13 years earlier

15 June, 2013 - Arthur, Stuart and Ginie discuss Buffy: The Vampire Slayer at a sleep-over at the Russo household on Elm Street

“It’s 10:20 P.M. you guys! Don’t make me have to ask you again!” Mrs Russo exclaimed from the hallway, just outside of Ginie’s room. This was the second warning, and Mrs Russo’s voice had now pitched a whole octave higher, and was threatening to go ultrasonic if Ginie didn’t start complying ASAP. After years of sleeping over at Ginie’s, Arthur knew the closer Mrs Russo got to dog-whistle-pitch, the worse the row would become. Arthur hated awkward Russo-family arguments, because this was his escape from Velnias family arguments - which were admittedly worse.

“Ginie darling,” Mrs Russo said, squeezing the word darling through clenched teeth. “I have been very generous and patient in letting you stay up an extra hour past your bed-time. But mum and dad have temple. Don’t make me cancel future sleep-overs little lady.”

This last threat was emptier than the rest. Mrs Russo and her husband were real push-overs. But Ginie knew, 10:20 P.M. was a red-line, in a household with a dearth of rules. Temple above all else, that’s how it was.

Ginie’s mum came over and switched the Blu-Ray player off with a single click, ending their Buffy: The Vampire Slayer marathon for the evening. This simple, and unexpectedly abrupt action was more than any of them could take. To their immature minds, it was a complete violation. Ginie growled like her old family-dog Bubba, but her mother ignored her. Arthur and Stuart stood up, their mouths quite literally agape at the injustice of this world.

“Come on the three of you, go brush your teeth, and get into your jammies.”

“Mum,” Ginie protested. “You can’t just turn off the friken Gingerbread episode halfway through. It’s not cool.”

Mrs Russo took no notice of the loose language, and pushed on regardless.

“Your father and I have eight minutes to start Temple and we will not be late missy.”

“But mum!”

Arthur and Stuart nodded furiously from behind Ginie, in a sort of silent demonstration of solidarity. Arthur was normally rule-oriented, and would not have shown the slightest cheek, especially not to someone else’s mum. But even he had to admit that prematurely ceasing a masterpiece like Gingerbread halfway-through was definitely some sort of crime. And what’s worse, Mrs Russo had cut it off right before his favourite part, where Giles reveals the reason this week’s demons had attacked Sunny Dale in the first place. Of course, Arthur knew exactly what Giles would say – word for word – but it was somehow different when the lines came from the mouth of the very British Librarian himself.

GILES

There are demons that thrive on fostering persecution and hatred among the mortal animals. Not on destroying men, but on watching them destroy each other. They feed us our darkest fear, and turn peaceful communities into vigilantes

“Ginie Thania Jane Russo, if you talk back one more time. If even a single sound escapes that big mouth of yours; heavens help you missy.”

Ginie knew the jig was up. She stormed off to the bathroom, with Arthur and Stuart close behind. The three of them brushed their teeth, still small enough to use the same bathroom mirror simultaneously. As they brushed, and spat and dribbled and laughed they soon forgot their grievances and were once again deeply engaged in their recurring debates about which was the better House, Slytherin or Gryffindor. They only ceased their Potter-conversation prematurely because Arthur and Stuart had to get changed into their pyjamas in the bedroom, while Ginie changed in the bathroom. They reconvened moments later in Ginie’s room and Mrs Russo joined them just in time to tuck Ginie in to bed.

Arthur and Stuart crawled into each of their sleeping bags and zipped themselves in. The sleeping bags were propped up on thin mattresses to give them a comfortable barrier from the cold, hard wooden floor. Mrs Russo lent in and gave each of the boys a quick peck on the forehead, and then joined her husband at the door.

“Night children,” Mr Russo said, smiling broadly and turning off the light. “No late night wanderings you guys. Stick to the present, and avoid the Astral Plane. You’re too young for that sort of thing,” he chuckled deeply.

“May Goddess Hekat protect you all from evil dreams, and protect this household too,” Mrs Russo continued.

“Into her arms,” Ginie replied, embarrassed as usual by her parents’ evident otherness.

Her mum turned-out the bedroom light and closed the door behind her, leaving a crack open so that the light from the hall could seep in.

Ginie was still scared of the dark and who could blame her, Arthur thought. Ginie truly and deeply held to the occult and all the things that go bump in the night. She held that the world was inhabited by ghosts, ghouls, dybbuks, fairies, goblins, dragons and gin; just to name a few. She even claimed (largely in hushed tones) to have seen more than a couple of those things in the waking world, including right here in this room. A dark room full of tasty kids was the perfect snack for a wandering monster.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Arthur’s family on the other hand were, for want of a better term, very Christian. Even if Arthur was interested in Ginie’s pagan world, the Velnias’ God didn’t tolerate competition. Arthur would have loved to in habit a Universe were the events of Buffy or Charmed or any other of his favourite shows was a tangible reality. But his father had instructed him, at the end of a belt, that the only thing Arthur had to fear was the Lord God – the one and only, big man in the clouds. And bad boys like Arthur would end up in the H - E - double hockey sticks, if he didn’t realise that, and soon.

“Boys,” Gin whispered from the bed, “what’s your favourite episode of Buffy?”

This was a trap of course, but both Arthur and Stuart were too proud to bend even slightly from their firmly held views on this topic.

“Hush - Hush and Hush.”

Arthur genuinely loved the Hush episode. At the ripe old age of ten years, Arthur had never seen anything so clever in his life. A whole show where none of the actors could speak a word! That was something to behold. But there was no challenge, great or small, that the Scooby gang could not conquer. They still managed to work together to solve the mystery of the Gentleman. But what he really admired about that episode, was that Giles, Buffy, Willow and Xander learned to communicate without words. He loved the idea of a group of strangers, who formed a family. That’s what they Scooby gang were, a family of friends when you didn’t have a family of your own to lean on. That’s what he had with Stewie and Gin.

Stuart didn’t hesitate to agree with Arthur about Hush, and said so loudly and proudly. “Sorry Ginie, but Hush is way better than you know what.”

Ginie gasped in mock surprise.

Though she didn’t need to say it, Ginie jumped in to advise the boys that the best episode ever made was Villains. Gin thought Willow was the most beautiful and powerful being anywhere in the Universe. Even greater than the Gods of her parents. Even back then, there was no doubt Gin preferred girls, and she would openly cry when Tara died. Every time. Without fail.

“No,” Stuart argued. “Hush is the best.”

“Na,” she said, relaxing into bed. “Villains. Full stop. No returns. The end. What Willow does when Tara dies - that’s what love is. And that’s why we’re watching Villains first next weekend,” she said forcefully. “My house, my rules.”

Both Arthur and Stuart groaned, but this was the only place they could consume their favourite show and if the price was watching Villains for the hundredth time, they would gladly pay it. Before long it would be time to restart the Angel series anyway. So they would get a rest from Angry Willow flaying Warren over and over again.

They chatted about Buffy for a while longer, and then after a time, the conversation moved to the subject of school. It made its winding way through familiar topics; the English Teacher Mr Matther’s lisp, the rising cost of sausage rolls at the Canteen, and how third-year Josh Petit had just been dumped for the second time by his now ex-girlfriend and class captain Jenny Bifaga. The conversation lulled, and then finally ceased when Ginie (first) and then Stuart drifted into their own quiet and peaceful dreams.

Arthur lay in silence for an hour, fixated on the row of crystals lined up upon the window-sill. The little transparent rocks filtered the bright moonlight and painted the ceiling brilliantly in every imaginable colour. As he watched, he listened to the familiar sounds coming from Mr and Mrs Russo’s temple in the attic just above his head. The end of temple had become as familiar a sound to Arthur as the Lords Prayer; he’d heard these sounds almost every weekend since he was 4 years old, except for those times he or Ginie had been on vacation.

The conclusion of temple began with a mournful a cappella chant, delivered in a series of deep, binaural breaths and incantations. He could hear Mr Russo’s voice repeating the same sounds over and over again but he could never make out specific words. Even though he could not divine their meaning, the sounds of their voices, and the ritual they conducted were healing to him in some inexplicable way.

After a time the noises from the attic ceased too. He could hear Mr and Mrs Russo packing things away or moving them around. He liked to imagine what must be happening up in the attic. He wondered if they wore robes like Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings, or Dumbledore in Harry Potter. He heard them make their way downstairs, and not long after he heard them settling into bed. They would be asleep soon and the whole house would be his.

He waited for around ten minutes and then called quietly to his friends.

“Gin…Stewie…are you awake?” He whispered.

Neither of them answered him. He could hear them both breathing heavily in the way sound sleepers do.

Arthur pulled himself out of his sleeping bag careful not to make a sound. He pushed the door open, walked a few meters to the landing, and then crept up the stairs to the attic, his small feet cold against the polished wooden stairs. The attic door was closed, but not locked. He carefully pushed it open, stepped into the room, and closed the door behind him.

This hadn’t been the first time Arther had climbed these same stairs into the sparse, and empty Attic space. He had done so for the first time last week, and had promised to do so again tonight.

He stood in the vast room, suddenly feeling small and insignificant.

Moonlight streamed into the attic through a large oculus window, which was, like its name implied, an open eye out onto the street - or from another point of view, into the Russo’s home. The window was situated perfectly at the vertical and horizontal centre of the Western face of the house. It had a diameter of more than a meter, making it one of the largest attic windows in the whole neighbourhood. Rather than the ordinary wheel-shaped glazing bars common to a house of this era – with spokes radiating from the centre outwards – The Russo’s attic window had curved bars which created delicate arcs, in the pattern of a spider’s web, that cast strange little shadows on the floor around his feet.

The moonlight and the shadows created a dazzling border around a beautiful hand-drawn pentacle, painted with the strokes of a careful hand, right in the centre of the attic floor. Each point of the beautiful five-pointed star, was dotted with a mound of red wax.

Last time it had been an accident that he had stepped into the star. This time he took a deliberate step inside knowing that it would have the same result either way.

It did.

The image of a girl appeared in the window, as real as the breath in his lungs. This was the second time he had seen her in as many weeks. Her reflection bobbed in mid-air from within the window-glass. She was not in front of it, or behind it, but seemed to live within the glass.

There was something about the girl in the Attic Window that Arthur couldn’t quite put his finger on.