Chapter Text
When he switched, he groaned, he twisted, he panted. Every tendon and vein and artery in his neck stood out as if he might rip apart from the pressure of the change, before finally, finally, the new alter stood before her – arms folded or one hand holding the shirt collar closed or grinning with infantile excitement or any of the many other expressions and postures and breathing patterns of the alters. She had not met them all, she wondered whether she wanted to, but she knew what it looked like when he changed.
Except . . . this time was different.
One moment there was Kevin, saying, “Hey,” and smiling like she was his whole world, and then there was the Beast, pushing her aside, and she heard a zip through the air and a hole was in his stomach, and he leapt past her. She spun and saw him sprinting, then loping on four legs, then sprinting again, heading for the van and the sniper on top. The sniper got one more shot off – it grazed the Beast’s hip and he didn’t feel a thing – before the Beast tore him from the roof and stomped on his spine.
The doctor with a lion’s mane for hair and those compassionate – lying – eyes ran from the van. She tottered in her heels and the Beast caught her with ease. Her lips parted, she said, “No, Kevin Wendell Crumb!” but the Beast was in control. She did not have the strength to call Kevin out, not like Casey did. The Beast bit through her neck and relished the impure blood gushing down the collar of her white blouse. She gaped and choked and hovered a hand over her throat.
She fell.
The Beast was about to turn towards Casey, his pure one, when he glimpsed the man who’d beaten him. The green poncho still dripped from the tank and he was unable to lift himself off the sodden grass. The hospital’s eastern lawn was a boggy swamp now. Mr Glass had been right, water was his weakness. The Beast grinned teeth dripping blood and stalked closer. The man’s son screamed and fought against two officers dressed in SWAT gear. So weak. Nothing like his father.
Except another SWAT team member grabbed the man by the neck and started dragging him. The Beast saw the pool of water in the pothole. He understood.
He grew angrier – the man was his to defeat, his to destroy. His enemy to battle just like Mr Glass had said. With a roar, the Beast lunged for the SWAT officer and bashed his head into the drenched concrete inches from the choking man. There was a crack, like an eggshell breaking.
David Dunn lay before him, pathetic, ready to be devoured.
A bullet struck the Beast’s shoulder. He shuddered, almost tripping over Dunn, then he turned and glared and saw the man with the pistol. He grabbed Dunn by the slick poncho and threw him far from the puddle, saving him for later, and went for the remaining SWAT team. It was pitifully easy. They were lambs compared to him, helpless and white as snow and he ripped them apart. Now for Dunn, whose son had run to his side. The Beast roared. Time to take out the one who protected the impure, screw the Osaka Towers.
“Kevin . . .”
He stopped.
“Kevin, please.”
Casey lay in the gutter. Her head tilted towards him as she stretched out a hand. Blood stained her fingers. That pretty new shirt she wore, the pink one with the buttons that Barry approved of much more than her old hunting gear, was red over the abdomen.
In the room of chairs where the Beast stood in the light, those alters who were aware stood and screamed at the Beast.
“Casey!”
“Oh, my dear baby girl.”
“You were supposed to protect the broken!”
“She was pure! How could you let this happen?”
“He . . . he failed . . .”
Dennis looked at Hedwig, who was an approximation of Kevin aged nine and not entirely real in this odd mindscape they shared, and said, “Take him out.”
Hedwig, shaken, tear-stained, nodded, insofar as he could, and the Beast was ripped from the light and dragged, roaring, back to the train yard. The alters watched him go with relief. Most of them agreed with Dennis – so much death and carnage had not been their intent. They wanted to protect Kevin and be understood but the way the Beast handled things could not be the answer, especially if it meant Casey Cooke got shot.
Hedwig and Barry wrestled Patricia into her chair and chained her there.
Kevin slumbered deep within himself.
Dennis stepped into the light.
“Casey.”
She waved a hand through the air and felt it being grasped. Strong fingers slipped through hers and became slick with blood. Dennis’ scowl floated in her vision. She felt colder, cold like in the cage. Winter had set in deeper since the three weeks she’d been taken and it invaded her through the wound in her stomach. It pushed out the blood and replaced it with ice water.
Dennis said, “It’s going to be okay, Casey,” and lifted her as if she weighed nothing.
He did this with Marcia and Claire, she remembered. Dennis tried to get Marcia to dance for him and locked Claire in a storage room. Dennis wanted the Beast to eat the impure. Dennis was dangerous. She did not trust any of them, except maybe Barry and Kevin. Hedwig was too enamoured with the Beast, Patricia was his high priestess, and Dennis his faithful servant.
Right then, Dennis was all she had.
Lying limp across his arms, she saw Joseph Dunn kneeling by his father and scrabbling at the plastic fabric. He was crying.
Her worldview shifted in painful bounces and she saw Mrs Price kneeling by her son and carefully tracing the edge of his face. She was smiling.
Bounce.
Oh. There was Dr Staple. She didn’t have a throat anymore. Casey smelled blood – a familiar smell that reminded her of her father – and wondered how she could smell the dead doctor from so far away, and then she realised it was her own blood and the stench of it filled the car Dennis placed her in.
“Nice work, Dennis,” said Barry. “Let’s get you to hospital, love.” Barry put the car into gear. Casey watched his calm face, watched his hands and the ease with which he ignored the blood, and wondered how one person could be so many and wondered if she was splitting apart too. It felt like it. Below her ribcage it was as if she was being sawn in two.
She remembered pain, though. Pain was an old friend and she could put it to one side to say, “But they’ll recognise you.” Barry raised an eyebrow. “You –” They went over the speedbump at the end of the hospital’s drive and she hissed. “You were on the news.”
“Huh,” said Barry.
“My . . . my foster mom’s a nurse.” It was getting harder to speak. The ice water had made it to her head, and everything throbbed.
“Hold on, darling, where can we find her?”
“Four-three-three, Adelaide Road. Cobb’s Creek.”
“Got it.” Barry caught her hand and gave it a squeeze. “We’ll get you through this, don’t you worry.” He had this wonderful tenor voice that made her want to believe him.
Except it wasn’t only him in there – Patricia and the Beast waited.
Trapped and in pain and relying on the goodwill of a monster . . .
She knew this scenario well.
For once the collective consciousness of Kevin Wendell Crumb was almost in harmony. Those that could agreed together – Casey Cooke was more important than any Osaka Towers could ever be.
So they let Barry drive and watched on while Hedwig kept the Beast and Patricia firmly bound. The little boy couldn’t care about the mythical beast anymore when his girlfriend was about to die. Patricia crooned and wheedled and used her powers of adulthood against him and he ignored her and kept watching the vision through the light, absorbed by the spectacle as only children could be.
Inward thought is a funny thing. Humans imagine we have a monologue running through our minds of clear-cut words and sentences and punctuation, because that is how we write it out. Our diaries and memoirs and voice-overs are crafted so others can understand us, starting at one point and ending in another, with obvious steps to bridge the gap.
Yet that is patently untrue. Human heads are a riot of impressions and sensations and discarded ideas and growing beliefs, built by experience upon experience and truths that may or may not be true. We are constantly absorbing, constantly thinking, constantly feeling. We create ourselves within our minds without us being aware of it.
For Kevin Wendell Crumb, his alters were not linear thoughts writing themselves into a script in typewriter font. They responded to outside stimulus and each other – they thought in images and opinions and cut-away memories and created a riotous tapestry of mingling personalities as they absorbed and thought and felt, using the same brain to create themselves. It could be utter chaos. Most of the time it was – especially for Barry, who knew of all the personalities as intimately as he knew his own. Once upon a time he had unimpeded access to Kevin’s mind and tempered it with love and affection. Under him, they worked together as best they could to protect Kevin. Twenty-two disparate people, one goal.
But the Beast arose and Dennis and Patricia learnt about Hedwig and things went horribly, horribly wrong. Barry lost control. The other identities started switching sides. The colour of Kevin’s mind went from a pretty Jackson Pollock to Goya’s gruesome black paintings. He lost time, something that'd he'd never had a problem with since his inception.
It wasn’t so much true belief as it was self-preservation. The other identities went with the Horde because to refuse meant being trapped by Hedwig. For most it was unacceptable. Beyond keeping Kevin safe, an alter wants time in the light; it’s one of their primary drives. No one wants to be stuck in the backseat watching someone else drive for eternity.
The matter of Kevin’s mind grew darker, until Barry couldn’t see the light anymore. Just death.
Sometimes he sought out the Dennis shaped impression amongst the Horde to see what the oldest alter thought. What he found was exhaustion and the memory of a girl.
Within Hedwig he found hero-worship and the feeling of a kiss.
In Patricia, he saw nothing but narrow-focus faith, unshaken until the Beast was questioned. He’d wished for the doctor’s words to be enough sway her. For a while he’d been hopeful. Then Elijah Price came and tore that hope apart.
Barry sighed and wanted something warmer – and more fashionable – than hospital pants. He twisted the heater knob and left bloody smears on the dash. Hot air blasted out. Casey sighed in relief.
Dear Casey. Barry’s hope resurfaced when he looked at her. If anyone, anyone, could stop the Beast and the Horde for good, it would be this girl, who was bleeding out on the leather car seat.
Barry examined his mind and found worry, fear, horror at what the Beast had allowed to happen. Regret. He heard one voice more insistent than the rest; Dennis’ slow, ponderous drawl, laying the words in perfect order with heavy care.
Barry stepped to one side in the light and let Dennis join him. He could feel Dennis’ restraint, a tight leash on smouldering rage.
“I never wanted this,” said Dennis.
“I know, I know,” Barry replied, speeding to overtake a slow Corolla on the thruway. Cobb’s Creek was an hour from Raven Hill Memorial Hospital and with every second all the alters grew nervous and the anxiety was beginning to show in Barry’s hands. He kept flexing them on the steering wheel, over and over. Dennis wasn’t helping; he stared at the blood everywhere and the grass stains on his pants and fought down the urge to clean or scream.
“There’s a vet nearby.” Dennis nodded at the sign. “They can help.”
“They’ll call the police,” said Barry.
“We can be gone before they come.”
“If that bullet has hit any internal organs a vet won’t be able to help!”
Kevin’s mind exploded with shouting and suggestions and it took precious seconds for Barry to hear Casey’s whisper below it all.
“It went all the way through,” she rasped. “Felt it. Didn’t hit anything major. My uncle taught me about gun wounds.”
In the light, Dennis glared at Barry. Barry sighed and turned left at the next intersection, following the green arrow pointing to Catwell’s Veterinary Clinic, Open 9-5, Seven Days.
Doctor Melling was a world-renowned expert in feline renal failure. Doctor Melling had won awards for her work – the ones that could be framed hung on the walls of her consulting room. The ones that sat on carved wood were placed on the top of her shelves and dusted twice a week by the sixteen-year-old daughter of the practice owner. Doctor Melling was fifty-nine, enjoyed a donut on Saturday evenings, and took excellent care of her teeth.
Doctor Melling took in the crossed arms and scowl of the man and returned to stitching the girl on her personal consulting chair. She could not use the table because the table was used for nothing larger than a sheepdog. The girl had refused offers of analgesia, on the grounds that she knew how to handle pain – Doctor Melling suspected she simply didn’t want to try multiple doses of opioids meant for cats.
“How is she?” said the man, who wore a crisp blue shirt taken from Doctor Aaron’s cubby hole. The bullets in his stomach shoulder had been dug out with little blood and great stoicism on his side. Doctor Melling had mulled over asking why these two young people had been in a firefight – and especially why the man had muscle so dense and strong that the bullet had gotten lodged in the fibres and burrowed no further – but Doctor Melling was not a simpleton and had lived as a twenty-year-old girl in New York City in the eighties. She kept her head down and understood threat.
“She’ll be fine. Antiseptic, stitches, and clean bandages will do the trick.”
“I’m sorry we can’t pay,” said the girl, wincing a bit with the pull of the sterile thread.
Doctor Melling smiled, acutely aware of the man and the blood under his fingernails. “Nonsense. No trouble at all.”
Later, when the girl limped out the back way and was helped into the nondescript black sedan, Doctor Melling raised her eyes up to the sky and paid no attention to the number plate. She studiously wrote over the memory of the two by planning for her day. It was eight-thirty in the morning.
Before Dennis joined the Horde, Barry and Dennis had tag-teamed the job at the zoo. Barry was personable and friendly. Dennis was good at impersonating his fellow alter, scarily good, and he knew how to be precise and efficient with his work. Between the two of them, keeping up the image of Kevin wasn’t difficult. They’d made a good team once upon a time.
They made contingencies for Kevin – caches of money around the city and even out of state in case of emergencies. They had safehouses, spare clothing, more toothbrushes. Dennis knew the necessity of keeping things in order in case of a mess. They headed to one of these safehouses now, the one in Ithaca.
Casey fell asleep on the ride and Barry called a house meeting for those competent and in the know. Dennis drove upstate, listening to the collective as they spoke in images and ideas and feelings.
“We should never have listened to the Beast,” began Barry.
“I could have told you that.”
“Duh.”
“A decision worse than Napoleon invading Russia.”
“Ban Patricia!”
“Hedwig too.”
“What did I do!?”
“You’re too easily swayed!”
“We must protect Kevin.”
“We have to protect Casey too.”
“I like her. She has spunk.”
“Plus she’s hot as –”
“–We need to decide what to do next.”
“Protect Kevin, duh. And get some proper food. I can’t believe the Beast eats people. Eugh.”
“Foul.”
“Cannibalism has been practiced for millennia –”
“–We have to let Kevin take over.”
There was a pause. A long pause. Then . . .
“What?”
“He’s too weak!”
“Yeah, nah, dog, you crazy or something?”
“But I won’t exist if we let Kevin back into the light!”
And silence fell again. That was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? To let Kevin step into the light and stay there meant the alters would be left to dwindle and die, collapsing inwardly like forgotten thoughts and losing themselves to the ether of his mind.
"You were willing to sacrifice countless girls but you can't sacrifice yourselves?" said Barry. "You won't die anyway. You will go back into Kevin's identity, where we should be."
Hedwig sniffed. “But what if Kevin doesn’t like Drake?”
Patricia laughed, soft and horrible. “My dear boy,” she said to Barry, “You can’t think Kevin can sustain himself, can he? He’s too weak, too frail. We must comfort him, keep him safe. He cannot handle the world on his own.”
“But he’s not on his own, is he?” Barry pointed out. “He has Casey.”
Patricia cackled. “The girl with the abusive uncle? You think she would be able to help him? Oh, precious. You have a crush.”
“She’s my girlfriend!”
“That girl could be the answer!” Barry shouted. “We’re not meant to be around forever! You remember what Doctor Fletcher said – we’re here to protect Kevin. That’s why we exist. But all we’ve done is let a cannibal loose on the world and almost destroyed whatever chance of happiness Kevin has left! What do we matter if Kevin dies?”
“I don’t want to die.”
“None of us do, Hedwig.”
“Speak for yourself. I’m sick of being stuck in the body of a dude.”
Barry pinched the bridge of his metaphorical nose. “How about this; each one of us meets her and tells her our story.”
“Huh?”
“You don't want to die, right? Then meet Casey, teach her about yourself, so then she can reteach you to Kevin if necessary. You can be immortalised in her.”
Patricia raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t you simply tell Kevin yourself?” she asked.
Barry replied deadpan, “Because Kevin will not want to talk with us. We nearly got him killed, remember?”
She smiled. “Touché.”
Barry stepped up to Dennis in the light. “Catch all that?”
Dennis nodded in the car. “We’ll have to find somewhere secluded.”
“We can start again, if she lets us.” Barry thought of the way she’d taken Kevin’s arm in the hospital room, and the way she hugged the Beast into submission, and Dennis looked at Casey.
The others wondered if this might just work and who on earth Kevin Wendell Crumb would become if it did.
He looked around and saw pine trees marching into the distance and a trickling stream weaving through them. The trees were full with green leaves, painting the sunlight emerald. Warm earth and grass and wildflowers carpeted the forest floor. In the far distance, he saw a deer bounding along a path and out of sight, a flash of pale gold amongst the trunks. A fresh breeze of pine swept along and ruffled the hair around his ears. He’d never been anywhere this beautiful. How was he here? Wearing a t-shirt and lightweight camouflage pants, sitting on a wooden porch, a vegetable patch and herb garden off to his right, a one-storey log cabin at his back and . . . her next to him.
“Kevin?” she said, huge brown eyes wide with worry. “Kevin, stay in the light with me, please.”
Kevin blinked and tried to think of something to say. “I never caught your name.”
“Casey Cooke.” She smiled at him, a little hesitant.
“How long’s it been?”
“Six months. We’re in Wyoming.”
“Why . . . why am I here? Why are you here?”
Her smile strengthened and she placed her hand on his. Her hair was drawn into a ponytail, exposing the entirety of her face. She was even prettier than he remembered, freckled from the sun. Her exposed arms were lean with muscle. He had a sudden recollection that wasn’t his, of her and him stripping branches off logs with saws, her brushing the sweat from her brow and laughing at something he – Dennis? Barry? He knew those names at least – had said.
Casey Cooke looked at him with compassion and – dare he think it – love. Perhaps not romantic love and he was glad for it. Kevin did not, and maybe never would, wish for a relationship. At the most he wished for a friend. And Casey Cooke leaned against his shoulder and gazed over the little patch of wonder before them. She said, “We’re here because we both deserve peace. The others agree.”
“The others?”
She nodded. “They want you safe, Kevin, and whole.”
“Whole?”
“It's just you in there now."
Kevin concentrated and sensed . . . Peace. His mind was clear and quiet for the first time in forever. “What happened?” he breathed.
“We've got a lot to catch up on.”