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It starts on a rainy day.

There's a feeling of weight as Halloween begins. The visitors feel it: the air is so thick, the rain seems to fall in slow motion. They swim through their days. That weight bears down their hair, their clothes, makes every motion a chore. As dusk falls, they feel it. A slip-catch, like the release of a geographic fault, like an earthquake in the psyche. In that pressure-release, they see it, the shattered ground in the forest, stars deep in that darkness.

It fades. They're where they were. There's a pounding need in their heads now, iterated on each heartbeat. The forest. The forest. I have to go to the forest. We have to go to the forest.

And then a familiar voice, soundless and tasting of sage and burnt offerings:

COME AND SEE

Normally, Theo didn't mind the rain. He had been born and raised in western Washington, and soggy, dreary days were the norm for at least three-quarters of the year. He managed to convince himself that this was perfectly average drizzle for most of the day on the strength of that expectation, even though his very bones were heavy and his head bowed under the weight of nothing more than air. He didn't want to admit that this might be magic, and just as he had explained away the churning, black water of the river until it was rising out of the sewers at his feet, Theodore kept his eyes closed to these newest signs of strangeness as well.

He fell onto the couch when he arrived home from the diner that night, and he let himself drift off soon after, expecting that the neighborhood kids and their costumes would wake him at some point. Bekki was scheduled to bring Dorothy and Gerri over as well, though he doubted they would be the first. The other children would inevitably be disappointed, however. He hadn't bought candy for anyone he wasn't related to. For now, he was just going to catch a brief nap, and in a little while he would be as good as—

Theo awoke with a start when he felt the call, gasping and disoriented.

"Come and... see," he parroted haltingly, scrubbing at his eyes with the heel of his palm as if he might obliterate the images in his mind. It only made things worse.

There was a hole in the forest, a wide, angry crack packed full of sky, and someone wanted him to be there. No. He wanted to be there.

Theo rose on quaking legs, tears springing to his eyes as he reached for his discarded coat.

He had to go. He had to...

"No." He was crying in earnest now, but doing so provided no catharsis. Streaks of liquid trailed down his cheeks as he fought to sit, pushing away his discomfort as best he could. His children were on their way. He would be holding them close in under an hour, not in the middle of the ******** woods with sage burning his throat and an empty void yawning at his feet. Here.

Theo finally retook his seat, telling himself that his skin wasn't crawling, his eyes watering, his heart racing. He forced himself to believe that the magic didn't want him, that as long as he stuck to his monotonous routine, he would be safe. He pushed hard against the discomfort, quickly exhausting himself to the point of numb unconsciousness. The stretch of time between each of his blinks grew longer and longer, and Theodore's last thoughts were for his girls, their chubby little hands, their golden blond hair, their laughter.

He was asleep once more, and then he was gone.

The man who replaced him—or rather, the man he would have replaced had he ventured into the woods that night—was almost as wary and just as quiet. He had magic too, but he didn't bicker with it unless it deliberately inconvenienced him. He'd had a lesson with Gloom and faced the Faceless.

But he had no children.

There was often a pulse in his heart that he couldn't quantify, a lonely echo that never seemed tied to any particular activity or emotion, and because it was so ephemeral, Theo had never thought to try fixing it. That night...

...Halloween...

...December 21...

...he thought maybe it was time to give it a shot.