The Crescent

Chapter 9

Will blinked awake. He stood, avoiding the stacks of corpses. He checked his watch, but the ticking was gone from it. How long have I been asleep? 

"This is ridiculous," he said. He paced the small, cold space. "Baker! Baker, let me out of here now!" He kicked the door in frustration, and to his disbelief it swung open.

He bolted from the morgue, crashed through the black door, and ran towards the road, his legs pumping through the snow with strangely little effort. Above him the sky was laden with clouds, the sun shining on and off like a dying flashlight. I slept until morning? How am I alive? It didn't matter.  He pushed forward, reaching the edge of the hospital's grounds.

An abrupt force slammed him backward, and he flew back into the snow. He lay there dazed, confused at the source of the force. He reached for his camera, which had become a comfort to him, only to realize it was missing.

A mechanical grind rumbled from the distance. Will sat up. Two cars snaked up the road.  The first was his mother's car, a pink Custom Convertible Victoria. The second was Winston's car, a Model-T like Will's, except he'd maintained the paint job, so the indigo shone stubbornly.

Relief washed over Will. He raced towards them.

"Hey!" he shouted joyously. "Mom!  Dad!  Winston!  Charlie!"

The growl of the engines was excellent at masking outside noises, because they didn't seem to hear Will. They parked beside Dr. Baker's lavender motorcar. Will ran to them. 

"Charlie, I've missed you!" he said without thinking. Charlie's dark eyebrows knit together and his mouth tipped downward. "I'm alright, you can relax," Will assured.

Charlie didn't look at him. All of them strode to the hospital's overhang, where a patch of yellow grass remained untouched by the snow.

"Winston?" Will jogged to keep up with his long stride. Winston's face was stony, and his lanky arms swung like they used to before he'd fight in school, often on Will's behalf. He could always hit better than Will, blow after blow until his opponent was either too bruised or too winded to go on. But Will, Winston consoled, could take hits better than he could, and it was true. Perhaps because he'd had no other option before Winston, but it still made Will feel a little better. He could, at least, take a hit.

And it hit Will.

"Charlie, Winston – surely you aren't angry with me for not showing to work, are you?  I was trying to get the story!"  How uncharacteristic of them. If anything, he'd proved his dedication to The Cellardoor Journal. They huddled beneath the overhang, the hospital an impending force before them.

"This is the place, isn't it?" his mother said. His parents hadn't uttered a word to him, much less glanced in his direction. His father wore slacks and a trench coat so austere that Will didn't have to look at his face to know it was unsmiling. His mother wore one of her finest, but not favorite, dress and coat set. It was fashioned from simple and efficient lines of iron and flint, the makings of a flame. She tugged nervously at the tips of her gloves.

"Mom, Dad! It's so good to see you, Baker's utterly mad, he tried to kill me, left me in the freezer, oh, Winston, he's experimenting – "       

"This is it," Winston said quietly. He tapped a boot against a lavender stair step.

"Tacky," Charlie muttered.

"He's here, Benia," she whispered. Will's father put his arm around her, his face pale. While Will's parents had a sort of angry, proper look to them, Winston and Charlie were disheveled, and all four of them had bags beneath their eyes.