your-Attitude was what Karen called him more often than not. And yeah, he could be a bit of a bully sometimes-especially to his little sisters, or to kids he considered math nerds like his old man-but even so, fuck Mister Nicolo for calling his kid bad. Adam wasn’t bad; he was just … ten.
"Well, I don’t give a damn who he is," Randy said. "You’re not a bad kid, and he can kiss my ass for saying that. In fact, once we get out of here, I’m going to go have a talk with this Mister Nicolo; tell him what I think of him saying something like that to you. That is completely out of line. Completely out of line, Adam. And not true, either."
Adam crowded in a little closer, murmured, "Thanks, Dad."
Randy started to say something else, but stopped when several small chunks of debris rattled down from above, landed on his shoulders, muddied up his hair. When he looked up, he was surprised to see the guy with the flashlight already better than half way down the rope. He’d expected some kind of flashy, GI Joe commando repel; thought the guy would drop out of the night sky like a rescue hero on TV or something. But instead, he looked like he was coming down one of the ropes in a controlled, hand-over-hand descent. It took a lot of strength to do that. Took a lot of practice.
When he touched down, he didn’t even make a splash, just sank into the water in silence, fell to an immediate crouch at Randy’s side. He flicked his flashlight on again, pressed two fingers against the ropes twisted around Randy’s body, testing it in three or four different places, each time in close proximity to a knot. It was like he was reading the rope by feel; like he could tell how the bindings worked by just touching them the way Sherlock Holmes could tell you who murdered the countess just by sniffing what Watson had for breakfast.
"What’s your boy’s name?" he asked, his voice calm, quiet, almost casual.
"Adam."
"He hurt?"
"No. He’s okay. Just cold and a little scared is all."
The guy nodded. "Good." He pulled out a knife Rambo would consider overkill, and Randy couldn’t help it: he flinched. The guy met his eyes, said, "Relax. I’m on your side here."
Randy swallowed hard, nodded. "Yeah. Right. Okay."
He cut Randy’s ankles and knees free first, then went to work on the more intricate twist of knots and bindings wrapped around his torso. He worked with a precise economy that was both quick and efficient. There was no hesitation to any move he made, not even the smallest indication that wielding a blade that big within a hair’s breadth of someone else’s skin made him anywhere near as nervous as it made Randy.
Of course, it was Randy’s skin.
He flinched again when the knife slipped in under a knot near his throat, put significant pressure on his collarbone with cold metal that obviously wasn’t a cutting edge. The guy glanced at Randy, said, "Not a real good time to be wiggling around."
Because he couldn’t have spoken to save his life at that moment, Randy started to nod to indicate he understood; but decided against it at the last moment under the assumption that nodding would probably constitute wiggling. Instead, he concentrated on holding as still as he could, not even breathing until the guy had finished cutting through that knot and moved on to the next.
The moon crawled out from under the cloud cover as the guy worked, easing the dark just enough for Randy to get a clear look at a man who showed up out of nowhere like saving people from monsters was what he did, nine-to-five, the same way Randy crunched numbers to make the boss’s books balance. He only had maybe ten years on Randy, but he looked like he’d lived them all at full tilt. Six two, maybe a little more; but built solid, like one of those muscle cars with an engine that pisses the neighbors off just on general principles, or by waking them up in the middle of the night as he drops their daughters (or wives) off with a satisfied smile and their panties in their purse. He had a hell of a scar on one cheek and several more peppered under the half-beard he wore like he had more pressing things to do than shave; but it was the quick flick of hard, dark eyes that made it clear he was the kind of guy who could walk into any biker bar in the country in ballet slippers and a tutu without ever having to worry that anybody would give him a moment’s crap about it.
By the time their rescuer had cut through the last twist of rope and slipped his knife back into a sheath on his belt, Adam had stopped trembling and was peeking around Randy’s arm, trying to get a better look. It was only then that the guy glanced at him, smiled with the same easy, casual indifference in his voice and said, "So, Adam, huh? My name’s John." He picked up one of Randy’s arms, began rubbing it vigorously, massaging the dull numb of it back to life in a way that did not feel good at all. "What’s your dad’s name, Adam?" he asked as he worked.
When Adam hesitated, John looked at him again, lifted an eyebrow in a way that could be taken as either encouragement or expectation.
"Dad," Adam answered in the kind of awed tone he hadn’t used since he met Ronald McDonald when he was four.
John nodded, kept rubbing Randy’s arm until it started to burn. "Dad, huh? Good name. So how old are you, Adam?"
Adam responded immediately this time. "Ten."
"Ten? Really?" John let Randy’s arm drop back to his side and started in on the other one. "I have a son that age, too. Ten exactly, in fact. His name is Rufus." He looked at Randy, asked, "You feel that burn, Dad?"
Randy nodded.
"That’s what you want," John told him. "Hurts like a bitch, I know; but it means the blood is pumping again, and that’s what we need if we’re going to get you topside." He surrendered Randy’s arm back to him. "Keep rubbing them, as fast and as hard as you can take. More it hurts, faster you’ll recover. Faster you recover, faster we’re out of here."
Randy did his best to comply as John shifted his attention back to Adam. "What? You don’t have anything to say about that, Adam? Nothing to say about me naming my ten-year-old son Rufus Herman?"
"Rufus Herman?" Adam repeated like he wasn’t buying that for a moment.
"Well, Rufus Percival Herman, if you want to get technical. I call him Hermy for short, but his brother, Sebastian? He prefers Percival. What do you think of that?"
Man, John wasn’t kidding. His arms burned like somebody’d put a match to them; but he could feel his fingers again, and he could move them, too, which he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to do again with as numb as they’d gone, like two slabs of dead wood hinged to his body at the shoulders.
"I think you must be lying," Adam said. "Either that or he gets beat up a lot at school."
Randy glanced down and smiled. Now that sounded more like his kid. Adam had inched out a little from where he was hiding, was watching John from behind Randy’s elbow now.
"You are absolutely right," John said "I am lying to you. So tell me something: how are you at climbing ropes in school, Adam?"
"I suck," Adam admitted readily. "I never even get past the halfway mark."
John glanced at Randy. "How are those arms doing, Dad?"
"Better. I can feel my hands now at least."
"Good." John turned his attention back to Adam. "You know what the best part of having your own rope is, Adam? You can cheat." He reached out, took hold of the second rope that was dangling down the side of the well. "You see these knots every two feet? Know what that means? It means you can climb this sucker easy as climbing a ladder. Think you can do that for me, Adam?"
Randy half expected his son to make some smart-ass remark about John wearing his name out; but instead, Adam just looked up, studied the mudded wall all the way up to the top before venturing, "Um … I don’t know. That’s a long way up. What if the … if the things come back?"
"You let me worry about them," John said, his voice comfortingly confident. "All you need to worry about is climbing. You think you can do that part?"
"Uh …maybe. But what about my dad?"
"You let me worry about your dad, too. All I want you to concentrate on is climbing. How are you feet? Do you have any feeling in them?"
"Yeah. They feel cold. Really, really cold. And they ache like he-heck."
"I’ll bet they do." John held out one hand, expectant, certain. "Come on over here, Adam," he ordered, and Adam obeyed. No argument. No debate. He just obeyed. John handed him the rope, then patted his own thigh and said, "Crawl up here for a minute. I want to check out those feet for you. See if they’re half as blue as your ears are."
"My ears aren’t blue," Adam said. But again, he obeyed without objecting to the fact that somebody was presuming to tell him what to do. John checked Adams ankles, his heels, pressed down on his toes and asked, "Can you feel that?"
"Yeah."
"What about that?"
"Yeah." Then he added, "I said I had feeling in them."
"Curl your toes up for me," John instructed. When Adam did, John nodded his approval. "Okay. Good enough. Looks like you’re all set to go." He grabbed hold of the rope again, brought it in so the first knot was right beside his thigh. "Step over on the knot for me, Adam, and get a good grip with your hands right above the next one."
Adam looked up at the dark, cloudy sky again. His faced twisted. "But what if they’re up there waiting for me though?" he asked.
"They won’t be," John said. But what his tone said was: They wouldn’t dare be because I said they won’t be. He shook the rope a little, said, "Come on. Hop to it. Just like climbing a ladder."
"I don’t know if I can do it," Adam said, pulling away from the rope a little rather than moving toward it.
"Sure you can," John said. "The knots make it easy. Just move your hands one at a time so you don’t lose your grip, and make sure you bring both feet up at the same time because it’s easier that way."
"What if I fall?" Adam asked.
"You won’t fall. Make sure you get both feet situated squarely on the knot before you start moving your hands again. And take your time. This isn’t a race."
Adam didn’t say anything.
John have him several beats to respond, then asked, "Got it?"
Adam nodded. "Yeah."
"Good. You head on up; your dad and I will be right behind you."
"But-"
"No buts, Adam," John said firmly. "Start climbing."
Instead of doing what he was told, Adam looked back at Randy. "Dad?" he asked like he was looking for direction.
That threw Randy a little … threw him a lot, actually. Adam only asked his opinion these days so he could do exactly the opposite. Or asked for his approval by … well, by nothing. There were times Randy could swear Adam actively did everything he could just to avoid accidentally earning his dad’s approval.
"Um, I think we’d better do what John says, buddy," he allowed after a beat of stunned silence. "Sounds like he knows what he’s doing here."
"But what about you? Are your arms okay? Are you going to be able to climb, too?"
"Yeah," Randy lied. "They’re fine. Just like new. Now hop on that rope and show me how fast you can get to the top, okay?"
Adam glanced at John, then looked back to Randy. "I don’t want to leave you though."
"I’m fine, son," Randy assured him. "I’ll be right behind you. Promise."
Adam surprised the hell out of him for the second time by splashing down off John’s leg and throwing his arms around Randy’s neck. He hung on for dear life, giving Randy the kind of hug Jill and Bethy were both prone to giving their daddy at every possible opportunity, but his son hadn’t given him for three or four years now. "I’m sorry, Dad," he said into Randy’s neck. "I’m sorry I got us into this."
"You didn’t do anything wrong, Adam," Randy told him again.
"I got on the list," Adam said.
"That’s not your fault. Whatever kind of list that damn thing had, it’s not your fault you were on it."
Adam’s grip on his neck tightened.
Randy would have liked to return the hug; but his arms felt like they were made of lead, so he had to settle for a quick pat on the back instead. It was all he could manage before his muscles gave out and dropped his arm back into his lap. He figured his son would remember who he was hugging any second now and bail, but he didn’t. If anything, Adam actually held on tighter, held on so tight he didn’t look like he was going to ever let go at all.
"Time’s ticking, Dad," John said. His voice was still calm, but his tone was a low warning.
Randy nodded. He gave Adam a moment longer, then said, "Okay, bud. I love you, but it’s time to hop to it now, okay? Show John what you can do for me."
"I’m scared," Adam whispered.
"I know you are," Randy agreed. "I am, too. But we’ve gotta hang tough here. We’ve gotta do what John says, okay?"
"Okay." Adam held on a moment longer, then let go and pulled back. He stared at Randy, his face scraped up and streaked with mud, his eyes full of tears. "I’ll see you up at the top though, right?"
"Absolutely." Randy gave him a confident grin. "Last one there’s a rotten egg."
Adam nodded. He turned to the rope, looked up at the sky again. "Are you sure they won’t be up there waiting for me?" he asked John.
"I’m sure."
Adam took a big breath. "Okay. I sure hope you’re right." He grabbed the rope directly above the highest knot he could reach and climbed on, started inching up the rope, using the knots as handholds and footholds, just the way John told him to.
John held the rope steady until Adam had a good start, then let it go, turned back to crouch at Randy’s side. "Alright, Dad," he said. "Your turn. Think you can make it up that rope on your own, or do we need a plan B?"
Randy glanced up to the round at the top of darkness and winced. Wasn’t a chance in hell he could make that. He had a little feeling in his arms now, but they burned like a bitch and weighed better than a ton each. He couldn’t even clench either of his hands to a complete fist yet; he could barely feel his feet, and his knees were locked in place like rusted hinges. He wasn’t sure he could even stand up without help; let alone climb a rope like some kind of evolved chimpanzee.
"I’ll try," Randy said. "Give it my best shot."
John studied him for several seconds in silence. He didn’t have to say anything. His gaze was critical; his assessment, less than charitable. "How long have you been trussed up like that?" he asked finally.
"I don’t know. Several hours, maybe? I crashed around ten, eleven, so … since around midnight?"
John’s expression didn’t so much as twitch, but even so, it seemed to get a little grimmer … which was a bit like saying black got a little blacker. He nodded, said, "Okay then. Let’s get you on your feet and give it a shot." He didn’t step in to help though, just watched from a two-step remove while Randy struggled, tried in vain to make that happen on his own.
After what seemed like forever flopping around like a grounded fish, Randy settled back into the sticky layer of muck he’d stirred to a foul stench soup and said, "Little help here, John?"
"Try to do it yourself," John returned. There was no malice in his gaze, but no encouragement either. There was just nothing. A calm, casual, indifferent nothing.
Randy took a moment to catch his breath, then tried again. He did better with his second attempt, fought his way upright by wedging both shoulders against the mud-slick wall and digging near-numb stocking feet into the soft ground below them, forcing his body up the wall by powering his knees straight. He almost made it to a full stand despite the stacked deck of half-frozen feet and a half-frozen ass and screamingly half de-numbed arms.
Almost.
He lost his balance without warning. He slipped to one side, expected to fall hard; but John was there, one smooth move to an easy catch. Wedging a shoulder under Randy’s armpit, John propped him upright until he’d re-established his own balance, then eased his shoulders back to a stable lean against the wall before stepping away again.
"Lift your arms for me," John said.
Randy tried. He managed to get them almost to shoulder height before his muscles gave out, turned to Jell-O and dropped his hands back to his sides.
John nodded like he’d expected as much. "Okay," he said. "Plan B it is."
Reaching over to grab the rope he’d come down on (the one without knots, the one Adam wasn’t climbing, almost twenty feet off the ground now and still going strong), John reeled in the extra ten feet or so of length that was soaking in brackish water at their feet. "So here’s how this plays," he said. "You’re going up the hard way. I’ve got a car topside with a V-8. We’ll rig you up, use her horsepower to hoist you out." He stepped in close, started wrapping the excess rope around Randy’s waist as he talked, passing it down between his legs, under his butt cheeks, and back around his waist again. "It’s not going to be easy or fun, and you’re probably going to get banged up some; but I’ll go as slow as I can without losing traction. Your part of the deal is going to be keeping yourself oriented, keeping your feet between your ass and the wall all the way up. If you lose them, it’s going to get damn uncomfortable, damn quick. You with me so far?"
"Yeah," Randy allowed. "I think so."
John wove the rope in on itself, started knotting up something that looked disturbingly like a macramé diaper. He jerked on a knot hard, cinching Randy’s legs together tight enough at the high thigh to make him belatedly grateful his junk was iced to a near-numb.
"You know what you’re doing there?" Randy asked.
John glanced at him, said, "Sure hope so," with just a ghost of a smile.
"You and me both," Randy agreed. Then, because he wasn’t quite sure what else to say to a man who was being more intimate with his anatomy than anyone who wasn’t a woman had ever been, he added, "My name’s Randy, by the way. Probably ought to know that, I guess … all things considered."
John chuckled. "What happens at the bottom of a well stays at the bottom of the well, Randy."
Randy grunted. He watched John work for several more seconds before asking, "So … I take it you know something about those things that dumped us down here?"
"You mean the furry bitches with the tails and tongues?" John asked without looking up.
"Yeah."
"We’ve met."
Randy nodded. Waited. Then, when John didn’t offer anything more, he asked, "So what in the hell are they?"
"You’re better off not knowing," John said.
That answer pissed Randy off. Pissed him off more than it probably should have, given how much John had already done for them. But he was better off not knowing what invaded his house and tried to steal his kid? Fuck that.
"Those things crawled down my chimney and grabbed my kid out of his own bed," Randy pointed out tersely. "I think I’ve got a right to a few answers, don’t you?"
The corner of John’s mouth pulled to a small smile that had nothing to do with humor. "Good luck with that," he said, jerking another knot hard enough to almost knock Randy off his feet.
"You’re not going to tell me?"
"Kinda looks that way, doesn’t it?"
That answer pissed Randy off significantly more than just a little.
"Look here, you s-" he started, then cut himself off mid-word, clenched his jaw to keep from saying the rest of what he wanted to say.
John flicked him another glance. "Good save," he said.
Randy took a deep breath. "Look, John," he revised, using his you’re-the-boss-but-I-don’t-have-to-like-it tone. "I’m just trying to protect my family here. If you know what those things are, I’d appreciate it if you told me." He looked up, checked on Adam’s progress. His son was still inching up the rope, slow but steady, concentrating hard enough on the task at hand he probably wouldn’t have noticed a belly dancer at the bottom of the well. Nonetheless, Randy lowered his voice a little when he said, "I have two more kids at home, and a wife. Those things were in my house, for God’s sake. I need to know what they are, and why they were there."
"They were only after Adam," John said calmly. "The rest of your family’s safe."
"How am I supposed to know that?"
"Because I just told you."
Randy swallowed his first response and asked, "Why Adam?" instead.
John finished tying several knots more complicated than third-year calculus and stood. "Because he’s on their list."
"Their list? What the hell is that? Their list?"
"Doesn’t matter." He checked the knot at Randy’s waist, tugged it hard enough to make sure it would hold, then looked up, met Randy’s eyes with a quiet cold that was unnerving, to put it mildly. "I’ll take care of it," he said.
"He’s my kid," Randy argued.
"And he got himself into a spot of trouble," John said. "Caught the attention of something he shouldn’t have; got himself put on a list nobody wants to be on. That’s unfortunate, but it happens sometimes."
"It happens?" Randy was incredulous. "Like, shit happens? This isn’t somebody snaking a parking spot out from under me at the mall, or giving me the wrong order at the drive-thru. They took my damn kid, John."
"And you made enough noise about it they felt a need to take you, too," John allowed. "Adam’s lucky in that. Most kids who make the list don’t have someone to do that for them. Someone who will do that for them. But you did. That’s enough. Leave it alone now; let me take it from here."
"Just forget what I saw? Pretend it didn’t happen? I can’t do that, John. Maybe you could, but I can’t."
John snorted, shook his head.
"Whatever these things are," Randy added, "just knowing they’re out there changes everything. I can’t just close my eyes and hope for the best here. I may not be the toughest guy on the block, but I can’t just bury my head in the sand when my kid’s life is at stake."
"You willing to change your life over it?" John asked.
"If that’s what it takes, then yeah. Adam’s my son. I’ll do whatever I have to do to protect him."
"What about your daughters? Your wife? You willing to change their lives, too?"
Randy hesitated for a moment, then said, "We’re a family. We’ll do what we have to do."
John considered that. "The list is Nicolo’s list," he said abruptly. "These little bastards work for him. His pets, I guess you’d call them. Or slaves. Or lackeys. But whatever name you want to give them, it’s their job to take care of him all year long, and he takes care of them in return. Gives them a shopping list once a year: the Naughty List. Eight kids they can have. And your kid was on it."
"The Naughty List?" Randy repeated, wondering for a moment if John was technicolor insane or just plain ole black-and-white crazy as a loon. "Like naughty and nice? Like Santa’s naughty and nice? He knows when you’ve been sleeping? He knows when you’re awake? That list?"
John smiled a little. The look in his eyes was at least twice as scary as anything Randy’d yet seen when he said, "There’s some crazy shit out there in the dark, Randy. Most of it would sound vaguely familiar if someone tried to tell you about it."
"This is crazy," Randy said. "This is insane."
"Yeah? Well. What can I say? We’ll talk again after you’ve tried to explain to the cops exactly what grabbed your kid and shoved him up your chimney; and how they managed to get you up there, too."
That statement hit Randy hard, stunned him cold. John was right. They’d have him committed if he tried to tell them what really happened, what he really saw. Or didn’t see, being tied up in a sack at the time.
"Crazy is relative," John said grimly. "Compared to what came after my boys, this isn’t much more than just a blip on the radar."
"Something like this came after your kids, too?"
John’s eyes went dark, got reflective like he hadn’t realized he’d said that until he heard it repeated back to him. "We’re not talking about them; we’re talking about Adam. But if you’re serious about wanting to know the truth, then I’ll tell you what I can. Be sure you really want to know though, because once you hear something like this, you can’t un-hear it again."
Randy shoulders tensed. His jaw worked to keep from saying something that would get him decked by a man who could beat him to a smear on the cement without breaking a sweat. "I’m serious about wanting to know," he said finally. "What are they, and how did Adam get on their list?"
"Nicolo put him there."
"Nicolo … Mister Nicolo? Adam’s principal, Mister Nicolo?"
John grunted. "Yeah. Nice, huh? But you don’t have to worry him anymore. He retired earlier today. Permanently."
Randy hesitated. "You … killed him?"
"The important thing is that he’s gone," John said. "And after tonight, his krampuses will be, too."
"Krampuses?"
"Your furry friends. The one who talked to your kid? That’s Krokus. He and his mate, Perchta, run a pack that feeds once a year between the Twelfth Night and the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Always kids, always hand-picked by Nicolo, himself. Eight troublemakers who won’t be missed; who won’t stir the community to outrage when they disappear."
"Adam’s not a troublemaker," Randy said.
John’s expression didn’t change at all. "He made the list," was all he said.
Randy just stared at him. "Are you serious?" he asked finally.
"Dead serious. The serial killer you’ve got working in this area? The one on the news?"
"You mean The Straw Man?" Randy ventured.
"Not a serial killer," John said. "That’s what krampuses do. They eat the viscera, stuff the body cavity with straw and stones."
Randy gut pitched. He swallowed hard to keep his gorge where it belonged. "You said eight? But there’ve only been three-"
"They’ll find two more," John said. "A fourteen-year-old, another ten-year-old. Adam would have been number six."
Randy couldn’t answer that. He couldn’t process it, couldn’t make it anything more than just a collection of random words inside his head.
"The condition of the bodies are how I tracked them here," John said, watching him carefully. "How I knew they were hunting your area."
"Tracked them?" Randy asked after a long beat. "You tracked them here? Are you saying you do this for a living or something?"
"I do this to keep others from living through what I lived through. What I’m still living through." John glanced up again, saw Adam half a dozen feet from the top of the well. "You want more than that, it’ll have to wait. I don’t want Adam up there alone any longer than necessary. They can’t feed until Nicolo shows, but that doesn’t mean they can’t kill." He gave the harness he’d rigged around the lower half of Randy’s body another good, hard tug, then said, "Okay. You’re set. Remember what I said about keeping your feet on the wall. That mud’s slick as hell so it’s going to be a little tricky to accomplish; but if you slip up, you’re going to be banging against the wall every couple of feet all the way to the top. That happens, you’ll be lucky to get out with bruises instead of broken bones … or worse."
Randy just looked at him for a moment, then said, "Thanks for sugar-coating it for me, John."
John smiled. "Not much use for sugar in my line of work. Salt, on the other hand, comes in damn handy on occasion. See you topside."
He started up the second rope, moving fast, like he climbed ropes for fun. Or maybe for survival. It only took a couple of minutes for him to make it to the top. He actually beat Adam there, was already in place, ready to reach down and haul Adam out of the well as soon as he got to the last knot on his rope.
Randy could hear the mutter of voices above him, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. It sounded like an argument. Adam raised his voice a little, said something loud enough for Randy to catch the actual words: "I don’t care. I’m not leaving my dad down there. Period."
On one hand, it made Randy proud as hell to hear his son say that. On the other, it almost scared him into pissing his pants again. Was John really planning to leave him here? Good God, had he just let some stranger take his kid away from him, leave him standing at the bottom of a well in a rope diaper, thinking he was going to be rescued when all he was really going to be was left?
Maybe they don’t need a reason. Maybe they’re doing it just to be mean; just to make us think we’ve been rescued so they can laugh at the look on our faces when we find out we’re not.
Randy’s heart started to pound. He broke into a cold sweat, felt like somebody’d lit his skin on fire even though it was still colder than shit, and both his feet and ass were just about frozen solid. The night seemed overly dark all of a sudden, overly silent.
The echo of John’s words rang inside his skull: You know the serial killer you’ve got working in this area? The one on the news? Oh, God. Oh, God. They’ll find two more. A fourteen-year-old, another ten-year-old. He started to hyperventilate, felt himself going weak, getting dizzy. What happens at the bottom of a well stays at the bottom of the well, Randy. Crazy is relative. He listened as hard as he could, but he couldn’t hear a damn thing. Couldn’t hear his son’s voice; couldn’t hear John’s voice.
Staring up from the bottom of a well at the pockmarked moon floating like a watchful eye in the darkness above, Randy found himself praying again, but without words this time, without anything but the cold purity of absolute terror. How could he have done this? How could he have let this happen?
The silhouette of Adam’s head popped out over the rim of the well. There was just enough light reflecting off the wet stones below to make out his grin as he yelled down, "Here we go! Hang on, Dad!"
Randy’s knees gave. Had John not used all the rope’s slack to rig the harness knotted around his lower body, he would have fallen on his ass in the muck as the low, sonorous grumble of a V-8 engine kicked to life, breaking the night’s still with the kind of muscle car growl Randy imagined John to be: all power and no need for finesse.
Despite Adam’s warning, Randy was too busy being sick-to-the-point-of-passing-out relieved to be ready for that first jerk, to be ready to get yanked off the ground and left dangling in mid-air, spinning. He slammed against the muddy wall; tried to right himself, catch his balance, but only managed to bounce off the wall a second time.
The rope hoisted him a couple more feet, knocking him into the wall a third time. The impact wrenched his back, scattered his senses with a sharp smack to the temple.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait!" he heard Adam calling though the ringing in his ears. "Wait, wait, wait!" The herky-jerk ascent stopped. He hung in darkness, dangling, spinning.
"You okay, Dad?" Adam called down. "You got your feet yet?"
It took a second for Randy to gather his wits, to shake off the stun of being hiked into the air and battered against mud and stone. Figuring better late than never, he did what he could to follow John’s instructions, to get his feet planted squarely against the well wall so he could keep them between that wall and his already-battered, still-half-frozen ass.
That was a hell of a lot harder than it sounded.
Even with a good portion of his butt and legs still numb from hours of soaking in icy water, the harness John rigged up was still incredibly uncomfortable. The bind of rope cutting down between his legs, under his ass and around his waist again was using his own weight like a weapon against him. He felt like some poor, un-credited, underpaid schmuck getting chopped in half the hard way during the first ten minutes of a horror movie.
Like there was an easy way to get chopped in half in a horror movie.
But still …
"Dad?" Adam yelled again. "You okay down there?"
"Hang on a minute," Randy yelled back. Kicking like a kid in a twisted up swing, Randy jerked on the rope so hard and so many times that he managed to give himself some major league rope burns; but he finally got his body where it needed to be, got his feet placed flat against the wall. Once he was positioned to half-way resemble someone in a comedy sketch about mountain climbing, he gave Adam a thumbs up and yelled, "Okay. I’ve got it, son. Go ahead."
He made a point to hold onto the rope this time, to be more prepared for the jolt of motion that followed the audible gunning of that finessesless engine put to the gas pedal. Once they got going again, he progressed up the well in a slow pull punctuated by sharp, jerking heaves. He almost lost his footing twice, but managed to keep it right up to the very end.
He was only a couple of yards short of safety when one numb foot slipped on the muddy wall. His knee twisted hard and then gave, slammed him hip-first into the wall with enough force to rattle his teeth to the tonsils. The rope kept pulling, relentless progress that bounced him off the wall three more times before he hit the stone lip, got one leg wedged under it tight enough to keep him from popping out of the well to the ground above the way John no doubt intended for him to do.
Oh, shit.
The car didn’t seem to notice he’d stopped moving. It was still trying to drag him out of the well, still intent on accomplishing its objective even if it had to break him in two to do it. The pressure escalated incrementally. It was more than relentless now: more like inexorable. Pitiless. The rope cut in under his thighs. An excruciating pain bloomed through his body from knees to ribcage. His legs twisted, bending awkwardly.
"John!" he bellowed. "John! John!"
The car growled louder. The pressure just kept increasing.
He’d seen movies like this. It was usually westerns, sometimes gladiator flicks; but there were always two horses going in opposite directions, and one man tied between them.
It never ended well for the man tied between them.
Continue to Part 2