Chapter 1: First Blood
Chapter Text
“Holy shit- holy shit- hoooly shit-” Mr Kitty stuttered, voice still squeaky and young. His hand flew out to grasp Finch's arm. With Pig Pig's motionless body at their feet, all Finch could do was stare. He was captured by the blood pooling from his friend's chest. Red and thick. “Holy shit, he's dead- what do we do? Do we call the police or-”
Devil Lad smacked Mr Kitty upside the head, eyes narrowing visibly behind his mask. “Calm down, stupid. We can't go to the police, obviously. We killed him. Well, you killed him, Kitty,” he started, crossing his arms. When DL had asked to tag along it hadn't seemed like it would be a problem. Mr Kitty and Pig Pig had spent the greater part of the night quizzing him on who he was and if he went to their school. Then things went south. Way south. Finch examined the way the railway spike broke through Pig Pig's shoulder blades. He was dead and he couldn't comprehend it; just that the sounds of his bones snapping had been like a symphony.
“So, Finch, what do we do?” Devil Lad turned, giving Finch the most piercing look as if he knew what they should do but he wanted Finch to say it. He wanted Finch to lead, to take action.
“I... guess we should bury him.” He wasn't sure if that was the answer Devil Lad was looking for, but that was what you did with dead people. You bury them or burn them. His parents kept his grandma's ashes on a shelf in the living room but they'd buried their dog Mush out back when he'd been hit by a car.
“Right. Out in the woods then?” So it was the right answer, he could see the smile in the masked boy's eyes. Anyone else would've found it unnerving but Finch just found it curious.
“How the shit are you two just completely okay with this? Piggly's dead!” Mr Kitty chimed in, stepping back from the body. He was afraid and Finch could see it. Maybe more so because it was him who had shoved Pig Pig jokingly to his fate. It was a reasonable reaction, Finch decided. He knew he should feel bad about his ever growing fascination but one look at Devil Lad made him feel like maybe he didn't have to. Even if he should.
“There's nothing we can do, Mr Kitty. So let's deal with it.” Finch said, bending over as he pulled Pig Pig up by his shoulders. The sick scraping sound of the dead boy's bones against the metal impaling him made him shiver. Not in a bad way. Devil Lad moved in and grabbed his feet, helping to move him as they started toward the tree line.
The two of them cast a look back when Kitty didn’t immediately follow after them. He was pacing, hands fisted in his light blonde hair. Finch heard DL snort derisively but couldn’t blame his friend for being shaken. They were ten years old. Mr Kitty, the bleeding corpse in his arms, and himself. His fingers felt numb.
“He’ll keep his mouth shut right?” DL’s voice cut through his hazy thoughts.
“Yeah. Of course. He’ll be fine.”
Finch didn’t know if that was completely true.
---
“So, where’s the spades, man?” he’d asked as he wiped the blood from his hands onto his hoodie, far too casual for the situation.
“Wh- oh… Oh my god! Shit!” Kitty screeched, hands fisting in his blonde hair. “What the fuck are we gonna do? We can’t dig with our hands! Shit, shit. Someone’s gonna find him out here eventually, we can’t just leave him! What the hell do we do?”
Devil Lad was looking at him again, eyes burning holes in the skeleton mask over his face. He groaned.
“Calm down,” Finch commanded, stepping forward. “Just go find a shovel. You know where Mr Felcher’s place is? His shed can’t have a lock on it. Just…. ‘Borrow’ a shovel. I’ll stay here and keep watch. No one will find the body.”
“Don’t call him ‘the body’, man, christ...” Mr Kitty replied, looking almost queasy. It wasn’t a good look for him. “Fine. I know where Felcher’s is, but if there’s a lock on that shed I’m coming back here to kick your ass. You coming, DL?”
“No way. Snatching shovels is a stealth job. A one man mission. God speed.”
Mr Kitty didn’t waste any time getting as far away from the clearing as possible. It was for the best. He needed the distance. Finch could see that much. He stepped away from the body himself, seating himself in soft, damp grass. Devil Lad joined him a moment later as he was wiping his hands over the ground. He didn’t want to smear blood on his shorts. The grass was the next best thing.
“Was it wise to let him go alone?” He asked, staring out into the trees.
“You’re the one who said he wouldn’t snitch on us.”
“... So? You trust Mr Kitty completely?”
“Mm. No. I trust you completely.”
Finch’s gaze snapped to Devil Lad immediately, wide and startled. For the life of him, he didn’t know why DL would. “You just met me. You don’t know that.”
The red mask didn’t give away any insights, grinning at him with a casual shrug of his shoulder. “Call it intuition. I like you guys. You. Kitty. Pig Pig. We had fun tonight.”
“Pig Pig’s dead. I don’t know if it qualifies as fun after that.” Finch crossed his arms over his bare knees. He was cold… but he couldn’t hear the autumn wind whistling through the trees.
“Haha- Yeah. Good point.”
---
Then he'd went to sit on the porch, staring at the neighbourhood that had looked so beautiful in the dark. He wrapped his arms around his knees like he had the night before, Devil Lad’s words replaying in his head. Fun. Pig Pig’s corpse buried out in the woods at the edge of town.
Soon, Mr and Mrs Pig would be waking up to find their son had never come home. Or maybe they’d stayed up all night waiting and were already at the police station, filing the missing persons. Would they come to his house and question him?
He didn’t know how much time he’d spent sitting on the steps, mind twisting into knots. Eventually, Mr Kitty came barreling down the street, dragging Pig Pig by his hand. A very alive and well Pig Pig. “Finch! Look!” He shouted, jumping up and down on the sidewalk. “He's fine. Man, he's fine!”
“That's awesome,” he replied softly. He felt like the ground had been pulled from under him. As happy as he was to see his friend wasn't dead, he didn't know what to think. Had last night been real at all? What about Devil Lad? “Hey, did DL ever tell you who he was?” he cut Mr Kitty off in the middle of a clearly near hysterical rant.
“Uh... No? Why's it matter? I'd be happy if we never saw him again. C'mon man, look! Pig Pig doesn't even have a scar-”
He tuned out again. Clearly, the three of them remembered what had happened. At least if he was losing his mind, his friends were in the same boat. He hadn’t ever wondered where Devil Lad came from, where he went, who he was that night. Important questions he'd foolishly left unanswered. At least, until next year.
Chapter 2: Rot
Summary:
“My name. It's Finch.” he gritted his teeth. It was too late to turn back.
Chapter Text
“What's your name, anyway?” Spencer asked, tilting his head at the stranger who'd joined the three of them at sunset. He’d had been pondering the same question but the other boy fit so seamlessly into the group, he’d forgotten to ask at all.
“Devil Lad,” the strange boy responded smoothly, head tilting in a way that was almost threatening.
“Yeah and I'm Mr. Kitty,” was Spencer's snorted response. He didn’t have to look to know how hard Spencer was rolling his eyes.
“Why not? It's Halloween. We don't have to be the same old boring people. That's, like, half the fun.” 'Devil Lad' spun around, pinning a paper mache pig head with a purposeful stare. “What's your name?”
“Uh... Pig?... Pig.”
“HAH, Pig Pig. That's perfect for you, dumbass!” 'Mr. Kitty' laughed and stuck his finger through the mouth slot of 'Pig Pig's face.
He remained silent through all the commotion. They were all being stupid from the sugar rush. Mr. Kitty hadn't wasted anytime chowing down on the first couple house's pull. Still, he took a moment to consider what he’d call himself. Skeleton Boy? No, that was too close to Devil Lad's moniker.
It wasn't until Devil Lad stepped away from the arguing pair and grabbed his shoulder that he decided. “What's your name?” the boy asked, tone low and curious. He looked into hidden eyes for the first time that night through the mask. He swore for a moment they had a haunting red glow but one blink and it was gone.
“Finch.”
---
Mr. Kitty and Pig Pig wasted no time starting to call him Finch, claiming it was cool and complaining that their names were too dumb and nerdy to use off holiday. If anything good had come from last Halloween it was that he'd gotten a sweet nickname. He couldn’t complain about that. Honestly, he had felt cool at first but slowly he started to feel like something was off. Something had changed in him. Something he didn’t fully understand yet.
Every day, more and more classmates took notice and started to call him Finch until it was only adults who insisted on his real name. They thought the nickname was cute, which was just irritating. It wasn’t supposed to be cute. It was supposed to mean something about him that he was suddenly sure Devil Lad had known about that Halloween. The way he'd asked like he already knew the answer didn't sit right with him.
Still, he hadn’t pressed the issue with the adults. They didn’t understand and maybe that was for the best. That was until he came home one day, the name swimming in his head and feeling like a caged animal. It wasn’t just a name.
His mother, stomach huge with a soon to be sibling had kissed his forehead and asked how his day was. Perfectly affectionate now that her maternity leave had stranded her away from work. Finch didn’t answer immediately staring vacantly and nodding dismissively. Snapping her fingers in front of his face, she’d called his name.
The name that wasn't his anymore.
“My name's Finch,” it just slipped out. He hadn’t meant to. Really.
“What?” she blinked, looking taken aback. Her confused look just made something turn rancid inside him. Anger pushed against his ribs, like the railroad spike and Pig Pig's chest.
“My name. It's Finch.” he gritted his teeth. It was too late to turn back.
“That's what your friends call you now, isn't it? Like the bird?”
“No. Nothing like the bird,” he growled, all his pent up confusion and frustration bursting forth at once. His mother took a step back, startled. “Like me.” Like something deformed and grotesque, a poor mirror of what it used to be. Like something festering from the inside out because some worm had drilled into the core.
Finch turned and ran, up the stairs, up to his room. He slammed the door shut behind him, ignoring his mother’s concerned shout. She didn’t follow after him, knew him better than he wanted to admit. He threw himself onto his bed. The quilted blanket she’d made him smelled like home.
It was Halloween. Everything was different now, how could it not be? He needed answers and the one person who had them was nowhere to be found. Devil Lad was a ghost. He didn’t go to their school, or the middle school. It was possible he was from another town but that didn’t feel right. Not with the way he’d easily suggested streets, known who lived where.
He either had to find him or forget that godforsaken holiday ever happened… and he had a feeling he wasn’t forgetting about it anytime soon.
---
Finch’s mother gave birth late into October, far enough away from Halloween that he wasn’t pulling his hair out. The holiday loomed ever closer, reawakening feelings he’d spent all year trying to force into the back of his mind. He wasn’t how he felt about the news that a sweet baby girl would be joining him soon either, to cry and poop and sleep.
They brought her home swaddled in pink, tiny nose scrunched up like she had smelled something awful the first time the two of them met. She started crying immediately and he… laughed. Genuine and honest. When had he started faking his laughter? He couldn’t remember.
“That's not very nice!” his mother laughed, cradling the tiny girl to her chest. Happy to see Finch happy, maybe, even as she took to rocking and comforting the new baby girl. "Her name's Mary Rose. Like your grandma."
“Sorry...” he mumbled, but he wasn't, a quirked smirk still up turning his lips. It’d been her face. She was more perceptive than he thought for a newborn if she could smell the rot on him. It was so fresh in his mind. Halloween was creeping closer.
He decided immediately she needed a new name too. Mary didn't suit her cruel sounding giggles and shrieking cries.
“I'll call her Moochi, Mom.” he grinned.