Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Sundown, you better take care
If I find you been creeping 'round my back stairs
Sometimes I think it's a sin
When I feel like I'm winning when I'm losing again"
— Gordon Lightfoot

Boyd Stevens sat at one of the booths in the Diner holding a coffee cup filled with nothing more than water inside of it, though he would've preferred something of the stronger variety. He was staring straight ahead at nothing in particular because his mind took him elsewhere, to places he'd rather ignore or forget, but couldn't. Currently, he was replaying the visage of Dale's dead face partially protruding from within one of the pool walls. He could still see the light leave the man's eyes while blood dripped from them, as well as from his nostrils; having been crushed to death by the concrete. Why had Dale been such a stubborn sonofabitch? Why couldn't he just listen? Why couldn't anyone just take what Boyd said at face value; that everything he did was for all of their good?

In the midst of his macabre reverie, the tabletop jukebox at the booth he was sitting at turned on and began to play music. And it wasn't just any music; it was a song he'd managed to overhear Dale hum to himself on a few occasions over the last two and a half years. It was 'Sundown' by Gordon Lightfoot, and it left Boyd wondering if it was Dale somehow saying hello from the Great Beyond; letting him know that he was okay now and was free of the suffering this place created. Or, was it whatever kept them stuck here in this town—taunting him?

Barely twenty seconds into the song, the bell above the door to the Diner dinged as someone stepped inside. With his back to the door, Boyd couldn't see who it was at the moment.

"I love that song," a female voice muttered. "It was my father's favorite. He used to play it on his guitar all the time when I was growing up."

Slowly, Boyd turned as a woman stepped behind the counter. Her blonde hair was tied up in a high, lazy ponytail. There was what looked like soot smudged across one of her cheeks, dark circles under her eyes, and her face was void of any emotion; one of the residents who had long since given up on ever getting out of this place.

"The Hermit graces me with her presence. I'm honored," he tried to tease, but it fell flat. The tabletop jukebox turned off, just as abruptly as it came on, and the silence was suddenly deafening. With a frown, Boyd asked, "What brings you out of your house?"

"Heard about Dale."

"It only just happened."

The woman—the 'Hermit', according to Boyd—looked up from the pot of hot water she was pouring into a cup behind the counter. "In case you haven't realized, this is a painfully small town. Information spreads quicker than a forest fire, and just because I very rarely leave the house, it doesn't preclude me from knowing about the shit that goes down here. I'm a recluse by choice, not some ignorant agoraphobe."

"Sorry," Boyd quietly apologized; something he felt he was doing a lot of lately and usually for things he wasn't even at fault for.

The woman was still puttering, likely finding a tea bag and whatever else to make tea the way she liked it, while occasionally looking over at him. "Tabitha Matthews came back, too, I hear?"

"Yeah, uh…she did." Furrowing his brow, Boyd looked to the woman. "I wasn't aware you'd met any of our new arrivals to know their names."

"They've been pretty active since arriving. Hard not to know who they are. Plus," the woman muttered as she picked up her mug and began to make her way back around the counter, "her husband is pretty cute, but you didn't hear that from me."

Despite everything, Boyd chuckled. As the woman sat down across from him in the booth, he sighed and leaned back slightly. "What—you been spying out your windows like a Peeping Thomasina?"

"There's no TV here, and I've read through all the books available that I care to read. And that Jim Matthews I find to be a sight for sore eyes."

"Am I not enough?" Boyd questioned with mock offense. "Is all this," he gestured at himself with both hands, "not enough visual stimulation?"

Taking a sip of her tea, the woman shrugged. "Variety is the spice of life, Boyd," she spoke into her cup.

After a moment of silence passed between them, he gripped his own cup in both hands again and stared more directly at her. "So, is Dale's death what managed to bring you out? Why him and none of the others lately? Not even Father Khatri?"

"He could be an antagonistic asshole, but Dale and I arrived here around the same time, within weeks of each other, so there was a sort of bond there. We hid together a lot before you arrived and found the talismans." Setting her cup down and staring into it, she added, "Even though he moved up to Colony House and I moved into a house here in town, and I've barely seen him in the last two years, doesn't change anything."

"Well, in that case, I'm sorry for your loss."

The woman smirked. "It wasn't just Dale that brought me here," she admitted. "I needed some supplies. Running low on baking soda."

"We're running low on a lot of things lately. Morale being one of them."

"Morale has always been low, Boyd."

"True." Taking a sip of his water, he flashed a crooked smile at her. "Shampoo, soap and toothpaste never has, though, thanks to you."

The woman shrugged again. "We all have our parts to play. And, if there's one good thing about being stuck here, it's having to not worry about running out of toilet paper. I don't know how it magically restocks itself and I'm not going to ever question it because I don't think I have a strong enough constitution for using leaves or scraps of cloth to get the job done." To make light of it, she shuddered dramatically and pretended to gag.

Boyd chuckled. "Maybe we don't even bring attention to it," he remarked; pointing between them both. "Whatever controls this place, if they're somehow listening to us right now, could take the TP away for the fun of it, just to fuck with us further."

"You mean they could take it away…for shits and giggles."

Boyd smacked his lips and rolled his eyes, but he couldn't avoid another chuckle in regard to that turn of phrase. As the heavy weight upon his shoulders seemed to lighten, thanks a great deal to her witty banter, he began to feel a little better. The darkness in his mind and in his soul seemed to ebb away for a while, though there was no doubt it would return soon enough. He'd take what little joy he could get, while he could. Out the corner of his eye, to his right, he noticed movement outside as a few people walked past the Diner. Dragging his dark eyes upward, he could see the sky was overcast, but could also see that the sun would be setting within an hour or so.

A heavy sigh escaped his lips. "It's gonna be dark soon," he stated. With a nod toward the back of the Diner, where the storage room was located. "You should get whatever supplies you needed." Then, with a frown he added, "I got a bell to ring."

The woman nodded and watched as Boyd slowly moved to slide out of the booth; leaving his cup behind. As he stepped away from the table and gave her a small nod goodbye, she continued to watch him go in the direction of the Sheriff's Office, which doubled as his residence. Left alone in the Diner made her feel a strange mix of calm and unease. She didn't mind the peace and quiet but didn't particularly like being in the Diner alone. Even though there was a talisman hanging in the window and it wasn't dark yet, she still felt as if something might be lurking around in the shadows; watching her, waiting to pounce.

Standing up with her cup of tea, she made it a point to turn on the lights so she wasn't bathed in the interior's encroaching darkness, despite how light it still was outside. It helped shoo away those shadows and felt less eerie. Sipping her tea as she walked, she grabbed a small cardboard box from behind the counter that was on the floor and took it with her as she headed toward the back of the diner; past the kitchen and into the storage room. While rummaging for the few items she needed and coming up successful in her endeavor, she soon made her way back into the kitchen. It was then when she realized she was no longer alone in the Diner.

As she stared through the pass-through window, from the kitchen toward the dining space, she found a man staring back at her who seemed just as startled as she was. Her startled reaction, however, caused her to drop her cup of tea, which shattered; spilling the liquid and scattering broken bits of porcelain upon the linoleum floor.

"Shit," she blurted; immediately setting the box down on a prep table and crouching down out of view. As she began reaching around to pick up the broken pieces, heavy footsteps quickly approached, causing her to look up briefly as the man in question appeared in the doorway.

"I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. I saw the lights on inside. Thought Bakta was here and could help me find something sweet to tempt my son to eat something."

The woman looked up again as she gathered the broken porcelain pieces in the palm of her hand and was now staring directly at the face of Jim Matthews, who had crouched down to help her clean up the mess he'd indirectly created. "It's okay," she insisted. "I didn't hear anyone come in. With it getting dark soon, I dunno…I guess I let my mind run away with me and assumed the worse."

"Sorry," he repeated.

She tried to avoid looking at him any further; especially considering her commentary to Boyd about him. "Don't be," she mumbled. Slowly standing up, she stepped aside and dumped the shards into the waste bin and then looked around for some sort of cloth to wipe up the spill. "The further along into perimenopause I get, the more clumsy I've been getting. Dropping shit, bumping into shit." Immediately pausing, realizing she'd unnecessarily divulged information that might be a bit TMI, she frowned. "You didn't need to know that."

Jim snickered and stood up as well; bracing the corner of the prep table as he did. Possibly because he wanted to shine a light away from her perceived embarrassment, he changed the subject. "I've been here a couple months and I've never seen you here before. I mean, I know I don't know everyone in this place yet, but—did you arrive with the bus from Grand Rapids? Are you living up at Colony House?"

Grabbing a dish towel and crouching back down, the woman shook her head. "I've been here much longer than you, Jim."

"You know my name and I don't know yours. Hardly seems fair," he lightly teased.

"Genny. With a G." Wiping up the spill as best as she could, the woman—Genny—once again stood back up and tossed the dish cloth aside. "Short for Genevieve, but don't call me that."

After a moment, Jim narrowed his gaze upon her and seemed to be studying her with more interest. As she stood there, staring back at him and trying to—again—not think of what she'd said to Boyd about him, she saw the look of recognition on his face and sighed. This happened with anyone over the age of thirty-five, give or take, who met her for the first time.

"Genny Carter?" he questioned with a small, shy smile; as if he were worried he was mistaken.

"Once upon a time, yeah."

"You were in that TV show—" He snapped his fingers a few times; the name of the television series right there on his tongue, but alluding him. "I used to watch it all the time in high school, back in the early nineties." More pointedly, he added, "You had that catchphrase; made the show." He smiled more properly, and it seemed like it had been a long while since he'd had a reason to. "'That's totally bogus beach!'"

Genny cringed. "I hated that catchphrase," she replied. "I still get stopped on the street, every once in a while, with people shouting that at me." Suddenly her face fell. "I mean…before here."

"How long have you been here?"

"Since May 2019," she answered. "So, almost three years."

"Jesus."

"He has nothing to do with it."

"So, how is it, in two months, I haven't seen you before now?" Jim wondered.

"Boyd likes to call me the Hermit. I just…choose to stay indoors as much as possible, not just at night, obviously." Not wanting to dwell on herself any more, she cleared her throat and gestured lamely about the kitchen. "You said you came here for snacks or something for your kid? It's gonna get dark soon, so you should get to finding what you can and get home," she urged; reaching for her cardboard box. "I'm gonna do the same."

"Where do you live?" he wondered. He wasn't trying to be nosey. He was just genuinely curious how there was a former sitcom star living in this place this entire time that he hadn't managed to cross paths with yet.

Genny pointed toward the front of the Diner. "Across the street, in the blue house."

"Huh." Jim's gaze drifted in that direction as she moved to step around him toward the doorway out of the kitchen. "Well, it was nice to finally meet you, Genny."

She nodded and cast a subtle look over her shoulder at him. "You too." As she stepped out from behind the counter and headed toward the vestibule door, she threw back, "If you run out of toiletries, like soap or shampoo, come see me. I'm not just the Town's Hermit; I'm apparently also the hygiene guru."

With a smile, Jim watched as Genny exited the Diner and then, without missing a beat, made it a point to hurry up and find something in the kitchen that would be appetizing enough to take his son's mind off his mother heading off to the Bottle Tree, so soon after just getting back from the outside world.

As for Genny, as she was greeted by the crisp air and the sight of snow clinging to the ground, which was a strange, new development in this place they were all stuck in, she heard Boyd ringing his bell before she saw him. Holding the cardboard box close to her chest, she nodded at him as he drew near; walking up the middle of the road. As he nodded back at her, she hurried up the stairs to her front porch and let herself inside. The moment she closed the door behind her, she locked it and went through the usual motions of drawing any and all open curtains or other drapery closed on the windows. She sprinted toward the back door and made sure it was locked.

When all that was said and done, Genny returned to the front of the house and grabbed up the cardboard box back from where she'd left it when she came in. Bringing it into the kitchen, she set it upon the table and began to remove the items inside when she realized she'd forgotten a few items from the kitchen because she'd been caught off guard by Jim's arrival.

Well, it was too late now.

She'd have to go back tomorrow morning.

She would have to make do with what she had right now. This was the time she kept herself busy. Once the sun went down and nighttime arrived, the screeching from the Creatures made it impossible to sleep most nights. In the three months leading up to the death of the Pratt family and the arrival of the Matthews family—and Jade—the Creatures hadn't been so loud. There hadn't been any incidents for nearly one hundred days. Now, it seemed there was something happening every day and night without fail.

Things were changing, and Genny doubted any of it was for the better, but there was nothing she could do about it.

What she could do was make her homemade soaps, shampoos and toothpaste for the people of the Town and for those up at Colony House.

They all had their parts to play.

Chapter Text

"Don't give up
You've got a reason to live
Can't forget
We only get what we give"
— New Radicals

A short while before the first rays of morning light began peeking through the trees, the intermittent screeching had finally stopped; the Creatures having retreated from whence they came once the new day began. Most people in both the Town and up at Colony House were still asleep, but not for long, as it was always best to make the most of every ounce of daylight in a place like this. As for Genny, she was already up. In fact, she'd never gone to bed. She'd spent most of the night making a few fresh batches of soap and shampoo; both in bar form. The only difference in appearance, so people didn't mistake one for the other, was that the shampoo bars she made in round molds.

With a cup of tea that was going cold, firmly in her grasp this time, she moved around the lower level of the blue house she called home while wearing a blanket draped around her shoulders for added warmth. This whole snow covering the ground and getting cold situation was very odd and, being a former lifelong resident of California, she wasn't sure she enjoyed the chill.

Knowing she still needed to get those few minor items she'd forgotten from the diner the evening before, along with making her bi-weekly trip up to Colony House, Genny downed the rest of her tea and set the empty cup down in the sink to wash out later. Making her way toward the front of the house, she draped the blanket she was wearing over the couch in the living room and then grabbed for her jacket that was hanging up by the front door when she heard the distinct sound of a door shutting nearby, which came from beyond her house. As per usual, when she heard any such noises but didn't feel like making herself known, she stood to the side of one of the windows, subtly pulled back the bed sheet that doubled as a curtain and took a gander on what was going on outside that might be of interest to her.

And interested she was.

Looking down the road a bit, to the left, she watched as Jim was stepping away from the Liu's house with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket and looked to be pacing for a moment and muttering; as if trying to work through some sort of mathematical equation. Which, she supposed that, as a former amusement park engineer—yes, she knew what he used to be because she paid attention, even if she didn't interact a whole lot—he very well could be doing just that. With a smirk, Genny stepped away from the window and went to the front door, unlocked it and pulled it open. As the cool air hit her in the face, she leaned against the frame and folded her arms over her chest.

And then, she just stood there and continued to watch him, this time without hiding herself away, as he began to slowly walk up the road in her direction. As he got nearer, she stepped more fully outside onto the rickety wooden porch and instead leaned against the post to the left of the rickety wooden stairs. With his head tipped down and his gaze focused on the road under his foot, Jim didn't notice her right away. It was when she cleared her throat that he finally looked up; his eyes darting around for a few seconds to figure out where the noise had come from.

When Jim spotted her, the deep-set frown that had been engraved upon his face seemed to vanish considerably as he smiled politely up at her. Coming to a stop a few paces in front of the abandoned, yellow Volkswagen Beetle at the edge of her front yard, he nodded his hello up at her. "Nothing in two months and then twice in twelve hours," he remarked.

"What do you mean?"

"Seeing you."

With a snicker and a shrug, she pushed off the post but kept her arms still folded. "Maybe it's like when you have a specific car, and suddenly all you ever see is that same make and model." With a thoughtful and somewhat distant gaze, she added, "Almost twenty years ago, I had this blue Saturn Ion and it was only after I got it that I saw other Saturn Ions everywhere I went. And it wasn't because there were so many around. They weren't that popular, if I recall, but I never saw them before I got mine and didn't see them after I got my next car."

"Funny how that is." Taking a few steps closer, he began to cut through the snow-covered front lawn, toward the stone walking path that led from the smaller road between her house and the pool to her front steps. "So, you an early riser?" He wasn't about to point out the fact that the dark circles around her eyes were very noticeable and thereby ask her if she slept at all. He would be correct in that assumption but he wasn't some kind of asshole to outright bring attention to a woman's appearance.

"Most days, yeah," she replied. "It's like clockwork. About an hour before sunrise, every day, by body wakes me up, regardless of how many hours of sleep I managed to get. Though, other times, like last night, I just haven't been to bed yet."

"I'm sorry."

Genny narrowed her gaze and raised an eyebrow at him. "Why?"

Jim shrugged. "I dunno. Seemed like the thing to say." He chuckled a bit awkwardly under his breath. "Was there a particular reason you were kept up last night?"

"It was just a bit loud—all the screeching," she commented; taking a deep breath and then expelling a particularly pronounced puff of warm air from between her lips. Another odd development, attributed to the change in this place. "I'm not exactly a light sleeper, per se, but I'm not a heavy one either."

"Sorry about that. I didn't think—"

"What do you keep apologizing for?"

"Oh," he muttered; realization hitting him like a baseball bat to the face. "You meant the Creatures."

It was her turn to chuckle, but audibly. "Who else would I have meant?"

"Nothing," he assured. "I guess I'm just a little tired. My brain's not braining this morning."

Seeing through his evasiveness, for whatever his reasons, Genny ignored it and unfolded her arms before reaching out to grip her left hand upon the rickety wooden handrail. Everything about this damn house's wooden exterior was fucking rickety. "So, why are you up and about so early?"

"Just needed to get out of the house," he began to explain; shifting his gaze up the road to his left and her right. "I'm gonna head up to Colony House and see about gathering up a few people to get the rest of the food found at the lake." Tilting his head to the side, he asked, "You wanna come along?"

"Oh, hell no. I don't go off into those woods anymore, even in the day. Not if I can help it," she quickly responded with a shake of her head. "Too many bad memories of early days—or rather nights—here." Licking at her bottom lip, her tired blue eyes drifted over his head toward the Diner across the street. "I was about to head back to the Diner, actually. Forgot a couple of items when you spooked me."

Jim grimaced sheepishly. "Sorry again."

"You and Boyd seriously need stop with the constant apologizing."

"I'd say 'sorry' to that, too, but I'm not sure I want to incur your wrath." Before she could respond in any way, shape or form, he quickly added, "I mean, not that I know you well enough yet to know if you even have the sort of temper or short fuse that would lead to wrath…"

Bringing her focus more squarely back upon Jim, Genny found he was already looking at her, and with an amiable smile. "I'm not quick to temper," she insisted. "You're safe."

With mock relief, he removed one of his hands from his coat pockets and pretended to wipe nonexistent sweat from his brow. "Phew."

A bit of laughter escaped Genny's lips. "I was planning on a brief jaunt up to Colony House, though," she continued to say.

"Oh?"

"Weekly delivery to restock what they've gone through. And, with the recent influx of residents, they'll be needing more than usual, which is fine because I've got plenty."

"Of your soaps and shampoos," he denoted.

"And toothpaste."

He seemed impressed, or was just placating her. "A regular Rembrandt."

"We all have our parts to play," she repeated what she'd said to Boyd the evening before. "I know how to make homemade hygiene goods. Seemed like a good situation to have once we had the safety of the talismans and could build some semblance of community here."

"I get it," he muttered; looking downward and digging the toe of his shoe somewhat further into the snow underfoot. "I'm still trying to figure out what part I play here, either in this community or in the grander scheme of things." With a sigh, he frowned and moved his gaze back toward the Liu's house where his family was living now. "I'm starting to think I should stop focusing on the mystery of this place. It seems like every time anyone digs too deep or pushes too far against the way things are, in hopes of getting home, this place pushes back and not for the better."

She hated seeing the light of hope going out of people's eyes after an a while, but she'd come to believe it was for the best to just accept the new normal; which is that this place was forever and there would never be any going home. They would live out whatever time they had left, and then die here. If they were lucky, they would manage to survive decades like Victor and then die of old age, asleep in their beds. Worst case—and the more likely—scenario was some bullshit would go down, they would get stuck outside or one of the Creatures would manage to get inside, and then they'd been agonizingly torn to shreds. If they were lucky, it would happen fast. If not…

Well, she tried not to think about that.

"I can think of something you could do."

Jim looked upward at her. "I'm all ears."

"You can help me carry my concoctions up to Colony House, and we can keep each other company on the walk up there," she suggested. Turning her attention to the right, where the road bent and led toward the large house on the hill's location, her brow knitted slightly together. "Even during the day I'm not the biggest fan of walking there on my own, so you'd be doing me a favor."

Slowly, he nodded. "I can certainly do that."

Turning away from the edge of the front porch, near the steps, she gestured for him to follow. "Come on inside from the cold. I gotta gather up my shit."

"I thought you had to go to the Diner?" he inquired; hesitating to move for a moment.

"I can swing by there on my way back." Beckoning him once more, she muttered, "Come on."

As she stepped inside, she finally threw on her coat she'd been reaching for before taking to spy out her window. A moment later, she heard the familiar creak of weight upon that damn rickety wooden porch, and then Jim appeared inside the entrance to the house. Casually noticing the way he looked around the interior and likely seeing nothing remotely interesting about it, as was the same with the rest of the houses here, she led the way past the stairs, through the small hallway and through to the kitchen. Spread out on the kitchen table were the soap molds and even a few bread tins filled with the cooling soap mixture she'd made during the night.

"Are these it?" Jim wondered; reaching for one of the molds, only for Genny to very nearly swat his hand away.

"Ah-ah-ah, those still have to settle for about another thirty-six hours. That's the fresh batch I just made," she explained as she moved toward the door that led down to her basement and pulled it open. "Bread tins are the regular soap, which I'll eventually cut into smaller squares. Cookie molds are the shampoo bars."

"Cookie molds?" He seemed intrigued.

"Springerle molds to be exact." Pausing, she cast a look over her shoulder at him as he continued to take in the sight of her latest—cooling—creations. "Springerles are this type of German cookie with an embossed design from when the rolled dough is pressed into the mold. I figured it added a special something for everyone; to have something pretty in a hellscape like this."

Holding his hair back with both hands, Jim leaned down and gave the molds a sniff. "Minty," he muttered.

"I get the dried mint from Colony House and other dried herbs, like lavender and rosemary, which I use for fragrance. Easiest to come by." After another moment, she beckoned to him once again. When he took the hint, he began to follow her down into the basement, but only after she clicked on the light so that they weren't descending into darkness. "I store the older stock down here because it's cooler and they harden more quickly that way. It's also where I make my own lye."

That brought an ounce of concern to Jim's face. "I hope you take precautions for that. Lye can be volatile. I mean, if handled incorrectly, it can burn your skin or eyes, cause damage if inhaled or accidentally ingested," he rambled off.

"I know." She immediately pointed to a table and the wash basin beside it.

On the table was a pair of large rubber gloves, goggles and a few boxes of N95 face masks, which gave him flashbacks to Covid, which he realized she would've missed out on; having been stuck here nearly a full year before the pandemic began, and was possibly the only good thing about being stuck here. When his gaze shifted to a few plastic buckets on the concrete floor, he was reminded of his wife Tabitha digging a hole in the basement in the house they'd initially lived in when they arrived, which soon led to the house collapsing on top of him.

Fun times.

As he took in this other extension of her workspace, he realized she was gesturing to some shelving a few feet away from where they stood. And he was thoroughly impressed. "You've been busy," he quipped as he stepped forward and took in the amount bars of soap, round bars of shampoo and small jars filled with what he assumed was the homemade toothpaste. Reaching forward to pick up one of the bars, he tossed her a tentative look. "Can I…?"

"Go ahead."

Bringing one of those bars to his nose, and smelling it, he smiled. "I like this one. Smells like you could eat it."

"I wouldn't if I were you," she warned with a smirk.

"This one is…" He sniffed again at it. "Lavender and…something else I can't pin."

Leaning forward, she gave the bar a sniff as well; having forgot which one it was. "Chamomile. I gather it myself. The flowers grow wild in a field nearby." Stepping back from him, she sighed. "Well, they did before the snow appeared."

"I think I remember seeing them. White petals, yellow center…like a daisy?"

To confirm his assumption, she gestured to another, smaller shelving unit that contained a few glass jars filled with chamomile flower bulbs that were dried out. "Yup," she replied with a nod before grabbing up two backpacks off the ground. "Fill your bag with the shampoo bars and jars of toothpaste from the top shelf, but position the jars around the bars so the jars don't clack together and potentially break." She then looked upward, as if doing one of those mathematical equations she'd mused about him working through. "That was a lot of unintentional rhyming."

Jim chuckled. "I wasn't going to say anything." As he began to reach for the products off the top shelf in front of them, he wondered, "Is your bag for the soap bars?"

"Yeah," she nodded. "I don't want to get them mixed up."

"Is it terrible if they do?"

Genny shook her head. "No, I think I'm just a little OCD."

Throwing a look back toward the table with her safety supplies for when she mixed her own lye, he asked, "Where'd you get those things from?"

"They came with me when I arrived here."

"You were a soap maker before this place?"

"Something like that."

As he switched things up and began to grab for the toothpaste jars, another question popped into his head. "Was acting no longer fulfilling?" Almost immediately, Genny began to clam up. Noticing the change in the air, Jim turned to look at her profile and felt bad; assuming he'd unwittingly touched a nerve. "Sorry," he once more apologized. "I didn't mean to…"

Plastering a forced smile upon her lips, but assuring him with a kind look in her eyes, she pushed a breath out from her nostrils. "It's fine. I haven't acted in a long time. I mean, it was never truly fulfilling to begin with; just something my mom pushed me into when I was six. A talent agent saw the two of us at the mall and thought I was 'a darling thing' and gave my mom his card. Shortly after that, I remember booking a few local commercials, then national. Then came the walk-on-roles on a few TV shows here or there," she began to elaborate on that part of her past. "I was getting tired of it. I just wanted to play with my friends. But then, when I was eleven, I booked 'You, Me and Our Three'."

"That's what it was called," Jim remarked with a smile. "It was right there at the tip of my tongue."

"It ran for seven seasons," she continued to say. "Should've ended after the fifth season when they recast my TV mom. There was a culling of the writers around that time, too, and the quality just went downhill. By the final season it was on its last legs." Zipping up her bag, after placing the bars of soap inside of it, she turned toward Jim. "I took time off from acting after that. Tried college for a while, but left after barely two years. I wasn't America's sweetheart anymore, so it was hard to find my niche." As he listened to her with genuine interest, she put an arm through one of the bag's straps. "I landed minor roles in a few teen movies, reverting back to walk-on-roles on other TV shows. Then I fell into the occasional made-for-TV movie or straight-to-DVD movie, or was the blonde bimbo who got killed off in the first scene of a horror flick." With a frown that said 'what are you gonna do?', she added, "I was washed up by twenty-five and I became dangerously close to going the way of too many former child actors." Without explicitly stating for him to follow her, Genny merely began to step away from the shelving unit and headed back to the stairs. As he fell in step behind her she kept her eyes trained ahead of her toward the basement door until they made their way back up into the kitchen. "It took one really bad night and I decided to turn myself around. I tried college again. I didn't get a Bachelor's degree or anything like that, but I did manage a Paralegal Studies Certificate from UCLA."

"So you became a paralegal?"

"Yeah, and I enjoyed it for a while." She almost laughed, as if the notion was ridiculous. "It was my first normal job where I was just Genny Carter instead of," she threw her hands up and made the jazz hands gesture, "Genny Carter."

Turning off the basement light and closing the basement door behind them, she continued to lead the way; this time back out of the house. Both had fallen silent for a bit after they stepped into the cool air again. As their shoes began to crunch in the snow, which didn't seem to cling to the road as if did to the grass, the pair fell in step beside each other with their respective backpacks slung over their shoulders while heading up the road toward the church, where the road bent.

"Can I admit something a little embarrassing to you?" Jim inquired; his eyes once more focused on the ground before them.

"Sure."

"Yesterday, when I said I watched your show all the time in high school, I wasn't lying."

"I didn't assume you were."

"But, more than that…" He tossed a brief, somewhat shy look her way. "I had your picture on my bedroom wall." Looking quickly away, he immediately frowned at himself. "I think I ripped it out of one of those Teen Beat magazines that used to be popular." Shoving his hands as deeply into his coat pockets as they could go, he was starting to wonder why the hell he was admitting any of this. It made him feel so painfully awkward. "I, uh, kinda had a crush on you for a while."

"You and every other hormonal boy from back then," she mused with a good-natured laugh. It was kind of nice to hear him say this, because it deflated the awkwardness she had initially felt after finally making his acquaintance the evening before; after admitting to Boyd she thought he was nice to look at. "The studio execs would send us to these fan events once in a while, usually at malls or civic centers, and I could barely beat them boys off with a stick." Without hesitation, Genny blanched. "That sounded better in my head."

"Had I lived in Southern California, where I assume those fan events were, I might've been one of those boys, had I the chance." Jim found himself blanching as well; feeling as if he'd put his foot in his mouth or crossed a line he shouldn't have. He shifted his attention more upright and further on up the road, where Colony House was coming more into view. "So, uh, what supplies did you need from the Diner?" he asked; desperate for a change of subject.

"Um, baking soda, mostly. For the toothpaste," she replied, grateful for the change in subject. "It was actually the main thing I went there for."

She didn't often talk about her youth, or past in general, because it hurt too much; knowing she'd never get back to the life she'd left behind. More importantly, she'd never get back to her—no. Nope. Don't focus on it. It won't help. It'll just deepen the ache.

"I used to do that almost every time Tabitha would send me to the grocery store. I'd go in for one thing and come out with everything but."

"Been there, done that," she commiserated with a smile.

"I remember, when our daughter was a few weeks old, I went in for diapers. I came home with formula, baby wipes, chocolate ice cream and, I dunno, probably something random like toothpicks because I was a new dad and sleep-deprived. Tabitha just looked at me like I was an idiot and then would just take the keys from me, grumble about having 'to do everything around here' and leave me at home with Julie to get the diapers." Turning his gaze back toward Genny, he began to chuckle. "And then she came home with everything but diapers."

"Also been there and done that."

Narrowing his gaze, he broached the subject she was avoiding. "Do you have kids, too?"

Before she could answer, Donna appeared on the front porch of Colony House and spotted the approaching pair. As she waved to them, and shouted a 'good morning' to them in her usual brusque manner, Genny was more or less saved by the bell and could avoid any further discussion about her past and her personal life that she wasn't comfortable talking with him about just yet. Very few knew much about any of that, but it was mostly because she didn't go out of her way to socialize with anyone.

"Ooh, good," Donna muttered as she descended the stairs to meet them halfway. "Soap we've been good on, but please tell me you have those shampoo bars with you."

"And more toothpaste," Genny answered, sliding her backpack off and passing it to the older woman. "And I brought more of everything than usual, what with the increase in people you got here."

A look of frustration passed over Donna's eyes, but then also gratefulness. "We can always count on you to keep providing. Starvation might be right around the corner, but at least our corpses will be clean."

"And that's why I'm here," Jim interjected; sliding the backpack he'd been carrying off his shoulder to hold the strap by the hand. "I've come to join whoever's going back to the lake to get the rest of the food we found."

"I don't think there's much to bring back. I think Kenny's group brought most of it back yesterday."

"Most isn't all," he countered.

Donna shrugged. "Not sure who might be going, but you're more than welcome to come in and wait around. Not everyone is up and about yet."

Gripping the backpack Genny had given her a bit better in her hand, she retreated back toward the stairs and led the twosome up toward the front door. Letting Genny go ahead of him up the stairs and into the house, Jim looked casually around at the front porch and back over his shoulder toward the direction of the Town. After stepping through into Colony House, spotting a few early risers moving about from room to room, he was a bit caught off guard when Genny took the backpack from him.

"Thanks for the walk and the talk, and helping me bring this stuff up here," she muttered with an appreciative smile.

Jim smiled back at her and them promptly shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. "Likewise," he responded with a nod. As she began to walk after Donna, who was wasting no time disappearing further into the bowels of the house—likely toward the kitchen—Jim began to say something more, which caused Genny to stop and turn back toward him. "I suppose, now that we've met and officially interacted two whole times, I'll be seeing you everywhere from here on out."

With a playful grin as she walked backwards for a few steps, Genny joked, "Your very own Saturn Ion."

A hearty chuckle spilled from Jim's lips; his mood shifting upward. After the fight he'd had the night before with Tabitha, with his life seeming up in the air, and with nothing making sense anymore, it was a welcome reprieve to be able to laugh and smile with someone. It made him feel a sense of normalcy again, and he was glad he walked into the Diner the night before; allowing him to meet the source of his newfound levity.

It had been sorely lacking in his life for a while now.

Chapter Text

"Can't you hear me knockin'?
Ahh, are you safe asleep?"
— The Rolling Stones

On her walk back to her house, Genny had felt a little lighter in her steps. With the sun shining overhead and the snow underfoot, everything was also literally light. It wasn't just her mood and outlook. She had given over the soaps, shampoos and toothpaste to Donna for Colony House and, in exchange, was given several bundles of dried herbs, as well as a couple of cleaned, empty jars from the toothpaste that had already been used up. While both women had made a brief foray into small talk, Donna had asked of Genny a question that had been on her mind for some time, which led into a slightly deeper conversation.

"I've never bothered to ask before but why do you choose to live alone in Town? You know you'd be more than welcome up here."

Genny had smiled politely; silently thanking Donna for the consideration. "I like the quiet. During the day, anyway," she added quickly and knowingly. "I like the privacy, and not having to share a bathroom with dozens of people."

Donna snickered. "What about just one extra person—a roommate? You know, sort of like a buddy system, in case something happens, and I don't necessarily mean those Creatures." She pressed one hand upon the kitchen table while shoving the other into the pocket of her jeans. "You could fall heading up or down those stairs to your basement, with all your soap molds. Who would hear you all the way down there to get you help? You barely come out of that damned house. No one would think to check in on you until it was likely too late."

"Well, if I died falling down the stairs, I'd consider myself lucky," Genny retorted. "Better to go out like that than the alternative."

She didn't need to spell it out. Donna got the gist.

Shortly after that, Genny had left Colony House with Donna urging her to be less of a stranger. With a few friendly nods at those she barely knew or didn't know at all, the 'Hermit' headed back to Town on her own. She hadn't seen Jim leave, but she was aware that only two others had gone with him to the Settlement where the rest of the food still needed to be gathered up. Because of the amount of time it took to get there on foot, Donna had mentioned it meant staying over at the Settlement in some sort of rudimentary cabins that were there. When Genny had appeared concerned, Donna had seemed to understand where Genny's mind was at. They both remembered the pre-talisman days, so Genny was relieved to hear that a talisman had been taken with the food gatherers to keep them safe during the night.

The backpack filled with empty toothpaste jars rested on Genny's back and the other, filled with the dried herbs, she held in her hand. When she rounded the corner where the church sat, she looked up briefly and was certain she saw movement in a window of the Myers' house where Sara had resumed living. She could safely assume it had been Sara staring out the window at her, much like she did with the others in Town, just more discreetly.

Passing the Diner on her right and the grey house next door on her left, Genny had arrived home. She'd ascended the rickety wooden steps and let herself inside. She didn't lock the door, not yet. That was only something she did come nightfall. She brought the backpacks into the kitchen and hung them on the backs of two of the chairs surrounding the table and then felt the grumble in her stomach of hunger. Not that she had much to eat, the same as everyone else, but she had enough to make do with for now.

As she went about looking for something to eat, she settled upon frying a couple of eggs. She had two potatoes, some green onions and a carrot she would do something with later in the day for dinner; skipping over lunch to spread out her rations. Tea was usually her best option for something to drink, but with sugar low, and not being a fan of goat's milk, she opted for a dollop of honey in her tea to make it somewhat sweet and enjoyable to drink. Being by herself, there was no need to stand on ceremony. She grabbed a fork and ate her fried eggs straight out of the frying pan when they were done, as she stood at the stove, and sipped her tea, which she rested on the counter beside her. She washed the frying pan after in silence and then looked at the backpacks.

"Shit," she muttered; having forgotten about going to the Diner for the couple of items she still needed.

There really was no rush, though.

She'd made a trek to the Diner the evening before and had just made the trek to and from Colony House. Perhaps that was enough heading out of the house in less than twenty-four hours.

The day had progressed slowly, as most did for Genny.

Soap making wasn't a particularly arduous task, so it didn't often take up too much of her time, especially when she'd long since had it down to a science, and that was considering her knowledge on the subject before arriving to this place. It was something she had already known how to do and it was a way she could contribute to this ragtag society of survivors, and it gave her something to keep her busy so her mind didn't dwell too much on what she couldn't change.

When she heard the bell ringing outside, denoting sundown was approaching and for those outside to get indoors, Genny had locked her front door. After stealing a look at her talisman beside it, to make sure it was safe and secure, and would in turn keep her safe and secure, she headed toward the back door off the kitchen, which she knew was still locked from the evening before, but had to make sure…just in case. She made sure all the windows were shut and that all curtains or makeshift drapery were drawn closed.

She'd already made and consumed her dinner by that point, and had no plans for further work, so she was finally able to let exhaustion fall heavy on her shoulders. She felt like a stone, sinking into mud, with each step she took upstairs. She turned off all the lights as she went and, when she reached her bedroom, she didn't bother with turning on just one of the bedside lamps. She went to one of the two windows that looked out at the street below, and pulled aside the bed sheet that acted as a curtain, but only a hair. She didn't see anyone outside, but she could make out the glow of a light on inside the Myers' house, which she took to mean that Sara was still up.

She felt bad for the girl. She knew she did a terrible thing but, in a place like this, there were always extenuating circumstances. Nothing was black and white. It was all grey. This place had fucked with Sara's mind and led her to do things that were against her better judgement. Maybe if they all just looked out for each other a little better, things like that wouldn't happen.

Stepping away from the window when she noticed movement near the end of the road, coming out of the woods, Genny tensed up and scurried over to her bed. She slipped under the covers and curled up into a ball and tried not to think of anything.

She tried not to think of the literal monsters lurking around outside.

She tried not to imagine any of them walking up the rickety wooden steps to her rickety wooden porch.

She tried not to picture their unsettling gazes as they tried to peer inside her house.

She tried not to listen as their screeching began in the distance, as she they began milling about; whispering amongst themselves or urging the people in Town to come out of their homes or to let them inside instead.

Genny had been on the receiving end of the latter enough times. One of the last times, half a year ago, when the last incident had occurred prior to the death of the Pratt family, Genny had felt particularly bold and pulled back one of the curtains downstairs to find the Creature dressed like a Milkman on her porch. As he taunted her and asked her to open the door, she'd scowled at him, told him to fuck off, and flipped him the bird. After closing the curtain and heading up to bed, nothing overly eventful had happened after that for at least a couple hours. Then, close to midnight, she'd heard the screaming, but she knew it didn't come from those Creatures.

The following morning, she'd heard the commotion outside and had come downstairs. With the sun having come up on a new day and the Creatures having retreated once more, she knew it was safe to unlock her front door and pull it open to see why the people in Town were gathering.

She hadn't expected to find a dead body propped up and gutted on her porch.

Boyd and Father Khatri had been the ones to remove the body and take it to be buried beside the church. Donna had helped Genny in cleaning the blood up afterward, which was when Genny had wondered if the body of the dead townsperson had been left there on purpose by the Milkman.

So, from then on out, she refused to give in and engage; not even a little bit.

Once more doing her best ignore the usual nightly sounds, Genny tried thinking shifting her focus away from the darkness of this place and toward something that brought her cheer rather than fear. Shifting around in bed to get more comfortable, she closed her eyes in hopes of dreams instead of nightmares and then, for the few moments before her exhaustion finally claimed her, Jim passed through her mind.

As the night wore on, Jim was sitting upright with his back against an interior wall of one of the cabins at the Settlement. To his right, a fire crackled to keep him and his two companions warm. None of them seemed capable of getting much rest. The fire only did so much, plus there was that eerie movement of something outside the cabin that Jim had mentioned sounding different than the Creatures in town. His companions seemed perturbed by the idea of something more out there that could try to hurt them, and chose to keep primarily silent; willing sleep to come.

Jim fiddled with a random twig for most of the night as he listened to the crackling of the fire while trying to drown out the snapping of other twigs outside from whatever was lurking. He tried to force his mind to think of anything but. When he thought about his children, he felt nothing but worry for their safety and everything they'd been through since arriving. He wanted nothing more than to protect them, but felt like he'd been nothing but a failure as a parent lately. Then, when Tabitha crossed his mind, he felt regret. If they'd just told the kids about their plans for divorce, maybe they'd have never gotten stuck here. Those first few days, however, seemed like this place could allow Tabitha and him to work on their issues and find their way back to each other again, but all they did was spiral. They kept butting heads, just like before; unable to get past the root of their problems.

The road trip was never going to fix his marriage. This place wasn't going to either, but he would fight to keep Tabitha safe, the same as their kids, whether they remained as husband or wife, or not.

"Penny for your thoughts, Jim?" the male companion, whose name Jim had already forgotten, asked; cutting through the silence of the cabin.

Jim blinked a few times and drew his focus upward. A deep, languid sigh escaped his lips as he shrugged. "Just…" He tried to find the words. "Just thinking about my family."

It was a simple answer, and accurate, without having to go far into it.

"Wanna play a game to pass the time?"

A small chuckle escaped Jim's lips. "I don't remember either of you bringing Monopoly with you."

"Nah, like a verbal game. Like '20 Questions' or 'I Spy'. Like that…"

The female companion sat up straighter. "I'll play."

"Alright," the male muttered with a slight smirk; also clearly doing his best to ignore the sound of footsteps and the occasional banging against the outside of the cabin. "We each take a turn, asking a random question that the other two have to answer."

"Like Truth or Dare, but without the dare?"

"Sorta. But mostly as a way to get to know each other."

Jim shrugged again. "Yeah, okay. Why not? I'll play."

The male companion smiled. "Okay, I'll go first," he muttered. "Alright, let's start simple: what's your favorite color?"

The woman snickered. "That is very simple." Then, "Purple."

"I like blue." The male turned his focus back to Jim. "And you?"

"I like blue, too."

"My turn," the woman spoke. She paused for a few moments as she thought up a question. "Ooh, okay, I got one." With an amused grin, she asked, "Who was your first celebrity crush? Mine was Keanu Reeves."

Jim tipped his head back. Of all the questions.

"Winona Ryder," the male companion replied with an almost dreamy look in his eyes. "Loved her in 'Heathers'."

When he realized both were staring back at him for his answer, Jim couldn't very well name Genny without making it suddenly awkward, so he tried to think further back into his youth. "Um…" He was struggling. It seemed like the more he tried to not think about Genny, that's all he could think about.

"I'd say we don't have all night, but we kinda do," the woman teased.

Just pick someone, Jim, he urged himself. Pick anyone.

"Uh…Heather Locklear."

She was literally the first female celebrity from his youth that came to mind after Genny and, the thing is, he never actually had a crush on Heather Locklear. He just picked her so they could move on to the next question.

"She was quite the beauty," the male companion remarked. He then gestured at Jim. "Your turn to ask a question."

Jim suddenly wished he hadn't agreed to this 'game' and had instead tried to sleep. "Um, favorite ice cream flavor?"

While the other two took their turns answering, Jim's mind began to wander. He was vaguely aware that they were expecting him to give an answer to his own question, the same they did to their own, but he was no longer paying attention. He hoped they'd chalk it up to him being tired. Closing his eyes seemed to help the matter. He was aware they'd begun to talk more quietly to each other; likely assuming he'd had fallen asleep or was in the process of it.

And, turns out, he was falling asleep.

The last waking thoughts he had weren't of his worries or his fears in regard to wife and kids, or of this place.

He found himself slipping into a dream as a pair of blue eyes stared back at him in his mind.

A couple of hours before sunrise, Genny woke up to knocking. It was loud and coming from downstairs. At first, because she knew she'd been asleep for some while, she thought that the sun had come up and it was someone like Boyd or Donna coming to look in on her. But, as she sat up, she could tell that, beyond the bed sheet draped over her bedroom windows, it was still dark out.

It definitely wouldn't be Boyd or Donna.

She tried to ignore it, but it just kept on happening. For at least ten minutes, off and on, the knocking continued. She couldn't drown it out, and it was making her angry.

Throwing the covers off of her, she got out of bed and marched toward her bedroom door, but then stopped.

This was what they wanted.

The Creatures wanted to rile her up, to taunt and toy with her; perhaps make her angry enough to open the front door and really give them a piece of her mind. Genny knew she was stronger than that, though. She'd made it here almost three years without giving in to their attempts to lure her out. She would continue to remain strong. But, if she went downstairs and told them to shove off, would they react by eventually dumping another dead body on her porch?

Taking that chance, she slipped down the upstairs hallways and slowly descended the stairs. The sound of the knocking became louder, the closer she got. She noticed the shadow from one of the Creatures shifting about outside the front door.

"Go away," she called out. "Please, just go away. There's nothing you can say to coax me outside and I would never let you inside."

"It would be so much more fun if you did, though," a male voice replied.

She knew that voice.

The Milkman.

That motherfucker.

"I'm not in the mood to have you rip me to shreds, and I don't appreciate you leaving bodies of my neighbors on my porch. So, please fuck all the way off."

"Now, that isn't very nice."

"Monsters don't deserve nice."

"Your neighbors think Sara Myers is a monster. Maybe she'll come out to play."

"Fuck. Off."

In response, the Milkman began knocking again.

"Fuck off! Fuck off! Fuck off!" she shouted before crouching down to sit on the bottom step. Burying her face in her hands, she fought off tears of fear and frustration. Then, whispering, mostly to herself, "Please leave me alone."

The knocking ceased, but she knew the Milkman remained by the creaking floorboards on the porch.

"Would be more fun if you weren't alone. One person is a bit boring. Two people, though? The more the merrier, they say."

"Leave me alone," she repeated, this time a bit more audibly.

"You should make more friends. Having someone to play with is always good fun."

Genny looked up toward the door and could see the Milkman was practically pressing his face against it, but not quite—because of the talisman preventing it from touching the house. But then—how was he knocking? Standing up, she carefully stepped closer to the door and took a steadying breath. As she pulled back the drapery, the Milkman's true face was staring back at her and he was gripping, in his claw-like hand, the severed head of—

"Ahhh!" Genny screamed and fell to the ground, but it was short drop.

Looking around, she realized she wasn't downstairs, but instead on the floor beside her bed and, through a gap in the bed sheet covering her bedroom windows, she could see that it was morning.

"What the fuck," she murmured.

It had all been a nightmare.

She sighed with relief.

Nightmares, she could handle. If what she'd dreamt had been real, she might've opened the door and attempted to take her rage out on the Milkman; getting her pound of flesh before she was eviscerated. However, it hadn't been real. It had all been the inner workings of her mind, and only happened because she'd briefly thought about that time with the Milkman half a year prior.

Picking herself up off the floor, she plodded over to the window and pushed the makeshift drapery aside to stare out the window at the street below. Very few people were up and about. It was also raining, which was melting some of the snow that had fallen, and there was a slight fog hanging around. It was almost as eerie as nightfall, but with the benefit of knowing everyone was safe because of it not being nightfall.

Heading back over to her bed, Genny laid back down and stared up at the ceiling.

Despite being grateful it had all been a nightmare, she couldn't shake that last image from her mind.

Chapter Text

"Nothing's really making any sense at all
Let's talk, let's talk"
— Coldplay

Due to the rain and the unsettling feeling left behind by her nightmare, Genny didn't venture out of the house the rest of that day. Not even just to go across the street to the Diner to at least get that baking soda she'd forgotten. It could wait.

Instead, she remained inside and went down into the basement to make a new batch of lye, even though she was running low on wood ash. However, that was easy to come by. It was something else she usually got in return from Colony House, along with the dried herbs, but if she wasn't heading across the street, she sure as shit wasn't going all the way to that big house on the hill. So, she made do with what she had, which was plenty enough. She also finally began prying those shampoo bars from the Springerle molds and cutting up the soap bars now that they'd had two days to harden and settle. After that, she stored them downstairs on the shelving unit where the others were stored.

The evening before, she'd made a light soup with the potatoes, green onions and single carrot she had. She hadn't eaten all of it, though. Since she'd skipped over breakfast, she went straight to eating the leftovers for lunch, and then headed up to finally take a shower. Feeling physically refreshed and changed into a clean pair of clothes, she puttered around upstairs; making her bed, wiping dust off of surfaces. Sometime after that, she headed back downstairs and cleaned out the used bread tins and Springerle molds so they'd be ready for when she poured whatever her next batch of soaps and shampoos would be. She also took the cleaned, empty toothpaste jars and the dried herbs she'd gotten from Colony House out of the two backpacks; placing the jars in cupboard for now, and clipping the herbs to a string dangling from the ceiling near the back door.

By nightfall, she ate a pack of stale crackers for a late dinner while drinking another cup of tea, but she didn't go straight up to bed. She sat in the living room with a light on and read one of the books she'd recently decided to reread, which was something she rarely did. Knowing how the story ended usually left little to be desired. Even before this place, she never reread books. When it came to TV shows or movies, she very rarely re-watched anything.

It was after she heard the familiar screeching beginning that she felt she had pushed it far enough with hanging around downstairs with a light on. Turning the light off and closing the book without bothering to dog-ear the page she'd left off on, Genny slipped quietly upstairs and went to bed.

Fortunately for her, she slept soundly and didn't wake up on the floor the following morning.

Once she was up and around on this new day, she noticed the rain had stopped but gentle flakes of snow had resumed lingering in the air. Throwing on her shoes and her coat, she finally slipped out of the house and made her way to the Diner. Once inside, she went straight for where she knew the baking soda to be; taking one of the smaller boxes. In regard to the other minor items she'd initially planned on grabbing, they no longer seemed important, so she left without them.

Heading back into her house, she brought the baking soda into the kitchen and considered working on making some new batches of toothpaste, but instead went to check on her lye solution downstairs, which had been mixed and stored in large white buckets with lids. Everything looked good still, so she returned upstairs again and began laying out the bread tins for the soap she was going to make. She unclipped a few sprigs of dried lavender, which she set upon the table along with a few other utensils she'd need. She wasn't going to start right that moment with making new soap, but she was preparing for it. She was probably going to aim for another all-nighter; to keep herself busy while the screeching occurred. It was something she did plenty of nights anyway. She could always catch some sleep during the day.

When she finally managed to eat something for lunch, once again bypassing breakfast, she took another shower and changed into another clean pair of clothes, and then made herself a new cup of tea. Carrying the mug toward the front of the house with her, she stepped out onto the porch and sat down at the top of the steps; enjoying the crisp air for at least a few minutes while also enjoying the way the heat from the cup warmed the palms of her hands.

Genny was still sitting there when she noticed people coming out of the woods, up the road on her right. Initial instinct put her on high alert, but then she had to remember it was daylight. They weren't the monsters that went bump in the night, but townspeople. And they weren't just any townspeople. The closer they got, she could see they were Jim, his wife Tabitha, their son Ethan, and Jade.

With a smile as they drew nearer, she gave them all a wave. The boy, Ethan, looked up and politely waved back, even though he hadn't made Genny's acquaintance yet and had no idea who she was. Tabitha and Jade's gazes seemed to be focused ahead of them. Jim was the only other person that looked her way, but not because she had waved.

His weary blue eyes were already drifting toward her house before he even realized she was sitting outside. With everything going on lately and as recently as the afternoon before when Tabitha, Jade and Ethan showed up at the Settlement, which led to the four of them hunkering down in one of those cabins again for the night, Genny was somewhat of a sight for sore eyes.

She'd made him smile and laugh in a place that had only made him cry and tried to kill everyone every night.

"Hi," she greeted with a smile.

"Hi," he replied; his tone a bit more sullen.

He didn't stop to chat any further. He continued up the road where he joined Tabitha and Ethan inside the Liu's house—which was now just there house because apparently Kenny Liu had decided to move up to Colony House. Jade continued on a bit further, where he retreated into the Bar, which had once been a gas station. As she watched the latter part ways with three of the four Matthews family members, Genny stood up and headed back inside of her house.

She was glad to see they'd all made it home safely.

After Jim's altercation with Jade at the bar, Victor's father Henry had offered some unsolicited advice to Jim, which Jim did take to heart, but his mind was just so muddled with everything going on. It felt like there was a puzzle in his head, but there were too many pieces missing to make sense of what the bigger picture was. As Henry began to pour another drink for himself, Jim was about to pull up a chair and sit down with the older man, but he felt a pull elsewhere. His gaze drifted toward the door. He didn't want to talk with Henry, even though he appreciated attempt at camaraderie.

Noticing the way Jim seemed to be lingering between staying and going, Henry asked, "Care for a drink?"

Jim turned and looked back at Henry; watching as Henry grabbed for an empty glass and was prepared to pour a drink. "Uh…no, thanks. My dad was a drunk, so…"

"So was mine."

"I think…" Jim's train of thought stalled. Instead of finishing his sentence, he just put one foot in front of the other and, before he realized it, he had walked out of the bar and back out into the daylight.

"More for me, then," Henry muttered to himself.

Of course, that went unheard by Jim, because he was already outside. Looking to his right, toward the town, his gaze shifted from building to building and from house to house. He looked upon what was his now, since Kenny had decided to move up to Colony House, at least for the time being; assuming both of his children were still inside where he'd asked Julie to keep an eye out on Ethan. Then, his gaze moved a little further up toward Genny's blue house and that pull from moments earlier grew stronger. He couldn't explain it, but he felt compelled to see her; that talking to her instead of still talking to Henry might soothe the soul, so to speak.

Again, without realizing it, his feet were moving. He was walking down the center of the road; soon passing his house on the right and the Sheriff's Office on the left, and then past the pool on his right and the bus from Grand Rapids on his left. Another dozen or so feet next, the ruins of his former home came up on his left and then, on his right, he was standing in front of Genny's house.

Why did he suddenly feel nervous?

Furrowing his brow, he inhaled a deep breath and walked across the small front lawn where the snow was barely clinging anymore because of the rain that had fallen. With each step he took up the stairs, the wood creaked underneath him. As he came to stand in front of the front door, Jim lifted his hand and knocked. Then waited. After a few moments of nothing, he knocked again.

Part of him considered that maybe Genny had gone across the street to the diner, but his gut told him she was here. After knocking a third time, he called out her name because maybe she was wary of who was on the other side of the threshold.

Still, nothing.

With an ounce of concern plaguing him, he made the decision to turn the knob and let himself in. As Jim entered the house, his eyes went to the right, toward the living room first, and then darted ahead of him, down the small hall toward the kitchen. "Genny? You here?" Stepping further inside, he shut the door behind him to keep the cold air out and then stuck his head into the living room to get a peek through to the dining room, but he didn't see any sign of her. Taking a few steps to the left, he grabbed the end of the banister to the stairs and looked upward. "Genny, it's Jim. I just came by to…" He sighed. "Honestly, I'm not entirely sure why…"

Again, nothing.

But then, he heard the muffled sound of something clattering coming from below him, in the basement. Jim chuckled quietly to himself as he realized Genny must be in the basement with her soap-making. Walking forward toward the kitchen, he noticed the basement door was closed, which probably contributed to her not hearing him. His voice would've carried more easily otherwise. Pulling the door open, he looked down the dimly lit stairs and called out, "Genny…hey. It's Jim."

"Jim?" she questioned; possibly to make sure she heard correctly.

"Yeah. Sorry if I'm interrupting. I was—"

Genny appeared just then at the base of the stairs with her hands filled with bars of soap, judging by their square-ish shape. "Hey," she smiled up at him; her hair pulled back off of her face but with a few wily strands doing whatever the hell they wanted. "What's up?"

"Um…"

He felt a bit foolish now. He barely knew her. Why was he wanting to talk to her over anyone else he knew better in this place, that he could go to advice to or spill his guts about his hopes and fears to? What was the pull he felt toward her, beyond the fact that he'd had a wet dream or two about her when he was still pubescent.

For fuck's sake, why didn't he have to think about it like that?

"Cat got your tongue?" she teased.

He chuckled nervously. "Sorry, uh, just was wondering if you had a moment to chat. But, you're busy. I'll just—"

"Pfft, nah. It's okay," she insisted. "Let me just set this shit down and I'll be right up."

As she disappeared from his line of sight, Jim stepped backward from the door. He moved closer to the table and grabbed onto the back of a chair; his eyes dancing over the mess on the table. When he heard her footsteps coming up the stairs, he bit down on his bottom lip and then stopped to smile politely at her when she appeared in the kitchen.

"Sorry for showing up unannounced, and just letting myself in," he apologized. "And I'm sorry for constantly saying 'sorry'. It's probably gonna happen again."

Genny laughed. "It's fine."

"I did knock a few times, and was calling out. Didn't realize you were downstairs with the door closed." As she moved toward the cupboards behind him, he knitted his brow together with concern. "You know if something had happened to you, how would anyone hear you shouting for help?"

"Donna said the same thing," she replied; removing two coffee mugs from the cupboard. "Said I should consider a roommate, and that I'm always welcome to live at Colony House." Off topic, Genny looked up at him as she asked, "Want some tea? I don't have coffee."

"Yeah, sure. Thanks."

Grabbing her teapot off the stove, she moved about to fill it up and return it to a burner, which she turned on. All the while, Jim kept moving or shifting around as not to be in her way. "I had roommates before, when we first got the talismans and moved into the houses," she revealed; next pulling two sachets of tea out of a jar on the counter, which looked homemade. "I've had plenty of roommates. But the same thing always happened."

"They died," Jim solemnly deduced.

"Yeah," she nodded. Placing a sachet into each cup, Genny turned around and pressed the small of her back into the counter. "About a year ago, Fatima showed up." She pointed in the direction of the front of the house. "That's her Volkswagen out front." Folding her arms across her chest, she continued. "She stayed with me for a few nights, and then chose to live up at Colony House after the Choosing Ceremony."

"Did you scare her off or something?" Jim lightheartedly joked.

"No, I think it had everything to do with her and Ellis catching each other's eye and, since Ellis was living at Colony House…"

Jim gave a brief nod of his head. "Young love."

"Well, not quite that soon, but the seeds were planted shortly after her arrival." As the teapot began to gradually whistle, Genny turned and grabbed for it off the stove; turning off the burner at the same time. "About a week after Fatima moved out, my last roomie was killed. He was at the Bar with a few others. Not sure what happened other than one of them must've drunkenly opened a door to one of the Creatures, who got inside and ripped them all apart." Her gaze darkened as she began to pour the hot water into both mugs. "After that, I told Boyd not to send anyone my way; that I didn't want roommates. He was good not to push the matter and try to convince me otherwise."

"So you've been alone here for a year."

"A little over a year now, but yes." Genny set the teapot back down on the stove and handed a mug over to Jim. "I don't have sugar, but I have honey to sweeten it."

"Yeah, thanks." As he watched her removed a jar of honey from another cupboard, he helped himself to rummaging for a spoon in one of the drawers as she passed the jar along the counter to him.

"So, you said you wanted to chat…?"

Jim sighed. Twisting off the cap of the jar and casually scooped out a dollop of honey with the spoon he found. Dunking it into his cup of tea, he kept his gaze down—his chin to his chest—and nodded ever so slightly. "I did," he confirmed.

"What about?"

"Honestly, I'm a bit unsure." As he passed the jar over to her, Jim began to stir the honey into his tea. "When I was getting ready to leave the Settlement yesterday with the others, Tabitha and Jade showed up with Ethan. She said she had visions of the Settlement as a child." He passed the spoon to her, so she could add honey to her own cup and stir it in. Bringing his to his lips, he didn't sip it yet because it was still too hot, but he gave it a whiff, and he was certain it was chamomile; which made sense, given her dried out chamomile flower buds stored in a jar in the basement. She probably didn't use all of it for her soaps and shampoo, but also for tea. "I suggested she was trying to make connections that aren't really there, but she insisted she'd dreamt of the Settlement for months as a child, down to every last detail including the same totems that are there."

"I'll have to take your word for it, since I've never been there."

"They're creepy," Jim muttered.

"Everything here is creepy," Genny countered.

With the smallest of smiles, he said, "Surely I'm not."

Smiling back a bit wider, Genny shook her head and then gestured for him to follow her out of the kitchen. "You're definitely not creepy."

"That's good to know, especially since I just walked right in without an invite."

"You're not a vampire, Jim."

"I could be. You don't know," he joked; following her through dining room and then toward the living room where she sat down in one of the chairs while he sank down onto the couch. "I could be one of those Twilight vampires who walk around in the daytime."

"You don't sparkle, though."

"Ah, you got me there." Finally taking a sip of the tea, he did his best not to make a face. It didn't taste that great to him. One could say it just wasn't his cup of tea. But she'd been kind to offer him what he assumed was her limited supply of both tea sachets and honey, so he would power through it.

"So, what more of this vision of hers?" Genny inquired, bringing them back on topic.

Jim lowered the cup, holding it with both hands upon his lap; his shoulders hunched forward slightly. "I tried warning her that previous attempts at trying to figure things out hadn't gone well. People have been hurt or have died. She said it was different because the injuries and death, the overall failure of trying to figure out the riddle that is this place happened after we got here, but her visions or dreams happened before," he went on to explain. Looking up from the contents of his cup, he watched as Genny was sipping from hers while a fleeting urge popped into his head, which he quietly pushed out of his head. For a moment, as he watched one of her tendrils of blonde hair fall forward and became close to falling into her drink, he wanted to get up, lean forward and brush it away for her. "I, uh…I didn't want her to think I wasn't being supportive, so I agreed with her that it was an avenue worth pursuing."

"Do you really think it's a good idea, though?" She set her cup down on the coffee table between them and folded her hands between her knees. "Her visions might've occurred before this place, but you're in this place now. And you said it yourself that trying to figure things out haven't worked. This place—the more you push, the harder it pushes back."

"I know," he agreed. "I'm realizing that more and more, but Tabitha can't shake it. And it doesn't help that Jade is just feeding more and more into her need to unravel the mystery. It's almost like…" Jim frowned; feeling guilty. "It's almost like he's enabling an addict, for a lack of better words."

"Kind of reminds me of a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald."

"Oh?"

"First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you."

Jim listened and nodded; able to correlate the meaning to what he'd been saying. It did seem to be an appropriate quote for the subject matter. Thinking more onto the day before at the Settlement, he added, "Jade thinks Tabitha was chosen and destined to come here, just like Victor's mom, Miranda."

Genny held a hand up. "I'm lost."

"Sorry, yeah. I suppose you're not one to be aware of all the goings-on around here." Wondering if what he'd just said sounded insensitive, he frowned. "That is, what with your fondness for being a homebody and keeping yourself busy here. I mean, I know you get wind of a lot of what's happening or what's happened. I don't mean to insinuate that—"

Once again, Genny held up a hand. This time, though, she smiled. "Shut up, Jim."

He chuckled and smiled back, albeit shyly, but also a bit grateful she'd got him to stop talking before he somehow put his foot in his mouth and insulted her. "Sorry."

"How come you didn't come back till this morning?"

"It takes so long to get to the Settlement from here, and vice versa, that when they arrived and we went around discussing everything in regard to what Tabitha says she's seen, there wouldn't have been enough time to make it back here before dark," he answered; picking up his tea again and taking another sip. He did it mostly to keep being polite and not waste the beverage. And he once again pretended that it didn't taste like piss water to him. "I still had a talisman with me, so we stayed overnight in one of the cabins."

"What was it like out there?"

"Different."

"And you were safe from the Creatures in those cabins?"

"Well, I mean, you saw us return and I'm here talking to you, so yeah."

Genny rolled her eyes. "Okay, smartass. I get it. Stupid question. But you know what I meant, right?"

"I did," he nodded. "And we were safe. But it's different out there," he reiterated; furrowing his brow as his gaze drifted toward the front windows. "I think there's something different out there—different than the Creatures. Something keeps walking around the cabins. It—or they—make different noises. They bang on the outside of the cabin. They never speak or taunt like the Creatures do."

An involuntary shiver went up Genny's spine. "And here I was hoping all we had to worry about was the Creatures. Now there are more things that go bump in the night?"

"Unfortunately, I think so."

"Well, now I have even less of a desire to go into those woods ever again."

Jim smiled supportively at her. "They're not so bad during the day."

"I'll just have to take your word for it."

Setting his cup on the coffee table, Jim mirrored Genny by leaning forward and folding his hand between his knees. It wasn't intentional. It just felt like the natural thing to do. "What would you do in my position? If you were me, would you help Tabitha figure out what all of this shit means?"

"Well, she is your wife. It's supposed to be for better or for worse, right?"

An unintentionally derisive scoff escaped his lips. Realizing his faux pas, Jim leaned back; gripping his hands upon his legs and looking back toward the front windows.

"Did I touch a nerve?" she asked, sheepishly.

"When my family ended up here, we were on a roadtrip to Yellowstone National Park. We hadn't told the kids yet, but Tabitha and I were planning on getting divorced. The trip was supposed to be one last hurrah before we broke the news to them. But, of course, then we got stuck here and it's been one thing after another. And, as it turns out, my daughter Julie was already aware we were planning to divorce, but I don't think Ethan knows yet. Part of me hoped that during our trip, and then even after we got stuck here, somehow we might work through our issues, but this place seems to have only exacerbated them. I wished we could find our way back to how things used to be before…" He trailed off; hunching forward again. His mind drifted, for only a moment, to his infant son Thomas. "We're still putting on brave faces for our kids, even though Julie knows the truth of the matter. I'm just a little lost and wondering what to do next."

Genny could tell there was more to his tale of woe that seemed to darkened his mood for a minute or so. There was a deeper pain there, just underneath the surface and plain, for all to see, within his eyes. It was loss, but of what she didn't know. His marriage? His nuclear family? Something more than that?

"I've been where you are," Genny offered up; which caused him to catch her eye almost immediately. "I know what it's like to go through a divorce and worry about how it will affect my child."

"You have a kid?"

"A son. Aiden."

Jim looked at her more squarely; his gaze softening as they sat there, sympathizing with each other. "Is he—?"

She seemed to understand what he was silently alluding to, and shook her head. "He's alive. With his father," she answered. "I ended up here on my own."

"That's good." Quick to elaborate, he added, "That he didn't get stuck here, and that he's safe out in the real world. But—shit. I can't imagine how hard it's been for you, to be separated from him for so long."

"It hasn't been easy," Genny agreed, leaning back and slouching her shoulders. "But, like you said, he's not here. I prefer it that way. It's better that way." With a frown, she quickly wiped away a tear that had appeared in the corner of her eye but hadn't fallen yet. "I wouldn't wish this place on my worst enemy."

"If you don't mind me asking, since we're commiserating," Jim began to say with a rueful smile, "what happened? With your marriage, I mean, and how your son took it."

Genny folded her arms under her chest and then crossed her legs, one over the other. Her gaze drifted away from him, toward the coffee table where both of their cups sat. "I met my ex-husband—Patrick—almost as soon as I got hired as a paralegal. He was ten years older than me and a junior partner at his uncle's firm in LA where I worked. He flirted shamelessly with me, but not in any sort of inappropriate way that would've gotten him a meeting with HR." She smirked at that. "After only a couple of months, he finally asked me out, but I turned him down about three times. But, you know, third time's the charm, I guess."

Jim smirked, too.

"It was pretty much a whirlwind romance. It was like a movie my mother would've loved to have seen me cast in, had I kept acting and gotten past the former child actor stigma," Genny carried on; briefly lifting her gaze toward Jim. "Patrick proposed after only six months. Another six months later, we were married on the beach in Oahu."

"Destination wedding. Nice."

"I hated it."

Jim chuckled. "Then why did you have one?"

"It was a dream of his, and the wedding didn't matter so much to me as my hopes for what our marriage would be like," she responded with a shrug. "Less than a year later our son was born, but it wasn't an easy birth. There were complications. Aiden was born healthy and all, but doctors said it would be very difficult for me to get pregnant again. Not impossible, just...difficult. We were both disappointed. I always pictured having at least one of each—a son and a daughter—but we were happy to at least have Aiden. And he was an amazing baby. He was happy and lovable. Always cuddling." A happy, distant smile spread across her lips and reached upward to her eyes. "When he was about five months old, I went back to work, but only part-time. The firm had a daycare, but I hated not being with him, even for only five hours a day. After a year, I left work and committed to being a stay-at-home mom, and I really enjoyed it. Patrick was fine with it. He made enough, and I had my royalty checks from the work I'd done as an actress. We didn't really want for anything. But, when Aiden was starting school, I was a bit bored during the day without him there, so I returned to work; again part-time. I enjoyed it, but it felt more like a way to simply pass the time. I didn't feel fulfilled."

Clearing her throat, Genny shifted her legs; crossing and uncrossing when the former began to ache from being draped over the other. Jim remained quiet; politely listening to her. "I thought my life was virtually perfect. Then, when Aiden was eight, Patrick pulled the rug out from underneath me and told me, in so many words, that he would always love me but that he wasn't in love with me anymore. When I asked if there was someone else, he said yes. He said he loved her and wanted to be with her. Not me."

"Damn," Jim muttered. "That had to have been hard."

"It was," she nodded in agreement. "Fortunately, I think his uncle liked me better than him, so his uncle represented me as a client in the divorce. On my behalf, he took his own nephew to the cleaners. I got alimony, primary custody of Aiden, child support, our house in Pasadena. Patrick, understandably, quit the firm and got a job at a different law firm. To this day, I doubt he talks to his uncle."

"Was it a difficult divorce? Like, was there a lot of animosity? How did your son handle it?" Jim reiterated his earlier questions.

"It was difficult while we were going through it, and I was angry at him for the first year or two afterward. Aiden took it hard initially, but Patrick and I made sure he knew we both loved him so very much and that, even though mom and dad weren't husband and wife anymore, that didn't mean we wouldn't be there for each other. And, I suppose it did help that the other woman, who became Patrick's new wife a year after our divorce was finalized, was really wonderful with Aiden. She was a lovely stepmom. She might've been a homewrecker, but she was kind and caring. That's what helped me get beyond my anger. Aiden came round to her, too, but he still had issues with his dad; angry at him being the one to throw away the family dynamic we had. Once he hit puberty, it was pretty rough for a while. We got him into therapy, which seemed to help. We both tried to encourage him to get into sports or some sort of extracurricular activity, but nothing seemed to really arouse his interest."

"What eventually worked? I mean, I'm assuming something did."

"I took an evening class every other Friday night, when he was at Patrick's for the weekend." Genny smirked up at Jim. "It was a soap-making class. And I got really into it. When I told Aiden about it, he asked if he could come with me one Friday night instead of going to his dad's. Soon enough, it became our thing to do together. I bought the supplies and then we were doing it at home. I began expanding and experimenting with different ingredients and scents and whatnot. I gave them away as little gifts to friends, and they loved it. One friend said I should pursue the venture as a full-time job. But it was mostly for fun. Then, five years ago, Aiden and I took a trip to Ojai for a weekend during the summer. We did horseback riding, fed goats and chickens at this farm. We wandered around the town and shopped. When we returned home, Aiden told me he loved it there, and wished we could live there. I loved it, too. So, after a few weeks, I surprised him with the news, which I hoped he would be thrilled by, which was that I bought a ranch in Ojai, and I was going to make my soaps and shampoos full-time. And I thought we could try living more naturally and a little off the grid."

"Was he thrilled?"

Genny smiled. "He was. He asked if we'd get goats and chickens of our own," she replied; thinking back fondly on that time in her life. "Patrick wasn't too happy, because it was a longer commute for him, in getting Aiden every other weekend, and alternating holidays, but he learned to make do." A look of sadness suddenly passed over her face which Jim noticed immediately. "I had just taken Aiden to his dad's and made a stop for some supplies I'd needed for my fledgling business. I had just gotten back to Ojai and was literally five minutes from home when I saw that damned tree in the road…"

Jim's face fell; understanding the heartbreak in her voice and the pain in her eyes. "I'm sorry."

Lifting her gaze toward him again, she smiled appreciatively at him. "I'm sorry for you, too. I'm sorry for all of us."

A gentle sigh slipped free from his lips. "How old would your son be now?"

"Seventeen," Genny answered. "Eighteen in July." Furrowing her brow, as if to rein in tears threatening to fall, she added, "He'd be graduating high school soon and going off to college in the fall. I keep wondering what he looks like now, what kind of young man he's grown up into. And then I have moments where I wonder if he hates me for disappearing. Does he think I just took off? Does he think I'm dead? It's been three years. That's a lot of time to miss out on."

Leaning forward, Jim scooted closer to the edge of the sofa and stared at her until she looked back at him to see the compassionate twinkle in his blue eyes. "I'm sure he misses you, regardless of what he thinks happened to you." He added with a small smile, "Mothers and sons. It's a special bond."

"Were you close with your mom?"

"I was."

Just as Jim opened his mouth to say something further, he heard someone shouting for him outside, and they seemed flustered. Jim looked at Genny, and Genny looked at Jim. Immediately, they both stood up and made a beeline for the front door. Having the benefit of longer legs, Jim made it to the door first and pulled it open. As Genny stepped outside behind him, they both spotted Kenny scurrying away from his former domicile, which was the Matthews' residence now. When the younger man spotted Jim on Genny's front porch, he began to beckon to Jim, who came rushing down the steps.

"Jim!"

"What is it?"

"It's Julie. Something happened to her at the ruins. Marielle and I got her to the Clinic."

Jim's eyes widened with fear. "Is she okay?" He hurried further into the street to meet Kenny halfway.

"She doesn't seem to be hurt, but she seemed badly shaken up."

"Is Ethan—?"

"He's at the Clinic, too. He's fine."

A wave of relief washed over Jim. Pausing for a moment, and only a moment, he threw an apologetic look over at Genny. "Sorry—I gotta go."

"It's okay. Go. Be with your kids."

With a nod goodbye, that seemed laced with the sentiment that they'd talk again soon, Jim was off running alongside Kenny in the direction of the Clinic; leaving Genny alone on her front porch as she wrapped her arms around her to stave off the cold.

Sighing with understanding—from being a parent and having that innate fear from worrying about your child's safety and well-being—Genny frowned and hoped all was well, for all their sake. Then, with nothing she could do about it but pray everything was okay, or at least would be, she retreated back inside her home and closed the door behind her.

Chapter Text

"It's a line between head and heart
Hold on to reason as it falls apart
Peel away my thickest skin
I hesitate and you pull me in"
— Paper Lions

While at the Clinic, Jim had sat and watched as Kristi looked Julie over for signs of trauma from whatever had happened to her at the ruins. He was a bundle of nerves on the inside, but put on a brave face as not to draw the ire of his teenage daughter for fussing over her while also not wanting to worry his son any further than he could already tell the boy was.

Kristi had concluded that Julie was okay; that there were no signs of trauma, which was obviously a good thing. Julie, also, insisted as much—that she was fine. When asked what had happened, she explained that she had walked to the ruins, stepped inside and blacked out. When asked if there was anything else, she said she had a weird dream.

Jim felt unsettled by this.

After Kristi said she wanted Julie to stay the night at the Clinic for observation, which Jim said would be alright, both Kristi and Marielle stepped away to give Jim some privacy with his kids. Moving to sit down beside his daughter, he just stared at her for a moment until she turned to look back at him, and then he asked her what she and Ethan were doing at the ruins, especially since he had asked her to stay put at the house with her little brother. When she began to explain that she had gone there the day before with Randall, his mind was suddenly going a mile a minute with a million other questions. Before Julie could elaborate, though, Tabitha had shown up; interrupting that particular conversation.

Allowing mother to fuss over daughter, Jim had instead gone off in search of Randall—to find out why a grown man was hanging out in the woods with his seventeen-year-old daughter. When he found Randall in the basement, the younger man looked a bit stressed out about something, but still inquired as to what the two were doing in the woods yesterday. Randall immediately got defensive, but Jim expressed that he knew Julie was going through something after her shared ordeal with Randall and Marielle, but that Julie won't discuss it and he just wants to understand. He just figured Randall might.

Randall's answer wasn't what Jim had been expecting.

"I was teaching her how to drive, man."

Jim knitted his brow together. "What?"

"She said she didn't have her learner's permit, so we boosted the Colony House van," Randall elaborated. "I freaked out about something and we ended up in the woods."

"And the ruins you saw?"

"Look, man, I don't mean to be a dick, but I got my own shit going on, alright? You want me to explain what happened to us? Well, I can't. And I don't know about those fucking ruins, but I told her not to go back out there."

"Why?"

Randall had turned away briefly, as if suddenly plagued by the briefest of intense migraines. "Because they…" He looked back at Jim. "They just felt wrong."

"How?"

"They just fucking did, Jim. That's what I got," he insisted as Jim held his hands slightly aloft, preparing to deescalate the situation in case Randall's abrasive defensiveness took a turn. "Are we done?"

Instead of answering, Jim just eyed him for a moment and then turned around to leave. As he reached the double doors to the area Randall was staying in and stepped out, Randall called out to him. "You want my advice?" Randall asked, rhetorically. He was gonna give it anyway. As Jim sighed and looked back, Randall added, "Go get the van and teach your kid how to drive, because there is fuck all you can do about the rest. None of us are getting out of here alive."

"I don't accept that," Jim countered; the faintest tinges of hope in his voice as he closed the door behind him and walked back upstairs.

And he didn't.

He knew there were a lot in this place that had given up that hope of ever getting home, just as he knew there were those that believed they could, maybe, someday. Genny was one of the former. Tabitha was the latter. He was falling somewhere in between, but he was trying his best to cling toward the latter as well. He wasn't ready to give up. Not yet. Though, he supposed, after only two months, he could be considered naïve. Perhaps, when he was still here a few years from now, his tune might very well change.

A short while later, it was evident that it would be getting dark soon. While Julie was going to remain at the Clinic, Tabitha had decided to stay as well, but insisted Jim take Ethan back home. For a moment, he almost decided to go against her suggestion and have them all stay, but he felt this tug in a different direction. And, he supposed, it might be easier for Ethan to sleep in a regular bed in an actual house. It might seem more normal and safe for him.

So the pair—father and son—bid Tabitha and Julie farewell for the night, with the suggestion they all get breakfast in the morning at the Diner, since apparently Bakta had taken to reopening it for the town; to give it new life. When they reached the house, Jim hesitated to lead them inside right away. It was still light enough out. Boyd hadn't even rung his bell yet, so there was time, he figured.

Sensing his father's hesitancy, Ethan looked up at him. "What's wrong, dad?"

"Um…" Jim looked up the road. "Come on. I need to make a stop somewhere before we head in for the night."

"Where are we going?" Ethan asked; falling in step with his father.

"Just need to tell a friend something."

He couldn't explain the weight he'd been feeling in his chest since arriving at the Clinic. It wasn't the weight of worry or burden that had anything to do with being a parent. This was something different. He'd been feeling this pull for a few days now; this tension deep inside of him. It was a pull that felt like it originated in his midsection and tightened, like pulling a rope to its absolute limit; creating tension from the lack of slack. The closer he got back to Town, the ache from the pull lessened, but there was something at the end of this invisible rope. He was at one end, something else was at the other.

When he realized he was breathing easier, the closer he got to Genny's house, he almost stopped in his tracks. There was a slight stumble in his step, which almost caused Ethan to bump into him, but he continued forward despite the thought that had popped into his mind. He couldn't think too much into it right now. It wasn't the time or the place, and he was sure it was probably just all in his head anyway.

As Ethan followed him up onto Genny's porch, Jim knocked on the door and then waited.

After a few moments, the pillowcase hanging over the window to the door shifted aside and Genny peered out at him; a pleasant surprise on her face. Almost immediately she pulled open the door to greet both father and son. "Hey."

"Hey," he repeated.

When silence fell over them both, Ethan cut into it by waving up at Genny like he had that morning. "Hi."

Genny smiled down at him. "You're Ethan, aren't you?" she asked. As he nodded back at her, but before he could verbally answer, she added, "I'm Genny."

"Hi, Genny. Are you my dad's friend?"

"I, uh, suppose I am." Lifting her gaze, she smiled instead upon Jim, who was smirking back at her.

"I left pretty abruptly before," he began to say to her. "I wanted to thank you again for the conversation and, uh, the tea."

"The tea which you hated."

Jim's mouth fell slightly agape. "You could tell?"

"You made a face," she replied with a quiet chuckle.

"I thought I was playing it pretty cool." He shrugged. "I'm sorry. It smelled good, and I did appreciate it."

"It was probably the honey."

"Yeah, probably," Jim agreed with a nod. After another silent moment, he could sense his son's eyes darting back and forth between both adults before settling squarely upon his father with curiosity as to why they were still just standing there. "Um, I also wanted to let you know that Julie's okay. She blacked out at the ruins and had some sort of dream. She didn't elaborate much on it. I mean…" His gaze drifted away and down toward the wooden porch. "She's been through a lot lately that I don't understand, that I wish she would tell me about, but physically she's fine, which I take comfort in."

"Whatever she's going through—she'll tell you when she's ready, and not a moment before," Genny insisted. "She's a teenage girl. Getting any teenager to open up is like trying to get blood from a stone."

Jim chuckled; a dry, knowing sound that held a hint of shared experience. His eyes lifted and settled back on Genny. "Too true."

"I appreciate you telling me everything is okay with your family."

"More or less," he muttered; elaborating on his familial woes going unsaid but seemingly acknowledged by Genny by the way she smiled supportively back at him. "Julie's staying overnight at the Clinic. Tabitha is staying with her." Looking down at his son, he reached for the boy's hand and gave it a squeeze. "We decided to head home. Maybe we'll have a boy's night." He wasn't blind to the small smile that Ethan had given him, that seemed distant and forced. His daughter wasn't the only one dealing with something, it seemed. "Maybe we'll do a puzzle or a board game. How's that sound, buddy?"

Ethan shrugged. "Sure."

"I have a few board games here," Genny remarked; also turning her gaze down toward the boy. "Ever play Candyland?"

"I have Candyland Junior at home," Ethan replied. Then, a bit sadly, he added, "Our real home, I mean."

"Well, you can have the regular Candyland, if you want. It's just collecting dust."

"We will gladly accept it," Jim spoke up. "Thank you."

"Okay. Wait right there."

As Genny stepped away, father and son were able to watch her with their eyes because she'd left the door open. They watched her walk into the living room, where she was momentarily out of sight from where they were standing, and then as she returned with the board game in her hands. As she presented it to both, Jim was the one who accepted it.

"What do you say, buddy?" Jim asked of his son.

"Oh." Ethan looked as if he'd just been snapped out of a daydream. "Thank you, Genny."

"You are most certainly welcome." The second the words left her mouth, Boyd's bell began to ring. All three turned and looked up the road a bit to the Sheriff's Office to see Boyd walking away from it with the bell in hand. "Well, you two should hurry on up and get home." With a wink down at Ethan, she added, "Make sure to kick your old man's butt."

That seemed to draw a proper smile out of Ethan. "I will."

Jim chuckled. "I'm sure you will, too." With one hand, he gripped the board game. With the other, he ruffled his son's dark hair. Eyeing Genny, he also smiled at her. "Thank you for the game. And again for the chat earlier."

"Any time. My door's always open," she insisted. Then, quickly, "Well, during the day, anyway."

With one last smile, Jim nudged his son to follow him back down the stairs, but not without first wishing Genny a good night. When she wished the same back at the pair, she closed the door behind her. The sound of the door being locked signaled she was fully securing herself in for the night, and was something Jim and Ethan had to get on doing. As they walked down the steps and into the road, they passed Boyd; both men giving each other a nod of acknowledgement in the process.

The further away Jim got from Genny's house, the pull reared its ugly head again. It was no longer just an urge; it was a physical phenomenon. The tightness in his chest intensified and knotted his diaphragm until breathing became a shallow, conscious effort. He felt the phantom pressure of that invisible cord—leaving him with more questions than he had answers—snapping taut around the small of his back and his solar plexus. It got tighter. He felt like there was a bungee cord wrapped around him now and, at any moment—if he slowed his pace, if he dared to pause for a moment to rest or rationalize—he would not just walk back toward her house; he would be violently, mercilessly snapped back. He pictured himself careening backward, helpless, dragged across the lawn and slammed against her front steps like a puppet pulled back to the only stage it truly belonged on. Jim furrowed his brow with what it all meant while trying to suppress any bold thoughts that attempted to fully take form in his mind. He tried shaking them out of his head instead.

However, at the same time, he felt like a ship that had been drifting in an ocean for too long and had finally anchored itself in a harbor. There was suddenly calm amidst the chaos, a port in the storm he felt the first semblance of safety in since arriving to this godforsaken place, and—admittedly—since before that.

There was more to it, he knew, but now wasn't the time to focus on it. He had to push it deeper down, as far as it could go, so he could switch that focus back to his son, getting him inside and then strategizing how he was going to let Ethan beat him at Candyland in a way that didn't make it obvious he'd thrown the game.

Genny was already up and about the next morning when she heard Boyd's bell ringing.

Concern instantly flooded her senses.

Throwing on a coat, she stepped out onto her porch and noticed how the townspeople were coming from every direction and congregating across the street, in front of the Diner. He and Donna were both calling everyone to attention and to gather round for some sort of emergency town meeting. As these were very, very rare, Genny found herself swiftly making her way to join everyone else. She wasn't short, but she wasn't particularly tall either, so she tried to make her way closer to the front to see what the hubbub was about. Wrapping her arms around her chest, she listened to some muttering from others; mentioning something about someone named Tillie who had been found murdered in Colony House's greenhouse the day before, and how Sara was likely to blame.

"What happened to Tillie—we know you're all scared," Donna began to say. "We know you want answers. I want answers, too. But right now we don't have them."

Genny had no idea who Tillie was, and was only just now learning about this, so she wasn't particularly scared, but she was concerned. And she didn't think it was right for anyone to just assume Sara was responsible; to pass judgement without proof. Just because she was guilty of one thing didn't mean she was guilty of another.

"We call you all here because…look, we need your help," Boyd spoke next. "That's…" He turned as Jim and Ethan appeared; exiting the Diner to join everyone else. "Hey."

As she watched Jim and Ethan sidle up closer to Tabitha and Julie, he noticed her as well and, for half a second, his gait faltered. In silent greeting to her, as a nonverbal 'good morning', he nodded to her and offered a faint smile. She did the same.

Turning back toward the crowd, Boyd announced, "Fatima is missing."

Genny didn't like the sounds of that.

"Nobody's, uh—nobody's seen her since last night," he continued.

"What we're asking for is a search party," Donna explained. "People to scour the Town, every corner, every crack, so we can bring her home."

"Whatever took her, is that what killed Tillie?" a redheaded woman asked.

"We don't know."

Boyd looked around at everyone; looking understandably frazzled. "Look, I don't have all the information on what happened. All I know is that she's close by."

"How do you know that?" called out another townsperson.

Sharing a look with Donna, Boyd answered, "I know that because something here told us; something that wants us to know that she's alone—that she's afraid. Something that thinks we don't have what it takes to find her. Now, look, I can't tell anybody what to do. Right? But you see these here?" He held up a talisman for everyone to see. "We didn't always have these. When I first got here, those things in the woods, they would come out at night and take whoever the fuck they wanted. Everybody here was living day to day, moment to moment, hour to hour. We found these. We proved that this place couldn't break us. Now it's trying to break us again. So, you can either lay down and die…" Pocketing the talisman, Boyd proceeded to hold up both middle fingers. "Or we can say fuck you." As murmurs of agreement spread, he repeated, with greater gusto, "Fuck you! We're taking our lives back! It's possible to fight back! We proved it once before and I am asking for your help to prove it again. Now, look, it's your choice. There's no shame in backing out. Okay?"

"How are we gonna do this?" Bakta wondered.

"We're gonna…" Boyd looked around at all the willing faces. "We're gonna pair up. We're all gonna go out there in groups of two, and we're gonna cover every inch of this place, okay? Okay." He nodded with a small smile of appreciation. "Okay. Let's do it. Let's go."

Standing more off to the side as everyone began to disperse, Genny had overheard Julie telling her father that she had to help because Fatima was her friend, and then how Ethan wanted to help, too. Looking between his children and then to Tabitha, he explained that he would take Ethan and she would go with Julie. She felt the natural pull to help out, too. After all, Fatima had lived with her first when she arrived a little over a year earlier. But there was another pull, a sense of anxiety that was starting to fill Genny up something fierce. The thought of going off into the woods, even to look for her former roomie…it made her breath constrict in her chest.

Seeing her shifting awkwardly in place, Jim stepped over to Genny; placing his hand upon her shoulder as he said, "You're welcome to join Ethan and me, if you want."

"I, uh…"

Before she could complete her sentence, Donna approached. "Hey, Gen, you know—we could use someone hanging back here at the Diner in case Fatima comes back to town while everyone else is out looking for her. And maybe help Bakta with serving out some food for anyone working up an appetite in the process," the older woman suggested rather knowingly; clearly sensing Genny's unease with heading out with the others.

"Yeah, I could definitely do that." Genny looked Donna in the eye; thanking her silently at first. "Thank you," she whispered.

"Don't mention it," Donna whispered back before stepping aside and walking off.

"Thanks again for Candyland," Ethan remarked as he looked up at Genny. "We only played one game last night and I won, but I know my dad let me."

Jim chuckled. "I did not."

Ethan turned his gaze toward his father and rolled his eyes. "Yes you did."

Moving to stand behind his son and placing both hands on his shoulders, Jim gazed softly upon Genny. "I was thinking we'd stick more toward the main road that leads into Town—making our way to our overturned RV—so we wouldn't be really heading into any of the woods, if that sways you."

"I appreciate the offer, but I think I'll do my part here."

He knew from what she'd already mentioned to him that she avoided the woods at all costs during the day, so he didn't want to push her out of her comfort zone. Perhaps he was feeling a little selfish, though, because he wouldn't have minded having her company. But, he supposed, this could be a good time for a father-and-son chat between him and Ethan about Ethan's guilt over what happened to Julie at the ruins the day before. "Well, if you change your mind, you'll know where to find us," he commented; but wanting to be polite.

Genny nodded with a smile. "You'll be the first to know if I do."

They both knew she wouldn't.

As the day went on, Genny remained at the Diner where she dished out plates of food for the townspeople alongside Bakta. The entire time, Fatima never showed up from where she had been taken to during the night; not that Genny really expected her to. Not that she saw herself as a pessimist, but if Fatima was taken in the night, Fatima was likely dead, as heartbreaking a notion that was. Either way, she did what she could for those still around. Those that had chosen to stay put, namely the elderly who couldn't just go traipsing around unsteady terrain like in the woods, spent a good deal of time at the Diner. Some didn't go out looking very long and were back by mid-afternoon, like the Matthews family. It was shortly after that when Julie and Ethan arrived at the Diner to eat a late lunch; helping themselves to slipping into one of the first booths upon first entering.

Genny had approached them both with a friendly smile, and said there was a stew available if they were ready to eat. Julie had said yes and, for drinks, a glass of water would be fine for her while Ethan asked for a glass of milk. It was a rare thing, but since there was one cow left, they were able to have fresh milk, and pasteurizing wasn't too hard to do so it wasn't being consumed raw. As she went to bring the drinks first, Genny considered grabbing some milk to take home with her so she could add it to her tea. And maybe some sugar. That had been one of the other items she'd originally intended to grab from the Diner but had decided against.

After bringing the Matthews kids plates of stew, and a small plate of side salad for them to share, both thanked Genny and got to eating and chatting quietly with each other. Without much to do at that moment, Genny had grabbed some coffee, which wasn't her usual beverage of choice, but she was feeling like she needed the pick-me-up. She sat at the counter while Bakta was chatting about this or that, but Genny wasn't really paying attention because her mind was drifting, and not even toward the more daunting topic of Fatima being missing.

There was a feeling in the pit of her chest; a sort of emptiness. A week ago she would've attributed it to missing her son, but it was different somehow. It felt like she'd awoken from a long, deep slumber, like Sleeping Beauty, and was just now realizing how hungry she was from going without food for an undetermined amount of time, and having only been allowed a few bites which did little to sate her hunger. She wanted more, she needed more, of whatever it was she was longing for. It wasn't a constant feeling. It ebbed and flowed. It seemed to get stronger, usually when she was alone, and lessened with great relief when…

Genny knitted her brow together.

No.

That was a silly notion.

She had no right to even entertain such a thought.

A little while later, most of the townspeople had come back from their searches for Fatima. It would be getting dark soon, so they would be needing to head home; inside where it was safe. 'Clocking out' from her impromptu 'shift' at the Diner, Genny had bid Bakta an early good night and then approached the Matthews kids, where she offered to walk them home.

While Julie was about to insist it wasn't necessary, Ethan had been quicker to respond.

"Sure," he consented. "You could play Candyland with us until our mom and dad get back."

"I'm not sure I'm in much of a board game mood, but I will stay with the two of you until your parents return, if you'd feel more comfortable not being alone till then."

Julie seemed to be considering this. Then, she nodded appreciatively. "Yeah, that'd be okay."

As the three of them exited the Diner together, with Genny holding open the door so they could step outside first, Genny fell in step behind them; letting the Matthews siblings lead the way up the road. Then, once they approached the yellow house that was their home, Julie was the one to lead the way in first. Ethan quickly removed his coat and tossed it over a chair, with his sister scoffing at him to hang it up; which she did for him when he made no move to do it. While the teenager removed her own, Genny kept hers on since she didn't know how long she'd be there. Either one or both of their parents would return to relieve her and she could head home, or neither would make it back before nightfall—hopefully finding safe shelter elsewhere—and Genny would hunker down with Julie and Ethan till morning.

Fortunately, that didn't happen because Tabitha arrived first with Jade, which Genny found a little strange, but didn't really question it. Tabitha didn't seem too surprised to find the other woman there when she arrived because it seemed she was distracted and upset about something.

"Oh—hello," Tabitha had greeted.

"Hi," Genny replied; casting a brief glance out a window to see it was getting darker, and still no bell had been rung by Boyd. It wasn't necessarily a point of concern for her. There were plenty of nights where the bell didn't get rung. The people were usually smart enough to notice when the sun was going down and to get indoors. "We haven't met yet." Holding out her hand, she smiled politely as Tabitha shook it. "I'm Genny Carter. I live in the blue house across from the Diner."

"You were outside it this morning," Tabitha remarked; a touch of recognition in her dark eyes.

"I don't hang around outside much, but yeah, I was." Genny gestured toward both of the woman's kids, who were sitting in the living room with Candyland on the coffee table between them. "I walked them home from the Diner and waited. I didn't want them to be alone."

"Thank you. I appreciate it."

"It was nothing. But now I'm gonna head out and get home."

Giving in to her distraction, in regard to whatever was bothering her, Tabitha nodded absentmindedly and didn't bother to say goodbye as she headed toward the kitchen at the back of the house. Jade, however, offered a polite smile even though he, too, seemed a little distracted as well.

"I'm Jade," he introduced himself; taking a moment to shake Genny's hand. As she reciprocated the gesture, he narrowed his gaze. "Don't I know you from somewhere? You look familiar."

She didn't feel like going down the 'I was a child actress' rabbit hole at the moment, since that was usually the direction a conversation went whenever someone approached her with the same question, so she switched gears. "Just because I don't go outside much doesn't mean you haven't seen me around here or there." She offered him a small smile and then poked her head into the living room; waving to Julie and Ethan. "Goodnight, you two."

"Bye," Julie replied.

"'Night, Genny," Ethan added his farewell. "See you tomorrow."

She smiled. What a sweet boy.

As she headed outside, her smile faded when she remembered how sweet of a boy her son used to be, especially at Ethan's age, and how she longed to hold him in her arms again. But, she'd only want that if she could somehow get out of this place. She wouldn't want him here with her. Not needing to rush to get home, mostly because it wasn't far from the Matthews' home, she inhaled the crisp scent of the cold night air and let her mind begin to wander again.

With her gaze focused straight ahead, she felt that emptiness in her chest again, but it was paired with this growing feeling of worry and something more…foreboding. She felt almost sick to her stomach and couldn't understand why that was. As she walked up to her front porch and let herself into her house, she slowly closed the door as if stuck in a daydream, or suddenly as distracted as Tabitha had seemed.

Something wasn't right.

Taking off her jacket and hanging it up, she began her tried and true ritual of moving around the house to close any curtains or makeshift drapery, and make sure the front and back door were locked for the night. When she settled in the kitchen, she decided that maybe a hot cup of tea would sate her nerves but, the moment she grabbed for a cup out of the cupboard, her eyes shifted to the cup Jim had drank out of the day before and suddenly that feeling of foreboding took shape and, in her mind, she knew what was wrong. She couldn't explain why, but she knew.

She immediately dropped the cup; not caring one iota that it shattered to the floor. She reached over the sink and shoved aside the curtain and saw that nightfall had arrived. With fear in her eyes, she darted away and sprinted toward the front of the house where she did something she never did once darkness had descended: she unlocked her front door and opened it.

Stepping out onto her porch, something inside of her told her to look to her right.

It was a strange feeling then.

It was a mix of relief and fear.

She saw Jim, who burst from the shadowed confines of the woods in a blur of desperate motion. He was running not just with speed, but with terror propelling him forward—a frantic scramble like a bat out of hell; his breath ragged and torn. His face, usually open and friendly, was contorted into a mask of unadulterated fear; eyes wide and unfocused, and justifiably so.

For barely a breath behind him, stepping with unnerving grace and casualness from the treeline, were several of the Creatures. They moved with a predatory slowness that starkly contrasted Jim's panicked flight. Jim's desperate focus was singular: home. He could see the familiar, welcoming glow from lights on inside the house, like a beacon of safety promising warmth and sanctuary. His chest burned, his legs screamed with effort, but he pressed on; every fiber of his being straining towards that unreachable haven. Then, with a sickening lurch of his stomach, he saw them. More Creatures, materializing as if from the very air, now stood at the other end of his street as a silent, impassable wall of menace. They had him completely encircled, cutting off his escape and likely sealing his fate.

They didn't chase, didn't rush. They simply were. They just stood there, side by side, perfectly spaced and forming a macabre blockade, as if wanting to play a grotesque game of Red Rover with him; the stakes being Jim's very life. Their eerie stillness was more terrifying than any pursuit. Their gazes, cold and calculating, were fixed on him—waiting to see what he would do, where he would go—like hunters observing cornered prey. A collective, unsettling quiet hung in the air, broken only by Jim's ragged gasps. And then, a detail that turned Genny's blood to ice: their pale faces were tilted slightly to one side, each bearing an unnerving, utterly devoid-of-joy smile that promised anything but mirth.

"Jim!" Genny's voice tore through the paralyzed silence, sharp with urgency; a lifeline thrown across the widening chasm of his terror. He didn't stand a chance of reaching his house, not with that unbreachable wall of creatures. But he could with hers. "Come on!" she beckoned again, the command laced with desperation as her hand instinctively reached out as if to physically pull him.

His eyes, wild with terror and darting for any possible escape, had snapped to her before she had even opened her mouth; as if her presence, her sheer will, had tugged at some invisible thread binding them.

For Jim, lost in panic and adrenaline, her voice was a beacon. It felt as if she was holding on to the other end of that invisible cord he'd been feeling was tied around him and within him at the same time. And now, she was pulling him, exerting a gentle but irresistible force, drawing him to safety with it; away from the waiting, smiling death. His trajectory shifted, his desperate race now veering towards the only open path.

Towards an uncertain but immediate future.

Towards Genny.

Chapter Text

“But I fear
I have nothing to give
I have so much
To lose here in this lonely place”
— Sarah McLachlan

The opened front door of Genny's house was a beacon—a desperate finish line Jim had been careening towards for what felt like an eternity. In a mad, breathless dash, he had all but launched himself up the three rickety, wooden steps. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. He stumbled on the top step; his knees buckling beneath him with a bone-jarring, aching thud that momentarily stole his breath. Before he could fully fall, Genny's hand shot out. Her grip was firm on his arm, and she quite literally yanked him with surprising force across the threshold. The moment his body cleared the frame, a guttural groan escaping his lips, Genny slammed the door shut with a resounding thud that rattled the very foundations of the house. The bolt clicked, then the deadbolt engaged with a satisfying metallic thunk, sealing them inside. Her blue eyes, wide and intense, immediately cast upward as she swept over the intricate stone talisman hanging beside the doorframe; secured in place.

With his chest heaving, each gasp for air a painful, raspy effort, Jim slumped against the solid wood of the door with his legs outstretched before him, seemingly devoid of strength. His hands, trembling uncontrollably, gripped at the material of his sweater underneath his jacket, as if trying to anchor himself to something real. His eyes darted frantically around the dimly lit entryway, scanning every shadow, every corner, but he wasn't really focusing on anything yet. The world outside had dissolved into a blurred nightmare, and the world inside was just a confusing kaleidoscope of shapes. His mind was too clouded; unable to process much of anything else. The adrenaline that had propelled him to Genny's doorstep was now crashing and it left him a trembling, hollow shell.

Genny, her movements swift and fluid, knelt beside him on his right side, facing his hunched form. Her hands, warm against his clammy skin, first settled firmly and reassuringly, upon his shoulders and then slid upward to cup the sides of his face as she gently but firmly drew his gaze. "Hey—it's okay," she murmured; her voice a low, steady balm. "You're safe now. It's okay. Just take deep, slow breaths." Her thumbs caressed his temples, a silent plea for calm. When his haunted eyes finally met hers, they were wide and unfocused. His pupils were dilated with residual terror. He looked like a small, lost boy, abandoned and utterly vulnerable. His brow was damp with sweat, cold and clammy, which mingled unpleasantly with some darker streaks—fresh, shallow scrapes here and there around his face. "You're all cut up," she remarked; her voice laced with a deep, immediate concern as her thumb brushed a nascent bruise on his left cheekbone. Then, letting her eyes drift a bit further down, her gaze sharpened as she noticed the deeper, more profound injuries. A single, jagged cut marred the right side of his neck, and on the left, four distinct, angry gashes ran parallel, like a terrible claw mark. It was a recent injury, disturbingly fresh, as evidenced by the way his blood looked tacky against his skin; already beginning to coagulate around the edges of the wounds. A sharp intake of breath escaped her lips. "Jesus, Jim," she whispered, her voice barely audible, "what happened?"

The moment she moved gingerly, almost reverently, to touch her fingers to the raw, gash-marked skin on the left side of his neck, a primal instinct took over Jim. He flinched and his arm shot up; roughly swatting her hand away as if he was having a sudden, traumatic episode of PTSD. "No, no, stop!" he shouted. The words tore from his throat unintentionally, ragged and raw; his tone laced with a lingering, visceral fear that sent a shiver down Genny's spine. When he watched the way she immediately recoiled and held her hands up defensively to placate him, his brow knitted together in guilt. The realization of his outburst, his unintended intensity of his reaction, crashed over him. Tears, hot and stinging, burned at the corners of his eyes, blurring her face. "I'm sorry," he choked out, his voice hoarse; remorse already flooding him. "I didn't mean to—"

"It's okay," she assured him quickly and soothingly, all while she maintained a calm and cool head. She lowered her hands slowly, bringing them to rest on her knees. "But, Jim," she pressed gently, her gaze unwavering, and repeated, "what happened?"

"I…I…" His breath was just as shaky as his hands still were. He was trying his best to mirror her composure, to find some semblance of calm within the storm raging inside him, but he was finding it impossibly difficult. His throat felt constricted, his chest tight with a pain that wasn't just physical. His eyes flickered away, then back to her, brimming with the memory of absolute dread. "I thought I was gonna die," he finally managed; the admission a quiet, chilling whisper.

Genny tilted her head to the side, but not like the unnerving creepiness of the Creatures currently lingering outside. Her expression was soft and deeply inquisitive, her eyes reflecting genuine concern. It was the look of someone who just wanted to help, to understand the depths of his nightmare. "But you didn't," she responded; her voice firm, resolute. "Those assholes didn't get to you. You made it inside in the nick of time." She spoke of them with a familiar, weary disdain as she assumed the source of his terror.

"No." He shook his head slowly, a grim certainty in his eyes. "Not them." He cleared his throat, wincing as the movement sent a fresh jolt of pain through his lacerated neck and raw, burning chest. "Can I…can I have a glass of water?" he rasped, his voice barely a whisper. "My throat and chest feel like they're on fire. I was running as fast as I could go."

"Of course." Genny pushed herself up to her feet; her gaze still fixed on him, ensuring he felt seen. As she stood, she gestured with her chin toward the living room through the wide archway. "Would you rather sit in there? You'd be more comfortable on the couch."

Jim's eyes, however, were still fixed on some invisible point beyond her as his body slouched against the door. "I don't wanna move," he muttered; his voice devoid of all energy. The mere thought of any further exertion felt repugnant.

"Okay." With a sympathetic frown, Genny nodded, accepting his answer without question. She headed off to the kitchen, her footsteps soft. Sidestepping the shattered shards of the coffee mug she'd dropped earlier in her own moment of panic, she opened the cupboard for a glass tumbler—a cheerful, retro piece adorned with bright pink, yellow, and orange flowers. Filling it up with cool water from the tap, the rhythmic gurgling a small, mundane sound in the tense silence, she returned without hesitation. She found Jim still in the exact same position, slumped against the door, but this time he was staring intently at his hands. They were curled inward toward himself. His fingers splayed, tightening and relaxing, like an animal examining its own claws. "Here," she murmured; crouching down beside him once more and offering him the glass.

Jim looked up at her with his eyes still looking considerably haunted. With a shaky right hand, he accepted the glass of water with a small, almost imperceptible nod of thanks. When he brought it carefully to his lips and took that first sip, the cool liquid a blessed relief against his raw throat, he watched out of the corner of his eye as Genny moved to sit beside him; pressing her back up against the wall to the right of the doorframe. Her presence was a quiet anchor in his storm. After his gingerly sips quickly devolved into gulps, his throat felt exponentially better. Pulling the cup away and setting it down on the floor between his thighs, he began to finally take Genny's advice by taking deep and slow breaths. He was trying so hard to find the strength to put on a brave face, but he couldn't shake recent memories from his mind.

Having been an engineer before arriving to this place, he was a man of science and, therefore, couldn't help trying to look for logic and reason when faced with things he couldn't explain. Even after everything that he'd seen and experienced in his two months here, it was hard not to question the validity of it all. Like, if they could all get stuck here, then surely there was a way to get unstuck. But with questions, comes answers. With answers, comes knowledge.

"Knowledge comes with a cost."

Jim shuddered involuntarily.

"If you're not ready to talk about whatever happened, we can just sit here in silence for as long as you need," Genny assured.

Bringing his right hand up to his neck, his face began to contort as a whirlwind of emotions seemed to be fighting for dominance, but it ended up being despair that won out and brought a sob from his lips. His chin quivered, his nose scrunched up and his brow furrowed as tears began to drip from his eyes. Embarrassed, he brought his hands up and covered his face, as if she couldn't see him if he couldn't see her.

Twisting at the waist and feeling useless, Genny reached for his right hand and pulled it over into her lap. "Whatever happened is over now. You got away from it."

With half of his face laid bare to her again, he looked away from her for a moment as a few, smaller sobs continued to rack his chest. He'd lowered his left hand to his neck again; touching the four gashes. He winced because, unsurprisingly, they hurt.

"Did I, though?" Jim asked as he turned his head toward her, with fresh tears cutting through the dried blood on his face. He looked so lost and confused, and plagued with something greater than worry. "Did I get away? Did I make it here alive? I'm not dead right now, out there in the woods?"

It was Genny's turn to knit her brow together, but with continued concern. "Can you tell me what happened, so I can understand?"

"I'm not sure it's safe to tell you."

"Knowledge comes with a cost."

Those words kept echoing in his head.

"This entire place isn't safe," she countered. "Divulging information is surely the least of our worries."

Jim scoffed and looked straight ahead again. "I'm not sure where to begin."

Offering up a small smile in his direction, she attempted to tease him, to bring some levity to the situation. "At the beginning, typically."

Parting his lips to speak, Jim went further back in the day; to when he couldn't have imagined how things would've taken such a nose dive. "After we got back from looking for Fatima," he began, lifting his left hand to wipe some tears away now that he felt himself starting to properly calm down, "I got home and found out that Tabitha had fallen near the root cellar. She'd had this vision or something about Miranda, Victor's mother, being killed by one of those Creatures. Jade thought that, somehow, Miranda was trying to tell Tabitha something. He asked her where she had first seen the ghost of some little girl. She said it was by Victor's truck."

"Victor has a truck?"

"It's a, uh, derelict delivery truck stuck in a field that he converted into a hideout at some point."

"Well, I mean, he has had the time here to do it."

Jim nodded ruefully; trying not to wince again from the pain of the gashes in his neck. "We went to the truck and Jade mentioned that he'd also seen these ghost children that Tabitha had been seeing. They've both been having a lot of shared experiences here, regarding the mystery of this place, and we were trying to figure out what it could mean, or at least they were and I was trying to, as usual, look at it from a more logical standpoint."

His forehead creased into a familiar, weary frown; a physical manifestation of the tightening knot in his stomach. His gaze had drifted as a cold tendril of dread seemed to unspool within him. Then, just as the well-worn path of his anxieties began to deepen into a familiar trench of despair, he felt it. Genny's fingers, warm and infinitely understanding, interlaced with his; giving a gentle, deliberate squeeze. It wasn't a question, nor a command, but a silent, potent declaration of solidarity. The subtle pressure on his palm was a lifeline, a tangible anchor that pulled him, however briefly, from the churning waters of his internal turmoil. The sharp edge of his anxiety softened and the tight band around his chest loosened by a fraction, allowing a slightly deeper breath. With each word he spoke, he was nearing the darker part of his day. But in that moment, with Genny's hand in his, the oppressive weight he was feeling was marginally less crushing. Her presence was a small, steady light against the encroaching shadow; enough to remind him he wasn't alone.

"We opened the truck and went inside, where we tried figuring out the meaning of these numbers found in bottles at the bottle tree," he continued to explain before noticing Genny smiling. "What?"

"Sorry—it's just, I've been here three years and you know more about this place than I do, it seems," she replied; wrapping her other hand around his so that she was fully encapsulating it, but in a way that seemed as if she didn't even realize she was doing it. Like it was the most natural gesture in the world. "What's the bottle tree?"

"Just a tree in the woods with a bunch of bottles hanging from it. And inside were pieces of papers with numbers written on them." As she nodded, understanding a bit better now, he carried on. "Jade got them down and had been trying and trying to make sense of the patterns the numbers could make or mean. There were twelve in total, written in different groupings, so I suggested the twelve notes in a musical scale, and I only knew that because my mother was a piano teacher. Jade got excited by that revelation and he told me to go back to our house to find Victor's mother's violin, because it was apparently hidden by Victor in the basement. Jade and Tabitha were already at the bar, trying to piece together the number combinations, when I arrived with the violin. And then, out of practically nowhere, Jade seemed to just know the melody to the song. He claimed he heard the music just by looking at the notes. I didn't think playing the song aloud was such a good idea because I thought it was possible the Town was manipulating him. He said it was just music, but I reminded him that the music box nearly killed everyone…"

"Wait—what?"

Despite everything, Jim let out a small chuckle as his eyes drifted momentarily to both her hands wrapped around one of his. "You really need to get out more," he managed to tease. Then, "Another story for another time." After a moment, he picked up where he had left off with his recount of the day. "Tabitha at least agreed with me that the song shouldn't be played within township limits, just in case, but they were both so excited, so animated about figuring this shit out, and I just felt like I was along for the ride, or some sort of interloper."

"I'm sure they didn't see you that way; that they valued your input and your help. You provided the single most important bridge between the numbers and the music," Genny assured him, giving his hand another squeeze.

A frown reappeared on his face as he turned to glance at Genny, and—well, shit—if he didn't feel even more at ease from that alone. "Thank you for the vote of confidence." He curled the fingers of his left hand and clutched at the left side of his coat's opening to hide the fact that it was still somewhat shaky.

"So how did you end up at the bar with a violin and a melody, all the way into the woods with...something that drove you from them?" she wondered; her small, supportive smile shifting back toward serious concern. She didn't want to rush the answer out of him, since they literally had all night for him to elaborate, but she was incredibly curious, now more than ever.

"We went to the Bottle Tree, since that's where the numbers—the notes—originated from; from within the bottles hanging on from the tree's branches. Jade began to play the melody on the violin then, and it was a beautiful melody. A little sad, but beautiful. And, all things aside, he's a very talented instrumentalist." Jim tipped his head back against the door; his focus drifting upward toward the overhead light that was off. The only light they had came from within the living room and further away in the kitchen, otherwise they were primarily sitting in shadows together on the floor. "While Jade played, Tabitha and him both said they could see the ghost children. They were arriving to listen to the song." Jim shrugged and reached for the glass between his thighs. Lifting it up, he brought it back to his lips and took another sip to eradicate the dryness in his mouth and sate the scratchy ache still in his throat.

"Did you see them, too?"

He shook his head. "I didn't see anything." Setting the glass back down, Jim sighed. "Jade finished playing and apparently one of those ghost children had approached Tabitha and spoke to her. It freaked her out so she ran off. Jade seemed just as bothered."

Feeling the way his hand was tightening within hers, Genny scooted a little bit closer and then tipped her head toward him so he knew he still had her undivided attention. She watched the way his nostrils flared and the way his eyes darted around the immediate vicinity of his glass of water; focusing on everything and nothing while his mind was still processing whatever horror he'd experienced but was getting closer to revealing to her. "Take your time," she urged. "I'm clearly not going anywhere."

With a sharp, involuntary intake of breath, Jim turned his face toward hers again; the shift in his center of gravity too enthusiastic for the intimate space they shared. He didn't realize just how close their heads were to each other until the bridge of his nose nearly nudged the gentle curve of Genny's brow bone. He instinctively pulled back half an inch as the proximity was instantly destabilizing. A rush of unwelcome heat flooded his system—the electric prickle of an attraction he was struggling desperately to suppress—starting down his arms and pooling in his fingertips. He resumed gripping tightly onto his coat with his left hand; forcing the tingling in his extremities and the dangerous thoughts popping into his head back into submission. He concentrated solely on the subject matter; the unpleasant, unbelievable explanation he wished he didn't have to voice.

"I followed Tabitha. I was practically begging her to stop and talk to me, to look at me like a rational human being," he continued; his voice steadying into a deliberate, even monotone intended to mask the sheer absurdity of the facts. "When I finally caught up to her, she laid this whole thing out. She explained that the reason she and Jade can see the ghost children here is because she and Jade are the literal, physical reincarnations of Miranda and Christopher."

Genny, who had been listening with a focused intensity, slowly lifted her face to look more squarely upon him again. Jim watched as the words processed behind her eyes—first confusion, then a sudden, wide-eyed astonishment. The deep perplexity etched itself onto her features, a slight parting of the lips and a furrowed brow that mirrored his exact feeling about the explanation Tabitha had given him. He felt just as confused, just as profoundly skeptical, and just as utterly 'mind-blown' about the entire premise as Genny clearly was.

He leaned in slightly, lowering his voice almost to a conspiratorial whisper as if the surrounding silence could hear the secret. "And it gets crazier," Jim revealed, the complexity of the narrative weighing heavily on his shoulders. "Tabitha insists that she and Jade, by way of Miranda and Christopher, are also the reincarnations of the original people who tried to save these ghost children from being sacrificed a long time ago. She claims they failed, horribly. And the one crushing detail that ties it all together is that one of the children was supposedly their daughter."

While this did seem absolutely crazier, it seemed perfectly on brand for this place. At least that was Genny's view on it. "How long have the two of them been pursuing this mystery?"

"Since we arrived, more or less. Though, neither of them seem to know what exactly they were looking for, let alone that it would lead them down the same path, or that they would learn of some mutual connection to this place and shared past lives."

"There was a lot I didn't believe in before I got here," Genny muttered, subconsciously brushing her thumb across his knuckles. "But I've seen and heard enough for my mind to remain permanently open to countless possibilities. I mean, if a unicorn walked down the middle of the road tomorrow morning, I doubt I'd question it." Her gaze flitted from their hands, back to his face, and watched the tiniest hints of amusement appear upon his lips. "I know it's strange and it might be difficult to wrap your mind around, but I think you should believe that neither Tabitha nor Jade are making any of this up. Either they both believe it to be true, even if it's actually just some sort of shared hysteria, or it really is true. And, for the sake of your marriage, if you are planning on fixing it, it's for the best to support Tabitha either way."

"What does it say about my marriage if my wife's fate is to be tied to another man, life after life?"

"Is she fated to be in love with or married to another man?"

Jim sighed. He made the choice to slip his right hand free of both of hers, despite the comfort it had brought him. With both of his hands, he pulled his knees up toward his chest; mindful not to knock over the nearly empty glass of water in the process. He began to chew on his bottom lip as he draped his arms over his knees while his thoughts shifted back and forth between the feeling that the fate of his marriage was hanging in the balance and the feeling that there was a different fate awaiting him, and that fate could go either one of two ways. One was absolutely horrible. The other was something he only had a notion about and didn't seem horrible at all. It led him to drag his attention back toward Genny, where he settled his gaze upon her eyes, which were cast down toward the floor. He hadn't answered her question, but it didn't feel as if he needed to.

There was something else he needed to tell her. It was the reason he'd been caught in the woods and had escaped them in such a violent panic and left him feeling shaken to the bone.

It was the reason his neck was so cut up.

"I, uh, don't know where Tabitha went after all that. Or what happened to Jade. I don't know if they left the woods separately or together, or if they're somehow still out there. I don't know if they're okay," he began to speak again. "What I know is what happened to me next and I wish I could pretend it was all just a bad dream I could wake up from, but…" He gestured to his neck. "Obviously, the physical evidence begs to differ."

Genny was about to ask 'what happened' again but instead asked the more precise, "Who did that to you?" She nodded to the gashes. "And will you let me get my first aid kit to take care of it before it gets infected?"

Ignoring the latter question, Jim answered the former. "I walked off. I made it to my RV and I just…started crying." He wasn't ashamed to admit that. She'd just seen him sobbing like a frantic idiot here on her floor. "Everywhere I turn, there's a new crisis, a new disaster I can't stop. And I'm running on empty. Emotionally, physically. I'm just feeling lost and confused about what I'm supposed to do next, or if there even is a next step I can take that won't make things worse."

Despite the fact that he'd pulled his hand away from Genny mere moments ago—a reflexive, ingrained attempt to deny comfort and maintain his solitary struggle—he didn't attempt to stop her when she reached for it again. He was too drained for resistance. He watched, weary and passive, as she shifted her position. She sat up from against the wall and turned her entire body so that she faced his right side, offering him her full, quiet attention. Her touch was not demanding, merely steady, as she took hold of his hand, her fingers seeking purchase between his knuckles. As their fingers finally laced together, the physical contact was immediate and overwhelming. It wasn't just comfort; it was a sudden, necessary intervention against the fear still raging inside him. It was like she was a large, immediate bucket of cold water thrown onto a fire in a firepit that was getting aggressively out of control—the kind of roaring blaze that spits sparks high into the night and threatened to consume everything around it. Her touch helped considerably, but Jim knew that it couldn't circumvent the damage that was already done. His resolve was already compromised.

"Julie appeared. She was screaming for me." He furrowed his brow with new confusion. "She looked different. Her hair was shorter, she was covered in blood, but she didn't look hurt. I don't think it was her blood. She was so scared about something and she was trying to get me to run away—from what I didn't know." Jim's breath hitched and the shaking in his hands began. He felt his chest ache with that same primal fear animals had when they sensed danger or some natural disaster was imminent. But he couldn't outrun fear. "Then he appeared."

Genny furrowed her brow with curiosity. "Who?"

Slowly, he brought his focus away from their hands and up toward her face once more. Tears began to sting at his eyes and he was tempted to start crying again. "The man in yellow."

"Who's the man in yellow?"

"He's…he's like the Creatures, but different. I mean, it wasn't even dark yet. He looked like an old man—grey-haired and gaunt—but something about him felt ancient. I think that, whoever he is, he predates the Creatures. His eyes were like black pools, devoid of anything, and they practically bored holes into me," he continued to say; his voice as shaky as his hands. "The first thing the Man in Yellow said was 'that was one hell of a song' and 'that Jade sure can play'. As he got closer, Julie kept screaming for me to run, and I don't know why I didn't. I think I was a little disarmed by the fact that it wasn't nightfall and he was just there. The moment he spoke, though, I knew his voice from somewhere. It was the same voice I heard over the radio, warning me that Tabitha shouldn't have been digging the hole in the basement—across the street in the house that collapsed with me underneath it." Once again, Jim looked upon both of their hands but he wasn't seeing both of their hands. His sight was focused on what he was recalling in his mind and he was becoming increasingly more agitated. "I should've ran."

"You obviously did. You ran until you quite literally collapsed and I pulled you inside," she replied softly; her voice low and steady with reassurance. "You're here."

"Am I? This isn't just a dream I'm having, my final thoughts, as I'm actively dying in the woods?"

The distress in his voice threatened to break the fragile control he was struggling to maintain. Though her right hand kept its firm, anchoring grip on his, rooting him gently to the moment, she cupped the side of his face with her left. Her thumb began brushing soothingly against his temple; a repetitive, gentle pressure. That, mixed with the latent scent of lavender that lingered on her hand, probably because she'd been handling it at some point before his arrival, seemed designed to ground him to the moment. "You're cut up and clearly exhausted, but you're intact. You're very much alive, and very much here, right now, where you're safe."

Jim leaned into the palm of her hand and closed his eyes. He could still see the Man in Yellow even then, but it didn't feel like he was still back there, stuck in that horrible moment with him. He knew he was with Genny now. He knew he was safe with her, here in her house. With his eyelids still blocking out the sight of his immediate surroundings, he resumed telling her what happened. "I pushed Julie away, standing between her and the Man in Yellow, and told her to run as he got closer." Knitting his brow, trying to reveal every terrible detail, Jim added, "He told me 'this didn't have to happen' and that 'knowledge comes with a cost' as I grabbed for this big stick to keep him back." Slowly, he began to open his eyes again, which were wet again with encroaching tears. "He said he tried to warn me, and then he knocked the stick away. I could still hear Julie screaming for me, but I couldn't look away from him. I couldn't look away." His grip within her right hand tightened to the point of it possibly being borderline painful for her. If that was truly the case, she didn't bring attention to it. He could see she remained focused on every word he spoke. "I didn't have time to react. He…"

As his breathing began to quicken again, Genny shuffled her body a bit closer. "Hey—remember where you are. You're safe. That man isn't here."

"He grabbed me by the neck," Jim continued as he gingerly touched his neck with the fingertips of his left hand. "He grabbed me by the neck and lifted me up against the RV, and then he told me that Tabitha shouldn't have dug that hole." His fearful blue eyes darted toward Genny's face. "Just as I thought he was going to kill me, I think I had a vision. It was like I was being shown an alternate future. It felt like an out-of-body experience. I could see the Man in Yellow holding me against the topside of my overturned RV and then as he ripped my throat open. I could hear Julie still screaming and I could see the absolute shock and horror in my eyes as I bled out and died. But then I was back in my own body and I was still staring at him as he sneered at me." A puff of breath—not quite relief but something akin to it—left his lips. "And then he just released me, but not before really digging his nails into my neck. He took his time with it; making sure I felt the pain."

"He just let you go? Just like that?" Genny narrowed her gaze. "Why? And what about Julie? Did she get away?"

Jim shrugged. "Julie was gone. I didn't hear her screaming for me anymore and I didn't see her anywhere. The Man in Yellow just released his hand from my neck and stepped back."

"Did he say anything?"

"He seemed distracted. Something, somewhere, seemed to be drawing him away. But he did look back and pointed at me. He just repeated 'knowledge comes with a cost' and 'someone will pay the price'," he recounted. "I didn't wait around for what might happen next. I suddenly remembered how to run and just that. I got around the RV, to the road, calling out for Julie, but she wasn't anywhere. I looked inside the RV. She wasn't there. I tried to catch a glimpse into the woods on the other side of the road, thinking maybe she'd hidden among the pines, but there was no sight of her there either. I could only assume she had made a run for it home, so I did the same, but I hadn't gone half a mile before the sun finally dropped below the horizon, and that's when the other Creatures began to appear on the road. Not the Man in Yellow, but the others. I knew I couldn't outrun them on the open asphalt, so I had to dart immediately into the woods, to try and find a shortcut back. I dodged branches as best as I could but," he gestured faintly at the small collection of scratches crisscrossing his forehead and cheekbones, "obviously I missed a few."

From the moment Genny had resumed her placement of her left hand upon his face, she had kept it there. He had made no move to lean away from it but, after he had finished speaking, only then did she realize the the ache in her shoulder from maintaining her arm in that position for an extended amount of time. When she pulled her hand away, she dropped it down to the small amount of space between them; palm pressed to the floor. "I'm so sorry you had to experience that," she remarked. "Before and shortly after the talismans, there were times I'd come close to nearly losing my life, but never as close as you were tonight. I can't imagine the fear you felt and are still feeling, but I think it's a testament to your character that you had the sense to finally run when you had the chance."

"More like when I remembered that sometimes flight is better than fight," he mumbled; mentally admonishing himself. "I should've run the moment Julie told me to. I was just so caught off guard by this man—obviously a Creature, but different—that was walking about with the sun still out, even if it was low in the sky. My brain couldn't process the immediate danger I was in because I couldn't process a Creature unencumbered by the time of day."

"What do you think this means?" Genny wondered; positively curious. "I mean, you said he felt different to you—older, ancient. Do you think he's the original Creature? Or, maybe, is he the one who created this place and is in charge, sort of like an architect?"

"I think, after tonight, anything is possible here. Or, more accurately, the rules, the very foundation of what we understand about this place, are changing." Once again removing his right hand from hers, he brought it up to his face and wiped downward, as if trying to physically erase the horrifying images burned into his mind, while expelling a deep, shaky sigh. He had been slowly calming down, thanks to Genny, but he still felt considerably on edge. "If he's not original, if he's not a deviation from the others, could that mean the others will gain the ability to walk around during the day, too? What happens when there are no safe hours left? Will the talismans stop working? If he's the only one not hindered by daylight, if that fundamental rule can be bent for him, is he the only one not hindered by the talismans? Could he just…walk inside any place? Any home, any building, the diner, the clinic…and just kill anyone at any time? No lock, no talisman, no hour of day or night would offer sanctuary. We'd be completely, utterly exposed."

"Maybe the fact that he chose not to kill you and let you get away—"

"For now," Jim interjected, grimly.

"—means he is in charge, but has some sort of rules he more or less lives by. Just because he can move about during the day doesn't mean he can kill during the day. Or maybe he's bound only to the woods and can't leave them." It was so much to consider, to process. She could now understand why he felt so frantic, and not just because of how close he came to losing his life. "We should bring this to Boyd, and to Donna, tomorrow morning. They need to know of this other danger out there."

Slowly, Jim nodded in agreement. "I think I'm gonna take a page from your book from now on and avoid the woods at all costs, no matter what."

With a rueful smile, Genny reached up with her right hand and settled for only a moment on the denim covering his right knee. The fleeting contact was a silent assurance and a small, warm link of solidarity. "You could hang out with me here," she offered, leaning forward conspiratorially, "and I can teach you how to make soap."

"I might just take you up on that," he replied with a ghost of a smile on his own lips. His gaze was softening from frantic fear to soothing calm. Taking the initiative this time, he grabbed for her right hand and held it firmly in his. Turning hers palmside up, he gazed down upon it. "Your hands smell like lavender. I wouldn't mind having that scent linger on me. Isn't it supposed to be relaxing, and help reduce stress and anxiety?"

"It is."

Rubbing his thumb against her palm, he asked, "Were you making soap before I got here?"

Genny shook her head. "No. I had just got home a short while before." Then knitting her brow together in confusion, she pulled back a hair from him. A sudden realization about something hit her like a bag of bricks. "Jim, I was at your house, with both of your kids. Ethan and Julie. I walked them home from the Diner and stayed with them until Tabitha and Jade showed up."

"Are you sure? Julie didn't slip away at any point before then?" He seemed just as thrown off by this revelation. "How could she be with you and me at the same time?"

"You said she looked different—her hair was shorter?" Off Jim's nod, she added, "Well, her hair was her normal length when I left. Still long." As a thought popped into her head, she asked, "Are you sure you saw her? Are you sure it was Julie in the woods with you, screaming for you to run?"

"I'm sure as I am that you're here with me now."

Genny tilted her head at him again; her expression a touch withering. "You also weren't sure you were even alive ten minutes ago." After a few moments of silence hanging in the air between them, she turned her attention down the short hall toward the kitchen, as if towards a more tangible, perhaps hopeful, possibility. "Maybe," she mused, "there are entities in this place that aren't all evil. Maybe there are good entities to balance things out." When she turned back to look at him, his gaze was already waiting for her.

"There's a Boy in White" he offered up; unsure if he knew about this other 'entity' or not. "I know my son's seen him, and Tabitha said he was the one who pushed her from the Lighthouse, but only before apologizing to her because it was the only way to help. He seems to appear to only a few people and offers advice.

"If he's truly good, maybe there are others like him none of us have seen or encountered yet," Genny suggested; trying to be hopeful about the possibility but largely ended up always leaning toward being realistic. "If this place continues on its trajectory of constant changes, maybe the scales tipping in our favor of good things and good beings will increase."

"Honestly, I'm not sure I care if there are good entities beyond that of the Boy in White. I don't need more good things to happen as I just want less bad things to happen. I want whatever is going on to slow down and just give us a goddamn minute to breathe."

"Well, things were slow until your family and Jade arrived," she teasingly poked fun.

"More like Tabitha and Jade arrived at the same time because they're destined to keep coming back here, and my kids and I are collateral damage."

Poking the side of his arm with her index finger, Genny smirked. "Pessimist."

"Nah," he muttered with a shake of his head. "I'm just stating the obvious." Looking her in the eye, he added, "If she had been by herself, if my kids and I had been at home and she had been driving to the store or something instead of all four of us headed to Yellowstone, maybe only Tabitha would've ended up here. My kids and I could've been safe. They wouldn't have to be constantly traumatized by living nightmares all because, once upon a time, Tabitha and Jade's past lives failed to save their shared child…or whatever."

With a slow and steady expelling of breath from her lips, Genny turned away from him and then began the slightly arduous task of getting up to her feet. It wasn't just the dull ache that had taken root in her lower back, it was the quiet indignity of middle age. A decade ago, a couple of hours on a floor wouldn't have warranted a second thought. Now, at forty-five, every joint felt like a rusty hinge. As she pushed herself upright, a low, involuntary groan escaped her; caught somewhere between a grunt of effort and a sigh of weary resignation. Her knees immediately popped. They were like exclamation points at the end of an internal sentence that screamed, 'I'm no spring chicken anymore! My warranty has expired, and the service plan is ridiculously expensive!'

Having achieved a vertical stance, she held out a hand to him and there was a mix of no-nonsense practicality in her gaze, with an undercurrent of deep, unadorned concern. "Alright, how about you finally let me grab my first aid kit and tend to your wounds," she stated; her voice gentle, yet underscored by a steely resolve that implied this was not a suggestion, but a directive.

Jim looked at her outstretched hand, then up into her eyes. As his hand closed around hers, he found reassuring strength in her grip. The dull throb in his knees and the deep, systemic fatigue aching through his legs were a stark reminder of the hard-fought running, the desperate sprints, and the frantic evasions he'd endured to make it here alive and in one piece. The adrenaline had long since fled, leaving behind a leaden weight that made him feel a little weak in the knees, as if his very bones might buckle. But it wasn't just the physical toll.

The way she looked at him—her clear, intelligent eyes holding a steady gaze, a quiet blend of compassion and weary exasperation, the soft, almost maternal concern etched around her mouth, and the casual disarray of a few blonde strands that had rebelliously fallen into her eyes—seemed to have a completely different kind of impact on him. This unexpected vulnerability, the sudden awareness of her proximity and her quiet care, felt more unnerving than any physical threat; sparking an unfamiliar anxiety that had nothing to do with pain or danger, and everything to do with the unexpected surge of something warm and unsettling in his chest.

Neither spoke for a few moments after that.

He followed her as she led the way toward her kitchen, where she gestured for him to take a more comfortable seat upon a chair rather than the linoleum. With steady eyes, he watched her bend down and open up the cupboards under the sink and pull out a small box that was blue on the bottom and white on the top, and had a red cross and red words that explicitly stated 'FIRST AID' upon it. When she sat down in the chair perpendicular to him, she wordlessly indicated for him to scoot his chair closer and face her more fully. When he obliged her, she opened up the kit and then began to clean the scrapes on his face with what merely looked like a wet nap from a small packet, but was in fact an antiseptic wipe. There was a slight sting with each gentle stroke, but he powered through easily enough.

He lifted his gaze upward toward the ceiling the closer she got to him; suddenly feeling as if he could look her in the eye. When she removed a new antiseptic wipe from its packet, he was aware she was frowning. "What is it?" he wondered.

"The scratches on your face are superficial. You don't need any bandages on them, but the cuts on your neck are pretty bad." She watched as his gaze drifted back down to hers. "I can clean around them, cover them with gauze pads and secure them to your neck with adhesive tape, but you're gonna need stitches." He didn't make any sort of reply right away. He simply seemed resigned to this information. As she brought the antiseptic wipe closer to his neck, she warned, "This is definitely going to sting a hell of a lot worse, but I'll be as gentle as possible."

"It's okay," he muttered. "I trust you."

"You say that now," she joked. Barely a second later she watched as he noticeably winced and bit down on his bottom lip, which caused her to chuckle. "Told you."

"Having it tended to is much easier to deal with than when it was done to me. I'll live." Catching her eye, he added, almost wistfully, "Apparently."

When she finished up, applying the last piece of adhesive tape upon the gauze patch covering his singular gash on the right side of his neck, likely made by the Man in Yellow's thumb nail, Genny leaned back and inspected her work. "That's as good as it's gonna get for now."

"Thank you," he said with a grateful nod. "I appreciate it."

"You're welcome."

The very architecture of this place seemed to defy conventional logic. It warped his sense of time and connection. He'd only been here for two months, if that, but it felt like so much longer, more like a year. So, it suddenly didn't feel as if he'd only known Genny for barely a week. There was something about her that made him feel as if he'd known her most of his life, and not because she graced his television screen from 1989 to 1996 or had a poster of her in his childhood bedroom. It seemed more profound than that. Instead, it was something far deeper that hinted at a connection that transcended mere happenstance.

He considered the revelations of the day, of how Tabitha and Jade had found each other in this place, time and time again, apparently. They were obviously born and raised in the outside world, and eventually made their way here, but were they always destined to meet here and to die here? Rinse and repeat? Was each incarnation beyond their first, as parents to the daughter they couldn't save, drawn together romantically or platonically? Was his marriage always—unknowingly—doomed from the start because Jade was her endgame? Ellis and Fatima found love in this place. Were they parents of a ghost child in a past life? Were there others?

As Genny cleaned up from patching him up as best as she could, he found himself staring at her with that familiar pull inside of him drawing him more and more toward her. When she stood up, so did he. He thought about the way she was there, waiting for him, as he'd made his mad dash out of the woods, and then a new question appeared in his mind that he couldn't avoid asking.

"Why were you on your porch when I came out of the woods?" he inquired while she shoved her first aid kit back under the sink.

When she stood back up and turned to face him, Genny narrowed her gaze. "Huh?"

"You never go outside after dark. You barely go out in the day," he continued, stepping around the table and moving closer to her; the fingertips of his right hand gently dragging along the surface of the formica surface of her retro kitchen table. "But you were outside, waiting for me. You were already there when I escaped the treeline and began running up the road."

She seemed to be realizing what he was getting at. More or less.

"How come?" he asked. There was no judgment or anything like that in his tone, just blatant curiosity.

"Something had felt off when I left your house. Something that made me feel sick to my stomach with worry. I didn't understand what it was," she replied, gripping her hands behind her upon the edge of the counter. "I came inside, closed the curtains and made sure the doors were locked for the night, and I was about to make a cup of tea for myself." Pointing down at the ground, she gestured at the shards of porcelain she still hadn't cleaned up and had just been sidestepping all this time. "Then there was this feeling. It was so strong. I just knew what it was, like a little voice in my head whispering it to me. I saw that it was already nightfall and that I couldn't waste anymore time, so I ran to the front of the house, threw open the door after unlocking it and there you were. I couldn't fully discern that it was you from that distance up the road, but I knew."

"How, though?"

She shrugged; just as perplexed about it as he was. "I don't know."

"What if…" His voice trailed. He wasn't sure he wasn't about to spout nonsense or if she would be able to follow his train of thought. "What if others here are meant to have some sort of connection, like Tabitha and Jade? I haven't been able to shake this feeling that's been weighing on me since we met." Mirroring her gesture from earlier, he tilted his head slightly to the side and looked at her with a sense of vulnerability in his eyes. "Tell me it's not just me."

"I think we're treading on dangerous territory," she replied apprehensively. Seemingly breaking the spell that was drawing them dangerously closer together, Genny placed the palm of her hand against his chest, and then patted it. "Your sweater is covered with blood." Removing her hand, she pointed upward toward the ceiling. "I think I have a spare shirt upstairs you can change into." As she began to move around him, she headed for the short hall, to head upstairs and get that shirt for him. "Since you're stuck here with me for the night, I'll make up a bed in one of the spare bedrooms for you to sleep in."

"I doubt I'll be able to sleep at all tonight," Jim replied; following her with his eyes before also turning his body to face the direction she was heading in. "Not with everything that's happened. It would be restless or I'd wake with constant nightmares."

"Then we'll stay up all night, talking and making soap."

As she slowly disappeared toward the front of the house, Jim stepped forward and braced his hands on either side of the doorframe; watching her grab the top of the newel post before taking to the first step of the staircase. "Genny," he called out.

"Yeah?" she called back; pausing and letting her gaze drift back toward him.

"When you walk away, there's a pull—right here." He pressed both of his hands flat against his abdomen. "Do you feel it, too?"

She couldn't bring herself to answer either way, worried about what the implications might mean, so she deflected. "I'll be right down with that shirt."

Without another word, Genny walked up the rest of the stairs.

With a tired sigh, Jim furrowed his brow and closed his eyes only for a moment. When he reopened them, he decided that she was right. It was dangerous territory, and he shouldn't be asking such a question, especially not after his warning from the Man in Yellow.

"Knowledge comes with a cost, Jim, and someone will pay the price."

If he pushed further for answers of any kind—for knowledge—what would the cost be and who would end up paying it?

He feared what he might lose—or who.

Chapter Text

"There's something happening here
But what it is ain't exactly clear"
— Buffalo Springfield

The living room in Genny's house was dimly lit, though soft gray light was pressing around the edges of the curtains and makeshift drapery that covered the windows. Startled by the last remnants of a nightmare he'd been having, Jim woke abruptly with a sharp crick in his neck. His eyes flew open while caught off guard by the unfamiliar texture of the blanket covering him from his abdomen to his feet. As he stretched out awkwardly on the narrow, slightly worn couch, he pushed himself up as best as he could with his elbows, but the cushions underneath him weren't the firmest, so he sank a bit further down. As a yawn escaped his lips, he moved a bit slower; swinging his legs over the edge of the couch and sitting up properly.

Somewhere, he heard the faint sound of humming, shuffled footsteps and the occasional clink of a dish, or pan or some sort of utensil coming from the direction of the kitchen. Clearing his throat to get rid of the phlegm that had been gathering while he slept, a lovely little thing that had been happening more and more as he got older, Jim finally made the move to stand up.

While in the midst of flexing his back muscles to get the kinks out, he brought a hand up to the back of his neck and winced; not from the gashes underneath the gauze pads still taped over them, but from his head lying at a weird angle for some undetermined amount of time. Looking down at his feet and seeing his socks instead of his shoes, he remembered taking the latter off at some point the night before. So, when he began to walk forward, he barely made a sound, which contributed to the scare he gave Genny when he suddenly appeared in the narrow archway between the dining room and the kitchen.

"For fuck's sake," she blurted when she saw him standing there; nearly dropping yet another cup to the ground. Her initial jolt of alarm evaporated instantly, replaced by a warm swell of genuine amusement. His naturally curled and was therefore a tad bit unruly but now it was sticking up at alarming angles. Seeing the groggy confusion on his face—the pure, unadulterated surprise that the night had ended—Genny's smile widened, lighting up her eyes. "Good morning, Sleeping Beauty."

Jim responded with a guttural sound that was half-groan, half-yawn. Inhaling a deep, noisy breath through his nostrils—trying desperately to clear the thick, dusty fog that clung to his brain—he shuffled the final two steps into the bright, lemon-scented kitchen. He reached out and grabbed onto the back of the closest chair, clutching the wood as if it were a life raft in a turbulent sea. "I didn't realize I fell asleep," he mumbled; his voice thick and raspy from lack of use. He lifted a hand, picking at the small, gritty crust gathered stubbornly in the corners of both his eyes. "I remember we were talking in the living room about the difference between saponification and lye concentrations after we poured your new batch of soap into those molds." He gestured vaguely toward the counter, then nodded pointedly at the row of simple, loaf-sized bread tins sitting patiently on the kitchen table; their contents—a pale, creamy color—slowly solidifying into workable blocks. "Next thing I know, I'm waking up on the couch with a blanket on me." Arching an eyebrow, he asked, "How long was I out?"

Genny leaned back against the counter behind her, taking a calm sip from the cup of tea she was holding. "You konked out around one, right after we finished wrapping the last tins in towels. It's a little after eight now, so about seven hours," she replied, her smile soft but teasing. "Not too shabby."

"And the blanket?"

She shrugged. "Didn't want you getting cold." It was said simply, matter-of-factly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

A slow smirk spread across Jim's face and he met her gaze; a silent challenge passing between them. "So you tucked me in?"

"I did," Genny confirmed, her chin lifting just a fraction.

"Well, I'm very grateful for the hospitality."

"I mean, it's not like I was gonna send you home in the middle of the night. You would've been more comfortable in one of the spare beds upstairs, but I didn't want to wake you," she went on to say. "You were really exhausted—mentally and physically—despite your claims that there was no way you'd be able to sleep after what happened."

"Yeah, well, I think it was a restless sleep." He frowned as a sigh spilled from his lips. "I was having a nightmare when I woke up."

Taking another sip of her tea, she shared a sort of commiserative look with him. "I've lost track of how many of those I've had since coming here." As a bit of silence began to hang in the air between them, she stepped forward and set her cup down, and then mirrored him by grabbing onto the back of the chair across the table from him. "What might help wake you up and soothe the aches and pains from all that running you did last night, is a nice, hot shower. The water pressure here leaves little to be desired, but the water temperature is pretty decent most of the time. It's free for you to use."

"That's genuinely kind of you, Genny, but truly, I'm fine. I don't need to impose any further," he stated as he shifted his weight slightly.

Genny, however, was having none of it. Her brow furrowed, and she pushed out a breath that was half sigh, half exasperated snort. She made a face at him then—a quick, expressive scrunch of her features that conveyed a mixture of disbelief and affectionate annoyance. "Listen to yourself, Jim. You're talking as if I have a mortgage here and I'm rationing hot water. It's not like I bought this house, or signed a lease, or am personally responsible for the electric bill," she countered. "None of us are here willingly, you know that. We are all—at best—squatters under duress. I just chose to stay here, in this specific house. It's logistics, not ownership. I have no more inherent right to this space than anyone else. Use the shower anytime you want." Watching the stiffness drain from his shoulders as her logic finally bypassed his ingrained need for politeness, she smiled. "I also have other men's clothes where I got that shirt from." Genny gestured to the shirt he was wearing now, which he had changed into after removing his blood-soaked sweater the night before. "It's just a few things from past roomies that, for whatever reason, I haven't gotten around to taking to the clothing storage." She turned and pointed toward the direction of the front of the house. "It's simple enough: at the top of the stairs, the first door on your left is the bathroom. The door closest to that is one of the two spare bedrooms where I'll lay something out for you to change into. It'll be waiting for you."

Jim had accepted that she was offering him a direct path to relief without further opportunity for argument. He just stood silent for a long moment, then exhaled slowly, and finally acquiesced with a heavy nod. "Thank you, Genny," he said; the gratitude in his voice deep and entirely genuine now that the pretense of self-sufficiency was abandoned. "I appreciate it."

"Yeah, yeah," she muttered. "Go on. I head up in a minute to get those clothes for you."

With one last nod, Jim took his leave. Shuffling out of the kitchen and into the narrow that ran parallel to the stairs, part of the way, before revealing the worn, wooden balusters. As he took to the steps, the old wood groaned a soft, familiar complaint under his weight; a sound that seemed to echo his own internal sigh. The creaking wasn't just a sound; it was a cue that pulled him back to the memory, sharp and unwelcome, from the night before. He'd managed to broach the subject of that undeniable, magnetic current that had crackled within him for nigh on a week. He'd tried to articulate the strange, compelling pull he felt toward her—a resonance that defied logic and a quiet certainty that he somehow belonged in her orbit. And she, in turn, with a softness that somehow made the warning sting more, had more or less cautioned him against saying anything more about it. Her words, gentle but firm, had been a clear line drawn in the sand; a boundary he now felt he'd stumbled over.

The weight of it was quite heavy. It wasn't a harsh dismissal, but the nuance made it worse. He realized, with a jolt that was both hopeful and terrifying, that she seemed to understand exactly what he had been alluding to. The flicker in her eyes, the almost undetectable tensing of her shoulders—she had known. And that realization made him wonder, with an aching urgency, if she felt it, too.

Did she, in her own quiet moments, in the solitary hours of the day or the long stretches of night, feel inexplicably drawn to him the way he felt drawn to her? Did her thoughts drift to his face? Did she, too, experience that strange, persistent echo of his presence in the quiet corners of her mind, even when he was gone? The questions spiraled, each one a silent counterpoint to the groaning steps beneath his feet, leading him upwards.

In the upper hallway, he noted a closed door on his right, assuming it was likely her bedroom. Straight ahead was another door he was unsure of. Perhaps a linen closet, judging by how close to the side of the house and the slant of the gable roof it was. Turning left and taking bare two steps, he found himself outside the bathroom. The door was partially open, as were both doors to the spare bedrooms. He was able to catch a glimpse inside of them. The one she'd mention had what looked to be a full- or queen-sized bed inside. The other had two sets of bunk beds. He couldn't help but think that would come in handy down the line, if there was a greater influx of new residents to the town, and she couldn't avoid taking on roommates anymore from lack of beds elsewhere.

Once inside the bathroom, Jim shut the door with a soft click.

Placing his hands upon the small counter surrounding the sink, he lifted his head and stared at his reflection in the mirror; unable to avoid seeing the bandages on either side of his neck and the scrapes over his face, which in turn brought back the fear he'd felt last night, even if the feeling was fleeting at the moment.

Downstairs, upwards of five minutes had eventually passed since Genny had heard Jim make it upstairs. She'd finished her cup of tea and then rinsed it out before letting it sit in the sink; opting to wash it out more thoroughly later. When she made her way upstairs, she saw the bathroom door was closed and she heard the water running. Moving to the left, she slipped through the bedroom door nearest the bathroom and opened up the closet. She grabbed a flannel shirt off a hanger and a folded pair of jeans off the shelf above it. The man who'd previously wore these clothes had been built the same as Jim, so she was certain there would be no issue in them fitting. As the bed was pushed against the wall that was low, due to the slanted ceiling, there was only one nightstand. From inside its solitary drawer, Genny removed a clean pair of socks and even a pair of boxers. She laid everything out next to each other and then, quiet as the grave, headed back downstairs.

Since the kitchen was typically the heart of many a home, it wasn't strange to Genny that it was where she spent the most of her time in this house. It wasn't just because the kitchen, along with the basement, was where she passed the time with making her soaps, shampoos and toothpastes. It wasn't a large room, compared to the living room or the dining room, which had the bigger table. She supposed the compactness of it and the warmth of it being a place to also cook and enjoy her tea, made her feel safer. Plus, it had the smallest windows, because of the counters, so it was less tempting to look out of them at night and possibly see something terrifying she'd never be able to unsee.

When Genny heard the tired groan from the house's pipes when Jim turned the shower off, her gaze drifted upward to the ceiling. She listened as, moments later, he seemed to be moving about, and she could tell by his footsteps, as well as the faint creak of a door, that he'd left the bathroom and headed into that spare bedroom, which was situated over the kitchen. Turning her gaze back down, she opted to finally wash out her cup, but instead of putting it away in the cupboard, she left it to dry on a towel beside the sink.

She'd been so lost in a daydream, her mind drifting upstairs to Jim and the pull he'd mentioned, and it made her feel so foolish; the relief it had given her that he'd brought it up first. It was a weight off her shoulders, but it was also such a complication, because he wasn't free to explore the notion—the feeling—any further. He was married, even if the marriage was on its last legs. She wasn't about to be the final nail in that coffin.

Genny thought he was incredibly handsome. She couldn't deny it, no matter how hard she tried, and it was made worse by the fact that she felt a little like a silly teenager whenever he looked at her. One glance and it was like he was seeing into her soul. It felt as if she'd suddenly known him her entire life.

Despite all that, despite how she may or may not feel—unlike her son's stepmother—she was no homewrecker.

"You were right about the water."

Genny nearly jumped out of her skin. She'd been so lost in thought that she hadn't realized Jim had come downstairs until she heard his voice behind her. To make matters worse—or better—there was her small, sharp intake of breath when she turned around to see him standing there wearing the jeans she'd laid out for him, with the clean socks on his feet, while only just now pulling on the flannel shirt which was a button-up. As it was hanging open, she was pleasantly surprised at the revelation of just how toned and hairy his chest was. That fraction of immaturity that was a holdover from her youth mused at the fact that he could pull off '70s porn star' rather easily from the state of his torso alone. The damp, loose curls atop his head, that were falling forward at the sides of his face added to that particular allure,

When she realized she hadn't said anything in response to his comment, she sputtered awkwardly. "Um, uh…sorry. What?"

"The water," he replied. "You were right. It was weak but it was definitely warm enough." As he gave most of his attention toward rolling up the cuffs of his sleeves, he was unaware that she was doing her best to not stare at his chest any further and find something else of interest in the kitchen. When he finally began to button it up, Jim brought his attention back toward Genny; noting the way she was very ardently pressing her lips together. "The bandages on my neck might need replacing," he informed. "They got wet."

Turning away, Genny nodded. "Well, then we should get you to the clinic," she advised; pushing down the warmth she felt rising to her cheeks as best as she could. "I did say you were going to need stitches."

"You did," he agreed, while doing some pushing down of his own—of the fear that went hand in hand with why he needed stitches in the first place. Leaving the top button undone, he asked, "Are you planning to go with me?" His tone was partially curious, and partially hopeful.

"Yeah," she replied, dragging her gaze back toward him. "If anything, I'll be there with you as moral support."

Jim smiled gratefully. "I appreciate it." Inhaling a slow, steady breath, he added, "I need to make a stop at home first. I need to check on my kids now that the sun's up. I mean, they've gotta be wondering why I didn't come home last night and, since Tabitha and Jade both last saw me in the woods, I hope they're not worrying too badly."

"How about, while you go home to check in with your family, I'll head across the street to the Diner and grab us both cups of coffee to go."

"They have throwaway cups?"

"No, just usual mugs," she answered. "We'll bring them back later."

His smile turning into more of a playfully boyish smirk, he remarked, "Didn't think you were much of a coffee person, what with all the tea you always seem to be drinking."

"Well, that's because the coffee here isn't a blonde roast from Starbucks," she countered with a chuckle, "but, even though you got about seven hours of sleep, doesn't mean I did."

"I'm sorry."

Genny merely tilted her head at him in response.

Holding his hands up defensively, he muttered, "I did tell you I was gonna keep saying that."

She smiled, and then sighed. "Alright. Let's put on our shoes, grab our coats and finally greet the day, shall we?"

The front door to the Liu-turned-Matthews house opened and Jim stepped inside. He heard muffled conversation nearby, but it was the sudden and relieved appearance of his daughter that distracted him. As Julie practically threw herself at him, wrapping her arms firmly around his midsection, he was more than happy to reciprocate.

"Hey, kiddo," he greeted, as the warm glow of morning poured through the front windows.

"Dad—I'm so glad your back," she mumbled partially against his chest. "When you didn't come home last night and then I heard someone shouting your name outside, I thought the worst."

"I know. I'm sorry about that."

"I barely slept. Mom kept insisting you were fine and probably found shelter elsewhere. And first thing this morning, I looked outside and didn't see you lying in the road, dead, so I felt a little better." Finally pulling back from him, her eyes finally drifted up toward the gauze pads taped to either side of his neck, which were fresh gauze pads because Genny had ended up replacing the ones that got wet in the shower before they both left her house. "Oh my god, dad, what happened?"

"Something happened in the woods yesterday after your mom and I went off in different directions." Julie had been through enough and he didn't necessarily want to bog her down with any of his woes, but he knew she could handle it more easily than Ethan. Shoving his hands into the pockets of his coat, he chose to give her the condensed, PG-rated version. "I was accosted, so to speak, by a Creature. He was different from the others. He was out before it was dark."

"Holy shit, dad."

Her swearing didn't really bother him anymore, so he ignored it. "Were you in the woods at all yesterday, after you took Ethan to the Diner?" He needed to know if it was really Julie he had seen, a figment of his imagination or something in this place mimicking her.

"I was here. Genny brought Ethan and me back. I never left," she insisted. "Why?"

"No reason." If he decided to elaborate on it, he'd do it at a later time.

"So where were you?"

"I made it back into town, but just barely. Night had already fallen. The Creatures were already out and blocking my path here, but Genny opened her door and brought me inside, so that's where I was." He gestured to his neck. "She patched me up as best she could, let me use her shower and gave me some spare clothes to wear that she had tucked away in her house." Rocking slightly on the heels of his feet, he tried to make light of the situation by adding, "She taught me how to make soap. I'm sure I fucked some of the process up but, even if I did, she was nice enough not to draw attention to it."

"Yeah, she seems really nice like that."

Jim nodded in agreement. "She really is." With a nod, he suggested, "You know, if you ever want something to do around here that's not getting yourself into mischief or accidentally terrorized by this place, I'm sure she wouldn't mind giving you a crash course in soapmaking, either. She's a good teacher. Generously patient." He smirked; thinking of his own experience and how he'd nearly spilled an entire batch of soap mixture because he'd forgotten to put on an oven mitt while grabbing for the pot it was in. "Is your mom and Ethan here?"

Julie confirmed with a nod. "Mom made Ethan go upstairs and take a shower. She said he was smelling funky," she replied with a small laugh. "But she and Jade are in the kitchen." Seeing the way her dad's expression shifted, she remarked a bit knowingly, "Something changed between you two, didn't it? I thought that, because of this place, your divorce took a backseat, what with how you both kept pretending everything was fine between you two, but," she leaned her head closer to Jim, almost conspiratorially, "she and Jade seem different. It's like they're communing telepathically with each other even when they're speaking aloud to each other. There's this undercurrent that's…weird."

"They didn't tell you about their discovery—their revelation?" Jim hadn't meant for it to sound so petty, but…yeah, it kind of went that way. But it truly was unintentional.

"No. They've been hush-hush and pretty distracted about something, though."

"Well, I feel like it should come from your mom, and I was just popping in to make sure you were all okay." Lifting his hands from his pockets, Jim cupped the sides of his daughter's face, pulled her in and kissed her forehead. He then took a moment to clarify that her hair was still the same length, and not the shorter style he'd been certain he'd seen her in the woods with. "I'm glad you're okay."

"Where are you going?"

"I need to head to the Clinic." He gestured to the bandaging upon his neck. "I got some pretty nasty cuts under there that need stitches."

"I can come with you."

"I appreciate it, but I'll be okay."

"Jim?" Tabitha appeared in the archway to the kitchen. "You're back."

"Yeah."

A moment later, Jade was there standing behind her with his gaze narrowed in confusion as he pointed at Jim. "What happened there?"

"I was attacked by a Creature, during the day, after your mini concert in the woods."

The fear he had surrounding that incident was starting to shift into anger. It's not that he blamed Tabitha and Jade for what happened to him, because he wasn't blameless in trying to suss out the mysteries of this hellhole, but the Man in Yellow did reference the pair before grabbing Jim by the neck and warning him about knowledge coming with a cost. He wouldn't have been in those woods at that time of day if it weren't for their need to understand the connection between the ghost children and the song, and their overall connection to the place. He could've been at the Diner with his kids. He could've been safe at home with them instead of being given a vision of his potential death, badly injured and then left to make a run for his literal life.

Okay, so, maybe he was feeling a little bitter.

And, sure, this last year of their marriage had just been a drawn-out death rattle. And maybe he was pursuing his own avenue of what his life would look like, post-marriage, but now knowing that Tabitha and Jade were apparently destined, time after time, to meet here and possibly fall in love, over and over, was a bit of a kick to the balls. Especially given the fact that, here they were, unmistakably gravitating toward each other right in front of him, and not at all seeming too bothered by the fact that he hadn't come home the night before and they had no way of knowing where he'd been or what had happened to him.

What if he'd actually been killed and left for dead in the woods by the Man in Yellow? Would they be hanging around here, acting so blasé and casual about him being AWOL? Would they have sent out a search party for his potentially mutilated body or would they be too busy canoodling?

"Why did it take you so long to get out of the woods? How were you stuck there after dark?" Jade continued to ask.

"He wasn't," Julie spoke up, almost as if she was coming to her father's defense. "He said it was still daytime out. It was some sort of different creature that attacked him."

Tabitha finally seemed to realize the weight of this information. "There's a Creature that can walk around during the day now?" She turned her gaze up toward Jade, who seemed just as perplexed. Possibly just then remembering she and Jim were still technically married, she walked up to him with genuine care and concern in her eyes, and placed her hands upon either side of his shoulders. "I'm so sorry that happened to you, Jim. How did you get away?"

"'Cause he let me go," Jim replied, matter-of-factly, while his jaw began to clench and unclench.

"He let you go?" Jade repeated, sounding skeptical while raising an eyebrow.

"That's what I said. Why? Does it seem hard to believe?" He was starting to feel increasingly agitated; his gaze, intense. "Was Randall not attacked and left alive? Was Boyd not left unharmed while being made to watch Tian-Chen be ripped apart? Are you and Tabitha not mysteriously tied to this place and each other? Tell me, Jade," Jim all but growled as he sidestepped both Tabitha and Julie and approached the other man, "where do you draw the line in what's easy to believe about this place and what isn't?"

"Hey, hey, hey," Tabitha muttered urgently, positioning herself between Jim and Jade, but attempting to garner the former's focus. "No one is contradicting you. Okay? We're sorry you were attacked and I can see in your eyes it was a scary thing, and I'm very happy you escaped with your life. We all are. But there is no need to get belligerent about it."

Jim scoffed in her face. "I don't need to—" He rolled his eyes and grabbed upward with both hands, ripping off the gauze pads to reveal what the gashes looked like to them. "This doesn't warrant getting a little testy?" He leaned closer to Tabitha, but also threw a look over her shoulder to Jade. "I looked into the eyes of the Creature that did this, who is able to walk around in the woods during the day. His voice was the very same voice I heard on the radio, warning me about you," he looked Tabitha in the eye, "digging that damned hole in the basement, and he seemed to really enjoy your playing," he looked back at Jade, "but I'm pretty certain he was being sarcastic. He seemed none too pleased by how much everyone has been looking into the inner workings of this place, and he was prepared to kill me as a warning to the rest of you. I—" A latent sob got stuck in his throat. "I saw my death. I saw what he was planning to do—to rip my throat out. He only stopped because something else distracted him. Whatever it was, I don't care, but I'm glad he did." Running a hand down his face, he pushed out a derisive puff of air from his lips. "We've all been pushing and pushing, and more and more shit has been happening to everyone here. More injuries, more deaths than normal. We've only been here two months and I can say, without a doubt, it's not normal for this place to be as active and volatile. And I think it's us. We're causing the disruption. We're pushing and pushing, so this place is pushing back and changing the way things work to accommodate all the shit we're doing." Looking around at the three concerned faces staring back at him, Jim took a step backward and raised the palms of his hands, attempting to calm himself down. "I think it would be best for all of us to reel it in for a while."

"I mean, it's not like we're detectives or anything, but we just cracked a pretty big case here, Jim," Jade countered. "And now you want us to what—forget about it? How long is a while? A few days, weeks, months? I'm sorry, I can't not look more into what this all means."

"He warned me that knowledge comes with a cost and that someone will pay the price, so I'm sorry if I'm not willing to put those I love or care about at risk of losing their fucking lives because this place is making your ass itch." As Jade stared back at him with a huff, Jim continued, "You know that phrase, 'if you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back'? It's kinda like that, but worse, because the abyss isn't just staring back, it's killing us for daring to stare."

"The full quote is 'he who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you'," Jade remarked, flippantly, and little under his breath, but also audibly enough.

"What the fuck ever, Jade," Jim bit out. "I'm just saying, we've been so caught up in fighting back against this place that we're losing ourselves in the process. Can we just take a goddamn minute to find some fucking normalcy here?" Reaching out a hand, he gently gripped Julie by the shoulder and looked a tad sadly at her. "This place is robbing my kids of their childhood, their innocence. I don't want it robbing them of their souls or their lives."

"Dad," Julie muttered quietly, as if saying 'I love you' and 'please don't worry about me' in the same breath.

Clearing his throat, Jim began to back away from the three of them and turned to face the door. "I'm heading to the Clinic to see if Kristi can stitch me up," he informed; swiftly changing the subject. "Someone might wanna check on Ethan—make sure he's not turning into a prune in the shower."

Without another word, he opened the door and walked out of the house.

As he stood there for a moment, trying to let his angst and his fears roll off his back, there he noticed Genny standing in the middle of the road with two porcelain mugs filled with dark brown liquid and coils of steam rising upward from them. She was like a greater breath of fresh air than that he'd stepped out into. With his shoulders slumping, he walked down the steps from the porch and made his way over to her.

"What happened to the bandages?" she wondered, passing him a mug.

Grateful for the coffee, he accepted it and reveled in the warmth between his palms. "I may have ripped them off in a fit of anger."

A small chuckle escaped Genny's lips. "Is everything okay in there?"

"It could've gone better," he replied as they began to walk in step with each other down the small road between his house and the empty, inground pool. As he took the first sip of his coffee, he practically hummed. "This is good. Thank you."

"I wasn't sure how you take yours, so I made it like mine," she remarked; catching a brief look upward at his profile. "I hope it's not too sweet."

"No, it's perfect. It's pretty close to how I usually make it for myself anyway. Plus, I could really use the caffeine and the sugar right now."

After going about twenty feet further in silence, Genny asked, "Does your neck hurt?"

He wanted to downplay it, but he felt he could be completely honest with her about just about anything. "Yeah, it does."

See frowned accordingly; wishing she'd had some sort of ibuprofen or acetaminophen at her house for him. "Kristi will have something for it, I'm sure."

"I know."

Further in silence they walked, but it was a comfortable silence that neither felt obligated to fill with noise. It was a peaceful walk along the winding road up to the Clinic and both seemed to appreciate the company and the camaraderie. But there was more in the air than just silence that was hanging between them, and that was feeling particularly heavy. But, just like needless small talk, it was remaining unsaid for now.

As for Jim, all he knew was that, at the moment, that invisible string that seemed to tighten and cause such a dull ache in the pit of his chest the further apart they got from one another, was virtually nonexistent in the moment.

When the Clinic came into view, so too did Donna, who was walking down another lane from Colony House. It seemed all three were heading in the same direction.

As the older woman drew nearer, she seemed distracted—no different than everyone else lately—but was able to manage a pleasant greeting. "Hey, you two." When she got close enough and noticed the gashes on Jim's neck she looked like a deer caught in the headlights. "Well, Jesus fucking Christ, Jim, what the hell happened to you?"

"Long story," he replied, "but I'll fill you when we get inside."

Donna gestured toward the doors to the Clinic. "Well, since you're here, so is Boyd, and he has a long story to tell, too, that you might wanna hear."

"Oh?"

"Yeah." As Donna stepped ahead of Jim and Genny, she grabbed for the door first and held it open. Looking back at them, she informed, "We got Fatima back."