23 – Opening a Box of Worms

“So,” Erika said, taking a seat at the Varn’s meeting table. “That’s the plan. Comments, questions, concerns?”

Today was a bit of an odd day at the arcade. More of the machines were functional, including an old-fashioned skee-ball game. The carpets were clean, and some new lighting had been installed, readying the place for a hopeful opening after the new year.

That assumed Rick was up for it. The proprietor of Varn’s sat at the meeting table with a sunken look in his eyes, staring at the paper containing Erika’s plan without seeing it. She wasn’t sure what his deal was. The Warrior had even gotten into contact, letting them know that she would have a handful of lightly cursed items for Erika to break by Christmas; assuming all went well, he might be rid of his sword on Christmas Day.

Another oddity for the day: The Fixer sat at Rick’s side, gussied up in their Mister Dice persona. This wasn’t the first time The Fixer had visited The Hunters since the museum, but it might well have been the second. The avoidance was allegedly to protect The Hunters, but Erika thought they didn’t want to talk to other people due to whatever paranoia they had.

The rest of The Hunters had assembled as well, which was a third oddity. Aside from the night they intended to break into The Church, Erika wasn’t sure she had seen all of them gathered together. Leslie lightly stroked his beard as he stared at the paper, Anna frowned over it, and Sofia sat in the back, barely participating. Even Daniel had a seat at the table today.

“You want to… draw these people out,” Daniel said, speaking slowly as if talking to a toddler.

“Yes. I said that,” Erika said.

“Then what? Fight them? Your plan has one step.”

“You’ll find two steps if you review the handout.” Erika held up one finger. “Break a bunch of things,” she said before holding up her second finger. “Attract cultists and naked women. Alternate step one is The Stalker, assuming her power works on these things.”

There were a few more details than that, much as Erika had considered leaving it barren for the joke. Most of the details revolved around potential locations to trigger this whole thing, times and dates, and allies that might assist—The Puppet, mostly, but maybe also The Church, given their interest in The Mummy, assuming Erika thought they would help and not just observe.

It was true that there wasn’t anything after. The Fixer had been fighting these types of people their whole existence, if not this specific branch of the cult, so it was up to them to figure out what to do.

“Women,” Anna said. “Plural. You really think there is more than one?”

Erika shrugged. “According to The Fixer, instances of this cult typically revolve around some central theme and ideology—those are similar between instances, but often not exactly the same. I’m not quite sure what that means here, but I’ve seen masked people and now naked people. One of those two things is probably a theme.”

Upon mentioning them, most of the assembled group turned to The Fixer.

“My former self was killed, mid-September, by a large man bearing a vast number of tattoos—or, perhaps, a single tattoo that covered a vast portion of his body. He wore robes of some type, but apart from that, I would say he matches the description Erika gave of the woman.”

“The mask people are their baseline goons, while the tattooed crew are their heavy hitters?” Erika asked. “Cultists versus true supernatural entities?”

“Given the information we have, I would tentatively agree.”

Sofia clapped her hands to the table, swearing a bit of Spanish under her breath. “I’m sorry. Am I the only one who thinks we’re diving even deeper into something that is already way over our heads?” She pointed an accusatory finger toward The Fixer. “Killed his former self? What even does that mean? Rick’s been acting all mopey over killing someone who shoved her hand through a giant person-sized spider? De verdad, parece que estoy perdiendo la cabeza acá.”

“She isn’t dead,” Erika said, looking to Rick with a calculating expression. Turning to speak directly to him, she said, “I told you that I heard her laughing right before the van hit her.”

“I chopped her head off,” Rick said without any real oomph in his words. He pressed his fingers to his eyes, rubbing hard enough that it had to hurt. “I did it again…”

“She nearly tore out my throat,” Erika said, tugging down the fashionable scarf she had taken to wearing in the last few days. The marks had faded, but there were still four faint red lines dragging across her neck. “If you hadn’t acted, I might be dead.”

Erika wasn’t actually sure about that. If the naked woman was truly working with The Mummy cult, they wanted her alive to break more chains. At the same time, that woman had not presented a particularly stable appearance—if she was insane enough, she might just have killed her regardless, even accidentally.

“You didn’t take a life with your sword,” Erika continued. What the naked woman might have done didn’t matter; Erika had felt genuinely threatened in that moment, and now, Rick needed to hear something. “You saved a life. Maybe you don’t want to think about this, but here it is: Thank you for drawing your sword. I’ll try to break it as soon as possible.”

Rick just nodded his head, sighing a little. Leslie, seated at his side, clapped a hand to his shoulder, giving him a reaffirming squeeze. He seemed to perk up a bit at that, even looking up to Erika for the first time since she’d arrived.

She doubted he would get over whatever guilt he had that easily, but Erika also doubted she could do much more to help. From here on, Leslie could give him a little morale support.

“This is what I’m talking about,” Sofia said, bringing the conversation back down. “All this talk of life and death. I know we dealt with ghosts, and ghosts aren’t safe by any stretch of the imagination, but they sure sound a whole lot safer than all these… monsters.”

“And you do not have to deal with them,” Leslie said. “No one is being forced to do anything that makes them uncomfortable. But we formed this group…” He trailed off, looking around the table. “My family has fought the unknown for a hundred years. If something is preying on humanity, ghost or otherwise, then I will stand in its path. If you wish to stand at my side, I will welcome you. If you don’t, I will not call you a coward. You, all of you, are welcome to continue as you were or, if you feel you must, leave entirely.”

A heavy silence followed Leslie’s speech. Anna, Rick, and Sofia all looked around at one another. Erika felt like she was being left out, but she wasn’t upset over it—he wasn’t talking to her. She and The Fixer represented the other here; they weren’t part of The Hunters and, likely, would never truly be part of them, no matter how much they interacted.

Daniel straightened his back, opening his mouth.

Leslie interrupted. “Except you,” he said, making Daniel snap his mouth shut. “You’re fine to sit in on these kinds of meetings, but you need more training before doing anything else.”

Daniel slumped a little, but he didn’t look too disappointed. If anything, he looked relieved.

Nobody else said anything, though some vibe in the room made Erika frown over at Sofia, figuring she would be the first to stand up and walk out. From day one, Sofia had been the one worried and concerned about everything.

Sofia sighed, shoulder slouching. “I’m not saying I’m out,” she said, making Erika realize that everyone else had been looking her way as well. “I just… It’s scary, you know? Ghosts are familiar. These things aren’t.”

“I get it,” Anna said. “At that hotel… I was sure I wasn’t walking out of there. I think I just locked up. A giant rock monster bashes through the lobby wall like the fucking Kool-Aid Man, and Erika starts fighting it with her baseball bat. Rick waves his sword at a giant spider. Then there was The Art.” She shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut for the moment. “The Warrior handed me a gun, and I honestly don’t know if I fired it or not. I just… it was like stepping into some bizarro world.”

“Typically,” The Fixer said, “supernatural polities try to avoid such large and brazen displays. Someone must have really ticked someone else off.”

“Check the news regarding that hotel.” Anna flipped out her phone with a small grin. “Every major local journalist repeated the near exact same line of a movie being filmed in the area,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “Something went wrong with one of the pyrotechnic displays, causing some errant damage to the front of the hotel. Some poor special effects supervisor has been fired, the filming company is really sorry and will launch a full investigation, and there have been no significant injuries to any cast, crew, or bystanders.”

Erika scoffed. “They really just sweep it under a rug with the movie excuse? What about all those people in the hotel lobby? The cops outside? Someone had their phone out recording the whole thing, I know it.”

Anna shrugged, looking to Rick like she expected him to have some answer.

Erika doubted he had been investigating in his sorry state.

“It was a hotel,” Rick said, sounding uncertain. “So most people there were probably from out of town. The news clearly doesn’t want their quotes, so they’ll scatter back to wherever they came from. Maybe they try to tell people what really happened, but one or two random people strewn throughout the world don’t have the kind of talking power needed to convince anyone. They might even convince themselves that they accidentally wandered onto a movie set, eventually.”

“And the recordings?”

“Ignored. It is hard enough to gain traction on the internet when you try. Some random person posting a video will get viewed by nobody unless they’ve already got a sizable follower count. Based on the news reports from the hotel, they’re all in The Eclipse’s pocket. They won’t report on it. They might have other groups deliberately suppressing things like that. Maybe they even have tech companies bribed to penalize things like that in the algorithm.”

“Conspiracies,” Leslie said. “Like the lizard people running the country—”

Anna rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t start—”

“We have evidence now—”

“I don’t know about lizards, but there is something—”

“Vampires. It’s vampires, I’ve tried to tell you all, but none of you—

“There’s no way a bunch of—”

Everyone started speaking at once, diving right into an argument that Erika felt could last all day and well into the night.

A heavy thump, thump, thump against the arcade’s back door stopped the argument before it could truly begin.

Tension jolted through everyone present. Rick’s sheathed sword popped into his hand while Leslie stood, drawing a large pistol with one hand while stepping around Daniel to place himself between the door and his son. Anna did almost the same for Sofia despite her lack of weapons—Sofia just sat, though she looked about ready to throw herself beneath the table.

“Not expecting company, I take it,” The Fixer said, sounding calm enough. “Enemies don’t often knock.”

“It’s how they get you to the door,” Rick hissed back. “Then they shoot through it, taking someone out without a fight. Damnit. I knew I should have put next-day delivery on those security cameras.”

“Would you prefer if I opened the door?” The Fixer asked. “This guise is a collection of ideas and parts, not a true person. Losing it would be unfortunate, but it would not be my end.”

“Losing it would leave only my mom?” Erika shook her head, moving toward the door. “Nah. If losing Dice would put my mother on the front lines, you stay right in your seat.”

“Erika—”

The Fixer tried to stop her, but Erika easily broke free of their grasp, hurrying toward the door. She froze for a brief moment, a worried realization hitting her that she had just broken something at Varn’s, only to realize that both The Fixer was here and she had her new birthday present on. Calming, she put on a grin and threw a look over her shoulder. “Like you said, enemies don’t knock.”

“What about what I said?” Rick muttered.

Erika hadn’t ignored him. She was careful to stand just to the side of the door as she worked to unlatch it. Unlatching made noise, meaning whoever was on the other side knew she was nearby—if they wanted to take her out early, now would be the time.

With a look back to the room, watching as Rick, Leslie, and The Fixer all shifted positions to be ready, Erika cracked open the door.

A human-sized spider stood on the other side with an arm around the shoulders of a crash test dummy. “Yo,” the spider said, raising a hand in greeting. “We’re—”

Erika slammed the door shut.

“Enemies might sometimes knock,” she said with a grimace. “It’s The Eclipse.”

Repeated knocking hit the door, along with a muffled shout of, “We’re not here to fight!”

“How did they find us?” Rick hissed.

“We haven’t been paranoid enough,” Leslie said. “It wouldn’t have been hard to follow one of us.”

“What are you yammering about? That doesn’t matter now!” Sofia snapped, grumbling some Spanish under her breath. “What do we do?”

“Maybe they’ll go away if we don’t open the door,” Rick said. His fingers tightened around his sword, drawing it closer. “I don’t want to fight them.”

Erika grimaced as the knocking continued. “They’ll probably break the door down.”

“They say they aren’t here to fight.” Anna relaxed somewhat, still tense, but no longer in a boxing stance. “Just open the door.”

The Fixer added their two cents with a simple, “I concur.” After a moment of looking around the room, he continued. “The Eclipse relies on trustworthiness and general honor to maintain control over all the other supernaturals within the city. If they say they won’t fight, I believe them.”

Erika waited a long moment, staring around the room in the hopes that someone had a good argument. She could tell that Rick and Leslie weren’t exactly thrilled with the idea, but neither said anything. With two votes for opening the door and nobody else speaking, Erika sighed and slowly opened the door again.

The spider and the crash test dummy were still there.

“Hey. I think we got off on the wrong foot,” The Adjustment said. “Mind if we come in to chat?”

Erika cast a glance back to the room at large and found herself unsurprised at the gaping expressions on nearly everyone’s faces. With the door open a little wider now, everyone could see just who was at the door. The Fixer, The Warrior, and The Stalker all looked human, even if The Fixer had shown off their strangeness by swapping between guises in front of everyone. The Art had been a bit different, but a moving porcelain doll was still human enough. The same could not be said for The Adjustment.

With no nose, more large, round eyes than was average, and solid black chitin covering her body, The Adjustment could not be mistaken for human. Her proportions were all off, sometimes by a mere degree, sometimes by obvious amounts. Particularly unnerving was the way her long, spider-like legs twitched at random, moving in unsettling little jitters in the air around her.

Anna and Rick had seen The Adjustment at the hotel, obviously, but it was one thing to be thrown into a stressful situation with fighting and monsters; it was another thing entirely for a giant spider to show up wanting to talk. For the rest of them, this was not only their first obviously inhuman supernatural creature that they had seen, but one who had been prominently featured in Rick’s retellings of the hotel incident.

Erika didn’t know if they all were too stunned to think properly or if they just didn’t know what to say in general. It was The Fixer nodding in her direction that got Erika to look back at The Adjustment.

“Fine. Get in. You’re going to attract weird looks if you keep standing around out there.”

“Just tell people you were having a Halloween party,” The Adjustment laughed, letting go of the crash test dummy as she walked inside like she was a regular at the arcade.

“Five days before Christmas?”

“Nightmare Before Christmas night,” The Adjustment said, looking around the place with a keen set of several eyes. She stopped abruptly, not looking at any of the people, but off toward the arcade machines. “You’ve got an original cabinet, 1981 Gagala machine?”

“Adjustment, please,” the crash test dummy said in a familiar string-like voice. Pausing at the entry, the vacant black dots that served as the dummy’s eyes turned to Erika for just a moment. “Pardon me.”

“You’re The Art,” Erika said as the dummy stepped into the room. She quickly realized that several different beings could have similar-sounding vocals, making her hesitate a moment, but she doubled down. “Aren’t you?”

“Is that problematic?” she asked with a hint of tension in those strings that served as her voice.

“No, I… You just look different.”

“Yes. The Stalker rendered my favorite body little more than dust.”

Hearing the increased tension in The Art’s voice, Erika decided no further commentary was necessary; she gave closing and latching the door an extra dose of attention before turning back to face the group once more.

That extra moment gave The Art time to drag The Adjustment away from the arcade section of Varn’s, positioning them both at one end of the table. Previously, The Hunters had been gathered around on all sides of the table. Now, all four stood on one side, opposing The Eclipse’s retinue. Daniel was at his father’s side, between him and Rick, while The Fixer was slightly apart.

All of them stood, as if they believed sitting down would put them in too vulnerable a position.

Erika moved back, taking up a position on The Hunter side of the table on the opposite end from The Fixer—she stood there for balance, if nothing else. Her spot put her closest to The Adjustment, who gave her a grin.

How she could tell it was a grin was something of a mystery: The Adjustment lacked both lips and teeth, but she still had a maw that could be somewhat shaped using various plates of chitin and wiggling spider parts that she couldn’t begin to name. Erika’s feelings toward spiders were fairly neutral, cognizant as she was of their usefulness in getting rid of other pests, but that didn’t mean she wanted them in her face. A spider in the corner of her room was better than a fly buzzing around her head, but a spider in her bed would meet a swift demise.

The Adjustment was not a spider, Erika tried to remember that. She was a person, one who spoke well and even expressed an interest in some old video game.

No matter how much of a person she was, those little mouth parts still sent shivers up Erika’s spine. She forced a cocky grin in return despite that.

That only served to make The Adjustment grin more. Turning to address the group as a whole, she said in a casual tone, “So, something like this would normally be The Hanged Man’s job. The Emperor, in her sub-infinite wisdom, decided that sending him would be a recipe for disaster.”

“If he had been at the door, I probably would have bashed in his face before he could speak,” Erika admitted.

The Adjustment barked out a laugh. “His face is extremely punchable,” she agreed.

“So… you aren’t here to finish what we started the other night,” Rick asked, still clutching his sword.

The Adjustment’s eyes lingered on the sword for a moment. “If anything, I’m more inclined to thank you,” she said, bringing a hand to a spot on her chest where the carapace was somewhat discolored. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t think much of you when we were tangoing, but then I heard you stabbed that bitch a good one. No. Not here to fight. I’m here to hopefully avoid future altercations of that sort.

“The Emperor wanted me to be subtle, I think,” The Adjustment said, leaning on the table. Her arms remained folded across her chest, but her long spider legs jutted out, taking her weight in place of her arms. “Then she told me to go about this however I felt like. So fuck subtlety,” she said, raising two middle fingers toward the ceiling.

The Art let out a few discordant notes that might have equated a groan, although the meaning of the sound wasn’t clear, the way she palmed her face put her exasperation on display.

“The long and short of it is this: The Emperor wants you guys back to hunting ghosts. Yes, we’ve been aware of you for a long time. Frankly, you were doing us all a favor by clearing out psychic remnants and hauntings. It’s a thankless job, but somebody’s got to do it.

“But lately…” The Adjustment’s eyes roamed over the group, lingering longest on the start and end—The Fixer and Erika. “I doubt I need to explain what all you’ve been up to lately.”

The Art decided to take over, picking up from The Adjustment’s incomplete assessment. “Suffice it to say, continuing in this way would be self-destructive.”

That was a threat. The Adjustment ignored subtlety, but The Art wasn’t much better.

Leslie was the first to speak. “Mind if we talk among ourselves for a moment?”

“Sure thing,” The Adjustment said, backing away from the table a step. “Mind if I…” Trailing off, she pointed a thumb over her shoulder at the arcade cabinets.

Rick looked pained, but he nodded jerkily. “Try not to… damage anything too much.”

“Don’t you worry, I’m not one of those types who don’t know their own strength.”

As The Adjustment dragged a clearly reluctant Art off toward the games, The Hunters huddled up in the back office. Leslie had to pull The Fixer into the circle, the latter apparently feeling like they didn’t get a voice here, but once all grouped up, nobody spoke.

Tense eyes looked from one person to the next. Rick and Anna both kept stealing glances back at the door to the arcade.

“What the hell do we do now?” Sofia finally hissed.