Chapter Text
The one thing Dan Howell had noticed about Western Canada, from the limited view provided by the confines of the van he’d been sat in for the better part of two hours, is that there are so many trees. They bordered the highway on all sides for miles, a grey-green expanse of forest that blurred together no matter how hard he tried to focus. They’re still covered in snow, as was the ground, which was a bit of a shock when he left the airport. Janine had laughed at him, upon seeing the expression on his face when his boots hit a mound of slush, and told him that the snow here could last into May.
Janine was sitting beside him now, the small, emotionless smile she had been wearing since the day they had met still on her face. Dan wasn’t sure she was capable of any other expression. She was the reason he was here, in the back of a van, driving down a bumpy rural highway in the middle of a country so far away from his own.
He doesn’t remember all the details of their meeting clearly— if he’s being honest, he can’t recall anything from the past year with much clarity— but he does remember it happened in his favourite café down the street from the law firm he worked at. The memory is stained with the taste of coffee.
Janine had looked much the same as she did now; hair pulled back into a severe bun, wearing a grey pencil skirt with a matching grey blazer, that plain smile glued to her face. She had an air of professionalism about her, which is probably why Dan had let her sit down across from him in the first place.
We’ve been searching for you, Daniel Howell, she had said in lieu of an introduction. He seeks you, calls for you. Will you answer Him?
Before Dan had the opportunity to respond, she had shot out of her chair and made her way through the door, leaving behind only a pamphlet and a business card.
At first, Dan found the whole situation amusing. He had read enough about cults and weird religious sects in his spare time to understand that the woman was likely trying to recruit him for something, so he shoved the pamphlet and the card to the bottom of his work bag before promptly forgetting about them both.
Or he would’ve, if Janine had stopped showing up.
He found out her name was Janine the third time she had sat down next to him in the cafe. That was the same day she first called him The Shepherd. Dan didn’t know what it meant. If he’s being honest, he still wasn’t quite sure.
The fifth time she was there, she told Dan he was special. The eighth time, she told him that his cooperation was essential to the goals of her organization. By the twelfth time she had shown up, Dan was ready to agree.
Dan liked to think he wasn’t an idiot, and for a long time held steady in his belief that he wasn’t susceptible to the kind of manipulation tactics employed by cults, tactics he recognized in the way Janine interacted with him. This was a belief formed by a much younger Dan Howell, though; one that wasn’t working as a soul-sucking lawyer or on the tail end of a messy and lengthy divorce. Unfortunately, the current Dan was, so with little left to lose, he told Janine he would join her organization.
Dan was expecting a lot of things to happen when he shook Janine’s hand in that coffee shop a little over three weeks ago, mostly involving communes and off-grid living and a sense of community Dan hadn’t felt since, well, ever. He had figured all Janine’s talk about him being “chosen” and “The Shepherd” were just platitudes told to every potential recruit to butter them up.
It turned out that most new recruits were not told the same things Dan had heard. Most new recruits also hadn’t been flown across the ocean to be taken to the middle of nowhere.
The van lurched as the road transitioned from pavement to gravel, jolting Dan out of the trance the blurring trees had held him in. He turned to look at Janine again. “Are we almost there?” he asked, trying his best not to sound like a petulant child.
Janine smiled at him. Dan was starting to believe her face had permanently frozen that way. “No need to fret, The Lamb is safe. Mother watches over him.” she replied, which wasn’t an answer. Dan sighed and turned his attention back to the smear of trees outside his window.
He wasn’t going to be totally alone out here, wherever here was; he had a companion, someone Janine had only referred to as “The Lamb”, who he knew absolutely nothing about, save for the fact that they were a person and not an actual sheep. Considering his social ineptitude and general dislike of other people, Dan figured he would prefer it if they were an animal.
Maybe I won’t have to interact with them much, Dan reasoned to himself. It did nothing to quell the small burst of anxiety in his gut, though.
Dan’s head knocked into the window as the van took a sharp right onto a narrow road cradled by towering pines. They rumbled along for some distance before Janine said, “We have arrived!”
Dan turned away from the thinning trees just as the van rounded one last corner. In front of him, along a stretch of driveway, was a log cabin. It was a squat little thing, made of worn brown logs and faded red shingles, with windows on all sides. A porch jutted out to face the driveway, two old chairs resting on the planks like guardians of the property. Behind the cabin stretched a fenced field that had probably once been used for cattle, but seemed now to only hold sparse trees and overgrown grass. A small car was parked haphazardly out front.
The van came to a stop outside the little cabin with an unceremonious lurch. With a speed Dan could barely follow, Janine had already opened the door and was trying to find her balance in her heels on the gravel. Once she found it, she looked up at Dan. “We have arrived!”
Before long, Dan had unloaded his meagre belongings and hauled them up the porch steps. Janine wobbled in front of him, one of her heels catching briefly in between the slats of the old wood, but she managed to regain her composure enough to open the door for him. Dan had to duck a little in order to fit through the frame.
The cabin was as cosy on the inside as it had seemed on the outside. Across from the doorway was the living room, which consisted of a large couch, a stone fireplace with a TV mounted above it, and a vinyl record player. To his left was the kitchen, which had relatively modern appliances tucked between retro wooden cabinets and a small yet sturdy looking breakfast bar. Just beyond the kitchen was a short hallway with doors on either side, one of which was likely a bathroom. In the far corner was a staircase that led up to the loft, which loomed over the kitchen.
A short, gruff woman sat at one of the stools of the breakfast bar, scribbling into a notebook. She was the exact opposite of Janine in every way, from her unruly greying curls to her casual muddy clothes to the deep frown that creased her face.
At the sound of Janine’s heels on the worn wooden floors, the woman looked up. “Took you long enough to get here,” she said in lieu of a greeting, her voice as rough as Dan had expected, tinged with an accent he couldn’t quite place.
“We got delayed by construction on our way out of the city,” Janine explained. Dan noticed, for the first time, her smile falter.
“Yeah, well we’ve been here almost two hours,” the woman replied, before getting out of her seat and approaching Dan. “I’m Shane, but Janine calls me Shannon to be a dick,” she said, sticking out hand for a handshake, aborting the movement when she noticed how much stuff Dan was carrying.
“I’m Dan, uh, Dan Howell,” he replied, trying his best not to stumble over his words. It had been a while since he had talked to someone that wasn’t Janine.
Shane nodded. “The Shepherd,” she said, a hint of respect in her tone. “I brought The Lamb out. Strange guy. Quite talkative. He went up to the loft to take a nap a while ago, but the commotion might’ve woken him up.”
Dan had a lot of questions in that moment; So the Lamb is a he?, followed by, are you the Mother Janine was being cryptic about in the car?, but they all died in his throat as his gaze landed on the staircase on the far wall.
The first thing Dan noticed about the man frozen on the stairs was that he was tall, probably almost as tall as Dan himself was. The second thing he noticed is that he was gorgeous, all pale skin and reddish-brown hair and blue eyes, eyes that were studying Dan in a way that made him feel like he was being flayed down to the bone.
Without taking his eyes off of Dan, the stranger attempted to take another step down the staircase, but misjudged the distance and sent himself tumbling down the last few steps with a yelp.
Dan dropped his bags in a pile on the floor on autopilot, determined to help this strange, clumsy man, but Shane managed to beat him to it. By the time Dan met them across the small room, she already had him up on his feet and was checking for bruises.
“I’m okay, Shane, I promise,” the man reassured, which did nothing to stop Shane’s fussing, and took Dan by complete surprise. The man had a distinctive Northern accent, which Dan hadn’t expected to hear so far away from home.
They locked eyes again as Shane was inspecting the man’s right arm, and he smiled. “Hi! I’m Phil,” the man greeted.
“I’m Dan,” Dan replied. “You seem awfully chipper for a man who just took a tumble down the stairs.”
The man—Phil—shrugged, a motion made more difficult by Shane prodding one of his shoulders. “My bones are strong, they can handle it.”
“You won’t have to worry much about injuries, anyway. Mother’s milk heals all wounds,” Janine said, coming up to their little group and roughly pulling Shane’s hands away from Phil. “We have important things to discuss that aren’t the physical health of the Lamb, and Shane and I have to leave before sundown. Would you two please sit on the couch?”
The two of them sat on the couch, and promptly learned the thing had not been designed for two large men to share. They were almost shoulder-to-shoulder, and Dan had to consciously prevent their knees from brushing. He wasn’t fond of touching strangers, no matter how clumsy or beautiful they may be.
Janine stood in front of the fireplace, Shane at her side, looking like she was preparing to give a lecture. She clasped her hands in front of her body and put on her biggest, brightest smile. Shane rolled her eyes.
“You boys have been chosen for a very special purpose,” she said in a tone that made Dan feel like he was going through an awful workplace training program. “The goal of C.R.A.F.T is to summon Him, our glorious leader, into our realm to usher in a new age of prosperity. All of those who follow him will be gifted with a utopia, and all those who disparage him will be damned to eternal suffering. You, boys, were selected by Him personally, as the face of C.R.A.F.T, with the mission of spreading His word and finding the seals that will set him free into our realm.”
Janine paused, like she was waiting for praise, or applause. She received neither.
“How are we expected to find these ‘seals’?” Phil asked, breaking the silence.
Janine smiled bigger, which Dan thought wasn’t possible. “Traditionally, C.R.A.F.T has used various methods of divination to try and determine the seals needed to release Him into our world and usher in our utopia, but none of them have worked. What we haven’t tried, though, is regular arts and crafts.”
“I’m gonna cut to the chase,” Shane interrupted, causing Janine to grimace, the second emotion she had ever expressed. “C.R.A.F.T needs you to make YouTube craft tutorials to recruit people to our organization and discover the seals to free Him.”
Both men stared at the women across from them in quiet disbelief. The silence was broken by Dan letting out a peal of laughter so loud it made Phil jump out of his seat.
“We’re not joking,” Janine said sternly, which quieted Dan’s laughter. “We need you to make YouTube craft videos. You can film them in batches of two, and send them off to our editing team in Toronto to post twice daily. Whenever you discover a seal, contact me immediately using the email I provided you.”
“How will we know if we’ve found a seal?” Phil asked, which Dan appreciated. This whole situation was absurd, but he didn’t want them to be directionless.
Janine turned the focus of that bright smile entirely on Phil. “You will know,” she replied, in her typical cryptic way. She turned to Shane. “Anything else they should know?”
Shane sighed. “I’ll be driving out supplies once a week on Wednesdays, shit like groceries and toiletries and stuff. If you need anything specific, shoot me a text at least two days before. If there are any emergencies, do not contact the police, call me instead. The local government is being extremely lenient with us, and I do not want to cause them any problems. Can we leave now?”
“I think we can, yes,” Janine replied, before turning her gaze back to the couch. “Good luck, boys. I cannot wait to see what beautiful crafts you make!”