I’m Still Here
2
Lady Yate-xel
The drive was long, dusty and mostly silent after Johnny’s return to reasonably normal. Tenna occasionally clicked her tongue in disapproval of nothing and everything. The little skeleton toy she’d made in high school hung from the rearview mirror and sporadically tapped the windshield. Tenna saw Johnny in the mirror, predicting the toy’s clicks and apparently finding a kind of tune in it.
“So, we used to be invisible,” Jimmy started, echoing Tenna’s thoughts, “and yet we let ourselves get kicked out of a shitty Safari Sam’s?”
“No,” Johnny answered.
“That’s what it looked like to me,” Tenna said, driving on near-autopilot.
“No,” Johnny said again. He seemed to have lost track of the tune the skeleton toy was giving him.
“Then what the hell was it?” Tenna prodded. “As soon as that lady interrupted your little moment, you wanted to get the fuck out.”
Something from behind Devi’s seat slammed into the windshield, and Tenna swerved the van in response. Jimmy and Edgar both managed to hit the side of the van, Devi had braced herself against the dashboard and Johnny never moved.
Tenna tried to wring the steering wheel in her hands as the van sat motionless near a ditch on the side of the road. Usually, it was easy to judge whether she had crossed a line, or if Johnny had, but now she wasn’t sure. She tried to yell something but found Johnny already flailing about whatever had motivated him to leave the stupid Safari place. It wasn’t worth it to yell over him, so she just stepped out of the van.
Devi and Jimmy followed suit, though Jimmy had to be threatened to do so. He found something to do behind the van, probably spying, and Devi spread herself over the hood, asking the sky why some higher power hadn’t run her over already. Tenna wandered along the ditch, kicking rocks and abandoned beer cans into it. One day, when it didn’t involve endangering everyone else, Tenna decided she was just going to say ‘fuck it’ to indulging Johnny’s random fits of crazy.
A car drove by, and Tenna thought the people in it were pointing at her. Or at least at her van.
Edgar poked his head out of a window just then to say he was sorry for Johnny being a pain. Devi mocked him, and Jimmy wanted to know why Johnny couldn’t apologize for himself. Johnny swore at Jimmy from inside the van.
The others argued, while Tenna continued to fake extreme interest in the ditch. She kicked a can into the ditch several feet ahead of the van. The satisfying clink she was used to hearing was replaced with something more muffled. Intrigued, she strolled away from the downward spiral of an argument to investigate.
Just some abandoned clothing. Maybe another of those mystery pairs of pants that can be found on any highway in the world, though no one understands how they get there (which are almost as mysterious as the 'single shoe on the side of the road' phenomenon, but not quite).
Tenna shrugged, and was about to turn around to herd the group back into the van when she realized the abandoned clothing was breathing. When she really looked, Tenna saw dark hair in pigtails. A little girl. Sleeping in a ditch. Tenna put her hands on her hips, and tilted her head.
“Huh.”
“Whadja find?” Johnny had emerged in the madness of the argument and seemed miraculously better. The others could still be heard half-heartedly bickering behind him.
“Huh.”
“Tenna, seriously,” Johnny slid up to Tenna’s side and gazed into the ditch with her.
“Huh,” he echoed.
“Yeah.”
“She look dead to you?”
“I think she’s breathing, actually.”
“Oh, well, let’s get going then.”
“Wait, what?” Tenna turned to see Johnny climbing back into the van. He stuck his head back out after a few seconds, pointed at Tenna and made a mimed steering motion. Tenna stuck her lower lip out, but resisted yelling at him. There was no reason to start all the crazy Johnny shit up again.
She stared into the ditch at the small girl sleeping among the yellowed grass and decided, Johnny be damned, that she was going to do something decent.
*****
“Tenna, what is that?” Devi eyed the pile of clothing that Tenna dropped into Jimmy’s usual chair.
“It’s… a girl.”
Edgar, who’d been reading a magazine in the back since he had been relieved of ‘making Johnny shut up’ duty, kicked his way through some trash to see into the seat.
“What are you doing with her? Where did you find her?” He didn’t sound like he thought what Tenna was doing was decent at all.
“Just over there,” Tenna said, pointing out of the passenger side window.
“You can’t just abduct kids from the side of the road!”
“Pretty sure you can’t just leave them there, either,” Johnny chimed in, though he sounded completely disinterested. He was curled into the seat beside the pile of girl, sliding some pieces around on a cheap plastic puzzle he’d won in a crane game at Safari Sam’s.
“This is sort of like leaving kittens in a box on the side of the road, right?” Jimmy offered, “Like they want to be found?”
“Quick, Ten,” Devi grabbed Tenna’s shoulder dramatically, “put her back before we get our stench on her, or the mother will come back later and eat her.”
“Um, Devi, the police?” Edgar tried with a trace of panic.
“Oh, come on,” Devi teased, poking Edgar’s shoulder, “I didn’t mean it. We’ll take her to someone.”
“‘S’not gonna work,” Johnny muttered, slipping the last piece of the puzzle in place. At the same moment, the girl stirred, and any attention given to Johnny’s comment was lost.
The group, save for Johnny, who remained in his seat, crowded around the chair containing the girl. Tenna knelt down in front of the chair, prepared to tackle the girl’s likely panic and bracing herself for impact.
Rather than scream, the girl only blinked up at the people staring at her.
“Umm, hi.”
Tenna looked startled by the girl’s plain reaction, but continued relatively unshaken, “Hi sweetie. Are you lost?”
Jimmy muttered something, and Devi elbowed him in the ribs.
“Not in front of kids,” she hissed. “Jeez, what’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t think I’m lost,” the girl told Tenna.
“Where are your parents?” Tenna tried to maintain even some level of calm, but the girl looked only confused at her questioning. Tenna sighed.
“What’s your name, hun?”
“Steph-a-nie,” the girl answered, emphasizing each syllable.
“Okay then, Stephanie. We’ll take you to some people who can help you, okay?”
“Okay,” Stephanie answered cheerily. When she nodded her head, her dirty pigtails bobbed over her shoulders.
Tenna regarded the girl for a few moments and then returned hesitantly to the driver’s seat. Devi clicked the seatbelt in the seat next to her and then opened a candy bar she found in the glove compartment.
“Seems awfully okay for an abandoned kid, doesn’t she?” Devi asked her chocolate.
“Yeeeah, that worries me a little,” Tenna nodded, starting the engine, “I wonder if she’s in shock or something.”
Devi dictated that should Stephanie need anything, Edgar was in charge of getting it. Edgar had attempted a protest, but it was cut off by another chirpy “okay” from the little girl.
*****
“So where you from?” Johnny asked suddenly, breaking the silence of some fifty miles.
The girl beside him answered when no one else did.
“Uhh…,” she answered, staring straight up.
“The roof, huh?” Johnny glanced at the ceiling. Edgar appeared from the back and stepped between the seats holding juice boxes.
“Here,” he said, “I found these in the back.”
Johnny took one of the boxes, but didn’t bother with acknowledging Edgar. Instead, he spoke to Stephanie.
“You know you’re staying, don’t you?”
“Mmhmm.”
“Nny, she can’t stay here!” Edgar, for some reason, was surprised at Johnny’s behavior, “She belongs somewhere!”
“Yeah,” Johnny replied, peeling some glue from the back of the juice box, “here.”
“I think that’s kidnapping,” Jimmy observed from behind them. His mouth was full of cheese puffs.
“Someone find the calendar and put ‘Jimmy Made Fucking Sense’ on today,” Devi called from the front.
“Devi!” Tenna snapped as she jerked the wheel. Devi shot an apologetic glance at the girl behind her.
“Sorry sweetie,” she mumbled. Stephanie smiled at her in response.
Jimmy made a huffing noise and Johnny pulled the calendar from under his seat. He scrawled something on it before tucking it away again. Devi gave him a nod.
“Anyway, we can’t keep her here. Jimmy is right,” Devi winced at her own words, “It’s kidnapping.”
“Suit yourself,” Johnny said, shrugging. “You’ll see.”
*****
“I can’t even fucking believe you,” Tenna growled as she and Johnny left the first police station they’d come across, Stephanie in tow.
“Oh no, Tenna,” Johnny mocked, waving his hands towards the girl, “not in front of her!”
Stephanie was paying no attention at all, and was instead watching a passing squirrel.
“They had no idea! They knew you because you were DEAD once and that was it! Wouldn’t even look at her!”
“I tried to tell you guys, but nooo, Johnny’s never been right before.”
“But we couldn’t not try,” Tenna sighed. “It was worth a shot wasn’t it?”
“Not really.”
“I mean for normal people.”
“Maybe.”
“So she stays with us, then?” Tenna asked. “Until we figure something out?”
“Sure,” Johnny answered casually, “we can make anyone visible.”
He strolled back to the van apparently with little concern at all.
*****
Edgar listened to the recap of events in the police station with horror, “And no one can see her? This young?”
“Nope,” Tenna said, shaking her head. “No one but people like us, I guess. ‘Fellowship in invisible’ or something like that.”
“How did she learn to talk, or walk or… anything?”
“Same way we all did,” Johnny said, shrugging. “She just did. I can’t tell if she’s luckier, or if we were.”
“About what?” Edgar asked. He didn’t look at Johnny as he spoke, but instead at the small girl having a staring contest with Jimmy on the floor between the seats in the front of the van.
“She’s going to remember being this young. We bottom out at what, Devi, ten? Maybe nine?”
“Something like that,” Devi answered, nodding. “It’s approximate.”
“I remember being about ten,” Edgar said slowly.
“Hey, congratulations,” Johnny grinned. “Maybe you’re our second oldest.”
“I’m older than you?”
“Ha, even Tenna’s older than me,” Johnny laughed. “Aside from our new acquisition here, I’m the youngest.”
“I… I hadn’t even thought about it before,” Edgar said, blinking. “It seems weird now, but I don’t think I ever even thought it relevant.”
“Not like it changes anything,” Johnny said with a satisfied smile. “Those two have always known and I’m still in charge.”
“Speaking of our newest,” Devi broke in, “what do you propose we do with her?”
“Eh, let’s worry about it later,” Johnny answered dismissively. “It’ll take a while to get her seen anyway.”
“This doesn’t strike me as a ‘later’ situation,” Edgar said, watching as Jimmy lost another game.
“What do you want?” Johnny asked, gesturing dramatically. “A ‘Have You Seen This Invisible Little Girl’ poster? A picture on a milk carton with a dotted line in the shape of her head?”
“I guess not. It just feels wrong to take her away from…”
“Away from her happy home among the cattails? I think some part of your moral compass is broken, Edgar.”
“Coming from you, I’m not sure if that should worry me or not.”
“Shiiiiit,” Jimmy hissed from the floor, “this kid is almost as good at this as you are, Nny. Few more years, and she’ll just never blink.”
He stood up as much as he was able in the van and dropped into a seat to join the discussion, “So. What’re we doing with her?”
“Keeping her,” Johnny said.
“You keep saying that,” Devi started, “but-“
“We’ll figure it out,” Johnny interrupted. “Let’s find some lunch.”
Edgar suspected this all to be a large show of smoke and mirrors on Johnny’s part meant to distract people from bringing up Safari Sam’s again. Playing into Johnny’s whims, Edgar didn’t mention it.
*****
Tenna pulled into the parking lot of the convenience store, and parked by the entrance, but no one got out of the van.
“This is a bad idea,” Devi said to the windshield. “You know everything in there is made of corn, right?”
“Then we’re getting her some vegetables,” Johnny told her. He turned to Stephanie and rested a hand on her head, “Just go grab whatever looks good, okay?”
“Okay.”
Something was wrong and thrilling about watching a small girl innocently steal from a store that didn’t know it was being stolen from rather than possessed or enchanted.
“That was always my favorite reaction,” Jimmy said dreamily when an old woman reacted to seeing a few boxes of pink cupcakes drift by her knees.
“You miss it?” Johnny asked him.
“I was never really into it when you guys wanted to pay for shit,” Jimmy answered, shaking his head. “Seemed so fucking backwards.”
“It was a worthy trade, I think.”
Stephanie and the possessed cupcakes left the building with little incident. Johnny opened the van door and pulled her inside and told Tenna to get out of the parking lot before people started seeing the van. Tenna complied, although somewhat reluctantly. Edgar made some remarks about not believing what was happening.
“What was that?” Johnny asked, ripping open the box of cupcakes.
“Nothing,” Edgar answered, sighing. Johnny continued tearing at the packaging on the neon pink puff balls.
“Don’t smash them!” Stephanie squeaked.
“Do you want to do it?” Johnny asked threateningly.
“Yes!” she said, grabbing the corner of the box. Johnny blinked, surprised, but let her take the box. She gripped it, motionless for a moment as though she expected continued reaction from Johnny. He crossed his arms and stared at her. She seemed to take this as approval and started in on the box.
The group sat in silence, watching her tear at the plastic wrap, and finally pulling out a cupcake that was only slightly marred by the process.
“Here,” she said, thrusting the cupcake in Johnny’s direction. “You do it like that.”
Johnny stared at the cupcake, and then at the girl with the box in her lap. An amused smile crossed his face before he laughed loudly at her.
“Okay,” he said moments later, still with a trace of a laugh, “you win.”
Stephanie spent the next fifteen minutes carefully passing out cupcakes to everyone in the van, even Tenna, who couldn’t explain that she needed to drive, so held the offending snack by gripping the wrapper between her teeth.
*****
Edgar tried to discuss Johnny’s scary brain-collapsing woman when he had a moment. Johnny didn’t look interested, yet again. When Edgar pushed the issue, Johnny stuffed a cupcake in his mouth and took so long to chew that he could change the subject when he was done with it.
When this failed multiple times, Edgar resigned himself to wondering if he’d have mail when he got home.
*****
Edgar sat in the back of the van next to Johnny, reading some mindless magazine in hopes of ignoring Jimmy trying to teach Stephanie to swear in German. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about possibly endangering the poor girl, maybe even taking her from parents who had been invisible themselves and just lost her in the woods. He wished there was some kind of support group for invisible people, some kind of place to go to make sure no one had gone missing.
Stephanie seemed too well-behaved for someone to just abandon her, and too intelligent to have been raised by hobos or wolves or whatever else had been along that stretch of highway where’d she’d been sleeping. The more Edgar pondered it, the more he didn’t like it.
He was also done hearing Jimmy say the same foul words over and over.
“Jimmy, stop it, she doesn’t need to know that stuff,” Edgar said. “Send her back here, okay?”
“Going to teach her about Bigfoot marrying the Loch Ness Monster?” Jimmy asked, eyeing the magazine in Edgar’s hands. Edgar really hadn’t even been paying attention to the content of what he was reading and felt a little stupid.
“I think Dib is in this one,” Johnny said, shoving another tabloid in Edgar’s face and effectively ignoring Jimmy. “Check it out.”
“I think he’s the only person I can recognize by his hair alone,” Edgar marveled at the pictures. Dib really was there, pointing emphatically at something in his garage, but the pictures looked questionably authentic. Edgar looked back up at Jimmy, who was sneaking glances into his dictionary and whispering things to Stephanie.
“Jimmy, really, come on.”
“Fine, fine,” Jimmy said with a huff, “have it your way.”
He patted Stephanie on her back and steered her toward the back, “Get going, Kleine.”
“Oh, good,” Devi said from the front, “nicknames. Just what we need.”
Jimmy ignored her.
Stephanie climbed onto the seat between Johnny and Edgar and leaned over Edgar’s lap to look at the magazine with him.
“What is it?” she asked, eyeing one picture in particular.
“It’s… It’s probably a stick or something, or a little floating rig sorta thing, maybe,” Edgar said, squinting at the photo.
“It’s the Loch Ness Monster,” Johnny said without looking up from his magazine.
“Monster?” Stephanie asked, eyes wide.
“Mmhmm,” Johnny nodded. “Lives in a lake thing. Might be a dinosaur. Might eat little kids.”
“Wow. Can we go see it?”
“Man, kid, you had some awesome not-parents,” Johnny smirked.
Edgar winced at the mention of ‘parents.’
“You’re sure you don’t have any, Stephanie?” he asked.
“Any what?” she replied, trying to turn the pages in the tabloid. “Monsters?”
“Parents.”
She looked at him curiously, and then brought her attention back to the page in front of her.
“I want to meet the Lock Monster,” she said.
“Hey, Tenna!” Johnny called to the front. “How do you feel about getting a submarine?”
“Shut up, Johnny, or we’re heading straight for that telephone pole.”
*****
Most of the group decided on an early night, and so rather than find a hotel or something that made sense, they called the van bed that evening.
Stephanie took one of the seats, since she fit reasonably comfortably into them, and Jimmy crashed on the floor. Devi and Tenna swapped driving (Devi, of course, only when the road was completely straight for miles) while complaining that the new trailer they’d attached to the back of the van to hold instruments and other junk impaired maneuverability.
Edgar got to keep his usual spot with Johnny in the far back. Johnny was pretending to be asleep on top of him, and Edgar was debating letting on that he knew.
“It’s fine,” Johnny said into Edgar’s shoulder.
“What?”
“I’m fine. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Go to bed.”
*****
“This is the best way any of us can think of, Edgar, so unless you come up with a better idea in an hour and a half, she’s going with us.”
Tenna finished applying another layer of black around Stephanie’s eyes and stepped back to survey the damage. Edgar had come in to try to tell her it was a bad idea to let Johnny drag her on stage but the others had been all for it and there was no convincing anyone otherwise. Jimmy wouldn’t even pretend to disagree in exchange for money or food.
Edgar didn’t know why he felt it was a bad idea. Maybe it was on the same level as using Stephanie to steal cupcakes? Like she was a tool for something, even though he saw the logic in getting her seen by putting her in front of hundreds of people and having her wail into a mic. Something didn’t line up for him, but if Johnny wanted to do it, there were few powers on Earth that would stop him.
For a moment, Edgar wanted to look up when the planets would align next.
Tenna finished the make-up on Stephanie and set her on the floor. The girl instantly tore off to the other side of the room calling for Johnny. Edgar hadn’t expected Johnny’s strange people magnet to work on members of the population under ten.
“Nny, Nny! Aunt Tenna made me a BAMSHEE!” Stephanie shrieked, flailing her arms at Johnny, who had been sitting quietly on a couch until then. “Those’re even better than Princesses!”
“Oh, really? Did she tell you why banshees are better?” Johnny didn’t look up from the notebook in his lap.
“I can tell people to die,” Stephanie whispered, trying to hide a giant grin.
“Absolutely,” Johnny shot a grin at Tenna, who gave him a thumbs-up. Edgar shook his head, but had to admit that the girl looked sort of cute as a demon.
Edgar tried to ask about what was going to happen if the woman with the ankh was there that night, but Johnny wasn’t inclined to talk about it and brushed him off in favor of dragging Stephanie outside to practice her scream.
*****
Stephanie served her role as the Homicides’ personal banshee rather well. The shriek she let loose into the auditorium that obviously startled even Johnny, who’d been holding her up to the microphone.
The audience made a collective wincing, and then those who’d suddenly seen a little girl actually forgot that she’d foretold the death of their eardrums and ‘aww’d at the stage. She waved happily at them with sleeves that were too long and then looked at Johnny, a very serious expression on her face.
“Nny, how many do you think are gonna die?” she asked earnestly.
Johnny grinned in surprise.
“You mean you didn’t get them all?” he mock-scolded. “You’re going to need to try harder next time, Banshee.”
Edgar and the others found themselves to be both charmed and disturbed by how easily Johnny took to using the girl for strange purposes.
Show after show, Johnny took delight in having Stephanie, who he now called Banshee regardless of whether she was in costume, scream incoherently into a microphone. Edgar stopped seeing it as using her for something, and started seeing it as showing her a good time until she was eventually seen by someone who would recognize her and take her home.
Stephanie viewed everyone in the group as her friends, and tacked an ‘Uncle’ or ‘Aunt’ onto everyone but Johnny and Edgar, though Jimmy’s title was sometimes questionably in German. Edgar didn’t know why he didn’t get a fancy title, but didn’t question it. He was sure it made sense in Stephanie’s head, so it was fine with him. Johnny had probably outright told her that he would, under no circumstances, be anything but ‘Nny’.
Edgar’d been surprised that Stephanie had grown on everyone so easily. They developed nicknames for her within a week or two, even Devi, who had originally said that it was a sign of getting too attached. It had actually been Devi that first called Stephanie by just the last syllable of her name, though it was only to mock Johnny.
“We should call you ‘Nie,’ too,” Devi had told the girl in the middle of a long game of ‘Not Talking.’ Johnny had been seated behind them and remained silent, but did his best to project ‘not amused’ to the front of the van.
“YOU LOSE!” Stephanie had shouted, jumping up on her seat.
“Yes, you’re definitely ‘Little Nie’. Perhaps ‘New Nie’, even,” Devi looked at Stephanie, but her tone had indicated she was vocally poking Johnny.
“Oooh, we have the same name!”
It had caught on with the others since then, whenever they felt like they needed to get back at Johnny for an occasional spasm or freak out. Johnny had objected whole-heartedly to being ‘Old Nny’ or ‘Big Nny.’
“She’s the new one, guys. She gets the modifier. She’s ‘Imitation’ if anything,” he’d said.
“And ‘Banshee’ is better?” was usually the response.
“Yeah, she likes that.”
“How cute.”
“Fuck you.”
“Hey, watch it.”
“Oh, come on. She can say that in two languages now.”
This was true, to an extent. Jimmy was no where near fluent in German, but he taught whatever sick version of the language he’d convinced himself that he knew to Stephanie, who he called ‘Kleine’ or “Mädchen” most often. He read stories to her in German and she mimed simple dialog at him, often sprinkled with random swearing when she didn’t know a word. Even Jimmy was starting to realize that teaching her those first had been a mistake, since she now used them as substitutes for the German versions of ‘um’ and ‘uh.’
Tenna began teaching Stephanie the parts of vehicles and got her used to sitting in the driver’s seat. When questioned, Tenna simply said someone else would have to ‘fucking learn to drive around here’. She didn’t seem to think about the girl not sticking around long enough to be tall enough to even reach the pedals.
Tenna also tried to make sure she got milk occasionally, but it was usually in addition to coffee. This practice was quickly put to a halt, and Devi was left in charge of actually getting Stephanie some food that wouldn’t kill her or keep everyone else awake until seven in the morning the night before a show.
Devi played the ‘Not Talking’ game for quite a while before she warmed up to the idea of Stephanie actually spending time with her. Stephanie picked up on staying subdued around Devi and Devi started trying to get her to draw and told her stories of women warriors in history and tales of people who had died doing stupid things. After some time, Stephanie developed a taste for herbal tea and eating with chopsticks.
Johnny stole shirts and other random things from Edgar to give Stephanie some kind of wardrobe and customized things for her the way he used to decorate his own clothes. She sported Edgar’s address on her shirt-dress one day and ‘Give Me Things’ on another. Edgar had vetoed ‘FUCK’ in hieroglyphs, even though Stephanie was already well aware of the word and it bothered her about as much as any pronoun might.
Beyond stealing shirts, Johnny was also the one who roped the girl into doing questionable things for his amusement. Stephanie saw it all as a giant game, and didn’t mind in the slightest until the time she had been told to ask Edgar why people were so unpleasant. Johnny had run some blue drink mix through her hair and even had her stagger around in his boots. Edgar was not amused, and his reaction ensured that Stephanie was wary of agreeing to go along with anything that started with “Hey, go tell Edgar…” ever again.
Edgar wasn’t sure what he did for the poor girl. His attempt at doing her some good by leaving her to the police certainly hadn’t done well, and now Johnny’s banshee solution was proving more effective than the police ever would have been. It wasn’t until he noticed Stephanie’s habit of sitting near him and staring expectantly when he held a book or a magazine that he realized he could have been doing something for her.
“Do you want to look at this?” Edgar asked her one day.
“Yes.” Her fingers twitched. A side effect, Edgar guessed, of Devi’s training a child to not act like one was that Stephanie had suppressed the grabbing urge.
“Alright, here,” Edgar said, handing her the newest tabloid from the stack. “Have a fresh one.”
“Is the Lock Monster in there?”
“There’s a good chance.”
“Okay, good.”
Edgar sat and watched Stephanie regard page after page very slowly, nodding thoughtfully at each page turn. His fear that she had parents who were sick and worried for her returned.
“Stephanie, can you read?”
“Uh-huh. Some of these words are too big, though.”
“Did you go to school?” Edgar asked, trying not to sound alarmed.
“No,” she answered casually.
Oh god, Edgar thought, home schooling. “Who taught you?”
“No one. I just know.”
“You learned yourself?”
“No!” she squeaked, exasperated. “I just know!”
“Edgar, are you making Banshee angry?” Johnny strolled to the back of the van carrying a giant soft pretzel. He offered a piece to Stephanie, who took it happily, though when she chewed her face still showed the frustration of answering Edgar.
“Nny, she knows how to read.”
“Yeah, she looks old enough to,” Johnny said, taking a bite of the pretzel. “What’s the big deal?”
“Someone had to teach her how.”
“Really? Who taught you?” Johnny gestured toward him with a pretzel arm and dripped some mustard on the stack of magazines between them. Edgar was silent for a few moments as he watched Stephanie turn the pages about BatBoy.
“No one,” he answered quietly.
“You get it now? She’s just like us. No parents, no family, no anything. She just is.”
“Is she reincarnated, too? Think we knew her once and she got sent back too young?”
“I don’t remember her. I think I would have remembered someone this weird.”
“How long do you think she was out there?” Edgar asked, still watching as Stephanie stared intently into the grainy photos.
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“Stephanie, can I ask you something?” Edgar touched the girl’s shoulder.
“I don’t know, I just do.”
“No, no, sweetie, not that. I wanted to ask you about when we found you.”
“Okay.”
Edgar sighed. He felt relieved that she’d had no parents that were panicking without their daughter, but now felt guilty about essentially being glad that she’d been out to defend for herself, “When we found you, you were sleeping on the side of the road, remember?”
“Yeah.”
“How long were you out there?”
“Just a little while.”
“How little is little?” Edgar asked. Stephanie measured a short distance between her thumb and index finger.
“No, no,” Edgar shook his head. “I mean, how much is ‘a little while’?”
“Just a little while,” Stephanie repeated.
“Months? Weeks?”
“Noooo,” she answered, shaking her head. “Like a whole show! Just for a show.”
“Shows are like an hour and a bit,” Johnny pointed out.
“An hour? Stephanie, are you sure?” Edgar pressed.
“Yeah, jus’ an hour.”
“She’s just repeating what you’re saying, Nny.”
“Would this kid lie to you?” Johnny motioned toward her with the tabloid he’d picked up.
“I think she’s confused,” Edgar said.
“Even if she is,” Johnny said, leaning over to give Stephanie the rest of the pretzel, “and she’s saying ‘a whole show’ like ‘how long it takes to get ready’, she was only there a few hours before we picked her up.”
“So, what, someone dropped her there for us to find?” Edgar raised an eyebrow.
“Edgar, I can’t even fathom how you don’t assume shit like this is happening anymore. I came back from the dead after injuring the Anti-Christ’s boyfriend, you’re getting stalker letters, there’s a woman out there somewhere who makes my brain implode and you’re trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for some little girl popping out of nowhere?”
“I can’t help it,” Edgar replied, “I have this vague hope that supernatural stuff will stop fucking with us.”
“Heh, good luck with that. I think by our very nature, we, and her, now that I’m thinking about it, are going to be involved with supernatural for the rest of our lives.”
“Great, great. Eighty-something years of thinking Nessie is Pepito’s dog and that she’s going to rain children on me at random,” Edgar slumped into the seat and adjusted his glasses.
“Eighty?” Johnny blinked, staring at the floor.
“Yeeees? That sound wrong to you or something? You of all people should have figured out that we’re not immortal.”
“That’s not it,” Johnny said, shaking his head. “I’m just… not planning on going that long.”
“Nny, really.”
“I’ll take you with me this time.”
For some reason, that made everything fine with Edgar for the moment.
“Okay,” he said, nodding, “see that you do.”
Johnny smirked at him.
“Oh, I promise,” he said, leaning against Edgar’s shoulder. “You won’t even know what hit you.”
“Nny.”
Johnny laughed at him, but said no more. When Edgar tried to say something else, Johnny shushed him, saying that Stephanie was trying to read.
She’d found an article about banshees.
*****
On a night when a scummy motel was again an option, the group found themselves wary of staying. As the van made its way through the rows and rows of vacancy signs, the occupants made up excuses as to why each one was a bad idea. Too skeevy, too dark, too expensive, too shady, too family-oriented, too close to a goth club. Motels had become something of a phobia among the five of them, with the televisions in said rooms tacked onto Johnny and Edgar’s fears.
However, the van had begun to feel too small, and when Tenna, while driving, actually turned around in her seat, let go of the wheel and threw her hands in the air to properly tell Johnny off, a unanimous decision to find somewhere else to sleep was made. Dying in the van was unappealing enough to risk another motel. Tenna pulled into the very next parking lot.
The fear of tentacle monsters aside, the problem of who would take Stephanie in their room arose. They stood around the van, arguing about who really wanted to do what in their rooms that would not allow a child to be present.
“I drive all the goddamned day,” Tenna said, still livid from her outburst at Johnny. She didn’t bother to apologize to Stephanie for the language she used, though everyone paused and waited for her to.
“And I’m staying with Tenna,” Devi chimed in. “So she’s not staying with me either.”
“I vote Jimmy,” Edgar said, raising his hand.
“Because she really needs to learn more foul German in her sleep,” Devi crossed her arms.
“I’ll corrupt her,” Jimmy threatened. The others shot him disgusted expressions.
“That’s not so bad,” Edgar offered, though he still looked ill.
“Edgar, you are a sorry liar,” Tenna crossed her arms. “You just wanna-” She stopped when Edgar’s expression increased both in levels of ‘ill’ and ‘watch it.’
Meanwhile, somewhere a few feet below the bickering, stood the source of it. She wasn’t particularly happy to be the point of so much negative interest.
“I can stay in the van,” she offered between the accusations flying over her head.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Tenna screeched at her. She snapped her mouth shut almost the very second the last word left her lips, but Devi finished for her.
“You want to get stolen and eaten, kid?”
“Not really.”
“Then just wait until we figure this out.”
“But-!”
“Just wait!”
And then, Johnny drifted out of the van, like perhaps he’d just noticed that everyone else had left it. Clearly, he’d not heard a word of what had been shouted in the last few minutes.
“Are we getting some rooms or not?”
“Johnny,” Devi tried calmly, “this isn’t-”
“Whatever. Argue for a while if that suits you. Someone just remember to get another room for Banshee.”
A collective blink later, and the argument was gone.
*****
There was no television in their room.
Edgar and Johnny both made audible sounds of relief.
“Never thought I’d be upset to see a fucking TV,” Johnny muttered as he began to investigate the features of the room.
“It’s a justifiable phobia if people know the story behind it,” Edgar said, tossing a few books on the nearest surface.
“The fucking crazy story. Hey, we got an extra bottle of hotel soap!”
“Oh good, we can add it to the collection.”
Johnny strolled around the room, ruling things unfit for use or consumption by what seemed to be an entirely arbitrary system. The cups in the bathroom were no good, and they needed new towels and pillow cases immediately. Edgar wasn’t sure what was wrong with the pillow cases other than the retina-scarring prehistoric pattern, but he let Johnny bother the service ladies with it anyway.
With everything Johnny found objectionable fixed to a tolerable level, he and Edgar took to seeing what in the room could be toyed with, stolen, hidden or otherwise used to confuse or frighten the cleaning ladies. Johnny blacked out the eyes of the people on the tacky painting on the far wall, and Edgar took everything in the bathroom that he and Johnny wouldn’t use and tossed it in the refrigerator.
Johnny, satisfied with his more obvious damage, dropped onto the bed and set about drawing a kind of intricate circle across a spread of the phonebook, taking care to put the tiniest of flourishes on it.
“What are you doing to the phonebook?” Edgar sat down in front of Johnny, watching him making his excited marks.
“It’s either to summon Pepito,” Johnny tapped his lip with the end of the pen, “or to sacrifice children to him. I’m not sure yet.”
“Oh god, speaking of children…”
“Is this about Banshee again? You guys seem to think this kid is incapable of sentient thought. Just let it go. I’m sure she’s not being eaten by housekeeping.”
“I’m not worried about her, I – Well, no, I am worried about her, but not at this very second,” Edgar scratched at something above his eyebrow. “Just, how long do we do this before someone comes to get her? Or even sees her and-?”
“See, that’s where I’m figuring the Mystic Phonebook Portal to Pepito is going to come in handy.”
“You can’t sacrifice her! She’d never fit on the- God, I’m starting to sound like you.”
Johnny looked satisfied and laughed quietly, “Sounds like an improvement to me.”
“Really. We can’t keep her around here. I can’t even believe I’m the one saying this, I mean, I thought you’d be the one with the problem if anyone did.”
“I don’t want to keep her here, that’s just how it’s going to be for a while. It’s minor.”
Edgar crossed his arms, and continued observation on the demon circle, “Children don’t strike me as ‘minor,’ actually.”
“Forgive me if my interests lie more in the area of my brain not imploding.”
“You haven’t seen her at a single show! Not even felt anything!”
“But I did at the Sam’s place.”
Edgar let his posture fall and got comfortable. This would likely be a while.
“I thought that was the…” he trailed off and glanced nervously at the spot on the wall where a television had to have spent years until tonight.
“No, it wasn’t the wall thing,” Johnny continued drawing in the phonebook, though his lines looked more like a hopeless distraction now than the fun they had been a few minutes ago.
“So you lied to us?”
“No. It was a situation like the wall. And since no one’s afraid of her bu- since you all remember the wall, it was just easier.”
Edgar sighed, sinking into the old stiff cushions, “So what did she want?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“She’s trying to collapse your brain, you have a keen sense of when she shows up, and you have fits when she’s within a certain proximity, from what I’ve seen.”
Johnny set the pen down at his side and stared into the circle he’d drawn as though it was prompting his answer, “She played the song at us.”
“So she’s a creepy fan.”
“It’s not quite like that, I don’t think.”
With that, Johnny drifted into talking to himself, which Edgar listened to first with amusement and then with the expectation that this was helping Johnny sort out some kind of thought process. When Johnny started repeating things in violent circles, Edgar reached across his lap and took the phonebook. Johnny jumped as though he’d been jabbed in the ribs.
“I think you’ve had enough Satan for today,” Edgar said, sliding the phonebook back into the drawer it had come from.
Johnny’s gaze followed all of Edgar’s movements. “I think she was trying to talk to us.”
“To you.”
“…can’t forget what you’ve forgotten. She’s talking to us.”
“That’s one lyric, Nny, seriously. And even if she’s delivering magical song messages, what about the rest of it?”
“It all fits too.”
“Because you want it to.”
“Because she wanted it to.”
“Look, you’re going to keep thinking about this stuff and just drive yourself cra-Um.”
“Ha,” Johnny looked oddly pleased.
“It just sort of came out.”
“I don’t mind.”
Had this been any other conversation, one that seemed to be operating under normal conditions, Edgar would have made a joke there. Instead, he tried to keep things sensible.
“You really think she’s sending you song messages?”
Johnny stared at the wall behind Edgar, his gaze falling somewhere over Edgar’s left shoulder.
“If a plane were to fall from the sky…,” he didn’t sing, or even speak rhythmically, but his fingers twitched to the rhythm the words should have had.
“Hey, come on. The end of times is not here because this woman showed up in our lawn, really,” Edgar reached out to do something – shake Johnny’s shoulder, take his hand, wave his hand around in front of Johnny’s eyes – but Johnny wasn’t paying enough attention. The twitchy rhythm continued, and leaked slightly into Johnny’s speech.
“…how big a hole would it make in the surface of the Earth?”
“Nny, you’re scaring me.”
“It’s fine.”
“This actually seems really ‘not fine’ to me. You’re coming up with outrageously improbable shit about some creepy lady who once made your brain feel weird.”
“The key point there being, ‘made my brain feel weird.’”
“You make my brain feel weird, and I’m doing okay! I’m not spouting circular madness about a woman with soul-eating songs!”
“A song,” Johnny blinked, a sudden look of curiosity crossing his face, “I wonder what her song is like. I wonder if I can find her with it.”
“That… is not where this was supposed to go, actually.”
“We can talk about your stalker, if you want.”
“Not really.”
“I think I’m surprised,” Johnny laughed.
“I’m sort of worried she’s the same person as soul-eating-music-woman.”
“I didn’t feel anything while you got all your mystical mail.”
Edgar felt remarkably better about the entire situation with that one line, even if it came with a little guilt, “It’s a strange thing to suggest, but I wonder if you just shouldn’t talk to this woman if we run into her again.”
“Is this an attempt to get me to tell you that seeing your stalker is a good idea?”
“Nooo, I don’t think so. Though, now that you mention it, that would have been a great tactic. Still. Talking to her couldn’t hurt.”
“No, actually, it can hurt like fuck and make me spout madness and buzzing if I even look at her.”
Edgar tried to catch eye contact, but Johnny wasn’t interested.
“Maybe we can get you used to her gradually?” Edgar offered.
“Like a reverse twelve step program, great.”
“You’re just talking in circles about all this! What the hell am I supposed to suggest?”
“Probably checking on Banshee.”
“What?”
“Maybe the hotel ate her.”
Edgar sighed, “Okay. I’ll go look in on her, I guess. Can you be okay when I get back?”
“Either way I answer that question doesn’t really bode well for you.”
“Suppose so. I’ll be back.”
He closed the door behind him.
*****
There was a television in Stephanie’s room. Edgar felt unsettled by it, even if the picture on the screen was a bad old animated show with gratuitous amounts of pink and flash.
“Hi,” Stephanie said, gaze fixated on the television.
“Hi there. I just came to make sure you were okay in here.”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You don’t mind being alone in here?”
“Everyone keeps coming in to see me anyway, it’s okay.”
“Oh, really?”
“Uh-huh. Uncle Jimmy talked all the way through the show and then watched the commercials.”
Edgar had to resist the urge to wince when he heard Stephanie tack the endearing ‘aunt’ and ‘uncle’ titles onto the others. He thought they were sort of cute, but also thought they were awfully familiar for people that Stephanie would have to leave soon. He was still holding out hope that someone was going to see her and recognize her. Even if that never happened, he wondered why no one had taken her from them yet – she wasn’t exactly being given stellar role models.
Maybe the magazine that had claimed Devi was pregnant was now citing Stephanie as proof. The idea made his skin feel like crawling off.
“You don’t have a problem with all of this?” Edgar asked after some delay.
“It’s a nice room.”
“No, no, I mean, with this van thing, with all of us.”
“I like it. You guys are fun.”
Edgar wanted her to have some problem, some concern, some insecurity. Something he could use as leverage to get the others to play enthusiastically in front of the police and have Stephanie taken to some kind of safety. He didn’t know what he was worried would befall her, but he felt sure that their filthy van was not the place for her. He could only hope that whoever they were able to take her to didn’t know any German.
And then something he hadn’t considered before struck him.
“Stephanie, do you know anyone named Pepito?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Hell, do you know anyone at all?”
“I know you, and Nny, and-”
“I mean other than us.”
“Not really.”
“And no Pepito?”
“Nuh-uh. Who is he?”
Edgar sighed. He mentally yelled at himself for even bringing it up, since now he had to explain to a small girl that he and his friends knew Satan.
“He’s… he’s some guy we know. He’s not a very nice person.”
Stephanie sighed and looked annoyed.
“He’s the son of Satan,” Johnny’s voice corrected from the hallway. Stephanie brightened up immediately. Edgar hoped it was in response to Johnny’s voice and not in response to ‘Satan.’
“Satan?”
“Yeah,” Johnny wove his way into the room and joined Edgar and Stephanie on the bed. The mattress made no shift at all when he sat down, “Satan is the guy in charge of Hell.”
Stephanie nodded, her expression trying to look understanding but doing a terrible job of masking that she was totally lost.
Edgar laughed, hoping to steer things away from Hell, “Maybe we don’t all come standard with intimate knowledge of the system.”
Johnny seemed to register something just then, and stared intently at Stephanie, who responded with a nervous smile. It did not surprise Edgar when Johnny didn’t bother to clarify what he’d been interested in after staring at the girl for several seconds, or that he snapped out of whatever it was and acted as though it hadn’t happened moments later.
“Maybe we can give you a crash course in mythology before we toss you into an audience someday,” Johnny said.
With a small squeak, Stephanie went wide-eyed and looked a little afraid to argue. Edgar patted her head.
“He’s joking,” he sent a half-hearted glare at Johnny.
“You don’t know that,” Johnny’s arrogant smile was a welcome change from ‘dazed and under the influence of Satan’s phonebook’.
“He’s right,” Edgar said with mock-sadness, “I really don’t. You’ll have to be careful.”
“He’s bigger than me!” Stephanie protested, “That’s not fair!”
“Of course it isn’t, it’s Johnny. Also, you’re the only one smaller than he is; I think he’s planning on taking advantage of it.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Johnny folded his arms across his chest.
“Oh god,” Edgar flailed his arms wildly, “the plan has been compromised! Cyanide for everyone!”
Stephanie’s expression showed she understood very little of Edgar’s fake outbursts, but really, Edgar hadn’t been doing them for her benefit.
Johnny laughed, and whatever had been worrying him earlier seemed to dissolve. Stephanie still looked distressed. Johnny leaned closer to her as though preparing to tell her a secret.
“You know,” he said, grinning, “if Satan had you, you’d be in far more danger. We might throw you to an audience, but he’d throw you to his three-headed dog.”
“Three heads?” Stephanie sounded both afraid and fascinated.
“You’re mixing mythologies, Nny.”
“Hey, have you been to Hell?” Johnny glared up at Edgar.
“Carry on, Mr. Hades,” Edgar said, holding up his hands.
Johnny proceeded to blend nearly every underworld myth Edgar had ever read, and some he’d never heard of. Cerberus factored into the descent of Inanna, who somehow knew Isis, who married Osiris, whose skin tone was possibly diluted over the years and became Pepito’s, whose father had inherited the title of Satan from his father and his father and all the way back to original who, from what Edgar could untangle, had some kind of fling with Baal that got him voted off the island in the first place.
Hell was simultaneously burning hot and frozen solid, desolate and full of a bustling city, arid and pleasant, ugly and tantalizingly beautiful. Its people were all damned and saved, trapped and liberated, stupid and enlightened, solid and only as tangible as fog.
Stephanie followed all of it with rapt attention, often appearing as though just one more fantastical element would cause her to explode. Though not quite ready to lose his mind from excitement, Edgar enjoyed the story. Granted, his attention may have been more with the person telling the story than the mangled myth itself.
What Johnny hadn’t intended to be a bedtime story ended up draining the girl of all her energy and somewhere around an argument between Pluto, Izanagi and Loki, Stephanie yawned too obviously to be ignored. Johnny truncated the story suddenly (“Rocks fall, everyone dies.”), and told Stephanie she’d have to find some books to sort out the mess he’d woven for her.
She gave him a determined but tired nod and he and Edgar left her to almost certain nightmares.
Johnny’s mood had improved greatly from the impromptu story. He returned to the room and flopped onto the bed with a satisfied smile.
“I think I’m impressed,” Edgar told him, leaning against the doorframe.
“Of course you are.”
“I didn’t know you knew all those.”
“I didn’t know you knew any at all.”
“I was lost in a few places, so I’m not sure how much was creative liberties and how much was really there, but I followed.”
“I think Milton’s Satan was into his fellow fallen angels,” Johnny said, defending his story.
“And he’s different from current Satan how, exactly?”
“Ha, point.”
“Think she’ll sleep with all that in her head now?” Edgar shifted his weight against the frame.
“I like to think it doesn’t matter because we’re not in the same room with her. This isn’t like when we gave her coffee in the van that one time.”
“How much of it was true?”
“All of it’s true to somebody, just not in the order I arranged it.”
Edgar left the door frame to sit on the corner of the bed, “I mean, how much of that stuff did you see?”
“It all happened a couple thousand years ago, Edgar.”
“So?”
Johnny gave Edgar a look that Edgar couldn’t completely place, but it looked like a cross between proud and intrigued.
“I guess one of my ideas about death is that you just know things when you die,” Edgar continued when Johnny didn’t speak. “You know the whole history of everything once you’re dead, it all happens at once. Time doesn’t really work anymore.”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t know?”
Johnny spoke with his eyes closed, “I’m glad to have a reasonable idea as to who the fuck I am, actually. I wasn’t paying attention to the universe Big-Banging while I was wondering why I was in some guy’s bed.”
“Makes sense, I guess. I think I was hoping that we’d have some mystical new information when you came back. It’s something everyone wonders about. Having someone who went and remembers it, but can’t answer questions about it… I want to say it’s hard, but maybe that’s not quite the word.”
“Woe is you.”
“Yeah, it sure is rough having you alive instead of down there paying attention to the world happening at once. I don’t even know how I cope,” Edgar smiled, even if Johnny wasn’t going to see it.
“Life is so hard.”
“Speaking of that,” Edgar turned toward Johnny, hoping the shift in weight on the bed would get Johnny’s attention, “About not living to eighty…”
“Mmhmm.” Still with eyes closed.
“Are you planning on just willing yourself into non-existence, or…?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“I hope that you take my feelings into consideration.”
“I already told you I’m taking you with me.”
“Yeah,” Edgar stared at a patch of the carpet. The outdated old colors blurred into a shade of reddish grey, “Yeah, I know.”
“You’d rather something else?”
“I’d rather not die,” Edgar winced at something, but he wasn’t sure what, “but if I have to, I’d rather it be after I accomplish something.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re popular enough to have a stalker.”
“After I accomplish more, then. Everything I’m supposed to. We can’t do the Homicides thing when we’re old. We just can’t.”
“Hence the not living that long.”
“This can’t be all you want to do.”
“You can’t see things the way everyone else does.”
“I’m sure I could handle everyone else. It’s you I’ll never totally figure out.”
“That’s what keeps it interesting.”
Edgar wanted to make some sort of questionable comment about ‘interesting’ but Johnny sat up abruptly just as Edgar opened his mouth.
“What’s wrong?”
Johnny looked around the room frantically before pressing his ear to the wall behind him.
“Oh,” he let out a breath, “it’s Banshee’s TV.”
“Jeez, I thought something was wrong.”
“So did I.”
Edgar went to listen through the wall as well, and heard a faint crackle of commercials in a language he couldn’t understand. He knew it wasn’t German by now, but that was as much as he could determine.
“Why is her TV even on?” Edgar thought aloud.
Johnny shrugged, “Probably can’t sleep. It happens.”
A voice happily endorsing yet another product that no one needs hummed through the wall and was cut off, abruptly, by a strong electronic noise.
“Stephanie’s song?” Edgar offered. He felt himself straining to hear so much he thought he might push his ear through the drywall.
“No, that’s still the TV. You can’t hear that buzz over it?”
“Not really, no.”
“Moshi dekiru nara, anata to nigetai
Naraku no hate made mo”
“Huh.”
“What? What is it?” Edgar often felt like he was the only one who didn’t understand the more obvious intricacies of the universe, and this particular moment was no exception.
“She’s got some crazy Asian channel.”
“You mystically understand this language, too?”
“It’s Japanese.”
“How the hell do-?”
“I just know what it is - I can’t understand a damn thing.”
“It’s probably not subliminal messaging from your brain-melty woman then, right? She’d want you to understand,” Edgar wanted to let go of the wall, since he knew he wouldn’t be able to understand anything, but he had a feeling that the moment he leaned back, Johnny would hear something that would build up later into another event to shatter Tenna’s patience.
“That, and I’d feel her if she was just on the other side of some shitty dry wall.”
Edgar cringed, “I think I’m happy I have context for that sentence.”
“Run away...Doko made mo
Nigete, nigete, nigetai
“Run away...Okubyo na so jibun no kako kara”
The single English words Edgar could understand seemed to jump through the wall. He imagined that the uncomfortable expression he saw on Johnny’s face was mirrored on his own.
“That’s… not very encouraging,” Johnny said, now less enthusiastically attached to the wallpaper than he had been a moment ago.
“Run away...Honto wa otte, otte, ou no yo
Run away...Atarashii
Ah, honto no watashi o...”
“Yeeeeaaah,” Edgar pulled back from the wall and watched Johnny continue to look unsettled. Johnny’s expression moved rapidly between uncomfortable and interested until, Edgar assumed, the song ended.
“You know,” Johnny said, regarding a pillow near his knee, “I’m really starting to hate motels.”
*****
When Devi came in to ask about the noise, Stephanie told her that the television was broken.