1. Henry Matthew Deaver
For as long as the men knocked one another around in the dirt and mud upon a howling tempestuous night, it was known at the start, by the sublime Castle Lake, which outcome would triumph the rest.
Henry Deaver swept the pistol out of The Kid’s long fingers with one hard knock of the leg. A loose bullet fired, and they were lucky it shot away from them, instead dispersing a flock of birds in a flapping mess of cackles. Henry dove for the firearm as quickly as he tucked and rolled for distance.
He rocked onto his side, stood up, and then aimed at the sallow figure just getting up to his knees. At last, Henry was no longer being coaxed by him, and there was the slightest bit of astonishment from The Kid’s now wavering stare. Henry finally had the floor.
Still catching his breath and balance, Henry began. “You come into my house, you drive me all around Castle Rock for hell knows what, you avoid explaining things to me, you make my mom so afraid and disoriented that she guns her inamorato dead, meanwhile people die left and right just happening to clear the way to wherever the fuck you need to be so bad, and you hold on to your tale about being another Henry Matthew Deaver.” He scoffed.
The Kid, cat-like, stood up slowly without so much as a word— only that zen head-down-eyes-up look. His breath hitched somewhat, emaciated body bruised deep to the core.
Henry was inundated with wrath, fear, and righteousness which shook his body greatly. His voice continued to raise, and his lawyer-ly composure was becoming lost.
“It’s not the unfathomable nature of the idea, no… the multi-dimensional shit? Not that hard to imagine at this point.”
“It’s you and your discrepant sob story.”
“I don’t know what your deal is with me. I don’t know what it is about you and people dying, or this… this fucking sound…”
“--Enough–" The Kid tried to cut him off.
"I don't know who in the hell you are, but you’re no Henry, not even close. You’re sick." Henry raised his gun.
The Kid raised his voice which was jarring to his usual composure, "The only person you have to blame is yourself.”
Silence and stillness.
He continued in his typical demeanor. “Your ignorant stubbornness only worsens everything. You won’t, and you can’t understand what is coming to be. I have passed the gates between worlds, I have seen rifts across dimensions, I have seen behind the veil of reality. What you have seen, in comparison, is infinitesimal. Come to your senses and let us help each other. It would seem that I’m the only one who knows how to do that.” He began to steadily prowl forward, as non-threateningly as he could manage to.
Their silence was filled with gusts of air booming through Castle Lake, causing that all-encompassing howl to pass through the almighty evergreens.
At this moment, Henry had reached a breaking point with the condemnation, and brimmed with nauseating rage that he could no longer swallow.
BANG!
The Kid’s wail was so devastating that it made Henry’s bones go cold.
The young man had dropped. He began to writhe in the mulch, moaning and bleeding. Henry almost gagged at what he'd done.
Henry whimpered, "Fuck! Fuck!" Frustrated with his trigger-happy fingers, he cast away the gun and collapsed to The Kid's side.
Henry was going lightheaded, and his breathing was all out of whack. Now the town was right about him– he really was going to be a murderer. Frenzied hands patted a laboring flannel back, finding the gushing exit of the bullet. He was spurting such a sickening amount of blood that Henry figured he’d struck a vital organ by accident. Even if he demobilized The Kid at most, it was going to be elusive to plead self-defense, which made Henry the most frustrated with himself. Most of all, he was scared of himself for acting so volatile, a low he never imagined he’d stoop unto.
He knew everything was so hopelessly fucked. “I'm gonna-gonna get you an ambulance, okay? Everything's gonna be fine. It's gonna be fine–"
The Kid's agonized groans quickly grew deeper– incredibly guttural. Henry's heart leapt into his throat as The Kid made the least human sounds he could've expected. Without a moment's notice, Henry jumped back onto his ass.
Thick snarling and bellowing emanated from The Kid’s arched body, as he started to convulse on all fours. Bones and flesh contorted audibly. His skin lost even more pigment, as his limbs appeared to stretch out longer, thinner, and sharper. Blood trailed down his body, as some of his skin shed and stretched to extreme aberration. His clothes pulled and tore, then he shook them off brutishly. Henry swore he could hear some insectoid sounds, but not at all like a sweet beetle nor a cricket. Something huge and ungodly. Something grinding, clicking, croaking, chirring, shuddering, and churning moistly.
The whirring schisma drilled through Henry's head worse than ever. What he was seeing finally brought some sense into everything else that had happened, but this moment was still hardly fathomable.
Before The “Kid” could finish his grotesque metamorphosis, Henry snatched his firearm and began to sprint.
He covered ample distance, grimacing from the ethereal ringing that penetrated his being.
Henry soon realized that he was not being followed. A figure of "The Kid's" newfound scale would surely have gained on him by now to meet the glock.
When he stopped to catch his breath, it came to Henry that he'd only gotten himself further entangled in the woods.
Henry dizzily stood in the moonlight, panting hard, with only the trees for company.
Even so, he did not, in any measure, feel safe. Visual apparitions accompanied the sting of the schisma, clearer than anything he’d seen in the horrific isolation box. His sense of self came in and out. The pure anguish of every deceased Castle Rock civilian was now more vivid than he had ever sensed. His heart was thumping at a rate that concerned him terribly. He felt cold, but sweaty at once. He thought he might be dying.
One hallucination ruled in the most sinister majesty of the rest:
The Eyes.
A fog-headed, perspiring, hyperventilating mess, Henry pushed on. His finger, which he'd just doubted, was now shamelessly hovering over the trigger. He kept his aim up, flinching towards the dark at any subtle noise, unable to tell what was in his head and what was real. He felt that his mind and the world merged. “Come on, come on, come on…” he repeated urgently.
In an instant, the most venomous, mocking laughter emerged upon all of the sound in his head.
This is exactly what he wants. This was all just a fucking game to him, all along. Henry loathsomely thought.
“COME ONNN!” He shouted into the dark.
Everything in his head went quiet, all except for the ringing and howling schizma.
With the vile clicking and chirring, a low voice approached him from behind. “You pried and pried so adamantly. You wanted the truth, Henry Deaver.” His voice was more spindly and drawn out, with a tinge of mocking lyricism.
“Now face it.”
Henry turned around and immediately fell to his knees.
He took the gun to his chin and popped one through his skull.
Henry Deaver’s fresh, gushing cadaver lay at the feet of The King.
