Work Text:
Gotta Find the Passage Back to the Place I Was Before
“Your wife shouldn't have dug that hole, Jim.”
“NO!”
The Man in Yellow extends his claws and rips her father’s throat out like he’s tearing paper. No…it’s easier than tearing paper, though this thought doesn’t cross Julie’s mind until the fifth time she tries to stop him.
He never hurts her afterwards, just turns and gives Julie a smug look. They’ve met before this moment - the demon told her how he killed her Dad, but left Julie to figure out where in the forest he did it.
While randomly jumping from year to year, from chapter to chapter of the Town’s history, Julie encountered the Man in Yellow in the 1930s, the day he first donned his now-ragged suit. It was crisp and clean back then, which leads Julie to wonder if - though all the other Creatures in this Town can shapeshift - he kept wearing, whenever he was corporeal, the same exact suit. Something robbed from a dead man’s closet. (Maybe Jade’s closet. She’d ask him, but Julie doesn’t care - no matter how much Mom loves him - two shits about Jade!) Further back in the Town’s history, the Man wears different garments, but they’re always gold or piss yellow.
He used to have a firmer hand in events, walking amongst the Creatures like the leader of a posse. Before she found the chapter containing Dad’s death, Julie stumbled into one in which the Boy in White and Man in Yellow were staring each other down at the center of Town, like duelists about to draw their pistols. But the Boy in White noticed Julie’s presence, and cast her back to the Ruins.
Julie plans to try a sixth time - maybe this time she can make it to the Bottle Tree and stop Jade from playing that stupid fucking song! But the Ruins won’t take her that far forward, or that far back. It’s like the Boy in White and Man in Yellow are blocking her from that very specific moment in space and time.
She finds Jade in the 50s, and the 30s, and the goddamn 1800s. The Ruins take her to the day Jade and Mom made the Bottle Tree, willing their future selves to find it and remember. But it was nightfall and the Creatures were coming. They knew they weren’t getting out of that forest alive.
Julie watches them fall in love in the 1700s, and in the 1600s, and she curses the Boy in White and Man in Yellow for dicking her around like this, like they’re telling her she’s trying to rewrite the wrong love story!
She can only observe as all these stories unfold, but that doesn’t explain why she could interact with a rope in that dungeon the first time she traveled. Unless she was caught in a causality loop? The rope couldn’t fall unless Julie threw it, and Julie wouldn’t be there to throw it if the rope hadn’t fallen.
***
For a long time, Julie can’t control where the Ruins take her. And for a long time, only Ethan and Randall know what she’s doing, ‘cause she knows that Mom and Jade won’t approve. (Mom and Jade. Mom and Jade. Julie wonders if the same thing would have happened had her parents got a normal divorce, with no demon claws to the throat. Or maybe Mom having a new boyfriend would be more tolerable with Dad still alive.)
Julie should have been more confident Jade would help her, and not forbid her from traveling outright, when she finally spills the beans she’s a Storywalker. Though Jade’s way of “helping” isn’t finding a solution, it’s explaining how causality loops work. (Why any efforts to save Dad’s life are fruitless.) She should never have told him about the rope!
Julie begs Jade not to tell Mom, but she’s his fucking ‘soulmate,’ so he tells her anyway. Mom is torn between finding a way to save Dad, and listening to her soulmate’s insistence it’s impossible.
“Nothing is impossible,” counters Mom, and Julie cringes when she kisses Jade’s cheek. “You taught me that.”
Mom smiles and her ‘soulmate’ smiles back. Julie feels sick.
Ethan is more accepting of this new arrangement - of Jade moving out of the bar and into their house. Julie thinks he should have stayed at the bar, but Henry needed a place to live, and Jade wanted to be close to Mom.
Ethan misses Dad, but when they found his corpse dumped in the center of Town - (at first, no one knew what killed him or how his body got there, but they eventually learned it was a “message” from the Man in Yellow) - Jade stepped up as a protector. With Dad dead, he was the only other man in Town - not including Victor - that Ethan trusted.
***
Julie doesn’t know how she knows how to spot Mom in the past, she just does. Maybe it’s something all Storywalkers know how to do - recognize dramatic irony. When she doesn’t watch them fall in love, she watches Mom and Jade fight, and sometimes get each other killed. One time, she watches them barely acknowledge each other’s presence, before a Creature snags and eats one of them.
Often the Boy in White appears, like a footnote or citation. The soulmates who craft the Bottle Tree narrowly dodge death many times, all due to his intervention. Until the day it’s completed and they know they’ll have to try again, in another life.
“What do you want me to know?” Julie shouts at the Boy, but the spirit turns and walks away from her. “Huh? What the FUCK am I supposed to learn from all this?”
He never answers, and the Man in Yellow never acknowledges her either, except the times she tries to save Dad.
“Go home, sweetheart,” says the disgusting demon mildly, wiping his bloody claws off on his suit while Dad bleeds out. Her father takes his last breath - again - and the Man in Yellow comments, “Five times, and you still haven’t made it. Not that he’d believe you, of course. Jim died an unbeliever. He dies an unbeliever every time.”
Julie sobs, collapsing to the forest floor. She’d flee the Man in Yellow, but she knows he enjoys watching her suffer. He won’t lay a finger on her because this is more fun.
That’s something all the Creatures and the Man have in common. They like to have fun.
“Go home to your new Daddy,” adds the Man, and Julie glares up at the demon.
“How long’s it been, huh?” he asks. “Two years? Three? Four? How often can you make it to those Ruins, girl?”
Julie stumbles to her feet, readying herself for the journey back. On her sixth try, she’ll need to include Mom and Jade, Randall and Ethan, and maybe even Boyd. Definitely Boyd, who the Man in Yellow loves to torture more than anyone.
“Four years, huh?” guesses the Man in Yellow accurately. He whistles. “Those two must be sharing a bed by now.”
“Shut up.”
“That Boy,” he says, meaning the Boy in White, “keeps bringing them back here, they may as well have a little fun along with the rest of us.”
“Shut. Up.”
“He’s not just a good musician, he’s a real handsome fella, too.”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
Julie steps forward, finger in the Man in Yellow’s face, and steps out of the Ruins. She scurries back to the center, but it remains a pile of rocks. The portal is unpredictable, and won’t let her travel more than once a day.
Julie curses, kicks a stone, and bruises her foot. She sits down and cries, rocking back and forth. She can’t strategize like this - can’t think with Dad’s blood on her clothes. But no, she doesn’t have his blood on her clothes. She projected herself, like an avatar, while this version of her never moved.
She heard Jade making love to Mom through the wall, once. Now she doesn’t know how to unhear them.
***
In the summer, Jade shaves his beard and cuts his hair. The Town has regular seasons now, like they really are in Maine. In the daylight, life almost feels normal. But life in Town isn’t normal. It’ll never be 'normal.' On days Fatima isn’t killing old ladies or giving birth to demons, Elgin isn’t locking girls in basements, and Boyd isn’t losing his shit, the jagged scar on Randall’s cheek serves as a reminder.
After four years, Mom doesn’t stop Julie from dating the man. She’s twenty, now, and other than Elgin - who Julie once thought, before he kidnapped Fatima, could someday be her boyfriend - the Town hasn’t given Julie many options.
“Be safe,” Randall says, like every time Julie traverses the Town’s history.
“I’ll be fine,” she reassures him, kissing Randall softly on the lips.
Julie steps into the Ruins and onto the Colony House porch, right next to Elgin, who’s lounging there people-watching folks on the lawn.
“Did you…did you cut your hair?” Elgin asks her with a smile. He looks confused, and Julie inwardly curses she wasn’t more careful. She spots the other Julie - her past self - through the window.
“It’s just a wig,” Julie tells him. “Neat, huh?”
“Yeah,” says Elgin. “It looks real.” He nods and Julie awkwardly nods back.
“Hey, this camera’s pretty cool,” says Elgin, holding up the polaroid camera that ultimately leads to Fatima’s kidnapping and torture. “I’m gonna make a collage of everyone in Colony House.”
“That sounds great,” says Julie. “Look, I gotta go.” She looks through the window at her past self again. “Though, uh, I might be right back. Without the wig. Don’t mention it, okay?”
“The wig?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
“Awesome,” says Julie, emoting way more affection than she feels for this broken man. But no, this Elgin hasn’t been broken yet.
Julie excuses herself, and re-entering the house takes her back to the Ruins, where Randall is still there waiting. He helps Julie to her feet, asking, “How long were you gone this time?”
“Only a minute,” answers Julie. “It gave me an idea.”
“For the sixth try,” guesses Randall.
“For the sixth try,” Julie confirms. “Let’s go home. There’s someone I’ve gotta talk to first.”
“Who?”
“Elgin.”
***
What’s weird about Mom and Jade is that they don’t fight. It’s weird because when they met, they used to fight all the time, mostly because Jade was annoyingly arrogant.
It can’t be because they were a couple five hundred years ago. Surely even back then, growing up in these woods, they weren’t always in perfect harmony. Maybe it’s because, in the five hundred years since, they’ve met each other again and again and again. The Boy in White cursed them the day he blessed them. The Man in Yellow gave the villagers eternal life as demons, ghouls hungry for flesh. The Boy in White gave Mom and Jade eternal life, but in the least helpful way possible, because they couldn’t ever remember that’s why they were there.
“You haven’t forgotten Dad, have you?” Julie asks her mother one day, when Jade and Ethan aren’t around.
“Of course not,” asserts Mom. “Why would you think that?”
“Because…” Julie trails off. She’s twenty years old and still sounds sixteen.
“Because of Jade,” guesses Mom accurately. When Julie nods in affirmation, the woman tiredly sighs.
“I’m trying to avenge your father just as hard as you are,” says Mom. She lowers her voice, as if Jade and Ethan are able to hear them all the way from the diner.
“I’m going to get him,” says the woman, anger bubbling beneath the surface. Julie likes seeing her angry more than seeing her sad.
“The Man in the Yellow Suit,” clarifies Mom. “He’s going to pay for what he’s done.”
“I know,” says Julie. “I know.”
“So what makes you think–?”
“You know why! If I can find a way…if I can find the right moment. Change the right events–”
“Honey, time travel doesn’t work like that,” says Mom. “Ethan’s told me about Storywalking, and Jade knows–”
“Nothing!” snaps Julie. “Einstein’s theories…quantum physics…all the shit Jade was doing before he came here? Doesn’t matter! It’s magic, Mom. Not science! You’re living fucking proof!”
“Language,” chides her mother, and Julie scoffs.
“I can do this,” asserts Julie. “I can save Dad.”
“And what? Change the past four years?”
“Yeah, Mom,” says Julie. “That’s exactly what I plan to do.”
***
“It’s not what you think,” said Jade, the first time he objected to Julie using her abilities.
“Why don’t you think I should go back and save Dad?”
“Because it isn’t safe.”
“I’m not gonna get stuck in the past,” said Julie. “I’m not gonna die. The Man in Yellow can’t hurt me there if I’m protected here.”
“You don’t know that!” Jade exclaimed. Screamed it, like he really was her father, afraid he was gonna lose her.
“You don’t want to change things, do you?” guesses Julie. “You don’t want me to stop you and Mom from remembering.” After a beat, Julie adds, “Save Dad so she’ll never choose you.”
“That’s not–” Jade grunted in frustration. “We needed to remember so we could end the curse. So we could save the kids’ souls and release everybody else’s. So we could stop the Man in Yellow.”
“And be with my mom.”
“I get that you resent me,” said Jade. “But I love your mother. I’ve loved her for literally five hundred years. Can you cut a guy a little slack?”
Julie rolled her eyes, eliciting another tired sigh from Jade.
“Helping your dad and loving your mom are not mutually exclusive,” said Jade. “I would save Jim in a heartbeat if it was possible. I would come with you on your Storywalk and fight that motherfucking Man in Yellow my goddamn self!”
“You’re just saying that ‘cause…” Julie shrugged. “‘Cause that’s what I want to hear.”
“Tabitha loves him,” said Jade. “Loves, as in present-tense. She’s been holding onto Jim’s memory for four years. He’s your father. And he was the love of her life.”
“You’re the love of her life,” said Julie. “You just said it. For five hundred years!”
Jade waved his hand dismissively, saying, “It’s not the same.”
Julie grunted in frustration. “I don’t understand!”
“I never fell in love before coming here,” explained Jade. “There have been people I cared strongly about. People I enjoyed having sex with…” He huffed a self-deprecating laugh. “And sometimes even people who were both.” After a beat, Jade added, “I always believed in ‘True Love,’ I just pretended that I didn’t. When everyone thinks you're an asshole just ‘cause your mind functions differently, you play up the role of insensitive asshole.” With a wince, Jade asked, “Does that make any sense?”
Julie nodded, conceding, “Yeah. Yeah, it kinda does.”