Swirling smoke and chaotic laughter choked Pepper's dreams. Demonic doll's heads floated against a black sky. Tiny fangs chittered and chattered. Eyes burned like blood moons. Plastic skin became taught like a decomposing cadaver.
She sat up with a scream.
<< nightmare >>
"I wish."
Pepper shuddered beneath the blankets.
<< confess >>
"To Erin and Marshall? Not a chance."
<< sad >>
"We did a bad thing. A really bad thing." Pepper stroked her forearms. "I'll put it right. Put everything back. Just as it was. They'll never know."
<< secrets >>
<< lies >>
<< bad >>
"Look, I know it's bad. But being stranded out in The Great Wastes or returning to Hope's Ruin with our tails between our legs is far worse." Pepper dragged her hands down her face. "So, another of those dark spirits got out. Big deal. It'll probably just scurry back and join the hundreds of others at—"
<< boothill >>
Pepper shuddered again.
Beside the ever-present rumble in the clouds, the farmhouse remained quiet.
No sign of Marshall or Erin yet.
Pepper got dressed and wandered out onto the courtyard.
Streaks of dazzling morning sun edged her vision. She put a hand to her eyes and located her new friends at the farm's perimeter fence.
Pepper called out, but they did not respond.
Shrugging, she ambled through the warm morning light and joined them at the scarecrow crosses that looked out over the undulating landscape.
"Beautiful view," Pepper said, still shielding her eyes. "I can see why you're Ma and Pa decided to live here."
Erin was crying.
"Oh, Erin. Whatever is the matter?"
Marshall, his arm around Erin's shoulders, nodded skyward.
Pepper turned to the crosses.
Number Thirteen hung motionless in his cap and jeans and D&D t-shirt. His hollowed out eyes stared into the beautiful forever. But Number Twelve was a different matter. Her nightmarish black dress, pirate jacket, and bison skull were not where they should be.
Not where they should be at all.
Her cross was completely bare.
Pepper scanned the immediate area.
Wriggling tracks slithered through the mud.
"What in the name of—?"
Erin looked at Pepper. "She's gone," she said after an age. "Number Twelve. Gone."
"How? Did someone take her?" She looked at the tracks again. "Is she...alive again?"
"No. Maybe," Erin said, as her tears came harder. "Do you think it's possible?"
"Anything is possible."
"But if she came back—" Erin struggled, the idea of Number Twelve returning to her was obviously more than she could bear, "—why wouldn't she stay? Why wouldn't she come and talk to me? Why would she leave?"
Pepper had no clue.
Perhaps something inside Twelve had endured, something lying dormant, waiting. Something that the sight of the black smoke awakened. Something that chased away all the horrors and dangers that came for Erin and Marshall and Socks.
Perhaps Number Twelve had risen to save them once again.
"The world is a confusing place," Pepper told her. "There's no knowing what really happened—"
"—unless we find her," Erin said.
Marshall grunted.
Both girls looked at him.
"We've spent months, perhaps years, searching in every conceivable direction," the boy said. "For miles and miles we've walked and looked and returned with nothing." He pulled Erin close. "Sure, we could go further, we could abandon the farm and extend our search far into The Great Wastes, but it's such a risk." The boy darkened. "Clyde is lost. Twelve too. And if we're not careful, we'll become lost too."
"I don't care," Erin said. "I could almost bear this life, this existence, without knowing what happened to Clyde if Twelve was here with me. With us. She's my anchor. A touchstone to all I've lost. Ma. Pa. Clyde. Everything."
Erin gazed forlornly across the sun-kissed landscape.
"But without her...there's nothing left."
"I'm still here," Marshall said.
Erin withered. "I know. Thank you. I should say that more often. You've been fantastic. Amazing. And I've been...difficult. I'm sorry." She inspected the empty cross. "But I have to go now. I have to find Twelve. I have to find Clyde. Whatever it takes, no matter how far, no matter how hard to journey. Without them, all of this means nothing."
Pepper watched on, feeling impossibly awkward. This was a conversation they should be having in private, in their cosy bedroom, away from her eyes. "I'm gonna go and—" Pepper started.
"No," Marshall said. "Stay. Talk her out of this. You know The Great Wastes. You know how dangerous the world is now. You know that—"
"—Clyde and Twelve are out there," Erin butted in.
"—they are filled with death and desperation," Marshall finished. "Without food or water or shelter you'll last days, a week at the most, and then what?"
Erin failed to answer, to look at him.
Marshall sighed, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and wandered back to the farmhouse.
"You asked if I needed help finding my brother," Erin said eventually. "Well, I do. And it's now. Will that quad bike of yours sit two?"
Pepper nodded, wondering what would happen to Flake in her absence, but as she scanned the edge of the barn, Pepper failed to see her bike. She turned in circles, looking up and down the fence. And there, next to the wriggling tracks left by Number Twelve's legless torso, were the fresh, sunken tyre marks of the quad bike, trailing off into the distance.
Pepper's hand flew to her mouth.
"What is it?"
"She took my bike. Your scarecrow stole my bike!"
Erin followed the tracks beyond the farm borders and down the lip of the hill. It was true, where Twelve's chaotic wriggling tracks ended, the quad bike track began.
Erin locked her eyes on the horizon.
"He's out there," she whispered, as Pepper approached.
"Clyde?"
"Yes."
"Perhaps that's where Twelve has gone."
"To find Clyde?"
Pepper kicked a pebble. "Maybe."
"But why now? Why would Twelve come back now?" She glanced back at the gently swaying cross. "It can't be her. She died. I saw it. I felt it. Twelve spirited away right before my eyes on twirls of crystal white light."
Pepper's mind clogged with plastic doll's heads.
Vile black smoke.
Malicious laughter.
Had the resurgence of that terrible soul awakened Twelve? Had Erin's scarecrow sensed the threat and danger, woke from her slumber, climbed down from her cross, and chased the demon away? Or had something far more disturbing transpired?
"The world is a confusing place," Pepper tried, smothering the guilt.
Erin's eyes found hers. "Do you—" she started, "—think she came back?"
Pepper tried to smile. This was the moment to confess. This was the moment to admit what she'd done. But Erin's face was so full of hope, so desperate for something, anything, to cling to, that Pepper couldn't do it.
She couldn't kill all Erin's dreams with a single word.
She knew she should.
But Pepper didn't have it in her.
"I've seen all kinds of weird things," she told Erin. "In Silver Hollow. In Hope's Ruin. Across The Great Wastes. Things that make no sense. Things that challenge everything you believe in. If you're asking whether it's possible that Twelve could have come back and reanimated her body and gone driving off on my quad bike into the sunset...then, yes. Yes, it's possible."
It wasn't a lie. But it wasn't the whole truth either.
Erin smiled. "Thank you."
Pepper nodded.
Tucking her hair behind her ears, Erin adjusted her broken glasses and wiped the dribble from her nose. "I have to follow Twelve."
"Of course."
"I know you've only just arrived. And you barely survived The Great Wastes. And it feels horribly wrong of me to ask you to go running straight back into all that danger and—"
"It's okay," Pepper told her, the guilt bubbling like a witches broth. "I promised I'd help you look for Clyde. And now we need to follow Twelve too. I'm in. I mean, what would I do here without you?"
Erin smiled.
"So, what do you have in mind?"
Erin turned and pointed towards a clapped-out tractor slumped beside the stables.
"Let's fire up that mechanical brain of yours."