Chapter 1: hey kid, get out of the road
Chapter Text
Three cylindrical towers of crumbling, reinforced concrete stand at the edge of a field of yellow grass. Grain silos, long out of commission since the new ones were built a few years back, they have more bats and bugs in them now than anything else. They’re such an everyday sort of haunted. Someone has even been so bold as to tattoo graffiti along the side of one.
Tyler stares up at them, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans, and contemplates.
At the top of the central tower sit two vultures. Their wings are spread out to either side of their bodies to catch the rays of the sun. It’s a stance Tyler more closely associates with music services at church. Hands held out, head tipped back, worshipful.
But they’re creepy animals, regardless, with their mostly bald head and hunched posture. Not to mention the general association with roadkill and rotten meat. Though, it’s really not their fault they’ve got a bad rap.
Someone has to clean up the dead things in the world.
Vultures just work a really thankless job.
Tyler tugs the cellphone out of his back pocket and snaps a grainy photo of them perched there on top of the silo. Certainly not paying him any mind.
He ignores the long line of text message notifications, the recent missed calls. Instead, he tucks the phone back in his pocket with a frown and picks a june bug off his pants. It wiggles its legs at him, caught between his thumb and his forefinger. After a long moment, he flicks it into the grass.
His morning walks are supposed to be good for him. Exercise, he’s been told, is the key to a healthy body and a healthy mind. It sounds like something cooked up to sell gym memberships to him. But ever since his dad’s best friend offered the entirety of his farming property to Tyler for his “exclusive recreational use,” to put it in his words, he hasn’t minded the walks so much.
Better than kicking up and down the sidewalk of his own neighborhood at least. He always feels like people are watching him from their windows when he does that. Which is stupid, he knows. And vain or, better yet, paranoid. Probably a fun mixture of all three.
He shakes his head roughly, fingertips clawing at his short hair as he does. It’s a calming gesture he’s picked up, at least when there’s nobody around to see him. Or maybe “calming” is the wrong word. More like “warding,” fending off unwanted thoughts.
Probably if anyone else caught him at it they’d think he’s really lost it. Or maybe that he has fleas. He’s not sure which would be worse.
At the end of an overgrown dirt road, his ride home waits beneath a shade tree. Wrestling open the door to his borrowed truck - his dad’s “kick-around” as he calls it, which really just means it’s old and decrepit - Tyler climbs into the driver’s seat and grabs for his journal.
It’s a fancy leather-bound book that his mom bought him when he started therapy again. He thinks she probably intended it to be something he’d keep his thoughts in, self-reflect and hopefully self-correct. Instead, it’s turned into his weird art project.
Unwinding the leather cord from around it, Tyler lets the journal fall open where the cracked spine is most familiar. Pages of scribbled ideas, images clipped from magazines, ripped-out book pages highlighted in yellow and underlined in red. There’s even a few of his awful camera-phone photos printed out at the local drugstore and taped to the pages.
A picture of his sister in a bright red raincoat, her back turned somewhat ominously to the camera. A bonfire spitting sparks into the night sky. The discarded antlers of a young buck sticking up from wet leaves. Each annotated with story ideas and errant nightmares.
It’s all the darkest contents of his mind spilled out in gory detail, just not the way that anyone originally intended.
He thinks of it as the working-bible for his movie.
Really, he doesn’t know what put the itch in his head to make his own horror movie. Maybe it was too many late nights in his dorm, staying up watching bad indie flicks instead of studying. Maybe it’s his kid brother’s endless rants about the Slenderman games. Maybe his mind just needed something to cling to when everything else in his life fell through the rotted-out floor of his skull.
Tyler thumbs through the book until he reaches a clean page, snatches a ballpoint pen from his cup-holder, and uncaps it with his teeth. He spends a few quiet minutes gnawing on the already-mutilated pen cap and jotting down ideas from today’s walk, and he finishes by leaving enough room for the new photos before scribbling, at the very bottom:
Towers of Silence
Tapping the end of the pen to the paper, he looks back over what he wrote with bleary eyes. Good for his health or not, these walks are murder on his allergies. Apparently every pollen-producing plant in Ohio grows somewhere on his dad’s buddy’s farm, and every one of them wants Tyler dead.
If he weren’t already going by the drugstore to print his pictures, he’d stop by just to stock up on some more allergy medicine. And a Red Bull. He could really use a Red Bull.
Convincing the aged truck to start is a fine art in timing and spitefulness, but with a little luck and a few choice words that he’s glad his mom isn’t around to hear, the engine rattles to a choking half-life. Tyler eases his way down the old dirt road between fields that have been left fallow this season. An impressive cloud of dust kicks up behind his back tires, all the way back to the paved but pothole-riddled highway.
He’s fussing with the radio nobs and praying for a clear signal when something in the road catches his eye.
For a moment, it’s a human-shaped bonfire with a blackened figure at the center. An effigy, body made of twisted together sticks moving at odd angles, set ablaze like a Roman candle, leaving fire-touched footprints on the cracked blacktop, right down the yellow-dashed center line. Tyler blinks.
And then it’s a flesh-and-blood person.
He hits the breaks and swerves the truck to miss them. He shoots over the shoulder, through the shallow ditch, and partially into the next field. When he finally gets the old truck back under control, it jerks to a bone-rattling stop. The back of his skull impacts with the headrest of the seat. Whiplash, white hot TV static explodes behind his eyes, and for a moment, his whole world spirals into darkness.
After an indeterminate amount of time, Tyler becomes faintly aware of a Katy Perry song playing through the truck speakers. He groans, the heel of one hand pressed to the center of his forehead. He can feel his pulse through his whole body.
“What the-?”
Tyler glances around, trying to connect his present situation - “E.T.” playing in his ears, truck engine still rumbling, tires inches deep in mud at the edge of a field - to the string of snapshot memories from the moments before. Then he remembers the guy standing in the road.
Unbuckling from his seat, Tyler falls through the driver-side door and into the tall grass. His legs are jelly beneath him, and the ground feels like a waterbed, constantly shifting under his feet. His weight pivots. Shaking hands cling to the side of the truck for balance.
When he finally manages to get himself back onto the gravel shoulder of the road, he spies the other guy, still walking down the center of the highway like he wasn’t almost struck at full speed by a moving vehicle.
Tyler jogs after him.
“Hey! Hey, are you okay?”
But the stranger doesn’t turn. Doesn’t acknowledge him. And when Tyler reaches him, he sees why.
Dark eyes half-lidded and distant, jaw just slightly slackened, he watches as the person shuffles along zombie-like. He’s sleepwalking, Tyler thinks. And he’s pretty sure that everything he’s ever heard about sleepwalking says you’re not supposed to wake the person who’s doing it. But he feels like this is pretty extenuating circ*mstances, considering another vehicle might come barrelling down the road at any moment and squash them both. Bug-on-windshield.
He grabs one of the stranger’s tattooed arms and pulls. “Come on, man. Wake up!” He glances down the road in either direction. No one’s coming. Yet.
Then Tyler snaps his gaze back to the other guy’s face when he hears a groggy string of incoherent words. He blinks at his surroundings as Tyler draws him to the side of the road where the truck is idling. The moment their feet are off the pavement, the guy gasps and twists his arm from Tyler’s hold.
He stumbles back, but Tyler grabs for the front of his shirt and keeps him from falling back into the road. Thrown off-balance, they both skid down the gravel slope into the ditch where they each land gracelessly in the grass.
The jolt sends a new wave of pain through Tyler’s neck and shoulders, singing all the way down to the base of his spine. He has to lay back in the dirt a moment just to breathe.
The other guy hisses a few choice profanities before pushing himself up onto one elbow and glancing down at Tyler.
“-was sleepwalking, wasn’t I?” Tyler hears through the ringing in his skull.
He nods, barely able to move his head as he squeezes his eyes shut against the sun rising higher in the blue June sky. “I almost hit you, dude.”
Now he realizes that part of the pain is from his heart hammering itself to death against his rib cage. Tyler presses a hand to his chest and wills himself to breathe deep. It’s hard, though, when every muscle in his back is twisted into knots.
“Sorry, I’m - God - I’m so sorry.”
Tyler glances up to see the other guy - curly brown hair frizzed in the morning humidity, sun-tanned shoulders shaking where they slope from a wrinkled Space Jam tank - with his head between his knees. His fingers are laced together at the back of his skull. His chest heaves with every breath.
For a moment, Tyler sees a flash of his vision from before. Humanoid figure of burning sticks, the flames nearly ten feet high. He swallows the acid burn of bile in the back of his throat.
“‘S cool,” Tyler sputters through his own ebbing panic. “You do that often?”
It takes the guy a moment to respond. He’s rocking a little and rubbing his fingertips over the back of his scalp like he’s trying to self-soothe. “Unfortunately, yeah. It’s- It’s happened once or twice.”
After a moment, he raises his head. “Is your truck okay?”
Tyler snorts. But even that hurts. “Dude, I could have killed you, and you’re worried about the truck?”
But to placate the guy, because he really does look worried about it, Tyler juts a thumb over his shoulder as he sits up from the grass. “It’s still running. I guess that’s as good as I can hope for. It’s an old beater anyway.”
They both go silent then, enough for them to hear the final bars of the song spilling out through the open driver’s door.
Tyler is all nerve-endings and jello. He knows he should say something, ease the guy’s mind, but he’s pretty sure his brains have turned to mashed potatoes. He wonders distantly why all his metaphors for his current state are food-related and then remembers he hasn’t had breakfast.
Then the guy extends a hand to him. It’s still shaking a little.
“I’m Josh, by the way.”
Smirking slightly, Tyler shakes his hand. It’s all wrong for this moment, a gesture he’s only ever seen his father employ with any real social effectiveness - “Every man needs a good firm, handshake, Ty” - or something reserved for the awkward, formal greetings involved in Sunday church services and job interviews. Not for sitting in a ditch off the side of a highway enjoying a collective panic attack. But he figures he’ll throw the guy a line.
They’ve both had a rough morning.
“Tyler,” he says by way of greeting.
Another car speeds past on the road, startlingly close.
“Tyler,” Josh repeats back at him, and then sighs his next words through a bashful smile, “thanks for not hitting me with your truck.”
“Any time, man. Any time.”
Tyler scrubs his fingers through his hair. He’s certain it’s sticking in every possible direction now. Not to mention his t-shirt and jeans are covered in dust and wet grass. But he figures Josh will give him a pass on his appearance, all things considered.
“So, Josh, is there someone you want to call? Or maybe I could give you a ride?” Tyler fishes in his pocket where his phone has managed to hang on through all the recent harrowing events. He holds it out in offering to Josh between the knuckles of his first two fingers.
Josh waves his hand at the device. “Nah, technology hates me. I swear, it’s a curse. It’ll probably break just from me touching it.”
Tyler raises an eyebrow, but he doesn’t question it. He’s got his own thoughts about the reality of curses, after all. Not that he thinks now is the time to share.
“But,” Josh continues, looking up at Tyler through his lashes, “I wouldn’t mind a ride into town, since you’re offering.”
“Cool.” Tyler pushes himself up from the ground, takes a moment to find his balance, and then offers a hand down to Josh.
When he pulls him up, they nearly fall into each other. It seems they’re both a little shaky on their feet. But once Josh settles, he lets go of Tyler’s hand and nervously brushes his palms on his shorts. Then Tyler jerks his head for Josh to follow him. They round either side of the truck and both hop in.
The moment Josh clicks his seat belt into place, the truck’s radio bursts with a scream of sharp static before going dead. Tyler looks at the radio, looks at Josh. The other guy’s face is grim, his eyes suddenly turned dark, mouth pressed into a thin line. He looks annoyed. But he doesn’t look surprised.
Finally, he cuts a glance towards Tyler and raises his eyebrows as if to say - See, what I mean?
Tyler nods slowly. “You weren’t kidding - noted.” He drums his hands on the cracked leather of the steering wheel, still a little jittery with nervous energy. “So, where am I taking you, Josh? I’m just gonna keep saying your name so I don’t forget it.”
Josh has started scratching at his arms, which even Tyler can see from where he sits are covered in bug bites. Probably from his sleepwalking escapade. “Oh, well, I hate to put you out of your way-”
Tyler focuses on navigating the truck back onto the road, but he’s beginning to think this Josh guy is maybe too nice for his own good. “It’s not a problem, really. I was heading back into town, going to run by the drugstore to grab some things before heading home. That’s the direction you were coming from, right?”
Josh nods, still scratching. “Drugstore, that sounds good. Maybe they’ll have a landline I can use to call a ride. And some anti-itch cream.”
“Landline?” Tyler gives a sideways grin as he brings the truck up to speed and feels the last of the anxiety fade from his chest.
Shrugging his shoulders, Josh glances around the interior of the truck. “They tend to work better for me than cellphones.” He leans down and picks something up off the floorboard. It’s Tyler’s journal.
“Oh, don’t-” Tyler starts, realizing too late.
But the book automatically falls open in Josh’s hand, to a page covered in psycho-looking scribbles and more disturbing photos.
Josh frowns. “Is that- is that a picture of a dead rat?”
Now it’s Tyler’s turn to look bashful. He scratches at his scalp, a little more violently this time. Great, Josh is going to think he’s a psycho with lice.
“So, this is the part where I say that I’m making my own horror movie, and that’s why I have a photo of a dead rat in my journal. For inspiration. Not because I’m a serial killer.”
He chews on the inside of his cheek a moment, eyes cutting back and forth from the road to Josh’s unreadable expression, before asking, “You regret getting in my truck yet?”
But Josh only shrugs and lets the journal fall closed again. “Nah, I like horror movies.” He grins, and Tyler feels a weight lift from his shoulders.
“So, what’s this movie about?”
Chapter 2: night psycho trip
Chapter Text
As the sun continues to climb higher in the sky, they sit side-by-side on the tailgate of Tyler’s borrowed truck in the mostly-empty drugstore parking lot. While Josh waits on his ride to arrive, Tyler balances the movie-bible on his knee and chatters.
“So, it’s about this guy who’s haunted by demons. Only they’re maybe not literal demons, you know. They could all just be in his head, but he doesn’t know for sure.”
Tyler tips his newly-purchased bag of powdered donuts - breakfast of champions - towards Josh, who wordlessly takes two and pinches one in half to stick in his mouth.
“And so he’s filming everywhere he goes, like a documentary almost, to see if he can get video evidence of the stuff the demons are doing. Like leaving cryptic messages or burning fires in his front yard or-”
“Or leaving dead rats on his doorstep?” Josh asks after swallowing both donuts.
Tyler snorts and nods his head. “Yeah, something like that.”
“Could just be his pet cat,” Josh says while wiping off his sugar-dusted fingers on his pants before applying the anti-itch cream to his many bug bites.
“Sure, maybe the pet cat could’ve drug up some dead animal, but the other things? Definitely demons.” Tyler takes his allergy medicine with a swig of his Red Bull before setting the can next to him on the tailgate and grabbing for the blue and red washi tape he stole from his sister’s room.
Josh props his foot up on the tailgate to get at the bites on his leg. “I don’t know, man, my mom has a cat. I’m pretty sure if that thing had thumbs, it would be fully capable of arson.” He squints down at his own handiwork, and Tyler passes him a box of band-aids to cover the worst of the bites.
“I like found-footage horror, though,” Josh adds, plastering on one band-aid after the next until he looks like a little kid who was left unsupervised with a book of stickers.“Blair Witch Project? The, uh, Paranormal Activity ones. You want a similar style to those?”
Nodding along, Tyler realizes quietly that this is what he’s missed since his other friends left town for the summer. It’s been a while since he’s had someone to throw all his ideas at, someone to act as a sounding board. Not to mention, Josh is surprisingly easy to talk to, even about something he’s held so close to his chest for so long.
Of course, they did get a hell of an introduction to jumpstart things.
“You could do a variation on it,” Josh suggests as he closes the band-aid box and snags another donut. “Like a video-blogger style. Or live-streaming, even. That could be kind of corny, though.”
Tyler hums in vague acknowledgement. His focus is centered on arranging some of the new photos on his chosen pages. Tearing the tape with his teeth, he begins sticking them in place one at a time.
The aesthetics of his creation are half the fun for him, half the challenge. Even though it feels one step away from his mom’s scrap-booking hobby. The book is a tactile wonder, bowed-up with all that it contains, paper clips and errant scrap corners sticking out of the sides. He loves it. He’s also somewhat embarrassed for Josh to watch him be so finicky with it.
But if Josh thinks it’s weird, he doesn’t comment. He just takes another donut from the bag.
“I don’t mean to hate on your idea. I like it, it’s just…” He swallows this donut quickly, too, and Tyler is starting to wonder if he was wise to share his food with this guy.
“Hasn’t that been done before? Like a lot? The whole, setting up a camera to catch the ghost in the act bit?”
Tyler nods and crams a few donuts in his mouth himself as he thinks of how to explain this next part. The sun is fully up and beaming down heavily on their shoulders now, and as the asphalt beneath the truck starts heating up, Tyler is beginning to long for his darkened, air-conditioned bedroom again. Retreating into his cave to hide out like Gollum beneath the mountain.
“You’re right, but I want there to be some- I don’t know- fantastical elements to it, too?” Licking his fingers clean, he leafs through to the pages about the symbolism of neon lights, sketches of the red-hooded demons standing around their unwitting victim, a cut-out ad of a TV screen covered in static.
“Almost like you’re looking through a window into a different world sometimes. I want the viewer to question what’s real and what’s not. Usually in movies, if you can’t trust the characters, you can at least trust the camera not to lie to you. It’s your window into the world of the story, but what if the window is made of stained-glass? Coloring your view, shaping it, obscuring it.”
He shrugs, growing even more self-conscious the longer he talks, because this is the first person that he’s ever shared his ideas with. And even though Josh is basically a stranger - sans Tyler almost hitting him with his truck - he still doesn’t want him to think he’s crazy. Not like everyone else in Tyler’s life already does.
“But I want to tell a story about someone who isn’t able to trust himself. He doesn’t know if the attack is from outside or inside, you know? If this is some other world bleeding into his, or if it’s all made up by his own head. And even the camera can’t tell him which is which. The viewer, even though they see everything, can’t do anythingto help him. Even though he’s basically begging for someone, anyone to do something. They just sit there and-”
“Watch,” Josh says with him and nods. “That’s pretty dark.”
Tyler ducks his head and shuts the book. “Yeah. I guess.”
He drums his fingers over the back cover. Then, blinking away the chilliest of his thoughts, Tyler takes a spare piece of blue tape still stuck to his jeans and wraps it around his right ring finger, between the first and second knuckle.
“Sorry,” Josh apologizes again.
He apologizes too much, Tyler thinks.
“I really do like your ideas. I’m a big movie nerd myself, so I guess I just- I like to talk about stuff like this. Hash things out. My friends say it makes me a pain to actually watch movies with, though.”
He gives a nervous chuckle, tugging at one of his lime green gauges. “I guess they’re not wrong.”
Tyler shakes his head. “I can never shut up during movies either. My brothers say I’m too critical all the time, but the thing is, I love good horror.” He twists his fingers through the air while trying to explain, like he can pull a good movie right out of the air. “But so many horror movies suck, too. They just want to throw a big, scary thing in your face instead of asking why things scare us.”
He takes another swig of his Red Bull, peering out over the bleak landscape of their downtown, strip malls as far as the eye can see. “Not mine, though. It’s going to be great.”
The statement is only a little sarcastic.
Josh crosses his arms over his knee where its propped in front of him, and he leans his chin on his forearm. “Is it just you? Making the movie, I mean. Seems like a big project for just one guy.”
Tyler’s expression sours. “Yeah, it is.”
It hadn’t always been just him. At the start of the summer, a few of his buddies agreed to help him out. Initially, they were all just as excited as he was. They’d even started working on a script together, huddled around a single laptop in the Josephs’ basem*nt. But one by one they’d dropped out to do other things.
Summer courses for college. A chance to coach basketball at a sleep-away camp. Whatever the reason, they left, until it was just Tyler and his weird little book of nightmares. He tries not to assume that it was him, not their sudden changes in plans, that put them off. But he knows how difficult he’s been lately.
Excluding the part about his own insecurities, Tyler explains the situation to Josh in as neutral a tone as he can manage, but he’s pretty sure that his characteristic cynicism shines through well enough.
“It’s not their fault I’ve got nothing better to do these days.”
Josh’s brow is wrinkled in thought as he scratches his chin along the top of his arm. “If you- This may be overstepping some boundaries, I guess, but if you ever wanted help, I actually know a thing or two about making short films. I did summer camps a lot as a kid and film clubs, when I was in public school.”
Tyler, both eyebrows raised, turns his face towards Josh. “Seriously?”
Lips pursed, Josh nods his head and tucks his chin when Tyler continues to stare. “Yeah, seriously. I could show you some stuff I’ve worked on, if you want.”
“Doesn’t your whole,” Tyler flicks his fingers in Josh’s general direction, “technology curse make the movie-making thing a little hard?”
Josh’s expression gets that washed-out quality again, the same as it was when he glitched Tyler’s radio. “That’s a more recent development. But I’d still be happy to help however I can, if you wanted an extra pair of hands. Or eyes. Or whatever.”
Tyler is debating whether or not it would be too personal to ask for the story behind this sudden curse that Josh has come under when a car rolls into the lot and parks near the truck. Josh perks up, like he recognizes the person behind the wheel. And when Tyler looks, he sees a young woman who looks very similar to Josh. Probably his sister, if Tyler had to guess.
“That’s my ride,” Josh says, hopping down from the tailgate.
“Why don’t you give me your number?” Tyler asks suddenly, and when Josh turns back to him, an eyebrow raised, he continues. “So I could call you about the movie. We could set a time and place to workshop ideas?”
“You’d really let me help out?” Josh grins, it’s an infectious if self-conscious thing.
Tyler brushes a hand nervously over his own smile and nods. “I mean, I’d be willing to give you some credit, as a consultant. At least to start.” He flips open his journal to a blank page and holds it out to Josh, along with his pen.
He’s only a little embarrassed that it’s covered in bite-marks.
Once Josh has written down his number, he tucks the pen inside the journal and hands it back. “It’s just my temporary number, but you can ask for me. I’m usually around.”
“Cryptic,” Tyler says but decides to leave it at that. “I’ll see you around, Josh.”
“See you around,” he echoes back and gets into the waiting car.
The girl behind the wheel gives Tyler a polite wave before driving off. Tyler winds a finger through his hair, twisting and twisting, until the car is through the nearest red-light and gone around a corner. Then he frowns down at the journal in his hand.
All confidence from a moment ago has left him in an instant the longer he stares at the little book. A new, nervous energy begins to gnaw at his guts instead, realizing that he’s committed to this. To sharing this ugly, personal thing with someone who’s almost a stranger.
He just hopes he doesn’t come to regret it.
When he gets back into his truck and starts it, the radio comes screaming back to life, singing “Bad Moon Rising” through grainy static before the signal clears up.
“Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. One eye is taken for an eye.”
Tyler shuts off the radio and decides to drive home in silence.
The bedroom that Tyler shares with his brother Zack shares a wall with the filter for the family pool. It generates a certain amount of white noise, a low grumbling and spitting that almost sounds like a slumbering beast. When Tyler spent his two f*ckless semesters at college, he found that he couldn’t sleep most nights without that familiar sound.
He’d even gotten Zack to record it and send him the audio file so Tyler could go to bed with it droning through a pair of earbuds.
Now that he’s once more living under his parents’ roof, the sound keeps him awake. He lies on his back and watches the blades on the ceiling fan spin. The many-legged shadow it casts runs sidelong over the ceiling, illuminated by the blue glow of the pool through the window blinds. His mom took down his blackout curtains when he refused to come out of his room for three straight days.
“At least this way I know you might at least see the sun.”
She’s trying to help, he knows, but that doesn’t make the imposition feel any less like what it is. He’s old enough that he should have his own place by now, if he’s not going to be attending college. And if he were able to hold down more than a part-time job, Tyler might even be able to afford rent somewhere.
He picks at a scab on his elbow and sighs.
His therapist would call this train of thought his “I should be” spiral.
As in, I should be in college right now. I should be playing basketball still. I should be able to hold down a job. I should be able to afford rent. I should be meeting new people. I should be starting my adult life. I should be enjoying this time. I should be happier, in general.
I should be better by now.
Tyler hisses as the scab pulls away from his skin, and he can feel the blood start to flow again. Not wanting to get it all over his sheets, he clamps his hand over the cut and rolls out of bed.
Zack mumbles softly in his sleep as Tyler pads out on socked feet, down the hall to where the bathroom is partially illuminated by a shell-shaped nightlight. He slaps on the lights and nudges the door closed with his foot. There’s dinosaur band-aids in the second drawer, underneath all his sister’s crap. He picks through the box absent-mindedly, but there are no T-rex’s left. Just pterodactyls and brontosauruses.
He dabs off the blood with wadded-up toilet paper, then plasters the band-aid on. The cartoon pterodactyl tells him to: “Reach for the stars!” Tyler doesn’t think the pterodactyl has considered who he’s talking to here.
Looking up into the bathroom mirror, he meets his own glassy-eyed stare with a sigh. He’s sporting a stylish pair of eye-bags and a fresh crop of stubble on his jaw. When he leans forward to pull down one eyelid, staring at the blood veins standing out in his eyes, he feels a twinge where his finger presses to his cheek. A sudden toothache.
Frowning, Tyler presses his tongue to the offending tooth and feels it wiggle loosely inside his jaw. His stomach sinks. This can’t be good. He knows he flaked on his last dentist appointment, the last one his mom set up for him before she said he should be able to do things like that for himself now. And that was over a year ago.
I should be able to make my own dental appointments.
But surely one missed cleaning wouldn’t leave his teeth coming loose.
He leans over the sink and pulls back at the flesh of his cheek to try to get a look at the tooth. When he does, he sees that it’s black and rotten in his gum. He touches it with one finger, eyes wide, and jumps as it clatters into the sink. Tyler stares at it, where it’s landed near the drain.
Clotted blood coats the base of it.
Then he’s sticking his fingers into his mouth, feeling the gap where the tooth just was. But then another tooth follows it into the sink. And another. And another, until Tyler is spitting them out of his mouth, each of them coated in a film of blood and saliva.
Panic lances through his insides.
What is he going to do? How is he going to fix this? How is he going to keep his parents from finding out? Everyone is going to see. Everyone is going to know.
And then he jolts awake, lying curled up on the bathroom floor. His cheek is pressed to the cool tile, but his whole body is fever-hot and covered in sweat. He pushes himself up, stomach sloshing and reeling. Panic sits heavy on his chest as he realizes what he’s done.
There are claw-marks on his arms. Bloody and ragged, where fingernails have dug in. But this is not a horror movie, and Tyler doesn’t have to wonder if it was a demon that did this. The blood is under his own nails.
Probing in his mouth with his tongue - at least he finds all his teeth are intact.
He sighs, because he’s going to have clean himself up now, and tomorrow he’s going to have to come up with a reasonable excuse for wearing a long-sleeved shirt in June. Or else stay inside his room all day. Because he can’t let his parents see that he’s doing this kind of stuff in his sleep again.
I should be less of a burden.
He’s going to need more band-aids.
Chapter 3: we got a lot of problems
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The next day, Tyler scribbles in his journal as he listens to the phone ring. Where he grips the pen, his fingertips are sore from cutting the nails down too close to his skin, but it’s better than the alternative. He focuses on writing about his most recent dream in the same detached way that he compiles all his nuggets of inspiration.
But he doubts he’ll be able to find any human teeth to use for the movie. Fake ones maybe? Do they make loose, fake human teeth? He makes a note to find out.
Either way, it helps to compartmentalize.
Someone picks up the other phone. Tyler hears loud music and lots of shouting.
And then, “Hello? How the hell did you get this number? Thought this thing was disconnected.”
Tyler frowns at the phone, then presses it to his ear again. “Um, I’m looking for Josh?”
The person on the other end, not-Josh, shouts Josh’s name so loud that Tyler nearly drops his phone. He winces, pulling the speaker away from his ear again, before he hears a distant, “Coming!”
And then, thankfully, “Tyler?”
“Do you live at a frat house?” he asks, feeling suddenly very self-conscious. He wants to bite his nails, but well, that’s out. He reaches for the pen cap instead and puts the stem of it between his teeth.
“Close, but no. Just a house full of guys who flunked out of fraternities actually,” Josh answers, laughter in his voice. He has to practically yell to be heard over the background noise. “It’s… temporary. Also you called on Smash Bros Saturday, so it’s not exactly an opportune time.”
Picking at his teeth with the cap, Tyler frowns down at the words in his journal. He’s re-thinking this. He’s doing it anyway. He’s definitely going to hang up.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to take you away from Smash Bros Saturday…”
Suddenly, the background noise dims significantly.
“Sorry, I’m hiding in the kitchen pantry now. That’s as far as the cord on the phone will reach. Where do you want to meet?” Josh asks by way of an answer.
Tyler blinks in surprise, and the pen cap drops onto the table. He scrambles to catch it before it falls to the floor. “Uh, how do you feel about Taco Bell?”
For a moment, Josh is silent, and then he whispers, “I knew we would be good friends. I had a gut feeling.”
“That might just be the Taco Bell,” Tyler snorts. “See you there in half an hour?”
“Sure, you mind if I bring my dog?”
When Tyler ends the phone call, he’s still smiling. It’s nice, actually looking forward to going somewhere, to seeing someone. For so long, he’s been either holed up in his parents’ house, going to work part-time, or creeping over the farm on his morning walks. It’s a self-imposed isolation. He could always reach out to others, but he already knows he won’t.
Not while he’s still like this.
He rubs a hand across the place on his arm where the scratches still burn. If he’s going to let Josh in on this project, he’s got to at least try to keep things normal. Sane. Under control.
He lets his forehead fall forward so that it thunks against the journal on his desk.
“Be normal, please, just for once in your life be normal.”
When Josh gets out of his car in the Taco Bell parking lot, he’s already smiling at Tyler. “You okay, man? You look terrible.” Somehow, coming from Josh, it doesn't sting as much as it should.
"Hello to you, too." Tyler’s tugs at the rolled sleeves of his flannel to be sure they’re covering his scratches, but he tries his best to look casual. “Those are mighty big words for a guy wearing an Elmo snapback.”
“Hey,” Josh says and fidgets with the bright red hat on his head, “I’ll have you know, Elmo is my biggest role model. He’s a really good guy.”
Tyler drums the pen in his hand against his thigh, too hard, too fast. “Yeah, I was more of a Veggie Tales kid myself.”
Josh opens the back door of the car, and Tyler thinks, right - the dog. But the creature that steps out onto the pavement startles him. It’s big and black with thick, bristled fur and massive paws ending in dagger-sharp claws. The beast - can’t be a dog, it’s too big - turns its head towards Tyler with eyes like blazing red coals pulled from a furnace. And its teeth.
Tyler doesn’t have words to describe the horror of those teeth.
All the blood drains from his face, and he falls back a step before the thing lunges at him… And becomes a fluffy, pink-tongued golden retriever with sweet brown eyes and a big, drooling smile.
“This is Jim,” Josh says. His gaze lingers for a long moment on Tyler’s face.
Can he see the panic? Is Tyler smiling? He’s trying to smile.
Be normal, be normal, be normal, he begs himself.
“If you’re nervous around dogs, I can call my sister to come get him,” Josh offers, and Tyler sticks the pointed end of the pen against his thigh, digging it in. Because he’s being weird. He knows it, and Josh is having to compensate.
“She keeps him sometimes. I just don’t trust the guys I live with not to feed him garbage…”
“No, no,” Tyler says quickly, maybe too quickly. “It’s fine.”
And to prove his point, he kneels down and forces himself to pet Jim’s soft, silky fur. The dog really isn’t so bad; it’s Tyler that’s the problem. But Jim seems to enjoy the attention, even though he keeps glancing back at Josh or around at the sights and smells of the parking lot.
Tyler forces himself to breathe in and out through his nose, the acrid smell of dog-breath puffing in his face. “Will they let you take him inside? Isn’t that against a bunch of health regulations?”
“Only for snitches,” Josh warns and shrugs his shoulders. “I know the manager. I actually worked here for a while in high school, and as long as Jim stays under the table, she’s cool with me bringing him in.”
Tyler stands up again, watching Jim run to press himself to Josh’s legs. “You worked here, and you’re still willing to eat the food? That’s brave.”
Josh just grins and pats his stomach. “Nah, this thing is made out of cast iron. I’m good. Besides, Darlene runs a tight ship.” He clicks a leash onto Jim’s collar then nods his head towards the restaurant. “And speaking of, I’m starving. You?”
Suddenly, Tyler finds that his appetite has left him, but he’d rather not admit it.
Once they order, Josh pays for them both. Tyler, drilled by social convention that this is definitely him imposing on Josh’s kindness, tries valiantly to object. But Josh won’t hear it.
“No worries. Think of it as me saying thanks for saving my life the other day.” He passes a couple crumpled fives to the cashier and accepts his change before turning back to Tyler. “Besides, you can pick up the tab next time, if it bothers you that much.” And he winks.
Next time, Tyler thinks. He just has to make sure he doesn’t scare Josh away so that there will be a next time.
Then as they stand waiting for their food, Josh chats with the restaurant manager, Darlene - runner of tight ships - animatedly recounting how he met Tyler, as Tyler stands there wishing that he could fall through the floor and disappear. But then Josh has to speak to every other person he knows on shift, too. And they’re all excited to see him, like even working a crappy fastfood job he was a sheer delight. Who knows? He probably was.
Tyler thinks if he really had hit Josh with his truck, he would’ve had half the town coming after him with pitchforks. He tries very hard not to wonder how many people would care if the roles were reversed.
When they finally sit down, Tyler’s smile is so strained his face actually hurts.
“Sorry about that,” Josh says, always apologizing. Like he isn’t the nicest person Tyler has ever met, just as natural at kindness as breathing. It’s borderline irritating. “I usually don’t like to talk so much, but they’re all really cool.”
Tyler just shakes his head and stabs a straw into his drink. “It’s fine. Guess my social battery is kind of low.” Try dead, corroded, and leaking acid onto the floor. But that’s beside the point. “You, however, are a social butterfly.”
Josh almost chokes on his first taco and shakes a hand through the air. “No, no,” he says once he’s managed to swallow, “not even a little. It’s only like that with people that I already know.”
“Just fastfood workers and frat-row dropouts?” Tyler offers and picks at the grease-stained paper of his burrito. He thinks back to their earlier phone call, of all the voices in the background at Josh’s place. “Say, how’d you manage to sleepwalk out of a house full of people without anyone noticing anyway?”
Tyler doesn’t think he imagines that Josh takes a little longer to chew on his next bite. He washes it down with some soda before finally answering.
“Uh, just bad luck, I guess.” Josh scoops bits of loose ground beef onto a cracked piece of taco shell and passes it under the table to Jim.
Tyler can hear the dog loudly chewing where he rests between Josh’s legs.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t pry.” Tyler ducks his head and digs the pen into his thigh again.
“No, it’s a fair question.” Josh clears his throat, avoiding eye-contact. “Actually, I figure I should probably explain that whole situation, since we’re going to be working together on this.”
He scratches at the side of his head, just beneath where the cap rests. Another nervous tick. Tyler knows them well. So, he sits forward to show he’s paying attention.
“It all started a few months ago. February, I guess. One night I woke up out in the middle of this field.” Josh’s eyes are pinched at the sides as he speaks, obvious tension in his jaw where the muscle twinges.
“It was freezing out, and I was in nothing except my pajamas, already half-frozen. I had to wander up to this random farmer’s house and hope that he wasn’t going to think I was, I don’t know, robbing him or something. Even though my teeth were chattering out of my skull. So you can imagine how scary that was.”
Tyler nods. He knows more than his fair share about waking up feeling lost and terrified. He does not, under any circ*mstances, want to admit that out loud.
“They say sleepwalking starts for most people when they’re kids? And then it’s supposed to just wear off over time. Not mine.” Josh is leaning forward with his hands pinned between his chest and the table now. Underneath him, Jim whines like he knows that Josh is uncomfortable.
“Doctors said it could be caused by stress.” Josh casts his eyes beneath the table, where he reaches down to pet Jim’s head. “Anxiety disorder of some kind. Which, fine, it could be. I won’t say I’m always the most relaxed guy in any room. But then it doesn’t even have to be when I’m asleep. Sometimes I just start walking, and I can’t stop.”
Tyler frowns, twisting the pen in his fingers. “You mean this has happened when you’re awake?”
Josh nods. He fails to meet Tyler’s eye as he continues, “I can tell it’s happening, in a way. Like I know I’m losing time, but as soon as I know it, the thought is gone again.And I’m just walking. It’s… scary. And I’ve wound up in some not-great places.”
Tyler doesn’t ask. And Josh doesn’t elaborate.
“And if that weren’t weird enough, the technology thing happened around the same time.” Josh rolls his eyes even though his mouth is smiling, sending mixed signals, but all of them adding up to the same thing: he’s tired. Tired of whatever this is, and Tyler can’t blame him.
“It’s mostly with newer, digital stuff. Analog is fine. And it tends to only happen through touch, but it’s more proximity-based when I’m upset.” He winces. “Like with your radio. How’s that-?”
“Worked good as new as soon as I re-started the truck after you left,” Tyler assures him, and that seems to take a load off Josh’s shoulders.
God, Tyler thinks, how does he really deal with this all day?
“What do the doctors think about that?” Tyler asks as he tucks his pen behind his ear. “The technology thing.”
Josh bites down on his lip then and shakes his head. “I haven’t told anyone about it, none of the doctors, anyway. I mean, it sounds insane, right? It sounds like a freaking alien abduction story, like something from the X-Files. Like I'm going to ask them to check me for computer chips next or something. And most times, I can keep it under wraps, so it doesn’t really affect anything around me."
He pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes shut with a sigh. Tyler feels some kind of sharp, sympathy pain twist hard in his chest, knife between the ribs.
“But it makes finding a job kind of tough. Hence the living with a bunch of other guys temporarily thing. My parents offered to let me move back in with them, but I hate putting them out like that. Especially since the sleepwalking thing only happens once in a while. But seriously, every time I have to call someone to come pick me up from the middle of nowhere, I just…”
Josh’s nervous chuckle dies quickly once it passes his lips.
And that dips the conversation squarely into too-heavy territory for them both, it seems, because they each take a few bites of their food without either interrupting to speak. Josh continues to feed Jim little bits of meat under the table. Tyler continues fidgeting.
“Well, I feel like a jerk now,” he says finally.
And Josh looks up at him confused but still chewing.
Tyler sets his journal onto the table between them, opened to the page where he’s started to work out the general plot of the movie. “I thought about your sleepwalking, and figured it might be an interesting element to add to the haunting in the story. It’s another demon to deal with, something to fight.”
Josh swallows.
“But if this is too personal for you…”
“No,” Josh says, looking down at the book like he’s slowly realizing something.
Tyler thinks about falling through the floor again. He thinks about shoving the pen straight through his eyeball. He thinks-
“I think it might be good for me,” Josh finishes. He looks up at Tyler then, his eyes softened around the edges in a way that twists that knife in Tyler's ribs again. “Maybe I could take ownership of it, in a way. You’d really be willing to do that? Change up your movie?”
“Our movie,” Tyler says and watches as Josh smiles again. He thinks he could get addicted to trying to make Josh smile. “Since we’re partners now.”
Josh’s smile brightens, ten thousand watts at least, and becomes open-mouthed with delight. “Have I been upgraded from consultant to partner already? Does this mean I get equal credit?”
“You get like thirty percent credit,” Tyler cautions him, and even he can’t help himself from grinning now. “An argument could be made for thirty-three, but we’ll have to see how you deal with the competition.”
“Competition?” Josh asks around his next bite of food. “From who?”
“Jim, obviously,” Tyler says and feels the golden retriever’s tail thumping against his ankles at the sound of his name. He feels a cold nose push at his fingers. Glancing down, he scratches behind the dog’s ears.
“Oh man,” Josh sits back, hands slapping down on his knees with a pretend sigh of frustration. “Guess I’m screwed then.”
“Certainly, with that attitude.” Tyler finishes his food and grabs for napkins, surprised at the return of his appetite.
They spend the next two hours hashing out the plot of the movie. Several times Tyler glances at his phone’s clock, wondering if Josh is getting bored, but he’s a workhorse. Brows furrowed and shoulders hunched over the journal between them, he only gets up to occasionally give Jim a short walk outside and refill his fountain drink.
When he returns, Tyler has bought them nachos to share and started a list for necessary supplies.
“A lot of this equipment I have in storage at my parents’ place,” Josh tells him, tracing a finger down the list. “But as far as a camera goes, everything I own is digital, so…”
“I’ve got an idea for the camera,” Tyler tells him with a wave of his hand. “Don’t worry about that.”
Josh seems to consider saying something, the corners of his mouth pulling down slightly. Tyler swears that if he tries to apologize one more time, he’s going to start actually pulling his own hair out. But instead, Josh nods and copies Tyler’s lists of supplies onto a napkin.
By the time they’ve polished off the nachos, the sun has gone down, and Tyler’s skin is starting to itch with worry. Nighttime is dangerous; nighttime makes everything worse. But Josh stretches both arms above his head before resting his hands on his legs, which is such an old-man way of saying that the social interaction has come to its end that it's almost comical. Tyler should know, he learned it honestly from his old man. It’s a good move.
“Well, I should really be heading back.”
“Yeah,” he nods and tosses the stray napkins and wrappers onto the plastic tray. “I’m just going to finish up writing this outline.”
Josh rises. Jim slips out after him, tail already wagging gleefully. Then Tyler feels Josh’s hand on his shoulder, just a quick squeeze, but it almost makes him jump out of his skin.
“See you soon!”
It's a promise, one that he hasn't screwed this up yet. A little too good to be true, but he'll take it.
Tyler smiles back at him. “See you soon.”
Notes:
And everyone's favorite member of the band joins the cast, Jim! <3
Chapter 4: i don't wanna fall
Notes:
This has been an abysmal week, so as per usual, I've decided to make it a problem for these two...
Chapter Text
They meet up again at the derelict silos, a gentle summer breeze breathing down their necks. Tyler with his dad’s old Super 8 camera and a couple boxes of film under his arm and Josh with just about everything else.
“Where on Earth did you find that old thing?” Josh asks, spying the camera as he unloads boxes from his car.
Tyler hoists it by the handle attached to the bottom and shrugs. “Dad had it tucked away in his closet, and I managed to find a company online that still makes 8 millimeter film, you know for auteurs and such.”
“Auteurs?” Josh laughs. “Now that’s an SAT word if I’ve ever heard one. Is that what we are now?” He glances up at the silos. No vultures today, but they’re no less creepy regardless. Standing ominously overlooking the field, Tyler's Towers of Silence, where the climax of the movie will hopefully take place.
“By necessity it seems.” Tyler passes the camera to Josh and helps to unload boxes of equipment. “Try it out and see if you fry it or not. My dad won’t care either way.”
Josh holds the camera at arms-length first, like he’s afraid that it’s going to start spitting sparks. But when it doesn’t, he draws it closer in and starts inspecting it more closely. He aims the lens around, gets a feel for the weight and how to hold it. Tyler smirks to himself, more than a little proud that he’s found such a clever work-around for Josh’s “issue.”
“I’ve never used one of these old Kodak’s before, but we had something a little similar at one of my film camps,” Josh says, peering through the lens as he does. “You know this is going to be a pain to develop.”
“I’ve got it covered. There’s a company that still develops 8 millimeter. All we have to do is send it in to them,” Tyler waves his hand through the air, the other holding his journal propped open to a list of shots he wants to get in today.
“I say we start here and then move into the woods over there.” He gestures vaguely. “There’s some old storage shack we can use. Busted out, dusty windows, lots of creepy farm equipment. It’s perfect. Hope you're up on your tetanus shots.”
Josh doesn’t answer, and Tyler can tell in his peripheral vision that it’s because Josh is looking at him, like he’s considering saying something. Tyler turns to look, eyebrows raised. But Josh just shakes his head.
Tyler frowns. “What? Your parents aren't anti-vaxxers or something, are they? Because tetanus is no joke. I have an uncle who-”
“No, it’s not that.” Josh sweeps a hand over his hair. “How much is sending this off to a developer going to cost? I can help cover it, if you want. Or I could pay the whole fee, since you already bought the film.”
Tyler snaps the journal closed and shrugs it off. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not even paying bills right now. I can afford-”
“But this is my problem,” Josh interrupts him. “You wouldn’t have to spend all this money on developing film if you were just doing this on a digital camera.”
“It’s fine, Josh.” Tyler tries to sound reassuring, but he's not used to being the one in this position.
“I just, you let me in on this thing, but I feel like I’m more of a hindrance to this project than-”
“Hindrance? Now look at you using the SAT words,” Tyler teases, but Josh doesn’t smile and laugh it off like Tyler wishes that he would. He looks guilty, if anything, which is ridiculous.
“Let’s just,” Tyler nods his head towards the silos, “let’s just get a few shots, okay? I promise, it’s fine.”
Josh drops it. For now, at least, and they work to get a few good shots of the silos, of the surrounding fallow fields that are yellow from a lack of rain and too much sun. The whole landscape it washed out. Perfect for their opening.
Then Tyler leads Josh into the copse of wind-gnarled trees nearby. Trash from the road has blown into the bushes and ivy growing all over everything, and they spend a while picking up litter before getting a few shots of the trees, the heavy shadows cast by the foliage.
“I wonder,” Tyler whispers and approaches the nearest tree, “if I could climb up and get some shots from above…”
Josh lowers the camera, looking at him with a furrowed brow. “I don’t know about that. You’ll need one hand to hold the camera, at least. That doesn’t seem-”
But Tyler is already scaling the tree. Josh rushes over to stand beneath him, peering up. One hand-hold after the next, Tyler makes the slow ascent. He peers from one limb to the next, then perches and reaches one hand down.
“Toss it.”
“I am not tossing this to you,” Josh fights back, but Tyler gives him a look that says he’s not going to give up on this so easily. “If you fall and break your neck-”He prepares to toss the camera. Tyler grins, trying and failing not to look triumphant.
“If I fall and break my neck, then I died for my art. I can live with that.”
“You won’t live, though, that’s the problem.” But still Josh does the “1, 2, 3” motion before tossing the camera into the air, fully prepared to either catch it or Tyler when one or both inevitably come crashing down.
But Tyler just manages to snag the camera at the top of its arch, and he hoots with excitement as he does. Josh breathes a long sigh of relief.
“You’re insane.”
Tyler only grins wider down at him. “Thank you, I try.” Then he braces his back against the trunk of the tree before shimmying higher.
Josh stands below him and winces with every creak of wood, every snap when a branch Tyler reaches for won’t support him. He can feel his heart pounding in his ears.
Tyler, on the other hand, loves climbing. Ever since he was a kid, any tall tree or old building with enough ledges was just a challenge. He used to give his mom a heart attack any time they visited the local park, and now it seems he’s passed the torch to Josh. But it’s nice, getting his head above everything. And peering down, there’s the thrill of danger that sends his heart racing. After weeks of wallowing in the gray daze of depression, even this flirtation with danger is preferable.
He manages to find a nice spot that’s clear enough for him to film from, looking down on the silos from a distance and then out across the rest of the little forest. But as he does, he leans his weight a little too far forward, and he feels the branch beneath his left foot begin to snap.
“Tyler?” Josh calls from below, voice fraught with worry.
In the next moment, three things happen. Tyler feels himself begin to fall forward, and his mind flashes quick and ugly with an image of his mangled body twisted up on the ground below. Then he grabs for the nearest branch. And it snaps, too.
Everything after that is a blur of gravity, hitting branches, and more grabbing on for dear life. When Tyler is finally aware of his body again, he realizes that he has hooked one arm around a thicker branch further down the tree. He’s aching in a few places, probably from a rather bumpy descent. And he’s no longer holding the camera.He looks down below him to see Josh staring up, his mouth opened in a distinct, dark “O” shape.
“Have you got the camera?” Tyler asks, his voice strained with the effort to not let go and continue his fall.
“God, Ty- yes I have the camera! Will you get down now?” Josh shouts. There’s a nervous ring of anger in his voice that Tyler does feel the tiniest bit guilty for. The rest of him, selfishly, fills with a sick kind of warmth at the thought that Josh is actually worried about him.
Tyler considers letting himself fall the rest of the way just to punish himself for that particular thought.
He doesn’t, though. Instead, he takes his time with each step down, with the electric buzz of adrenaline shivering through his body. It takes a while, but he finally makes it to the ground. Once he does, Josh shoves the camera back into his hands.
“I think we’re done for today,” he says, both his voice and his face darkened with some unreadable emotion. He turns to stalk back to where they’ve parked their cars near the silos.
“Wait,” Tyler reaches for him but realizes that both his palms are scratched raw and bloody. He draws his hand back. “Josh, listen-”
And mercifully, Josh stops, his back still turned so that all Tyler can see of his face is the twinging curve of his jaw, the pinched corner of his dark lashes. His hands are gripped into fists on either side of his hips, and Tyler suddenly feels that guilt crashing down on him full force. He swallows, unsure of what he intended to say.
Finally, he settles for, “I promise not to climb anything else, okay?”
He didn’t mean for his voice to sound so small and shaky as he said it. Though, he supposes some part of him is still freaking out at the thought of almost falling to his death. Or, at least, to his extreme injury.
Josh turns on him then, and Tyler is half-expecting to get punched. He is not at all expecting for Josh to drag him into a quick, crushing hug with the camera in Tyler’s hands pinned awkwardly between them.
“I’m not,” Tyler swallows, “much for hugs.”
Josh pulls back, still not looking him in the eye. “That was for me, stupid.” And even now, after everything, there's a fond twinge to his tone. Then he takes the camera back again and grabs Tyler’s wrist, turning his hand over to inspect his palm. He hisses at the sight. “I still have that box of band-aids in my car.”
Tyler ducks his head away. “I’m fine.”
“And I’m not doing anything else if you’re going to bleed on my equipment.” Josh’s tone is firm, and when he does turn his gaze on Tyler again, there’s a surprising ferocity to his genuine care. “So, are you coming or what?”
Tyler, who thinks he’s beginning to understand some things about Joshua Dun, nods his head and follows Josh back to his car where he sits on the backseat with his legs stuck out through the open door while Josh, knelt on the ground in front of him, plasters band-aids over the worst of his cuts and scrapes.
“Yikes, did you hurt your arms, too?” he asks, touching one of Tyler’s forearms.
And with a sinking in his stomach, Tyler realizes that his sleeves have fallen back to his elbows, revealing the scratches from the other night. “Oh, uh, yeah. But it’s fine. I don’t think those are bleeding.”
He’s quick to pull his sleeves back into place.
Josh frowns for a moment, but if he’s noticed anything odd, he chooses not to comment. Instead, he sticks the last band-aid into place and looks Tyler over a moment.
“Anything else?”
Tyler lifts his t-shirt and flannel experimentally to find that he also caught a few branches along his stomach and side on the way down. The scratches there aren’t as bad, though. It seems the fabric of his flannel saved him from the worst of it. But he figures he’ll probably have a few bruises tomorrow.
Josh shakes his head. “I hate heights. I don’t know how you can do it.”
Tyler lets his shirt fall back in place with a soft chuckle. “I love it! Didn’t you ever climb trees as a kid?”
But the expression on Josh’s face says, definitively, no.
“Well, you missed out.”
Josh squints his eyes at him. “No, I don’t think I did.” Then he stands, brushes leaf debris from his pants, and offers a hand to help Tyler up, too.
When Tyler reaches for the camera, though, Josh points a finger at him.
“No more climbing?”
“No more climbing,” Tyler says with a nod and crosses his heart. “I promise.”
But he’s grinning that wily, reckless grin, and Josh rolls his eyes. Because he hasn't known Tyler for long but already he knows better than to trust that smile. But he can’t keep the corner of his mouth from curving up in rebellion.
Because he hasn't known Tyler for long, but he already knows that Tyler’s recklessness is infectious, too.
He’s liked telling stories ever since he was a kid. Probably because of his dad.
For as long as he can remember, Tyler has watched his father sit around with old friends and recount their many stories, memories of days spent doing nothing and everything. His dad can spin even a simple grocery store visit into something hilarious and enchanting. Find the nugget of gold waiting in the dairy section.There’s an art to it, drawing people into the story, and once they’re hooked, tugging them along to the end.
He’s seen his dad make people shake with laughter telling stories from his wild childhood. He’s watched grown men dash away tears with the backs of their hands at one of his old tales of a long-gone relative. Tyler has wanted, desperately wanted deep down in his soul, to have that same gift.
So, as a kid, he started telling stories to anyone who would listen. He found he was good at it, in his own way. He never really mastered his dad’s easy grace with it. He was always too awkward, too eager to please. But he knew he could be better.
With time and practice and a little more lived experience under his belt. Or so he thought.
Because then something happened in high school. He didn’t have a name for it, then. Not one that people wanted to say out loud. But something vital inside Tyler’s brain broke. Something structural. Something he’d never questioned the infallibility of before.
Stories suddenly seemed a lot less important.
Until he found one that got inside his head, burrowed its way down deep, and nested there. “All My Sons” became this thing that lived inside Tyler’s brain even when he wasn’t so sure that he was fully taking up residence. It chewed at him throughout the day and sometimes deep into the night. It breathed and moved.
That’s the kind of story Tyler wants to tell. The kind with teeth, the kind that haunts. The kind that might keep just one person alive.
He thinks about it while he works, shelving books at his local public library. The push-cart rattles along, loaded down with colorful children’s books, Amish romances, and true-crime thrillers. They’re not really the kind of stories that Tyler cares for.
He puts his earbuds in, shuffles his music, tucks his phone into his back pocket, and pushes further into the stacks. It’s a quiet job, and that’s a relief, at least. Even if it was his mom’s connection to the head librarian that got him hired. He tries not to let that fact irritate him. That everything in his life is a favor from someone else.
Shelving books isn’t really that much different than stocking shelves at a grocery store, but there are less people involved. Less smalltalk. Just Tyler pushing a cart around, shooing off the random teenagers making out in the back corners, and listening to his music.
He finds himself staring at a row of books, trying to remember whether “I” comes before or after “K” and internally monologuing - you always think you know alphabetical order until you get down to the nitty-gritty of putting library books on a shelf.
When he finally slots the book into it’s proper place, though, a hand appears from the other side of the shelf and seizes him by the wrist.
Tyler’s heart jumps into his throat. He yanks back and strains against the hold, but the grip on his wrist tightens, pulling him closer. He sees pitch black fingers, dripping with ink. It sloughs down onto the books and stains whatever it touches. Staining the pages of the books, the carpet floor beneath his feet. Staining Tyler himself.
He makes a pained noise in his throat, something between a choked cry for help and a wounded animal’s dying breath. And then the thing lets go. He flies back. And crashes into the shelf behind him, skull connecting with metal shelving. Books clatter to the floor.
Somewhere, someone unseen shushes him.
His ears are pounding with blood. He looks down at his wrist. Where he expects to see the blackened imprint of long, skeletal fingers, he finds only his own tattoos.
Someone pokes their head around the end of the aisle.
“Tyler?”
He looks up and sees Josh peering at him curiously.
“Did you do this?” Tyler snaps before he’s gotten himself under control enough to realize how ridiculous that accusation sounds.
“Do what? Knock a bunch of books off the shelf?” Josh approaches slowly, with his hands tucked in the pocket of his oversized hoodie. “Pretty sure that was you.”
Tyler doesn’t want to ask, but he’s feeling shaky. And not just the kind that tremors through his body. It’s the kind that sends shock waves through his head, too.
His eyes flicker down. “Can I- Can I see your hands?”
Josh stares at him a moment. And he’s being weird, Tyler knows he’s being weird, but he can’t help it. He needs to be sure.
“Yeah?” And Josh removes his hands from his pocket to show that they’re both perfectly normal. Not a trace of black ink. “Are you feeling okay? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
Tyler squeezes his eyes shut. He pulls his earbuds out by the cord and wraps it tight, tight around his fingers. So tight he knows it’ll leave a mark. “I’m fine.”
But he’s lying.
He is so very far from fine.
