By the time she finally works up the energy to drag her feet through the shattered doorway, the clock above the threshold reads 1:46, and the sky outside shows no sign of lightening anytime soon. The asphalt glistens red with puddles and the neon glare - no, she thinks it does at first, but the crimson is too dark, too rich. A faint metallic odor wafts up. Blood.

Her stomach drops and she stumbles along, following the trail with a sleeve cupped over her nose. Aside from the residue from the diner, only the moon above provides any light to see by, which has no definite shape, just a pinpoint of fuzzy white light. A breeze sweeps by, strong and cold, and she wraps her arms tighter to her chest as it whips sweat-laden hair into her eyes. It whips the bare branches by the side of the lot too, lifting the sound of lashes into the air. Even the moon's light doesn't penetrate beyond the deep treeline starting there. But Gideon's trail does. A scrap of his shirt hangs twisted in a dead shrub.

He's in there. Lacey isn't. And right now, with the world ablaze with shadow and menace, and crickets fighting to bring their songs to the forefront, she has no intentions of going in, not until the sun rises. So, with a heavy sigh, she turns and keeps walking along the lot.

Can't go home. Jeremy would set his sights on her and not let her leave ever again, never mind the fact she hasn't checked back in to let him know where she's been. No, that'd ruin everything, and with Gideon out there, she can't leave him behind just yet. She has to find something else. She doesn't know what that something else is until the lights of the twenty-four hour gas station at the corner of the road blind her.

She shuffles along, hugging herself, in a daze. At the side of the station there are doors to the bathrooms, and she grips the iced handle to let herself in. The stalls are empty; she chooses one. Absentmindedly, she locks the door, spreads a salt circle on the concrete, and settles down within it, criss-cross applesauce, surrounded by the smell of toilet water and whatever's in that metal box to the side.

Time passes like it doesn't exist at all, and she thinks the whole time. Replaying events. Predicting events. Wondering about trivial things - should I try to do homework later or just fall into a sleep coma? - but it doesn't help put her at ease. Images of Gideon's face twisted up into dirty looks keep flashing by; the haunting red glow of his skin keeps flashing by; the terrified glint, the mixed screams and desperate yells, they keep flashing by. She pulls her knees up to her chin and wraps her arms around them, letting the back of her spine press against the cold porcelain behind her. The bruise it touches aches, but she continues pressing down on it, hoping for any type of distraction.

She dazes off for a long while. Checks her phone little. Always little notifications from Isaac's social media popping up on her screen, but she can't bring herself to focus on what they say, on picking them apart. It's only on four percent anyways - the energy sucked out by a supernatural presence, no doubt. Even just having the bony fellas around has left her beating herself up over waking the screen at all.

Eventually, though, the hours pass and the sun drives its fingers into the earth again, hanging on over some other country, but calling out weakly that it's on its way. At around six in the morning, she tries to shovel the salt from her circle back into the bag, and once this is finished, she stumbles out of the bathroom and into the faint, dark morning. It's not much light, but it's something, and she's getting antsy.

With aching knees and bones pulsing with soreness, she returns to the path of blood and violence, and heaving a sigh, lets herself into the woods. The path isn't difficult to follow: broken branches, bloodied leaves, stomped weeds. After a short time walking - at least, she thinks it's a short time, but what does she know anymore? - she sees the corner of a white building, laden in a few places with graffiti and mud smudged to the side in places. It's not an inviting place, by any means, but alongside the vandalism rests a smudged handprint, a prominent swipe of red. She swallows. "God help me."

With wary steps, she navigates around a tangle of twisted branches stuck into the muddy earth. Getting closer to the smudge only makes a torrent of gooseflesh run up her arms, and she tries to pet it down, to no avail, as a weak breeze blows against her cheeks and brings a light drizzle with it. She almost breaks right then and there. Can it stop fucking raining at all? Can the sky have mercy? But she takes a deep breath and rounds the corner. There's a large window running nearly from the ground to the roof, with maybe a foot of margins from either, absent of glass. Most of it lays shattered in the dirt or inside. The breakage doesn't look recent, but still, there's another smear of vermillion along the sill, a larger one this time.

Her heart drops in her chest. Nausea swirls deep and true just walking over - please don't be dead, God, please, please don't be dead - but still, she pokes her head in.

She expects to find a pale corpse, laying slumped against the wall, blood pouring from two broken nostrils and fingers curled in tight and hard. She expects to find something like she saw in Stella a few days ago, not her, but something that held her, once, but doesn't now. So when she finds Gideon sitting tense against the wall beside the broken window, the quickly growing dawn illuminating his left half, she lets out a breath so relieved that it almost brings tears to her eyes. He doesn't seem to hear her, too deep in his own world, staring off into space. By the foot he has curled up close to his body, his fingers twiddle mindlessly with a leaf detached from the ivy growing in through the window and crawling along the wall behind him. The rustle of his fingertips against the greenery fills the space.

This could still be a trick, though. Malevolence could still be taking root, trying to regain control. So she tests the air, heart thumping too hard for her to keep her voice steady: "Gideon? That you?"

A pause, a deep swallow. "Will you disown me as your friend if I cry right here, right now?"

"Yup. That's you." After running a palm over her tired eyes, she clumsily sticks a leg in through the open window, then the other, until she's at the complete mercy of this abandoned hovel. The walls are barren and the room is empty, save the overgrowth and glass she crunches over. A few more steps in, though, and her relief quickly morphs back into panic, breaths coming faster than she can manage. He's hurt.

His shirt is missing, so all the black-and-blue is clear along his ribs, his arms, his everywhere. Her nail imprints still stick to his collarbones, and his body is laden in small cuts from having broken through the diner's front door. His feet are bare and torn to shreds, and the knuckles twiddling around the leaf are smashed and broken. There's a mark on his head, too, and in that moment, she regrets ever smashing that napkin dispenser over it. "You need to get cleaned up and bandaged before you get an infection out here," she starts. "No. Scratch that. I really think you should go to the hospital or something."

He shrugs. Her chest bursts into flames and she might just throttle him for this but then he looks down at his fiddling hands and his mouth twitches and in the cold orange glow of morning cast around his head his eyes grow glossy. The whites of his eyes look bloodshot - no sleep, salt, both? Both are her fault. She steels herself and moves closer, lower, until she's sitting beside him in a similar position, staring at those twitchy fingers.

He speaks, but it's low, monotone, empty. "I'm dangerous. You need to go."

Christ, she can feel the snot already running into her nose. She sniffles. "Giddy Boy, I think you're missing a very important point here. If you weren't around me, this wouldn't have happened to you. I'm the one who's dangerous. Not you. And before you argue, let's agree to blame the demon instead. That was the real asshole."

She tries forcing humor into her voice, but that's all it is. Forced. He ducks his head and folds himself up even further. Lips part, but clamp shut; he wants to speak but doesn't know what to say. He clears his throat. "I completely lost control of my body. My skull felt crowded out. There was so much...being in my head and skin and I couldn't, I couldn't force him out, he just stayed there and I couldn't move him and he was, like, suffocating me in here."

Lacey shakes her head. "What?"

"Having- having the thing take over. I thought I'd stop breathing even though I knew I was breathing just fine and there wasn't any consistency in any of it and it was driving me insane in there, in here, in me. And I kept screaming but it wouldn't come out. All the things I didn't want to say I said and all the things I didn't want to do I did. And then it started to burn and I thought I was gonna die. I thought you were gonna die, too. And I saw- I saw skeletons walking around the world and there was this hunger in me that wouldn't go away but then, and, and I was in the air, and everything spun and Kelly's Market was upside down and I remember hearing a crack and it hurting and then, well, I just wanted to throw up the whole time because it smelled so bad and-"

She doesn't know how to stop him so she grabs hold of his forearm and squeezes, tight, until he finally takes a breath, then another and a few more, and the first flood starts to rush down from his eyes, catching the sunrise against pale blue cheeks. He turns to her. "And then what if we find Erie and I'm still stuck like this? Or if, if we don't find Erie, and I'm still stuck like this? Is everything over?"

Her eyes widen and she shakes her head rapidly. "No, no no no, it's not. You won't be stuck like this."

It's not enough to convince him, but he still presses his head back against the wall and, with closed eyes, swallows down what could've been a sob. Only a few more seconds and his face is bathed. He acts like his cranium is full of water and with any minor movement, it sloshes out over the edge and he gives up on trying to put it all back. She wants to catch it in her hands and help, but all she has is her hands, so she sits there, watching him, unsure of what to do.

As it turns out, she doesn't have to do anything. His eyes crack open again, swollen, and he inhales like he's not getting enough air. And, oddly enough, he smiles. It's weak and sad and tired, but there. "Did I ever tell you how I met Erie?"

"Nobody ever tells me anything."

"It was a couple years ago." Again, he closes his eyes and sinks into a separate oblivion altogether. "We were both in theater, but he was in it, acting, and doing things like that, and I was part of the crew so I helped switch the sets during rehearsal and things. And I accidentally went faster than I was s'posed to and wasn't paying attention and I didn't see him so I hit him with this big desk, on accident, and he kind of fell over and I panicked so I went to help him up, and I'd known him before from school and things and he had all these people who loved him so I expected them all to start yelling, but then he didn't get mad at me and he just smiled and laughed and said he was sorry for being so slow. But then he turned around and there was this hole in the back of his costume, and so I told him because he must've ripped it on the way down, and then he got annoyed, I think.

"But I know how to sew and I really wanted to fix this, y'know? Because it was my fault. So I said if he gave me the costume after rehearsal, I could take it home and mend it and bring it back, but then he just shook his head and found a pen and right on that desk I was pushing he wrote down his number into the wood and said he'd text me his address and that I could come fix it there." He swallows, breathes. His fidgeting with the leaf slows and the vines tangle in his hair. "So I did. Well, I meant to. But when I got there, he was in a frenzy. His rat got out of the cage, y'see, so he was running all around the house trying to find him, since like, no way he's gonna use those mouse traps because those would hurt Ray-"

"Ray?"

"The rat. So he yanked me in the house just in case Ray would run outside in those five seconds we had the door open and I went into a frenzy right beside him and helped him find his rat." He interrupts himself with a soft chuckle. "And we did, eventually, but we were so focused on that that we forgot we had to fix his costume so I left and he texted me later and so I went back the next day. And we didn't really talk for a while, and usually I would but I got nervous because, well, he was really pretty and kept staring at me and- but then, well, he used this big word I didn't know - ephemeral - and he was always using big words after that and telling me what they meant because that's what he likes to do, but then he told me to slow down or this moment would be ephemeral and I asked what it meant and he said that he wanted me to stay longer. So I did.

"And then..." He sighs and drops the leaf altogether, grabbing at his palm with his other hand and running his fingers over the torn knuckles. "And then I gave it back and he took my hand and thanked me so earnestly that I think I almost kissed him right there, but I didn't. And then he kept inviting me back after that, y'know, for all kinds of little things, like if I wanted to see Ray again or if I could help him with chemistry or if I wanted to have dinner with him and his mom every now and then...I don't know, I think we kind of just fell into each other after enough time. And we kept getting closer and he kept wanting to keep my hand in his and-" His voice cracks, "-he was so soft and sweet and we helped each other grow, mutually. We help each other grow. And I miss," he can't get his mouth around the word for a minute and something in him breaks again," holding him and making him feel safe. But I couldn't keep him safe, Lacey. I couldn't keep the boy I love safe. And now I don't know anymore, I don't, it's all-"

Wet blubbering, that's what he melts into, and he chokes on his own air, and Lacey's face is wet too. She shifts her hand to his shoulder and gives it as reassuring a squeeze as she possibly can. "Look at me. Hey, look at me."

"I miss him."

"I know, but look at me." Reluctantly, he does, and she nods and makes him do the same to affirm that he's listening. "I'll do whatever I can to get him back. I promise he won't be gone much longer." The fates come back to mind, their wispy words. "This week. We'll find him by the end of this week. I'll do everything."

He rubs his eyes with the backs of his hands. "You already have been doing everything you can, though."

"No. No, I really haven't. Not as much as I could be. I have something that can help us and I haven't been trying to use it because I haven't wanted to. But it's time for me to try. To really try now."

A sad moan emanates as he tries to clear his nose of snot by sniffing it back and fails. "We shouldn't have to deal with this."

"But we're the only ones who will, it feels like."

"Yeah."

They share a moment of silence and he finds a way to nose-breathe again, but then she clears her throat and starts shifting from the spot. "C'mon, bud. We have to get you cleaned up." She stands and holds out her arms for him to grab onto for support. "Go wherever you're staying. Get rest, oof!" She hauls him up and they both stumble, wobbling precariously. He goes to the wall for support and an idea strikes her when she sees that inflamed scar again, less prominent than it was, but still there, loud and clear. "And-" She hesitates. This is a bad idea. This puts me at risk again. "And take some of my salt with you."

He tries to shake his head but she stuffs the bag of bathroom-floor salt into his pocket before he can truly argue and then distracts him by looping his arm around her shoulders for support. He's way too heavy, but what's a little bit of struggle, really, if it means getting him back home?

That's one person, at least.

Heavy-hearted, she guides him through the window, and then back from whence they came through the woods, feeling the weight of three other souls resting on her shoulders right beside his.

Goodbye (demo), by LAUREL

Gideon sitting in the room.