It was a dark and stormy night. No, really. They’d been driving for hours through stretch after stretch of identical broken-down industrial squalor, through what everyone assured them was an unseasonable downpour for Southern California.
“A motel, that’s all I ask for,” Devi griped.
“A shack.” Jimmy muttered.
“A parking lot,” Nny yawned.
“I don’t think any of us could sleep outside in this.”
“Oh, you can sleep under the car, Jimmy.”
“Van.”
 “’Let’s go west,’ Johnny says, ‘it’ll be fun, we can play at the beach’.” Devi turned around from the front seat. “WHERE’S THE BEACH, NNY?”
“Tennnnna…” Nny whined.
“You’re on your own here, Nny,” She said. “Oh man, a sign. Someone get out and read it.”
“Not it.”
“Not it.”
“Make Edgar do it.”
Nny elbowed Edgar, who made a faint gagging noise and curled in a ball.
“Nah, he’s still out.”
“He’d wake up if you put him out in the rain.”
“Shut up, Jimmy.” Nny peered through the window. “I think it just says ‘down’. That is so cool.”
“We don’t even know where it goes,” Devi protested.
“We don’t even know where we’re going. It’s perfect.”
“ ‘Down’. I don’t like it”.
“Shut your bitching, you’ns.” Tenna called. “Let’s do this thing.”
“This is California, you can’t say you’ns.”
“Y’all.”
“That’s Texas.”
“I will shoot you in the face, Devi. In the face. With my guns.”
Bickering absently, Tenna and Devi managed to get the van turned around and pointed towards the new road. Thunder pealed ominously. Since it had been pealing for the last five hours, no one paid much attention. The rusted, abandoned hulks of factories loomed around them like the shed exoskeletons of monstrous insects. The wind howled like lost souls. Devi and Nny began to sketch, then to argue over who’s pens were who’s and where all the erasers had gone to. Jimmy irritably tuned his guitar. It was about as normal as things got.
The Edgar-ball in the back of the van unrolled a little and made a vague nauseous sound.
Jimmy snickered.
“Is he going to spew again?” Tenna called. “I’m not cleaning it up!”
“You should never have dared him to eat that curry.” Devi said. “Nny, I need a 4h.”
“He is such a light-weight.”
“The curry was green.”
“It’s supposed to be like that.”
“Green.”
 “Murrrgh.” Edgar said, and raised his head. “Where are we?”
“ Sunny California.”
Edgar peered blearily out the window. “…Since when?”
“You got corduroy-face,” Jimmy put in helpfully.
“Since like this morning.” Nny said. “You’ve been out cold since Arizona.”
“Mrgh.” Edgar scrubbed at his face. “I…” His gaze focused out the window. “Where are we.”
“California. I said.”
“No, I mean…This place. This street. Where are we.”
“We’re lost, dude.” Tenna called.
“I… know this place.”
Nny’s gaze went from indulgent to razor-sharp in an instant. He set his head on Edgar’s shoulder and peered out the window as well. Whatever he saw transfixed him.
“When? When were you here before?”
“I don’t- I don’t know, I just feel, feel like…” Edgar shivered a little, jostling Nny away.
“Are we still lost?” Tenna asked. The van rocked over an especially bad pothole, and everyone cursed.
“No…” Nny said slowly. He was still scanning the streets. “Take a left turn.”
“What? When?”
“The next- now. Now.”
“Jeez, a little more warning-”
“Nny.” Edgar tugged on his shoulder. “Nny.”
Jimmy picked angrily at his guitar. “Hey, if he knows a way out of this shithole, let him be.”
“No, we need to go back.” Edgar looked around for support. Devi and Jimmy were unimpressed.
“You need less green curry for breakfast,” Devi remarked.
“Do I go straight?” Tenna asked.
“Yes.” Nny said.
“No,” Edgar said.
“Fuck off, Edgar,” Jimmy said.
Edgar clenched his teeth and tried to calm down. He hadn’t even known they used to live in California until Nny said something. Maybe they didn’t, maybe they used to live in Europe and he had just forgotten how to speak French. It was just that the streets looked so familiar.
“Go right here.”
“Right?”
“No, right.”
“Your right, then.”
“It’s everyone’s right.”
“Is Edgar going to throw up again? Because I’m not cleaning it up.”
“You said.”
“I’m fine.” Edgar snapped. There was a sick roaring that was building in his ears, a roaring like the ocean, making it hard to concentrate.
“You’re not fine, you’re a total nutcase,” Jimmy shot back.
“Look who’s talking,” Edgar said.
“Yeah, Edgar, look who’s talking. Could it be the kid who’s not a total nutcase?”
“Quit your bitching, boys.” Tenna said. “There’s a house.”
Jimmy perked up. “About time. We can see if they have maps.”
“No, it’s abandoned.” Devi narrowed her eyes. “But it’s all warehouses around here…”
“ It’s probably condemned. We could crash there, maybe.”
“I think the van would be safer…”
Nny was scrabbling at the latch to the rear doors of the van, blindly, his eyes still fixed on the window.
“Nny, what do you think?” Jimmy asked.
“Stop him.”  Edgar said.
Nny slipped outside, into the rain. There was one streetlight beside the house, spotlighting it in a sickly yellow glow. It threw unpleasant shadows over his face.
“Fuck this,” Jimmy said, throwing Edgar a disgusted look. He clambered out after Nny. After a moment Devi found an umbrella and a flashlight and followed after. Edgar and Tenna looked at each other.
Tenna’s face was very serious. She almost looked like someone else. “What’s going on, wonder boy?”
“Something bad,” Edgar forced out. He couldn’t stop shivering, though the temperature in the van hadn’t dropped much yet.
Tenna watched the three on the doorstep. “Not green curry, huh.”
“Just… stay in the van, okay? Stay.”
Tenna nodded slowly. “I think I can do that.”
Edgar gave her brief smile, and clambered out of the van.

OOO

“It’s locked.” Devi informed him when he arrived.
“Good. I mean, that’s a shame. Let’s all get back in the van and-”
There was a crunch. “Take that, door!” Jimmy shrieked, striking a kung-fu pose.
Edgar caught Devi’s arm. “Look, really, this is a bad idea.”
Devi narrowed her eyes at him. He let go of her quickly. “Edgar, you giant spaz, it’s pouring rain, everyone’s sick of that damn van, and we’re lost. How is this a bad idea?”
“You know when there’s a horror movie and everyone is like don’t go in the dark scary basement and the kids do?”
Devi made an incoherent sound of frustration and stomped through the door, clicking on her flashlight. “There’s no one here but us!”
“Arrrgh!” Edgar went. “Why are you being so difficult!”
“Why are you being such a bitch?”
Edgar almost screamed with frustration. “Fine! Go in then! See if I care!”  But Devi and the others had already vanished into the gloom of the house.
He sat on the stoop and wrapped his arms around his shoulders. He was getting soaked, and the roaring in his ears wasn’t getting any quieter. If anything, it was pulsing, like waves. Or sobs. He brushed at his bangs and watched the lightening—he was just making too big a deal of it all. It was just some old condemned house. It would be fine. The worst thing anyone would run into would be some old bum, or some mouse bones. They would spend the night here, ransack the place for whatever was left –keys, nails, soup pans- and be out of here and not lost by morning. He was just being a spaz.
There pounding in his head rose to a shriek as an actual scream echoed out of the house. Edgar was on his feet and charging towards the noise before he knew what he was doing.
The house flashed by in a blur- a living room, a hall, a bedroom with a closet still open, stairs inside the closet—light.
Edgar peered cautiously inside the new room as Devi’s flashlight rolled to a halt, its wavering light illuminating the far wall.
It was covered with baby dolls, nailed right into the wood. Dark, shriveled substances hung out of rips in the stained plastic and the tattered fabric.  Obscene lyrics were written on every remaining inch of wall. It didn’t look like they were written with ink.
Devi clapped her hands over her mouth. Even in the gloom she looked paler than usual.
Nny walked over to them and slowly, even gently, traced the cheek of one doll. He stared at his finger, his eyebrows drawn together in a kind of detached confusion.
Jimmy pulled a doll off the wall and turned it over.
“Maaaaaaa.” It went. Everyone jumped.
No one noticed what came out of the nail-hole until it wrapped a tentacle around Jimmy’s arm. Jimmy screamed –so it had been Devi that screamed, earlier- and wrenched his arm back. The tentacle stretched with it like a slimy rubberband. Devi and Edgar also screamed, Devi scrambling away, Edgar running over to grab Jimmy. Together they snapped the thing and it rebounded against the wall, then hung, twitching.
Jimmy backed away, whimpering.
“It’s okay,” Edgar said, patting his arm. “It’s okay.”
Devi had approached Nny, who was still staring vaguely at the dolls. “Nny. Nny, hey. Snap out of it.”
“Don’t touch me.” He mumbled.
“Nny, we have to go. We are going. We are going right now.” She gently touched his shoulder. The thing from the nail hole was starting to writhe, pushing outwards.
“Don’t touch me!” Nny shouted, smacking her hand away. When he finally focused on them his eyes were very wide. He was shaking. “I can hear it. I can hear it in my head. Everything. I can hear it. It knows things. It knows about you.”
“If it tells you to kill, don’t.” Edgar said, then bit his tongue.
Nny’s eyes narrowed, and his hands came up. “Edgar,” he breathed.
“WE NEED TO GO NOW.” Edgar said, grabbed Jimmy by his sleeve, and bolted.
 Devi was right beside him up the stairs. From behind him there was a hoarse, animalistic shriek.
“You did this!” She shouted. “Why did you do this!”
“Shut up shut up!”
Edgar couldn’t remember there being so many stairs. At the top there was a hallway stretching in both directions.
“Which way?”
“I don’t know, I came out of the closet!”
“What the fuck are you talking about, the stairs should go right up to the kitchen we went through-”
“You are so gay,” Jimmy muttered. He seemed to be in shock.
They turned left and found a room full of packing crates.
“Do we hide?” Edgar asked.
“Why are we even running?” Devi said.
“We need to snap Jimmy out this.”
“Hey, where’s Nny?” Jimmy asked vaguely. “Did we leave him?”
A shadow loomed in the doorway.
“Oh, hey, Nny!” Jimmy called. “Over here!”
“Shut up!” Edgar found a trap door in the floor and tipped Jimmy into it. “Devi, come on.”
“Edgar, seriously, it’s just Johnny.”
Johnny moved towards them. “You’re supposed to be dead. That’s why we came back. That’s why nothing works out like it should. That’s why the world is rotting. It’s like maggots.” 
“It is not just Johnny!” Edgar said. He tried to grab for Devi’s arm but she brushed him off.
“I had to bring you.” Nny said. His eyes were still narrowed, predatory.
“Nny, snap out of it, Tenna drove. Do you know the way out?”
“Down.” He said, and raised a long, sharp knife.
Edgar finally managed to grab the back of Devi’s shirt and yank. She fell with him through the trap door. The floor was barely three feet below them and thick with dust. He closed the trapdoor on the tip of Johnny’s knife and scrambled for a lock. Thankfully there was one. Why anyone would need a lock on the underside of a trap door was now strangely apparent.
“What is going ON, Edgar!” Devi shouted.
“It’s the house, it’s making him crazy!”
“Not that again! For the last time, you two are not reincarnated, you do not share some special bond, and you are not special!”
The wood above them began to splinter. Edgar and Devi shared a long look.
“I’ll get Jimmy.” Devi said. 

OOO

Now that they were running away, the screaming-ocean sound in Edgar’s head was actually pretty useful. It swirled around him in time to his footsteps and his pounding heart, and rose up in desperate shrieks any time Johnny was gaining on them. In contrast, the songs swirling up from Devi and Jimmy –actual music- seemed harsh and discordant, almost pointless. He couldn’t remember any of this happening the other times. Maybe if he had heard screaming when Johnny was close the very first time around he wouldn’t have woken up strapped to a human threshing machine.
If this house was making Johnny crazy, it was also bringing back what it had been like for him, in his first life, in his second life. Being helpless. Being dead.
He did his best to smother the increasing worry: what if this screaming, this pulsing static roar, what if this was Johnny’s song? Of all the fears he was dealing with now, this one was the most pressing. Dying was dying, but knowing that after everything, he had waited for this…
He brushed his hair out of his eyes and leaned his head against Devi’s shoulder. It was testament to her exhaustion that she leaned against him too. Jimmy was sprawled nearby. They were huddled in what looked like a bathroom, behind a stained toilet.
“I’m telling you guys, we need to go back. He could be hurt or something.” Jimmy wouldn’t drop the subject of Nny’s relative innocence.
“He’s trying to kill us.” Edgar sighed. It was funny, really, how quickly this all seemed normal. Like the past five years just hadn’t happened. Nny is crazy, run away. Just like old times.
“He wouldn’t. It’s just the… the tentacles.” Jimmy rubbed at the still-oozing cut on his shoulder. “The tentacle monster is trying to kill us.”
“He’s the one with the knives.”
“Maybe we could… fight back.” Devi said.
“Hurt Johnny?” Jimmy said, aghast.
“With what?” Edgar said.
“I don’t know, something. Maybe we could sharpen a toilet plunger.”
“We haven’t seen anything with an edge so far.”
“We can’t hurt Johnny.” Jimmy put in.
“I’m certainly starting to feel like it.” Devi griped.
“But he hasn’t done anything”
“Says the boy with the bleeding shoulder.”
“It’s the tentacles.”
“Do you think we could… I don’t know, we really haven’t tried to talk. Maybe Jimmy’s right.”
There was the sound of shattering glass, and then Johnny loomed in the doorway. Everyone screamed, despite themselves.
“Now what?”
“Oh god, oh god-”
“There’s got to be a way out-”
“It’s Johnny-”
“The window, there’s a window-”
“No, that’s the vent-”
“I can reach it, come on-”
“I’m not going.” Jimmy said, standing up. “He’s got to be in there somewhere.”
Everyone fixed on Jimmy, especially Johnny. Jimmy swallowed hard and raised his hands, palms up. “Hey,” He said. “Hey, come on, now.”
Johnny lunged, and they all scattered. Devi and Edgar managed to push past, into the room beyond the bathroom. They turned to see Jimmy backing into the shower, one hand around Johnny’s hand around the handle of the knife. The knife in his chest. He shot them a look over Nny’s shoulder. “Go on,” He said, almost calmly. “We’ll meet you outside.”
They ran.

OOO

“This isn’t working!” Devi shouted, some time later. They were ransacking a kitchen with no particular idea of what they were looking for. So far all they had found was an old soup lid and a chair.
“I’m sorry! Do you have any brilliant ideas?” Edgar shouted back.
“He’s your boyfriend! Fix him!”
 “He loved you first, fix him yourself!”
Devi brushed her hair out of her eyes and blinked at him. “What?”
“He loved you first. I mean- I mean, before, you know. When he was crazy. I thought you knew.”
“You two don’t tell me jack squat, how was I supposed to know?”
“Well, now you do.” Edgar muttered. He picked up the chair so he didn’t have to look at her. “He loved you. I don’t know what happened the first time around but- he used to go on about how he thought he knew you. The second time around. He was happy for awhile…Only I guess you beat the shit out of him when he tried something. I… I never thought he’d try to hurt you like this. Like you were me. I thought you were, you know, immune. Because he loved you.”
Devi sighed. “God, Edgar. You are such a martyr.”
They stood in the kitchen for awhile, not meeting each other’s eyes.
The sound of footsteps came echoing through the doorway.
 “Here, gimme.” Devi said. She took the chair away from him and smashed it against the wall until it shattered. “Maybe you’re on to something, I dunno. But I am ready to beat the shit out of something.”
Edgar looked distressed. “I don’t know, I thought maybe we were getting closer to the exit.”
“This place is a trap and you know it! Take this!”
Edgar took a leg of the chair. “Okay, okay, what do we do?”
“We wait until he comes through the door and then we beat him until he stops being homicidal. I think if we can sit on him long enough we can talk some sense into him. Maybe Jimmy was right.”
“God, Jimmy. Do you think he’s--”
Devi’s face was cold. “That boy is too fucking dumb to stay dead. He’s going to be fine.”
Johnny was at the door, and the screaming static rose up all around him. He was saying something, trying to explain, but Edgar couldn’t hear him over all the noise.
“Do it! Do it now!” Devi yelled.
“Are you sure about-”
“You hold one fucking end and you fucking swing it, Edgar!” Devi was already charging forward. Johnny raised his knife and swung but Devi ducked under it, around, and brought her chair leg down on his arm. Johnny grunted in pain and seemed to flow around her, pulling another knife out of nowhere in his other hand. In the dark and the shadows he seemed thinner, taller, older. Edgar dithered for a moment, dropped his own makeshift club, and in a moment of panic just threw himself at Johnny. They all went down in a heap.
Johnny snarled and thrashed like a wildcat. Devi clocked Edgar across the face with her chair leg. Edgar did his best to hang on to Johnny and all his teeth.
“Grab his hands!”
Edgar eventually managed to get Johnny in a hug from behind, his arms pinned to his sides. Devi pried the knife out of his hands and threw it away, into the far corner of the kitchen. After that the house gave a long, rattling moan, like wood coming apart.
“We have to get out of here!”
“YOU THINK?”
They dragged Johnny through the door and they were back in the livingroom, the front room connected to the front door, which was still hanging off it’s hinges. The night air was sweeter than anything they had ever smelled before. The rain was clearing away.
They set Nny down on the front stoop, Edgar holding him from behind, Devi from the front.
“Kiss him.”
“You kiss him.”
The sun was coming up, over the houses, a clear gold light, spilling into their eyes. Johnny shivered and cried between them. Like something lost. Like something broken. There was a noise from behind them, a scuff, and they turned in alarm. It was Tenna, dragging Jimmy by the back of his shirt.
“Fuck California,” She said. “Lets go home.” 
“Yes.” Johnny said.