Other than a quick smile from the knitting sandwich lady, the crowd largely ignored him after they got out of the bus. The driver melded into the crowd, and they all started to walk in rows of three towards the graveyard, slowly, and silently, still. Eerie isn't the half of it, Craig thought to himself, and tried to extract himself from the crowd, but someone took firm hold of his hand, and pulled him into the row with them. Furious, he whirled on the guy, stopping short where he was standing and punching him full-on in the chest. To his horror he saw the bloodshot eyes and grinning yellow teeth of the leering bum from last night (and now from the back of the bus) looking down at him from above his fist. His shout of anger and refusal to move with the crowd had disturbed the flow of traffic slightly, but people were simply morphing around them, bypassing them to form their neat rows of three and slow march towards the graveyard. At the head of the line, someone started humming, and it started to slowly spread until they were all making the same low, thrumming sound.
"It's forbidden to speak just yet," the yellow-toothed man whispered to Craig, and Craig felt a spike of fear go through his chest, real fear, since the first time he had set foot on the bus. The man was still holding his arm, and acting as if the blow to the chest hadn't affected him in the slightest. "Proceed with us. It's just what we need. Our Master is quite fond of you, am I correct?"
"Let go. You fucking creep." Craig said in no uncertain terms.
"Quiet. Walk. It is all safe. It is all serenity. This is the way. Come walk."
The last guy in the crowd - the bum's friend from the train - took a place on his opposite side and took hold of his other arm by the bicep, despite Craig's squirming resistance. We make a row of three, now, Craig thought to himself, and was gripped by the slightly insane urge to laugh.
"Silent," yellow-teeth said again, and Craig could tell he was hyped up on something from the way his unnaturally strong fingers shook like twigs. "Silent. Walk. Walk with us." The other man nodded, and they began to walk, having no trouble catching up to the humming procedure ahead of them, and at the very end of the line. While they continued humming, Craig began growling, and clawed both his stiff fists into palms, his feet dragging two dark trails in the gray dirt - the only marks that were being left behind them.
The rows of three began to break apart neatly once they reached the graveyard. The row on the left turned left, the row on the right turned right, and the center row alternated smoothly to form a thin single-file circle around the entire graveyard. Because they were bringing up the rear, Craig and the two creeps strong-arming him didn't have to make a decision of which way to turn, they simply stepped up to the line and filled the last gap. When Craig looked down at the dirt under his feet, he could see that there was a faint red smudge outlining the circle they had all created, and he tried not to suspect that it was blood. The humming was getting louder, and the way Craig's arms were being held no longer looked strange, since the group had extended their hands and were all holding them peacefully. Craig could almost feel the vibrations from their humming along his arms, and it was starting to make the hair on the back of his neck stand up. The pink in the sky was completely gone, now, the only light seemed to be reflected from the bus' headlights against the gray earth (that was becoming blacker now). After what felt like over an hour, their humming abruptly fell away into dead silence. Squinting in the dark, Craig could see movement out in the center of the graveyard, something that looked like a hunched-over animal against a headstone, but then it was climbing the headstone and standing on top of it. When it was perched on two feet Craig could see that it was a person. The silence in the entire circle was deafening, especially considering it was so dark that the person standing on the headstone in the center of the graveyard could hardly be seen. Then, in a raspy, tired voice that Craig recognized with a jolt, Kenny growled out a single word.
"Light."
At his command, at least six (on second count, eight) members of the circle clicked on spotlights they were holding, all focused on the now bright orange figure standing at their center, on top of a headstone, surrounded by, now that Craig could see, an artful arrangement of human bones, and one large, stained, dusty book. Kenny's eyes looked bruised from sleep deprivation, and he looked as ragged as ever, but he gestured to the grave he was currently desecrating with a crooked smile.
"My maternal grandmother. What's left of her, anyway. I'd say it's good to see you shitheads, but it's not good for me, is it?"
There was a murmuring chorus of "No sir," from the members of the circle. Craig was about to lose it. This was too fucking surreal. Yellow-teeth on his left was shivering in excitement. He took a large breath to try to shout something, but, abruptly, the man on his right released his arm, and clapped it over his mouth, instead. The mild scuffling must have been deafening to listen to in the silence, however, because as soon as he growled into the guy's filthy hand Kenny whirled in their direction, his eyes wide with anger, and this was when Craig noticed that his hands and front were both stained with blood.
"Is there unrest in my circle?"
Craig wanted to laugh. What the fuck was up with the way he was talking? Too much, this was all way too much.
"A non-believer, sir. He seemed to have been there by accident at first, but then we realized that you meant us to bring him as tribute." It wasn't yellow-teeth talking - Craig could hear that it was the lady with the knitting needles, and murmurs of agreement from the crowd, which died off quickly as Kenny's face went livid.
"Let him go. Immediately. You do not touch outsiders, you useless sacks of MEAT." The hands restraining Craig released him immediately, and he spat violently at the ground before rounding on the guy to give him a square kick in the stones.
"KENNY MCCORMICK YOU FUCKING WASTE OF SPACE," he shouted, and suddenly he didn't need the lights to see, his eyes were burning, sparking, he could feel his cheeks singe from what felt like a sudden hot flame across the bridge of his nose. "GET DOWN FROM THAT FUCKING HEADSTONE OR I'LL KILL YOU MYSELF."
There was noise all around them, now, fucking finally. The circle broke, and a few of them started to try to surround him, which he responded to with emphatic violence. His foot connected with several shins before they finally broke their tight circle around him, and looked nervously between the tall, furious boy with the glowing eyes, and the blood-stained child they claimed was their master.
Kenny looked down at him with a chilly expression that made Craig's breath catch in his throat. He had seen something similar the other night when yellow-teeth and Kenny had confronted each other, but having it turned on him made his insides feel like they were about to freeze over. He felt the flare of heat on his face flicker out, though singing remains of it burned in sore circles around his eyes. The sudden brightness and clarity he was seeing the scene with suddenly went out, and everyone looked like dark shadows surrounding him, even Kenny. His blue eyes looming from his high vantage point on the grave were now the only thing standing out from the darkness.
"Leave, all of you," Kenny finally spoke, and it was so quiet it felt like something he had whispered in Craig's ear, but he could tell that everyone in the circle had heard it.
"But-"
"We've been waiting for weeks-"
"Master, please don't-"
"SILENCE. Be silent, and depart. You've tainted the ceremony, and should be glad I don't just fucking kill you all! Leave the way you came, be quick, and don't you dare look back."
They all went silent, then, aside from a few resentful murmurs. Craig thought he could even hear a few of them quietly sobbing, which seemed like a really fucking dramatic over-reaction to him. But then, he didn't know these people. He didn't know how long Kenny had been working them up to this moment - how long he had been stringing them along with bullshit promises of another world or new gods or a goddamned fucking apocalypse. It was still a complete mystery to him why any of them thought Kenny was capable of that kind of shit, but as the last of them filed past him, his two friends from the circle stopped, impudent, and yellow-teeth's more taciturn friend looked Kenny right in the eye.
"Even God owes his people some explanation, and we know you to be our Prophet, Old One, but not yet our Lord." He had a slow, steady voice, surprisingly, Craig found himself thinking of Morpheus from the Matrix for some reason. The retreating crowd gently and almost reluctantly turned their heads to hear what he had to say.
"I don't owe you anything," Kenny returned, even colder than before, though Craig could see him shaking now that his eyes were adjusting to the minimal light. "And I am your Lord on this side of the veil or the side of the True World, which non-believers will never see. This you would know, if you had ears, Stone."
Stone seemed to be piecing together Kenny for what he was, for what Craig knew he was - a fraud, a bunch of cheap tricks, probably morbid ones, Craig knew Kenny to be an expert on faking his own death, though how he did it was still a mystery even to him.
"You bleed red like a mortal boy," Stone said slowly, and pulled, smooth as silk, a knife from his pocket, and tossed it from palm to palm causally. "And you delay our 'New World' for nothing but the affection of another insignificant boy. The ceremony is untainted - you simply don't want us to hurt your friend - or you."
Kenny stood strong for a few more moments as he looked at the knife, but then something broke in his expression, his knees went out and he was kneeling on the grave, now. His lips were moving, but Craig couldn't make out the sound - just from reading his lips he would guess that Kenny was mouthing "always - always, always, always." His stomach clenched, and for the second time that night he felt very close to vomiting what he had eaten that day. He saw Stone raise the knife, he saw Kenny shut his eyes and turn away, and then the heat returned to his face in full force, and before he even knew what he was doing he was running forward, and he was between Stone and Kenny, and there was brilliant blue light in front of him, and the knife made a dull thump as it hit the ground, drowned out in the piercing cacophany of Stone's screams and the sizzling electric sound of his skin and flesh being steadily fried off of his bones. The rest of the crowd stood still, shocked into silence and powerfully afraid, and Craig heard his own voice break that silence, cracking embarrassingly and sounding more like he was crying than authoritative.
"ARE YOU ALL FUCKING DEAF? GET. THE FUCK. OUT."
And with that, all of them fled, and the burning electricity over his face flickered out again. Craig touched each of his cheeks slowly and flinched - they felt badly burned, and despite it being nothing but a dark smudge, he couldn't tear his gaze off the sizzling remains of Stone's body. Fuck. Was this going to leave scars? That had never fucking happened before. The last time he had to deal with this bullshit nothing burned his face, it was just nice and clean and easy - supernatural laser beams came out of his eyes and a five minutes later there was a dead guinea rat in front of him. He had even thought that it was a dream from his that one loopy week he had in the fourth grade, when he experimented with some candy that really wasn't candy and ended up in the hospital.
Turns out it was real. Or this whole thing was a dream, which seemed just as likely. Kenny was still behind him, but he was being quiet, way too quiet. Quiet as a - well, as a graveyard, Craig thought to himself with a humorless snort. Enough of that.
"Speak up," Craig finally mumbled hoarsely, "I know you're there, and I know you're still watching me. I don't care how dark it is, I can hear you breathing." There was another long pause, and then Kenny's voice finally came hesitantly across to him.
"Are you...okay? You sound like you're crying..." Kenny sounded uncertain, and younger than he was.
"I'm not fucking crying. My eyes are watering because I just killed a guy with them. For you, just in case you had any doubts. Not that you deserved me even being worried about you, let alone coming out here in the middle of fucking nowhere to find you."
Craig paused for a few moments, his mind catching up belatedly to the full impact of what he was saying. He had killed a guy just now, hadn't he. And if this wasn't a dream, there were fucking consequences for that. Not jail - he wasn't even eighteen and no one would believe that he murdered a guy just by thinking too hard (or thinking not at all), but what if what his mom always said was right - he was rotten, he had just come out wrong, somehow - what if this was the final step into becoming truly insane?
[Always playing it safe, are we? Dry and boring, you stupid son of mine. You're not dry and boring. You're not apathetic. I don't know what made you lock yourself away like this, but the harder you try not to care, the worse it's going to be when you find out in the end that you do, you do care, Craig Tucker. And if you don't let it be a good thing now, one day it will rear up and eat you alive.]
When Craig came back from his thoughts, Kenny had turned on a flashlight, and had come down from his grave perch to stand next to him. After a few moments of evaluating each other quietly, Kenny pressed his pink, bloodstained fingertips against his cheek. Craig breathed in slowly, his hands forming into fists instinctively to push him away, but he forced himself to relax, and keep his tense hands at his sides. When Craig finally looked at him he was surprised by how concerned Kenny's face was - but he smiled a little when they finally made eye contact.
"Looks pretty bad, but I've seen much worse. I'd say I'm surprised, about your eye lasers, but I'm more surprised that you used them to save me. Mostly I'm just kind of pissed that you burned yourself. Sucks to have powers that turn on you like that."
"What do you know?" Craig hissed bitterly, which made the warmth in Kenny's eyes flicker like a candle, and his mouth flattened as he got to his feet.
"Whatever you want to say is fine by me, but let's get out of here. My ritual is ruined, thanks to your skinny heroic ass, so we might as well get home. Fuck. Craig. Why did you even come here?"
"Something was wrong," Craig mumbled, not moving, too angry with Kenny now to follow any sensible line of thought he was giving him, "Something was wrong and no one would fucking admit it. I just wanted to find you. I pretty much tore the whole town apart before Cartman-"
"Cartman," Kenny groaned, slamming the hand carrying the flashlight into his forehead, "What a fat fuck. He told you about this? I didn't think you guys even looked at each other, let alone spoke."
"We don't," Craig deadpanned, even more irritated that Kenny didn't seem to get how worried he had been, how much he had put himself through, when no one else seemed to think it was even a problem, "But your other friends were useless and mine all hate me today for whatever fucking reason, I didn't have anything better to do. I didn't know you were the leader in some kind of fucked up blood cult or believe me, I never would have come." He paused, and swallowed before adding, "How the hell does no one else know about this?"
"Because no one cares. Because no one is supposed to care, that's how. Kenny goes missing for days at a time, that's just how he is - I thought that you were the one that understood that the most."
"Apparently not. So now that I'm finally here - having just saved your ass from getting stabbed, in case you forgot, are you even going to explain to me what the fuck is even going on, aside from something dangerous, creepy, and extremely fucking disgusting?"
"No. I'm not. You already saw enough to figure it out. Besides, I promise to never do it again, or whatever. They're not going to come after you, I won't let them."
"Sure, as if that's the only thing to worry about. They're barely holding back from coming after you - you don't have as great a hold on them as you think you do. This asshole was about to bleed you dry, what happens next time when five of them want to question your 'Word of God'?"
Kenny grinned crookedly.
"All I have to do is pretend the boy with the lightning eyes will strike them down in the name of my wrath if they try anything."
"That's not funny, McCormick - you're already in too deep to-"
Kenny suddenly slumped toward him, one of his arms grabbing Craig roughly around the waist. He dropped the flashlight down between them, and leaned in close enough that their foreheads were pressed against each other.
"You're so sweet, sometimes. When you you get so mad that you forget that you can even be sweet. You fucking asshole."
Craig felt him shiver, and then one of his grubby hands was pulling at his jacket, and he shook his head firmly and pushed it back out of his clothes.
"Are you kidding me right now. Talk."
Kenny snorted, but let his seeking hand go lax in Craig's grip. "Prude. Okay. Fine. You just killed a guy with lasers that come out of your eyes, so maybe...there's a chance that you'll get it if I explained it to you. Plus, I just don't give a shit anymore. Craig, I'm trying to die."
Craig tensed, and let a long, painful silence stretch out. Kenny stayed still for a long moment, and then his hand traveled upward over Craig's chest, turning over almost gracefully to wrap each of his fingers around Craig's throat. It was always his first move any time they were wrestling each other, anger and blood both boiling over as they wrestled to the ground, always ending up with one or the other pinned. Craig tried not to think about how many of their fucks had started out with fighting, first. Even without any violence or pressure in his grip, it was hard not to get turned on by Kenny's fingers wrapped around his neck. When he looked down at Kenny's face, he was grinning, and his eyes were half-lidded and cold.
"Don't fight me. Don't interrupt me. Hear me out to the end, then see how much you want to smash my face in. I'll probably let you do it."
Craig held out for a few more seconds, then pulled Kenny's wrist away from his neck. He nodded once, hissing quietly in a mixture of confusion and the pain of the (now bleeding) burns on his cheeks - from generally feeling too much at once.
"Fine. Talk. I'm listening."
"It's a really tired story when you get down to it. I was born without the ability to die. I've been dying, all the time, ever since I can remember being alive. All the most horrible, most gut-churning, puke-inducing pain you can imagine, I at least remember fragments of that. This one time I got half my head cut off, and I was awake for a full five minutes bleeding out before I finally passed. Immortality. Doesn't it sound like a fucking dream? So this ritual - it wasn't going to start any kind of apocalypse, it wasn't going to summon any Old Gods, I'd never let that happen. It was just going to send me to where I can't come back. Permanently." Kenny's lips were pulled up in a cruel smirk, which emphasized the dark, bruised bags under his eyes, leaned more of his weight against Craig's chest as he continued his story, whatever fucking kind of story this was supposed to be, anyway.
"Not that there aren't any good times. Once I figured out erotic asphyxiation, I spent an entire month hanging myself while jacking off. It really works. Sometimes I didn't even die, just had a really fucking great O and was able to chop myself free afterwards, those were some very happy days. Sex is the best escape from pain, and from death, so combining them seemed only natural. But I can't do that with the girls at school - or you - so, when I'm feeling really frisky, I'll head out to the truck stop to find guys who seem likely to accept a blowjob in exchange for a ride to nowhere. I managed to get to the Grand Canyon once, and I threw myself in it. That was definitely better than the erotic asphyxiation thing, let me tell you. Broad daylight, scorching summer, no one around but me. No body for them to clean up, either, because after it's all over I'm here, in South Park, in my shitty room in my parents shitty house where everything is shit - and anything I might have done in a past life is pretty much over."
There was a long silence after that, and Craig chewed on his tongue. It wasn't like any of this could be true, but what Kenny had said about the lasers raised a good point. Frying people with lasers that shot from his eyes couldn't be true, either. So maybe it was - maybe all of it was. How could he even know? Things in this fucking town made no sense on a good day, so he finally nodded, and said simply;
"Not everything."
Kenny leveled him a sarcastic look.
"I came for you, didn't I? I don't forget about the things you've done. In fact, I'm holding you fucking accountable, and you're a delinquent."
Kenny looked more thoughtful at that, and let his body go somewhat limp against Craig's chest and shoulder, enough that he was forced to put his arms around his waist to hold him up. Kenny wasn't heavy, but his legs were starting to feel weak from holding him up.
"Yeah, I guess I was building something with you, without even realizing it...or maybe you did all the building, and I was just lucky enough to get a piece." Kenny smirked a little lopsidedly, and a little of the light was coming back into his eyes. Familiar - warm. Craig shrugged, and fought off an irrational, ridiculous urge to hug him tight around the middle and carry him from here all the way home. No, not home. The garage. To be alone.
"If you say so."
"What if I said something else?"
"What are you talking about?"
Kenny let out a heavy breath, and closed his eyes for a few moments before continuing.
"What if I said...even though you ruined my ritual, possibly turned my cult against me and consequently ensured me a life of endless, never-truly-dying pain for me until each of those bastards passes on from old age...I kind of love you."
Craig shrugged, and felt his face burn. Look anywhere but Kenny's face, he thought to himself, off his guard for a moment in a way he hadn't been since he had first arrived, which made no sense at all, considering how much more dramatic a black cult ring and frying a guy with his mind were compared to a confession of...love.
"Say whatever you want, I guess," he finally mumbled, but when Kenny started to pull away, he got a sharp pang of what he might be feeling - disappointment, rejection, loneliness - on top of everything else that had been happening that night, he couldn't stand it. He tightened his grip emphatically, and when their chests fit together so did their hips and cheeks, and after a few minutes of holding him tight and still he felt Kenny breathe a soft little sigh against his ear, and felt his arms wrap around his back to return his hold.
"Don't expect me to say it often. You're a cold son of a bitch and I don't know why I like you as much as I do. Thanks for coming out to find me, though."
"I won't do it a second time. If I hear any more about you making trips out here for your little permanent-death spell, I'm staying in and watching Animal Planet."
Kenny laughed, and though he didn't look down, he figured that Kenny was sniffling and wiping a hand over his eyes because he had been crying.
"Don't worry, I'm over it. Let's get to my bike before we both freeze our nuts off."