Chapter Text
A few days would pass before Tommy saw Wilbur again. The morning after dinner, Kristin, without incredible reverence, reported that Wilbur’s car vanished from the driveway in the middle of the night. Nothing else was said.
Sleep continues to evade him. Each time his eyes fell shut with exhaustion, nightmares plagued the colorful sparks behind his lids. Rather than obey his weeping mind, he sits at his window and watches the people who hoot and holler on the other side of the street. The mediocre strumming of guitar, distant, from the graveyard down the road, he eventually surrenders to slumber. From there, he receives a dreamless sleep.
His blank void breaks abruptly as two spindly hands shake him awake. The man above him is decidedly not of his mind’s phantasms, but of his waking nightmares.
Wilbur.
His face is hidden by the darkness, hardly illuminated by his glowing orange nightlight. Even with the limited visibility, though, he manages to look like a wreck. His round glasses rest crooked on his hooked nose; his hair, curls unkempt, stirs with a mind of its own; his lips purse thin and anxious around his unlit cigarette. Tommy’s eyes dart about, trying to discern his intentions. Tears threaten to spill, hot and huge and utterly embarrassing.
“Hey. Don’t talk.” Wilbur says, the hushed voice still sharp. “C’mon, get up. You don’t even have to put your clothes on, just get your shoes and follow me.” He turns swiftly and leaves.
Like a sheep guided by a crook, Tommy obeys.
Tommy fumbles for socks and slips down the stairs. Wilbur sends him a distinct shushing gesture before he can lose the rest of his footing. Fear alone forces Tommy to his feet.
When Tommy descends the stairs, Wilbur already awaits with the front door open. His expressionless face, concentrated, stares beyond Tommy, like Charon at the banks of Styx. He remembers the illustrations in those books, gifted to him by Dream on his thirteenth birthday. The psychopomp seemed to hover off of those pages, the inversion of his eyes twisting Tommy’s heart. Terrifying, but inevitable.
While Dream ensured he focused solely on his religious purpose, he never punished Tommy for garnering knowledge. Often, Tommy read about Moses and Ramses, about Bacchus and his madness, about Mohammad and his revelations delivered by Archangel Jibreel, about Kali and her wrath. For every minute of foreign theology, though, he spent an hour re-learning his own. Dream encouraged him to expand his mind—only if he were willing to exchange a pound of flesh.
He inhales the cold morning air. The sun has not yet risen, and the temperature guarantees that Tommy won’t forget.
The glass screen door shuts with a quiet click, almost so soft that Tommy doesn’t catch it. Wilbur stands behind him, lighting the cigarette in his mouth, his hands cupped around the suddenly appearing flame like a campfire. He glances at Tommy for a moment before returning his focus to the vanishing flame.
“Damn it.” Wilbur mutters, breath turning to vapor, accompanied by no telltale black wisp. The car beeps. “Get in.”
Wilbur’s car is noticeably messier compared to the previous time Tommy rode. The floor forced Tommy’s knees to his chest, covered with such a thick layer of garbage that Tommy wondered how he could find the pedals. Among that trash laid cigarette butts, waxy paper spotted with oil, colorful wrappers, and plastic bags with a powdery white residue. Tommy picks up one of the plastic bags. Wilbur smacks his hand.
“Don’t touch that. You don’t know where it’s been.”
The drive remains silent, underscored by Wilbur’s muttering and the grinding gravel beneath the tires. He notices the sunroof on the top of his car, and notes its uselessness at this hour. Tommy can sense his frustration, because even when he slips into cruise control, he can’t get his cigarette to light. He pushes a strange contraption into Tommy’s hand.
“You try,” he says, tossing the null cigarette out the window.
Tommy regards the smooth plastic device in his palm. There’s a little red gear on it, and a silver dial. He presses on the red gear, but nothing happens.
“He never let you touch a lighter?” Wilbur says, half exasperated. “C’mon. I’ll show you.”
Tommy glances around, searching for another set of lights, eyes in the dark. But he finds none. He reluctantly returns the lighter.
“Use your nail to pull back the silver thingy and press on the red thingy at the same time.” Wilbur explains. Tommy watches as his fingernails—long, scraggly, and stained green—fiddle with the silver dial. Then: flame.
Tommy shrivels.
Wilbur, still holding the open flame, retrieves a new cigarette. It finally lights.
The tiny plume of ash is nothing compared to the smokestacks in his old home. But it’s enough for tears to fall. He turns away.
His voice shakes against his will. “Wilbur, where are we going?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Wilbur says, quick and biting. “You’ll know when we get there.” His tone is only a little softer.
Tommy wonders what he means.
The tree line consumes the horizon and Tommy tries to define the shapes in his vision. Due to the darkness, his self-appointed task is near impossible. Only a blur of branches, spread like the imprint of a crushed hand, reaching up and imitating its counterpart within the soil. They shouldn’t be so terrifying, as the late springtime crowns them with their leaves. However, the dead trees, yet to fall, extend skyward, like a lethal claw extending to the clouds.
To Lady Prime. To his god.
To his mother.
Tommy envies the gall of these deceased trees, their courage to shake a fist towards their creator. He wishes he had that bravery; he wishes he were anyone else; he wishes he were borne any other burden.
The car rolls to a slow stop. So slow that Tommy doesn’t realize it’s stopped until Wilbur nudges him. He jolts.
At first, he doesn’t recognize the place. The clearing, surrounded by trees, is vast, but barren. The grass is short and stubby and black, and Tommy realizes that it’s drenched in ash when his footsteps leave shoe-shaped prints that come from the car. In the distance, there is a mass, a crumbling building. As Tommy approaches, it grows taller, and it reaches the height that he remembers. Though, it has shrunk since the last time he’d been here.
“Wilbur?”
His voice isn’t far behind. “Yeah?”
“How did you know?”
He’s quiet for a moment, then he walks up beside him. “I went through your file. Found the coordinates to this place. Thought you might want to come back.”
Tommy pushes past a yellow sheet of plastic, labeled “CRIME SCENE: DO NOT CROSS”. A weighted air falls over him. The distinct scent of burnt flesh still permeates his nostrils, remaining after the weeks and months he spent away. The soles of his feet tingle with that familiar burning sensation. He shivers.
He stops before the remnants of the wooden doors, which have burned away for the most part. Pieces of himself beg that he reach for the knobs, throw open the door, search for his past and die in the way he’d been born. The other pieces urge him to retreat to the car, to Wilbur, of all people, and run until his legs grind to mounds of sinew and blood and he can no longer move. He suppresses both of them.
He reaches for the handles, twin rings of iron, and clasps his hand around them. He keeps his hold for a moment. Then, it burns.
Tommy yelps and pulls away. He stares at his hands for any sign of injury, but they look fine. The heat left no mark. He looks back to Wilbur. He stares at him with a hint of concern on his face, glasses glinting in the moonlight. His cigarette lays forgotten at his feet.
“Are… are you okay?” he asks, carefully, as if speaking might hurt him.
“I’m fine,” Tommy snaps. After a brief moment, he asks, “Can you open the door?”
Wilbur pauses. With a shrug, he walks up, hunched over a little. Tommy watches as he places a hand on the knob and, strangely, does not flinch back in pain. The door swings open, and the hallway is dark.
“I’ve already been inside, so I don’t need to come with unless you want me to,” Wilbur says. He still holds the door, unaffected by the searing heat in those iron handles.
Tommy wonders if Wilbur descends from gods. Perhaps, kinder ones.
He takes his first step inside the cathedral he once called home. He expects to be brought to his knees with some kind of revelation, but he is met with nothing. No sudden premonition, prophecy, or vision is blessed upon him; no sort of divine realization hits him. Tommy is utterly godless.
He forces the pain down his throat and continues. Like the grass outside, the stone is coated in soot, spotted with footprints that aren’t his. He follows the prints through the corridor—there’s more than a few sets.
Tommy does his best to ignore the rooms which line the hall, full of memories of a simpler age. An age, an era in which he had a purpose. Echoes from his childhood assault his ears like fits from a sickened state. Before he reaches the chapel, however, he stops.
His chambers, and across from them, Dream’s.
He considers going inside. A tiny voice from the back of his mind tugs on his fingers, reminiscing about the sweet breakfasts and little candies Dream would give him in the mornings and the evenings. Those gentle spring days when Dream would lean back in his old plush chair and Tommy would read to him. He would recite the Iliad, or perhaps the Epic of Gilgamesh, or Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The stormy summer nights when lightning would send Tommy to the foot of Dream’s bed, and he’d find comfort in Dream’s hand.
Those days are over, Tommy thinks. They are gone and I’ll never see Dream again.
He focuses on the second set of twin doors, wooden again, but without handles. Despite the lack of light, Tommy traces his finger over the elaborate carvings chiseled into the mahogany. Dream told him about these doors and their design. He commissioned them specifically for Tommy before he entered their world. They contained the scripture, he said, your conception, every miracle you’ll perform, up until you bring us along to Lady Prime.
What happens after that? Tommy asked, much younger than he is now, when his fingers thrummed fat and healthy against Dream’s desk.
That’s for you to know, Theseus.
Tommy presses his palms against the wood, but the doors refuse to budge. He wonders if it wishes to keep him out, to oust him for the embarrassment he caused it. He inhales sharply—breathing a mouthful of dust—and forces the door with his shoulder. It moves.
The creaky hinges reveal a scene promised by the yellow tape which surrounded the perimeter. Ash forms a thick layer on the stone, covering every item left upon the altar. He swears that there had been more before—more candles, more herb packets, more offerings crowded around the podium where Dream would give his sermons. However, other than ash, there are only a few candelabras.
White chalk is sprinkled in an amorphous mass all over the floor. Tommy steps over the line gingerly, though his footprints leave enough evidence of his visit. He trudges through the ash, focused solely on the dais where he had nearly danced himself to paradise. He pauses, for no reason at all, and walks towards the pews, which had previously been relocated to the sides of the room for his celebration. He can see something. A hand, a head.
His heart lurches when he realizes what he’s looking at.
A skull—so small —melded into the cushions of a pew. It is no longer attached to a neck, or shoulders. There’s a small hole in the back of her head, a cracked spot where dried blood once dripped from. Its only company are the five fingers similarly stuck to the pew. Touched by flame, but not enough, a bit of flesh, a lock of hair, still clings to the bone. Tommy chokes on tears. He knows whose head this is. He knows from the color of its hair.
The girl who’d crowned him before his death.
Tears fall unrestricted from his eyes, landing on the little girl’s bones. She’s dead, immortalized only with her head. He weeps quietly, a hand clamped over his mouth. He failed, and he killed this little girl. He survived, and he killed this little girl.
He doesn’t have much time to stew in his guilt, because a hand squeezes his shoulder and pulls him from his mind.
“You alright, Tommy?” Wilbur’s voice brings him to his feet. “You were taking kind of a while, and the sun’s coming up, so— oh.”
Tommy pinpoints the moment that Wilbur noticed the skull on the pew. His face doesn’t change nearly as much as Tommy thought—or wanted —but stays in a face of small shock, of vague sadness redirected.
“Maybe we should go home.”
“No,” Tommy says, and he doesn’t expect to hear his voice come so fast. “No, there’s one more thing.”
He remembers, once, many years ago, a brick that could move. He watched from a pew, as Dream moved that brick, and took something from that space. He thinks Dream cried over it. He sniffles, and presses away from Wilbur, whose hand lingered. He doesn’t care that he might scare the life out of Kristin, or Phil, or even Techno by disappearing from his bed and showing up on the porch just before the rest of the neighborhood awoke. He needs to know what Dream kept behind that brick.
Wilbur’s footfalls grow distant but reverberate about the chapel. Tommy climbs the dais and passes the contents of the altar. He scratches at the wall behind the altar, prying at the insolent bricks, for the weak link, for the secret Dream hid.
A loose brick draws Tommy’s attention. His fingers, though shredded, grasp the edges, and it falls to the ground.
There.
Tommy reaches inside. There’s a vase, tiny, with a lid, tucked behind the stone wall. He wraps his bloody hands around the vase and frees it from its decade-old prison.
In the limited light, he admires its design. Although it is smeared with blood—his own—it’s beautiful. Painted a pale blue, marbled with deep violet veins, like roots. He turns it in his hand. A golden shine catches his eye.
On the vase, he realizes, there's a little gold plate, with words engraved on it.
Mary Innes. Loving woman. Human mother to Theseus.
Eight words to shatter him completely. Human, he thinks, I am human. I am no divine thing. He realizes that the vase in his hand is no vase, but an urn. He cradles the urn, his mother, his real mother, in his arms. He turns back to Wilbur, who stands at the door, watching not vigilantly, but anxiously.
He walks, absent, back to Wilbur. His foster brother’s eyes scan him, careful, almost gentle.
“Ready to go?”
Tommy nods wordlessly. Wilbur takes a deep breath, then coughs. He takes Tommy’s free hand—a strange gesture of softness—and guides them down the hallway. Tommy successfully ignores the rooms.
Wilbur glances at him for a moment before opening the final doors. However, after the wave of cool morning air hits them, Wilbur halts.
“Shit,” he mutters. His hand falls away from Tommy’s.
Tommy peers around him, looking for the occurrence that could’ve earned an exploitative from him. He flinches when he sees light.
A flame, a small one, eating away at the grass from where Wilbur dropped his cigarette.
Tommy thinks about the little girl whose life he traded for his own. He thinks about her gap-toothed smile, the flowers she coronated him with, the little hole in the back of his skull.
He breaks.
He crumbles to the ground, sobs folding his rib cage inward. His fingers dig into his hair, still bleeding, and he pulls. The flowers that were in his hair need to come out. They’ve threaded into his scalp and burrowed beneath his flesh, sending their roots into his bones and into his brain. He needs them out, out.
“Tommy?”
That voice, he knows that voice, but he can’t focus on it. He can’t hear it. He can't hear anything, he can’t find its origin. He can only focus on the flowers in his hair, leeching off of him, killing everything he touches. He’s horrid, destructive, cruel. His skin sears whomever he loves. He’s a killer.
“Tommy, it’s Wilbur. It’s me. The fire’s gone. You’re okay.”
Wilbur. Wilbur. He knows that name. He remembers that face. That face which greeted him with a scowl, that voice which would berate and bully him, those hands which took him from anchorless sleep and dragged him to his former home, the rotting corpse of his childhood, the skeleton of his destiny. The man who smoked cigarettes in the car with the windows up, the man who rested a hand on his shoulder, the man who guided him through the throat of the cathedral and brought him to the comforting air.
Tommy lifts his head. Wilbur kneels in front of him, his face screwed with the concern he hadn’t spared for the girl. He’s not wearing his coat, which lays discarded over the patch of former flame. Suffocated. Dead. Gone.
“Tommy. It’s okay. It’s okay.” He says it with a certain desperation and Tommy’s not sure if he believes him.
He finds his hands, trembling, pooled in Wilbur’s. There’s a bit of fresh blood on them, accompanied by pain in little crescent moons on his head.
“Breathe. In for four, hold for five, out for seven. Can you do that for me, Toms?”
Toms. The nickname is so peculiar, so foreign that Tommy has to stop for a second to remember who’s talking. Wilbur, the man who’s hated him since he arrived, gave him a nickname. He feels so fragile.
Obediently, he follows Wilbur’s instructions, imitating his breathing pattern. His heart slows, his head stays in one spot, his hands stop shaking so badly. He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. He’s real.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Toms. I’m sorry,” Wilbur mutters, partially incoherent. Tommy isn’t sure what he’s apologizing for.
Tommy feels himself swathed into a hug. He accepts it, falling limp like a kitten between its mother’s teeth. Wilbur crushes him against his chest. Tommy pushes his head into Wilbur’s collarbone. The pressure is comforting.
“You dropped your urn,” Wilbur says, after a minute. Tommy jumps up. He grabs it and inspects it carefully for any damage. Nothing. His dead mother, safe in ashes.
Wilbur extends a hand, his coat folded over his forearm. He pulls Tommy up.
“Okay. Let’s go before Mom reports us missing.”