Chapter Text
Chapter 1
[Every action is subject to a judgment, and such judgment is eternal. ]
Click! Whur…
“What’cha doing?” Harker gives the Polaroid slide several quick shakes, squinting against the afternoon sun.
It’s cold as Hell out in the yard, fresh snow glinting off the trees as a harsh wind sends it fluttering. Far off a bird cries out, a strange sound she doesn’t recognize from the sorts of little sparrows that live in the shed. Cuc-koo. Cuuu. Kooo. Harker likes the snow only because it means momma doesn’t make her go to school, and the bus won’t come all the way out here either, but she thinks maybe she won’t have to go back to school anymore now that the tall man is here. He’s funny in a weird way, like he doesn’t really know how to be a person and doesn’t care to learn. She likes him for those reasons and all the others that make her mother hate him.
A secret part of Harker thinks her momma hates him even more for that.
He turns away from the station wagon’s hood to peer over his shoulder at her. There’s grease, or oil, or whatever, staining his fingers and up his skinny forearms from where he’s been working on momma's sh*tkicker car. It looks strange compared to his creamy white shirt and slacks, and Harker’s pretty sure that’s the exact opposite of what he ought to be wearing when messing around with a car. Above him the shed light flickers and sways, casting his pale face in odd shadows. For just a moment she can’t see his eyes at all, just a sharp blackness like half of his face was replaced by the pitch of night before he comes back into focus.
Sometimes there’s greasepaint on his face, like a clown or something strange from a magic show, but other times he’s just got blue eyeshadow around his eyes. So do the ladies in momma’s magazines and she says it means he’s a queer, but Harker doesn’t know what that means and doesn’t want to ask and get a Bible lesson about it. She’s pretty sure that her mother doesn’t like queer stuff, so it makes her like him even more.
“Fixing the motor.” He hums a tune only he knows, a quirk of his strange painted mouth. “What are you doing, Cuckoo?”
Momma doesn’t like when the tall man calls her that, either. Maybe it’s just that she doesn’t like anything about him on principle. He calls her Cuckoo and she calls him Longlegs or sometimes, when she is trying to sound grownup, just Dale. Momma calls him Mr. Cobble in a tone that makes it sound like a cuss word. She figures it doesn’t matter much to him if he’s called Dale, or Longlegs, or even a queer. Whenever momma calls him that word it just makes him laugh, but Harker doesn’t think it’s meant to be funny.
Another harsh wind rattles her bones and Harker scampers closer to the relative warmth of the rickety old shed. The lamp hanging from the rafters makes it at least warm enough that the snow has melted in a ring around where he stands, but Longlegs looks woefully under-dressed for the weather anyway. Just that billowy shirt and vest, his shaggy hair held away from his forehead in a haphazard ponytail. There’s something funny about his face, she thinks, like he’s perpetually wearing a rubber Halloween mask and part of her really wants to touch his skin just to find out if he is.
The teachers at school said it’s rude to ask people about stuff like that so she doesn’t, but Harker suspects he can hear the thoughts in her head anyway. One day she’ll test it, she’ll think of the funniest joke in the whole world and if he laughs that’ll be enough proof. He’s already looking at her with this smirk on his face - like he’s heard that thought too, so maybe that’s all the proof she needs.
“What’s the engine do?” She turns the Polaroid photo around when he cranes over her shoulder to take a peek - proudly showing off her photograph of the house bathed in snow.
He nods approvingly.
“Well, it makes the car run.” Dale says awkwardly, clearly struggling to figure out a way to explain the mechanics of car maintenance to a nine year old.
She lets out a little snort, shuffling back far enough to angle her camera and catch his whole body in frame. There’s a reason she calls him Longlegs - he’s all wiry and tall, sorta scrawny looking despite how Harker knows he’s real strong. He barely fits in the frame, even hunched over the car like he is, but something in her gut tells Harker she’s going to need these photographs later. A looming sense that one day, once the car is fixed and the backroads aren’t iced over, he’ll leave. Harker doesn’t want to forget him, but fears the innate knowledge that she will.
If Longlegs is gone, she’ll be stuck here all alone with momma and hours of going bleary-eyed on Bible verses.
“Sounds boring.” Harker saddles back up beside him, looking curiously into the hood. Then, feeling particularly brave, she asks him one of the dozens of burning questions rattling around her head. “Hey, what’s ‘queer’ mean?”
Longlegs barks out a shrill laugh, just this short and sharp hyena sound and nearly drops his wrench into the tangle of foreign wires and car parts. “My, my little birdie, has your ma’ been having words with you?”
He sounds profoundly amused, a pleased little grin quirking his mouth. Longlegs isn’t handsome like guys on TV, but his peculiar face is striking and Harker likes looking at him - especially when he smiles. Not pretty, but interesting.
“Momma said you’re a queer and if I’m around you too much it’ll rub off on me.” She shrugs, unconcerned. “What’s it mean?”
Dale wipes his hands on an old rag, but oil stains remain beneath his fingernails. He leans against the bumper, one ankle crossed over the other as he balances his palms behind himself in the lip of the open hood. Golly he’s long, it’s not the first time she’s thought it and it won’t be the last. But she’s only nine and hopes that means she’s got enough time to get long legs, too.
“It means lotsa things.” He says bright and sing-song, bobbing his head back-and-forth to music playing on the tinny radio he’s got on the toolbox. “What your ma’ is saying about me is that I go running around with men and women equally and it makes her ohhhh so steamin’ mad. She’ll tell you I dress like a girl, if she’s feeling charitable.”
Being just nine years old, Harker doesn’t care an ounce about gross stuff like dating. Which is, in her humble opinion, a decidedly grownup activity she thinks about the same way she thinks about one day having to go to work or file taxes - it’s all incomprehensible adult behavior. Personally, Harker thinks he dresses real pretty and doesn’t get what's so bad about a thing like that. She wrinkles her nose and stares up, up and up, at him.
“You date? What for?”
He blinks once very slowly, then laughs giddily again - looking positively delighted by her conclusion.
“Sometimes you just wanna.” He tries, and fails, to keep the amusem*nt off his face.
“If you say so…” Harker sends him a dubious look, haughtily skeptical.
It sounds dumb and gross to her in general, though not for the same reasons as her mother. She doesn’t care about what he looks like or who he’s messing with, it is the simple fact that any grownup dating at all is bizarre. Besides, as far as Harker is concerned momma doesn’t have room to talk because she wasn’t married when Harker was born and some folks at church think that's a sin. Frankly she doesn’t think any of it matters at all, but can’t say that without getting in trouble.
They don’t talk about how he works slower than he really should on fixing up the car, or what it means when he inevitably must move on from the Harker’s family home. Longlegs is a temporary fixture in her childhood and Harker knows this, but is very good at pretending not to. In the ways of all children, she has decided as long as she doesn’t think about him leaving that means he won’t. It’s nice to pretend for a while, because she has had no one else in her life but momma and Bible stories.
When he playfully steals the camera from her and snaps a photograph of Harker, she is laughing and reaching to snatch the Polaroid back from him - her hand a blur but her face is bright.
Eventually she succeeds in winning the camera over and spends the whole day alternating between pestering him about car parts and running off to take pictures of red breasted robins. Hoping that she can keep him in these photographs long after he has gone.
[A supernormal impulse came over her to write a paper full of the most hideous blasphemies against Our Lord and His Blessed Mother]
Now that Longlegs is here, Harker absolutely hates arguing with her mother inside the house. It makes her so embarrassed - leaves her feeling like the little kid she really is. Instead, she and momma get into arguments outside…where she’s certain he can still hear the shouting just fine, but it feels less shameful somehow. More polite not to argue ‘in front of a guest’, not that momma would ever call him a guest. The problem is they fight often enough that eventually something has to give.
Harker slams the back door behind her, stomping petulantly for the foyer stairs with great big tears on her face that she furtively rubs away with her shirtsleeve. ‘Stupid momma and stupid dreams and stupid Bible. Stupid everything.’ Passing through the kitchen, she pauses at the sight of the basem*nt door open just an inch - enough that she can make out the shine of light below and the scratch of a record spinning.
…Stopped into a church, I passed along the way…
Momma always tells her not to go down there when ‘Mr. Cobble’ is around, but the reason for why she ought not to is ever changing; First momma said that it’s rude to go in someone’s room without asking, but then it became he might be the sort of man who touches little girls in a bad way, and finally they settled on the fact Ruth just doesn’t want Harker around him at all. ‘He’s a bad influence, angel. I don’t like you hanging around him all day.’ Harker begrudgingly agrees it would be awfully rude to go down without permission, it is basically his bedroom after all, but he left the door open so that must make it okay.
She takes the basem*nt steps loud enough that he would certainly hear her coming and could tell her off if he really wanted to, but she tries to be polite about it. As for her mothers’ other concerns, well, Harker figures if he wanted to touch her he already would have. He never even goes upstairs to where her and momma’s rooms are on the second floor, Longlegs is an odd man who can do very odd things but he doesn’t frighten her. Not like that. Besides, just because he’s a queer doesn’t mean he’s a pervert or something like momma thinks.
The basem*nt looks different now, more organized than the forgotten storage room it had been. An old red afghan is sprawled in the corner with a mattress plopped right on top, there’s mismatched sheets on it that she recognizes from when her mother meant to donate them to the church months ago. A few of the man’s suitcases have been stacked together to make a table for the little stained glass lamp that sits atop them, and she spots his shiny white boots primly tucked beside the stairs. It makes her sorta sad he sleeps down here like that, but he never seems to mind sharing awkward space with them. Harker still doesn’t know why he’s here or why momma lets him stay, despite how much she dislikes the man.
One time she’d dared to ask if he was her daddy, who she was told is a deadbeat that never even stuck around to see her be born, but when she did momma struck her across the face so hard it left a smarting bruise for two whole weeks. Harker never asked again.
On the workbench a scattered assortment of carving utensils are strewn about, weird looking metal tools shaped like little trowels or hooks or blades, and Longlegs reaches for one as he sits on an uncomfortable looking stool to work. He acknowledges her with a glance in the mirror propped against the wall, the dancing amusem*nt in his eyes suggests he’d heard their earlier argument just fine. Harker used the word ‘c*nt’ today and her mother thinks she learned it from him. She didn’t, but momma doesn’t believe her.
“Hello, little birdie.” He chimes out to her and she takes that as permission to come in, so to speak.
Harker steps down off the last step, tentatively wandering over to the workbench. There’s a lotta mess on it, tools and materials she isn’t familiar with and knows better than to touch. She’s very interested in them anyway. He’s got a crummy looking record player on the far end of the workbench and a couple of vinyl's propped up near it, but she doesn’t recognize most of the names. Momma only lets her listen to gospel music, so Harker doesn’t listen to any music at all. She likes whatever Longlegs is playing, though.
…and I pretend to pray. You know the preacher like the cold…
“Hi…” She mutters awkwardly, scuffling the toe of her boot on the floor. Then, because she is nine years old and angry, blurts out the only thought in her head. “I hate my mom, sometimes.”
“Baby bird hates the nest.” He coos, gently teasing. “It’s too small for her great big wings.”
“Yeah.” Harker agrees a little childishly, watching as he carves into a pale slab of…stone? Wood? It looks like a mask, almost. The empty eyed face of a doll. “…Can I tell you a secret?”
“A secret! Yes of course, shall we pinky promise on it?” He holds his hand out to her, grinning wide and crooked.
She reaches out, looping her little finger around his - pinky promise, and it’s the first time they’ve ever touched. It’s a bit thrilling because he is so otherworldly to her and only half-human at the best of times, but right now he’s solid and real and willing to listen to a child's frustrations. In that bizarre way in which he always seems to prioritize her over whatever else must surely be more important. There are not many friends to be had out here in this tiny corner of Oregon, not when momma makes any other kids Harker brings over say prayers at 10 o’clock just like she has to and momma is no more gentle with them than with her.
…all the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray…
The other kids think she’s a weirdo with a weirdo mother, not even the church likes it when they show up for mass. Momma always has some strange things to say about the Devil and Father Dockett frowns a lot, Harker is simply guilty by association. But Longlegs is not cowed by her mother and doesn’t care about morning prayers or that Harker is a weirdo, because he is also a weirdo. When she showed him her photo album full of Polaroid bird photos and feathers and little bones, he listened and asked questions and liked that Harker could tell him the Latin name for each one. He didn’t even tell her it’s stupid and boring and weird.
Weird people should stick together, she’s decided.
“Momma yells at me ‘cuz I see things.” Harker clambers up onto a stool, nudging herself back-and-forth with a rusty squeeeeeak. “Like how I knew Mr. Crowley was cheating on his wife with the grocery store lady. I dunno, I just…see stuff in my head and it’s almost always true.”
Their arguments are never about just one thing, so what started as getting in trouble for saying a bad word - which Harker was willing to admit was not very nice, turned into…everything else.
Beside her, Longlegs props his chin in one hand and listens with an enthusiastic look on his face, all bubbling energy she can feel fizzing in the air. “Ya’ don’t say? Well, that’s peachy keen in my book! You’re a real special little birdie, aintcha?”
“You…you believe me?” She stares up at him hopefully, his odd face and blue eyes and crooked canine teeth, and wants so badly for this man to be right. That she really is special and not just a mistake.
“Ab-so-lutely.” He sing-songs. Then Longlegs stares past her off into the distance and goes a little quiet, voice reverent and strangely serious as if he is hearing something she cannot. “I knew He brought me here for a good reason, I knew His generosity was not for nothing.”
…I’ve been for a walk, on a winter's day…
It is jarring the way he giggles to himself, voice lilting as he sings. “Hark the herald angel, indeed.”
The man’s eyes have gone unfocused, distant somehow, like he’s seeing into something very far away. Harker stretches up and tentatively brushes the pads of her fingertips against his painted cheek, barely touching him at all, but he snaps back into abrupt focus and laughs brightly. All that odd heaviness eking out of him like air from a balloon, and Harker bashfully tucks her hands underneath her legs so she won’t go and do something embarrassing like that again.
“Who’s ‘he’? Is that your boss?” She asks because it only just occurs to her that adults have jobs and don’t normally have a whole winter to hang out with some kid. Though, she’s willing to bet he doesn’t do most things the normal adult way.
“Ohhhh. He is… a friend! A good friend to me and many. Maybe even to you, Cuckoo.”
That sounds a lot like grownup talk for things they think kids can’t understand, but Longlegs never speaks to her like she’s just a stupid child. So Harker tries to decipher what that really means, as it must mean something important. She gets the feeling he says a lot of important things and she just has to figure out what it all really means.
“I knew you were coming.” She admits. “No one ever comes to visit us; not family and not big bad wolves, but I knew someone was. I saw it in a dream.”
“Cuckoo bird, what did you see?” He asks fervently, all wide-eyed intensity as he hangs on her every word.
“A goat.” Harker fidgets with the zipper on her windbreaker, anxious that he will be mad the way momma was. Her mother’s anger is familiar, but if he were to scold her as well it would feel devastating. “I was standing in the snow and a big black goat was waiting for me in the driveway. It had huge horns and shiny black eyes and it didn’t say anything, but I knew someone was coming.”
She brings her hands up behind her head, mimicking it’s great big knotted horns. Longlegs copies her and his hands are big enough that the silhouette he makes with his knobby fingers is almost perfect. In the dim basem*nt light, she could swear it looks like he has horns for real.
“My friend came to say ‘hello, birdie’.” He looks at her with a touch of giddy awe behind his pale eyes, like she’s said something terribly important.
It makes her happy, makes her feel special and important and less freakish. “Oh.”
“Is that what mama bird got her feathers all ruffled over?” He asks, jauntily twirling the carving knife between his fingers.
“Oh, uhm. No.” She blushes scarlet and stares down at her mucky snow boots. If it was just the cuss word it wouldn’t be all that bad, he’d probably think it was real funny, but somehow talking about girly stuff with a boy makes her shy. Though, Longlegs does girly stuff too so maybe he won’t laugh. “I put momma’s lipstick on…just for fun I mean! I wasn’t trying to be a slu*t.”
His smile goes strained at the edges, more a grimace than anything, and Harker gets the impression he’s been told the same sorts of things. Maybe even worse, because boys aren’t supposed to wear makeup like that. One of the boys at her school got sent away when his pa’ caught him wearing his mothers dress, she doesn’t know where he went, only that he isn’t coming back home. She wonders if Longlegs ever got sent away, too.
“That's not a very nice thing to call a little angel.” He grits out, trying very hard not to sound as mad as he feels. Then, as if for his own benefit just as much as hers, he says; “Children are precious, mothers should be good to them.”
“Momma says little girls who wear makeup are inviting the Devil into their beds, by dressing up like whor*s.” Harker can’t look at him when she says it, a hot blush burning up to her ears.
She doesn’t really understand what all this sex stuff means, but her mother made it sound real bad and not the kind of thing she’s supposed to talk to a grown man about. Not even her teachers at school would tell her what it meant and that makes it even scarier, so now she doesn’t know what her and the Devil would even do in her bed - only that it’s naughty. The truth is…she doesn’t actually believe her momma, not about God and Jesus or whor*s and the Devil. But it hurts anyway when momma calls her names she doesn’t fully understand.
Longlegs rolls his stool backwards across the carpet, snatching a shiny metal tube of lipstick off the vanity. It was once in her momma’s room, but one of the big lights burnt out and there’s a crack running across one corner, so downstairs it went and was forgotten. He seems to use it anyway, since there’s a pouch full of cosmetics and some dirty brushes strewn across it. A hairbrush, comb, the same giant can of hairspray she’s seen in catalogs. Girly stuff, but for a boy. Maybe if he can like girly stuff, she can like boy stuff.
Her mother wants her to stay at home forever, to never leave for college and only get a job if it’s something a proper lady should be doing. Something for the church, of course. Harker doesn’t want to do that, but isn’t certain what she’d want to do for the rest of her whole life either. Help people, maybe. Do something really fantastic, something big and important like whatever Longlegs is doing.
“Hold still for me.”
He doesn’t put a hand on her to keep her still, Harker simply dutifully obeys and straightens up. She holds her breath to keep from squirming on the stool when he brings the rosy pink tube of lipstick to her mouth. That is the only thing that touches her, but it makes her sorta bashful anyway - like the time she shared a cigarette with a girl at school. Longlegs just giggles at the bewildered expression on her face, popping the lid back on the tube and nudging her over to the mirror.
“Take a look, birdie.”
Harker likes it a lot, it isn’t as red and bright as what her momma has and it hardly looks like she’s wearing makeup at all. But she can feel it on her mouth like lip balm and it makes her happy to share something with this peculiar man, who feels like both a friend and someone even more important than that. At school, Harker really liked her art teacher Mrs. Rodgers; a woman in her fifties who always had an extra cookie or a box of chocolate milk for Harker after class, sometimes she even drove her all the way home because momma would forget to pick her up. Would Longlegs drive her to school when momma forgets? Would he pick her up and take her to McDonald’s if she gets all A’s?
The funniest thing is, she thinks he really would.
He gives her the lipstick to keep and Harker squirrels it away in her desk drawer, way in the back inside a bent up pencil case to make sure momma never finds it. At night, when everyone else is asleep, she sometimes puts it on and lays in her bed staring up at the stark white ceiling - half expecting the Devil to take her away. The Devil never does and the beeswax taste of lipstick on her tongue starts to make her feel safe. More than the cloying scent of church votives ever has.
[Once a fortnight, or at least each month, the murder of some child, or an homicidal act of sorcery.]
It’s a cold afternoon in February when Father Dockett knocks on the door. Harker isn’t supposed to answer when her mother isn’t home, but she got a ride into town for Sunday mass so the sight of him on her doorstep isn’t surprising. She figures momma made a scene, again, and Father Dockett is the unlucky one who must do another home check on Harker. Fifth time this year, a new record. Begrudgingly, she opens the door just enough to poke her head out and glare unhappily at him.
Father Dockett makes her uneasy, though she cannot say precisely why that is. His eyes are dark, his short cropped hair is dark, his priest's robes are dark and his shiny loafers are dark - he looks like someone took an inverted photograph of Dale. Something about him is too polite, too sweet, and everyone at church always gossips about how handsome a man he is. What a shame it is that he'll never marry, considering his holy vows. Harker has disliked him since she was old enough to be dragged into church on Sunday’s, his perfect face makes her want to snap and snarl. Glancing behind him she spots his black car in the drive, but her mother is nowhere to be seen.
He came alone, as he expected her to be because no one else knows about the man in her basem*nt.
“Good afternoon, Lee.” He says amiably, hands folded politely in front of himself and she spots the silver glint of a crucifix ring on one hand.
Longlegs wears rings and bracelets, too. Sometimes they’re beaded chains that chime when he moves his hands and other days he wears golden rings in an assortment of shapes. Her favorite is one that looks like a daisy. Harker has been working on a woven bracelet made out of embroidery thread, like the girls at school would make during lunchtime, but isn’t sure how to size it for a grown man’s wrist instead of her own. She doesn’t think Father Dockett would wear a friendship bracelet, but she wouldn’t make him one anyway.
“Momma isn’t home.” She says bluntly.
Harker hates it when he calls her Lee, it’s what momma uses when she’s gotten into real big trouble. ‘Lee Harker, you get over here right now.’ Despite having done nothing to her, there is simply an indescribable wrongness about Father Dockett that makes her dislike everything he says. Even if he came to offer her a million dollars she’d still slam the door in his face on principle alone. He’s never been cruel, doesn’t hardly look at her at church, but as she stares down at his perfectly shined black loafers that starts to feel kinda funny. Why would a man who doesn’t even pay attention to her at church come to visit her alone at home?
“I know.” He laughs in a way that’s supposed to sound friendly, good-natured, but makes the fine hairs on her arms prickle. His cologne smells sugary sweet, tooth-rotting, like too much raw honey in her tea. “Ruth asked me to come keep an eye on you for the afternoon! May I come in, sweetheart?”
That's a lie. It’s a big fat lie, because momma wouldn’t ever risk someone finding out about Longlegs and especially not Father Dockett - who already disapproves of them. What is it about his shoes that is so peculiar? Harker can’t figure out what it is; they’re perfectly normal loafers all the priests wear, black patent leather with perfect little knots in the laces, but the shine makes her vision swim. His black wool coat, his black starched jacket and trousers, and when she looks at his face even his eyes seem black. Flat, like no light has ever touched them.
“No.” Harker starts to shut the door, but he wedges one foot between the jamb and frowns disapprovingly at her.
“That’s not using your manners, Lee.” He insists, one hand around the edge of the door as he stops her from slamming it in his face.
A strange ringing in her ears makes Harker feel sick, the cold stone of dread sinking in her tummy, and she finally realizes why his shoes are so strange. There’s no tread on them, no brand logo or size or anything else to identify them - he’s sanded the soles completely smooth. Oh, she thinks, then turns on her heel and runs as the world around her goes sluggish as dripping honey. Skidding down the hall on her bare feet, the voice of Father Dockett close behind, Harker calls out for the only other person she can and prays he hears.
Father Dockett’s voice is muffled by the rush of blood in her ears, but she hears him clearly as he calls to her. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Pretty girl.”
“DALE.” It's a frightened holler, she knows. The bleating of a rabbit with one leg stuck in the farmer's trap, and the second time she shouts for Longlegs her voice comes out too scratchy to make much noise at all. Just a pathetic high-pitched whine.
The time between the front door shutting and the basem*nt door crashing open is no more than a minute, but to Harker it feels like an eternity. Like she’s been stuck running in place for eons, wading through syrupy molasses while the cloying, saccharine, scent of Dockett’s cologne damn near suffocates her. Every inch of her is alight, prickly with animal terror the way she imagines the rabbits must feel when the fox hears their cries, but the thunder of heavy boots stomping up the basem*nt stairs may very well be the most beautiful song she’s ever heard.
Practically gospel hymns.
She stumbles into the kitchen and nearly goes ass-over-teakettle, would’ve if not for Dale catching her around the shoulders. He’s got this static grin on his face, a wild ferocious snarl of a thing as he stares down Father Dockett. The man has a bewildered sort of frown on his hideous, perfect, face at the sight of Longlegs in her home - a look of abrupt panic taking over. The panic turns into fear when Longlegs says…nothing, just sways on his feet and stares at him with a terrible hunger behind his blue eyes.
Without saying a word, he carefully guides Harker to the basem*nt door and nudges her onto the first step. She understands what he wants of her, that he’s bidding her to go down to the basem*nt like a good girl and cover her ears and stay far away from the wreckage about to happen. Harker does not want to cower, no matter how fearful she is, and so stays there on the top step - even when Longlegs has locked the basem*nt door behind her. There’s a voice now, Father Dockett, who puts on that sickeningly friendly laugh and asks if Longlegs is a relative. What’s he doing in the house? Why is he here?
A nervous distraction, wavering fear in his words. Father Dockett has seen the dark thing inside Longlegs, too.
Crouching on the top step, Harker peaks under the basem*nt door - but all she can make out is the shine of Dockett’s shoes as he takes a careful step back towards the front door. A great big whooshing noise makes her gasp, the sound of massive wings unfurling. Yet she cannot see Longlegs at all and when he speaks it sounds as if his own words have been looped over and over again in discordant synchronization. Many voices speak as one until it hardly sounds anything like him at all. Some innate knowing her mind tells Harker he isn’t speaking out loud at all, that it's all inside their heads.
“Jesus.” Father Dockett swears, or prays, tripping backwards onto the kitchen tile. Whatever he sees that she cannot has him sobbing, miserable and weak and full of terror.
It is his turn to bleat, to thrash in the snare while monsters come to gobble him up.
“If your right eye causes you to sin, ̷g̶o̷u̷g̸e̶ ̵i̸t̴ ̴o̶u̶t̵. Don’t forget your Hail Mary’s. Amen.” Longlegs laughs uproariously, this lilting hysterical thing. Madness and violence crawling in like fog atop marshland.
Then, something heavy rattles the foundations of the house - the shock-wave of a monster's inaudible cry, and all Harker can hear is an abrupt tearing squelch. A gut wrenching snap of bone, the gurgle of Father Dockett’s last miserable wet breath. In her mind she can see the bubble of blood that pops between his lips. The house goes eerily still - only the sound of muffled tearing and Longlegs occasional manic giggling. Harker tries to see under the door, to catch a glimpse of the ancient presence swirling in the back of her mind, and for a moment Harker thinks she sees nothing but darkness there on the other side. Until that darkness spills over the stairs and it is blood, red as cherries in the summertime and stinking of metallic sweetness she can taste in the back of her throat. Like sucking on a greasy coin.
She lets out a startled gasp when it spills over her hands and Longlegs goes quiet, as if for a moment the feral thing inside him has forgotten she was there at all. The tearing, the snapping, the consuming has silenced and the lock clicks open. Loud as thunder in the quiet din. He is standing there with afternoon sunshine at his back, bright from the kitchen window she left often to chase out the stale air of winter. There is…awkwardness on his pale face as he stares down at her with something uneasy in his eyes. There, behind the blue, Harker sees him. Who he is, what he is, and Longlegs steps away from the basem*nt until his back hits the kitchen sink.
He’s frightened of me, she realizes.
This impossible man is frightened of her rejection the same way she was once frightened of his, and the part of her that still knows songs of Heaven is screaming at her to run. Screams that she has traded one predator for a different sort. Harker squashes it deep down, grinds the insect of a thought to dust beneath her feet. She steps in Father Dockett’s blood as she crosses the kitchen, warm and wet on her skin and staining the hem of her woolen skirt. Longlegs watches her, wary and curious, his head tilted in dog-like interest. There is blood soaking into the front of his clothes; caught in the mother-of-pearl buttons down his vest, arterial spray in his hair.
He is frightening and strange and a little bit beautiful the way all monstrous things are.
When she reaches up to put her small hands on his face, he flinches - but does not refuse her as Harker pulls him down to be level with her.
“Harker…”
Longlegs never calls her Harker and it feels very serious that he does so now, but she cannot worry about that when she is too busy searching for the monster in his eyes. It’s there, in the black of his pupil - a seven headed beast of a thing that roars like a dragon in her fairytale books. You’ve got the teeth of the hydra. She isn’t certain what a hydra is or what this means, not entirely, but her mind swirls with waking dreams that make her squeeze his face between her palms until her hands move upwards. Harker drags her fingers into his hair, leaving streaks of blood that turns the ashy blond to vivid pink.
Pressing with her fingers against his temple, she frowns a little when her search comes up empty. “Where are your horns? I saw them.”
Only now does he take her little hands and frees them from his hair, it hangs shaggy and wet across his face - his unblinking eyes that bore into her. When he speaks, there is blood staining his teeth and the inside of his mouth is cherry red.
“They’re not there.” He smiles, a touch hysterical, then grimaces at the sight of her bloody feet. “Oh, little bird…”
“Are you the Devil?” Harker asks, turning her wrists around in his grip so they are holding hands. She trembles from the crashing adrenaline in her blood and fears her knees may give out beneath her.
Strangely, she is not afraid of him. Not like she was afraid of Father Dockett. Out of the corner of her eye she sees one of his shoes, the sanded down soles and prim knotted laces, soaked with blood. She does not see the rest of Dockett anywhere and tries not to look at anything else but Longlegs’ face - just in case she finds a piece of the priest somewhere.
“Noooo.” His voice comes out warbling, a broken radio full of tinny static, and the insanity in his eyes threatens to surge up.
When Longlegs first came here he’d been a crazed thing, like a once loved dog dumped on the streets and left to fend for itself for too long. Rabies and fleas, the madness unique to wild things. Harker spoke to those broken pieces like she would any other broken creature that wandered onto the property, and one day at a time he became more Man than Madness. She sees it in him now, the devilish thing inside, and thinks that she and him are the same creature. Something that must be socialized or lose itself to loneliness.
“What are you?” She looks down at their bloody joined hands, the red beneath their fingernails. Even if this man were the Devil, Harker wouldn’t care.
“I am friends with Mr. Downstairs.” He whispers conspiratorially, as if they are sharing a great big secret.
Just like the pages of ciphered text, Harker knows it is a riddle and a message and a test. This one is not so difficult to understand. “You’re friends with the Devil, but you aren’t the Devil.”
When he flashes her a lopsided grin it's full of pride and flesh. “Bingo, off to the races!”
Harker suspects that he is more than friends with Mr. Downstairs, because there’s a monster inside him and he’s not quite human after all. But perhaps ‘friends’ is close enough and really it doesn’t matter to her what Longlegs is or is not, above everything else he is her friend and she hopes the Devil knows it too. He is Harker’s friend first, everything else second. And third, and fourth, and so on.
When momma gets home it is ten o’clock at night and the blood is gone - so is whatever was left of Father Dockett, as far as Harker could tell. Momma notices nothing and does not greet Harker when she gets home, simply offers her a bag of McDonald’s chicken nuggets and tells her goodnight. They’re cold, but she eats them anyway as she sits in her room and tries not to think about the way Father Dockett looked at her. She spent an hour in the bath scrubbing blood off her skin and beneath her fingernails, but that isn’t what makes her feel dirty still.
Dockett hadn’t touched her, didn’t get the chance, but the way his eyes looked into her feels as if he had. Pretty girl, he’d said and Harker doesn’t want to be a pretty girl. She’s never thought of her own appearance other than making sure her hair is brushed and her shirt isn’t inside out, but she likes the rosy pink lipstick Longlegs gave her. A thought comes unwanted into her head; what if momma was right and it’s her own fault for wearing makeup? What if she is a slu*t?
Harker doesn’t want to be alone with thoughts that make her feel slimy and dirty. The darkness in her room is too frightening for her to remain and so she takes the stairs down to the kitchen with careful, quiet, steps. One at a time, from heel to toe so the creaky old wood doesn’t wake her momma, and finally finds herself at the basem*nt door - straining to listen below. She cannot hear any sign of Longlegs being awake, and once more tries to be as quiet as she can on the stairs.
One step, then the second and the third, her fingers cramping around the pillow she brought from her own room as she clings to it with anxiety in her tummy. The lamp beside his bed is on and she has a moment of sharp panic that he is awake and will send her away, but he lays asleep on his side with a leather bound book sticking out from under his arm. There’s no title, only the shape of an inverted triangle embedded into the cover, and Harker carefully sets it aside. Very quietly, an inch at a time, she tucks herself under the blanket - an arms length between herself and him.
It’s strange to see him asleep, he looks too still and quiet like this. He is meant to be laughing or dancing or literally anything else - but in sleep he becomes human again. Just a man. Harker is afraid of Father Dockett, even in death, but is not afraid to insert herself into Longlegs space like this. Despite knowing momma will kill her if she gets caught, though probably not before killing Longlegs. On some level she understands it isn’t appropriate, but in all other ways simply does not care. She is frightened and lonely and being close to another person makes it easier not to think of what Dockett would’ve done if Harker had really been alone.
It feels important that she can do this with him, to just exist in the same space.
For a long time it seems as if she’ll never be able to fall asleep, the uncomfortable anxiety perpetually turning over and over in her mind - thoughts of Father Dockett that leave her feeling seasick. As she lay there beside Longlegs, hugging her pillow to her chest, his quiet rhythmic breathing slowly lulls her to sleep. A dream awaits her.
She is walking in the snow while the black goat steadily trots along beside her, his hot breath curling like steam from his nose. The goat is no more talkative than he was the first time, but his glossy eyes are exceptionally intelligent so Harker fills the silence between them; she tells the creature of bird bones in the rafters and snakes under rocks, of making friends with toads that ribbit at dusk and of growing up lonely.
Ruth Harker wasn’t always this way. Before she first came to her mother with the uncanny visions, they were doing alright together. Only once Harker started talking of dreams and feelings of knowing impossible things did her mother turn to God with fervent obsession. She confesses to the goat that she used to pray for God to make her momma love her again, but he never did.
They walk and they walk through nondescript snowy lands that could be anywhere and nowhere all at once, familiar enough to remind her of home yet decidedly foreign. After minutes or hours, the shape of her home comes into view across the horizon. Longlegs is there too, working in the shed as he almost always is, and she turns to the goat - a sense of loss growing in her belly. Harker drops to her knees in the snow, reaching out to pet down the animal’s bristly fur.
“Can you make him stay?” She asks.
The goat blinks once, then presses his furry snout against her forehead where he snuffles into her hair. She understands that the goat will not make Longlegs remain with her, but at least it looks sorry about it. Slowly, Harker wraps her arms around the creature’s neck and presses her forehead between its great gnarled horns. The goat, whatever he may be, dutifully allows it.
“He’s my friend.” She says with the limitless certainty of childhood. “He is mine first, so you have to make sure he’s okay wherever he goes.”
When she stands, the goat is watching her with no small amount of amusem*nt - like she’s said something right or charming and it likes her for it. There’s more she wants to tell it, but the words fall away with the rest of the dream and she wakes to a hand on her shoulder. Dale is crouched beside the mattress, still in his flannel pajamas and a faded Led Zeppelin tee-shirt, and it’s strange how very human he seems to her now. In spite of all she knows, or perhaps because of it.
“Rise and shine, early bird.” He sings out.
Longlegs is gracious enough not to bring up how she ended up in his bed and Harker is more than willing to pretend she didn’t. She promised herself to only do it the one time, because she’s a big girl who can sleep on her own when she’s frightened - but just the once is okay, considering. Extenuating circ*mstances. Neither of them address it and Harker sits at the kitchen counter with her bowl of Lucky Charms while he has only coffee with an awful lot of sugar.
“Can I try some?” Harker asks.
“You won’t like it.” But he offers the mug to her all the same.
He’s right, she doesn’t like it at all and it really is unbearably sweet. How it can be both bitter and too sweet Harker doesn’t know, and miserably shoves more cereal in her mouth to chase the taste away. He laughs, delighted and teasing, at the look of betrayal she sends him. It’s okay though, because she isn’t scared in the light of day and doesn’t even think about where the blood has gone or what Longlegs did with the rest of Father Dockett. She isn’t thinking of her dream or the black goat or that he will leave.
[ The Demon imprints upon the Witches some mark…When this has all been performed in accordance with the instructions of those Masters who have initiated the Novice]
“This is too hard.” Harker nibbles the cap on her pen, squinting unhappily at the coded message Longlegs has supplied her with. “Can I have a hint?”
“Put on your thinking cap, little birdie. I gave you all the hints you need.” A sliver of porcelain falls away beneath his blade, the tiny hand of a child-sized doll slowly coming into shape as he works.
The quiet scrape of porcelain is lost beneath the electric guitar coming from his record player, another song Harker doesn’t recognize but has come to like. A snowstorm hit Oregon this morning and the basem*nt windows rattle with the cold winds, drifts of snow crawling up the panes. If not for the furnace chugging away beneath the stairs it would be freezing cold down here, too. Whether Longlegs is ever bothered by living out of a dingy cellar, he never says - but she figures he isn’t the sort of man who puts much stock in settling down in one place.
Normally the coded messages he lays out for her to solve are made up of mostly normal letters, just enough so that she can figure out the words with a little trial and error, but this one is entirely written in those strange symbols with no hints as to the meaning. Unless. Harker darts back to her room, taking the stairs two at a time both ways - snatching up the prior messages out of her desk drawer and promptly rushing right back downstairs. Longlegs hasn’t moved an inch, but looks particularly amused as she comes hopping back down the stairs, a pile of notebook pages in her arms.
“Can I sit there?” Harker points to the mattress and tries her best to look as innocent as possible.
“Hmm.” Longlegs hums in a mockery of very seriously considering her request as he drags the carving tool down in another smooth arc. “She asks, this time.”
She sends him an exceptionally long-suffering sort of look that just makes him laugh and wave vaguely at the mattress. Which is permission enough for her.
Harker plops herself crisscross in the middle of his unmade bed and begins to lay out each page in the order he gave them to her. It’s so obvious now that she has them all in front of her: from first to last, each coded message has been teaching her a handful of new ‘letters’ at a time - leaving just enough decoded in every message for her to put the entire ciphered alphabet together once she sees them all as one unit. Some of them look like symbols from a typewriter, but the rest are too bizarre to be anything other than handwritten.
It takes her the better part of twenty minutes, but eventually Harker produces the decoded passage.
I A M L O C K E D I N A
L I T T L E W A R D R O B E
W I T H A P I C T U R E O F
S H E P H E R D S P O S T E D
O N T O T H E C E N T R A L P A P E L
B E T W E E N C A R V I N G S
T H E B O X S T A N D S O N
C U R V E D L E G S
“Very good.” He praises, clapping his hands together under his chin. “Clever little Cuckoo, I knew you could do it.”
“Is this about monster stuff?” Harker waves the decoded page around then begins writing her own message on the back, carefully going through each letter and double checking each line. This is her first time writing a whole message in the funny alphabet he uses and has carefully taught her over many weeks, so she wants to make sure it’s right and he’ll understand.
“Monster stuff?”
“You know, like the Devil.”
His grin is a little too sharp, shark teeth deep down his throat, but his eyes are bright and mirthful. “Something like that.”
Harker slides off the mattress and offers her own ciphered message to him, hopeful she did well enough that he’ll get what she really means. She hasn’t been able to put words to the night she snuck down here and he’s been generously lenient in not pushing her for an answer, today is the first time he’s even acknowledged it and though it's embarrassing Harker finds it's much easier to explain without having to do so aloud. If her mother finds the paper, she won’t even know what’s being said and to Harker that’s even better. Neither her nor Longlegs ever told her momma about what happened, but Longlegs seems more distrusting and quicker to be biting than he was before Father Dockett - like maybe he knows something Harker does not.
I W A S S C A R E D
O F T H E F A T H E R
“He’s gone now.” Longlegs says as if it pleases him, it probably does. It pleases Harker, too. “To where all the pedophiles go.”
The word makes her flinch. Some confirmation of abstract fears half-formed and grotesque. “Where do they go…? The Bible says sinners like that go to hell.”
If he’s friends with Mr. Downstairs it seems a little backwards to send bad people there. Or rather, the bad people Longlegs doesn’t like. There must be bad people he does like, otherwise he wouldn’t be so content with spooky things and be friends with a…person? Angel? Like the Devil.
“Purgatory.” There’s a kind of manic glee in his words, barely restrained but carefully managed. It reminds her of how he’d been the first time they met, all frenetic energy and practically bouncing off the walls. “He will be punished for his sins by having them done unto himself, for all eternity.”
That scares her not because she feels sympathy for Father Dockett, but because she fears what part of purgatory it means she will end up. The Bible treats all badness equally; your sins send you to Hell whether you lied or stole or murdered and no child is safe from the sin of simply being. Harker uses cuss words when she’s upset, she lies about saying her prayers, her only friend is a man with a demon inside and she’s certain it is the Devil whom she dreams of as a black goat. Will she go to purgatory or Hell and which is better?
“Are you going to Hell?” She asks shyly, plucking at the pilling of her sweater. It’s the kind of rude question you shouldn’t ask people, but Longlegs is different than anyone else and even when she asks about invasive stuff he never gets upset with her.
“Oh yes.” He closes his eyes wistfully, as if Hell is some long lost home he will be welcomed back to. If Longlegs is happy about it she knows that it’s his choice, but the idea of him hurting forever and ever makes her profoundly sad. “Don’t worry, little Cuckoo. It won’t be like that, I’ll just be going home for a little while then come back to play.”
So he does hear me, she thinks and finds it doesn’t bother her nearly as much as it ought to.
“Will I go to Hell, too?” Harker doesn’t think Heaven will let her in, but also doesn’t think it’s fair for little kids to go to Hell. She’s nothing like Father Dockett was, after all.
The Bible says infants who die before being baptized go to purgatory, but little kids are capable of sin and might go to Hell. It seems unfair to put babies in the same place bad men go and Harker is of a mind that no person is sinful by birth. Not even the Devil. It’s all very confusing and she isn’t certain what to think about Hell and the Devil other than she wishes Longlegs wasn’t going there because it means he’s done bad things. She doesn’t want him to have done bad things, but has known from the very first day she met him that he has and that he would.
Longlegs tilts his head and observes her with sudden bewilderment and she realizes he doesn’t know. “I can’t tell ya’. You're right about little things not being sinners and you are still a little thing. It’s possible to make a child go below, but that’s not because they did something bad. It’s what you choose to be when you’re all grown up and flown away. Even if you’re a saint all your life, you could just ask and my friend would take you if that's what you wanted.”
It’s possible to make a child go below.
The half-finished porcelain doll sits in pieces on the workbench, the simulacrum of a little girl Harker won’t meet for another decade and some change, and looks out at her with empty eyes. In school she learned that people used to believe cameras would steal the soul of whoever had their picture taken, could a doll do the same? If someone tried real hard to make it so? Longlegs is patiently quiet, observing her thinking through the great many thoughts bouncing around her head. The reasoning of a child who is perhaps too grownup for her own good, with a spark of the arcane in her blood.
“Why’d you come here?” Harker finally asks, fingers curling into the sleeve of his pullover. “Is there a doll of me, too?”
“No, not of you.” Longlegs says with urgency and she gets the inkling it is very important she doesn’t have one. “I asked my dear and darling friend to make an exception for you, and because He is generous and fond He allowed it.” His hand covers her own twice over and she clings to him as her breath catches. “I came because I was simply doing what I was made for. He bids me to take a soul and so I do. I am a bad thing, Harker.”
“No.” She shakes her head fervently, because he is not bad to her and that means something. It has to. “You’re my friend.”
A little breath whooshes out of him and with it goes that intangible darkness hanging heavy around them, the one she recognizes from the day Father Dockett was gobbled up by a demon. It leaves them alone in the dingy basem*nt with The Velvet Underground skipping on the record player, Longlegs uncanny face and the hydra in his eyes. Lee Harker in her second-hand wool sweater with reindeer on it and her hair in braids, nine years old and unafraid of the monstrous thing she has deemed worthy enough to be called friend - that has chosen her in turn. Feral, the both of them and one day Harker will grow untamable.
“Oh.” He laughs and it’s all airy and sweet. Genuine in a way no one else has ever been with her. He pulls teasingly on the tuft of her braid, half-child and half-beast in this moment. “You’re my friend too, Cuckoo bird.”
When Harker turned eight her momma bought her a diary with yellow and pink flowers on the cover, but she only ever wrote her name in the front sleeve: Property of ̶L̶e̶e̶ Harker, then promptly lost interest. She begins using it with great earnestness after that day, filling pages front and back with coded diary entries her momma will never ever be able to figure out. A secret, all the things she is too frightened to admit out-loud or feels ashamed of. Happy things and scary things and the ardent hopes of a lonely child.
L⊥—
⊂•∴
Ո—
⊔：ↃↃ
Ↄ—•⊘—
O N E D A Y
H E W I L L
L E A V E
And the things that scare her the most.
[ The witches cut off a piece of their own garments, and as a token of homage tender it to the Devil, who takes it away and keeps it.]
It finally happens on an afternoon when the snow thaw leaves the ground muddy, squelching under her rubber boots when she takes the trash out to the curb. She doesn’t think of what this means until the sound of the engine turning and Harker goes bolting out the front door. From the porch she catches Dale as he shuts the car hood with a satisfied look on his face, months of his struggle with the damn rusted up car and days hauled up indoors when the weather got too bad had Harker letting herself forget what was coming. The chipped paint railing creaks beneath her white-knuckled grip, panic rushing through her as she watches the man give the ignition a second go just for good measure. It turns, the car letting out a smooth rumble - it’s the best it’s ever run and Harker hates it.
Longlegs looks so out of place in her momma’s car, too tall by half as he ambles out of the driver’s seat. He spots her there at the porch, all smiles as he calls out to her. Little birdie. The look on her face makes him pause and frown, but when he calls to her once more Harker has let the front door fall shut behind her as she runs straight for her bedroom. Harker curls up beneath the covers and silently begs the universe for Longlegs to change his mind; to promise he wont ever leave and she doesn’t even care if the Devil is there too. He does not follow, as she knew he wouldn't, and Harker remains as she is until late into night. Well past when Ruth tries to call her down for dinner or lure her out with promises of extra TV time.
The clock on her desk reads 12:00am on the dot when she hears the engine again, the crunch of gravel as the station wagon pulls out into the driveway. In the darkness all she can hear is the wind and the gentle rumble of the idling car, her own agonized heartbeat that rings in her ears. The headlights cast long shadows through her blinds, dancing lights across the wall that swirl dizzyingly.
Then, he waits.
Harker doesn’t bother putting on her shoes or coat, despite how cold it still is at night, she fears wasting a single second - fears risking him leaving before she gets out the door. Her bare feet burn on the remaining snow when she sneaks out of the house, sorrow in her throat. He’s waiting there outside the car with his suitcases in the backseat and a leather messenger bag on the ground by his feet, leaning against the door with his arms crossed and looking as serious as she’s ever seen him. There’s a terse little frown on his face and his shirt messily untucked from his trousers, like maybe he’s been wandering around all afternoon and losing himself to something. Maybe he’s felt as bad as Harker has. When he sees her take off at a sprint across the lawn, he crouches to meet her - just like he’d done that very first day she met him.
‘I’ve got my long legs on, what if I just…’
The force at which she barrels into him nearly sends him sprawling onto the gravel driveway, but Longlegs is bigger and stronger and he catches her just fine. Harker feels her little heart thundering deep down in her chest and she presses her face into his shoulder, fists gathered in the back of his jacket. He’s speaking to her in that lilting voice, trying to make it all sound peachy keen, but he’s gone quiet tonight and she knows he doesn’t like leaving anymore than she likes him to leave.
Whatever he says goes in and out of her mind, there one moment and gone the next because she can only focus on trying to memorize everything about him before it’s too late. His coat smells faintly of cigarette smoke, musky cologne that tickles her nose, and something like the scent of cupboard - clothes left forgotten for too long. Then, a little absurdly, the astringent bite of hairspray and Harker laughs wetly into his coat. She’s trying to be brave and not cry, but it’s a very near thing.
“Take me with you.” She says because she knows he cannot stay.
For just a moment he tenses, his hold around her squeezing a little tighter as if he’s very seriously considering doing exactly that. It would be so much fun, just the two of them on the road forever and ever and her momma won't ever get mad and yell at her again. She won't ever have to pray and pray and pray until her mind buzzes like TV static. Harker wonders if maybe Longlegs already asked her momma if he could, but even if he wasn’t a queer and wasn’t friends with the Devil she wouldn’t have let him. Harker knows he cannot stay and knows he will not take her with him, but having spent the wintertime knowing she must stay behind doesn’t make it feel any better.
She’s gotten good at pretending and so has he.
He doesn’t answer, there is nothing he could say to make it feel okay, just rubs up and down her back once and tries to pull her from him with his hands around her shoulders. She clings, refusing, and he allows her to remain like that until a light flicks on upstairs and they both know her momma is awake now.
“I don’t wanna forget.” She croaks weakly. “You know I’m gonna forget and I am scared.”
“Cuckoo.” He says in a voice that doesn’t match him at all. It’s too serious, too sad. Too much like a real man doing something that hurts very, very, much. He sounds like he’s going to cry and that makes Harker want to cry even more. It isn’t right, he’s not supposed to sound so real. “Little birdie, please.”
She hiccups once, the cold seeping up from her bare feet and turning her nose rosy pink as he pulls her from him with more force than he wanted to. But he has to leave and she must stay and if Ruth gets to him now he’ll do something awful. Harker does not know how the urge to spirit her away alongside him is bone deep, that it is only a sworn promise between Mother and Monster that keeps him from doing exactly that. Not even the Devil breaks a promise.
“Harker.” Dale pleads as she sniffles and fights back the sob that wants to rip out of her, wringing the hem of her nightshirt between her little fists as she trembles in the cold. She is all but bird bones beneath his hands, barely half of who she will one day grow to be. He will be so proud of her then, he knows. He’s proud of her now.
Clever little imp of a child that she is, who sees with keen eyes and spends her dreams walking with Him, unafraid but not unaware. Dale isn’t certain if He knew what awaited them both in Lee Harker, if His knowing could have ever predicted this girlchild for what she is - but it feels good and right that he had come here and known her and cares for her. Some fractured piece of his mind clicking back together through the uncomplicated affection that comes from childhood, the sort he did not have and Harker barely has as it is. Ferociously dependent on one another, he knows.
Part of him wants so badly to tell her that he has begged, nights and days and nights anew, for himself to be allowed stay; the basem*nt is as good as any place to work and he wants for nothing special, nothing more than a bed in the corner and the guileless company of someone willing to see him and know him and still care that he is there. How pathetic, his mother would’ve said, that you need the friendship of a child to get by. Maybe she would be right, or maybe loneliness does not discriminate who it roosts in.
The sudden shock of light from the kitchen, followed by Ruth’s worried voice calling for her daughter, makes Dale decide upon something reckless. He reaches into the brown leather bag at his feet and pulls from it a burnished metal orb just slightly larger than a baseball, then frantically presses it between Harker’s palms. This is not breaking the promise he made to Ruth, but it is most certainly bending the rules as far as they will go.
“Don’t let your ma’ find this.” He instructs, sounding devastated. “No matter what, don’t ever let mama bird find it.”
Harker understands the urgency, the desperation in this strange gift as she clutches it between her hands. It’s weightless, smooth and cold beneath her fingers, until Longlegs uses the point of his canine teeth to prick blood from his thumb and drags a smear of it down the side of the metal. All at once it becomes weighty and warm, yet nothing rings within it when she brings it to her chest - it feels just as empty as it had been, though she knows instinctively it now carries something very special.
“Promise me, Cuckoo. Promise me you won’t ever let mama take it.” Longlegs has shucked off his pale jacket and folded it across her shoulders, pulling it closed around her by knotting the sleeves at her front. It’s body-warmed and carries the burn of tobacco smoke and cheap hairspray and men’s cologne.
“I promise.” She agrees and stares up into his very blue eyes, hoping he understands.
“Will it make it so I don’t forget?” She asks, hopeful, while knowing that sounds too good to be true, and tucks the metal orb into the inside pocket on Longlegs’ jacket.
“No.” Longlegs says honestly. “But it’ll make it so you can remember. One day when you are very strong and all grown up.”
She doesn’t like that, because it means he really won’t be coming back - at least not for a while, because Harker has a very long time before she is all grown up. But it’s also good, because at least she won’t forget forever and hopefully when she does remember it will be worth it. Standing there in the dark, she watches as the taillights of the car disappear around the bend and into the deep dark night and only then does Harker allow herself to cry. The tears burn hot down her cheeks and chokes her as she gasps and wails and howls, because he is gone for real now.
Momma finds her and must drag her back inside by force, for Harker does not want to move - watching the winding road with hope in her heart that he will turn around and come back for her after all. He does not and she knew he couldn’t. Momma makes her hot chocolate and takes her back to bed, pretending like she doesn’t know that Harker was saying goodbye to Longlegs. They cannot talk about it now because Harker knows her mother is glad he has left, she is too raw for talking.
Harker has only ever loved her momma, even during times they fight and cry and doors slam, but she’s very certain she might love this man too. Not like she loves her mother, because Longlegs is not her father and he isn’t anywhere close to family at all. A friend. He’s her friend and she loves him and she holds the strange little ball to her chest and squeezes her eyes shut and thinks it so so hard that he must hear her. He must. Wherever he is, wherever he goes, she hopes he knows it.
Neither of them say anything about it that night, but when Harker wakes up in the morning there is an ache of loss deep down. The worst part is that the memories aren’t there one day and gone the next; they slide away like water in a creek - one trickle at a time and she feels it happening.
The first day Harker still remembers his face, his name, and stands in the kitchen looking out across the lawn still hoping he’ll be out there working on the car. He isn’t, and Momma keeps pretending she doesn’t know who Longlegs is until it makes Harker cry and she relents.
“He’s far away now, angel. It’s better that he’s gone.” Ruth says it with equal parts hope and relief, bluntly unapologetic in being glad he has left them.
Harker doesn’t get mad because she’s already known her momma hates him, but she takes her lunch up to her room to eat alone for the first time in her whole life and Ruth doesn’t try to stop her.
The second day his face becomes a foggy blur in her mind. Harker can recall that he was strikingly peculiar, that his hair is fair and his eyes are blue, but the details of his features are gone - simply a pale porcelain face where Longlegs used to be. She goes out to the shed and throws dirty old tools around and she screams and she cries and momma lets her tire herself out. That night Harker goes to bed repeating his name over and over in her mind.
Longlegs,
Longlegs,
Longlegs.
In the morning she wakes up and cannot remember it. Longlegs is gone, Dale is gone, Mr. Cobble is gone. Only the knowledge that she cannot remember his name remains, the grief inside grows until it feels like she’s going to choke on it. When Ruth tries to take his jacket away, Harker claws at her and screams and has such a fit that both of them are left in tears and they don’t speak the rest of the day. Harker hides his jacket in her cedar chest, with the photographs she has forgotten sit at the bottom of a little memory box and the ciphers he taught her how to decode. The orb, stained with the man’s blood, remains in the pocket of his denim coat and when she shuts the lid on it all she forgets. About his coat, the memories in it’s pocket, and everything else within.
Two weeks after Longlegs went away, she cannot remember why she feels so sad. Cannot remember why there is this empty feeling in her chest that tells her she’s forgotten about something important, or why some nights she stands out in the dark and looks out at the winding road that disappears into the woods - hoping for someone to come back. Harker forgets his face, his name, his voice, who Longlegs ever was, but she doesn’t forget the sense of loss. If her momma remembers, it’s impossible to tell - but she acts scared and angry whenever Harker tries to ask about the tall man she swears was there once.
Eventually, she forgets a tall man was ever there at all - but the loneliness never leaves her.
