- Opening Credits
December 24, 1987
Shawn leaned against the cottage window, nose numbing against the winter-cold glass, and squinted at the colorful spots that were his parents fighting by the edge of the woods outside.
They had moved far enough to make it almost impossible to overhear the conversation - as they had rapidly learned to do when dealing with their quick-witted, snooping-prone son - but not enough to make it impossible to follow their body language. His father’s painfully orange parka may be a source of everlasting shame to any ten-year-old son and make Henry look like a very agitated Muppet, and his mother’s pink stuffed coat really wasn’t much better - but their awful fashion choices did nothing to keep him from reading the wild gesturing of his dad’s arms, the hard line of his mom’s shoulders. Her face was so pale with rage her pink lipstick shone like a flame against it, almost as bright as Henry’s apoplectic face.
Shawn wasn’t sure what they were arguing about, exactly, but had witnessed enough of his parents going at each other’s throat to know that wasn’t the point. It almost never was. The real point was the electric energy crackling around his parents most days, like they were a couple of the charged Tesla coils Miss Swanson showed them at school for their science class. It was his mother’s long silences, his father’s perpetual frown.
Shawn stared hard at the two shifting dots of color, at the streak of black and green of the mountain forest behind them, and commanded his stomach to stop churning so hard. Yeah, Dad and Mom fought a lot - but so what? He and Dad fought a lot, too, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t work it out. Didn’t mean anyone was going to walk away.
Right? Right.
Shawn repeated the words to himself, silently, tracing the arc of his father’s flailing arms as he turned and stalked off, trudging through Douglas fir needles towards the lake. The scene would have been even funny, if it wasn’t for that stupid hurt under Shawn’s ribs - for the pinched expression on his mother’s face.
And it would certainly be easier to properly spy on them if Gus stopped disrupting Shawn’s concentration for one minute.
To be completely honest, his poor best friend wasn’t doing anything - technically speaking. He was standing quietly by his side, hands curled tight around the inner windowsill, not daring to mutter a single word as the TV chattered away at their back, forgotten. But Gus’s discomfort had the uncanny ability to manifest itself physically even when he didn’t say anything: Shawn could feel it pulse against his skin, wafting off in vibrations like a microwave’s heat, one step from transforming into a blossom of migraine behind his eyes.
So, he did what any reasonable person would have done in his shoes.
He kicked his best friend in the shin. Not too hard, but enough to make him yelp in outraged pain.
“Ow! Shawn, what was that for?”
“You’re distracting me, Gus,” explained Shawn, not a hint of guilt in his voice. He pressed his nose to the glass, squinting to follow his mom’s blonde head as she paced in front of the hovering silhouettes of the trees.
“I am not doing anything. I’m not even talking.”
“You’re still being distracting. Your Gus-worriedness is.”
“I’m not sure that’s a real word.”
“Well, I heard it both ways.”
Shawn had come up with that remark more or less two months ago, when he grew bored with scooping out pulp for Halloween decorations and tried to convince Gus ancient people used ginormous cucumbers instead of pumpkins for their Halloween lanterns, and his snotty nerd of a friend replied that he probably meant cucurbitaceae. Shawn rather liked the sound of it.
Now, leaning against the window of their rented cottage, the bright morning before Christmas, Gus muttered something offensive under his breath, but stayed put.
It took it all of ten seconds before the humming of his worry started pounding against Shawn’s brain again. It didn’t help it kind of fell into sync with the tightening of his chest, a crawling nausea sloshing in his stomach at the sight of his dot-of-color-parents taking opposite paths, drifting farther and farther away.
Sometimes having a nearly-telepathic bond with your best friend can prove a real pain in the ass.
“I don’t think we should spy on them, Shawn.” Gus’s voice sounded suddenly very small. Very ten-year-old. “I mean, it’s grown-up stuff - they’ll take care of it. And it’s their business anyway. You wouldn’t want them come snooping around during our meetings at the HQ, would you? It’s the same thing.”
Their HQ consisted of two of Gus’s grandma’s patchwork quilts arranged in a ramshackle tent in Shawn’s backyard, held together by Henry’s duct tape and a couple of old pool cues, but Shawn got what he meant. And made a dismissive sound at it.
“That’s a completely different thing. And it is my business.” Shawn bared his teeth, realizing it only when he glimpsed his reflection in the window. He snapped his lips closed, because the kid in the glass looked a bit too wild, and a bit desperate, too, and he had no intention of being either. “They’re my parents. I can spy on them anytime and how much I want, as long as I don’t get caught.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gus’s perfectly round chocolate head swivel toward the hallway leading off the kitchen of the cottage, stress etching every line of his body. “If my parents finish with that cake and come here, I don’t think they would be very happy about your spying. They talk of how important privacy is all the time.”
“I don’t care.” Outside, beyond the stretch of fir needles and muddy frozen earth between her and the house, his mother had fished out one of the thin cigarettes Dad disapproved of so much. Dad was already out of sight. Shawn felt a trembling note rise in his voice, and pushed it down hard. “They have been the first to not stick to the deal, anyway. They said this vacation all together would make things better, that they were not going to fight as bad as at home. They promised.”
To that, Gus had nothing to say, because it was the pure truth.
Much to his chagrin, Shawn got nothing but a grim kind of satisfaction from finally shutting up his best friend.
They had promised, both of them. When his parents told him they had planned to spend Christmas at the little cottage tucked away in the mountains the Gusters had been renting for a couple years, Shawn had felt almost as blessed as if Val Kilmer himself had parked in front of his porch and asked him if he minded a ride. Visions of endless pranks and games and adventures with Gus sprang up in his mind, like bubbles in a fresh glass of Coke. Shawn’s experience with nature and mountains - with jagged peaks, evergreen woods, something approaching cold even here in sunny California - was pretty much limited to a very unfortunate school trip in first grade involving captured frogs and Mrs Simpson finding her beauty-case full of tadpoles, but he didn’t mind: he would spend a whole week with Gus, gorging themselves on gingerbread, playing Tron with their winter suits, and trying to watch enough TV to have their eyes fall off out of overuse. Life was good.
When Mom and Dad sat him back down on the couch from where he had bounced off on his neon-lit sneakers, and told him what they wanted to promise him, Shawn’s chest had filled with a different kind of warmth - not bad, not exactly, but more complicated than the sheer joy of spending time with his best buddy.
A whole week without fights. Without his Mom’s glances, so cold they burn the skin, and his Dad’s explosive thoughts practically bursting out of his skin. One week trying to mend things, to make them right, the way they were before.
Shawn was a clever kid, they had always told him so, and it took him less than one minute to realize what the complicated softness expanding in his chest was.
Hope.
Newborn and shuddering and as fragile as a glass-blown Christmas ball.
As the last days of school before the Christmas break trudged by, as he ran home to prepare his duffel bag, as they piled into Henry’s truck, Gus riding with them, and the two of them spent the following hours rehearsing their favorite Magnum PI eps in the backseat, Shawn was so secretly scared to break that delicate hope he had to fight the urge to cradle his own ribs.
Oh, how hard Shawn had believed in that promise. He had wanted to believe in it so much. And he had trusted them, too, his clever mother and his tough father, trusted them to make up whatever made them keep jumping at each other’s throat, and to be true to their word.
And yet, here they were: barely a day in their cottage vacation, and already they had excused themselves just after breakfast, mumbling terrible excuses about checking on the car and calling Madeline’s mom - Shawn was a connoisseur when it came to excuses, and felt personally outraged by how bad they were at it - and walked out to scream at each other. Already they had fought hard and then stalked off, as if they couldn’t wait to get as far as physically possible from each other.
From him, too.
He had trusted them, and let them make a fool out of him. That, Shawn told himself, tapping at the window frame in time with the words, that was what irked him the most.
He may be a kid, but no one made a fool of Shawn Spencer. Not even his parents.
Especially not his parents.
Gus’s bumped his shoulder with his, gently. Pressing closer as if he could perceive the cold seeping into Shawn, from his nose and his fingertips all the way up his arms.
“Shawn…”
He shook his head, unable to look away. “They’re not going to figure it out on their own, Gus. Grown-ups never do. Do they think I know nothing?” He swallowed, hard. Keeping that trembling voice down was growing harder and harder. “People divorce all the time, I know it. But they can’t do that. I won’t let them.”
Gus’s ridiculous dragon-shaped slippers scratch against each other, tracing careful circles on the plush burgundy carpet of the living room. “You know, it wouldn’t be that bad. I mean, if your parents… if they divorce.” Gus’s tone is aiming for flippancy and failing something epic, the reflected Gus in the glass looking about to throw up his breakfast. But Shawn smiled, more for the effort than anything else.
He watched as his best friend turned to him, both Gus and reflected-Gus. “Even if they’re not together anymore, they will never stop loving you, and loving you a lot. And if you need them, they will always come for you.” He lifted his chin. “Mom told me that when Miss Preacher told us about Ginny McDonald’s parents splitting up. And I think it’s very true, especially for your parents. They love you very much, even if they’re both very scary.”
Under regular circumstances, Shawn would have caught the spark of actual fear tucked under his best friend’s reasonable tone, and spent at least five glorious minutes teasing him for it. But these were not regular circumstances. Shawn Spencer stood frozen in front of the window, hand still splayed against the glass, heedless of Gus’s parents’ voice growing closer as they walked down the hallway, of the knot in his stomach, of the brightly-wrapped presents under the Christmas tree in the corner.
Because Shawn Spencer had just thought of a plan.
He didn’t know how it happened, why his brain worked that way, but could feel it: the idea blossoming from Gus’s words, warping them, stretching out - and then the necessary steps falling into place, the possible tricky points considered and dismissed, the details inscribing themselves in their matrix so fast it didn’t even feel like thinking.
Shawn could feel a smile stretch across his lips, slow and large and vaguely wicked. Shawn Spencer’s plans may not always be pure genius, and they may not always end well, but they were always fantastical things. Dramatic. Daring.
And absolutely, completely unstoppable once they took root in his head. He could feel this one click into place just now, the snap almost audible as he drew a sharp breath, coming back to himself. He could feel the plan itch under his skin, humming like a guitar string. He could feel it lure him in, promising success, promising many things.
They love you very much.
Even if they’re not together.
They will always come if you need them.
“Shawn.” One word, and yet they knew each other enough Shawn could picture down to the last detail the face of his best bud as he said it - skin paling, eyes wide as saucer-plates, the recognition of the light in Shawn’s eyes.
Gus had a certain experience with Shawn’s plans. He usually hated them with a passion.
“Shawn. Please, please tell me you’re not plotting anything right now.”
Mr and Mrs Guster’ voices were almost there, the shuffling steps of Joy stumbling behind them as she prattled on about some inane kindergarten story. Gus’s voice dropped to a frantic whisper, but there was nothing tentative in the elbow digging into Shawn’s ribs.
“Shawn. Tell me what you’re thinking. Now.”
Shawn pursed his lips, his mind leaping forward, light-years ahead. He wanted to tell Gus - he always wanted to tell Gus, everything, anything - but something stopped him. Something told him this time even his faithful best friend, so clever and knowledgeable and equipped with way too much common sense for Shawn’s taste, would not give in - that there was a line to cross here, and it was Shawn’s alone to cross.
Shawn didn’t particularly like that part of himself - that wild Shawn who wanted to do things on his own and believed to be the smartest creature that have ever lived, bitter as sour gummy worms. But he knew he was almost always right.
So he said nothing, pushed back from the window. Turned a very convincing smile to his friend, shrugging, as if his parents taking opposite paths was a thin film of drizzle he could shake off his hair.
“I was thinking maybe it can be nice - my folks splitting up, I mean. Two Christmases. Double presents. Probably two cars once I’m sixteen.”
“I find that highly unlikely,” Gus replied judiciously, arching his eyebrows. “What would you ever do with two cars anyway?”
“I thought that was obvious. Ride them. One for regular stuff, and one to chase criminals on the highway and slide under out-of-control trucks and jump over explosions and stuff.”
Shawn widened his grin, letting his eyes go hazy and far as if lost in contemplation of his sixteen-year-old self doing acrobatics with his pineapple-yellow beast of a ride.
Gus blanched significantly. “I swear, if we are ever to have to share a car, I’ll drive. All the time.”
“Deal,” Shawn nodded absently. He was trying to stay calm, and to make sure Gus fell for it, too - even as his heart hammered away in his chest, the plan expanding, coalescing into a shape.
“Mh.” For a moment, Gus’s tone made Shawn catch his breath - made him afraid he had seen through his act after all. But then his best friend smiled, pattering back to the TV set at the center of the room. His parents and his little sister came in just then, bringing milk and cookies.
Shawn joined them, and promptly took the plate and glass offered by Mrs Guster, and settled down beside Gus in a heap of flannel pajamas and dough crumbs. He made himself ignore the tension lines around their eyes, the hesitate glances they cast at the door, at the soft footprints left by his parents when they stormed out. He made himself lean back against the couch and munch on his gingerbread Christmas tree, even if it felt like gnawing on cardboard.
When Gus slapped gently at his arm and offered his fist to bump them, Chips opening theme blaring out of the TV, Shawn’s chest tightened with a complicated emotion that felt almost like fever. Part hope, part guilt, part regret.
Trust me, Gus, he silently wished - prayed. Trust me - I’ll make everything okay.
***
By seven p.m., Shawn Spencer had figured out the last loose ends, was about to set the first phase of his strategy into motion, and was standing on the edge of the path winding amid the evergreen trees surrounding the cottage.
Gus’s precise, high voice floated towards him, counting off numbers for their hide-and-seek session. Shawn forced himself not to listen too closely.
He wasn’t going into this completely unprepared, you know. He had a backpack with him, stuffed with as many cookies and chocolate bars as he dared to pluck out of Mrs Guster’s secret stash in the pantry - wrapped in tinfoil and leaking already some caramel all over the rest of his supplies, but he wasn’t going to be picky about that - a pair of spare socks, because Dad always said a man’s best friend is a pair dry socks, and his own Dynamo-powered Scout flashlight. Okay, Gus’s Dynamo-powered Scout flashlight.
Gus’s final warning that he was done with counting and everyone was fair game echoed in the distance - and Shawn shivered, breath a white plume swirling against his scarf.
He was as ready as he will ever be. And it wasn’t like he planned to stay in the woods for ages - probably a couple hours, a night at most. His Dad was a cop, his Mom the smartest person he knew alongside Gus: they were going to figure it out pretty fast. They were going to find him pretty fast.
The plan was simple and daring, as the back of Gus’s trashy choose-your-own-adventure fantasy books always say. His parents loved him, that much he was pretty sure was true; but they loved each other, too. They just had to be reminded of that. If they were made to believe their son had gone missing, that he was out there in the forest, with wolves and bears and zebras - Shawn had a patchy understanding of mountain fauna - ready to pounce on him and eat him up, they were obviously going figure out their problems and go looking for him, as a team.
They would find him, of course; and in the process they would realize how well they work together, how the important thing was family and everything would be all right as long as they were together, and all that cheesy stuff Christmas movies were made of. Hovering in front of the steep, darkening slope of the forest stretching past the path, Shawn could almost see it, playing in technicolor behind his eyelids: the flashlights dramatically slashing through the night, his parents calling his name, faces tight and hands holding on each other, and Shawn himself sliding nimbly down the conveniently-hollow tree he had spent the night in, comfortably tucked in his parka and munching on his chocolate. It was even Christmas’s Eve: his plan was bound to work.
Gosh, he so wanted it to work. Needed it to work. He had never been a great fan of Christmas flicks before - with their criminal lack of explosions and brash international spies and robots and dinosaurs. But this year - this year he wanted to live one. So much.
With a spasm of horror, he found his throat closing at the thought of seeing his parents weep in joy and embrace under Christmas lights, inane White Christmas choruses leading the public to end credits.
Enough, Shawn. Don’t be a Gus now. If he felt bad for anything in his scheme, it was for poor dear Gus - who would surely spin himself in a frenzy of worry once he realized Shawn was not playing anymore and was nowhere to be seen. He promised himself he would make amend. Maybe even give him back his flashlight.
A ripple of laughter reached him from somewhere far on his right, followed by the shuffling of Gus chasing his sister out of her hiding place. Shawn’s hands felt suddenly ten degrees colder than before. His heart beat fast enough to thrum in his tongue.
Be smart, Shawn. Be daring.
Wrapping the image of the end credits of his own movie around himself like a second scarf, Shawn stepped off the path, and lost himself in the deep dark woods.
- End Credits
That was a mistake.
The thought thudded across Henry’s skull with growing force, pressing down like the blood roaring in his temples.
He wasn’t a hot-tempered man, made a whole career out of the steel-like clarity of his presence, but over the years anger had became something of a constant companion: a copper taste on the back of his tongue, a film coating his eyes, his bones. He felt it simmering just under the surface, all the time, like his veins had been filled with gasoline, always ready to catch fire.
He wasn’t sure who did it: who made him a gas tank begging to explode. A gnarled, ugly part of him snarled it was all Madeline’s fault; Cop Henry, with his cold eyes and his lie-detector mind, told him in no uncertain terms that the real culprit was probably him.
Henry suspected it was a combination of factors, a multitude of arsonists: he and his beautiful, brilliant wife first in line, lighting matches after matches in the center of his rage. How romantic.
That was a mistake. A, damn, mistake.
He accented each word with a step, half-stumbling and half-climbing down the path leading to the lake, boots slipping on rain-soaked mud, gulping down cold air like it were antibiotics. He could barely remember what sparked this morning’s particular fight, this particular inferno: something about the way he stashed their bags in the truck, maybe - something about Shawn. It was there that the gasoline pooled deeper, in the immense nook carved in his heart by his son’s existence; it was there Henry was more likely to catch fire. It would take a single moment of Madeline’s pink lips pursing in displeasure, that evaluating gaze speaking of failed parental tests and unresolved issues, and Henry’s vision would go white-hot around the edges - the fierce things he felt for his Shawn a physical weight in the middle of his chest, flaring high at the simple insinuation that he wasn’t trying hard enough.
And he thought coming here would do them good. And he thought being a whole week with her, every hour, every minute, would be smart.
Henry came into sight of the lake’s silvery waters, the bitter wind coming off it finally starting to cool him down. It had been hours since their fight, but he had a vision of Madeline frowning at the psychiatric naivety of his hope - those hawk-sharp eyes of hers finding him even here. He clenched his jaw. Clenched his fists.
Oh, you can be such a fool, Henry Spencer.
The lake shore was quiet: a thin strip of gray-gold sandy earth lining the water, a clutch of boulders and gnarled bushes shielding it from the worst of the wind. He sat down on one of the flatter stones, fiercely enjoying the hard angles of rock digging in his pants, the cold biting at his neck, his knuckles, his teeth. It was the secret pleasure of his fishing trips, the one he’d never confessed anyone: the harshness of nature rushing over him, the cold of predawn hours or winter - such a prized gift in sunny California - snuffing out his anger. It wouldn’t last; it never did. But for now, for now - Henry closed his eyes, and prayed for the low humming of the lake waves to soothe him, for the wind to give him a touch of its numbness.
He couldn’t stay here for long. He had to get back soon; should go back soon. The Gusters were probably well on their way to have the Eve dinner prepared and laid out, juicy ham and endless pumpkin pies steaming on the dark wood dining table of the cottage, the scent of buttered corn thick and sweet as they hoarded the kids back inside; no doubt Shawn was already harassing Madeline to know where Henry was - deducing too much and too fast in that brilliant little head of his.
Sometimes it scared Henry how much of his wife shone in their son: the diamond-sharp brilliance of some of his smirks, in the flicking of his eyes. It made Henry swell with disproportionate pride, and sometimes ache with resentment, and above all, it made Henry deadly afraid. He would sometimes find himself slipping into Shawn’s room, when he came home late and the house was quiet and silent and bathed in nothing but the ridiculous lime-green glow of Shawn’s dinosaur night light, and he would sit on the edge of his bed to run his hand through his son’s thick mop of hair, feeling the energy humming under his skin even while asleep. Wondering how you even begin to harness such a bright thing. What am I going to do with you, son?, he would wonder in his head.
What am I going to teach you, my son?
On his perch by the lake, Henry rubbed his face, cheeks already dull with cold. For now, he had found no good answer to any of those questions; and Madeline had never lost the chance to remind him how wrong she thought the ones he did find were. Both Maddie and their son had the uncanny ability to make him feel like a complete idiot; they were both made of such a strange cloth, of such airborne elements, sometimes Henry felt afraid one day he would wake up and find both of them floating away into the sky, returning to their natural sphere. The thought broke his heart like nothing else in the world.
Enough. Henry dug the heel of his hands into his eye sockets till splashes of colors fluttered behind his eyelids. It was Christmas Eve, and Shawn needed him there: he had to go back. He had to go back, and sit beside Madeline despite the knife-glares falling on him every time he lost the trail of conversation, and then haul the presents out of the truck‘s trunk so next morning the kids could wake up in a sugar-induced frenzy to thank a red-clothed, beer-belly-sporting Scandinavian dumbass for Henry’s hard work and money. The thought of it, the sheer burden of it nearly smothered Henry; nearly rekindled the gasoline in his blood, craving any new reason to catch fire and burn it all with him.
He wondered if Madeline was fighting her anger, too: if she too was bracing for the rituals of the evening, choking on her grudges, the things left unsaid, the ones they said and didn’t mean. He wondered if there was something like gasoline in her, too: a hole shaped like him somewhere in her airborne soul.
He had started to figure out the answer to that one. He still didn’t dare to put it into words, not even in his mind.
Fool. And a bit on the spineless side, too.
The blood roared so ferociously in his head it took Henry a moment to hear the shuffling of someone walking down the path. Stumbling down it, more like it: with a great deal of yelps and hard breathing and childlike, shrill screams.
Something in those screams struck Henry under his sternum, in a deeply parental spot - the timbre of them almost as familiar as the curve of his son’s ear. Gus’s voice. Gus’s scared voice.
Even as he pivoted, unfolding himself from his perch on the boulder, a prickling feeling started building in Henry: a buzzing energy, lodged somewhere in the back of his skull, in the tangle of nerves twisting around his spine - an exquisitely physical omen. He suddenly took in the darkening sky, the gathering shadows gaining ground amid the trees like enemy armies, and felt his lips peel off his teeth, the scrap of animal mind left in his human body screaming at him to gather his pack against the night.
If Henry Spencer had any inclination to believe in such psychic nonsense, he’d call it foreboding.
“Mister Spencer!” A shower of wet mud from the ledge above Henry announced Gus’s position: the kid stopped there, head swiveling frantically from left to right. In the crack between his woolly beanie and his scarf, the kid’s eyes were wide and dark as twin cups of coffee. “Mister Spencer?”
The second time, Gu’s voice caught on his name.
The prickling sensation crawled higher, clawing at Henry’s skull, at his jaw.
“I’m down here, Gus!” he yelled, waving the kid down. The boy literally jumped in his boots, gave a broken sound between a sob and a yelp, and tore off down the last curve of the path - fast enough Henry reflexively rushed forward to catch him before he could trip on his feet and break his neck.
His arms wrapped around Gus’s back. The kid’s small arms clutched at Henry’s parka, without hesitation, holding tight enough to make the synthetic fabric squeak under the pressure. Henry could feel the shivers rattling Gus’s body, ricocheting through their touching bodies.
Gus was still screaming - prattling on about something, a jumbled avalanche of words Henry couldn’t make out of nothing but the words woods and late and game. He reined in his instinct, swallowing down the mounting pressure in his teeth. Instead, he crouched in front of the kid: holding him at arm’s length, squeezing gently to help ground him.
“Gus,” he said, in his detective voice, in the voice cops were trained to use as bodies got zipped up in their bags and the world burned to ashes around them. “I’m here, okay? It’s all right. Everything is all right. Tell me what’s going on.”
That name, the one he didn’t want to say now, the one he had to.
“Where is Shawn?”
The visible sliver of Gus’s face turned ashen; he shut up, lips clasped together suddenly enough it looked painful. Henry could almost feel the kid’s pulse echo off his skin, quick like a frightened bird’s.
Oh God, no. Oh no no no please-
Gus sniffed loudly. “It-it’s Shawn, Mister Spencer,” he croaked out. “It, it can be he’s pulling my leg, you know - he would do it, really. It’s, it’s probably just that, I swear. But I looked for him everywhere and it’s late and I was growing scared-“
“Gus.” Henry made violence to every cell in his body, every tightening nerve snaking under his skin, to keep from shouting. “Where is Shawn?”
“He’s probably just pulling my leg. Yeah, that’s it. it’s, It’s just a trick, right?”
“Gus.”
Henry’s words stayed low and steady, but something horrible must have shown on his face - a shudder of pain, a flash of teeth - because under his stare, Gus broke. Split in a thin line from head to toe, face shattering into tears and snot.
“I - I don’t know, Mister Spencer,” the kid sobbed. Henry had expected those words - but they still slammed into him like a sledgehammer to the jaw. Pulverizing bones. “We were playing hide and seek, out in the woods, just down the path, I swear, - and then I was looking for him and he was nowhere and I called for him, me and Joy, we called for him a lot, but -“
Gus shook his head. Henry felt the shivers under his fingertips grow in intensity, and couldn’t tell if it was him or the kid.
“I can’t find him,” Gus whispered. “I can’t find Shawn, Mister Spencer. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
For a moment, Henry felt like the only thing he had the strength to do was sit back on the stretch of gray sand and crumple there - every ounce of Henry Spencer’s toughness scooped out of him. He was powdered bones, crushed behind recognition. He was falling.
Shawn. My Shawn. He thought of his nights spent sitting on Shawn’s bed, watching him sleep. No. No no no.
Foolish, foolish man.
Gus’s sobs started him back into motion - wide red-rimmed eyes searching his face.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Mister Spencer.”
Henry had thought his own face must have shown teeth and snarling lips - must have been pretty horrible, pretty shocking. It still felt like nothing beside the sight of conscientious a ten-year-old boy in tears, asking for forgiveness for losing his best friend.
Henry made himself take a breath, and a second, till his legs stopped feeling like they were made of wet cardboard. He made himself climb back to his feet, holding up the kid all the while - brushing at his wet cheeks in the process, as if wiping away that guilt nonsense off his face.
Breathe, Spencer. He’s right - Shawn plays games. Shawn loves pranks. It could all be a ruse. It could all be a false alarm. We will find him. He will be okay.
“I know you’re sorry, Gus,” Henry said, because it was true. “I know. Did you already tell the others? Your parents?”
The kid shook his head, wet eyes glistening in the dark. “No. Joy is waiting at the cottage. I - I thought we needed to tell you first.”
Henry nodded tightly. He looked up - found the cottage lights bright and burning, flooding the night in butter yellow. Carols crackled into the night, coughed out by the decrepit stereo system Bill Guster’s had insisted to bring over.
He thought of what the Gusters would do when they saw their clever son half-faint with tears, of the panic and the fear that he would have to quench and harness in a couple minutes, of the things he needed and the ones he could find - of Madeline’s eyes when he told her their son may be lost and he didn’t prevent it.
He tried hard, so hard not to think of red-and-blue lights flashing off the cottage’s windows, of how yellow and bright a crime scene lights could be.
He could endure the panic. He could endure Madeline. But that, God, that-
As he started walking and clasped Gus’s shoulder, gently nudging him back up the incline, Henry prayed the kid wouldn’t feel how hard his hand was shaking.
***
Night had never been so dark, back at home.
Shawn knew it was a stupid thing to think, but he couldn’t help himself. As he pushed through the scaly trunks of the fir trees, hopping over roots and muddy animal dens and tangles of thorny bushes getting snagged on his jeans, sometimes he would look up and feel a swelling, strange sort of cold fill his chest, like a vertigo.
The night sky at home was a comfortable, domestic thing - a smattering of stars like the sprinkles on a doughnut, safely enclosed between the shimmering line of the sea on one side and the orange haze of city and pollution on the other: a Shawn-sized sky, which curved sensibly over his and Gus’s heads as they biked their way home, and disappeared behind the red roofs of their neighborhood. Here, in the forest, there were so many stars, glittering like silver eyes, drawing odd shadows across the ground. Shawn’s hands too looked weird under that light: smothered in gray, shaking harder as the temperature dropped.
And he was alone. That was something that clever, wild part of him hadn’t considered in sketching out his plan: how being alone made time stretch and spread, and how half an hour could turn into several centuries - and how impossibly dumb he had been for not snatching up Gus’s rubber wristwatch alongside his flashlight.
Have faith, Shawn. Said flashlight bathed the underbrush in its fuzzy light, strapped to the side pocket of his backpack, bouncing in time with his stride. You just have to hang on a little longer. You kept the path to your left; made sure to break enough branches and stuff on your way down so they can follow the trail. You’ll be fine.
Shawn wanted to believe that, he really wanted. But the sky was so deep and so huge, arching over him like a giant wave ready to fall, and he could barely feel his feet.
He trudged forward. He felt his foot slip on a smear of fresh mud - something shuffling and hissing somewhere near his right calf.
He tucked his hands under his armpits. Had to clasp his lips tight not to let his teeth chatter.
Slowly, gradually, very discreetly, Shawn was starting to approach the notion he may have made a mistake.
I told you, said the nagging voice lodged into his head, the one which sounded like a monstrous mix of Gus’s and Dad’s and virtually never stopped turning down his genius plans.
Oh, shut up, he told the voice.
A howl echoed in the distance, loud and piercing and full of teeth, and Shawn startled so hard he was nearly sent tumbling down the decline. His sneakers squeaked on the muck, his body lost balance. He had to blindly grab at the large trunk of the fir tree on his side to stop his fall.
Shawn stood there for a moment, gulping down air, pressing a hand against the spot on his chest his palpitating heart was trying to hammer its way through. He wondered if Californian forests were home to many vampires, and if all the horror Blockbuster flicks were right about vampires being able to hear the heartbeats of their victims from miles away.
He really, really hoped they didn’t, and that forests in the country were as vampire-free as his Dad kept telling him. He felt he had enough on his hands without adding that, too.
Shawn mentally slapped himself. He wouldn’t think of Dad, or any Dad-related matters. It was a terrible idea: he could already feel that familiar closing up of his throat, a vague prickling at the back of his eyes.
He would not cry. He would not do anything as dumb as crying.
Slowly, carefully, Shawn pushed himself back on his feet, making sure to feel solid ground under the soles of his shoes before letting go of the tree. The bark had scraped his palm raw - little pinpricks of blood swelling in the grayness. He brushed it down his parka, ignoring the twinge of pain, and rubbed his eyes dry too, for good measure.
It was clear that no matter how shockingly cool he thought Harrison Ford was in his whip-cracking, jungle-trudging Indiana Jones persona, Shawn himself wasn’t exactly made for hardcore hiking. No problem; really, no problem at all. It just meant it was time to find a good sturdy tree, climb on it, and wait for his parents to come rushing to the rescue.
He clutched at his vision of their happy end, crackling with old-timey voices and tasteful movie fade-outs, waiting for its heat to seep into his fingers and his chest. Then, he set out to survey his surroundings.
He snatched the torch off its strap, letting its beam roll across the ground in wide arcs. It didn’t show him anything Shawn hadn’t been able to see with his regular eyes: trails of muddy ridges from when the last downpour made gravel and debris tumble downhill, more of those treacherous roots bulging out of the ground; a big, metal-green beetle moving through the leaf mulch, its shell shining like a jewel under the flashlight.
Shawn’s gaze hesitated a moment on the brown moss hugging one side of the trees, a memory of something Gus once said about moss on trees and directions sloshing around his mind. But he couldn’t remember if the moss meant South, or North, or if Shawn had simply stopped paying attention before his friend could finish his explanation.
Well, at least there were no vampires in sight.
As in on cue, another howl tore through the dark - absolutely inhuman. Shawn’s heart skipped a beat under his ribs; his blood thundered so hard in his temples his vision swam with red.
He would not cry. He would not cry.
Shawn clasped both his hands around the flashlight, both to stop their trembling as to steady the cone of light, and made himself do a second sweep - longer this time. He called up every ounce of the bright power in him, that focus Mom said was the best thing he got from her.
The world is really just a bunch of dots, love: you just have to connect them. And you’ll be better at it than anyone else.
Shawn bit his bottom lip, hard enough to ground himself, and lost himself in that space in his head where everything was interesting and nothing really that hard to understand, and looked at the line of trees jumping into life in the flashlight’s halo.
There. Shawn’s eyes snagged on the form of a large fir tree, wider and stouter than the rest - its dirty-red trunk snapped in two, the fallen half lying at an awkward angle against the ground. The uneven edges of the trunk halves still reached for the sky, charred black by lightning. The stump’s inner pulp had caved in, a clump of ferns rolling out of it like a giant green tongue.
Must have happened during a storm, Shawn thought, eyeing the smudges of soot, the splintered wood. It had snapped the tree in half even if it didn’t catch fire.
And incidentally, it also provided Shawn Spencer with a possible comfy seat to kill time and eat his chocolate before getting heroically saved.
The stump did look soft enough - the moss lush and green, fallen chunks of the trunk spearing the ground around it like a makeshift fortress.
For the record, Shawn knew the universe hadn’t sent a lightning with the specific goal to make him comfortable; he wasn’t that self-absorbed.
It didn’t prevent his lips from pulling back in a wide grin, cheeks hurting from cold and relief and sheer muscle tension, as he started running down the wide curving slope separating him from the fallen tree. Shawn’s feet, mud-caked and tired as they were, flew through their steps, the flashlight bobbing enthusiastically in his hand as he stretched his arms for balance.
I knew it. I knew I could do it.
He had a vision burning in his head, again, and this time he gladly let him come, let it fill him up like helium with a balloon. His parents holding hands as they crested the slope and saw him, Gus right behind them. The sobs of joy. The glory. Their hugs, crushing him to their chest, as if they had no intention to ever let him go again.
And, oh, he would let them do it. He would let Mom comb his hair and button him up in those dreadful checkered shirts she was so fond of; he would let Dad check his homework after dinner and prattle on and on about justice and law-abiding citizens and all that dumb stuff that seemed to get in the way of anything fun; he would let them do whatever they wanted, be as awful and embarrassing as they could be, if they just came for him tonight.
If they just came together.
Shawn hopped over a gnarled root, taking the curve in one seamless motion. He pounced towards the tree, jumping in the puddle of fir needles scattered on the ground, brown and thick enough his sneakers were sinking into it.
Something deep under his feet cracked, a subtle rustling of falling debris.
Eyes pinned to the tree stump, Shawn didn’t hear it.
He took another step, gulping down air. Then lost patience, and took off in a run.
Another crack, louder this time. Something wrong with the ground under his feet.
Oh, you would see, Gus-coscience. You would see, they were going to save him, and everything-
A snapping sound. Some sudden instinct made his spine lock, his body freeze. He flicked his gaze to the tree, to the uneven sea of fir needles he was standing on. The wrongness of it.
Shawn knew enough about woods to be pretty sure leaves are supposed to fall on solid ground - and to stay there, too. But he suddenly remembered the time they went North to visit Uncle Jack at his newest job in a logging company, in Canada, and the Saturday Uncle Jack and Dad brought him to fish at the little lake two hundred feet below his cottage, walking on water frozen so thickly you could stand on it.
He had the same sensation now - the same clicks of breaking things, the same uneasiness. As if there was no solid ground at all. As if there was no earth under him, but just, just-
Shawn heard the second snap, and knew, knew in his stiff spine, in the cold pouring into his chest, that that was the final one. He felt his heart stop. Sucked in a breath.
As if there was nothing but a hole.
Suddenly, before he could even think of taking another step, the carpet of fir needles collapsed under his weight.
The world exploded, shattered into snapshots: the feeling of gravity pulling at him, stomach pushed against the back of his ribcage; a flash of night sky spiraling before him; his hands grasping for the edges of the hole; scraped nails; a scream lodged in his throat.
Then, Shawn was falling. Pitch black. Air slapping at his skin. He still had no time to scream, not even time to be properly scared, before the ground hit him from behind, slamming into his back, and a shocking cracking sound rang out from somewhere in his right leg.
Shawn had never had a broken bone before: but he had imagined it many times, in the complicated fantasies he wove around himself before sleeping, where he was usually a glamorous international spy or a gifted treasure hunter or a bit of both. He had always presumed it would sound like when you break a piece of chalk, or a sugar cane, only louder.
He had been wrong. The sound Shawn heard was unlike anything he had ever heard, and it was wet and layered, a crushing of moist things, of messy things that were never supposed to crack like that. It filled the hole like a wave of heat, the shard of sky hanging overhead swimming with it, and Shawn felt the vibration ripple up his leg and his hip and his bones, ricocheting through his body, through every single cell.
The pain rolling on the tail of that vibration caught him so off guard he forgot to breathe. It blinded him, and for the time of a heartbeat, Shawn felt like he was shrinking inside himself: only vaguely aware of the pressure of his backpack against his vertebrae, still crushed between him and the ground, of the showers of debris and mulch dislodged by his fall, of the flashlight knocked off his hand, broken on impact, of anything but the fire bullet burning in his leg.
Shawn’s world plunged into dark, and he realized he had closed his eyes. He forced himself to breathe, breathe through the pain, through the fear.
It did him very little good. It didn’t change a thing. It hurt, it hurt so much, and he was shaking so hard there was no way on earth he was going to move anytime soon.
Oh, he wanted Dad. The longing speared him like a knife, beating in time with the pulsing in his leg, the hammer of his blood. He wanted Dad and he had been so stupid and he was so sorry, so angry, so-
So scared.
Shawn heard a little sob, a mewing sort of noise, like a frightened kitten. It took him a moment to realize it was him.
Sucking in another mouthful of air, Shawn cracked his eyes open. The edges of the hole sharpened into view, and beyond them the sky, with those stars all glittering and cold. Breathing hurt, something stabbing at his left side every time he forced down air: and the place stank, the muck prickling his nose, soaking up his hair. His scarf, his awesome red scarf, was ruined: his favorite jeans, too, and his sneakers, with their strips of metal-blue plastic on the side, so pure white and so new and so rubber-smelling when Dad finally let him buy them for his birthday. He and Gus had spent a whole evening sniffing at them, that gummy scent telling stories of Olympic champions and futuristic cities full of latex-wearing people.
And now Gus was far, far away, probably out of his mind with worry, running back to their cottage with the Christmas lights strung at the windows and Mrs Guster’s chocolate cake - and he was here. Alone.
Shawn shivered, and it wasn’t the cold this time. He closed his hands over a chunk of fir needles, gray edging in his vision, his plan lying around him, as shattered as his flashlight. Everything hurt. Something moist pushed at the corner of his eyes.
I would not cry. I would not -
***
Henry Spencer’s foot caught in the hidden noose of a mud-covered root for the fourth time in an hour. For the fourth time, he unleashed a ferocious streak of curses, some muttered into the folds of his scarf and the foulest ones screamed in the safety of his head, and maneuvered his shoe until he could work it free. They had scarcely left the well-lit, spacious hiking path, but his sneakers - his coveted, denim-blue Chucks - were already shrouded in mud and decaying matter, soaked through with ice-cold moisture, and tinged deep brown with mulch: exquisitely beyond any hope of repair.
He didn’t have a single damn to give.
The two other members of their little searching party were bound to have heard him. He still didn’t turn. Madeline’s attention was already honed in on him as it was, digging into his shoulder blades. If he gave it too much attention, he would be done for good.
There - a footprint. Lightly smeared edges, already hardened with night brine.
“He’s gone this way,” he called over his shoulder, righting himself. He stopped looking at the small footprint as soon as he could. Coward, coward. “C’mon.”
Muffled groans answered him. He sympathized. The slope they had found the trail of footprints on was steep, uneven with mud and fir needles: roots bulged out to snag on clothes, bark rubbed raw every inch of skin left exposed. They were three healthy adults, and they were already concentrating not to gasp on their next breath. God only knew how punishing it could be on the physique of a kid.
His kid.
Considering what Gus told him, Shawn had been there for approximately one hour and half already: which may not sound particularly impressive to the profane, but was an awful long time for a detective - especially with a mountain environment which still counted wolves and snakes lurking in the underbrush, and the cold thick in the air, and the fact a kid was a completely unpredictable creature when scared. An awful lot of things could happen in less than two hours. Animals, accidents - and Henry had enemies, too, a neat little book of people who would stop before very few things just for the pleasure of making him bleed. Maybe it was too late. Maybe they wouldn’t get there in time. Maybe, maybe.
Henry’s thought crashed into a steel-solid wall - and lurched to a stop. He tried again, but there was no way to move his hypotheses past that point.
A pain like no other swelled through him till he gave up on pushing down the wall. It felt like his mind wasn’t even able to finish that sentence: as if he lacked the words, lacked the very genes, for thinking such a thing all the way through. They were going to find Shawn. They were going to get him back. There was simply no other way to imagine the end of this night.
Henry had always taken pride in his level-headness, in the unyielding clarity he insisted on looking at the world with; more than once, he had sneered at the pity-warm and occasionally inane reassurance his colleagues poured over victims and relatives, instead of doing their work and chasing cold facts. Now he wondered if there was a hint of ruthlessness in all that clarity, beside the steadiness; if Detective Spencer, who gloated at the thought of knowing so much more than anyone else, really didn’t know anything at all.
Because the deep, ugly truth was, if a police agent like Henry Spencer was to walk up to him right now and tell him how flimsy the chances of a ten-year-old surviving on his own in the woods in December were, he would deck him in the face without a moment of hesitation.
Oh no - he shouldn’t go there, not now. If he started going down that particular path right now, he would shatter like he nearly did back on the lake shore with Gus. He could feel the promise of it in his skin, in the slight trembling of his hands.
One more step.
“You sure…. We are going… the right way, Henry?” William Guster wheezed out, from some point behind his back. Henry could hear the other man’s labored breathing - exhaustion and sweat pouring off him in waves like heat. He knew he was pushing them at a punishing pace, but the idea of slowing down felt unfathomable, as physically impossible as time travel or moving at the speed of light. He would have gone alone, tearing right through the woods as soon as he ushered Gus and his sister back in the safety of the cottage’s yellow lights, cleaving the whole damn mountain in two till it gave his son back, but the others had reminded him three flashlights and three pair of eyes were better than one, no matter how trained they could be.
Now, moving through the ferns and the muck, Henry opened his mouth to answer his friend.
Yes. No. It has to be the right one.
Another voice beat him to it. Cutting through the air like a blade pressed against his throat.
“It is the right way,” she said. “We’re following the footprints. They match Shawn’s shoes.”
Madeline was barely a step behind him and William, trudging forward with grim diligence. She moved like cold water down the slope, her pale hair flashing against the dark like a dove’s wing. She had been the one to suggest Henry could use a couple more pairs of eyes in the woods; hers, especially.
She had been the one to find the tracks first, too - her face swiveling hard on her neck to peer at a slightly larger smear of muck, the mussed ridges of a footprint half-covered in needles and darkness. That clicking, perpetually-whirring mind of hers sliding pieces into place.
The same clicking mind of his impossible, gifted son.
That dark feeling - the knot of fear and nameless rage and vertigo that had locked on the back on his spine back at the lake - gave a sharp twinge. It nearly made Henry bare his teeth again, snarling at the night which dared to whisk away his son - nearly made him grow fur and claws and sensitive animal nostrils, to better prowl the mountain sides.
Men going feral with protectiveness: he had made fun of that too, once.
William muttered something non-committal in response, probably trying to both save his breath and not walk into the virtual minefield that was the space between Henry and his wife. That space felt charged, as it always did: but this time it felt oily with chlorine, too, as ready to catch fire as the gasoline in his blood. If they struck that match now, though, there would be no stopping it: the whole world would go up in flames, them crumbling to a pile of ashes at the center of their inferno.
But they had no intention to explode - not now, not yet. Somewhere between the moment Henry gave her the news and the second the cottage door clicked closed behind them, they had struck a deal, an armistice of sort: one which involved Madeline saying nothing more than what was strictly necessary, and Henry never coming too close to her, never looking directly at her face.
And it was working. was an efficient, profoundly dysfunctional deal, like most things with the two of them. Henry had a sudden vision of how they must look like from the outside: a woman and a man, somewhere around middle age, pale and tightly-coiled, fighting down the darkened decline of the forest, unrelenting as snowplows.
He didn’t know if the image comforted him or not - if Madeline’s presence at his side, as chilling and hard-shelled at it was, felt like a good thing or a bad one. But he knew one of the reasons she had wanted to come, beside lending him her sight, was that waiting the night out at the cottage with Bunny and the kids, nothing to do but uxorially wriggling her hands and breathing inthe hot smell of burnt-cake making the windows fog over, would have been pure torture for her. He knew he still knew her well enough to read in the line of her shoulders, if nothing else.
Good and bad. Cold and hot. It had always been so hard telling them apart, with her.
Everything had always been so hard.
After Madeline pointed it out, Henry had been able follow Shawn’s trail, too: the broken ferns at child height, the imprints of little feet in the mud. He tracked them hungrily, sliding the flashlight along like a giant yellow eye, one after the other. He could almost see Shawn, too, standing there by his side, skipping on the small hollows left by his feet like in a creepy version of hopscotch: freckles shining all over his pixie face. He worried so much about those freckles, but Henry had told him he had nothing to worry about: Spencers all came into this world sprinkled like sesame bread loaves, but always grew out of it during their teens.
His detective self shrugged cruelly.
If he got to see his teens.
Henry clenched his teeth together to keep from growling.
Instead, he called out Shawn’s name. The woods echoed hollowly with it; the sky over their head star-clad and desert, the chopper the deputy promised on the phone still nowhere in sight.
He called his son’s name again. Madeline followed suit, their voices chasing each other, never mingling.
One beat, two, three. Nothing.
Henry gripped the flashlight hard enough the black plastic squeaked.
“What did the cops say?” gasped William - a stumbling shadow on Henry’s free side, the one not pressed to Madeline’s razor-edged cold. Billy bent forward, the wool beanie Minnie forced on his head bouncing with each lungful of air as he clasped at his knees.
Henry felt like he was talking through concrete. Concrete words, exquisitely useless in the woods. “They said they’re sending a helicopter as soon as possible - that they’re willing to make an exception, even if he’s been gone for less than two hours, but they don’t know how much it will take.” The young officer Henry had barked his requests to on the phone had been strangely kind, warm with something like real regret as he told him they would do their best and he couldn’t promise anything more. Henry had still pushed down the urge to slam down the receiver and throw the whole damn thing against the Christmas tree, but he understood: he knew people’ uncanny capacity to come up with Christmas Eve ways to kill themselves, and the absolute hell of spending the night trying to prevent them from doing so.
God. Christmas Eve. I lost my son on Christmas Eve. A flash of newspaper titles fluttered in Henry’s head, a ghost of tomorrow news, and his stomach lurched hard enough to make him gag.
What kind of degenerate father loses his son on Christmas Eve?
“Oh.” William was talking again - and Henry found himself somersaulting back into his body, into his muddy soaked-through Chucks. “Oh. I… I’m sure they’ll do their best, Henry. Better yet, I’m sure we’ll find him before they get here, and you’ll kick Shawn’s butt to the moon and back for getting us worried sick. You’ll see.”
Bill’s voice sounded dangerously gentle, so affectionate it sent a twinge of awkwardness creep up Henry’s spine. Still, the other man didn’t reach out to pat his shoulder, and Henry was grateful for that. He felt as if a simple touch would make him crumple down, like he was made of paper-mâché.
He answered something, then; later, Henry would have no idea what that could have possibly be. But he made his throat muscles work, and even lifted the edges of his lips in some approximation of a smile. Madeline’s presence was a steady pressure on his side, too, too far to bring comfort, close enough he could feel it, and there was a measure of reassurance in that, too. She had never felt quite so far away, this brilliant wife of his; she had not felt so close, so in tune with him, in years, either.
“Let’s go,” she said. She didn’t reach for his hand. He didn’t really want her to.
“Yes,” he nodded, and made his feet climb down and down into the darkness, the torch speckling their steps in light.
***
There were lights, dancing above Shawn.
He wasn’t sure what they could be: stars blurred by his hazy eyes, passing airplanes, UFOs. Vampires, maybe. He had been slipping in and out of consciousness for some time, now, and the boundaries between the two were growing fuzzy - like he were a twitching old-timey TV, every channel frizzling with statics. His mind felt full of statics, too.
His body shook - a long, teeth-rattling kind of shiver, rippling all the way from the tip of his head to the toes of his feet. The shivers had been coming less and less often since he fell in the hole, and he distantly remembered that wasn’t supposed to be a good thing despite what basic common sense may say about it.
The shudder had dislodged his leg from its little nest of leaf muck, too, and the fact the pain of it was dull enough not to make him cry out was probably less than good, too.
Or at least, so his Gus-conscience insisted to say. Shawn was still debating the matter. It felt so nice not being in blinding pain anymore, and it felt almost nice this floating, staticky calm he had plunged into - the cold so far, far away under him.
Sure, he was still thirsty - and he could barely perceive the pressure when he passed his tongue over his lips, cracked over with chilled air. Sure, breathing was growing kinda hard, and things felt blurred around the edges, shifting like the spinning squares and diamond shapes of Gus’s kaleidoscope: the rough circle of the hole over him completely unreachable, light-years from his face and his chattering teeth and his broken leg. The thought of climbing out of it was as laughable as plucking stars off the sky with a jet-pack rig strapped to his back.
Shawn wasn’t an idiot: he knew the sky wasn’t actually moving away from him, and that it wasn't because of air he couldn’t breathe well, and that the problem was in Shawn and it was pretty really bad one - but he just couldn’t do anything about it. He coughed, tongue stiff like a sponge, and cracked his eyes open to stare at the dancing lights.
He should scream, probably. Do any of the clever and useful things he and Gus learned at the Scout meeting, even if it was just one Scout meeting and he ended up banned from the camp after accidentally setting fire to his instructor’s hair. (The hair was bright pink and gel-sculpted into spikes, so that it looked like the guy’s head was being permanently gnawed upon by a fuzzy strawberry-colored monster. Really, fire had been an improvement.)
After that particular stunt, as he drove both him and Gus - who, had always, had been banned by close association with Shawn - back home, Henry had been so angry he turned a bright purple, the color clashing horribly with the blue collar of his uniform.
Dad. Shawn blinked, hard, and felt another cough crawl out of his throat. His eyes burned. Dad’s evoked presence was a strong enough thing it pierced through the staticky numbness, sharper than the pain, the cold, the fear.
Unconsciousness tugged at him. Blood was roaring again in his ears - but Shawn forced his stiff fingers to dig into the mulch, the frozen earth underneath, anchoring him to the here and now. Dad wouldn’t want him to let go that easily.
Oh, he would be so mad when they found him.
If. If they found him.
The lights were swirling now, flickering - their glow piercing like a headache. He scrunched his eyes closed by instinct. A new shiver tore through him, but weaker than the last one. Afterimages pulsed behind Shawn’s eyelids, and they took on the shape of his dream - of his Mom’s golden hair falling on his cheek as she bent over him, his Dad’s smell wrapping him, their voices breaking as they told him they were not going to let go of him ever again. That everything would be just fine.
Oh, he didn’t mean for things to go like this. He had been so stupid. He was so tired. So, so tired.
Keeping his thoughts together was becoming so hard. Staying awake felt tricky, too. He had really hoped his plan would work out - that no one would be sad or hurt or scared, and that he would save his family and prove how handsome and glamorous and unstoppable he was at the same time. He had hoped, with every inch of his body, with every single cell in his skin and his bones and his heart. He had thought it would mean something.
Mom, Gus, Shawn thought: the smiling faces of his parents beckoning from the dark, perfect and flawlessly warm as only dream things can be. Dad. Whatever happens - I’m sorry.
He coughed again - tasted a hint of copper in it. For a moment, a bright light flashed through his eyelids, somewhere over the edge of the hole - buttery yellow and not alien-ish at all. But Shawn was too tired to open his eyes.
I’m sorry.
He stopped fighting, and started falling, falling and falling - the last scraps of pain receding, the cold melting away like popsicles in summer.
Swirling Christmas-movie end credits music echoed in his head.
The end.
Blackness.
***
Twenty minutes since the last stop.
Night was pressing down hard on them - air sharper here in the mountains, stars bigger, gnawing wide enough to swallow them and the fir trees whole. Leaf mulch crunched wetly under their feet, filled nostrils. William was wheezing again, stumbling down the makeshift trail of Shawn’s footprints, clutching at his side like he’d just been mortally shot by middle age. Madeline rustled at his side, clouds of breath in front of her lips, growing paler by the minute, bleeding colors.
And Henry -
Henry honestly didn’t know how he felt. He could tick off physical symptoms, sure. There was a steady trickle of sweat rolling down the line of his spine, now, soaking up the plaid shirts under his parka, leaving stains under the armpits. His mud-buried Chucks had finally betrayed him, and he’d probably twisted his ankle, and now every slightly careless step sent electrical jolts of pained awareness up his leg. His steel wristwatch ticked away against his skin, face glowing a dully fluorescent green. But his body felt so far, far away, so inconsistent in the shadows and the cold, Henry Spencer couldn’t even tell if he was tired. He felt as if he could keep walking for the whole night, and the day after that, until his knees would physically gave out under him and his body would run out of nutrients to process.
Then he would resort to crawling, probably.
Yep, crawling sounds good. Not fast, but effective.
A rustle of leaves and ferns snatched Henry out of the numbness. He glimpsed a flash of white on his right, a flurry of blond hair.
He turned in time to stop Madeline’s fall - arms closing expertly around her waist, her little “oh!” lost in the folds of his coat.
“Careful, Maddie,” Henry whispered, the words falling automatically out of him before he could figure out how bad of an idea they were. She tilted her head up, finding his gaze, eyes large and blue and almost soft.
“Thanks, Henry,” she said, and for a moment they stood there, locked into each other’s arms. For a moment, it was so like the old times Henry’s bones went brittle with nostalgia.
Then she was pulling back: head changing its tilt, the angle of her gaze turning sharp enough to kill. Henry felt it slide between his ribs like a scalpel.
“Your cop buddies are not coming, are they?”
He knew her so painfully well he could fill all the blanks in her sentence. Your cop buddies - undisciplined, frightfully shorts-sighted, almost too alienated by their machismo to be of any use. It was the kindle of a good thirty percent of their fights.
So they were back at it. Henry let his hands fall off her hips, and made himself brace for it. It was fine; it was to be expected. Their moment couldn’t have lasted anyway.
He waited for the familiar surge of acidic anger, for the gasoline to catch fire and begging him to burn both of them alive, but strangely, it didn’t come. Shawn was out there, alone, in the deep darkness of a world he knows not nearly enough of; but Henry wasn’t alone. He had Madeline’s keen eyes, her keener mind. It was something. It was enough to make him feel more grateful than angry.
He shook his head. “I don’t know, Mad; no sign of it for now. But it’s not been that long; we’re not even into danger zone, I promise.”
There must have been something in his voice, some inkling of that unexpected peace - because Madeline’s shoulders started dropping, too. The coiled tension of the coming fight rushing out of her system.
“Okay, Hotshot,” she said again, voice so low and so quiet and so strained he had to bent toward her to hear it. “I believe you.”
Hotshot. It had been years since she called him that stupid nickname. She was his again, then, for a heartbeat, a sliver of a microsecond, the laughing blond girl who outwitted him in every way and smelled like summer and magnolia flowers.
When she slid out of his embrace, though, he didn’t try to stop her.
“We need to stop.” William lurched to the small bent of the decline he and Madeline had stopped by, lungs whistling, grabbing at close branches and trees hard enough to send bark chips fly around in his wake.
Poor Bill’s face was a mask of sweat; lips cracked under the hem of the scarf. He let himself slump back, sitting on the fern-smeared boulder by a tangle of fir trees. A spider the size of Henry’s thumb scuttled away from under William’s right knee. He didn’t seem to mind. “Okay, I need to stop. But we should - regroup a bit too, guys. Figure out a plan.” He grimaced under his protective layers, expression full of chagrin and sympathy. “Or you can go on without me, and I’ll either catch up with you later or let the woodland fauna eat me. Whatever comes first.”
Henry knew he was trying to crack a joke to ease the tension, and he would have liked to manage a smile in return; he really would. But he suddenly found he couldn’t. Whatever just passed between them, Madeline was tensing again, a white-hot vibration at his side. It wasn’t like William’s suggestion was that stupid, either. But the idea of organizing, of talking about what was going on, of stopping, made Henry feel completely marooned: about to float out in hundreds of little pieces, and never be whole again.
Henry wanted to go on, to run, to crawl.
But how do you explain this? How do you explain this to someone who never lost his child?
“I… All right, Bill.” God, was that his voice? “I think we can stop for a min -”
“No.”
It was Maddie. Henry turned, enough to see her staring at something behind his back, beyond the shadows.
“Maddie, I know it sucks, I do, but -“
“Henry,” she hissed back. “Shut up and look.”
Henry could get angry. The Henry of this morning, of this very afternoon would have gone angry and berserk and refuse to listen to a single world coming out of her lips.
Instead, this Henry rolled his shoulders in their sockets, crackled his knuckles, and obeyed.
He followed Madeline’s gaze, snagged on the curving slope of trees and leaf muck stretching in front of them. He slashed the flashlight forward, and glimpsed ferns, an impression of more footprints; a larger tree, snapped in half by lightning, about three hundred feet below them. And a spot of deeper darkness before the stump, round-shaped, like an empty eye socket blinking in the mulch.
“You know anything about this place, Bill?” he asked after a couple seconds. “History, game trails, caves - anything?”
Anything that could have snatched my kid like a damned fairy-tale wolf. Anywhere he may be right now, freezing and hurting and waiting.
Oh, don’t go there, Henry.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched William’s honest face scrunch up in thought - lift the hem of the beanie to scratch at the thinning hair underneath. Then Bill shook his head, grimly. “Nothing I can think of, Henry. I mean, yeah, people hunt around here pretty much all year long - but there would be no one out here now, of course. I’m sorry.”
There - something. A clue. Henry’s breath caught in his lungs, condensing into cold. He felt himself turn into metal, charge up.
Henry knew a lot less about hunting than his own old man would have liked, but this much he knew: hunting traps are large, and cunning, and dangerous business, and they look almost exactly like the traps crafted by the leather-covered, hippie-gone-rogue-looking primitive people who first figured out how to wipe out entire ecosystems to serve their needs ten thousands years ago - and who now rummaged around bone detritus on Shawn’s history book against backgrounds of erupting volcanoes and prancing mammoths. Aka, traps look like wooden cages, ready to drop from the trees at the slightest pressure of the unfortunate beast going for an easy morsel.
Or more simply - Henry’s mind provided, as his heart picked up speed, the click in his head almost audible - more simply, they look holes dug in the ground, and covered in leaves. The difference between them and the underbrush almost imperceptible even to human eye.
Almost.
Hunters never took into account Madeline Spencer’s eye, though.
Henry was moving, and he had no idea when he started. The thought had no words. It had no real reasoning, either - if you don’t want to call reasoning that shimmering of sudden connections, the electricity throbbing in his teeth, spurring him forward. But it was there, and Henry grabbed at it, held it close like a child, like a hope, as he hurled himself down the slope and into the darkness, heedless of his companions and the treacherous roots and the slippery muck - vision, mind, every bit of soul left to him by years of murder investigations focused on a single half-thought, a single, flimsy hunch.
Focused on the deeper shadow lying at the feet of the big fallen tree, large enough for a deer to fall in.
Large enough for a kid to fall in.
Please, Henry begged - to the cold, cold stars, to the deep silence of the forest, to his own kid and the brilliance he could bring into this world. Please.
He didn’t check if Maddie was following him.
He knew she was.
***
The first thing Shawn felt - perception slowly creeping back into his skin and his face and his hands, a something loud and near banging onto the walls of his mind like a crazed marching band cross-bred with Alien - was puzzlement.
First, the end credits had just rolled out. He’d been floating in nothingness, gray and cold and growing heavier with each soft breath. Shawn didn’t know what that darkness meant, exactly - didn’t want to think of it, really - but he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to wake up like this. And not this soon: with the night sky still spreading high and wide above him, the fir tree mulch and the rubbery corners of his backpack still digging into his back.
Second of all, he didn’t know what to make of the something. It was a shift in pressure in the world around him - a noise.
Something in it made a part of Shawn give a fierce tug, trying desperately to wriggle free of the numbness, but Shawn knew better than to let it. He kind of liked the numbness. It was cozy, if freezing, and wrapping him tight enough to squeeze out pretty much any other feeling. He half-remembered there had been pain before the numbness, his leg making a pretty ew-worthy sound, and cold, and fear, so much fear, and he really didn’t care to go back to that. Drifting away in a sea of not-feelings sounded better than that.
He half-remembered there had been fantasies, too. Waiting for his parents to come, for Mom to wrap him in her arms, for Dad to come sweeping in, screaming his head off and taking him to safety and warmth.
But that was dumb. Not-TV people don’t come sweeping in at the last possible moment. Not-TV people don’t get saved by their parents just because they want them to.
There’s no final scene to wrap things up in not-TV world, not even for Shawn Spencer.
The noise was there again, louder - bouncing off the edges of Shawn’s consciousness like marbles. That was weird: if he listened closely enough, it almost sounded like people calling. Like Dad’s voice calling.
Despite his good friend numbness, a little sob popped out of Shawn’s lips.
The dancing lights were back. They too felt different, though - sharper, brighter, like falling stars speeding through the sky just above Shawn’s face.
Flashing over him again. And again.
And the noise was growing in intensity, too. He was pretty sure stars aren’t supposed to make such a fuss while falling.
That part of him, the one which woke up with the mysterious noise, plucked him again, like a guitar. Calling to Shawn’s body, to his clever brain, to his curiosity. Don’t you want to see what the lights are about?, it seemed to ask, in the shivers down his spine, in the force his teeth were trying to start chattering - and Shawn remembered hazily that was a good sign, too.
No, he told the plucking voice, the tugging and the chattering. I don’t want to know. Leave me alone. Let me sleep.
The lights slashed across his eyes. He realized they were closed - eyelids glued shut by cold, rimmed with frozen dew. It hurt to try to move them.
Open your eyes, Shawn.
No, he barked at the voice, stubbornly. He was too scared to try again. He was too tired.
Suddenly, the lights flickered and winked off, shadows swelling in their place, and on the other side of the numbness Shawn felt a vicious stab of panic ripple through him.
But then, the noise transformed. Multiplied.
Oh, they were voices now alright - real voices, human ones. A woman calling his name, the tones and timbre so familiar it bypassed Shawn’s mind completely and went straight for his chest - to spark a longing so strong it nearly made him shatter in a million pieces, despite the numbness, despite his closed eyes.
A man’s voice, too - moving closer. Chipped at the edges, shakier than he had ever heard it. Very real.
Still, Shawn didn’t open his eyes. He had to curl his fingers into fists to keep himself from giving in to the temptation - the blood rushing back in his skin making his hands tremble and ache like they were full of prickling sand-grains.
But he didn’t want that anymore. He didn’t want to hope again, and then open his eyes, and see there was nothing waiting for him and how stupid he had been.
But you want to see, that annoying Shawn-part whispered, soft as the pulse echoing in his ears, so quiet and slow, you want to see if it’s him. And his body wanted to wake up, too. Shawn could do nothing but feel it, helpless, as sensation flooded back into his arms, crawling forward inch by inch, hurting all the way - burning its way back into his feet. Into his broken leg.
Open your eyes.
No. Not-TV people don’t get saved at the last moment. They don’t get that kind of final scene.
“… Shawn?”
That voice. So close he could hear him breathing. Dad.
“Kiddo - you, you hear me?”
Something moved across his forehead, pushing back a lock of mud-caked hair. It felt rough, and warm, and Shawn’s brain deduced it must be Dad’s hand. He heard a sob, too, not unlike the one he hadn’t been able to keep down before, but it slowly came to him this time it hadn’t come from him. It had come from Dad.
“Shawn - baby boy. Please. You hear me?”
Shawn trembled. It was a bone-rattling shiver, a nerve-wracking spasm, and it rushed from the tip of his head all the way through his heart - spreading from the touch of his father, those rough fingers pressing back his hair - and then his eyes snapped open, and Shawn gulped down a mouthful of air, and he was back.
Hovering over him, turned upside-down from where he was crouching by his head, his Dad’s face floated in the darkness, leaning in. He was a mess: face so pale it shone white, hands shaking, mud spraying the right side of his face. He looked balder than he had been in the afternoon, too.
He was Dad. He was perfect.
The annoying Shawn within him pushed so hard, it burst free.
“Pop?” The words felt wrong on Shawn’s tongue, or maybe it was just too spongy to properly form sentences. He tried to lick his lips to wet them, but that didn’t seem to be necessary, because Dad was already pulling him to him - enveloping him in his arms, pressing him to his chest fast enough Shawn felt dizzy with the sudden movement.
He could hear Dad murmur jumbled nothings into his hair, the humming strength he was hugging him with.
He had the sudden impression he was trying hard to hold back in order not to hurt him.
“It’s okay kiddo.” Dad was caressing his hair, oh-so-gently. “I got you - it’s okay. It’s okay.”
Someone was crying. Lights - flashlights - bobbed around them, but Shawn’s eyelids were starting to feel so, so heavy.
“You found me.” Shawn coughed. He sniffed at the collar of his parka. “And I stink. I stink a lot.”
His Dad’s laughter shook so bad it sounded like crying. “I don’t give a damn if you stink, kid.”
Shawn was still lucid enough to know it was highly probable Dad wasn’t supposed to say damn around him, but that was okay. These were exceptional circumstances after all. And right now he was following a blaze of gold over his father’s right shoulder. The gold coalesced into hair. The discreet crying turned into Mom’s voice.
“You found me.” Shawn’s head lolled against Dad’s shoulder; his Mom closing the distance between them, her scent almost in his nostrils, flowers and the powder girls and women put on their face. “Both of you.”
A sob rolled out of him, and another one, ricocheting down his bruised ribs.
Then Mom was there, and there was a new set of arms closing around him - pressing him into warmth and safety, into two sets of steady, strong heartbeats. Shawn was shivering harder, now; the prickling in his arms almost unbearable, blood flooding back in every inch of him.
Shawn melted in their touch. The world looked edged in fuzziness, like the fur of the bunnies Gus spent so much time with at the petting zoo, but he wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t numb, either.
“Of course we found you.” His Dad’s whisper. His Mom’s hand against his cheek, wet with tears. “We’ll always find you.”
And Shawn, even if it wasn’t exactly like in the movies, even if the relief was so big and so swelling it nearly hurt, believed them. He didn’t know how they found him, didn’t really remember why this was supposed to be a good plan, but he didn’t care. They had been badass enough to track him down. They were unstoppable. They were holding him. Nothing else mattered.
See? Shawn heard the voice again, as he let himself tumble into the folds of a warmer kind of darkness. I told you you wanted to see this.
Despite the cracked lips and the broken leg, Shawn smiled, because Annoying-Shawn was right.
- Bonus Scenes
January 1, 1987
Shawn scrunched up his nose. He scuttled back in his hospital bed until his spine pressed against the small mountain of pillows piled behind him, trying to put as much distance as possible between him and the lunch tray balanced on his legs.
Balanced on his leg, to be precise: the right one made twice its size by the plaster cast, hanging from the Total-Recall-worthy rig the docs put it in.
And from the thing sitting on his tray, to be even more precise: as to say the wobbly, orange-yellow-hued, poisonous-looking nightmare Nurse Samson added to his lunch pretending it was something as innocent as Jell-O.
Oh, Nurse Samson, Shawn thought miserably, I almost thought you were cool. One more reason never to trust a grownup without double, triple checking.
Perched on the side opposite of Shawn’s space-age-style-caged leg, Gus coked an eyebrow. He munched noisily on the forkful of meatloaf he’d stolen from Shawn’s plate. “I don’t know why you’re being so picky, Shawn. It looks fine to me.”
“It looks fine because you would eat literally anything if there’s sugar or maple syrup on it, Gus.” Shawn tapped at the little mountain of goo with one, carefully-extended finger, watching it wriggle and shudder like a convulsing alien. His grimace deepened. “I’ll pass, thanks.”
“Whatever you say.” Gus shrugged, the last bit of meatloaf vanishing in the cavernous hole of his best friend’s mouth. “More for me, I guess.”
Before Shawn could blink, the Jell-O was gone from his tray, paper plate and little spoon included, with nothing but a rush of dislodged air in its wake.
Gus was already swallowing it, munching loudly and happily on every chunk of radioactive-green dessert. He wasn’t gulping down the plate and the spoon too, but it was a close thing.
“I think the hospital has an excellent cuisine, if you ask my opinion.”
“Yes, but you’re totally disgusting, buddy. No offense.”
“At least I didn’t run out in the woods in order for my parents to find me, leaving my best friend in the dark and scared out of his mind,” Gus snapped back, although the jelly in his mouth made him sound less like a righteous child and more like an angry, cheeks-full-of-seeds hamster. “I’ve never been so worried in my life, Shawn - not even for Mrs Keats’s Math Quiz in third grade. You own me at least ten billions more desserts for that trick.”
The logic sounded flawed even to him, but Shawn still felt himself cringe - a twinge of shame weaseling its way through his chest, intertwined with something warmer, too. He nearly lost Gus for good. He nearly gave up on the chance of ever seeing his best friend slurping down entire hospital trays like a perfect pig ever again.
The thought left him with a painful knot stuck in his throat.
Silence fell, thicker than it should have been. He bumped Gus’s shoulder, a gentle shove. “I’m… sorry for that, man,” Shawn mumbled, hoping Gus would hear all the stuff he couldn’t make himself say, too. “Here, take my banana. Mom wanted me to eat it anyway.”
Gus shook his head. From the way he tilted his head and the slight shimmer he glimpsed in his eyes, Shawn had the sudden impression he didn’t want him to see his face. “I’m fine. Just… swear you’ll never do something like that ever again, deal?”
Shawn made a small smile as the door clicked open behind them. “Deal.”
“Gus,” Henry Spencer’s voice boomed from the door. Loud and authoritative and alas, fully back to normal Papa-Bear mode. “Are you finishing Shawn’s lunch for him again?”
Gus’s head swiveled back - body frozen like a terrified opossum. “No,” he whispered, jelly bits still stuck to his chin.
Dad - probably sensing a too easy prey was not worth the effort - didn’t rub it in, and resigned himself to simply roll his eyes.
“Who told you about that?” Shawn blurted out, before he could tell his stupid mouth to shut it.
First Rule of Shawn’s Troublemaker’s Bible - never admit you know what the Parent is talking about. Nurse Sampson must still be pumping pretty heavy stuff in his IVs, if his mind was still fuzzy enough to make such rookie mistakes.
“Your nurses,” Dad answered, coming to stop by the bed and sliding into the white plastic chair on its side. “You may have them all wrapped around your little finger, son, but I’m still a detective. And their patient’s dad. I have ways to know things.”
He certainly had. In the last days, Dad had really been on a protective kick - haunting the hospital corridors practically every hour the docs let him stay over for, baring teeth at anyone approaching Shawn with a needle or something vaguely more malicious-looking than a change of bandages, and generally hovering no more than six feet from him. It made Shawn feel like those brown bear cubs you see on TV, in the loving claws of one grizzled, pissed-off big bear.
It wasn’t a completely unpleasant feeling, but considering the deep uncoolness of having your Dad shadowing you like a VIP bodyguard twenty four seven, it had started getting Shawn worried about his social life once back in the world.
Shawn shared a disheartened look with Gus, silently thanking him for trying to keep up the rouse despite how bad he sucked at it. Then he let himself fall back against his pillows, sighing dramatically enough to make the paper napkin on the tray flutter with it.
He muttered something unintelligible under his breath. His father didn’t even try not to look smug.
“Gus,” he said, crossing his arms. “Would you leave us a moment? I think your Dad was looking for you. And you should get Shawn’s homework anyway.”
Shawn made a second, even more unintelligible sound. Gus blabbered his assent, sliding off the bed with a little hop - and still turning to linger by Shawn’s side, one hand grabbing at the papery hospital sheets. For a moment, pure conflict filled his face, as if he couldn’t convince his feet to move to the opposite direction. Since Shawn woke up one week before, Gus had spent here most of his afternoons - spreading on the blankets and Shawn’s slowly-healing limbs Risk boards, piles of comic new releases, and, unfortunately, even the geometry homework Mister Wilkinson was sending Shawn so he can ‘keep up with the class’. He usually stayed until the last half-minute of visiting hours - squabbling with Shawn over the TV channel they should tune the old rickety thing in the corner on, helping him to stay focused on the math problems long enough to solve them, and generally being Gus, which was always a good thing in Shawn’s book.
He told Gus there was no need to come every day, that he would be home in three days or four tops, but Gus would have none of it. From the way he sometimes stopped breathing and just stared hard at him, at the pads of gauze covering the scraps on his face and his arms under the pajama jacket, at the cast on his leg, it almost looked like he was afraid if he stopped staring, Shawn would vanish in a puff of smoke, like ghosts or genies in the bottle.
“I’ll be fine, dude.” Shawn felt he should comfort his best friend - reaching out with a fist to receive their usual bump. “I’ll call you later. You need to tell me if you already figured out how to make our sis’s hair go pink with that Kid’s First Chemistry thingy your folks got you for Christmas.”
Despite his worry, Gus’s eyes glimmered with something that could only be described as Mad Scientist Excitement. “I’m this close to a breakthrough, Shawn.” He dutifully bumped Shawn’s outstretched had. “See ya, dude.” He swirled toward Dad. “Good - goodbye, Mister Spencer.”
“Goodbye, Gus.” Dad nodded, watching Gus pick up his oversize backpack and scurry down the corridor in a symphony of rubber-squeaky sneakers. There was a slight smile hidden somewhere in the folds of his face.
It was gone when he turned back to his son.
Shawn gulped. Loudly.
Dad and Mom had showed that unsmiling face a lot since he woke up: Mom’s one accessorized with red-rimmed eyes, Dad’s with the lines in his forehead four times deeper than Shawn remembered. They had brought him his doctor-approved cup of eggnog as a belated treat for his missed Christmas, and joked around while watching TV Christmas specials in the evening, but sometimes, sometimes Shawn would feel the tug of it - those serious faces, those pained eyes.
They always brought him back to a deep trap in the forest, the overpowering smell of things dying and being born of leaf mulch. The cold in his lips as he tried to call his Dad.
“Are… are you mad, Pop?” he asked quietly. His voice sounded way thinner - smaller - than he would like.
Dad blinked, and the Henry who strolled in a couple minutes before - half-pissed, snarky, normal - seemed to resurface, fill up the space under his bones. “No, kiddo,” he said. Leaned in to thread his fingers through Shawn’s hair. “I’m not mad. Why you’re asking?”
Shawn found himself melt into his father’s touch - repressing a shiver. He tried to curl up under the sheets, made a face when his right leg throbbed in protest, and settled to grab a pillow from the layers behind his back and press it against his stomach, like an armor. It was a silly frog-shaped flannel thing Mom got him two birthdays ago, but it worked.
“’Cause you…. you’re giving me that look.” Shawn swallowed again. Averted his gaze. “Like it’s kind of hard to look at me, you know?”
There. He said it. The thing that had bounced off the walls of his brain for a week, the hardest words he’s ever said. He was glad the doc had taken him off the heart monitor, or he suspected the thing would jump all over the place like an arcade game soundtrack right now.
Henry said nothing. He simply let his fingers slide down the side of Shawn’s face, and stop on his chin - gently tilting it till he was forced to meet his Dad’s eyes.
Which were dark gray, half of the color of Shawn’s own, and very solemn, and no, not mad at all.
“Son. You have an idea,” Dad asked, “how scared I was when I was looking for you in the woods?”
Shawn recoiled. He would bet his eyes were blown wide like an owl’s.
It was probably a pretty dumb thing to realize, but the concept of Henry Spencer being scared felt preposterous - bordering on insane. The man faced criminals and goons and teenagers stuffing unpaid lipsticks into their school bags - okay, the last one wasn’t that badass, but it’s the thought that counts - all day long, and at least in the depths of his crafty, pixie-like heart, Shawn had to admit that was pretty tough of him. He couldn’t be terrified by something a kid did. Something Shawn did.
And yet, Dad’s eyes told him that was the truth. Shawn knew how to read the signs.
“I… I didn’t think it would be so bad,” Shawn said, honestly. “I just, just...”
“Just wanted to make me and your mother stop fighting so much?”
Shawn gasped - jaw suddenly unhinged by sheer bewilderment. His face must really be something, because Dad chuckled, gave a sigh, and proceeded to haul a shell-shocked Shawn onto his lap, maneuvering him so not to mistreat his leg. “You should work a bit harder on your poker face, kid.”
Shawn sputtered - body adjusting automatically to the ridges and angles of his father’s legs, to its warmth. “How do you - I mean, how -“
That face again, so tight and pale it nearly didn’t look like his Dad. “You… said things in the helicopter, on the way to the hospital.” He brushed Shawn’s hair again. “You probably don’t remember it. But I was holding you, and you had a fever, and started talking about a plan, and Christmas movies, and about us. From that, it wasn’t that hard to put the pieces together. Your old man knows you more than you would like to think.”
Much to his horror, Shawn felt a surge of heat ripple up his neck and flood his cheeks - a queasiness in his stomach that had nothing to do with his sad, sad lunch tray. He recalled how stupid and lonely he felt, lying at the bottom of that trap, nothing but the dancing lights of the stars to keep him company. He recalled Henry’s arms finally closing around him, the smell of mud and fresh sweat coating his skin, and how much he had hoped in that wacky plan of his.
“I wanted you to realize you still love each other a lot,” he finally said, feeling as each word was being extracted from his mouth with prongs. “I wanted us to be happy. For Christmas.”
Dad went very still under him. “You know that was pretty dumb of you, right? You could have hurt yourself way worse, Shawn. Holy crap, you could have even -” Henry stumbled. “I mean, if we didn’t get there in time -“
“Yes,” Shawn stepped in. “You’re right. It was… it wasn’t as genius-y a plan as I thought it was.”
“No. It really, really wasn’t.”
A sudden spark glimmered deep into Shawn, like a prickling between his shoulder blades. He sucked in a breath, grabbing at Henry’s denim jacket.
“But - but it kind of worked, didn’t it?” he pressed on, warming up to the idea as he went, holding tighter, tighter. “You and Mom found me - worked together, just like old times. You’re not mad at each other anymore, right? The plan worked!”
Dad grimaced, and it was almost worse than the solemn face. It looked like this time it wasn’t him the one hurting - but like he knew whatever he was going to say was going to hurt Shawn, and really, really didn’t want it to.
Shawn’s heart tightened.
No. Please, no.
“Shawn, it’s very complicated - “
“It’s not complicated,” Shawn cut him off. He was shivering, hard shudders making his hands tremble. “I’m smart. I can get it.”
“No, kid,” Dad said, shaking his head. “You can’t get it. Not because you’re not smart - I know you are - but because you’re, well, a kid. You have a lot years to catch up with us. Your feelings are still all sort of fresh and green, barely used. But as you grow old, feelings start to get a lot more… layered. Like coffee rings on a table.” Henry rubbed at his face, as if feeling the telltale signs of a headache. “And it gets a lot more difficult to know what’s the right thing to do.”
Shawn shook harder. This wasn’t the answer he wanted: not even close. But Dad’s voice was so gentle, so tired, he couldn’t even get angry at him. How unfair. “I know what I did was stupid,” he murmured, letting his eyes fall to his knobby knees, the pants of his Knight Rider-themed pajamas. “But, I felt I had to do something. Mom is always nervous, or in some other place to give speeches. You take more and more night shifts, and you’re so cranky.”
Henry playfully bumped him with his nose. “I’m always cranky.”
“I mean crankier than normal,” Shawn protested, but felt a sliver of a smile pull at his lips. It didn’t make it easier to say what he wanted to say, though.
“I don’t… I don’t want for things to change, Pop,” he whispered. “I’m weird, I know that: if Gus leaves, or you do, or Mom does, I… I don’t know what I will do.”
He tugged at his hair, and felt crazy awkward: like he had shed a skin, piton-style, and was currently trembling on his father’s lap in nothing but his muscles and his bones, heart fluttering one inch from the surface, so easy to hurt.
Vulnerable. Shawn hated the feeling. He hated it almost as much as the idea of being so alone.
He could hear Dad’s calm breaths against his cheek. Suddenly, Henry was readjusting his grip on Shawn, and pressing him against his chest, like that day in the woods - head lying on his collarbone, rising and falling with each intake of air.
Outside the window, the soft-glow afternoon was dwindling into a rosy evening, the only sign of winter the indigo edge to the clouds, the deeper blue of the ocean far below them. Strings of multicolored Christmas lights framed the window, flashing fluttering blues and reds and greens on the smiling face of the inflatable snowman on the windowsill. A soft chorus of carols, nostalgia-tinged like all Christmas things after the twenty-fifth went by, rolled in from the cracked door, speckled with the fuzziness of old speakers.
“Shawn,” his Dad said, the words reverberating through his shirt buttons and Shawn’s skin, “listen to me and listen closely, okay? I want you to remember this forever. All right? You can forget everything, every lesson, every tack, every piece of advice I’ve given and will ever give you, but not this. It’s that important. Got it?”
Henry waited for Shawn to nod; then went on.
“I don’t know what it’s going to happen to your mother and me, kiddo. I sure can’t promise you nothing will ever change - because things change; it’s just what they do. And I can’t tell you there wouldn’t be a moment in your life when you and Gus would drift apart, though I feel pretty confident it wouldn’t be for long. But this, this I can promise you.”
He rested his chin on Shawn’s head. Wrapped his arms around his back.
“I will come for you. Always. Every single time you need me to, and even a few times when you don’t want it. I will comb cities and woods, and pester people, and crawl all over the country to find you, until I have half a leg and a quarter of brain left to do it. And the same exact thing goes for your mother. That’s the only thing I’m absolutely, one hundred percent sure of, in the whole world; and now you know this promise. And you have to always remember it.”
Shawn grew very still in his father’s embrace, very focused: sucking up every detail about this moment - the faulty string of lights, the aftershave smell of Dad, every single world uttered and sworn. He wanted them branded in his memory. He wanted to never forget any of it.
Not in front of years passing, aliens, criminal goons, vampires.
Not in front of anything.
It was not what he hoped, not at all. But it felt like an important thing: a very precious thing.
Shawn stopped shivering. Tucked away all those words, all those little bits making up a scene and a second in history, and folded them close to his heart.
Their magical, cheesy Christmas moment.
Their final scene.
“Okay, Dad,” he murmured, closing his eyes. “Don’t worry. I won’t forget it.”
“Deal?”
“Deal.”