10. Paris is for Lovers

Zack was usually a cautious driver—but the torrent of rain and thunder erupting all around them now caused him to abandon that habit. They rocketed home. The topless, doorless Jeep did little to protect them from the deluge that had begun as they'd left the gas station.

"I hope the lobster was worth it!" Zack screamed over the din in a failed attempt at humor, directing his voice in the general direction of Todd, who was now pressed firmly up against the 4x4's heat vents and was looking like he regretted that they had stopped…or that Maine existed.

"Y-y-y…ea-h." Todd chattered. "Sup…er worth!" He flashed a weak thumbs-up at Zack.

"We'll be home soon!" Zack yelled. "Hang on!"

He floored the Jeep, sending splashes arcing up it on either side, drenching them both in ice-cold wet.

Zack would need to put the fabric top back on the Jeep when they got home…and the doors. It would only take a moment but he had always hated the disappointment of losing the fresh air and freedom he felt when the Jeep was able to be so much more open than Zack felt himself able to be at times. Every year, he made this same mistake—betting on his optimism that the rain and cold and dark were gone for good long before there was any truth to it. Summer never really started in Maine before July—if at all. And it had been far too early to remove the car's cladding.

At last, he turned onto the street Zack had spent so much of his life calling home. He was just about to turn into the drive when a strobe of lightning lit up a dismal sight ahead, one that made Zack slam on his brakes rather abruptly. The two of them were thrown forward against the resistance of their seatbelts.

"Sorry!" He yelped. Zack's eyes darted from Todd back to what he'd just seen: there—in the driveway—Snail. Todd's ancient red Volvo station wagon—every single window smashed out. The pieces shimmered and taunted in disunity with each angry crack of lightning. The boys sat dumbly, stunned. The silence created an unctuous expanse between them.

"What the fuck, Todd?!" Zack hadn't meant to bark it at him. He hadn't meant to imply that any of this was Todd's fault. But this…the cultists had already found them somehow? How!?Zack's thoughts involuntarily sailed once more back to Quiet Island—what they'd seen when they'd sought out the prototype.

"I…I dunno. This is all new to me." Todd said. "I just assumed the cult shit was dumb internet lore, nothing real. It seemed made up!" He protested.

"Well, it doesn't seem very made up now, does it?" Zack demanded, gesturing to the wreckage of Snail.

"No, it doesn't." Todd agreed glumly.

"Sorry…I lost my temper." Zack mumbled, releasing his foot from the brake and allowing the Jeep to roll the rest of the way along the street—abruptly stopping once they'd become even with the Volvo.

"It's fine. This is a fucked up situation. I get it." Todd said. "But I swear I had no idea that shit was going to get so weird. I promise."

"I believe you." Zack acknowledged. And it was mostly the truth. He couldn't really see how Todd could have known better.

Up close, it was clear that Snail had been rummaged through. Looking past her toward the massive, oaken front doors that had so impressively—impregnably—stood for Zack's entire life, he realized in horror that the house had been broken into as well. One of the doors had been torn straight from its hinges.

Zack froze as he looked at the damage.

"Wait here. I'm going to get the car stuff out of the garage real quick for the Jeep." Zack had turned to Todd, who was still sitting in his seat, shivering but silent…seemingly unable to move as the horror of their situation sunk in.

"Todd." Zack shook his wet shoulder, trying to drag him from the shadows and back to the now, speaking with pressured urgency.

"Yeah…" Todd said weakly, shaking his head as though snapping back from a far-off conversation. "Yeah, okay. Got it."

Zack squeezed again lightly. "The house was broken into; look at the doors." Todd did, and Zack could feel him crumble slightly at the realization. "Hey, this isn't your fault, Todd. Those guys…" Zack shook his head in disbelief, not knowing what to say. "Look, we can't stay here tonight. We should drive up to my grandparent's cabin. It's a few hours inland, but we can get there quickly enough. It'll be safe. Safer than here, at least. Sit tight. I'll be right back."

And with that, Zack hopped out of the Jeep and splashed up the huge granite steps to the house. He dared take only a single, fearful look back to Todd before slipping into the house, feeling the routine judgment of the Gargoyle as he passed inside.

Zack took a careful step past the threshold and then another, trying desperately to avoid bumping his large frame into anything. He was thankful for the coordination his years of swimming provided. He moved quickly toward the garage, constantly looking over his shoulder as he did so, expecting a horde of cultists to charge out of a door at any moment and overtake him. But there were no cultists to be found.

When Zacked entered the garage, he quickly flicked on the light and pressed the button to raise the door, flinching at the noise, before jogging across the space to where he always stored the Jeep's missing components along the far wall. As the big garage door opened, the sound of the rain falling violently against the driveway met Zack once more. He could see Todd again, still crumpled numbly in the 4x4. He hadn't moved. With a heave, Zack grabbed one door—then the other—holding one in each hand, and loped back toward Todd.

Getting those doors on was a simple enough task. He had them latched and fixed into place in a matter of moments before making a second trip for the fabric roof of the Jeep and snapping it into place as well. Zack knew the soaking interior would dry quickly now and allowed himself a moment's reprieve now that that was taken care of.

Zack then opened the driver's side door briefly, popping his head in, and found himself confronted with a still-silent, still-shivering Todd. Todd had at least repositioned himself to absorb the heat from the vents, no longer appearing quite so shaken.

"I'll be right back. I'm going to grab a couple more things from the house—some food, some clothes—lock the doors." Zack added. He quickly decoupled Bitchin' from his car, leaving the jet ski to sit in the street where it didn't belong. And then Zack was off—sprinting up the steps again, braver now. He heard the ‘click' of Todd engaging the Jeep's locks as he did so.

Good. Zack thought with relief. Still not at all convinced they were safe.

As he gathered what he needed from the house, Zack found himself constantly distracted by each creak and groan the old structure made. He scrutinized every shadow as he traced his way through the cavernous interior: had someone moved that? Was that chair always there? What was that? And he found the once-familiar space no longer feeling familiar at all. His home no longer felt remotely safe or homelike to him in any way, and the feeling terrified him as much as all the rest of it had.

And Just as Zack was about to leave through the front door—a bag of food in one hand and a duffel of the first clothes he'd been able to hastily locate along the dark floor of his room in the other—he heard something. And it wasn't just an old house sound this time—it wasn't just a figment of his overstimulated imagination. It was real. And it was terrifying. A voice called out from the shadows.

"Hey, fucker."

The words cut through the dark like a punch and struck Zack with the fearful blow they'd intended. He instantly reeled his head in the direction of the utterance; there—at the end of the darkened hallway—was a masked cultist.

The man was standing in the middle of the hall—about 30 feet away—breathing heavily enough that it almost sounded like he was grunting—or worse…giggling.

"Who are you? What do you want?" Zack cried out.

"Oh, you'll find that out soon enough, pretty boy." The cultist called out. "Your whole world is about to get flipped upside down." He chortled, throwing a lamp to the floor and laughing as it shattered. Zack flinched. "You have no idea what you're tangled up in."

The stranger hurled a vase at him. It barely missed his head, exploding on the wall behind him.

"It doesn't matter; the boss man says you don't have a role to play in any of this." He teased, still advancing toward the still-paralyzed Zack. You're fair game." he sneered, " unlike Toddy."

Zack spied a shock of grotesque blond chin hair that curled and twisted at the base of the pig's face as the man closed the distance between them. Sharp little fangs dropped down out of the snout—managing to intimidate Zack in spite of his own formidable size and strength. The man wasn't naked as they had been earlier, instead wearing all black now. There was a menace in his stance, and his head cocked this way and that as he grew nearer and nearer in the dark.

Suddenly, the stranger stamped his foot on the ground, causing Zack to yelp in fear.

"Thought so." The pig chuckled, stomping again before charging suddenly at Zack, thundering down the hallway straight toward him.

Zack turned and ran, feeling like he was about to vomit. He could hear the heavy, powerful footsteps of someone of formidable athleticism bearing down on him, the rapidity of the gait giving him real cause for concern as the sound grew nearer and nearer in a frenzied stomp-stomp-stomp-stomp.

Zack threw himself through the front door, vaulting down the steps in a single giant leap. He tore ass to the car—pounding on the driver's door as he pulled frantically at the handle.

"Oh fuck!" Todd yipped from within, spying Zack's boorish pursuer charging out the front door. To Zack's monumental relief, the doors clicked open.

"Lock them!" Zack yelped, flipping the 4x4 into drive and firing the ignition in a single, panicked motion.

The pig-man had nearly reached them—running furiously toward the Jeep in a full-tilt charge and slashing a hole in the Jeep's canvas top. Todd screamed as Zack managed to take off with a roar. The pig was grasping futilely at Zack's door handle, banging furiously on his window.

But then Zack put the Jeep into second gear, and the man/pig fell away from them. They were screeching off to the relative safety of the cold, wet night. Zack gasped as he tried to catch his breath.

In his rearview mirror, Zack spotted his attacker standing under a streetlamp, waving at him cartoonishly as he wheeled them out of sight.

Zack ripped off towards his grandparents' summer house, eager to distance himself from everything that had just happened.

"I'm sorry, I honestly thought it would just be another job. Usually, we hunt down someone's lost whatever, and then we're done with it. I never imagined we'd be cracking into Maine's most fucked up cult." Todd said quietly.

"I'm not blaming you." Zack replied. "It's just a lot to take in. Are you okay?" He asked.

"I…think?" Todd replied unconvincingly. "We're alive, at least."

"For now." Zack added.

"For now." Todd agreed.

The increasingly familiar silence pooled out between them as they journeyed on. Zack directed the Jeep inland, hoping at some point they'd cross out of the frontier of the storm and back into dryer weather. It was nearly impossible to see out the front of the Jeep.

"You don't think we should, like…call the police or something, do you?" Todd asked after a time.

"And say what? ‘Hey, officer, we uncovered a cult on Quiet Island, and now they're hunting us down and menacing us in pig masks?'" Zack replied. He'd considered calling the cops but really didn't know how to tell their story. And besides, if their parents found out about all of this, it might lead to them coming home early, cutting his summer with Todd short.

"You really don't think they'd believe us?" Todd implored.

"I…I dunno. Honestly, I really don't want to deal with family right now. I'll get the door fixed, this will all blow over soon." Zack insisted.

"Fine. It's your house." Todd relented.

"Our house." Zack corrected, not liking that he couldn't seem to make Todd feel at home.

Todd just laughed at him.

"It'll all blow over! It's just a fucking dildo, after all." Zack laughed. "Come on. How serious could any of this really be? That guy was just full of shit." But everything he'd just said was exactly what he wanted to hear…and he didn't believe a word of it.

"People have started wars for less." Todd remarked grimly.

And now it was Zack who couldn't help but chuckle.

"Welcome to Paris,"Zack said with a flourish. He had finally turned the Jeep off the remote state highway they'd been traveling on and onto the winding gravel drive of his grandparents' summer cabin.

"Huh." Todd said, sounding mildly impressed, leaning forward in his seat as if he were taking in the vistas of a grand city.

"The Eiffel Tower is right over there," Zack pointed toward a particularly tall tree as they rounded a bend in the drive. The headlights revealed a two-story chalet-style cabin in a clearing that opened up around it like a storybook, beckoning warmth and reassurance with its charms.

"And the best shopping is over there," Zack nodded toward an old shed. "But you'll have to fight some grumpy raccoons if you want this season's latest fashions." He rambled. The tension was finally unwinding, and he was relieved to be here.

"Paris is exactly as I'd imagined it," Todd said weakly, feigning humor but not well enough for Zack not to take notice. Zack reached out and squeezed one of Todd's hands in his own.

"I bet." Zack said quietly.

The pair hadn't spoken very much on the drive to Paris, Maine. The few words shared between them were like these: playful. Light. The sight of the whimsical chalet made him smile. It was exactly as he'd last seen it: the property looked like a little piece of Switzerland had been scooped up and transplanted here. The cabin's sloping roofline and ornamented banisters of the deck made the whole thing appear like a life-sized cuckoo clock. And situated here—nestled amongst the dense pines—it felt like a sanctuary. He wanted to believe that nothing in the world could touch or reach them now but doubted that was true.

After what they'd just been through, how could it be? But he found it easier than he might have imagined to pretend anyway, wanting nothing more than to light a fire in the stove and pretend the rest of the world was as normal as it had seemed not too long ago.

It had takenZack a moment (or several) to find the house key his grandparents kept hidden. His grandmother had an affinity for lawn gnomes. And while he remembered that the key was under a lawn gnome, it took him a few tries before he guessed which lawn gnome. There had been many choices, and the process consumed more time than he would have liked in the now-predatory-feeling darkness. Each sound in the dark woods startled him. He was jumpy, on edge, and ready for bed.

"Got it." Zack finally said exhaustedly, holding the key up to Todd like he'd won a prize.

Todd had been meandering around the driveway while Zack searched, staring up at the little chalet and the surroundings with seeming satisfaction as he took it all in. Zack hoped he had been right bringing them here…that the cult couldn't track them down so quickly this far out. He had little idea what those weirdos were capable of, and he didn't want to find out.

"Heads up, the house only has a wood stove for heat…it might be a bitchilly at first. I need to go turn the water and power on, too." Zack automatically recalled the list of chores his grandparents had drilled into him when he'd finally been afforded the privilege to use the cabin on his own terms when he'd turned 18. He could recount them as though they had been recited to him just yesterday. He had many fond memories here.

"No problem." Todd replied. "I'll get this stuff inside while you do all that, if you want." Todd had picked up the bag of clothes and the random food Zack had grabbed in his rush out of the Kennebunk house.

"Sounds good." Zack agreed.

And so, with that, Zack approached the door and placed the key in the lock—opening the cabin door up for them. He debated giving Todd another kiss, then…or another something…but couldn't bring himself back into that same headspace they'd reached earlier, pre-home invasion—and frankly, he just wanted to get the lights and heat going and get to bed at this point. Todd brushed past him into the dark house without hesitation, seemingly at home in the shadows, and the door swung shut behind him with a thud.

Zack hurried around the side of the house to where the power and water hookups were, nervously glancing down the darkened driveway as he did. A part of him even dared to imagine he heard a faint, singular grunt between the crunch-crunching of his loud footsteps, but he convinced himself it was only nerves. In the distance, distant thunder still rumbled from beyond the trees.

Zack flipped on the power, and his surroundings burst to life. The floodlights lit up the little clearing and eased his doubts—at least to the periphery of those tall, dark trees. He looked around anxiously.

Todd had begun flicking on the interior lights. Zack paused to watch as they began to cast defiantly out of the previously darkened windows, beckoning him inward to Todd's comfort and the fleeting illusion of safety. He shivered, hurrying inside.

"Some place." Todd greeted him.

"Thanks, it's technically my grandparents, but they're getting a bit too old to use it like they used to."

"It's cozy." Todd mused. "Much cozier than the Kennebunk place." He laughed.

"I think we can agree on that," Zack chuckled. Hey, I'm going to go chop some firewood. Would you mind getting some food going? I'm starving, and I think we've both seen my talents are best applied outside the kitchen…"

"Sure thing." Todd laughed, hoisting some of the bags of food they'd brought up onto the kitchen counter.

And so, just like that, Zack and Todd settled into their evening, trying their best to pretend it was like any other.

Zack's grandfather'saxe was enormous. The man had towered over even Zack—who, at 6'4, was usually taller and broader than most. And as Zack hefted it now, sizing up the mountainous woodpile that was a fixture at the camp, he recalled all the years he'd spent summers here as a child: learning to swim out in the glittering sapphire lake on the far edge of the property with his Pap-Pap—or helping his him pick wild blueberries out in the woods before boiling them down into jam and baking them into pies. These were some of his fondest memories.

Zack heaved and split another piece of wood, tossing it into his growing pile.

The crack of a twig beyond the horizon of the cabin's floodlights caused Zack to jolt. He gripped the massive axe with a single huge hand while balling his other into a tense fist.

"Who's there?" He cried out.

But there was just silence now. And he felt a bit foolish for being so easily startled.

Zack decided that he had gathered as much fuel as he dared. He quickly stacked the firewood beside the front door in a tidy pile, always keeping an eye on the spaces between the trees. He swore he could feel eyes pressing into him each time he turned his back on those too-dark shadows.

With a final look into the dark, Zack slid back into the cabin. Within, he was met by the gentle sizzling and clinking of someone preparing food with determined competency. He bolted and latched the door with finality.

The cabin itself had been built by Zack's grandfather in the early 1960's. It was—largely—in its factory-original condition: when entering, there was only a large, single common room with a kitchen along the far wall. A solitary bunk room was the only sleeping accommodation. Above those two features was a lofted space containing the old gym Zack's grandfather had used avidly for many years. It spanned half of the cabin's vaulted upper level—giving the entire wooden structure a cozy, intimate feel.

In the far corner, an ancient cast iron wood stove sat idle. Its only company was a vintage fuchsia-and-azure plaid sofa that, to this day, was Zack's favorite couch in the entire world. Threadbare, faded, perfection.

He went to the stove, noting Todd busily moving about the kitchen. Zack smiled as he opened the old contraption with care and arranged the logs…the smallest on the bottom and then the larger, heavier pieces up top—before striking a match along an iron-bound side of the stove and setting the entire pile of tinder he'd just made alight—blowing into it gently until the fire caught purchase. To his satisfaction, it crackled to life.

"What are we having, chef?" Zack inquired eagerly, joining Todd in the kitchen and slapping him playfully on the ass, his spirits lifting notably at the prospect of food.

"Eggs." Todd winked. He had just finished preparing the second of two egg and cheese omlettes. They looked perfect—the egg even and glistening, the cheese oozing out from within. Todd had even managed to crack a bit of pepper over each.

"You're putting me to shame." Zack laughed.

"Never!" Todd rebuffed. "Come on, it's better hot."

Todd handed Zack a plate, and the two plopped down on the sofa before digging in ravenously to the meal.

"So glad Itaught you how to make eggs like that." Zack joked, wiping the last of the omelet from the corner of his broad mouth.

That was fucking delicious, he admired, giving a crediting look toward Todd. The muscular guy was sitting next to him—shoulders still slouchy—working slowly through his own plate with seemingly increasing disinterest.

"Totally." Todd agreed flatly. He was scraping at his plate absently as he pushed around the half of the omelet that Zack was still half-hungry for. He'd fallen quiet again as they'd eaten, and Zack felt uneasy watching him fall back into one of his dour moods.

Zack rested beside him—feet outstretched, arms behind his head, plate in lap—he leaned back and groaned, enjoying finally being able to relax a little after all they'd been through today.

"So…" Zack whistled.

"So…" Todd replied.

"Do you have any leads on what's going on?" Zack asked, still mystified by the prospect of a cult running around in this day and age.

"If I think of something, you'll be the first to know." Todd assured, his voice sounding dismal.

Eventually, he finished toying with his uneaten food, and Todd rose. He took Zack's empty plate from his lap and returned it to the kitchen counter before rejoining. He sat down on the far side of the couch with a half-contented "hrmph."

"This is a great couch." Todd said after a while.

"Isn't it though?" Zack asked.

The two stared into the little window on the old stove, watching as the flames within devoured the last of the logs.

Zack's eyes grew weary, and he was drawn to lay his head in Todd's lap after a while. Todd readily accepted him, placing his hand on Zack's shoulder as he slowly faded off to sleep.

In his dreams, he was stalked down an endless corridor, a beast of a man chasing him on and on and on as he ran, screaming, terrified. All around him, the windows were exploding as a riotous black fog swirled inside, threatening to blind and choke him, sucking him out into the unknown…