I noticed things that I didn’t before. The hand in my own felt thick and bristly, like the ends of a hairbrush—thick enough that I could feel it through the exposed fingers through my cast. As if realizing what was happening, the fingers tightened around mine, fingernails stabbing into the soft parts of my hand. Its digits were long and gangly, managing to wrap around the entirety of my hand. It was wrinkled too. I immediately began to sweat, and my palms turned clammy in a matter of seconds. It took its thumb and began to stroke the inside of my palm.
I swallowed, unsure of what to do.
The creature spoke first, its voice high-pitched but nervous. There was almost a whining quality to it. “C-Cat got your tongue?”
I had to stay calm. If there was one thing that everything taught me so far, it was that a practitioner’s wits were worth their weight in gold. It had kept me alive this far. Panic meant acting on instinct instead of reason. I needed to keep my wits about me. Most of all, I needed to convince this thing that that was indeed the case.
So I imitated the creature’s casual tone, like we were continuing a conversation we were just having. “Just thinking.”
“About?” It asked without missing a beat.
“About where to go next,” I said, careful not to mention my friends. “I can’t find the basement.”
“The under-cave! Boy seek under-cave?”
Boy? Is that what I looked like to the creature? I was small for my age, but not that small. I tossed the thought aside, focusing on the conversation.
“Yes,” I said simply. Contextually, the basement in a house would be the underground cave if said house were turned into a forest. Randomly, I was reminded of the transitive property I learned in math class.
The creature was quiet for a moment. “Tagalong c-can lead the boy there.”
Tagalong. That had to be the creature’s name. I took a second to mentally go through all the different folklores and myths Wol had me read in the last few days, and came up with nothing. Zilch.
“Only if you have the time.”
There was some movement at my side. I didn’t dare turn my head to look. Every time we encountered the unknown, Wol often told me not to look, rather fervently, might I add. Until I figured out what this thing was, I needed to play it real careful.
“Oh, but under-layer is dangerous,” the Tagalong said. “Tagalong scared, h-he lead the boy to danger.”
“Why? What’s there?”
It sniffed. “Dangerous,” it repeated adamantly.
I bit back a frustrated sigh. “The people I were with. The girls, the Haetae, the black cat, and the koi… did you happen to see them? Maybe you could lead me to them?”
The air shook along with his head. A negative.
Damn it. It sounded like he had made up his mind, and I didn’t know the creature well enough to push back on the matter. If only I knew a little bit more…
No. Maybe I did know. I just hadn’t figured it out yet.
The biggest and most obvious clue. His Name. Tagalong.
Words have power, and Names have even more power than words. In the preternatural world, names are more than just a label. For a lot of preternaturals, practitioners included, Names are like a phone number. You can use it to get their attention, send nasty things their way, or even try to track them down. But the flip side of that is that Names have to be given. You can’t just randomly hear a person’s name and use it willy-nilly without consequences. It requires circles. Sacrifices. Payment. Power that most people are not willing to expend.
In Anthropology, names have meaning. Well, names have meaning in general. Social statuses, like naming day for kids. Relationships, like how McMahon really means Son of McMahon. It’s a cultural and social tool, and I was willing to bet three-fiddy that this was a way that humankind interacted with the supernatural on some level. For preternaturals, I had to imagine that it was similar. It was a clue to their identity, who they were, how they behaved, how they came to be. And I had a feeling that this was especially true for older, less ‘humanized’ creatures like Tagalong.
Thinking about it some more, the name Tagalong had to be old. It was so… basic. And in English too.
Old usually meant powerful. Tagalong didn’t feel powerful, though. His fingers trembled in mine, and all the dread I was feeling from before was drained out of me. It was like he held my hand because he was scared, and I just happened to be the person to latch onto. He certainly didn’t feel like a malevolent forest entity that kidnapped everyone.
Tagalong. To follow, or trailing. Was it positive or negative? It depended. What about from Tagalong’s perspective? Was it a good thing that he was tagging along?
I gave him a tight squeeze with my hand, and he squeezed back. I was starting to get a feel for the creature.
He was scared. The idea that he had been purposefully trying to freak me out was all but gone. It had all been a figment of my own imagination, only taking into consideration my own experiences in the dark. He was a nervous little thing and gave me the feeling he had held my hand out of his own need. He wasn’t too smart either, I think.
“Tagalong,” I said the preternatural’s name into the darkness, reaching out and trying to establish some kind of bond with it. Nothing magical, just wishful thinking.
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He flinched at the strength in my voice. “Y-yes?”
“I’m going to search for the basement,” I said. Reaching into my pocket, I took out a piece of chalk and began to write an occult rune on my cast: a small zig-zagging lightning shape with a circle around it. “Sowilō,”I whispered, and felt a small bit of myself disappear into the world.
Nothing big. Maybe enough effort to walk uphill, but definitely noticeable. Damn it. Without Wol around, I had to power my own workings. I was working with limited sources here. Either way, the rune for light lit up and the cast around my right arm began to give off a whitish glow. Again, the light didn’t reach far. The forest was too vast, the darkness too heavy, and the house too empty.
“You want to come with?”I asked, taking care not to look at Tagalong’s direction.
“Boy invites Tagalong?” he asked rhetorically. “Tagalong will tag along!”
“Then let’s go.”
I resumed my walk through the woods, Tagalong on my heels. There was a certain bounce to his steps. Jesus. I felt like an older brother leading his younger sibling on an adventure through the woods, except this wood tended to kidnap people. It had to be some kind of Rule, or a Creature that could take advantage of said Rule, which was specific to this place. I couldn’t see Mina and Seoul going down without a fight, and that went double for Wol and Hwari.
“Tagalong is tagging along,” Tagalong sang.
“Yes, you are,” I confirmed. “You know, if we were driving, you’d be the front-seat passenger.”
“What is this front-seat passenger?”
“You know what a car is?”
Tagalong shuddered. “Big things. Loud. Stinky. Yes. Tagalnog knows what a car is.”
“Well, one person is the driver. He chooses where to go. He steers the wheel, makes the car go forward, and all that. On a long trip, he might ask someone to be the front-seat passenger.”
“Tagalong likes trips!” The bounce in his steps grew, and his shape came dangerously close to revealing itself in my peripheral vision. Huge eyes that took up most of his face, and a sharp beak-like mouth. Long, double-jointed arms covered in brown fur brushed up against me.
I turned my head away.
“And when a front-seat passenger does a good job, the driver might invite him back,” I said nonchalantly. “They do things too.”
Tagalong’s interest in the conversation sharpened like a knife. “Another trip?! What does front-seat passenger do? Tagalong can do it!”
“Usually? Snacks and music.”
“Oh songs! Tagalong loves songs! Tagalong sang with friends all the time!” Then he immediately began belting out a tune. “Once more a-lumbering go, and we’ll range the wild woods—”
I cut him off. “But more importantly, they’re in charge of navigation.”
He stopped singing.“Na… vigation?”
“Directions. Leading us on the right path, making sure we don’t take long turns,” I said. “Checking maps, keeping the driver focused on getting where we need to go.”
“Tagalong has to… lead? But Tagalong cannot lead,” His voice shriveled to a whisper. “Does that make Tagalong bad front-seat passenger?”
“No, no. Just… advise. The driver leads. The passenger just helps.”
“Oh,” Tagalong said.
I swallowed, wondering if it would work. This kind of blatant fishing wouldn’t work at all against anything smarter than a freaking preschooler. If it worked, then I had an easy way into the basement.
“We take the right here then,” Tagalong said in a mousy voice.
I pivoted on my heel and obeyed.
Tagalong gave me a series of directions. Turn here and turn there. Along the way, my Third Eye itched to be opened, like there were things to see. I had the sense that Tagalong’s directions had led me past the mire that couldn’t be seen by my Third Eye, and it was reacting to the subconscious mental map I was drawing.
Along the way, Tagalong began to sing, and I hummed along, which seemed to delight him. He sang about a man who loves nature, but secretly wanted to be a woman.
“Where’d you hear this song?”
“A friend,” Tagalong said, then added in a small voice, “He’s gone now.”
“Oh,” I tried to think of a topic that might cheer him up. “You go on a lot of trips?”
He moaned. “No. Now… all smoke and loud noises. Cars. Big cars that belch smoke and yell. All the birds fly away, and the groundhogs shrivel up in their holes. Huge arms that hit trees, again and again. Even baby trees.”
Welp, I tried.
We walked for what felt like forever. My feet hurt. I had to redo the light rune a couple of times, each working draining a little bit more out of me than before. I thought Tagalong might comment on the fact that I was a practitioner, but he remained silent.
We continued.
“Now, straight and the under-cave will be there,” Tagalong said once we turned the bend.
A straight road, with trees on either side so that the place looked like a road. The walls of the house blended with the scenery of a cliffside, the door transforming so that it formed the mouth of a cave.
“Perfect,” I hissed and took a step forward.
Tagalong let go of my hand.
I stopped. “Tagalong?”
“…Tagalong scared. Tagalong remembered. Under-cave not safe. Dangerous. Boy will be in danger,” the preternatural said, his voice wavering.
I suppressed a shiver. “What’s there?”
“The others,” Tagalong whispered.
“Tagalong, tell me the truth. Did you see what happened to my friends?”
I heard the shuffling of feet, and Tagalong’s presence shifted from directly next to me to my right. I turned my head left, keeping his shadow in my peripheral vision, which was damned hard because technically, the only source of light was my cast and it was already starting to fade.
“They took them,” Tagalong said at last.
The shiver came out regardless.
“Who’s they?” I asked.
“Same as Tagalong. Made of merry songs and drunken tales when the woods were old. Older than now. Older than they were. We met at campfires, over tobacco, rotgut, axes, and jerky. Some said we were brothers. Tagalong does not know. But they took Boy’s friends.”
Folklore? History? My brain felt that there was a connection between what I already knew and what Tagalong was referring to. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
“How’d you end up here?” I asked the question that had been weighing on my mind. “You know this is a house, right? Not the real woods?”
Tagalong’s shadow shrugged, an entirely too human gesture that creeped me out. “Tagalong tagged along. Not invited. But Tagalong was curious. Followed them. They followed Tagalong.”
He had to be talking about the Wickermen.
“I could use your help, Tagalong,” I said.
Tagalong flitted over to my side, halfway, then darted back the way we came, stopping a few yards away. “They will be mean Tagalong. Make Tagalong hurt Boy. Boy was nice to Tagalong. Invited Tagalong to tag along. No one ever invites Tagalong,” he said sadly. “Thank Boy, for inviting Tagalong.”
It sounded like a good-bye. I didn’t know since when, but Tagalong’s presence had become a source of comfort. I guess the moment I realized he was no threat, I had welcomed the company. It sure beat walking in the woods alone. I opened my mouth to try to say something to get him to go down with me.
But time was ticking.
Besides, tagging along wasn’t synonymous with coerced along or kidnapped.
I nodded. “It was nice, Tagalong. I’m Jain, by the way. Jain Shin Hallow.”
“Tagalong happy to meet Jain,” Tagalong said. “...Was Tagalong good front-seat passenger?
I pretended to think about it. “Yeah. You were. We also call it riding shotgun. It’s cooler that way.”
“Riding shotgun,” Tagalong said, tasting the words. “Riding shoutgun…”
Suddenly, his presence disappeared.
Leaving me alone.
An animal cried somewhere. Bushes rustled.
I knelt down, reaching into my pink ‘Girl Power!’ backpack and took out some things that I might need, stuffing as many of them into my pockets as I could. Then I decided against it and put the bare minimum in them. Having too many things meant I’d have to sift through them all. In the heat of the moment, I couldn’t afford that.
The cave’s maw stared at me.
No Wol. No Hwari. No staff. No contracted preternatural at my beck and call. None of the backup I came with.
I entered the cave and started climbing down the stairs.