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Part and Parcel Scrap Yard

                Ichabod was flung from the portal like a bolt from a crossbow, but he had been practicing this technique with December, and both of them knew what to expect. They kept their feet raised, waiting for their momentum to die before riding out the last of it, skidding across the dirt. Margaret was not so lucky, immediately trying to stop her forward inertia, she planted her feet in the dirt and went spinning, nearly bowling over Ichabod as she collided with him.

“Maybe I should’ve given you a bit of a warning,” he admitted as the fox/dog slid to a halt at his side.

“You think?” Margaret complained as she did a quick inventory of her scrapes and bruises, “And where the Hell am I anyway, is this where you keep Lizzie?”

“I don’t keep Lizzie anywhere,” Ichabod insisted, “She’s safe, that’s all you need to know.”

“Yeah, that’s a great way to not answer the question,” Margaret snapped, then, off of Ichabod’s confused look, “Where the Hell am I?!”

“Oh, it’s a place we all lived for a bit, it’s pretty well fortified, you should be safe here.”

“No, I totally get that,” she glanced at the distant gate and raised her eyebrows incredulously, “You couldn’t keep a goat outta this place, no wonder you traded up.”

“Believe me there was more than one reason for that,” Ichabod sighed before continuing on, “Anyway, the shack itself,” he pointed to the small house constructed from discarded scrap and steel parts, “It’s a lot tougher than it looks, has a solid metal door, and a big bunker underneath so you can go hide in there if you get frightened, trust me it’ll practically take an act of God to harm you while you’re here.”

“Huh…so…” she nervously glanced around, “So, what made that hole in the gate?”

“Doesn’t matter…”

“I disagree, what the Hell made that hole in the gate?”

“Your biggest concern,” Ichabod pushed on despite her, “Is food, there’s plenty of the freeze-dried stuff to last you for the night, so we’ll come by in the morning and bring you some more,” he turned and walked towards the shack, “There’s tetris on the computer, and a radio for entertainment, knock yourself out.”

“Is there anything to drink?”

“Plenty, the place gets supplied by a nearby lake and, yes,” he smiled over his shoulder, “The shower should still be usable.”

“Thank God for small favors,” she muttered, shoving her way past him.

                Ichabod shook his head as he watched her leave and, as soon as he entered the old shack, the shower was running with heavy lashes of steam drifting out the cracks around the door.

“We don’t have a washer,” he yelled, trying to be heard over the thrum of water.

“WHAT?”

“I said we don’t have a washer!” he shouted even louder, “You’re gonna have to clean your clothes in the sink.”

“Aw, now that sounds like fun,” she complained, “Running around some strange place buck naked, you don’t have any cameras in here do you?”

“Not anymore,” Ichabod joked, “I’ll go see if the others left anything you can wear.”

“MUCH Appreciated.”

                Descending down into the bunker, he found himself engulfed in a wave of nostalgia that he couldn’t quite explain, for some reason, he felt attached to this place. The scrap yard hadn’t been his home for long, but, then again, he mused while still trying to put a face to the cause of the emotion, in that brief amount of time, he had gone through many changes. He had found a family he never knew he had, a new life and a purpose, a reason to live. This place, though incidental, had given him so very much, and he might’ve outgrown it, but it would always hold fond memories for him.

                Shaking off that train of thought, he walked into the storage area, the place Medea had practically lived in and looked on at all the neatly ordered and sealed boxes on the shelves, waiting to be examined or plundered. The vaguely warm, nostalgic feeling was quickly replaced by one of terror, the concept alone of opening and searching through all of these storage chests, but this too was rendered moot when he saw the vial sticking out of the pages of a diary Medea had left on the shelf.

“A book mark,” he couldn’t help but grin at the silliness of it, they’re greatest weapon, their trump card, and she had been using it to keep her place in some poor dead girl’s journal.

                Despite himself, curiosity got the better of Ichabod and he scanned the page Medea left marked, but stopped almost instantly. Scrawled across the top were three small words, emblazoned with red ink and stating: It Won’t Work. It was Medea, he knew it, she had anticipated him doing just this, she had thought of his plan and the realization of that sent a chill up his spine. It wasn’t perfect, of course, there were a thousand things that could go wrong, but in over a year, this was his only option, his only safety net. Clenching the vial in his hand, her promised that this changed nothing, if the worst came to it, he would let the dice roll, and deal with consequences afterward.

                Tucking the vial away in his coat pocket, he started towards the room Bianca and Oriko had shared, his first stop to search for Margaret’s clothes. He came away with rather slim pickings, an old pair of boxer shorts and a long t-shirt that smelled rather musty, but hoped it would be enough. Along the way, Ichabod also conducted a search of the bunker’s munitions pile, finding a treasure trove of explosives and incendiary ordinance, but nothing he was willing to use in an enclosed area like a hospital. Though, there was also a decent pair of silver edged butterfly knives that he hooked to his belt before exiting the armory. On his way out he knocked on the bathroom door to let Margaret know where he was laying the spare clothes, then walked out of the shack and headed for the waiting tow truck.

                The vehicle roared to life as he expected it too, though, upon inheriting the scrap yard, many of its artifices and machines were in need of dire repair, this truck had never been one of them. She had kept it almost immaculately tuned and ready for use, no matter how long it had idled for, it had always seemed ready. Still, he did a pre-check of the engine, of the engine, of the tires, to see if it was leaking any oil or fuel. It was in the midst of this checklist that he finally noticed December, waiting patiently for commands.

“What are you still doing here?” Ichabod demanded, “Go home, you’re mother needs you.”

“Mother is sleeping right now, and also being watched over by those three women,” the fox/dog responded in a clipped tone, “You are headed into danger, you need my help.”

“No, I don’t,” he insisted, still running through his checklist.

“You’re going to fight Caroline.”

“Hopefully it won’t come to that…”

“Father…” the fox/dog sighed, “Are you that lucky?”

“…no comment.”

“You didn’t argue this much when Cindy wanted to follow you on your little road trip.”

“Don’t do that, I am not playing favorites.”

“It is not that I don’t understand father,” December added with a bit of a mournful yowl in his voice, “She’s the youngest and she is tiny and cute.”

“For the love of God,” Ichabod shook his head, pulling himself out from under the truck to face his son, “I didn’t ‘let’ her go, I argued, I told her she should stay, at home, just like I’m telling you now, because home is where you’re safe, but she wouldn’t let it go and…” he paused for a minute before burying his face in his hands, “Ugh-dammit.”

“What is it father?”

“I just got talked into admitting that you can browbeat me into this.”

“It’s not so bad father,” December approached putting a paw on Ichabod’s knee, “I could actually be useful in this fight, while Caroline has the power of the Garuda, my ice powers should negate her flames…”

“Her Garuda was powerful enough to melt a section of land mass that swallowed a hundred story tall demon and keep it imprisoned within the molten earth,” Ichabod shook his head, “It’s not that I don’t believe in you, I know you’re strong, but, before you even consider going into this battle, you need to ask yourself and give an honest answer, can you handle something of that magnitude?”

“I will endeavor…”

“Fools rush in kid, and most of the time they end up bloody because of it.”

“It never stopped you,” December grumbled.

“Yeah, and look at me now,” Ichabod reached out with his right hand, the fake one, the hand of ashes that replaced the arm he had lost, and cupped the fox/dog’s cheek as much to convey the message as to hold his gaze, “Don’t let me be your role-model, let me be your warning.”

“I…I will,” December looked back at him with determination clearly set in his eyes, “Father, I will.”

“You…” Ichabod began but could only shake his head, knowing that there was no winning this argument, “Dumb kid,” taking his hand away, he nodded to the driver’s side door still hanging open, “Get in the truck.”

Sunrise Mental Asylum

                It took them almost an hour to drive from the scrap yard to the asylum, and Ichabod wasn’t exactly in the mood to chat, so it was a very awkward and quiet hour that passed between him and December. It wasn’t until they were in the parking lot, staring at Yolanda’s motionless frame at the entrance to the hospital that it was finally broken.

“Something to keep in mind before we go in,” Ichabod stated as he collected his weapons and stashed the vial in the glove box, “Stay close.”

“Yes father,” December nodded.

“I’m not joking around here,” he turned insistently, “You do not wander away, you do not take off on your own, we don’t know what we’re facing, we don’t know what they have planned, and we are entering a literal insane asylum, so, if you see something that catches your interest, then you call it out, you show it to me, but you do not leave my side, clear?”

“I understand.”

                Complaining a bit to himself, Ichabod hopped out of the truck and walked towards Yolanda who only stood in spot, head bowed with fists clenched at her side, still as a statue. He was considering how best to approach her, knowing that the language barrier would be a divide in and of itself, when he also saw the blade clutched firmly in her left hand and he began to realize how odd she seemed. Slowing his pace to a crawl, Ichabod placed a hand on one of his guns and circled around, as much as to not startle her by coming from behind as to keep the naked sword she held in clear view at all times.

“Yolanda?” he called out, completely uncertain what to expect.

                She didn’t respond, not at first, and even when she did react to him, it was only to turn her eye in his direction before staring pointedly back down the bloodied corpse laying at her feet. So focused had he been on her that Ichabod completely overlooked the body of the child, sliced up, gutted, dead. The first instinct he had was to accuse, but, looking Yolanda over dispelled that very notion, there was no blood upon her person and her weapon was decidedly clean.

“” Yolanda spoke at last in a halting whisper, “”

“I…” Ichabod shook his head, not understanding.

“She said that he did it to himself,” December translated, a dower expression on his face.

“You speak Spanish?” Ichabod wondered.

“I speak all languages, I just can’t translate them like mother can.”

“And you’re only telling me this now?” Ichabod sighed while cautiously walking towards the downed boy.

“It never came up before.”

                Ignoring him, Ichabod went to examine the body, pausing only briefly for Yolanda to step away. The boy was still clutching a scalpel, both his hand and it were soaked over and clotted with blood, almost like a disgusting red mitten. There were multiple stab wounds all over him, and a few scars in the crook of his arm from an IV drip, beyond that, he seemed normal. That is what Ichabod thought before getting a good look at the boy’s face, the twisted horrifying grin that literally split open from ear to ear exposing muscle and sinew beneath. Also, there was the mark, the broken circle branded deeply into the child’s brow, the symbol of Abraham Scratch.

“Confirmation at least,” Ichabod muttered, cleaning his hands on the dirt and then wiping the dust off on his coat, he turned to December, “Tell her I know who we’re dealing with.”

                He waited patiently while they conversed and checked the edge on the butterfly knives he had pilfered from Grace’s store. Still in the middle of this, Ichabod caught sight of Yolanda staring at him and he could only think to shrug.

“What?”

“How are you so calm about this?” December relayed the message and nodded towards Yolanda.

“Because…I’m a professional,” he spat out the answer not really wanting to think about the question too hard, “If I’m not calm, if I’m not focused, then more people die,” shaking his head, Ichabod could hardly believe his own words, “Could you try to clean that up for her so I sound like less of a jackass?”

“I…will try,” December replied sheepishly.

“Also…” he gritted his teeth, hating himself for saying it, “Try to convey that she needs to get her shit together, we’re likely to run into more of these things and she can’t let herself hesitate, otherwise they’ll rip her apart.”

“Father…does, does that include Caroline?”

                Ichabod bit his lip to stop himself from yelling, already they’d wasted too much time outside and he had no wishes to dally about anymore.

“No, she’s a special case, she didn’t snap, it just drove her nuts, but the ones with the grins,” he sighed, “There’s no saving them.”

                Once again, Ichabod waited, impatiently shifting from one foot to another while December and Yolanda had their chat. At last December broke away and nodded happily to Ichabod.

“All done father.”

“Great, let’s go.”

                Pushing his way into the asylum, Ichabod only made it three steps past the threshold before his charge ground to a halt. The lights had been shattered, leaving the whole room lit by a string of candles arrayed around its boarder. In front of him was a woman in a nurse’s outfit, bound, gagged and tied to a chair while some strange man in a doctor’s coat slowly, diligently sawed her arm off. Acting on instinct alone, Ichabod drew his weapon and fired, killing the man ‘playing doctor’ with a single shot. Even before the body hit the ground, he was moving again, rushing to the lady, to try and save her, but she only leered back and smiled as she spat out her gag.

“You can’t save me,” the woman cackled.

                Pulling her other arm free from behind the chair, she slung a small metal valve across the room, releasing a distinctive hissing noise that Ichabod immediately recognized. He skated to a halt and backpedaled, but not fast enough. As the candles ignited the compressed gas, the resulting explosion turned the woman into chunks of bloody rain and threw Ichabod back against the entrance, shattering the glass even as his body slammed it shut on Yolanda and December.

                For a minute he just sat there, amidst the broken glass and flecks of gore, everything had happened so quickly, his brain needed time to catch up, to understand. There was also the matter of the mild concussion he had sustained from slamming his head against the metal divide between the doors. Ichabod had barely regained his senses when he heard the buzz of the intercom, and required a few seconds longer to recognize the voice chirping out over it.

“Helllllllllooooooooo…” Caroline sang over the broken electric crackle of the hidden speakers, “That was you right? They weren’t just having too much fun?”

                Ichabod stared into the now darkened room, not bothering to respond.

“No, no, that’s you…” she took a deep shuddering breath, “Mmm, I can smell you-OW!” Caroline shouted in response to a loud slap popping against her skin, “I’ll read the damn script, Ahem, by the orders of our glorious legion it has been assigned to me that I bid you welcome to our newly opened ‘house of horrors’…That’s really the name we came up with? OW! You know I’m not gonna take too many more of those! Ugh, fine, continuing on: what we offer to you this day is a maze, to whit-who the Hell says to whit-HEY!” there was the sound of a struggle cut off by the crackle of flames that continued on through her entire speech, “I fucking warned you!”

“Rrrrr, anyway, what we’re offering is essentially a maze, full of traps, tricks and party favors, search through and find your way to the useless lump within one hour of hearing this message or we begin slicing him up for spare parts…Huh? What? Yes I realize it doesn’t say that exactly, but-No Screw That! I’m not reading all this shit, you’ve got one hour sweetheart, goodbye!”

                Ichabod was leering upwards at the shadowed ceiling, her comment catching him off guard. Truthfully, he didn’t know what to make of her attitude, she had never acted like this before, and he certainly didn’t find her forward nature ‘alluring’. If anything it scared him a bit, if only because he imagined Vhen, Yolanda, or Horus might kill him for accepting the advances, but also, it terrified him to think what Abraham Scratch must have done to her to make her this way. Even worse, he thought as a sickening feeling grew in his stomach, it must have been done on purpose. The Ghoul couldn’t break her mind, so he weakened it through torture and integrated a focal point, something to lean on so that she could be manipulated, implanted Ichabod into her thoughts like a virus and destroyed who Caroline had been.

                Hearing, December’s paw pads against the broken glass from the door, shook Ichabod from his self-recrimination and he looked over to see the fox/dog tilt its head questioningly.

“’sweetheart’?”

“Don’t ask,” Ichabod sighed, and then saw Yolanda crawling in from the other side and couldn’t help flinching away from her before getting control of himself again and standing upright, “Relay the information to her, I need to find a map for this place.”

“So, do you know where Mr. Horus is?” December wondered.

“Just a hunch, but they said they were going to start chopping him up, and…I suppose there’s a few ways to interpret that, but, there’s a lot of pageantry going on here, and a guy as big as Horus, they’d need to tie him down, and somewhere that had plenty of space…” as Ichabod mused, he walked further into the darkened lobby and suddenly stopped, turning back to the pair who still remained at the entrance, “Ask her if there’s an operating theater in here.”

The Temple of the Easternmost Pillar

                Oriko wandered through the halls, anxiously flexing her fingers as she tried to keep her mind occupied and off of what Ichabod might be facing out there. Once again in her endless circuit, she found herself outside of Laurie’s room and finally gave in, to the need for distraction as much as curiosity.

“Can I come in?” she asked through the door.

“I guess,” was Laurie’s morose reply.

                Pushing open the large oaken barrier, Oriko entered the room. The Dryad had not so much decorated the place as overgrown it, covered the floor with potting soil, the walls with ivy, flowers, and bioluminescent vines. The centerpiece of it all was a small tree in a clay urn, this is where Cindy lay now, atop a bed of moss and leaves with Laurie sitting next to her, a look of concern drawing down the corners of her mouth.

“I half expected it to be ‘him’ coming in here to apologize,” she grumbled.

“You know it’s not Ichabod’s fault,” Oriko tried to assure as she sat down next to her companion.

“Maybe,” Laurie huffed, “But I’ve got a lot of rage right now and I need some place to vent it.”

“Do I really need to explain to you how that’s not fair?”

“No…” the dryad slumped forward a little, defeated, “I just…”

“Decided to be mean and self-absorbed?” Oriko supplied for her.

“I…um…” she tapped the tips of her fingers together and refused to look her companion in the eye, “I suppose.”

“It’s okay little sister,” Oriko smiled down on her warmly while placing a comforting hand on her head, “Frankly you were overdue to be a little selfish, just don’t go and make a habit out of it.”

“Spoil my fun,” Laurie muttered, but reached out and hugged the Gorgon before resuming her vigil over the sleeping imp.

“So, how is she doing?”

“I…don’t know,” Laurie admitted, pressing a finger against Cindy’s chest, “She’s breathing, and she drank some water, but she never woke up, part of me wants to slice her open and see what the Hell’s going on inside…but…”

“Why…why would you even…”

“Because something’s happening,” the Dryad’s touch lifted before gently placing the back of her pinky against Cindy’s brow, “She’s warm, but not feverish, she’s not twitching or sweating or muttering, she just lays there still, it’s like, and I don’t know why, but, when I look at her now, I feel like I’m staring at a cocoon.”

“I feel the same way when I look at Ichabod sometimes,” Oriko admitted and then found herself staring back into Laurie’s stern gaze.

“You realize that I’m being literal and not figurative right?”

Description

Part and Parcel Scrap Yard

                Ichabod was flung from the portal like a bolt from a crossbow, but he had been practicing this technique with December, and both of them knew what to expect. They kept their feet raised, waiting for their momentum to die before riding out the last of it, skidding across the dirt. Margaret was not so lucky, immediately trying to stop her forward inertia, she planted her feet in the dirt and went spinning, nearly bowling over Ichabod as she collided with him.

“Maybe I should’ve given you a bit of a warning,” he admitted as the fox/dog slid to a halt at his side.

“You think?” Margaret complained as she did a quick inventory of her scrapes and bruises, “And where the Hell am I anyway, is this where you keep Lizzie?”

“I don’t keep Lizzie anywhere,” Ichabod insisted, “She’s safe, that’s all you need to know.”

“Yeah, that’s a great way to not answer the question,” Margaret snapped, then, off of Ichabod’s confused look, “Where the Hell am I?!”

“Oh, it’s a place we all lived for a bit, it’s pretty well fortified, you should be safe here.”

“No, I totally get that,” she glanced at the distant gate and raised her eyebrows incredulously, “You couldn’t keep a goat outta this place, no wonder you traded up.”

“Believe me there was more than one reason for that,” Ichabod sighed before continuing on, “Anyway, the shack itself,” he pointed to the small house constructed from discarded scrap and steel parts, “It’s a lot tougher than it looks, has a solid metal door, and a big bunker underneath so you can go hide in there if you get frightened, trust me it’ll practically take an act of God to harm you while you’re here.”

“Huh…so…” she nervously glanced around, “So, what made that hole in the gate?”

“Doesn’t matter…”

“I disagree, what the Hell made that hole in the gate?”

“Your biggest concern,” Ichabod pushed on despite her, “Is food, there’s plenty of the freeze-dried stuff to last you for the night, so we’ll come by in the morning and bring you some more,” he turned and walked towards the shack, “There’s tetris on the computer, and a radio for entertainment, knock yourself out.”

“Is there anything to drink?”

“Plenty, the place gets supplied by a nearby lake and, yes,” he smiled over his shoulder, “The shower should still be usable.”

“Thank God for small favors,” she muttered, shoving her way past him.

                Ichabod shook his head as he watched her leave and, as soon as he entered the old shack, the shower was running with heavy lashes of steam drifting out the cracks around the door.

“We don’t have a washer,” he yelled, trying to be heard over the thrum of water.

“WHAT?”

“I said we don’t have a washer!” he shouted even louder, “You’re gonna have to clean your clothes in the sink.”

“Aw, now that sounds like fun,” she complained, “Running around some strange place buck naked, you don’t have any cameras in here do you?”

“Not anymore,” Ichabod joked, “I’ll go see if the others left anything you can wear.”

“MUCH Appreciated.”

                Descending down into the bunker, he found himself engulfed in a wave of nostalgia that he couldn’t quite explain, for some reason, he felt attached to this place. The scrap yard hadn’t been his home for long, but, then again, he mused while still trying to put a face to the cause of the emotion, in that brief amount of time, he had gone through many changes. He had found a family he never knew he had, a new life and a purpose, a reason to live. This place, though incidental, had given him so very much, and he might’ve outgrown it, but it would always hold fond memories for him.

                Shaking off that train of thought, he walked into the storage area, the place Medea had practically lived in and looked on at all the neatly ordered and sealed boxes on the shelves, waiting to be examined or plundered. The vaguely warm, nostalgic feeling was quickly replaced by one of terror, the concept alone of opening and searching through all of these storage chests, but this too was rendered moot when he saw the vial sticking out of the pages of a diary Medea had left on the shelf.

“A book mark,” he couldn’t help but grin at the silliness of it, they’re greatest weapon, their trump card, and she had been using it to keep her place in some poor dead girl’s journal.

                Despite himself, curiosity got the better of Ichabod and he scanned the page Medea left marked, but stopped almost instantly. Scrawled across the top were three small words, emblazoned with red ink and stating: It Won’t Work. It was Medea, he knew it, she had anticipated him doing just this, she had thought of his plan and the realization of that sent a chill up his spine. It wasn’t perfect, of course, there were a thousand things that could go wrong, but in over a year, this was his only option, his only safety net. Clenching the vial in his hand, her promised that this changed nothing, if the worst came to it, he would let the dice roll, and deal with consequences afterward.

                Tucking the vial away in his coat pocket, he started towards the room Bianca and Oriko had shared, his first stop to search for Margaret’s clothes. He came away with rather slim pickings, an old pair of boxer shorts and a long t-shirt that smelled rather musty, but hoped it would be enough. Along the way, Ichabod also conducted a search of the bunker’s munitions pile, finding a treasure trove of explosives and incendiary ordinance, but nothing he was willing to use in an enclosed area like a hospital. Though, there was also a decent pair of silver edged butterfly knives that he hooked to his belt before exiting the armory. On his way out he knocked on the bathroom door to let Margaret know where he was laying the spare clothes, then walked out of the shack and headed for the waiting tow truck.

                The vehicle roared to life as he expected it too, though, upon inheriting the scrap yard, many of its artifices and machines were in need of dire repair, this truck had never been one of them. She had kept it almost immaculately tuned and ready for use, no matter how long it had idled for, it had always seemed ready. Still, he did a pre-check of the engine, of the engine, of the tires, to see if it was leaking any oil or fuel. It was in the midst of this checklist that he finally noticed December, waiting patiently for commands.

“What are you still doing here?” Ichabod demanded, “Go home, you’re mother needs you.”

“Mother is sleeping right now, and also being watched over by those three women,” the fox/dog responded in a clipped tone, “You are headed into danger, you need my help.”

“No, I don’t,” he insisted, still running through his checklist.

“You’re going to fight Caroline.”

“Hopefully it won’t come to that…”

“Father…” the fox/dog sighed, “Are you that lucky?”

“…no comment.”

“You didn’t argue this much when Cindy wanted to follow you on your little road trip.”

“Don’t do that, I am not playing favorites.”

“It is not that I don’t understand father,” December added with a bit of a mournful yowl in his voice, “She’s the youngest and she is tiny and cute.”

“For the love of God,” Ichabod shook his head, pulling himself out from under the truck to face his son, “I didn’t ‘let’ her go, I argued, I told her she should stay, at home, just like I’m telling you now, because home is where you’re safe, but she wouldn’t let it go and…” he paused for a minute before burying his face in his hands, “Ugh-dammit.”

“What is it father?”

“I just got talked into admitting that you can browbeat me into this.”

“It’s not so bad father,” December approached putting a paw on Ichabod’s knee, “I could actually be useful in this fight, while Caroline has the power of the Garuda, my ice powers should negate her flames…”

“Her Garuda was powerful enough to melt a section of land mass that swallowed a hundred story tall demon and keep it imprisoned within the molten earth,” Ichabod shook his head, “It’s not that I don’t believe in you, I know you’re strong, but, before you even consider going into this battle, you need to ask yourself and give an honest answer, can you handle something of that magnitude?”

“I will endeavor…”

“Fools rush in kid, and most of the time they end up bloody because of it.”

“It never stopped you,” December grumbled.

“Yeah, and look at me now,” Ichabod reached out with his right hand, the fake one, the hand of ashes that replaced the arm he had lost, and cupped the fox/dog’s cheek as much to convey the message as to hold his gaze, “Don’t let me be your role-model, let me be your warning.”

“I…I will,” December looked back at him with determination clearly set in his eyes, “Father, I will.”

“You…” Ichabod began but could only shake his head, knowing that there was no winning this argument, “Dumb kid,” taking his hand away, he nodded to the driver’s side door still hanging open, “Get in the truck.”

Sunrise Mental Asylum

                It took them almost an hour to drive from the scrap yard to the asylum, and Ichabod wasn’t exactly in the mood to chat, so it was a very awkward and quiet hour that passed between him and December. It wasn’t until they were in the parking lot, staring at Yolanda’s motionless frame at the entrance to the hospital that it was finally broken.

“Something to keep in mind before we go in,” Ichabod stated as he collected his weapons and stashed the vial in the glove box, “Stay close.”

“Yes father,” December nodded.

“I’m not joking around here,” he turned insistently, “You do not wander away, you do not take off on your own, we don’t know what we’re facing, we don’t know what they have planned, and we are entering a literal insane asylum, so, if you see something that catches your interest, then you call it out, you show it to me, but you do not leave my side, clear?”

“I understand.”

                Complaining a bit to himself, Ichabod hopped out of the truck and walked towards Yolanda who only stood in spot, head bowed with fists clenched at her side, still as a statue. He was considering how best to approach her, knowing that the language barrier would be a divide in and of itself, when he also saw the blade clutched firmly in her left hand and he began to realize how odd she seemed. Slowing his pace to a crawl, Ichabod placed a hand on one of his guns and circled around, as much as to not startle her by coming from behind as to keep the naked sword she held in clear view at all times.

“Yolanda?” he called out, completely uncertain what to expect.

                She didn’t respond, not at first, and even when she did react to him, it was only to turn her eye in his direction before staring pointedly back down the bloodied corpse laying at her feet. So focused had he been on her that Ichabod completely overlooked the body of the child, sliced up, gutted, dead. The first instinct he had was to accuse, but, looking Yolanda over dispelled that very notion, there was no blood upon her person and her weapon was decidedly clean.

“” Yolanda spoke at last in a halting whisper, “”

“I…” Ichabod shook his head, not understanding.

“She said that he did it to himself,” December translated, a dower expression on his face.

“You speak Spanish?” Ichabod wondered.

“I speak all languages, I just can’t translate them like mother can.”

“And you’re only telling me this now?” Ichabod sighed while cautiously walking towards the downed boy.

“It never came up before.”

                Ignoring him, Ichabod went to examine the body, pausing only briefly for Yolanda to step away. The boy was still clutching a scalpel, both his hand and it were soaked over and clotted with blood, almost like a disgusting red mitten. There were multiple stab wounds all over him, and a few scars in the crook of his arm from an IV drip, beyond that, he seemed normal. That is what Ichabod thought before getting a good look at the boy’s face, the twisted horrifying grin that literally split open from ear to ear exposing muscle and sinew beneath. Also, there was the mark, the broken circle branded deeply into the child’s brow, the symbol of Abraham Scratch.

“Confirmation at least,” Ichabod muttered, cleaning his hands on the dirt and then wiping the dust off on his coat, he turned to December, “Tell her I know who we’re dealing with.”

                He waited patiently while they conversed and checked the edge on the butterfly knives he had pilfered from Grace’s store. Still in the middle of this, Ichabod caught sight of Yolanda staring at him and he could only think to shrug.

“What?”

“How are you so calm about this?” December relayed the message and nodded towards Yolanda.

“Because…I’m a professional,” he spat out the answer not really wanting to think about the question too hard, “If I’m not calm, if I’m not focused, then more people die,” shaking his head, Ichabod could hardly believe his own words, “Could you try to clean that up for her so I sound like less of a jackass?”

“I…will try,” December replied sheepishly.

“Also…” he gritted his teeth, hating himself for saying it, “Try to convey that she needs to get her shit together, we’re likely to run into more of these things and she can’t let herself hesitate, otherwise they’ll rip her apart.”

“Father…does, does that include Caroline?”

                Ichabod bit his lip to stop himself from yelling, already they’d wasted too much time outside and he had no wishes to dally about anymore.

“No, she’s a special case, she didn’t snap, it just drove her nuts, but the ones with the grins,” he sighed, “There’s no saving them.”

                Once again, Ichabod waited, impatiently shifting from one foot to another while December and Yolanda had their chat. At last December broke away and nodded happily to Ichabod.

“All done father.”

“Great, let’s go.”

                Pushing his way into the asylum, Ichabod only made it three steps past the threshold before his charge ground to a halt. The lights had been shattered, leaving the whole room lit by a string of candles arrayed around its boarder. In front of him was a woman in a nurse’s outfit, bound, gagged and tied to a chair while some strange man in a doctor’s coat slowly, diligently sawed her arm off. Acting on instinct alone, Ichabod drew his weapon and fired, killing the man ‘playing doctor’ with a single shot. Even before the body hit the ground, he was moving again, rushing to the lady, to try and save her, but she only leered back and smiled as she spat out her gag.

“You can’t save me,” the woman cackled.

                Pulling her other arm free from behind the chair, she slung a small metal valve across the room, releasing a distinctive hissing noise that Ichabod immediately recognized. He skated to a halt and backpedaled, but not fast enough. As the candles ignited the compressed gas, the resulting explosion turned the woman into chunks of bloody rain and threw Ichabod back against the entrance, shattering the glass even as his body slammed it shut on Yolanda and December.

                For a minute he just sat there, amidst the broken glass and flecks of gore, everything had happened so quickly, his brain needed time to catch up, to understand. There was also the matter of the mild concussion he had sustained from slamming his head against the metal divide between the doors. Ichabod had barely regained his senses when he heard the buzz of the intercom, and required a few seconds longer to recognize the voice chirping out over it.

“Helllllllllooooooooo…” Caroline sang over the broken electric crackle of the hidden speakers, “That was you right? They weren’t just having too much fun?”

                Ichabod stared into the now darkened room, not bothering to respond.

“No, no, that’s you…” she took a deep shuddering breath, “Mmm, I can smell you-OW!” Caroline shouted in response to a loud slap popping against her skin, “I’ll read the damn script, Ahem, by the orders of our glorious legion it has been assigned to me that I bid you welcome to our newly opened ‘house of horrors’…That’s really the name we came up with? OW! You know I’m not gonna take too many more of those! Ugh, fine, continuing on: what we offer to you this day is a maze, to whit-who the Hell says to whit-HEY!” there was the sound of a struggle cut off by the crackle of flames that continued on through her entire speech, “I fucking warned you!”

“Rrrrr, anyway, what we’re offering is essentially a maze, full of traps, tricks and party favors, search through and find your way to the useless lump within one hour of hearing this message or we begin slicing him up for spare parts…Huh? What? Yes I realize it doesn’t say that exactly, but-No Screw That! I’m not reading all this shit, you’ve got one hour sweetheart, goodbye!”

                Ichabod was leering upwards at the shadowed ceiling, her comment catching him off guard. Truthfully, he didn’t know what to make of her attitude, she had never acted like this before, and he certainly didn’t find her forward nature ‘alluring’. If anything it scared him a bit, if only because he imagined Vhen, Yolanda, or Horus might kill him for accepting the advances, but also, it terrified him to think what Abraham Scratch must have done to her to make her this way. Even worse, he thought as a sickening feeling grew in his stomach, it must have been done on purpose. The Ghoul couldn’t break her mind, so he weakened it through torture and integrated a focal point, something to lean on so that she could be manipulated, implanted Ichabod into her thoughts like a virus and destroyed who Caroline had been.

                Hearing, December’s paw pads against the broken glass from the door, shook Ichabod from his self-recrimination and he looked over to see the fox/dog tilt its head questioningly.

“’sweetheart’?”

“Don’t ask,” Ichabod sighed, and then saw Yolanda crawling in from the other side and couldn’t help flinching away from her before getting control of himself again and standing upright, “Relay the information to her, I need to find a map for this place.”

“So, do you know where Mr. Horus is?” December wondered.

“Just a hunch, but they said they were going to start chopping him up, and…I suppose there’s a few ways to interpret that, but, there’s a lot of pageantry going on here, and a guy as big as Horus, they’d need to tie him down, and somewhere that had plenty of space…” as Ichabod mused, he walked further into the darkened lobby and suddenly stopped, turning back to the pair who still remained at the entrance, “Ask her if there’s an operating theater in here.”

The Temple of the Easternmost Pillar

                Oriko wandered through the halls, anxiously flexing her fingers as she tried to keep her mind occupied and off of what Ichabod might be facing out there. Once again in her endless circuit, she found herself outside of Laurie’s room and finally gave in, to the need for distraction as much as curiosity.

“Can I come in?” she asked through the door.

“I guess,” was Laurie’s morose reply.

                Pushing open the large oaken barrier, Oriko entered the room. The Dryad had not so much decorated the place as overgrown it, covered the floor with potting soil, the walls with ivy, flowers, and bioluminescent vines. The centerpiece of it all was a small tree in a clay urn, this is where Cindy lay now, atop a bed of moss and leaves with Laurie sitting next to her, a look of concern drawing down the corners of her mouth.

“I half expected it to be ‘him’ coming in here to apologize,” she grumbled.

“You know it’s not Ichabod’s fault,” Oriko tried to assure as she sat down next to her companion.

“Maybe,” Laurie huffed, “But I’ve got a lot of rage right now and I need some place to vent it.”

“Do I really need to explain to you how that’s not fair?”

“No…” the dryad slumped forward a little, defeated, “I just…”

“Decided to be mean and self-absorbed?” Oriko supplied for her.

“I…um…” she tapped the tips of her fingers together and refused to look her companion in the eye, “I suppose.”

“It’s okay little sister,” Oriko smiled down on her warmly while placing a comforting hand on her head, “Frankly you were overdue to be a little selfish, just don’t go and make a habit out of it.”

“Spoil my fun,” Laurie muttered, but reached out and hugged the Gorgon before resuming her vigil over the sleeping imp.

“So, how is she doing?”

“I…don’t know,” Laurie admitted, pressing a finger against Cindy’s chest, “She’s breathing, and she drank some water, but she never woke up, part of me wants to slice her open and see what the Hell’s going on inside…but…”

“Why…why would you even…”

“Because something’s happening,” the Dryad’s touch lifted before gently placing the back of her pinky against Cindy’s brow, “She’s warm, but not feverish, she’s not twitching or sweating or muttering, she just lays there still, it’s like, and I don’t know why, but, when I look at her now, I feel like I’m staring at a cocoon.”

“I feel the same way when I look at Ichabod sometimes,” Oriko admitted and then found herself staring back into Laurie’s stern gaze.

“You realize that I’m being literal and not figurative right?”