CREEPY CRAWLERS

Part III

By Wesley Overhults

San Francisco, California

The claws on Jimmy Tilton’s feet clicked against the pavement as he slithered his way towards what was once his own home.  The memories were coming back to him, helped along by the psychic connection Rachel had momentarily initiated with him.  Jimmy came from a broken home.  His mother had died in a brutal car accident that left him alone with his father.  His father’s solution to dealing with grief was burying himself in his work and that work had led to some astounding discoveries.  It was amazing what a human being was capable of when given motivation.  It was amazing to think about how low a man could sink when he felt he had nothing left to lose.

Jimmy was never close with his father the way other sons were with their fathers.  They never played games of catch in the yard or anything that resembled bonding.  His father was always slightly cold towards him and that coldness only intensified after the passing of Jimmy’s mother.  Erazsmus Tilton seemingly had set himself on course to eradicate what was left of his family all in the name of scientific progress.  He wanted to make Jimmy strong, not weak like his mother had been.  Jimmy felt strong now but that was almost all he felt.  He didn’t feel love for his father, not anymore.  Instead the rage burned inside his cold-blooded heart, burned so hot that it was going to eat him alive.  Jimmy didn’t care what happened to him.  They could put him in prison, put him in a zoo, or put him in the morgue for all he cared.  The only thing he cared about was making sure his father didn’t go anywhere except six feet in the ground.

“Father.”

The word was foreign now to Jimmy and it had nothing to do with the odd speech pattern he had acquired.  The man who had raised him had never been a real father to him and now he was just prey.  He was just a large chunk of meat for Jimmy to swallow whole, bones and all.  If Jimmy had to be honest with himself, he was going to enjoy what he would do to his father.  It was hard for him to feel enjoyment anymore but he knew he was definitely going to enjoy torturing his father and then ending his pathetic life.

“I want you to sssscream.”

Jimmy propelled himself through the living room window.  His scaly skin didn’t even register the glass and if any of it managed to pierce his hide, his regenerative abilities made the cuts disappear in seconds.  He wasted little time in looking around at the state of his former home.  He knew exactly where his father would be.  It was where he always was, where he had resigned himself to ever since Jimmy’s mother died.  He knew his father was never going to come out of that laboratory in the basement.  The man practically lived down there.  Jimmy remembered that basement.  He remembered the screams he made when the needles pierced his flesh, flesh that was once so laughably thin that anything could puncture it.  His skin was thick now, tougher in a way that meant he wouldn’t take the abuse from his father that he had suffered before.

“I’m not going to let you do this, Jimmy.”

He turned and locked his beady eyes on Rachel Roth, the girl who had tried to make him feel like a human being again.  He wasn’t human though, not anymore.  So why did it matter what he felt?  Why did it matter so much that he still continue to be something he wasn’t anymore?  Jimmy didn’t think it mattered anymore, being human and all that came with it.  It had never mattered to his father in the first place and now it didn’t matter to him either.

“Whatever person he once was died already,” assured Ragman.  “Jimmy Tilton, the innocent souls you’ve murdered cry out to me for justice.  I will make sure that you don’t hurt anyone else again.”

Jimmy snarled and came at Ragman.  He swiped his claws towards the man’s face, intending to rake them across his eyes and hamper his vision.  Ragman knew the attack was coming.  The guilty souls he had already absorbed within his costume came with all their knowledge intact.  Ragman knew more than he should about combat among many other things.  He knew exactly what Jimmy’s attack was designed to do and he would have none of it.  He caught Jimmy’s arm and used the strength of the hundreds of souls he had collected to overpower the reptilian boy.  It took only a smooth, swift motion to snap his arm but Ragman knew that wasn’t going to stop his foe.  Jimmy roared with pain as he popped his broken arm back into place.  It healed within a minute and the fight continued.  Ragman tried throwing some punches that only managed to be effective due to his enhanced strength.  Jimmy seemingly backed off but then used his tail to trip Ragman, sweeping his legs out from under him.  Ragman teleported to break his fall, reappearing behind Jimmy and using the tendrils of his costume to tie up his foe.

Rachel watched the two of them fight but she knew who the real villain was in this sordid affair.  She knew that Jimmy was a good kid because she could still feel that goodness somewhere deep inside of him.  It was his father that was the monster and Rachel was going to make sure that Erazsmus Tilton couldn’t do to others what he had done to his own son.  She could feel the elder Tilton’s emotions and they were coming from below.  She reasoned that he must have had a lab down in the basement, a lab that was probably where he conducted his gruesome experiments.  She spied the door to the basement and used her telekinesis to rip it from its hinges.  She turned back and watched Ragman and Jimmy continue their fight.  She would leave them to their senseless violence if that was what they wanted.

“I confess I wasn’t expecting my son to bring home friends,” admitted Tilton as Rachel entered his basement laboratory.  “I had a feeling though that we would meet again.  It seems you didn’t heed my warning when I told you to stay out of my business.”

“Okay you don’t get to act morally superior to anyone at this point,” shot back Rachel.  “Your son is up there fighting it out with a supernatural vigilante that’s probably going to kill him.  You don’t care.  I know you don’t because I can sense people’s emotions and I know that caring is an emotion that left you a long time ago.  How could you do this to your child?  He’s your damn son, your only son!  How sick are you that you have to do something like that to your only child?”

Rachel knew she could expect that kind of cruelty from her biological father.  Trigon was, after all, a demon and therefore not a human capable of mercy or kindness.  Rachel could understand this level of sickness from a being like her father but what she could never understand was how a human being could do something like that to another human being let alone their own offspring.  Rachel knew how parents were supposed to treat their children because her foster parents had shown her a level of kindness that she could never repay.  This man showed no such kindness to his own flesh and blood and it made her want to vomit to even be in the same room as him.  She could feel the rage building inside her and struggled to restrain herself.  She remembered what had happened to Brother Blood and she wondered for a brief moment if she should let the same thing happen to Tilton.  He may not have been as bad as Blood but he was certainly no better.

“He was weak,” stated Tilton.  “I remember the day he was born.  He was such a sickly child, smaller than all the others.  I remember the disappointment every time he came home from school with bruises or a black eye.  His mother would coddle him because she was weak as well.  With her gone and with my discovery, I knew exactly how I could make James stronger.  Look at him now.  Now he’s a son I’m proud of.”

Rachel had heard enough.  She used her telekinesis to throw Tilton into a wall and pin him there.  She didn’t know what she was going to do with him.  She knew exactly what she wanted to do to him but she didn’t even know how she had done it to Blood the first time and she had promised herself never to do it again.  Tilton had to pay though.  He had to be held accountable for his crimes.

“You’re going to rot in a prison cell for the rest of your life,” assured Rachel.  “Then they’re going to strap you down and shoot you full of poison.  They’re going to treat you the same way you’ve treated your son: just like an animal.”

“They won’t do a damn thing to me,” stated Tilton.  “I was very thorough in the handling of my son’s DNA.  Even if he was able to explain to the authorities what happened, there’s not a single strand of DNA that could mark him as my offspring.  If you bring the police here, they’re not going to find anything that would suggest I could create something like him.  I disposed of all that equipment after I was sure that my experiment was a success.  No, if you bring the police here the only thing they’re going to find is a grieving father being harassed by you and whoever you brought with you.”

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t send you upstairs and let your son rip your throat out,” ordered Rachel, realizing that he was telling the truth.

“Do with me whatever you will,” said Tilton.  “If you’ve managed to partially undo the work I did on my son then you’ve already contaminated him too much.  I would very much like to know how you acquired these abilities you display.  I have some theories that your powers aren’t scientific in nature but there’s no time for further analysis.  It’s a shame I won’t get the opportunity to study you.”

“Is that all the rest of us are to you?” asked Rachel and she was furious at this point.  “We’re just things you can put underneath a microscope and study?”

It was clear to her that whatever goodness that was once in Erazsmus Tilton died along with his wife.  So it seemed that the only logical thing to do was let nature take its course.  Rachel kept her telekinetic field around Tilton and used her powers to drag him upstairs and into where Ragman and Jimmy were still going at it.  Both of the combatants stopped when they realized what was going on.

“Dad?”  Jimmy’s unnatural features contorted into a grimace of pain when he saw the man.

“As I fear, you’ve already done too much damage,” said Tilton.  “Hello, son.  I’m pleased to see that you’re adjusting to your new body quite well. However, it seems that this girl has undermined the progress I was attempting to make.  Feelings are such terrible things, heavy things for human shoulders to bear.  I sought to spare you the pain of that, a pain that I know so very well.”

“You made me a monsssster!”

“That’s a matter of perspective, son.”

Rachel squeezed her telekinetic field just slightly, enough to cause the elder Tilton pain and remind him that he still lived because of her mercy.  However, she was going to run out of that mercy very soon.  She wasn’t going to kill Tilton but that didn’t mean she was going to allow him the chance to resume his ghastly experiments on other innocent people.

“I brought him up here to settle this,” she explained.  “Jimmy, you wanted to kill your father.  Here’s your chance.”

“You said you wouldn’t let that happen,” reminded Ragman.

“Changed my tune.”

Jimmy’s eyes glinted with malicious glee as he stalked his father.  To Tilton’s credit, he didn’t seem nervous at all about his impending death.  In fact, he seemed strangely calm to the point of serenity.  He had accepted his fate a long time ago, knew that once he began his work there was no going back.  He had wanted to die for so long that there was no emotion left in him anymore.  He was as heartless as a human being could get and death didn’t scare him anymore if it even did in the first place.  It was quite the opposite in fact.  Living was what terrified Erazsmus Tilton.

Jimmy Tilton raked his claws across his father’s face and the scent of the man’s blood only drove him deeper into frenzy.  He let his claws rest on his father’s throat, applying pressure and hoping for a scream.  His father’s face was still a mask of stone.  It infuriated him and that fury only heightened his desire to kill the man that had given him life.  He tensed the muscles in his hand preparing to drive his claws into his father’s throat and rip it out just as Rachel had told Tilton he would.  Something stopped him though.

“I can’t.”  It was the only thing he said and those two simple words spoke volumes.

Rachel let a smile form on her lips.  She had known all along that Jimmy wasn’t going to murder his father.  She could see the anger in him and it burned so hot and bright that it had almost blotted out all other emotions completely.  She saw something else in him though.  There was love and compassion in him.  The indigo and violet lights ran along the edges of the anger but underneath the red of rage there were other emotions too.  Rachel knew that all she had to do to bring those emotions out was give Jimmy exactly what he thought he wanted.

“Not so easy, huh?” asked Rachel.  “You’re not a monster, Jimmy.  You’re just a screwed up kid but you’ve still got the rest of your life to do something about it.  If you kill him then you’re no better than him.”

“You’re right,” he admitted.  “Ssso what do we do?”

“You let me handle it,” said Ragman as he brushed Jimmy aside.  “Will you let me handle this, Rachel?”

Rachel Roth stood there and contemplated what was about to happen.  She knew exactly what Ragman was going to do because it was the same thing she had done to Brother Blood.  There was no question that Tilton had to suffer for his crimes and that involving the police wasn’t going to get anything accomplished.  Was this the right thing to do then?  When she began this hunt, she vowed to uncover the truth.  When she came face to face with the creature, she knew that there was more to him than met the eye.  Rachel believed that people could change if given the chance.  She knew that because she was experiencing it herself.  She wanted to give Jimmy a second chance and he had proven himself more man than monster.  Should she offer his father that same redemption?

“Do whatever you have to,” said Rachel, releasing Tilton and moving towards Jimmy.  “We don’t need to be here for this.  The police are going to show up soon and we don’t need to be here for that either.”

Rachel teleported away with Jimmy in tow and that left just the Ragman and the elder Tilton in the room.  Tilton crumpled to the floor since he was no longer in the grip of Rachel’s telekinesis and he looked up at the man who was about to end his life.

“Last words?” inquired Ragman.

“Someday my son will see the truth and realize everything I’ve done for him,” stated Tilton.

“I sincerely hope that doesn’t come to pass.”

Ragman put his hands on Tilton and the tentacle-like rags shot off his costume and latched onto the man’s body as well.  He could feel the bond he began making with Erazsmus Tilton.  Rory Regan saw all the terrible, disgusting things this man had done and he made sure that as he removed Tilton’s soul it hurt more than any mortal man could imagine.  Tilton screamed in pain as the tendrils from Ragman’s costume buried themselves into his body, rooting through flesh and bone until they found something that was neither of those things.  Tilton’s body glowed and then began to fold and contort itself into a square.  The tendrils reeled themselves back in, bringing the cloth square with it.  It was added to the network of patches on Ragman’s costume, the fabrics melding together until that single square piece became seamlessly part of the whole.

The Ragman looked around at the empty room and wondered briefly if he should pursue Rachel and Jimmy.  He knew that Jimmy wasn’t the monster he appeared to be.  Rachel had shown Rory the truth and he knew the suit was willing to let Jimmy go because those murders that he had committed were the result of his father’s actions and not his own.  However, the suit still wasn’t sure about Rachel.  Rory could feel it weighing Rachel’s good heart against her evil blood.  The Ragman had never run across anyone like Rachel before.  In his view, people were either good or bad, innocent or guilty.  Maybe that was the problem.  Maybe that was why the suit needed a human being inside of it.  Rory had forgotten what it was like to be a human being.  He had been wearing the suit and being the Ragman for so long that he had forgotten what it was like to be plain, old Rory Regan.  Maybe it was time to start remembering how to do that.

“My thanks to you, Rachel Roth,” he said to the empty room before he teleported away to wherever the suit decided to take him next.

“What did that guy do to my dad?”

Rachel Roth looked at Jimmy Tilton and wondered if she should answer the boy’s question honestly.  She saw no reason to lie to him.  His life was already unusual enough that he wouldn’t take the news as something of a shock.  If anything, Rachel figured he would be happy about what was going to occur to his father.  Somehow she doubted that was the case though.

“From what the Ragman told me, he collects the souls of the guilty,” she explained.  “That costume he wears, every patch on it is someone’s soul.”

“Doessss it hurt?”

“Probably.”

Jimmy Tilton nodded and it seemed good enough for him.  He looked back to the giant pipes that would lead him back into the maze of the city’s sewer system.  He would have to find a new home, one where no one could find him.  The tunnels would provide for him in a way that nothing and no one else ever had before.

“I could go back,” he said almost to himself.  “I ssshould.”

“You could,” agreed Rachel.  “I’m sorry for all this, Jimmy.  I wish I had come to this city sooner, maybe I could have stopped your father from doing what he did.”

“My father wasss broken a long time ago.”

Rachel reached out to put a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder.  Her thoughts kept flashing back to her foster parents.  They were good people, perhaps the best people she had ever known.  They loved her and she felt terrible that she had to stay so far away from them for their own safety.  The night she left Gotham City, Rachel lost so many important things.  She lost her home, her family, maybe even her identity as well.  Maybe it was time to get some of those things back.  Maybe it was time to start letting people in again.

“I just want you to know that if you ever need anything, come find me and I’ll do everything I can to help,” she told him.

“Thank you,” said Jimmy before he crawled his way into one of the pipes and slithered back into the sewer system that was now his new home.  He stopped and turned to look back at Rachel.  “I don’t even know your name.”

“It’s Rachel,” she told him.

“Thank you for sssaving my life, Rachel,” said Jimmy Tilton and with those few words left hanging in the air, he disappeared into the dark once more.

Rachel watched him go and felt something good inside of her.  It was a warm feeling in her heart and it let her know that things had turned out for the better even if they hadn’t turned out exactly as she wanted them to.  She decided that there was one more thing she needed to do.  It was time to let people in again because if she couldn’t then she would end up becoming just like Jimmy’s father in the end.  If she wanted to be a part of San Francisco and make it her new home then it was time to start really making some new friends to go along with it.  With that thought, Rachel teleported away into the night.

Foster’s Antiquities

“This is where you get out.”

Sebastian Faust nodded to June Moone and got out of the cab.  He turned and looked back to her, smiling at her.  She wondered if that smile was genuine just as she wondered if everything else about him was genuine.  She hoped that it was.

‘It probably isn’t, June.’

‘Only one way to really find out, right?’

The Enchantress wasn’t pleased about June’s continued activities with Faust but she couldn’t do much more than simply voice that displeasure.  Faust waved to June and then went back inside his shop.  June told the driver her address and the cab pulled off from the curb and departed into the night.

“Quite an interesting night,” said Faust to himself as he unlocked the door to the shop and stepped back into more comfortable surroundings.

“Indeed.”

A normal man’s face would’ve gone white with fear at the sight of Brother Night in standing in their home or place of business.  Faust had long ago discarded conventional notions of terror.  He had seen many strange and unusual things in his time so Brother Night’s appearance was nothing for him to concern himself about.  That didn’t mean, however, that Night wasn’t cause for apprehension.

“I apologize for tonight’s activities, which I’m sure you’ve already heard about,” said Faust.  “It was meant as an act to win this girl’s trust.  You tasked me with finding both her and Trigon’s daughter.  I am doing just that.”

“You believe that she will lead you to the demon girl,” said Brother Night.  “A clever plan, Faust.  Just make sure that you’re doing all this for the job.  I know your reputation with women.  Make sure that all this is for my benefit and not yours.  Also, no more little stunts like tonight unless it’s absolutely required.  Are we clear?”

“Crystal, sir,” answered Faust.

Brother Night nodded and then teleported away.  The wisps of black smoke curled in the air, the only signs that he had even been in the room at all.  Faust watched that vapor dissipate.  He knew the dangerous game he was playing.  His entire life had been one dangerous game after another.  Maybe it was time to settle down, try operating a legitimate business even.  The evening’s activities with June had been fun.  Most women bored him but then again June wasn’t like most women.  He couldn’t lose sight of his goal though.  Night may have wanted the two girls found for him to personally dispose of but Faust wanted them found for a different reason.  He knew that Trigon’s daughter could be the key to taking out Brother Night and he was going to use whatever means available to him to see that come to pass.  He told himself that he wouldn’t care if June got caught in the crossfire.  For perhaps the first time in his life, he wasn’t sure whether or not he was lying.

June Moone stepped out of the cab and paid the driver.  She grimaced at the lack of cash in her wallet and knew that a trip to the ATM would be in order at some point in the very near future.  She had to get some homework done and then maybe there would be time for something fun.  She wondered if Rachel was home yet.  June knew that Rachel had gone out to track down the person responsible for the sewer killings.  June didn’t really want to believe it was some kind of creature as the papers claimed but it was hard to doubt the existence of such things when she had her own brushes with the unusual on a daily basis.

“Sorry that I let myself in,” apologized Rachel as June opened the door.  “I used my telekinesis on the lock.  It’s still in one piece.”

“I noticed,” said June.  “You look like you had a rough night.”

Rachel had just finished drying off and putting on clothes from her second shower of the evening.  When she began living at June’s apartment, the older girl had taken her out shopping.  After traipsing around in the sewers all night, Rachel was now thankful that her wardrobe consisted of more than just one outfit.  Said outfit would now possibly have to be burned if it couldn’t get rid of the stench that stubbornly clung to it.

“Solved the mystery of the sewer killings,” said Rachel and June noted the hollow tone in her voice.  “Just call me Veronica Mars or something.”

“We should celebrate then.”

Rachel didn’t really feel like celebrating.  The warm feeling in her heart had faded once she returned to June’s apartment.  She had done a good thing, brought a monster to justice even if Erazsmus Tilton didn’t receive the kind of justice the proper authorities could provide.  Still, Rachel felt like a recluse. She wasn’t any different than Jimmy Tilton, hiding away from the rest of the world because she was afraid of what everyone else might see her as.  Rachel looked at June and realized that maybe, just maybe, there was at least one person in the world who wouldn’t see her as a monster if she opened up to them.

“I’m sorry for this morning,” she apologized to June.  “I told you that the last real friend I had . . .”

“It’s okay,” assured June.  “You have a right to your privacy, Rachel.”

“She died,” explained Rachel.  “My best friend Megan . . . she died and it was because of me . . . because of what I am.”

June didn’t say anything.  She didn’t have to.  She just wrapped her arms around Rachel and for the first time in her life Rachel found herself crying on someone’s shoulder.  She had never felt so exposed before.  Ever since the friendship with Megan Waters dissolved, Rachel had her guard up constantly. She couldn’t look weak, couldn’t make herself a target, couldn’t show any emotion.  For the first time, the full weight of her screwed up life hit her completely and it was almost too much for her to bear.  She felt her legs go weak and she wobbled before June steadied both of them.  Rachel Roth, daughter of the dreaded Trigon the Terrible, stood there sobbing as if she was a child again.  Perhaps in a way she still was.

“You feel better?” asked June once Rachel stopped crying.

“Yeah,” admitted Rachel.  “There’s so much crap in my life that I feel like I could write a whole book about it.”

“Let it out when you’re ready,” said June.  “So, feel like watching a movie with me?”

“Yeah I think so.”

June smiled and went to the fridge.  Rachel stared at her quizzically and then realized what June was pulling out of the freezer.  June opened the carton of ice cream and got bowls and spoons from the cabinets.

“Well if we’re going to have a girls’ night then we’re going to do it right,” she explained as she saw Rachel staring at her.  “Go ahead and pick a movie.”

Rachel scanned June’s rack of DVDs.  Most of them were the kinds of movies she assumed typical girls her age liked.  They were definitely not movies that Rachel would enjoy but she decided maybe it was time to branch out and try new things.  Maybe that was what friendship was about: compromising on little things.

“That one’s my favorite,” admitted June as Rachel popped the disc into the player and June handed her a bowl of ice cream.

The two of them curled up on June’s couch, digging into their ice cream once the movie had started.  They sat in silence for the most part and as she watched the movie, June’s mind went back to the events earlier in the evening.  Everyone had a right to their secrets but some secrets were meant to be shared between friends.

“Rachel, there’s something I think I should tell you.”  June’s words yielded no response and she looked over at her friend.

Rachel’s head bobbed forward a bit and it was clear that she had fallen asleep.  June smiled at her and got up from her seat as quietly as she could so as not to disturb Rachel.  She fetched a pillow and a blanket that Rachel had previously used.  She delicately moved Rachel just enough to get her into a horizontal position and slipped the pillow under her head.  June covered her with the blanket and watched the younger girl continue to sleep.  She decided that telling Rachel about her involvement with Faust could wait until morning.  She gathered up the empty bowls of ice cream and washed them in the sink along with the spoons before putting everything in the dishwasher.  June then turned off the movie and turned out the light before going into her bedroom. She turned and gave Rachel one last look, smiling at her new roommate and feeling good knowing that she was someone Rachel trusted.  With that last smile, June closed the door and left Rachel slumbering silently in the dark.

Next Issue: When the wolves come out.