Salt Lucius Ulysses Tennery hated his mother, and for many and various reasons—not just because her dark sense of humour had made his teenage years a living hell.
Her vexacious naming of him so traumatised him that, at thirteen, he retreated from reality entirely, gavaunting about the place with a cast of imaginary friends (he was certain 'gavaunt' was a word with this meaning, but could never find any proof for this, eventually coming to believe he must have pulled it from an alternate reality).
A slim, sensitive boy, who drew bullies to himself the way cheap PlayStations drew Black Friday shoppers, Salt retreated into himself at school, utterly failing to learn the social skills school was touted to teach.
As engrossed in his fantasy world as he was, until the age of fourteen, he believed himself to be an untaught wizard, growing his hair long so that he could hide the scar he drew in his mother's lip liner in a jagged fork down his forehead.
It helped that his birthday fell on the 31st October, an arcane date by anyone's measure, and each year as Samhain, (which only he of his year knew to be pronounced 'sah-win', a fact the bullies joyously beat him for softly voicing in class), approached, he felt a dark energy rise inside him. On that night, he would dress himself in black and prowl the streets, convinced this would be the night he finally crossed the boundary to the other side and came into his power.
However, each year he did not cross the boundary between worlds, and he did not come into anything.
Despite this, he was certain that the weather obeyed him, concentrating intensely to shift storms over the town more quickly, or breaking apart clouds on a cool day to let the sun through. In a private place, where no one could see him, he would reach up to the sky, stretching his fingers wide, as if trying to tease apart the sky itself, to tear asunder the thick tufts of vapour above him.
He told no one of his delusions, aware that others would think these things symptoms of an unhinged mind, but as he grew older, his exploration of the dark arts expanded.
Since there were no Ouija boards for sale in his town, he drew one up on a sheet of paper, communicating alone in a darkened room with spirits who invariably answered 'yes' to questions that reflected his fears, and 'no' each time he asked if he would soon cease being a virgin. Disappointed, he concluded that his unscientific board must be laid out incorrectly, and moved onto divination.
He stole tarot cards from a store in the shopping centre and taught himself how to read them. Unfortunately, having no friends, he was forced to tell his cat's fortune, and since the animal spent most of its time out of his sight, it was difficult to know if Mr Fluffy really
was
experiencing difficulties with his relationships, or if he had recently taken up a new hobby.
Disenchanted with the art of the cards, Salt moved onto runes, casting the stones against himself, desperate to know what his future held.
But each time he cast the smooth pebbles, each decorated with a stark white symbol, the same symbols would cast again and again, telling him his future was bleak and devoid of erotic relationships, with the key cause being his intellect.
As depressing as it was to be told he simply wasn't smart enough to have sex, Salt continued to believe in a supernatural destiny that had yet to manifest itself.
At fifteen, he became convinced he could read people's minds, and what he heard appalled and terrified him. Dark whispers echoed from strangers' minds as they passed, each of them thinking degrading, sexual thoughts that sent him back to his bedroom confused and horny, to practice the art of self-gratification.
By sixteen however, he had come to realise that the dark thoughts were his own, that they echoed the pornography he watched late at night on his father's laptop, which did not have a content lock on it, and the password for which was
Passw0rd
.
Depressed, he stopped imagining himself a wizard, and wandered the bleak and lustreless world a sad, lonely boy, devoid of any particular abilities, too stupid to have sex.
And so it was that at 11 p.m. at night on his eighteenth birthday, Salt found himself still a virgin, sitting alone in his bedroom in front of his computer, masturbating to Mormon porn.
Downstairs, the bell rang, and Salt jumped. It was not tradition in Sydbourn where he lived, to celebrate Halloween, but he could hear the excited voices of trick-or-treaters drifting up from below.
Salt had no sweets or alcohol to give them, and so he stayed at his computer, his hand clamped around his sweaty gear shift, enjoying the carnal bonding of two Mormon brothers whose ideas on expressing their fraternal affection for each other could best be described as 'flexible'.
At 11.54 p.m., his birth day nearly at an end, Salt heard a thump at the door below.
His parents had left town for the weekend, so he knew it wouldn't be them, and the sporadic stream of trick-or-treaters had finally ceased. Besides, the thump made upon the door had the weight of, not just a grown man, but a tall, angry man, likely with dark and angry eyes.
Salt realised his cock, twice sated this evening already, was rising once more, and wondered how a solid knock at his door could possibly cause such a reaction.
The knock came again, and Salt could not help imagining who the solid and fearsome man at his door might be.
He did up his pants and wiped his hand on some used tissues, and then jogged downstairs to open the door.
He opened the door to find not one, tall, angry man, but three teenagers, all slightly older and taller than himself.
The one who'd knocked was dressed in a black trench coat that reached down to his knees. He had a head of wild, unkempt hair and dark eyes, just as Salt had imagined he would from his intimidating knock. He was over six feet tall, where Salt had only managed to grow to a meagre five foot eight, despite having been at it for eighteen years, and Salt found himself gazing up to meet the older boy's eyes.
Behind him stood another teenager wearing a white muslin shirt over blue jeans, both of which were stained with fake blood, and cut and torn for effect. He had short brown hair and green eyes, and sported a cheerful grin. He was the shorter of the three, and stood only slightly taller than Salt.
The third of their number was a boy with a shaved head, whose restless blue gaze roved over Salt and then away again to search behind him, as if he were concerned evil things may come out of the dark at any moment.
He was dressed in army fatigues, and had a plastic gun slung over his shoulder.
Salt swallowed as he looked up into the intense gaze of the tallest of the three, the one in the trenchcoat.
"Can I help you?" he asked, as the lanky teenager gazed down at him.
"Quite the opposite," said the dark-haired boy. "I hear you have a problem."
Salt blinked at him, wondering what kind of problem he might have that these three random strangers might know about. He didn't recognise them from his school, and didn't attend parties where he might meet people.
"Can we come in?" the stranger asked.
Salt remained confused. At the back of his mind, alarm bells were ringing, and in the hallway, the grandfather clock began to chime the twelve long strokes of midnight.
"Okay," said Salt, quite unsure why he agreed to let them in, but letting them in anyway.
"Thank you."
The three teenagers brushed past him, and he closed the door behind them and stood in the hallway, uncertain. After a moment, he followed them down to the lounge.
"I suppose we should introduce ourselves," said the tall boy. "My name's Brendon." He pointed to the boy with blood on his clothes. "This is Dex, or at least, for tonight. And this,' he gestured to the boy in army fatigues, "Is Clay."
"Short for Claymore," said Clay quickly, as if it was very important this were clarified before any misunderstandings occurred.
"Why Brendon?" Salt asked.
Brendon gave him a slow smile.
"Because 'Kevin' isn't as sexy. But we don't need to talk about that."
Which didn't seem like an explanation to Salt, but it did seem to be all Brendon was offering.
The three surrounded Salt, leaving him looking nervously from one to the next.
"So... why are you here again?" he asked, glancing over his left shoulder at Clay, then over his right shoulder at Dex.
"You called us," said Brendon in a low voice, spreading his hands wide. "You've been searching for us for a long, long time. And now we're here."
