Nothing But Bones

37: The Berrycloths Arrive

Tiff's phone rings. It's Melvin; the battery drops from twelve percent to eleven.

"Hi, Mr. Berrycloth!" She draws it out as much as she did before. "What's up?"

His voice crackles on the other end— like rain is falling on his phone, like the wind is blowing. "This town is positively miniscule, my dear. I'm standing in front of.... The Big Beaver."

"Did you know they have milkshakes there?"

"How lovely." His voice betrays that he doesn't actually care about milkshakes (which is honestly kind of rude). "Where are you? I'm going to take a wild guess and say the only hotel in town?"

"And only, yes." She winces. "I mean— Yes."

"Wonderful. Be up momentarily!"

She mutters her room number before he hangs up. After another minute of chewing her sandwich and watching her esophagus work, there's a gentle knock at the door.

"Oh no," she whispers, mostly to her hands and what jelly remains. "They're here."

Tiff pushes herself up out of the bathtub. She draws the dark shower curtain on its circular track; no need for questions. Covering the front of the hole in her torso with the still-bleeding wounded arm, she goes to answer the door. She opens it to the hall and stares down the pair of men on the other side, one with a half-shaved head of blonde hair and a mustache, the other with dark skin and a head of curls covering what Tiff knows are pointed ears.

Melvin J. Berrycloth smiles at Tiff; standing just behind, Ellis mirrors him. "Oh, dear. You do look like shit. May I come in?"

"Sure." She steps back and holds the door open wide, careful not to touch the wall. She doesn't want to scrub the wallpaper once all of this is over.

"Thank you, dear." Upon his entrance, Melvin takes a look around. Tiff's sure he clocks the duffel bag full of parts and projects just as easily as he spots Elton, but it's only the latter that he comments on, giving Tiff what he probably thinks is a conspiratorial look. "Oh, you are too fucking adorable. Look at you!"

Elton, still chewing his second PB&J, stares back at him. He swallows a thick mouthful of peanut butter. "Uh, thanks... nameless man?"

He steps closer, beaming. "The name is Melvin J. Berrycloth. You are?"

Elton narrows his eyes and takes a sip of Coke Zero. "Oh. Yeah. I should have guessed. Your comic just got a show, didn't it?"

Finally shaking Elton's hand, he grumbles, "Yes, it did. Don't watch it."

"Noted?"

"And what was your name?"

"Elton Castle." The peanut butter isn't going down easy; he swallows again.

With that taken care of, Melvin spins around to Tiff, who has been struggling to lock the door with one hand this whole time and not allowing Ellis to help. "Now, my dear, where is this book?"

"The counter in the bathroom." She gestures in that direction with her free hand. She mutters, still fighting the metal, "Goddamn lock."

"Tiff," Ellis whispers, "let me help."

"I've got it." It comes out almost-pleading, in a way that makes it clear she doesn't got it.

"I'm sure you do." Voice gentle, Ellis reaches around her and locks it anyway. "Let's go see about that book, huh?"

"Yeah. Yeah, the book. Correct."

"Ellis," Melvin calls, from the bathroom, audibly delighted, "come look at this!"

When he does— when Tiff follows him to the bathroom to see that Melvin has snatched up the spell tome from the counter— Ellis brings a hand up to cover his mouth. He turns to look at Tiff, wide-eyed and shocked. "Where did you get this?"

"A basement." After a second of dry silence and that feeling between anxiety and excitement she hasn't learned to differentiate yet, she elaborates, "It was a gift from a man who died in 1954. His... boyfriend? Partner? Howard owned it. I want to say it was a family heirloom, but I'm honestly very fuzzy on details right now."

Ellis takes the book from his husband, breezes past Tiff, and sits down on the bed next to Elton. He crosses his legs and opens the book to vellum-thin pages, immediately lost to the meaning of what it holds.

"I would ask why it's important, but I can guess why it's important." Being careful not to smear any more of herself anywhere, Tiff grabs a discarded bit of scrap metal and a moon-patterned sock from the bed and shoves them both in her pocket. She probably should have picked them up earlier, when Elton went to sit there. Truth be told, she just didn't think about it. She looks from Ellis to Elton, from Elton's shaking head to Melvin standing over her shoulder and visibly trying not to look at the back of her chest hole, from Melvin to his tome-consumed husband once more.

That's too much. It's too much to think about and concentrate on. Hurricane in her head, static in her still-beating heart, she blanches and quietly decides, "I'm going back to the bathtub."

"Good idea," Melvin says. "That wound looks rather grizzly."

"You should see the other guy." Cracking a tired grin, she pats his shoulder on her way past.

He looks to Elton for any sort of clarification over the sound of metal rings moving on a metal rod. Swallowing another bite of sandwich, Elton grimaces. "He's also not in great shape. He'll probably be... fine, though."

"I don't know," Melvin says. "I've seen her work. Grizzly stuff. Stealing teeth, lighting things with a styrofoam-powered flamethrower, zombie death behind the bookstore... I wouldn't doubt it."

"Don't tell people about that!" she calls, from the tub. "That's not something that everyone knows about!"

"What, that the undead keep sprouting up and you, little bunny, keep bopping them on the head?"

"Little Bunny Foo Foo? Really? That's the reference you're going for?"

"I believe it got my point across, yes." He looks away from the bathroom and back to Elton. "You should see her in action. Vicious little thing. Though— I suppose you have. Tell me, what did she do this time? Bite someone's nose off?"

"No?" Elton isn't sure what to make of that, and really isn't sure what to make of this guy. "She's been more normal than that. Except reaching out to that weird shadow thing, I guess. and the bone snake?"

Still in the doorway, Melvin looks at her askance. "Really, Tiff? Again?"

"It literally asked me to. What was I supposed to do? Say no?"

"Yes," he agrees, despite her facetious attitude. "Yes, that exactly."

"Well, sue me for being consistent in exactly one thing, I guess." She folds her arms over her chest and slouches deeper into the hard ceramic of the tub.