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Tyler screams.
Tyler screams and screams and screams and SCREAMS.
Wednesday stares at him, unmoving, her black shoes planted in the snow. Tyler screams and kicks and hits tree trunks with his bare fists, again and again and again. He wriggles like a trapped animal. He wriggles like he is trying to free himself from chains, from a giant hand that is squeezing his body. Wednesday can almost hear the sound of his ribs cracking, snapping, victims of an excruciatingly painful weight. There is something clinging to his back, something sharp and ruthless. Or perhaps that agony comes not from an axe someone has thrust between his shoulder blades, but from something Tyler carries inside. It is Tyler himself, the axe. It is his blood, the one that burns. It is his flesh and bone that corrodes him. Hate spills copiously from within, and the kind of hate that hates itself is the most dangerous one.
Wednesday is delighted by what she sees. All that suffering is intoxicating. She is intrigued, fascinated, fulfilled, because Tyler deserves it.
Tyler spews rivers of rage in the loneliness of the forest where time seems to have vanished, buried under a blanket of snow along with silence, along with the ghost of the boy Tyler was. He will never find peace. He will never stop screaming, not even by tearing out his tongue and sewing his lips together. And he deserves it, Wednesday thinks. He deserves it.
Or maybe he doesn’t, she thinks, staring at him. Laurel Gates’ face flashes in her eyes. It stings. Tyler has been manipulated in the cruelest way. The Hyde inside him has been awakened through injections, torture, and the exploitation of the memory of his mother. It is impossible not to embrace ferocity after such trauma. Laurel stuffed Tyler with resentment as if it were dynamite, and then blew him up. Well done, Laurel. Sincere congratulations on your chilling perfidy. Wednesday can admire it more easily now that she is dead. Tyler, this ripped Tyler, is all that is left of her almost-perfect plan.
Wednesday approaches his cracked, monstrous voice. After all, Tyler cannot see her. That is only a vision of something that has already happened or will happen in the future. Wednesday comes closer to his primal despair, feeling its acrid taste on her tongue, inside her throat. It is exquisitely deep, and viscous. It reminds her of blood. It reminds her of something in an advanced state of decomposition. Wednesday is delighted. She basks in that intense and enveloping destruction as reptiles do in the warm, abundant sunlight. And yet, a microscopic part of her, the more attentive and less vengeful one, sees injustice. Tyler has hurt and killed, but in that instant the one most hurt and dead is him. He is still alive, though. And that makes everything even more heartbreaking.
His lips tremble, his eyes tremble, every shred of his skin trembles. What is that place? Where are they? How can Wednesday reach him, and then turn him over to the police, to his father, who is searching for him with the unutterable madness and stubbornness of a desperate parent?
Tyler stops screaming. Wednesday stops breathing, surprised by the sudden silence that echoes like an explosion, suffocating like soot. Tyler looks around insecure, angry, frightened, as if hunted. His eyes find her face. They open wide.
"Wednesday?"
Wednesday wakes up gasping for air. She finds Enid holding her up.
"Are you okay?"
Wednesday nods, straightening her back.
"What happened? What did you see?"
Wednesday hesitates, but then chooses to tell the truth.
"I saw Tyler," she explains. And I think he saw me.
Enid brings her hands to her mouth. "Oh my God. Where?"
"I don't know," Wednesday replies, honestly. She couldn't recognize the forest. It could be anywhere in the world.
Tyler looked so weak, dim, as if he could fade away at any moment. But glass, however fragile, can be sharp. And it can pierce.
*
Wednesday opens her eyes. She’s in a familiar place: her kitchen. There is music, Beethoven. There is also the smell of pizza. There is also herself, sitting at the table biting into a piece of extra dark chocolate straight from the bar. Wednesday watches her body in disbelief. She looks a little more grown-up. Her hair is a bit shorter, and there is a new, more placid curve drawn between her lips. There is a warmer, tender glint sparkling in her pupils.
Tyler is there, too. He looks a little older, just like her. His shoulders are relaxed, and it is as if some of that overflowing, uncontrollable fury she saw in the forest, has settled down. There is muted acceptance in the way he stretches his back, in the way he moves. Despair still remains, crouching between his shoulder blades – Wednesday can taste its sourness – but there is also a flicker of lightness, as if Tyler has learned to indulge himself in a few caresses.
"Would you like to dance with me?" Tyler asks.
Wednesday holds her breath. Something in his voice disturbs her deeply. That Tyler resembles the Tyler she trusted, the one who then betrayed and nearly killed her. He resembles the Tyler she met at the bar. They were both unaware of who they had in front of them. Perhaps it was the only moment without lies.
No, she thinks, furious. I don't want to dance with you. How could I ever–
But her more adult self bites into another piece of chocolate and stands up. Wednesday watches herself disgusted and shocked twirling around the kitchen table and waving her arms. Tyler laughs. Adult-Wednesday begins to dance faster, more theatrically. She smiles. There is so much warmth in that instant, an all-encompassing relief. Wednesday is so utterly horrified that she cannot even mimic a retch of vomit, or a sharp joke. Her sarcasm died. She feels vulnerable, betrayed by the only person she thought she could rely on: herself.
Oh god, she realizes. Oh god. I look like Mother.
There is no greater shame. She would like to tear her eyes out of their sockets so as not to witness that terrifying spectacle. But instead, she watches herself, watches Tyler. She sees that heat flickering between her wrists, down her cheeks. It expands until it has filled the entire room. How could two people as dark and saturated with resentment as they are, bask in such a sweet moment?
Wednesday watches herself taking Tyler's hands.
Break his fingers, she thinks. Please. Hurt him.
Instead, she watches herself holding and squeezing them. Wednesday is incredulous. She has never been able to convey warmth with her hands. She has never been able to give away kindness. With her hands, she has only ever known how to do one thing: to baste pain, to embroider it around people's shadows like a bloody, cursed seam, creating a hatching that needs to be cut with shears. That dystopian version of herself, however, seems to know exactly how to touch without hurting. It is as if– as if she dispenses salvation, as if she has created a bridge to reach out and be reached.
Adult-Wednesday lifts her gaze from over Tyler's shoulder. Then she winks at her.
The kitchen dissolves in the blink of an eye. Wednesday wakes up in her bed with her eyes wide. Enid is snoring. Thing taps on her shoulder.
Dream, vision, which one?
Wednesday, for once, does not want to know the answer. She clasps her hands, several times, in emptiness, as if to make sure they are still hers.
*
They are on a cliff. In front is the sea, which opens up immense and fatal. Tyler, sitting on the edge of the cliff, stares at the waves and it is as if he is drowning – as if he wants to drown. He swallows the salty ocean with wide, never-saturated eyes. He looks more like a specter than a body.
He is strangely silent. He does not scream, is not possessed by the self-destructive fury of when Wednesday found him in the forest. He seems– he seems defeated. Tyler has been permanently crushed by the hatred and resentment he desperately fought against in the forest. Or perhaps it was the knowledge of what he did, of how much he killed, that devastated him. The murder will remain carved inside him forever, just like the guilt.
Tyler, the Tyler in front of her, is simply the result of someone who beat him with a hammer. Tyler was like a block of crystal, but instead of being carefully and delicately sculpted into a statue, he was mutilated and broken by hands and events that were too violent and tragic. Hands as heavy as the sky, as heavy as the ocean in front of them, came down on him tearing shred after shred, pulverizing all his kindness. The cruelty experienced because of others, has awakened the cruelty brooded within, and wickedness has taken over, forcing his body to rot, turning him into a soft puppet, easy to bend. Tyler is nothing but a catastrophe with no more purpose, full of holes and wounds from which even blood no longer gushes. He has been rejected by people and the world. And no longer knows what to do with the empty shell that is his body, animated only by despair. He is like a cursed corpse, saturated with hatred.
Tyler stares at the sea as if searching for answers. As if he hopes to discern among the waves some piece of himself that has been stolen from him. Wednesday wonders if it is possible to reattach them to him, the pieces he has lost, if it is possible to patch up at least some of his holes. If there is any hope for him, no matter how minuscule.
Tyler straightens his shoulders and turns his face.
"Wednesday?" he asks.
Wednesday remains silent. He can’t see me, she thinks. He can’t see me.
Tyler shakes his head and points his gaze back to the sea.
"I know you're not really here. But sometimes it's like I can feel you."
There is the sea. Immense. Overwhelming. It screams as it crashes on the rocks. It screams as Tyler screamed in the forest. It screams as Tyler never stopped doing, even with his mouth closed.
Something in his eyes sparkles. It is the first sparkle of light that Wednesday can glimpse. It sparkles with madness. Maybe he has thought about the next person he wants to kill, she thinks. Which has to be me.
Tyler gets up. He looks down mesmerized. He looks down as if he is already falling. As if he is already dead.
Wednesday realizes that there was no sparkle in his gaze, but only something that has vanished forever. Tyler is going to jump off.
"Wait!" she says. Tyler gasps and chills. He turns to her, and this time it is as if he can see her for real.
Wednesday wakes up, drenched in sweat.
*
Wednesday knows that place. It is the graveyard of Jericho.
Wednesday loves wandering around cemeteries, especially on a terrifyingly dark night like that one. But she cannot enjoy the excitement as she usually would, because she knows what awaits her – or rather, who.
Tyler should be licking his wounds in a place much further away. Everyone is looking for him. Only a fool would decide to return.
Wednesday walks among the gravestones. She inhales the icy air that foretells the long winter that will descend on the city like an anvil. Then she notices a shadow, crouched on the ground. Wednesday stops a few steps away.
Tyler is sitting in front of a headstone. Because of the darkness, Wednesday is unable to decipher the inscription on the cold stone, but she knows it has to be his mother. It is a scene that anyone would find sad. Wednesday finds it sad, yes, but also fascinating. In front of her eyes is a photograph that perfectly captures grief, in its most tragic and cruel hue. And it is impossible not to be catalyzed by that pure, almost liquid despair, concentrated in such a small space. Wednesday looks at Tyler and sees someone – something – that no longer has a place in the world, because his entire world lies underground. What remains of a mother's immense and indescribable and fierce love is just a name carved in the stone. And it is sad. It is so sad to exist and breathe floating in the awareness that you are left without a home. That the planet around which you used to gravitate has vanished, and in its place the emptiness of space, infinite and terrifying, has opened wide. You no longer know where to go, or where to look. What will you hold on to?
Tyler is an outcast. He is something endowed with arms and legs forced to drag all that pain inside. He is so crooked he can't fit anywhere.
What will happen to you? , Wednesday thinks. What happens to those who can't cut out a hole to fit their bodies into?
They wear out. They wear out like candles, like a sheet of paper when it burns. The flame curls and devours the edges first, then, insatiable, continues to eat until only ashes remain. Those who cannot find a niche in reality are swept away; it is a universal law. But Tyler is not simply out of place. Tyler doesn’t have a place at all.
Wednesday, however, always felt that the things without a place were the most charming, the only ones worth preserving, because they are precious, and unique.
"Wednesday," Tyler says. "Are you here?"
Wednesday does not answer. A part of her refuses to speak to him. The resentment she feels toward him has only increased, deepening. She will carry within her the humiliation of being deceived forever. Tyler, however, will carry on his conscience the fact that he was manipulated to kill. He will live with corpses curled up like cats in his lungs until the end.
"No one helped her," Tyler hisses, his voice choked with anger – or tears, Wednesday can't quite tell. "No one helped her. And I feel so full of hate. There’s so much hate inside me and I don't know what to do with it. I don’t know how to keep it inside. I don’t know how to let it go."
Wednesday watches Tyler's hands shaking and grasping convulsively at the void. It is as if he doesn't know where to put them. It's as if he doesn't know what to do with his hands and his body. And how sad it is when you don't know what to do with yourself anymore.
The next day, Wednesday goes to the graveyard and leaves a black flower on a headstone.
*
Tyler is eating. Wednesday listens to him as he bites and mauls. Tyler is in his Hyde form, under his claws he clutches what seems to be a gutted goat. There is something so poetic about those sounds, something melodious and profound, the essence of survival echoes crystal clear in all its atrocity. Wednesday stands motionless listening to that symphony, spellbound.
Suddenly, Tyler raises his snout smeared with brilliant blood. He sniffs the air, as if sensing some scent.
He cannot see me. He cannot hear me. I'm not really here.
Tyler turns around, however, and points his wide eyes at her, exactly as an animal would at its prey.
A sudden tide of fear swells inside her stomach. Tyler lets out a low, guttural growl and jumps in her direction. Wednesday doesn't even try to run. It would be useless.
Tyler grabs her. Wednesday feels his claws inside her arm. There is the smell of fresh blood, of wet fur.
Tyler stares at her and smiles. His body flickers, shrinks, until Wednesday faces a grotesque creature that is part human and part Hyde.
"Come see me."
Wednesday would like to say many things. Around her, however, the landscape begins to quiver, as if about to vanish. She doesn’t have time.
"Where?"
Tyler's smile widens. "You know where."
*
Crackstone's crypt is dark and cold, exactly as she remembers it. It was so obvious as a hiding place. But maybe that's exactly why it worked.
Tyler is sitting on the stone steps leading from the entrance to the small central altar. He looks thin and emaciated. He looks as if he could shatter into a thousand pieces simply by blowing air on his face. But Wednesday has learned not to trust what she sees – not to trust in general – when it comes to him.
"How long have you been hiding here?"
"A month, I think," Tyler replies. "Keeping track of time is getting difficult. Hi, Thing."
Thing, clinging to Wednesday's shoulder, returns the greeting by flipping the bird at him. Tyler smiles. Wednesday has no time for that.
"Did you see me?" Wednesday asks. She needs to know. "In my visions."
Tyler's smile grows. "'Oh, you had visions about me?"
Wednesday strangles any glimmer of irreverence in Tyler's expression with her gaze. This is no time for joking. Tyler becomes serious again, seemingly intimidated by her palpable, suffocating killer instinct. Those are the moments Wednesday detests most, because those are the ones that confuse her: there is a potential killer monster in front of her who could slaughter her throat, yet Tyler has chosen to remain human, to remain vulnerable. Is there deception? And if there is, where does it begin? Why is it so difficult to discern the truth from the false? Why are people so irritatingly complex and multifaceted?
"I saw you," Tyler replies. "At first it was more like a vague perception. I thought it was all in my head. But on the cliff– on the cliff, I felt you for the first time. And I understood you were real."
What about the vision in my kitchen?, Wednesday wishes to ask. But that moment, in case it is real, will happen in the future. And she has no intention of telling Tyler about the possibility that they will end up happily dancing around the dining table while making pizza.
"What about the graveyard?" she says instead.
Tyler hesitates. "I sensed you there, too. I told you about my mother. Thanks for the flowers, by the way. Usually people don’t remember her with kindness."
"I really think your mother was just a victim of other people's ignorance and prejudice, for what it's worth," Wednesday replies. "Too bad I can't say the same about you. I still haven't figured out whether you really enjoy killing, or whether you did it all because, as a Hyde, you have no control over yourself. Don't bother explaining it to me," Wednesday anticipates him, since Tyler has already opened his mouth. "I wouldn't believe you anyway."
"So what are you going to do?"
Well, that's exactly the problem, isn’t it? Wednesday can't just turn her back on him and leave the crypt. She cannot choose not to act, not when it would mean leaving a Hyde on the loose. Wednesday has not forgotten – and she never will – what Tyler did to Eugene, and what he almost did to Enid. But she cannot condemn him, because Wednesday has felt viscerally on her skin, through her visions, how much hatred and guilt, how much suffering, there’s inside him. Tyler is the overwhelming evidence that Principal Weems was right: there is not only black and white. There are also all the shades that tend between one color and the other.
"That's a question I should be asking you. What are you going to do? Live hidden underground forever?"
"Who says I'm hiding? Maybe I'm down here because I'm planning revenge. It wasn't just Laurel Gates. There are other people out there who want to see the outcasts dead. People who could help me."
"'As if you're not one of us. Whoever wants to kill us, will certainly want to kill you too. They will exploit you again, and you will remain a foolish puppet forever. If you really want revenge, then do it yourself."
Tyler opens his mouth to reply, then closes it again. He looks confused, unsteady.
"Revenge is something I understand," Wednesday continues. “Something I cherish, even. If I were in your place, I’d want to see the Nevermore burn in the most heinous way. But do you know what I think? I think you’re very different from me. I think you’re not so ruthless. I think you’re just weak, not that different from my little brother, actually. But my brother shows his weakness by crying, getting punched by the older kids, and throwing grenades into the ponds to let off steam. You, on the other hand, submit. I guess you can’t help it because it's in a Hyde’s nature, but believe me: docility won't help you with revenge. Docility will only allow people to take advantage of you and use your claws. And if that’s what you wish to be, just a tool maneuvered by someone else and emptied of its personal identity, then you can go back to the cliff. I won't stop you from jumping off this time."
Tyler looks at her, his eyes wide. "You know," he says after a while. "This was more painful than when my father shot me."
"Your father shot you?" Wednesday asks incredulously, positively impressed. "I didn't know that. I guess I'll have to change my mind about him."
Tyler hints at a smile, but then turns serious again. "You have no idea what it's like to be shot by your father."
"You're right, my father never shot me. He did throw me into a shark tank, though."
Tyler's eyes widen. He stares at her, looking for sarcasm on her face. He doesn't find it.
"You're serious," he says, shocked. "I guess– I guess you terrified all of them?"
"No," Wednesday replies, recalling the moment when she had dipped into the water, in which she had caressed their smooth skin. "The sharks immediately identified me as their kind. We had a nice swim."
Tyler, at that point, laughs. And for a moment it seems as if he has freed himself of the burden on his body, as if he has forgotten the tragedy into which his life has sunk so far. He really seems to be just a boy.
"I think you should go home, Tyler. To your father."
Tyler tightens his lips, his expression wary like that of a wounded cat. "I can’t. I hate him. He lied to me about mom all the time."
"I know there’s nothing more nerve-wracking than parents when they lie. But he’s the only one who wants to help you unconditionally. And he’s also the only one who apparently has a sense of justice strong enough not to bend even in front of his own child. Then we can try to find someone who can help you control your power without needing a master. But you have to find yourself again. You have to accept yourself again, and redraw your contours, otherwise anyone could manipulate you. And I cannot get out of this crypt without doing anything. I cannot risk the safety of my– of my–
The word hangs itself inside her throat.
"Friends," Tyler completes for her. Wednesday wrinkles her nose nauseated, but nods.
"Why do you want to help me?" Tyler asks. "You haven't even tried to kill me, despite it being the easiest choice. And also the smartest, since you don't trust me."
Wednesday stares at him. "I think Nevermore should never have banned people like you. You’re an outcast, just like us. By discriminating and rejecting your kind, Nevermore has cut you off from the only reality that should have accepted you for who you are. I blame them the most."
Tyler lowers his gaze. Wednesday continues. "Besides, no one seems to have a clear idea of what a Hyde is, and what triggers his more bestial side. I might become the first to figure that out. So, from my point of view, killing you would just be an immense waste of potential."
Tyler smiles. Wednesday smiles, too, like a mirror. She has to admit it: she is still magnetized by him, by all those things she doesn't know. Tyler is like a loose cannon, and Wednesday wants to discover, to touch, to swallow, every single nuance of his soul. The vengeful and violent one, which smells of blood, and the tender one, which tastes of coffee and dark chocolate and gentle hands.
Tyler follows her, obediently, out of the crypt.