Chapter Text
The stale grime of Waylon’s own smell cut through the crisp mountain air outside the asylum- sweat, piss and whatever other bodily fluids had accumulated on and in the patient jumpsuit he was still wearing. His foot was fucked, one ball of indescribable agony, and his side was oozing blood where his ex boss had only just plunged a knife into him. But he was out. He had his camera, his evidence, and he was out.
That fragile thought ignited a premature bout of hope that spurred him on beyond his pain and the lingering all encompassing terror. It wasn’t enough to make him notice how good the sun felt on his face, but enough to keep him going. Hobbling away from that thing and through the array of deserted special forces vans out front, past the main gate to that small red jeep. Thank God he knew how to hotwire a car. Growing up in a poor neighborhood had its merits after all.
Maybe he’d imagined it- the shadow. He’d been through enough these last few hours that he wouldn’t be surprised if his mind had just snapped.
And his insanity seemed even more plausible a second later- just as he was by the heavy iron gate at the entrance booth- when an impossible noise made him stop dead. A sound that had his blood turn to ice and his stomach do a double flip inside his belly. If he hadn’t been so dehydrated, he’d have pissed himself. Again.
“Daaaarling…”
Waylon almost didn’t dare turn around. He was watching his fingers tremble where he was holding onto the rough black iron gate for balance, watching the car behind the booth. So close. He’d imagined it, that sweet lull of a voice that had never been meant to be used for the incitation of such horrors. He was imagining the slow heavy footsteps behind him too, surely. The grunts and the wheezing.
He didn’t know where he found the guts to turn and look.
Be it Waylon’s crazed imaginings or reality- here he was, stumbling towards Waylon, a set of keys falling from his bloody fingers. Waylon could feel himself start to cry, all hope evaporated, gone with his breath. This could not be happening. There was no way Eddie could have got out of that tangle of ropes, got that pipe dislodged from his stomach.
“You… whore...” Eddie was growling in between wet gasps for air, in between labored steps closer, “You… skewered me.”
He looked worse than ever. His makeshift groom outfit was torn and frayed, ligatures and scrapes covering every inch of visible skin- including his neck. But the worst was his torso- a gaping wound flooded red with bits and pieces Waylon was too disgusted by to think about what they might be hanging out of Eddie’s stomach. They must have been organs or intestines, either way they weren’t something meant to be hanging out like that. Eddie was trying in vain to hold them in with his palms, creating a moist squelching sound. It was a wonder he was even able to walk, let alone all the way out here. His lower body was drenched in blood. By the stare on his snarling face he was ready to take Waylon with him to his certain soon grave.
And behind him, rising from the open front gates of the asylum in a black cloud of shimmering particles, was that ghost, hovering for a second as if it was just watching them. Waylon didn’t know which one of them he was more terrified of. All he knew was he was about ready to drop to the floor and accept his fate. He hadn’t blown the whistle, he’d blown his mission. And whatever that thing was, it was his end, if Eddie didn’t get to him first.
Just before he got the chance to give up for good, that shadow burst into a hazy mist- like a swarm of millions of birds far off in the distance. Only it wasn’t distant, it was rushing closer, like Eddie was coming closer with his determined last steps, until the swarm hit Eddie. He screamed as the thing seemed to pass right through him, made him convulse and go down to his knees as those tiny particles penetrated him from all sides. As quickly as they’d gone into him, they came out again and formed another shadowy cloud that zinged right back to the asylum.
And in that instant where Waylon realized it wasn’t after him, he finally got himself together, pulled himself past the main gate and waddled to the car. He didn’t even have to use his (admittedly limited) hood skills because the key was still in the ignition. Only when he started the engine (God, Engine, don’t think about it) he saw it again, rising into the sky in front of the asylum.
He couldn’t help it. He had to get it on video one last time. And as he did, watching through the viewfinder, he didn’t notice the most obvious, closest threat. Not until Eddie opened the passenger door and slid into the jeep beside Waylon. Waylon was too stunned to do anything but stare at him. This was not possible. He’d gone completely off his rockers. There were no animate shadow clouds or undead murderers who were trying to turn him into a woman by sawing him open. He’d just simply gone insane.
“Darling, drive” Eddie insisted politely, red eyes fixed on the thing that was heading towards them once more. He wasn’t bleeding anymore, just covered in gore and the bruising and patches of rash that had covered his face even before. His breathing was steady and his gaze seemed almost… lucid.
“Drive!” he shouted and Waylon kicked into gear without any more thought.
A minute later they were through the outer gate and speeding away from the shadow cloud behind them. Waylon wasn’t sure if it decided to let them go or if they’d escaped it, but when they were off the property he couldn’t see it in the rearview mirror anymore. On to his other problem.
This could not be reality. He couldn’t be sitting quietly in a car with The fucking Groom, whom he’d killed, whose guts he’d just watched spilling out of him, and who was now apparently just dandy, while Waylon could feel himself bleeding out, getting woozy. He had this vision in his head, of Eddie reaching over and running his hand along Waylon’s thigh, gently but persistently- the way he’d touched him when he’d tried to cut Waylon in half. God, he was living in the most demented version of every teenage romcom he’d ever seen. He could almost hear the sound of the flies around Eddie’s ‘workbench’.
Eddie did none of that though, he just stared out the window and surveyed the passing scene. Waylon wondered when the last time Eddie had roamed around free in the world had been. Fucking hell. He was driving around with a psychotic serial killer in the passenger seat.
Was the only reason Eddie didn’t attack him or try anything worse that Waylon was behind the wheel and therefore needed as the driver of the getaway vehicle? Waylon could not imagine Eddie having enough sense to worry about things of that nature. This was the man who’d performed ‘operations’ on the other inmates in order to make them into a bride fitting for him after all, what harm should a little car accident be to Eddie’s grand scheme of things?
But- as Waylon was flooring it for several miles along the deserted morning country roads it felt as if every mile further away from the feasting inferno of that place made a little more of that unfamiliar sanity in Eddie’s eyes grow. And a little more of Waylon’s strength run out. He could feel the car seat underneath him get wet with his own blood. His foot was burning where he was using it to drive. And Eddie seemed to notice it too.
“Stop here” he said calmly when a sign pointed to a rest stop a few miles up. Waylon jumped at the sound of his voice, pulled out of the imaginary pact of no talking they had been under for the hour or so they’d been on the road. It felt like a violation to hear Eddie speak, and like a threat of imminent death to stop the car. The car was his safety net; they needed to get away. He needed to get away.
“No” he mumbled, and the effort it took to say words made it even more obvious how weak he was getting. His hands were slipping on the wheel. He could hear the hum of the flies in his head.
“We need to get something to treat your wounds.”
Jesus fucking Christ, Eddie was starting to sound like the sane one between them. He was rummaging around the glove compartment and hummed approvingly when he found a few dollar bills. Black crept into the corners of Waylon’s vision in dots. Flies. At least it wasn’t the Engine’s kaleidoscope. Eddie was right, there was no way Waylon would make it past the next stop.
He stopped in the parking lot just in time before his muscles gave up. He barely registered Eddie getting out of the car and around it to the driver’s side. When Eddie opened his door and held out his hand, Waylon couldn’t resist a giggle. Such a gentleman, he wanted to say, but his tongue wouldn’t comply. It seemed an instant later he was lying across the backseat, and he thought he saw Eddie pull a trench coat over his bloodied clothes, then leave for the gas station. It was still early and theirs was the only vehicle around. Somewhere from the woods behind the highway came the sound of singing birds. It was eerily serene and beautiful, but it couldn’t drown out the screams in Waylon’s head, the thudding of his heart and his injuries.
When Eddie came back the fear intensified again. He put a tacky brown paper bag on the passenger seat, then opened the back door and all Waylon could see was Eddie opening the locker. Was he grinning still now as his bulk filled the tiny jeep, crawling onto the seat as Waylon was trying to scramble away? The only thing Waylon managed was hit the back of his head against the door behind him, and Eddie clicking his tongue at him. Smirking- he was smirking, not grinning.
“Always making me chase you, you little minx.”
Waylon couldn’t speak, he could barely breathe. The bottom of his suit was wet and as he looked down he was surprised to find it was red. Bright red, like Eddie’s right eye as he leaned in and got the zipper of Waylon’s patient suit between his fingers. The air returned to Waylon’s chest the way it did after a jump into cold water- with a rush that felt like a punch.
“No” he gasped but he couldn’t muster enough energy to lift his arms for more than a swat at Eddie’s hard frame, “No, no, no, please, wait, please-“
Eddie shushed him, looking stern now instead of fond.
“Don’t worry, darling” he said and pulled the zipper all the way down, “I’m here.”
That is the problem, Waylon thought, delirium close at hand. He gazed between them and everything was red, even his bared crotch over which Eddie’s hand was hovering like the worst kind of promise. All at once he noted again how they were in a mock position of intimacy, Eddie seated between his legs like a lover about to lean in for a make out session in the backseat. Only there was so much blood, and the last time Eddie had had his legs spread he’d been about to make Waylon bleed even more.
Eddie opened a pack of gauze with his teeth- God, like an actor in a cheap porn movie would a Trojan- and then Waylon’s eyes fell close and he was unable to open them anymore. The hum of the flies was so loud between his ears.
“I will protect you” Eddie said, and there was pressure on Waylon’s stomach, pressure that hurt, “I will keep you safe.”
If Waylon had had it in him, he’d have burst into a hysterical laughing fit. As it stood he blacked out.