"Truth is everybody is going to hurt you: you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for."

- Bob Marley

01:55 p.m

11 days earlier

With the elevator under maintenance, he took the four stories flight of stairs three steps at a time, his legs stretching further than he had ever thought was possible. Panting, shirt soaked with sweat, Tim pulled out his set of house keys and jammed it into the lock without any fumbling, pushing the door hard enough that the wooden frame gave a small crack across the centre as it hits the wall behind it.

“Dad?!” Tim yelled out into their small apartment to no reply.

He crossed the threshold and into the living room where the door to his father's room was half opened. Throwing his air rifle onto the couch, he approached the room. He stepped up to the door, pushing it open fully and realized it was the first time he had seen his father's room in over two years.

Though about a meter wider than Tim's room, Joshua's room was still considered small. Tim had expected to find beer cans and bottles to litter the place as it had when he last stepped in. Instead, the room was neat, with the small desk and chair properly pushed in. A pile of clothes and pants were folded neatly on a bedside table. The one thing that seemed out of place of the neatness was the blanket on the floor. Crumpled in a heap, it seemed to have been kicked off the bed by Joshua, who was lying on the mattress in the same white singlet and boxers from earlier in the morning, apparently fast asleep.

But Tim could tell something was wrong as he approached his father. “Dad?” he called out. Silence. The man did not even twitch in his sleep, though the slow rising and falling of his chest have Tim assume he was alive. “Dad?” he called out again with the same results as he stood beside his father.

Tim placed an arm on the sleeping man's shoulder and gently shook it. “Hey, dad. Wake up,” with no response, he shook harder. “Dad!” the man did not stir. Tim quickly checked Josh's wrist for a pulse and found it easily. Though the situation was weird, it did not appear to be life threatening to Josh.

However, Tim still felt a chill flowing down his spine, his guts churning uncomfortably as if telling him to think and act fast as something terrible was happening right under his nose.

“Okay kid,” he called himself by Clay's nickname for him. “Gotta keep calm and figure this out.”

His father was asleep with no way of waking up. His theory that Josh had Sin was being reinforced by the minute but he had never heard of people with Sin unable to be awaken from the outside before, adding a new layer of weirdness to an already strange situation. He watched his father's sleeping figure and noticed just how weary the older man seemed. Despite the muscular physique of the construction worker, there was a sense of age wrinkled into the skin. The once healthy bar goer, with a smooth crisp skin was now scarred and cracked, with the years and weariness etched into the eyes.

“Sorry old man...” Tim said under his breath. “I haven't been the easiest kid to deal with.”

He turned around and headed to his room and into his bathroom. Flipping open the medicine cabinet hidden behind his small basin mirror, he looked at the dozens of bottles of pills that he had not touched in over a year, picking one with a yellow tape around the cap. The number '2' was written in black marker on the top. He poured out four pills and left the bathroom.

In his room, Tim sat on his bed, the four pills in hand. Two of them would usually help him get to sleep but he felt his body was in too much of an adrenaline rush for it to be effective. Five and above would put him unconscious. Four sounded like a safe number in his head. Maybe. Probably.

He was able to invade his father's memories the night before. Assuming he could do so again, he might be able to meet Josh in the dream world. “No point in dwelling,” he finally said to himself.

He downed the pills without water.

XXX

Tim woke up coughing violently, facing the sky. His lungs suddenly burned with pain as if he had just swallowed acid. Struggling for air as liquid filled his throat, he turned to his sides and vomited a concoction of bile, blood, phlegm, and chunks of unidentified meat. He rolled away from his own pool of regurgitation and onto his back again. Still coughing, though less violently, he was able to breathe again.

A familiar dainty voice rang in his ears. “Now that's just disgusting.”

Tim tilted his head to the left and saw the girl in white dress sitting alone on a park bench. He focused on her for a second before examining his surroundings. They were in an empty field of dirt, devoid of any other life. Not even a single blade of grass grew in any direction that he could see. The sun was setting across the horizon to his right, a glow of blood red and orange stretching across the cloudless sky. He attempted to raise his right hand to wipe at his face, only to awkwardly wave his bandaged stump around instead. The pain of his amputated limb had subsided considerably and the discomfort was barely a tinge of what it was the night before.

He sat up forcefully, his stomach muscles straining as he did so. Calming his breathing, he grunted in an attempt to clear his throat of the burning sensation. When he realized it was not going away any time soon, he looked to the girl and asked, croaking, “Who are you?”

“Now that's not very polite, asking a girl for her name without giving yours,” she replied with a playful tone.

Her grey eyes were piercing, as if they read every line of his being, right down to the fabric of his soul. Unable to maintain eye contact, Tim looked away to his surroundings again, surveying the empty plain that stretched as far as he could see.

“Tsk,” the girl sounded, annoyed at his silent treatment. “If you really must know, I'm The Sister.”

“The what?” he turned his attention back to the girl.

“The Sister. That's my name.”

“Your name is The Sister? Really?”

“Well, not really, really,” she shrugged with the reply. “None of us remember our names so it's more of a title to call by.”

“Wait a second. Us?” Tim replied as he got to his feet.

“Yeah. You've met them, don't you remember? The old granny from last night? That's The Grandmother. Not my actual grandmother mind you,” she added the last line hastily. She sifted to the side of the bench and tapped the empty seat on her left with a sly smile. “Come on. I won't bite.”

Though he was hesitant, Tim nonetheless took the seat offered. “Okay,” he said, leaning into his knees as he sat down, crunching his stomach to quell the pain. “So I'm guessing that small boy in the barn and that business lady are part of your 'Family' as well?”

“Bingo!” she replied, slapping him playfully on his back. Though a light tap, he felt as if his skin had been in contact with ice where he was hit. Sister continued, “Those two are Son and Mother.”

He recalled what Clay said about his 'hunter'. “And the one with the bat?”

“You know a lot more than I'd thought,” she replied with a grin. “That's The Brother.”

He looked to his stump of an arm and thought of the man – creature, that cut it off. “And that person in the straw hat, that Sawman, does he have a name?”

Her voice softened to a near whisper and he thought he sensed a quiver of fear in her tone. “The Father. That's The Father...” her voice trailed off and she did not elaborate further. Tim wanted to continue questioning her, but her silence stopped him.

He felt a sense of concern for her, though he wasn't sure why, having never met her before the whole ordeal. All he knew was that he felt asking her more might dig into her and hurt her, and he cared enough not to do that for some reason. The girl called Sister had powers that baffled him, and could probably hurt or kill him like The Grandmother and The Father could. But he felt she was not an enemy.

Suddenly, a cold sensation ran up his right shoulder and he tensed up in shock before realizing it was Sister leaning against what remained of his arm. The fabric of her dress was maddeningly thin, and he could feel her cold, pale skin even through it. Though her entire body was leaned into him, it felt as though she weighed no more than a feather.

“Um...” Tim tried to regain his focus to speak but he could not help but be entranced by the beautiful girl who stared sadly into the empty red horizon. “Hey...”

“You have to stop him,” she said in a gentle tone. Her voice like a melody. Her eyelids slowly closing as if falling asleep. Her body glowing a soft light paler than her skin. “You're the only one who can.”

The light erupted into a blinding flash, forcing Tim to look away and close his eyes. By the time the light subsided and he was able to readjust his vision, the girl was gone, leaving not a single trace of her on the seat. Somehow, he had expected that to happen and was not the least bit surprised by her sudden disappearance this time.

Zoot. Zoon. Zoot. Zoon.

The sound of the saw, cutting through bone, echoing in his head. He expected that too.

Zoot. Zoon. Zoot. Zoon.

Tim looked forward where it was once an endless dirt plain that led eternally into a blood red horizon.

Zoot. Zoon.

A metal warehouse had appeared where nothing once was, right below the edge of the setting sun, glowing a menacing red.

Zoot. Zoon.

His father was in there. His guts were telling him so.

Zoot.

In there.

Zoon.

With the Sawman.