Part 1: Boyhood -1996- DECEMBER 1ST
CHAPTER ONE: THE WORLD ABOVE
1
It began on an ordinary day, when Bobby Brando stepped onto a filthy trail that twisted through the outskirts of Aberdeen Drive—unaware he was walking straight into the final hour of mankind. He moved with a hurried pace, his black Converse audibly scuffing against the dry dirt, sending tiny clouds of dust into the air. The cold night wrapped around him like a dooming sensation. Overhead, the skeletal branches of the trees clawed at the murky glow of streetlights, their leaves long shed in the chill of late autumn. Aberdeen Drive was inaudible with deadly silence. The houses lining the street stood dark and still, their windows blank as eyes in a deep undying slumbered. It wasn't the kind of calm that comforted him or gave him warmth, it was the kind that felt like the darkness glooming under his bed as a small child. Bobby always felt uneasy passing those silent homes after sunset. In the daylight, they looked warm, and tranquil. But at night, under the overbearing quiet of desert air, they seemed embedded in time—held by something unseen, something waiting distantly beyond the grim. He knew it was probably nothing. Bobby was a paranoid boy, but grounded enough to brush off the eerie thoughts as tricks of the adolescent imagination—shadows planted by horror movies and overactive nerves. Still, he couldn't quite shake the sensation that something ancient and unknowable lingered beyond the veil of what the desert's darkness held. But it wasn't enough to turn him back. He had a destination: Woody Callahan's house, just a few streets over. Warm yellow lights. A beanbag chair he could just feel his legs sinking into with comfort. A joint passed between once close friends. No talk of school, no mention of home, and none of the blood-curdling dread that, to a twelve-year-old boy like him, made it feel like this could be the walk that ended all walks. Just a simple escape. They'd been working together every day after class on their comicbook—Buck Cassidy: The Revolver Massacist—a gritty western epic they swore would get them fame and riches one day. Even now, as he followed the winding path toward Woody's house, Bobby found himself missing the sun. The harsh Arizona glare, the way it lit up the trail and burned against his skin—that was his comfort. Not this freezing wind and endless dark. As he reached the crossroad near Woody's block, he paused. Four paths stretched outward like the points of a compass. The image tugged at his memory—something Mr. Berguson had said in sixth-grade English about crossroads in literature. Moments of choice. Turning points. A story sparked in his mind: a broken man arrives at a highway crossroads and meets a mysterious figure offering four paths. In one, the man gains riches and fame beyond imagination. In another, he's reunited with his one true love, lost long ago. A third grants him godlike powers—dominion over life and death itself. But what about the fourth? Just as Bobby began to wonder, the silence shattered before him. From down the block, the crackling voice of N.W.A. burst through the night— "Fuck The Police" blaring from Woody's battered boombox like a war cry. Bobby gave his squinty almost devilish, yet truly happy grin. He knew this dreadful lonesome walk was over. Woody fastly approached him with a feminine skip, he was always doing outlandish things like this and Bobby thought it was secretly a cry for help. Woody had on a backwards yankees cap with his dads dirty old wife beater tank-top and and large And-One shorts that sagged down below his knees, his vintage muddy air Jordan 11s stomped against the side of the path's soil. As Woody walked over to Bobby to do their regular fist bump handshake all twelve year olds did and still do upon approaching each other. "Ay hey hey Bobby boy" he spoke with his southern thick accent that sounded very strange because he poorly covered it up with a fake wannabe gangster voice. Woody had grown up in a family of strict orthodox christians who swore their life to Jesus and the republican party. He completely hated his family and completely tried to shy away from their Texan roots, always talking about purity in the caucasian bloodline, this quite frankly made Woody wanna hitch a bus and knock up a Vietnamese immigrant. How would they like me then? Old fuckers he thought upon himself. He had always done everything he could possibly do to piss his conservative parents off, nothing caused him more joy than putting those old hacks in a complete frenzy
2
He started with things such as rapping with the black kids in the playground to classic hip hop beats to kissing Mexican girls in the sandbox. For three months, Woody's face wore the savage mark of violence—three of his front teeth shattered and missing, his voice twisted into a grotesque lisp like that of a terrified child robbed of innocence. No one at school or in his so-called circle knew the bloody truth—except Bobby. It wasn't some dumb accident on a skateboard that tore those teeth from his mouth. No, it was something far darker. Last August, the sun was a blistering furnace, mercilessly scorching the cracked streets of Saint Patrick, Arizona. Sweat cascaded down Woody's pale, freckled cheeks, soaking his tangled, fiery red curls that clung to his bruised neck. The heat was unbearable, but what burned deeper was the torment inside the school's suffocating halls. Timmy Smith, Woody's short, wiry friend with a wild, thick afro, was the target of merciless hatred. Because Tim was black, the racist swamp of Saint Patrick Middle had turned into a slaughterhouse of prejudice. Cowboy boots stomped with vicious intent; vicious slurs filled the air like venomous hisses. The children mimicked their parents' hate-filled rants about "white power" and the "immigrant menace," their faces twisted with cruelty. All day long, Woody felt the poisonous gaze, the verbal lashings, the savage jabs. Then, it escalated—an obsidian shard of rock, scorched and jagged, hurtled through the air and slammed into his small friend Tim's forehead with brutal force. Flesh tore open, blood bursting like a volcanic eruption, the crimson river streaming down his face and mixing with sweat and dirt. The fire within him ignited—cold, merciless, and unrelenting. His body tensed, every muscle coiling as if possessed by something unholy. His vision darkened at the edges; the world slipped into a void of shadow and fury. The rage inside wasn't human—it was hellfire itself, a relentless storm born from the deepest pits of damnation. Then he shattered. Woody's fists became weapons of ruin. Bone met flesh with sickening crunches as he tore into the bully—the school's nightmare, a cruel, scarred brute who'd been held back three grades but ruled the halls with terror. The boy's face split beneath Woody's furious assault, knuckles ripped raw on jagged edges, blood spraying in thick, wet bursts. The bully screamed—a sound strangled by terror and pain, his voice breaking into desperate gurgles as he crumpled. When the boy's eyes rolled back and darkness claimed him, Woody fled. He snatched his skateboard and slammed two quarters onto the cracked pavement, signaling Timmy to escape. The wind screamed past his ears as he carved down the hill, heart pounding a savage rhythm. Just two blocks from the school, the town square lay still—silent and watching, a graveyard of secrets. Saint Patrick had long been a town frozen in time, but beneath its quaint facade lurked an ancient nightmare. Woody had learned from the old man on Aberdeen Drive, only known to him as Billy—a tall figure who smoked cigarettes and spoke of horrors buried beneath the cracked sidewalks. Stories of disappearances, blood rituals, and unspeakable acts that had been erased from history but never from his memory of this godforsaken 'town of devil worship'As he liked to put it. At home, the television blared the news. Woody's mother sat on the couch, eyes cold and distant, Marlboro Red glowing between trembling fingers. She sipped scotch like he would chug a cold Coca-Cola after a long day of school and fighting , filing her nails as the election coverage droned on. "Honey, I really hope Dole wins," she said softly, her voice fragile yet chilling. "He's the only one who can save this country." Woody's knuckles throbbed, slick with blood. His father stood by the stove, flipping a steak, his face hard and unreadable, eyes burning with quiet fury. Then the dam broke. "I think Dole is a fucking retard," Woody spat, voice low and venomous. "And you're both fools for backing him." Silence slammed down like a guillotine. His father's face twisted into a monstrous rage. With a roar, he charged. Fists rained down with the force of hammers, battering Woody's body, slamming his face into the cold, unforgiving floor. Each blow was a savage promise of pain, years of bottled-up violence exploding. His mother rushed forward, but an elbow smashed into her chest, sending her crashing into the wall in a shattering thud. Then came the grotesque crunch—three of Woody's front teeth shattered under the relentless assault, spraying blood in a macabre fountain across the kitchen floor and. He felt the teeth fully disconnect and crumble from his mouth as he began bleeding uncontrollably. Her scream shattered the fragile quiet like glass breaking, raw and desperate. Susan's hands trembled as she reached for Woody's limp body, her heart pounding fiercely in her chest. Without hesitation, she hoisted him onto her shoulders, the weight of her unconscious son pressing down but not slowing her. The cracked leather seats of the white 1986 Chevy Celebrity seemed almost too fragile for the storm of emotions that filled the air as she slammed the door shut behind them. "I'm leaving. We're done," she said, her voice trembling but resolute, as she started the engine and pulled away from the house. Behind her, the man who had just unleashed such terrible pain crumpled, tears carving silent paths down his bruised face, the agony of what he'd done settling heavily on his shoulders. Woody remained unconscious in the hospital for three long days. The sterile smell of antiseptic and the quiet beep of machines became the backdrop to those endless hours. No visitors came but two: his mother, her face a mask of exhaustion and fierce love, and Bobby, his loyal friend who never left his side. When Bobby finally entered the room, carrying the newest outline for their cowboy comic—a story about dusty saloons and gritty showdowns—he struggled with the awkwardness of the moment, his voice low and hesitant as he read aloud. Slowly, the words seemed to reach Woody, stirring something beneath the fog of pain and confusion. His eyelids fluttered open, a dazed smile breaking through as he imagined a showdown over a cold glass of scotch, the kind of saloon battle that had filled their stories and their dreams. Awake now, Woody felt a flicker of relief—not just for the pain fading, but for the friend at his side and the new ideas beginning to take shape in his mind. Yet, beneath that fragile hope, he knew exactly what had happened. It was no surprise. This was the cycle his father had trapped them in for years—a cycle of violence and regret that seemed impossible to break. Worse still, just two days after the hospital ordeal, Susan Callahan had taken his father back. The apology had been seemingly heartfelt, complete with a bouquet of flowers left delicately at her workplace, Mazzy's Town Salon. The sight of those flowers sickened Woody, a bitter reminder of the manipulation his mother endured. She was a good woman—kind, caring, fiercely strong—but his father's control, his twisted influence, had clouded her judgment in ways Woody found unbearable. In the days that followed, his father made numerous attempts to reach out to Woody—pleas, gifts, empty promises—all falling on deaf ears. Even when he handed Woody a pack of Baby Blue American Spirits, hoping to spark some flicker of connection, there was only silence. The rejection fueled a fiery hatred inside Woody, a burning resentment towards the man he resembled in every painful way. But beneath all that anger and bitterness, buried deep and quiet, was a secret truth: despite everything, Woody still held a true burning love for his father. Because, in the darkest corners of his heart, he understood something no one else could see—they were, in so many ways, the same thread of the same needle. A man and a boy with souls bound by blood, forever in conflict, but always brutally and down to the core exactly alike. At least that is how Woody thought about it in a deep corner of his mind he keeps reserved for actual thinking. He did not do a lot of that.
3
As these thoughts flooded their vast wave through his mind just to be swept away into the tide just as quickly, he remembered what he was going to say to Bobby. That is when he would say the words that Bobby truly would never forget for as long as he lived. After Woody had spaced out for a little bit on the short, roughly two minute walk back to his house he spoke in a shy, timid voice. Much in contrast to his usual loud, and impulsive personality Bobby had grown to love. This was very true that despite some annoyances and pet peeves, Bobby loved Woody very much. Not in the queer way or anything just in the simple yet very profound way that if he were being beaten or threatened. Woody really would kill that person if it came down to it. He just knew it. That is when he spoke those words to Bobby standing on that dirt path feeling the cold breeze and slight fear creep up his neck in a dooming chill. "Do you remember that nutty old dude I told you about, Billy." Woody spoke in an excited yet nervous voice.
4
The walk back to Woody's place was uneventful enough, the two boys cutting through the familiar maze of dirt paths that crisscrossed the neighborhood like the veins of some sleeping desert god. Bobby's anxiety had mostly subsided—the presence of his friend was enough to chase away most of the creeping dread that had stalked him earlier. But now, as Woody spoke in that unusual, measured tone, something new began to coil in his stomach. "Yeah, I remember," Bobby said, kicking at a loose stone. "The old dude who's always smoking on Aberdeen Drive, right? The one who talks about all that weird conspiracy shit?" "Not conspiracy shit," Woody corrected, his lisp still present but less noticeable now that he'd grown accustomed to it. "Real shit, Bobby. Like, actually real." He paused, his backwards Yankees cap catching the meager streetlight as he turned to face his friend. "He told me about this house. Like, not just any house—this absolute massive, terrifying fucking mansion out past the old quarry. Black as sin, Bobby. Painted black like something out of a horror movie. And it's been sitting there, untouched, for like eighty-something years." "Okay, so... an old black house," Bobby said, trying to sound unimpressed. "Plenty of creepy houses around here." "Shut up and listen, asshole," Woody snapped, but there was excitement dancing in his voice. "Three kids went into that house in 1956. Teenagers, like us but older. And they never came out. They found the bodies three weeks later, all three of them, dead as fucking doornails. Triple homicide. But—and this is the crazy part—the cops covered it up. Like, completely erased it from the records. Billy said it was some kind of cult thing, some ritualistic murder bullshit that they didn't want the town to know about." Bobby felt his mouth go dry. "How does Billy know all this?" "He's old as fuck, dude. He was here back then. He said he remembers the families, remembers when the kids disappeared. The whole thing got swept under the rug like it never happened. But Billy knows. And I know." Woody's grin widened, that devilish, reckless expression taking over his face. "And now you know." "Why are you telling me this?" Bobby asked, though he already suspected the answer. "Because we're gonna go look at it.""Absolutely fucking not," Bobby said flatly. "Come on, don't be such a pussy," Woody laughed, shoving him lightly. "We've explored worse shit than this." It was true, in a way. Over the past year or so, the two boys had developed a taste for urban exploration—sneaking into abandoned schools, crawling through the skeletal remains of old warehouses, poking around in condemned houses where the walls had started to fold in on themselves like dying animals. It had started as a dare between friends, a way to prove they weren't scared little kids anymore. But it had become something more: an addiction to the thrill, to the danger, to the feeling that they were uncovering secrets the world had tried to bury. There was the Henderson place on Todash Street, a Victorian that had been vacant since the '70s. They'd found old furniture still arranged in the rooms, dust so thick it looked like snow, and in the master bedroom, a skeleton of a cat curled up on a rotting mattress. Bobby had nearly vomited. Woody had laughed until his sides hurt. Then there was the Riverside Industrial Complex—a massive factory that used to manufacture something neither of them could figure out. They'd spent an entire afternoon wandering through rusted machinery and toppled shelves, finding old employee badges and time cards dating back decades. That had been cool, Bobby had to admit. Spooky but cool. But this was different. This was a place where people had died. Where their blood had probably stained the floorboards. Where something dark enough to warrant a cover-up had occurred. "We're not going to that house, Woody," Bobby said, trying to sound firm. "Yes, we are," Woody replied, already turning down a path that wound deeper into the desert. "Come on, man. When are we ever gonna get a chance like this again? A real mystery. A real story for Buck Cassidy." "Buck Cassidy is a fictional cowboy, you idiot," Bobby called after him. "Yeah, well, this is real life, and real life needs real escapades!" Woody called back, his voice echoing across the dry landscape. Bobby cursed under his breath and jogged to catch up. He knew better than to let Woody venture out alone. The kid was reckless enough to get himself killed, and Bobby would never forgive himself if something happened. Besides, beneath the terror that was now fully blooming in his chest, there was a spark of curiosity. A terrible, dangerous curiosity. The path Woody took them wound past the old quarry, where massive chunks of stone jutted out of the earth like the bones of some prehistoric beast. The quarry had been abandoned for at least twenty years, ever since the town dried up and people stopped needing whatever it was they were mining. Weeds and scrub brush had reclaimed most of the site, and the occasional coyote could be seen prowling through the shadows at dusk. As they walked, the landscape began to shift. The houses of the neighborhood gave way to open desert, and the open desert gave way to something else entirely—a section of land that felt cut off from the rest of the world, as if it existed in some pocket dimension just barely adjacent to Saint Patrick. The air felt different here. Heavier. Colder, despite the lingering warmth of the desert evening. "It should be just up ahead," Woody said, consulting a crumpled piece of paper he'd apparently been carrying. Billy's directions, scrawled in shaky handwriting. "Past that ridge of rocks, through the dead trees, and then..." "Then what?" Bobby asked nervously. "Then we find the house of terrors, baby," Woody grinned. They trudged on in silence for another ten minutes, the only sounds the crunch of their feet on gravel and the distant cry of something wild in the darkness. Bobby's heart was hammering against his ribs so hard he was sure Woody could hear it. His palms were sweating despite the cold. This was stupid. This was monumentally, catastrophically stupid. And then they saw it. The house emerged from the darkness like a nightmare made manifest. It was massive—a sprawling Victorian mansion that seemed to stretch upward impossibly, as if it had been designed by someone with more ambition than sanity. Every inch of it was painted black, a black so deep and absolute it seemed to absorb the light around it rather than reflect it. The paint was peeling in long, skeletal strips, revealing the rotting wood beneath. The windows were boarded up, but the boards themselves were weathered and splintered, some hanging at broken angles. The roof sagged in places, and several of the decorative spires that topped the structure had collapsed completely, leaving jagged points that clawed at the night sky like accusing fingers. The front lawn was a graveyard of dead trees—twisted, gnarled things that had died long ago and never rotted away. They stood like sentinels, their branches reaching out in tortured positions, as if they'd been trying to escape from the house itself. Vines with thorns the size of nails crept across the ground and up the walls, their growth patterns so chaotic they looked almost deliberate, as if the house itself was trying to pull things into its embrace. The gate at the front of the property had long since rusted to near uselessness, hanging from its hinges at a drunken angle. Beyond it, a gravel driveway stretched toward the house, but the gravel had been mostly reclaimed by the desert—weeds and small rocks intermingled in a tapestry of decay. "Holy shit," Woody breathed, and for once, his voice lacked its usual bravado. Even he seemed genuinely unnerved by the sheer wrongness of the place. "We're not going in there," Bobby said, and he meant it. Every instinct he possessed was screaming at him to turn around, to run, to never speak of this house again. "Come on, man," Woody said, but his voice was quieter now, less certain. "We came all this way. We're not turning back now." "Yes, we are," Bobby insisted. "This place is... it's wrong, Woody. Don't you feel it? Something's wrong here." Woody was already moving toward the gate. "Stop being a little bitch. We'll just take a quick look around. We don't even have to go inside." "That's what you always say," Bobby muttered, but he followed anyway, because of course he did. They slipped through the broken gate—it scraped against the ground with a sound like a dying animal—and made their way up the driveway. As they got closer to the house, the details became even more horrifying. The windows weren't just boarded up; some of them had been boarded up from the inside, as if someone had been trying to keep something from getting out. Or perhaps keeping things from getting in. The front door was massive, made of black wood that had warped over the decades, and it stood slightly ajar, revealing only darkness beyond. "How is it even still standing?" Bobby whispered. "It should have collapsed by now." "Maybe it doesn't want to collapse," Woody replied, and there was something in his tone that made Bobby's skin crawl. They climbed the front steps—they creaked ominously under their weight—and peered through the gap in the door. Inside, it was impossibly dark, a darkness so complete it seemed almost solid. The smell that wafted out made Bobby's stomach churn: a mixture of rot, dust, and something else. Something that might have been old blood. Woody pushed the door open wider. The hinges protested with a shriek that echoed through whatever lay beyond. The interior of the house was a cathedral of decay. The entryway alone was larger than Bobby's entire living room, with a grand staircase that spiraled upward into shadow. The walls were covered with peeling wallpaper, and in some places, the paper had fallen away entirely, revealing plaster beneath that was stained with dark marks—water damage, or something worse. Furniture lay scattered throughout, overturned and broken, as if the house had been violently ransacked decades ago. In the corner, a grandfather clock stood silent, its face cracked, its hands frozen at 3:47. "Don't touch anything," Bobby said, but it was a pointless warning. Woody was already moving deeper into the house, his eyes wide with a mixture of fear and fascination. They passed through what must have been a parlor once, now filled with the skeletal remains of chairs and sofas. Portraits still hung on some of the walls, their subjects' faces obscured by dust and time, but their eyes seemed to follow the boys as they moved. In one corner, they found a phonograph, its needle still resting against a record that had long since warped into uselessness. "This is insane," Bobby muttered. "This is absolutely insane. We should leave." "Just a bit more," Woody said, and there was something in his voice now—something darker, more driven. "Look." He was pointing at a doorway that led deeper into the house. Beyond it, they could make out the shape of something in the darkness. Something that didn't fit with the rest of the decaying architecture. "Oh hell no," Bobby said immediately. "Whatever that is, we're not going near it." But Woody was already moving toward it, and Bobby—as always—had no choice but to follow. The doorway led to a hallway that descended slightly, as if they were moving deeper into the earth. The air grew colder here, and the smell of rot intensified. And then, as they rounded a corner, they saw it. It was an elevator. Not a modern elevator, necessarily, but not ancient either. It was the kind you'd find in a hotel from the 1950s, with polished brass railings and a gate made of wrought iron. The interior walls were mirrored, reflecting the boys' terrified faces back at them endlessly. And most impossibly of all, the light inside was on. A soft, amber glow that seemed almost welcoming compared to the suffocating darkness of the rest of the house. "Absolutely fucking not," Bobby said. "Oh, come on," Woody said, already pulling open the gate. "This is amazing. This is like, legitimately the coolest thing we've ever found." "Woody, I'm serious. That elevator is a trap. Or it's a time machine. Or it's a portal to hell. I don't care which, but we are not getting in it." "Relax, dude," Woody said, stepping inside. "It's just an elevator. Probably breaks down as soon as we touch it."The moment Woody's hand touched the brass call button, something shifted. The light inside the elevator pulsed once, twice, and then settled into a steady glow. The doors remained open, and the elevator seemed to hum with anticipation, like some great beast waking from a long sleep. "See? It still works," Woody said, not sounding as confident as he was trying to appear. "We'll just take it up one floor, see what's there, and then we'll leave. Quick look-see." "This is how everyone dies in horror movies," Bobby said. "Yeah, well, we're not in a horror movie, asshole. We're in real life. And in real life, elevators take people from one place to another. That's it. No big deal." Bobby knew Woody was wrong. He could feel it in his bones, in the marrow of his being. This was wrong. This was cosmically, fundamentally wrong. But he also knew that if he didn't get into that elevator with Woody, Woody would go alone, and Bobby would be left in this house of horrors by himself. Which was somehow even worse. "If we die, I'm going to haunt you forever," Bobby said, stepping into the elevator. "Deal," Woody replied, and pressed the button for the second floor. The moment the doors closed, Bobby knew they'd made a terrible mistake. The elevator lurched upward with a violence that threw both boys to the floor. It wasn't a smooth, mechanical rise—it was violent and jerking, as if the elevator was fighting against something, or something was fighting against the elevator. The mirrored walls began to flicker, reflecting images that weren't there. For a moment, Bobby caught glimpses of the boys' reflections, but twisted. Elongated. Wrong. "What the fuck—" Woody started to say, but his voice was cut off by a sound. A low, resonant hum that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. It started low in Bobby's chest, vibrating his ribs, and then rose higher and higher until his teeth ached and his vision began to blur. Then, without any warning Bobby could perceive, symbols began appearing on the elevator buttons. Not English letters or numbers, but something else entirely. Something ancient and geometric, with angles that hurt to look at directly. The symbols seemed to writhe and shift, never settling into one shape, always moving just at the edge of Bobby's perception. "What is that?" Bobby gasped, pointing at the buttons. Woody's face had gone pale, all traces of bravado stripped away. "I don't know. I don't... Bobby, I don't know what that is." The elevator accelerated. Bobby was pressed against the floor with increasing force, as if gravity itself had intensified tenfold. The hum grew louder, more insistent, and now there were voices underneath it. Whispers in languages Bobby had never heard, in tongues that predated human speech. The whispers grew louder, overlapping, until they became a roar. The numbers on the elevator display changed, but they weren't going to the second floor anymore. The numbers climbed impossibly high: 10, 50, 100, 500. The elevator's ascent felt like it was accelerating at the speed of a rocket launch, and Bobby suddenly had the terrible realization that they weren't going up through the house at all. They were going up and up and up, ascending through layers of reality itself, traveling to places that shouldn't exist. The symbols on the buttons became more and more elaborate, spreading across the entire interior of the elevator like some kind of living disease. They glowed now, a sickly green that made Bobby's skin crawl. And beneath them, almost imperceptible at first, new words began to appear, written in English, but in a handwriting that belonged to no human being. "Woody—" Bobby tried to say, but he couldn't make his voice work. The pressure was too great. The roar was too loud. His vision was starting to tunnel, and his last coherent thought was that this was it. This was where they died. In this impossible elevator, ascending toward some incomprehensible destination.And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. The elevator doors slid open.
5
The world that greeted them as they stumbled out was not the second floor of the mansion. The sky stretched above them in a roiling mass of purple and gray, swirling with clouds that moved in unnatural patterns. The air itself seemed to pulse with a barely contained malevolence, and in the distance, the occasional flash of lightning illuminated the landscape below, though the lightning moved wrong—sideways, in spirals, defying every law of physics Bobby understood. They stood on a platform of some kind, made of black stone that looked almost crystalline in places. The platform itself seemed to hang suspended in space, with nothing beneath it but an endless fall into fog. The fog that stretched out before them was impossibly thick, a churning mass that glowed with a faint, phosphorescent light. Within the fog, shapes moved. Large shapes. Shapes that might have been buildings, or might have been something else entirely. Something organic."What..." Bobby couldn't finish the sentence. Words felt inadequate for what he was witnessing. The landscape itself looked like the end of the world, but not a natural ending. This was the aftermath of something catastrophic and intentional. The ground, insofar as they could see it through the fog, was scarred and pitted, as if it had been bombed repeatedly. In the middle distance, what might have been a city lay in ruins, its towers collapsed into themselves, their remains reaching toward the purple sky like the bones of dead giants. Woody stepped forward and Bobby grabbed his arm. "Don't," he said, his voice barely a whisper.But Woody wasn't listening. He was staring out at the wasteland before them, his jaw hanging open, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and wonder. "Bobby," Woody said slowly. "Where... where are we?" Bobby didn't have an answer. He'd been asking himself the same question, and the only answer his mind could come up with was one he didn't want to accept: somewhere else. Somewhere that wasn't connected to the normal world. Somewhere outside of reality.
CHAPTER 2: THE SEARCH
1
Margo Brando hadn't slept in thirty-six hours. She sat at the kitchen table of her small, modest apartment on the edge of Saint Patrick, a cup of coffee that had gone cold hours ago cradled between her trembling hands. The apartment was small—a two-bedroom place she'd rented for the past nine years on a secretary's salary—but it was clean. Everything was always clean. It was the one thing Margo could control in a life that had largely spiraled beyond her control since the day her husband died. Bobby's father, Marcus, had been taken by cancer when Bobby was only three years old. Margo had been twenty-eight at the time, with a young child and no savings. The medical bills had nearly bankrupted her, and the grief had threatened to swallow her whole. But she'd survived. She'd persevered. She'd worked two jobs for a while, scraping together enough to pay rent and put food on the table and eventually, when Bobby was old enough to go to school, she'd settled into her current position as a secretary at the county courthouse. It wasn't much. It would never be much. But it had been enough to give Bobby a life. A life with a roof over his head, with food in his belly, with a mother who loved him more than she'd ever loved anything. And now he was missing. The police report sat on the table in front of her, filled out in the careful, methodical handwriting of Sheriff Ezra Grandos. Missing Person Report. The words seemed surreal, as if they were talking about someone else's son, not her Bobby. She'd first called the Callahan house at around midnight on the first night, frantic when Bobby hadn't come home by ten o'clock. It wasn't like him. Bobby was a good kid—not perfect, obviously, what twelve-year-old was? But he was responsible. He called when he was going to be late. He didn't just disappear. Susan Callahan had answered the phone in a voice that suggested she'd been drinking. Which, knowing Susan, was probably accurate. The woman had a problem, though Margo had never been unkind enough to say it to her face. Susan and her husband Robert had always seemed like nice enough people on the surface, though Margo had heard rumors about the violence in their home. The kind of rumors that got whispered at the grocery store, the kind that people pretended they didn't know about. "Is Woody there?" Margo had asked, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. "Is Bobby with Woody?" There was a pause. In the background, Margo could hear the muffled sound of a television, and then Robert's voice, saying something harsh that she couldn't quite make out. "Yeah, um, I think so," Susan had said vaguely. "Bobby's probably in Woody's room. They're working on their comic book thing, I think. You want me to go check?""Please," Margo had said, and she'd heard the phone being set down. She'd listened to the ambient sounds of the Callahan household—the television, the clink of ice in a glass—and waited. And waited. When Susan came back, there was something different in her voice. Something that sounded like concern trying to push its way through a haze of alcohol. "They're not up there," Susan had said. "Robert says they probably went out for a walk or something. You know how boys are." "Did they say anything about where they were going?" Margo had asked, and now the panic was definitely creeping into her voice. "No, honey, I... I didn't hear them leave. But they've probably just gone for a walk. It's a nice night. They'll be back soon." But they didn't come back soon. They hadn't come back at all. By two in the morning, Margo had been calling every hospital in the county. By three, she'd filed the missing person report. And since then, for the past thirty-six hours, she'd been living in a state of perpetual terror, checking her phone every thirty seconds, staring at the clock, her mind conjuring increasingly horrible scenarios. The second call to Susan Callahan had come at around six in the morning. Susan had sounded less drunk and more worried, and she'd told Margo that Robert thought the boys had probably gone to look at some old house or something—that they were into that kind of thing, exploring abandoned places. It was stupid, she'd said, but boys were stupid. They'd probably be back by midday, sheepish and hungry. But midday had passed. And so had the evening. And so it was midnight again. Now it was mid-morning on the second day since Bobby had gone missing, and Margo was running on fumes and cigarettes and pure, undiluted maternal terror. She took a drag on the cigarette she was currently smoking and looked at the phone sitting on the table in front of her. She'd been staring at it so intensely she was surprised it hadn't burst into flames. She picked it up and dialed the Callahan number again. This time, Robert answered. His voice was curt, impatient, the voice of a man who had better things to do than field worried phone calls from the mother of his son's friend. "They're not back," Margo said without preamble. "Bobby and Woody. They're still not back. Have you called the police?" "My wife called them yesterday," Robert said, and Margo could hear the irritation in his tone. "The cops said there's nothing they can do. Kids run off sometimes. They probably found some girl to spend time with, or they're holed up in some movie theater. They'll turn up." "They've been gone for over thirty-six hours," Margo said, her voice rising. "That's not normal, Mr. Callahan. That's not—" "Look, lady," Robert interrupted, and now there was a hard edge to his voice. "I don't know what your kid is up to, but I'm sure he's fine. My son is fine. They're probably having the time of their lives right now, probably doing something stupid but ultimately harmless. They'll come back when they're hungry or when they realize they've scared us. That's how it works." He hung up before Margo could respond. She sat there, phone in hand, staring at the dial tone, and felt something cold and terrible settle in her chest. She didn't know Robert Callahan well enough to know if he was a good judge of character or a terrible one, but his casual dismissal of his own son's disappearance struck her as wrong. Very wrong. She picked up the phone and called the sheriff's office.
2
Sheriff Ezra Grandos had arrived at Margo's apartment at around ten o'clock that morning, and the moment she saw him, she'd felt a strange mixture of relief and unease. He was handsome, in a weathered sort of way. His face was covered with a thick, dark beard that was just beginning to show traces of gray, and his features had the kind of sharp definition that came from good bone structure and a life lived hard. He was probably in his late forties, Margo guessed, but there was something about his eyes that made him look simultaneously older and younger. The eyes were a pale hazel, and they held a depth of exhaustion that spoke of witnessing things no human being should ever have to witness. He wore the standard sheriff's uniform, but it didn't quite hang right on him, as if he'd lost weight recently and hadn't bothered to get it tailored. There was a slight tremor in his hands when he pulled out his notebook, something that might have been a medical condition or might have been something else entirely. "Mrs. Brando," he'd said, his accent thick and Brazilian, the words slightly slurred in a way that suggested he'd only recently sobered up. "I'm Sheriff Grandos. I understand your son is missing." "Yes," Margo had said, ushering him inside. "Yes, since yesterday evening. Well, last night. It's been over thirty hours now." The sheriff had looked around the apartment with an expression that was hard to read. His eyes had lingered on the photographs on the wall—Margo and Bobby at the beach, Bobby's school picture from this year, a photograph of a man Margo recognized as Marcus from the few pictures she'd kept. Grandos's expression hadn't changed, but Margo thought she'd seen something flicker behind his eyes. Recognition, perhaps. Or something darker."Tell me about the boy," Grandos had said, sitting down at the kitchen table without being asked. He'd pulled out a notepad and began jotting down notes as Margo talked.She'd told him about Bobby. About how smart he was, how he loved drawing and comic books, how he and Woody Callahan were best friends and had been working on a comic together. She'd told him about Bobby's habit of calling when he was going to be late, about how responsible he was, about how he would never just disappear without telling her."And you have no idea where he might have gone?" Grandos had asked, his pen moving across the page in quick, efficient strokes."None," Margo had said. "The Callahans mentioned something about them looking at old houses. They like to explore abandoned places. But I don't know which house, or where they might have gone."
Grandos had paused at that. His hand had stilled on the page, and he'd looked up at Margo with an intensity that made her uncomfortable. There was something in that look—a flicker of recognition, perhaps, or fear. He'd recovered quickly, but not so quickly that Margo hadn't noticed."Old houses," he'd repeated, writing it down. "Any particular direction?" "I don't know," Margo had said helplessly. "I don't... I'm sorry, I should have asked more questions. I should have known where he was going. I'm a terrible mother, I should have—""You are not a terrible mother," Grandos had said, and his voice had been surprisingly gentle. "My mother would not have known where I was at midnight either. Boys at this age do not tell their mothers everything. It is not a reflection on you." There had been something in the way he'd said it that suggested he was speaking from personal experience, though Margo didn't want to pry. She had a feeling that Ezra Grandos had stories he didn't share with people, stories that had left marks on his soul. After taking the report—all the standard information, a description of Bobby, what he'd been wearing, his physical characteristics—Grandos had stood to leave. "I will look into this," he'd said, putting on his wide-brimmed hat. "We will find your son, Mrs. Brando. I promise you that." But his eyes had suggested otherwise. His eyes had suggested that he'd made promises like that before, and that they had not always come true.
3
Now, as night fell on the second day, Margo stood outside the sheriff's station, smoking a cigarette and trying not to think about all the terrible things that could happen to a boy in the desert at night. Grandos had called her an hour ago and asked her to come to the station. He'd said they were organizing a search party and he wanted her to help organize volunteers. When she'd arrived, she'd found the sheriff standing outside, smoking a cigarette of his own, staring out at the darkening sky with an expression that suggested he was seeing something far away and deeply troubling. "They've been gone for nearly three days now," Margo said quietly, coming to stand beside him. "Has it really only been three days? It feels like weeks." Grandos took a long drag on his cigarette before responding. "Time moves differently depending on where you are," he said cryptically. "Or so I have heard. In stories." Margo glanced at him, unsure how to respond to that. "I have been doing this job for a long time," Grandos continued, not looking at her. "Twenty-three years. In that time, I have seen a lot of boys disappear. Most of them turn up. Some don't." He paused, and she could see his jaw clench. "The ones who don't turn up... they are the ones who wander into places they should not go."
"What do you mean?" Margo asked, though part of her didn't want to know the answer. "There are places," Grandos said slowly, "where it is not wise to venture. Places that have been here longer than the town. Longer than the state. Places that... remember things. Terrible things." "You're talking in riddles," Margo said, her voice shaking slightly.
"I know," Grandos replied. He took another drag on his cigarette. "I do not like to speak plainly about these things. It makes me sound insane. But I have lived in this town for fifteen years, and I have learned that there are forces at work here that do not answer to the laws of nature or reason." He finally looked at her, and his pale eyes held a sincerity that was almost frightening in its intensity. "Your boy," Grandos said quietly. "If he has gone to the places I think he has gone, then we may already be too late. But we will search anyway. Because that is what we do. We search. We hope. And sometimes, if we are very lucky, we find what we are looking for." They stood in silence for a moment, watching as the sun dipped below the horizon and the first stars began to appear in the darkening sky. Above them, the night seemed to press down with a weight that felt almost physical. "Come," Grandos said finally, dropping his cigarette and crushing it beneath his boot. "We have work to do. And we had better hurry. The night is long, and the desert is hungry." As they turned to head back inside, Margo couldn't shake the feeling that they were already too late. That Bobby and Woody had slipped beyond the reach of the normal world and into somewhere else entirely. Somewhere where three days could pass in what felt like only hours, or where hours could feel like days. Somewhere from which there might be no return.
CHAPTER 3: THE MAN WITH THE BLADE
1
Bobby Brando and Woody Callahan scattered in humid voices around a world they did not know at all. That is when they heard it. A sound like scales sliding against stone, a susurrus so loud it drowned out the ambient roar of the storm above. Bobby and Woody turned simultaneously, their heads whipping around to locate the source. That was when the creature emerged from the fog. It was massive beyond comprehension. Even from a distance, Bobby could tell it was at least seventeen feet long, perhaps more. The body was serpentine, undulating with a grace that belied its size, and it was covered in scales that seemed to shift in color—from sickly yellow to deep crimson to a black so dark it hurt to look at. But it was the mouth that held Bobby's attention. The creature's maw opened, revealing hundreds of rows of teeth—perhaps a thousand or more—each one the size of a man's hand, each one sharp enough to pierce steel. The teeth seemed to go back infinitely, descending down a throat so cavernous that Bobby could see no bottom. The creature's eyes were the most terrible part. They were intelligent. Not animal intelligence, but something far more complex and sinister. These were the eyes of something that had been around for eons, that had seen the rise and fall of civilizations, that had fed on things Bobby couldn't even imagine. And it was heading directly for them. "Run!" Bobby screamed, but his feet wouldn't move. Fear had paralyzed him completely. All he could do was stand there, watching as the creature undulated across the rocky ground, its scales catching what little light existed in this nightmare world, each movement bringing it closer. But before the creature could reach them, something happened. A figure descended from above—not flying, but falling, dropping out of the purple sky like a meteor. The figure landed directly on the creature's back, and Bobby's mind struggled to process what he was seeing. It was a man. He looked to be in his early forties, with a weathered face and eyes that had seen things no human being should ever see. He wore a tattered coat that might have once been brown but was now the color of dried blood. And in his hand, he wielded a sword—not a decorative sword or a rusty antique, but a real blade that gleamed with an otherworldly light. The man roared, a sound that was somehow more terrifying than the creature's shriek, and brought the sword down in a perfect arc. The blade met the creature's flesh and split it open in an explosion of viscous, glowing fluid that burned where it touched the ground. The creature screamed—a sound so loud and so agonized that Bobby felt it pierce through his ears directly into his brain—and thrashed violently, trying to dislodge its attacker. But the man held on, his movements fluid and precise, moving along the creature's back as if he and the beast were dancing some terrible waltz they'd performed a thousand times before. The sword flashed again, and again, and again. With each stroke, another portion of the creature's flesh was cleaved away. The glowing fluid continued to pour, burning holes in the ground, evaporating into clouds of caustic steam that stung Bobby's eyes even from a distance. Finally, with one last tremendous stroke, the man drove the blade downward with both hands, cleaving the creature completely in two. The two halves of the beast fell to the ground, still twitching, still moving with a horrible mimicry of life. The glowing fluid pooled and bubbled, and then, after a moment, the creature simply ceased to exist. It didn't fade or dissolve. It simply stopped, as if whatever force had animated it had been switched off. The man descended along the blade as it fell, sliding down its length as if performing some kind of impossible stunt, his feet touching the ground just as the sword came to rest beside the vanished remains of his kill. Then he turned and looked directly at Bobby and Woody. His face was hard, lined with scars both physical and otherwise. His eyes were a pale gray, almost colorless, and they held the accumulated weight of untold suffering. When he spoke, his voice was rough, as if his throat had been damaged long ago and never properly healed. "Who the fuck are you guys?" he demanded, stepping toward them with a predatory grace. "I haven't seen a single damn human being in the past twenty years in this hell hole." He raised his sword slightly, not in an overtly threatening manner, but in a way that suggested he was perfectly willing to use it if necessary. Bobby and Woody stood frozen, unable to speak, unable to move, unable to do anything but stare at this impossible man and wonder how deep into the abyss they had truly fallen.