"I haven't seen it rain like this in a while." Karen stroked David's hair.

"The horror of our duties is drawing to a close. There are so few conjurers left in Driftwood." David held his hand over hers a moment, and then pulled his head off her lap, sitting up.

"Our patrols turn up nothing. Most are dead, and a lot have fled from Colt County altogether. This is what The Order wanted, right? What we wanted. We're winning."

"Yeah. It's just... it feels so empty. Empty city, empty victories. They're not our victories, you know?"

"Theyre victories, David. Who cares who did the fighting?"

"We spent our entire lives fighting something, and what do we do if there's nothing left to fight?"

Karen slid up beside him. "Lots of kids, I expect."

"No. I mean yeah, but it's just so..."

"Empty. I know what you mean, David. I know better than you do."

"That's an exaggeration."

"Pfffpt. You've got a beautiful, gentle heart. You love your station, and hate the consequences of it."

"...and you revel in them."

"So what if I do? We are what we do, baby. You've always known that. Maybe there's a new threat one day, maybe not. If not, we still train. We still raise our own in The Order."

"Driftwood isn't the entirety of the world, Karen. We win a war here. How many things like Bane are out there? How many monsters cross into our world out there, as they do here."

"You miss it."

David nodded. "I hated it, and now it's gone, and I miss it."

"We're married," Karen sighed into David's ear. "We could have kids."

"Right now?"

"No time like the present."

"You know how babies are made, right? They don't just appear."

Karen punched him in the shoulder. "Shut up, and do your duty."

✟ ☧ ✟

It was the crying that woke him up.

David yawned, sitting up in his bed. Karen stirred next to him, clinging to her pillow. She muttered something about food something cooking in the oven.

A baby's voice babbled from down the hall, distant, echoing as though from a great distance. David shifted, the muscles in his back protesting as he did, and hefted his legs over the side out of the bed. He felt the thick shag carpeting beneath his feet.

You don't have shag carpet, David.

A familiar voice in his head. A whisper. A thought not his own.

He stared down at the hardwood floor beneath his feet, felt the cold.

He stood from the bed, and crept in silence for the bedroom door to keep from waking Karen.

Karen's voice was a whisper when it came. "There's nothing out there for you, David."

"I'll be just right back, Karen."

Karen's light snore carried across the room in response. She was sleeping.

They're all sleeping, David. Not you, though. You've always been awake.

David stepped past the threshold of the door.

The hallway stretched into darkness, it's width, and height distorted by an impossible length. His home was large, but not so large. It was a long walk to the end of the hall, to the distant call of the baby's little voice.

A man crept past him, larger than him, shoulders broad as he ever saw them. His father, long dead, and creeping past him. David could smell him.

"Dad?"

Clay turned out of habit, or reflex, and swung on David. David, younger, faster, caught Clay by the wrist.

The hall light was on, bright in his eyes - almost blinding - and David was face-to-face with his father. His father, young in the face, eyes wild and scared.

He's not afraid of you, David.

David marveled in the moment, his father's clenched fist suspended between them, the taught muscle in his forearm steely in his grasp.

Clayton's wide eyes searched his, mystified, pupils large despite the light.

"Who - who are you?"

David felt his throat tighten. "What are you doing out of bed? Is everything alright?"

"It's fine. I... I heard Jonathan crying. It's been a long night," Clay's voice took a hushed tone, "and I just want to let Emily sleep."

David was alone in the hallway, his hand closing over empty air. He stood alone in the middle of the hall near the stairwell. Sudden movement on the landing below the second flight of stairs drew his eyes away from the empty space in the hall. He stared past the railing and saw Jasmine Wood on the landing.

She was dressed in the clothes she died in, a large serpent coiled around her arm. She turned her expression toward him, her eyes somewhere between accusation and longing. Her skin took on a clear gleam, pale and blue in the bright light of the hallway. He could see muscle, and bone, and beneath it a dull light of her own.

"It's cold, David. Would you put on a fire? The rains won't stop, and I can't find warmth anywhere."

"Throw a log in the hearth, Jazzy. I'll be down in a moment. I have to find someone."

"Who?"

Yes, who for are you looking, David?

"I have to find my dad, Jazzy. If I could find him..." David returned his gaze to the stretch of hallway. It was dark again.

"You'll do what?" Her voice carried out to him, though her lips never parted, her mouth never moved.

"I could save him."

He looked back to the landing. It was empty, the hardwood floor polished, his mother's tea cart sitting in its place, the place he remembered it all until the end of her life.

The air felt as a palpable static, not the electrical surge before a shock followed, but the crawling black and white static of a television left on after the close of the national anthem, when the movies were over, and the infomercials were long over. The static that woke you from sleep to let you know it was time to turn off the television and go back to sleep.

He could sense something behind the static, just beyond the edge of sight. Arguing, and a struggle. He could smell his dad in the air, and the unmistakable scent of his grandfather.

David lashed out on impulse.

"Dad!" Clayton dodged David's attack, and edged away. "It's fine! Did Emily call you? We had an argument, but things are fine now. I'm ready to move on."

David narrowed his eyes, rubbing his chest, and he yawned. "Dad, what are you doing? It's me. You need to go back to bed."

"Your mom's sleeping, boy."

David glanced past his father to his bedroom. "Sleeping? Dad, Mom's dead."

"I just left her sleeping in our room, boy! Your mom's fine!"

David worried, and saw the same worry on Clay's panicked face.

"Go back to bed, Dad. We'll talk in the morning."

"David, I need to get to your brother. He's awake, and I need to help him get back to sleep."

"Brother?"

"Your brother. Jonathan." Clayton turned, and David caught him by the arm.

David looked past Clayton, and saw the door at the end of the room. It breathed, the wood cracked and decrepit. Things writhed around it, beneath it. He could hear familiar snarling behind it. "Dad. You don't want to go in there. There are things you shouldn't ever see."

"You're alarming me, son. If you don't let me go I'm going to have to make you let me go."

"Fine." David put his hands up. He nodded to the room. "It's better you not dwell in the company of snakes."

"Da!"

David was alone, the baby's voice echoing down the dark hallway from the guest room.

"David?" Jasmine hollow voice called from the landing.

David turned with caution. He could hear his pulse in his ears, his heart beating hard in his chest. Jasmine stood on the landing as he remembered her, the black and gray dress, the cord on her neck with the glinting black glass pendant.

"Jazzy, I have to find my dad."

"It's cold."

"Keep warm by the fire. I'll be down after I find my father."

"I'm cold, David!"

"Go and sit by the hearth." David returned his attention to the hall, and saw Clayton hesitant in his trek to the guest room.

He caught up to his father and they walked side-by-side.

"You're not going to like what you see."

"I've seen a lot of shit I don't like, son." Clay spared a moment's glance at the young man, and returned his attention to the door. "Where's the doorknob, David?"

"It's right there, dad." David reached for the doorknob, and turned it. The door creaked open. David stopped at the door, and dared not step into the room. Clayton brushed past him, and shut the door.

David waited, the sound of wilderness calling from the room, tepid air rolling from beneath the door over David's bare feet.

"Get out!"

(Get out!)

(Get out!)

(Get out!)

David turned, and ran. He ran down the impossible length of the hall, and back into his bedroom, pulling the door shut behind him as he did.

✟ ☧ ✟

David woke to find Karen pinning him down, restraining his wrists in her strong grip. "David!"

"I'm awake." David shrugged her off with little effort.

"You were screaming, baby."

"It felt real."

"...dead god again?"

David sat up and shook his head. "No, not exactly. I mean they were there, somewhere in there, those terrors in the tree... but it was here."

"They were here?"

David heaved, trying not to give into waking frustration. "No. I was here. I woke up in our room. I saw you. Then I saw my dad, and Jasmine, and I could hear a baby crying."

"I though we discussed this. You're done with Jasmine." Karen folded her arms.

David felt his cheeks flush. "I can't believe I'm going to say this to you of all people, but don't be such a girl. I'm not having dirty dreams of ex-girlfriends."

"Dead ex-girlfriends." Karen shoved a finger into David's shoulder, and was immediately sorry for it.

He shrugged. "I wasn't dreaming of Jasmine, she was just part of the cast. I heard a baby crying down the hall from our guest room."

Karen sulked.

David ignored her sulking. "I wanted to go and see who it was, and dad was there... but he was young. He was insistent on getting to Jonathan."

"...baby, you've been reading his journals, and you saw that picture of your brother, and Nadjia. It's a dream."

David nodded. "True, maybe. Except this."

David slid to the bedside, and off the bed to his feet. He hurried to the closet, and opened it. He searched through the chest containing family diaries. He produced two from the chest, and brought them back to the bed.

"See this, and tell me it is only a dream." David opened the first journal. "This belonged to my father, dated September twenty-eighth, in nineteen-sixty-four."

Karen picked up the journal, and read through it while David stared at her profile.

After a while, David exaggerated a sigh.

"Yeah, I'm a slow reader. Plenty people are."

"Just read."

Karen continued through the journal, flipping the pages as she did. When she finished, she shook her head. "Of course yours would be similar. You've read it."

Read this. Grandpa's journal, dated January the thirteenth, nineteen-fifty-six.

Karen took the journal from David, sparing him a begrudging look, the kind of look that dared him to judge her speed in reading. "One sigh or grumble and it's JP for you, man."

David stifled laughter.

Karen's playful frustration faded from her face, and her brow furrowed.

Ten minutes, and thirty-three seconds - David watched the clock - and Karen sat the journal down on the bed.

"...what you've managed to tell me in as terrible a broken description you possibly could- and David please let someone else write your stories - matches two separate accounts of the same thing."

"Yes."

"...from two other perspectives."

Karen shuddered. "David, it's impossible. You, and Clay, and Bart all in one place, at one time."

"I didn't see my grandfather there... but I know he was. I could sense him. I could smell him."

Karen was still, quiet, and stared at the books.

"You're scared."

"David, we didn't sign up for this... and there's differences. Your grandfather's journal is dated Friday, January thirteenth, your father's is dated the day after his... dream."

"Today's the thirteenth of January."

"It's a Tuesday."

"Karen, three sides of the same tale. We were all there."

"To what end, then? What does it prove? What does it say?"

"My grandfather's looked forward, and only... father's looked forward, and back. Mine only looked back."

"...but why David?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Karen, I didn't see any of this shit on purpose."

"I know baby. Someone's fucking with us."

"No, we're immune to it. Rites and blessings. They can't cast on us, can't get into our heads, our sleep, or our dreams."

"Magick, or none, David. Someone is fucking with us..."

David cleared his throat, interrupting Karen, and pulled open his father's journal. He thumbed through the pages until he found the entry.

He sped to the end, and recited from it. "...magick or none, Clay. Someone is fucking with us. Find them and snuff them out." David snorted. "Was that what you were going to say?"

Karen made a face at him. "Not necessarily."

"Yeah. The great Karen Walker wasn't going to suggest violence on the enemy." David moved closer to her, and nuzzled the side of her head.

"What do we do?"

"I don't know what to do... but I know what we cannot do. We cannot let on to Grifford."

"The judge. David, we have to."

"My father did, and the good judge Samael Grifford took him to the Sepulchre. It offered no more answers then, anymore than when the brother Grifford took us there. We left with more questions than when we arrived."

"...secrets from The Order, David. That's treason."

"...and you're going to turn me in for treason? You're my other half."

"I'd die, first."

"Me, too." David frowned. "Karen, there's something bigger going on than we understand. If it scares you, then it scares the shit out of them."

"What do we do with this, then?"

David yawned. "Let's sleep on it. I'm tired. When we wake, let's figure out whether we should have sons, or daughters."

Karen blushed, despite herself. "Oh, we get to choose?"

"No, but it's fun to imagine while we practice at bringing the next generation about."

"You're terrible at sexy talk."

"...and you like to pretend you're a dinosaur."

"David. ...David."

"No. It's time to get some sleep."

"David, tell me we should run."

"No dinosaurs. Sleep."