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pizzee · 1 year

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here there be monsters

GET THIS BEAST AWAY FROM ME. i’ve been writing this for so long o my lord it was an endeavour let me tell ya. here’s the jack backstory fic no one asked for but i deliver anyway, here on Ao3 where the formatting is actually decent. warnings for a brief description of a panic attack and general horror elements (blood, mentions of death, monsters, etc)

AND THANK U @tiptapricot FOR BETA READING I LOVE U 💋💋FRUIT GOD NATION RISE UO

From a distant dream, somewhere on a shoreline miles away where it’s not quite dusk but not yet dawn, he sits and listens. Jack, she says, and he glances up to meet her gaze. Jack, she repeats, then reaches out and shakes him awake.

Lissa sits over him, a string of pearls strung up in a smile, eyes glittering with palpable excitement. She whispers his name again, his nickname, then his hidden name revealed to no one.

“Idiot.” She laughs, poking his cheek. “Come on, get up!”

He groans and bats her hand away, gently shoving her off before rolling over onto his stomach, right to the edge of their bed. He adjusts his covers a bit tighter and tries to ignore her. He knows it’s futile—she’s relentless when she gets like this, like there’s jet fuel heating her veins, pumping her heart, forcing her to move—but it doesn’t hurt to try. Jack likes his sleep. Lissa always has other ideas about what he can be doing.

“Come on!” Another shake, then a breath of frustration and Jack knows exactly what that means. There’s no preparing for it. He braces.

The covers are ripped off and thrown to the side, and so his pleasant bubble of warmth is gone and he’s left splayed out on the bed in the night chill. There’s no sleeping now.

He rolls back over and throws one arm over his face, peeking an eye out to look at his sister grinning. “What do you want?”

She pokes his cheeks, alternating sides while he fills them with air and lets her push it out. She laughs. He smiles.

Lissa points to the side. “The eclipse.”

Jack shifts to glance where she’s pointing, out the single window in their tiny room. The moon is bright. It’s orange. He bites back the bit of dread that always worms its way into his heart like a curse at the sight of it and keeps up with the act, fondly indulging, the fearless big brother. Jack swallows around the stone in his throat and pushes up to sit, letting Lissa crawl onto his back so he can carry her outside.

“Oof, you’re getting too big for this,” he groans quietly, allowing her to slowly push open the door of their room so they can tiptoe out of the house. Jack’s careful to step only on the floorboards he knows creak the quietest, especially when they move past where Mamá sleeps restlessly on the sofa.

“Maybe you’re getting too old,” Lissa says directly into his ear once they’re out of Mamá’s earshot, then grabs his head and redirects it in the direction she wants to go. “Ándale!”

On he goes, out through the house and up the hill, to the spot behind a row of bushes where a makeshift campsite sits. They made it last summer, on the first full moon they didn’t leave. When Mamá didn’t drag them out of the house with no explanation of where they were going, only that they were moving. On the first night of many nights they’d spent in one place in a long, long time. Jack lets Lissa hop off his back and follows her past the leaves and branches to a soft patch of land where she plops down onto the grass. He settles beside her with a sigh.

“Your nightgown is gonna get dirty.”

Lissa rolls her eyes in a manner that’s so like their mamá he has to laugh. She shoves him for it, and he apologizes, and they sit side by side, staring at the bright orange moon looming above like a bad omen. It’s so vibrant it’s almost red, oozing moonlight like an open wound. Jack shudders, then tries to disguise it as a shiver, wrapping his arms around himself.

Something grazes his shoulder and Jack nearly jumps, but it’s just Lissa, her touch staying light and easy. He glances at her.

She smiles. “Scared?”

No, Jack wants to say. He should say, should shake his head and be ok.

Moonlight.

His nails dig into his arms.

“Yes.”

There’s no more words between them. She moves closer, leans against his side, and falls asleep with her hand in his, crescent moons left embedded into his skin. Jack doesn’t join her. He stays awake, listening to the wind and her breaths until pink and orange paint over the purples of night as the sun stretches his arms across the sky. Not quite dawn, not quite night.

Mamá makes them pack that afternoon and they leave in the evening. Jack has to heave the suitcases filled with gifts she insists on bringing, while their clothes are relegated to being stuffed in school backpacks.

“We can’t show up empty handed,” she tells him as she fills yet another bag with baby clothes for a cousin he’s never met and ceramic plates for an aunt he doesn’t remember, “it’s rude.”

“We haven’t seen these people in years,” Jack complains.

“You’re sixteen, it’s about time you meet them. These people are your family.”

Then she does the thing. She stops dead in the middle of what she’s doing and stares blankly at the only picture on the dining table that sits atop stacks of nearly past due bills. It’s a faded old brown and beige photo of his father, high brows, a smile that pushes at the corners of his eyes, hair swept back and graying. He looks happy. Jack guesses he was.

Mamá’s hands move in a practiced pattern: she swipes her eyes, slowly with the pad of her thumbs as if tears were shed, and then stretches and reaches out, fingers retracting into loose fists, closing tightly, and lowering into her lap. Her breath catches. Jack watches silently.

“When he was alive,” she starts, she always starts, “we’d visit them once a year in Oaxaca. It’s tradition.”

Is it tradition to never stay in one town for more than a month for almost a decade? Jack doesn’t ask. He doesn’t say anything at all. Mamá goes back to packing gifts and humming songs and by the time Jack comes back in for the next round of things to stow away, the frame on the table is empty.

The journey from Guadalajara to Oaxaca takes an entire day and it’s hard not to feel like they’re leaving and never coming back. Their little car is brimming with things. There’s hardly enough room in the back for anyone to sit, so Lissa ends up sitting on Mamá’s lap in the front or on the center console, where—when he isn’t driving—Jack diligently ensures her safety with an arm constantly holding her steady. Most of the time is spent singing along to songs on the radio, and playing games. Charades ends up as a game of act out whatever animal or person Lissa tells you to and have Mamá guess it. Which, when playing with Lissa, always goes off the rails.

“Who am I supposed to be?” Jack asks her while they wait in the car at the pit stop.

“The paper says it.”

He waves it around in front of her. “Bigfoot isn’t real.”

She gives him a disappointed look. “He is, I know because I’ve met him.”

“You two have lunch together?” Mamá asks as she shimmies back into the car and hands them both burritos from the food truck they stopped at.

“Yup, he’s a big fan of tea.”

“Of course he is.”

They end up debating several other theories that Lissa proposes as a universal truth.

“The chupacabra is a werewolf.”

“That’s assuming the chupacabra is real.”

She scoffs and waves her hand dismissively. “Why wouldn’t he be?”

Jack chuckles and Lissa begins rambling, but he doesn’t miss the silence from their mamá, who sits with Lissa on her lap and stares blankly out the window. Her fingers are dancing across the edge of a paper. The photo of their father. Jack keeps his eyes resolutely on the road.

Night rolls around and they pull over to switch drivers. Jack moves around some luggage and makes enough room for Lissa to sleep in the back, at the expense of having to hold a suitcase in his lap, but it’s worth it. It’s dark when they continue, the sky pitch black, the road an even darker maw ahead, its teeth the sparse lights blurring past. The moon is out of sight, but it’s somewhere above. Jack doesn’t like it, so he closes his eyes. He’s half asleep when Mamá speaks.

“I will tell you a story.”

She doesn’t look at him to see if he’s awake. Her eyes stay on the road, headlights occasionally offering a glimpse of her face. Her mouth is a tight line, eyes seeing but unfocused, her hands tight around the fabric of the wheel and hair unruly from a day of travel. It makes the shadows lengthen beneath her eyes, cast over her cheekbones and under her nose, and they remind Jack of that story. La llorona, wailing over her lost children. He listens.

“A man and his wife lived in a village in the shadow of a castle. It was abandoned, only the Ghost meandered about the halls, whispering to itself, wishing it were dead. And yet it lived. The man’s wife was with child. One day, the lord of the castle returned. An evil man, who feasted on the blood of innocents and had a long shadow that did not grow as the sun descended. He returned and claimed dominion over the land, demanding all who live in the castle’s shadow acknowledge his lordship and pay taxes.

The man did not accept this new lord, but he lived in his domain. So, he captured moonlight in a bottle and sunlight in a box and placed both at the doorway of his house, preventing the lord from entering without permission and allowing him and his wife to live peacefully. The rest of the village fell into despair in the absence of light, but the man cared for his wife too much. When she went into labor, he was forced to leave his home, taking the box of sunlight with him as protection, to find a midwife. In his absence, the lord drank the wife’s blood and killed her, then made the infant drink moonlight, cursing it.”

“What were they cursed with?” Jack asked, his voice quiet.

Mamá hums, running her hands up and down the edge of the wheel. “When the moon waxes until it wanes, on the first night of their eighteenth year, the child would transform into a savage beast, driven to rip up everything in sight until its rage was quelled by the dawn.”

The car is briefly lit up by a street lamp. Mamá turns and stares at him, eyes piercing.

“They turned into a monster and slaughtered his village. They ate flesh and bone and was not satisfied until the sun rose three nights later and they were left steeped in blood and horror.”

Jack’s nails dig into the palm of his hand and he makes sure to hide the pain, keeping his breaths even, holding her gaze.

“Why are you telling me this?” he whispers, hoping he doesn’t sound as terrified as he feels.

Mamá doesn’t react for a beat, and Jack knows he’s missing something in her expression that’s supposed to tell him why. He doesn’t understand. Then she blinks and turns back to watching the road as if she said nothing. He’s left to sit in oppressive silence until she speaks again. Quietly, casually, forcefully.

“When he was alive—“ she begins, then abruptly changes her mind. “Learn from it.” She says nothing else.

Jack looks out the window, face hidden from Mamá’s view by the suitcase in his lap, and doesn’t sleep until exhaustion claims him sometime well into the morning when he can just start to make out the outlines of roadkill by the asphalt. He dreams of drinking moonlight and blood red stones and transformations in shadows and mornings filled with fear.

They arrive in Oaxaca around mid morning and it’s a whirlwind from there. Driving through the city, it’s nothing like Guadalajara. It’s older, with narrow cobbled streets and virtually no sidewalks, all small colorful buildings that have the charm of age and a need for a fresh coat of paint. There’s fewer tourists and fewer cars and fewer familiar sights. It’s nothing Jack isn’t used to, not with the constant monthly moves they did for so long. It became so constant he started waking up just before midnight every full moon and anticipating Mamá bursting into their room and rushing them out with suitcases they never even unpacked, the only picture that ever mattered clutched tightly in her hand, Lissa’s hand in the other. Jack always just trailed behind them.

The event (a family reunion or whatever it is), is being held at an event hall that looks like it was used for a wedding just a few hours prior. There are still pink rose petals scattered across the floor and plates of half eaten cake in the trash. And it’s absolutely brimming with people. They’re spilling out of the front entrance and on the covered patio out front, all conversations and laughing and smiling and reminiscing on stories and history Jack doesn’t know and never will. It’s too much.

“Mamá,” he whispers as she finally puts their sadly sputtering car into park. He looks out the window and then back at her. “There’s too many people.”

She furrows her eyebrows and follows his gaze, before grinning, her expression a little amused but mostly understanding and sympathetic as she takes his hands in hers.

“You’ll be fine mi amor.” She pulls him closer and plants a kiss on the crown of his head. “Mi caballero.”

It’s moments like these that make the terrifying tales and the dead stares and the constant moves worth it. When she strokes the back of his head and smiles at him with all love. It’s always all love, but there’s sometimes—oftentimes—something… solemn, almost paralyzed underneath.

“And if it’s too much,” she continues while unbuckling her seatbelt and reaching back to shake his sister awake, “for either you or Analissa, just tell me and I’ll cover for you.”

Jack smiles and launches himself over the center console to grab Mamá’s face and kiss her cheek. “I love you.”

She’s stunned for a beat, but then laughs bright and loud and shakes her head. “Yes I know, I love you too. Now get out.”

He does as he’s told, with a deep breath and quick mental pep talk, shielding his eyes against the sun as he pushes open the door. He’s been hidden from it for the almost fourteen hour ride, and now it rolls in waves over his skin, a gentle caress of warmth. Jack lowers his hand with a deep sigh and smiles into the sunbeams.

“You must be Laura’s boy,” an unfamiliar voice says.

Bliss flees, chased out by anxiety as Jack blinks away the multicolored dots littered across his vision and turns to whoever’s talking. It’s a woman in a dress that looks like wildflowers, a wide sun hat keeping her shaded. She takes him in, then pastes a smile on her face and presents him a gloved hand.

“Maria Rodriguez,” she says, “your cousin.”

“Uh, Jack—“

“I know.” She grips his hand hard mid-shake, enough to make the bones in his knuckles creak, and watches him from beneath dark lashes. She takes a deep breath before letting go, and all the while her grin never falters and is never anything but sharp. Something satisfied settles as she slides her hand free. Jack quietly sighs in relief. “We’ve been waiting to meet you for so long, it’s nice to finally see you around.”

He bites back a grimace and changes it into a wavering grin. Maria’s expression ticks and she opens her mouth to speak again when Mamá sweeps up from behind with Lissa in tow and clasps a hand on Jack’s shoulder firmly. Her smile is all bite when Jack glances over at her.

“Maria, where’s your husband?” she asks, voice dripping with fake politeness.

Maria shrugs and shifts, inching back. “Dead.”

Mamá clicks her tongue, feigning pity, and looks her up and down. “Ah, I see you’re in mourning.”

A burst of laughter that almost makes Jack jump erupts from the woman. “Always.” She makes a show of adjusting her sun hat and lets the humor fall. “Funny that. Until next time.”

And she’s off, turning back into the venue and ignoring a gaggle of children that call her name as she goes. Mamá’s hand falls from Jack’s shoulder. She swipes at her forehead, face already red from the sun, and rolls a suitcase balancing a pile of extra giftbags atop in front of him.

“Who was she?” Jack asks.

“Un pinche perra,” Lissa says, reciting with her eyes closed and a small grin.

Mamá lunges out to snatch her wrist. “Analissa!”

She dances out of reach, giggling as she runs into the venue and yelling behind her, “You said it first!”

“She’s going to be the death of me…” Mamá groans while Jack tries and fails to stifle a laugh behind his hand, receiving a light slap on the back of his head for his troubles. “You both will.”

Jack raises an eyebrow. “Not if that Maria lady doesn’t manage it first.”

Mamá hums. “She’s—they’re all…” She trails off and levels him with a serious look. “Listen, none of these people here know you. Only you know yourself. Don’t go to the crypt when we’re here, don’t listen to anything they tell you, they always lie.”

There’s an urgency and directness in her voice that’s different from usual. It borders on desperate. Jack pinches his lips together into what he hopes is a reassuring look and wraps two of his fingers around hers. Her face softens, her shoulders ease, and it’s worth the bit of dread that’s coiled tight in his gut, the bit that gets a little tighter when he sees the edge of the photograph sticking out of her pocket.

Jack ignores it, as he does best, and shoots a lighthearted look at the suitcase. “But you brought them a car full of gifts.”

She rolls her eyes. “It’s rude not to.”

“And is it rude to stay any longer than dinner?”

Now she laughs. “Just until dinner.”

By the time they finish unloading the car and enter the venue, dinner seems too far away. Jack’s met enough Gregory’s and Maria’s and Juan’s and Julia’s to fill a phone book, and he’s been asked if he “Remembers me?” followed by an inevitable “I met you when you were 1/2/3/4/5, you were so cute, you have your mother’s/father’s smile” so many times that he’s started cutting them off as soon as he hears ‘Recuerdas—’ with a swift “no, sorry,” a smile, and a quick shuffle away to the safety of the bathroom. He’s also heard enough contradictory stories about his parents that it’s become impossible to keep what he knows really happened separate from what others say.

“Your uncle Felipe and your mother always had something going on…” Tia Omira gossiped over a glass too many of wine.

“He was in a motorcycle gang, the asshole keyed my car,” Primo Julio complained.

“They met at a dance but were part of different communities,” Abuelo Hugo said, “a love that could never be.”

“Isn’t that the plot of West Side Story?” Jack asked.

Abuelo Hugo gaped. “The lack of respect from your generation…”

And so on.

Not even sitting by Mamá ends up being safe, since he’s always getting dragged into conversations with family members she very clearly does not like, and all he can do is watch them make passive aggressive comments to each other until he’s excused to go use the bathroom or eat or check on Lissa—who’s thriving commanding the other kids on how exactly to play freeze hide and seek—or any other excuse he can conjure up. It’s boring, everyone else his age was allowed to go into town because they’ve gone to every other family reunion but oh no, Jack has to stay and try and memorize every person’s name, relation to him, and short irrelevant story about what they remember about his father. And it seems like he’s the only person who doesn’t remember him at all.

Outside of the glimpses of the photo, in the mirror, in a dream.

So he finds himself doing exactly what he thought he’d be doing: nothing. He sits on the balcony overlooking the backyard, legs dangling between the bars of the railing, and tunes out the chatter of inane family drama and politics coming from the people eating at the tables behind him . He starts counting blades of grass in the yard behind the venue just to have anything to do, when the air shifts and there’s the clicking sound of heels making their way towards him. They stop beside him, and from the corner of his eye, Jack can make out black pointed toes, then knee length leather boots that lead up to a high collared dress and a small grin.

“Hello,” the person greets.

Jack blinks. “Hi.”

They tilt their head. “Jacob, is it.”

It isn’t a question. He answers regardless. “Just Jack.”

They click their tongue and their expression sours for a second so short Jack thinks he might’ve imagined it. “What are you doing here?”

“Uh…” He chews on his lip and musters a sheepish grin. “Enjoying the view?”

The person’s mouth quirks up, as if they don’t know how to smile, before they break out into radiant laughter that drowns out everything else. They smile at him, all teeth, eyes overly bright.

“I’m sorry,” Jack licks his lips and scratches behind his ear anxiously, “who—“

“—are you supposed to be?” they finish, then shrug. “Lupe. Your…” they grin, “abuel, of sorts.”

Abuel they say, yet their face is absent of wrinkles or any signs of aging, besides the light circles under their eyes that speak of a night or two without sleep. Jack frowns.

“Not to be rude,” he prefaces before adding, “but you look more like a cousin.”

Lupe’s eyes widen briefly before they burst out laughing again. They lean forward against the railing and point back inside at Abuela Imelda, who’s hunched over at a table where people are shouting questions at her. Jack’s heard she either responds to them the next year, or doesn’t seem to hear them at all.

“I’m older than her,” Abuel Lupe says, then straightens and clasps their hands behind their back, “but it’s just Lupe. Call me Abuel Lupe and I’ll hunt you for sport.”

There’s a look in their eyes that says they aren’t joking. Jack worries his lip for a moment before making to stand.

“Don’t move,” they command and he does as he’s told. They look behind them at the rest of the party, then move to sit beside him. “You seem to be having fun.”

Jack scoffs. “Are we really related?”

“We are. Paternally, directly.”

“How come no one here knows you then?”

They rock their head side to side for a second. “I know everyone here. Only a few know about me.”

“Why?”

“I knew your father.”

Jack huffs at the immediate topic change and draws his knees to his chest, resting his chin atop them. “You and everyone else,” he mumbles.

Lupe raises an eyebrow and narrows their eyes. “You’ve heard enough stories about him then.”

“No it’s not that I just…” Everyone knew him better than me. “I’d rather hear about something else.”

There’s a long pause, where the only sounds are the draw of breaths and the muffled chatter spilling out from inside. Jack’s attention is inexplicably drawn to Lupe, who stares intently at him in a way that makes his blood run a little colder. He fights the urge to move away.

“You are sixteen, no?” Jack nods. “I will tell you a story.”

They spread their palms flat over their knees.

“Long ago, after los conquistadors first came, there was a child. They lived with their father low in a valley, far from the village. The child wished to visit the village, but their father said no. He told them he was keeping the world safe, keeping them safe from the world, that he loved them very much but would not let them leave.” They hold up a finger. “Only one of those things was true.”

Jack chews on the inside of his cheek hard enough he tastes iron. “Which one?”

Lupe holds his gaze for a beat before curling their finger into a fist and lowering it back to their side. They shift, for the first time in what seems like ages since they sat, and begin to drum their fingers to a silent rhythm. A death march. They look at the yard, still buzzing with kids, and Jack does the same.

“The child grew and on their eighteenth birthday, they snuck down to the village, away from their father, and lived. For the first time in…” their eyebrows pinch, then smooth, “ever.” They sigh and lightly run their fingers down the bars of the railing. “The next day the moon was full and the village decimated, the blood on the child’s hands. Face. Teeth. In their belly.”

Lupe brushes their fingers along their throat. “Until they choked and coughed in disgust and a river of red poured from their mouth and swept away what was left.”

[And they returned home, five nights after the third, blood still caked under their fingernails and dripping from their tongue, terror clinging to every part of their body. It was still dark. The moon was gone but it didn’t matter. Not anymore.

The door creaked open when they pushed and they took one step inside and saw Father, sitting in a chair facing the door, a sword in his hand. It was carved from silver and glinted faintly in the shallow morning light. He looked up, eyes shadowed. He saw them. Clutched the hilt tighter and tighter until his hands shook and bled. They watched.

Father raised the sword, and asked, ‘What are you?’

A shadow in the doorway, they answered. ‘I don’t know.’]

Lissa tells Mamá she wants to go into town, so after a bit of arguing and bartering and promising “No I will not get into a fight with the other kids if they aren’t being pinche—“

“Analissa!”

…promising they will not get into any trouble and Jack will accompany her and they must be back before dinner, she lets them go.

“Thank you for asking for me,” Jack says as soon as they make it out of the venue and start making their way up the road to the town square.

“It’s fine, I wanted to go too, and you looked depressed.”

He forces himself to smile and shoves his hands into his pockets to hide how they shake. “I was fine.”

Lissa hums, unconvinced. “Right because fine entails staying in the bathroom for hours.”

“It wasn’t that long.”

It wasn’t. He ran in there, caught the breath that didn’t want to fill his lungs, gripped the counter until he thought he’d either break his hands or the sink, and bit his knuckles. All with the faucet on, so no one could hear whatever moment he was having after Lupe left. He’d timed it. Only 20 minutes of keeping his heart from pounding to a stop and sheer panic.

“It was only a few minutes,” he continues, then slows so his sister can skip in front of him, “and you were busy being a tyrant.”

She spins indignantly. “Hey! I asked if anyone wanted to take charge and the one kid that did lost the arm wrestle against me.” She brushes dirt off the skirt of her dress and smiles. “I’d say that was fair.”

Jack snorts. “Anyway, Mamá wouldn’t let me go to town if I asked.”

Lissa makes a face, then slows to his side when they come upon the path that’s apparently supposed to lead them there.

“Yeah she’s funny with that.”

Jack sighs. “Tell me about it.”

“Oh but once you turn eighteen you can do whatever you want!”

Once you turn eighteen–

Jack shakes away the fear that’s lodged itself in his throat and grins around it.

“Y-you just want someone to take you places,” he forces out and hopes not that Lissa won’t notice, because she always does, but that she’ll let it drop.

And she does, with a tick of her eyebrow and the ghost of a frown. Before it can settle, she spots something beyond his shoulder and starts tugging him off the trail, back in the direction of the venue.

“Lissa, I don’t think this is the way to the city,” he tells her uneasily, trying to remember where they’re going so they can find their way back.

She nods. “It isn’t, but I was talking to some kids earlier and they said the crypt is nearby.”

“The crypt?” The only place Mamá told them not to go. “I don’t—“

“Our entire family is buried down there! And maybe if we look hard enough, we can find Papá and—“

“Lissa!”

She stops and spins to look at him. Jack huffs and pulls his hand free, putting it on her shoulder and frowning. “Mamá told us specifically not to go there.”

“Yes she did.”

“And?”

“…and?”

Jack pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a deep breath. “Look, I know you’re used to doing whatever you want and getting away with it—“

“I am not!”

“—but I was left in charge here. And if she finds out that I took you to the crypt after she explicitly told us not to…” He rubs the back of his neck and tries to keep the anxiety out of his voice. “I’d rather we not tempt fate.”

Lissa furrows her eyebrows and, after a second, her expression softens and understanding no twelve year old should have sweeps over her face, before it’s quickly colored by rebellion.

“Isn’t that what it’s all about? Tempting fate?” Her stern look twitches to something mischievous. “Or are you going to live behind Mamá’s skirt your whole life?”

Only in the shadow of a photograph, moonlight, standing in the doorway, in Mamá’s and every adults’ eyes.

He gives her a flat look and groans when she doesn’t crack because she knows he will.

“Fine! Fine, lead the way.”

And she does, quietly, confidently, and so well Jack starts to wonder if she can actually sniff places out, or if she just has zero cares in the world. Probably both.

When they stumble upon the entrance to the crypt, they find it’s half buried underground, only a small section open that someone would have to get down on all fours to crawl through into what looks like pure darkness. Basically, ‘do not enter’ is written on the doorway in bright red paint. With the added bonus of what looks like actual blood on some of the stones constructing it and lightly splashed over the Rosillo family name engraved in the stone across the top. They crouch by the entrance and peer inside.

“Should we?” Lissa whispers.

Jack hums and moves his lips side to side as he thinks. “I don’t know. Is it a bad idea?”

“Probably.”

“…let’s do it.”

Lissa starts moving to jump but Jack second guesses his probably idiotic response and grabs her arm before she can throw herself headfirst into a dark, suspicious tunnel that might lead to hell or something.

“Wait wait. I’ll go first.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You. Really?”

“What! You don’t think I’d survive?”

“No.”

Ignoring her offensive comment, Jack rolls his eyes and pushes her back. “Ok listen, I’ll go down and if I don’t respond in ten minutes, you go get someone for help.”

“You mean I can go down and find you.”

“Let’s pretend you’ll listen to me for once? Please?”

She laughs and it feels good to hear. She hooks her pinky around his and nods.

“Ok alright. Don’t die.”

Jack wraps her in a hug and tries not to make it too tight, too desperate. But she knows, she always does, and hugs him back equally fiercely. He pulls away and messes with her hair.

“I won’t.”

He salutes her before he starts crawling through the opening. There’s light inside, just enough that he can make out the slope of loose rocks that lead down from the opening just as he looses his balance. Suddenly, he’s tumbling down and landing flat on his back, pelted by some falling rocks from the pile.

“Are you alive?!” Lissa yells down into the crypt and it reverberates too loud and worsens whatever headache he can feel coming on.

Jack groans and rolls onto his side, the bruises already making themselves known. “Yeah,” he shouts back, then mumbles, “painfully.”

“That was quite the fall.”

Jack yelps and leaps to his feet, stumbling back and falling over, again, back onto the pile of rocks. It hurts just as much as before, but now he’s stuck in a small enclosed area with a mystery man who’s standing not that far away from him,with no way of escape. Pain is about the last thing in his mind.

“Jack!” Lissa shouts.

The man presents his palms, but it’s hard to make out his face with just the light coming from the hallway. He says something incomprehensible while Jack blinks, disoriented, and stares for probably too long.

The man seems to catch his mistake and shifts to perfect, albeit heavily accented, Spanish. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you don’t speak English.”

“Who the hell are you?” Jack asks, wrapping his hand around a stone and clutching it tightly.

The man sees the motion and inches backwards a bit, keeping his hands up. “I could ask you the same thing, kid. You just broke into my family’s crypt.”

Jack wrinkles his nose and takes in said crypt. The walls are made of stone, arching in and poorly lit by sparse torches along the walls. There’s a single hallway of coffins on both sides. It’s… normal. Jack isn’t sure what he was expecting.

He turns his attention back to the man. “Technically the entrance was open, I just walked in. And this is my family’s crypt. So who are you?”

The man cocks his head a bit, like he’s listening for something, then tilts it up like he’s… sniffing the air? Jack’s probably just imagining things.

“Philip Russell.”

Jack raises an eyebrow and pushes himself to his feet, with a bit of effort and moves further into the crypt but stays away from Philip. “Who?”

“Uh, Felipe. Sorry, I know our family can be a bit…” he trails off and shrugs, “funny with names.”

That rings some bells. A memory of a letter from someone, Philip written on the shredded envelope and Sinceramente, Felipe at the very bottom of the page. Mamá would always scoff and toss it out with the rest of the trash.

Philip points. “And you’re—“

“Jack!!” Lissa yells again.

Jack sighs and hums. Philip nods. “Right.”

Philip moves slightly, just enough so the light shines on his face and he looks… like Jack. Or, more like Lissa, but she always took more after their father, apparently. Dark features, some height for her age, an expression like they always know what you mean because Lissa always does. He looks like family. Jack doesn’t drop the rock. Philip notices.

“I’m not gonna kill you kid,” he says lightheartedly, “and I think you would’ve done a good enough job of that, braining yourself on those rocks.”

As if on cue, Lissa comes falling down into the crypt, prompting Jack to go and help her.

“Like that,” Philip says from behind.

Once she’s up and has dusted off her dress, Lissa squints and points accusingly at him. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Lissa,” Jack groans and rubs his eyes. “Whatever happened to staying outside and going for help?”

She shrugs, a little too nonchalantly for potentially being stuck in the crypt with someone who’s relation to them they still don’t know. “You’re really turning into Mamá now.”

“Wow, wait you’re Gregory’s kids?” he exclaims, then claps excitedly. “You’re both so grown! I’m your tío, I met you both when you were, hm what was it a decade ago?”

“When I was six,” Jack supplies tiredly.

“Yeah! Gosh you were both so cute. Do you remember me?” He smiles and holds out his hands but they both just stare. He sighs and relents. “You look like you have questions.”

“I don’t—“

“Why are you American?” Lissa blurts out.

Philip reels back, then barks out a startled laugh. “I’m as American as you.”

“So… not at all?” She continues. Jack pinches her arm and shoots her a look, but Philip’s already answering.

“Hm, depends on who you ask, when you ask it, and how you do the asking. But is Mexico not in the Americas? What are they teaching you in school these days…”

She flushes and huffs. “It is. I meant—“

“I know, kid. I moved there. Hm, really my family moved there when I was young. Hence why our last name is Russell, not Rosillo. Made it easier to find work and all. It was me, my parents, my… older brother.”

Their father, Jack can fill in. “Why are you here?”

Philip raises his eyebrows and looks over his shoulder, at the end of the hall where it’s especially well lit. “To honor our ancestors. The same reason why I assume you're here, despite Laura definitely telling you to stay away.”

Jack cringes. “How’d you know?”

“Some things never change. Your mother is no different.”

He knows that. Too well.

Lissa leans out and stumbles forward, squinting at the light. “What’s down there?”

Philip follows her gaze. “Your father.”

“Really?!”

“In a way.” He beckons them on and they follow, Jack leading with Lissa close behind him.

They walk to the end of the hallway, past walls lined with coffin upon coffin, different names and remembrances carved beneath each slot they’re slid into. Some of the coffins shake along the way, some bang. Lissa jumps; Jack tries very hard to stay calm.

“Is that normal?” He asks, pointing at one of the shaking coffins.

Philip stops and glances at it. “The dead sometimes become restless.”

Lissa inches closer to one and reaches out. “Sh-shouldn’t we let them out—?”

Her hand is snatched away before her fingertips can grace the edge of the coffin. Philip lets her go as fast as he grabbed her and says, flatly: “The dead are dead for a reason. They are meant to stay that way.”

He continues on, but it’s nearly impossible to not hear the shaking and banging, the echoing sounds compounding into screams. Jack doesn’t think of it that way. He doesn’t.

They come to a stop at the end of the hall, before a statue of a saint, hooded, face covered, head bowed, and holding a bowl half filled with water dripping from the ceiling. Gregory Russell is inscribed at the base of it, along with several other names that look centuries older. Jack looks back at the face of the statue. It’s crying.

“You know, I knew your mom before your dad met her,” Philip continues.

Jack balks. “Really?”

“Ah well. Laura and I go… way back. But your dad was a better fit for her. A bit less… wild, I guess.”

Lissa snorts but it’s halfhearted. She keeps looking behind her, at the now still, quiet coffins. “You do seem pretty boring.”

Philip chuckles again, tight. “Anyone told you you look just like your dad?”

“Only when I’m here.” She looks more intently at the name that Jack’s been staring at, crouches down and traces the loops and letters with her fingers. “Do you know what happened to our father?”

“You don’t know?”

Jack answers for them. “No.”

Philip sucks in a breath and mutters something too low to hear that sounds like a countdown from two before he drags a hand over his face and sighs. “I’ll tell you a story.”

“Please no, I’ve heard…” Jack digs his nails into his palms and forces himself calm again, “I’ve heard enough.”

But everyone seems intent on telling him every tale without actually saying anything. Philip gives him a long look and his face hardens. “If you’re saying that then you haven’t. You have to know. You have to remember.”

He wets his lips and glances at the statue, then back at Jack before straightening and inhaling deeply.

“There were two brothers. Think of them like Cain and Abel.”

“You’re telling us Cain and Abel?” Lissa drawled.

“Listen,” he snaps with more than a little fury and frustration, with a lot of fear. Lissa grips Jack’s hand harder. “They fought over everything. Money, authority, women. Birthright. Until one day, something changed. The eldest he—“ He shakes his head. “He killed someone. He nearly killed the younger brother. He had him inches within death and then…”

Jack swallows hard. “What stopped him?”

“…I don’t know. I don’t know.”

The crypt is too big, too stagnant. The air smells like iron, rust drips down the walls in cascades of red. The statue sobs.

“What happened next? To the older brother.”

[He ran and ran and by the time morning beamed upon the land and he’d found shelter he was done running, but he could not stop. The eldest brother would continue running until the breath left his lungs, replaced with moonlight that he never drank but was forced to carry in his blood, in his heart. Replaced with that upon which he would gasp and choke, and die.]

“He died.”

The crypt is too small, too narrow. The air feels like ice and it burns his skin. The statue wails.

“A-and the younger?”

[Three shots rang out and by the time he turned back, by the time he got there, all that was left of the elder sibling, whatever he’d become, was a pool of blood seeping between the cobblestones and staining the street. And the casings of three silver bullets.]

“Never saw him again.”

They walk back in silence. Somewhere along the way Lissa gets tired, so Jack wordlessly crouches so he can carry her on his back, where she fights hard not to doze off but inevitably loses the battle. They make it back well into dinner and the look on Mamá’s face as they walk in, covered in dirt and sweat and twenty minutes late, is everything and nothing like he could’ve imagined. She doesn’t react, not like how she’d be expected to. There’s no yelling and stomping or even a change in her expression. She keeps smiling after hearing whatever joke someone just told her and holds it while she pins him with a stare.

She’s furious. Jack knows.

She excuses herself when he goes to put Lissa down on the sofa, letting her yank his arm and drag him outside, well away from the venue and windows, into a dimly lit shed that’s too cramped for two people. Her voice is too loud, the light hurts Jack’s eyes, and his head hurts almost as much as his chest does. It’s hard to breathe.

“Where the hell were you?” she hisses, low and steady. “Don’t lie.”

He wasn’t planning on it, but that makes fire rise from his feet past his heart to his mouth.

“The crypt,” he spits, “that’s where.”

“I told you—“

“I know what you said but you never told me why and I…” He tempers himself a little, tries to stay calm. “I spoke to Tío Philip.”

Her expression darkens, mouth tight. “Felipe.”

He stops his face from twisting. “He told me about my father, and—“

“You had no reason to speak to him.”

“It’s not like you would tell me anything. And everyone here just recalls these-these stories and half of them are lies and the other half are—“

‘What are you?’

He clamps his mouth shut and moves to wipe the sweat off his face when Mamá grabs a hold of his wrist.

“What do you want to hear?” she snaps. “That he was shot dead in the street like an animal? That we couldn’t have a funeral because they stole his body? That your family acts like nothing happened when it was their fault, when it will be their fault?! He’s dead, Jacob, let him rest.”

Jack rips his arm out of her grip and moves back to brace himself against the table and lets the anger speak. “You’re allowed to have a picture but I can’t even get one solid memory? Everyone here tells me stories Mamá, you tell me stories, but I don’t know what’s real—“

She shakes her head and mumbles, “They’re all real and none of them are.”

“I don’t understand!”

“You aren’t meant to! For God’s sake you are a child, you don’t need to—“

“Don’t you see that I do! I—I don’t know who I’m supposed to be… I don’t get it, you don’t—you don’t treat Lissa like this.”

Mamá’s face goes flat. She shakes her head more fervently and her voice wavers almost as much, her tone pressing. “She’s not the same, she isn’t— you are my first born. You are nearly eighteen. Do you understand what that means?”

Jack groans, “I don’t! I don’t and everyone keeps telling me I should but no one will tell me why. Why Mamá? Why are we here? Why—why can’t I go down to the crypt or talk to Lupe? Why—“

She yells then. “Because I said so! Because I’m trying to keep you safe and you seem intent on doing everything in your power to get yourself killed!”

Like your father.

She doesn’t say it. She doesn’t need to. She still clamps a hand over her mouth as if she did. She shuts her eyes against the tears that are shed regardless and she falls to her knees at his feet.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry…” she mutters between sobs, grabbing his hands. “Forgive me please forgive me.”

“…Ok.”

She wipes her face with her dress and looks up at him, face still shiny. She pleads. “Let’s leave, let’s… Let’s leave.”

“…Ok.”

They leave Oaxaca before the main course, after awkward goodbyes to family members Jack will probably forget again and whose names he won’t care to remember.

“I’ll see you soon,” Lupe tells him, grabbing his hand loosely but stopping him in his tracks. They sit at the head of the table, but no one looks their way. They let him go with a grin. “Vaya con Dios.”

He tries not to run.

Mamá drives, even if she’s been awake for almost twenty hours. She slips behind the wheel and starts the car without a word. Jack puts Lissa in the back, now clear of things, and she hardly stirs, only mumbling once to dreamily ask if it’s Christmas yet. He tells her no and sets his jacket over her, then sits in the passenger seat. He looks out the window and watches them pull away, the venue growing smaller and dimmer, its warm glowing lights making the stark white walls seem inviting, before eventually, it disappears around a corner, hidden by trees. The road blurs by, everything blends into itself, and with the moon out of sight, out of mind, Jack drifts.

He wakes twice. The first time still feels like a half-dream he can’t remember. He’s leaning against the door, the top of his head pressed to the window and neck aching. Someone is singing.

“Hoy me tengo que ir mi amor…”

It’s familiar. It’s warm, it’s bright. It’s a weight on the edge of his bed, hands tucking him in, his name. It’s Jack, mi hijo. It’s a face, a smile. Not Mamá’s, it’s... Memories that fade just as suddenly as he remembers. And a song, a lullaby.

“A solas yo te cantaré soñando en regresar.”

The second time is more solid. The car is stopped, he’s lying on the center console, and there’s a hand, fingers running through his hair. Gently, easily. Whispers of apologies and quiet cries that trail off into silence. Mamá falls asleep. Jack stays awake.

Something pokes his shoulder. He carefully shifts to look behind him at Lissa, on her knees in the backseat, crouched low.

“Hey,” she says.

He exhales quietly.

“Is Mamá asleep?”

He blinks and carefully nods.

She points outside. “Can we?”

He chews on his lip, closes his eyes, musters the courage, and nods again. Once Lissa’s climbed out and up onto the roof of the car, Jack carefully moves Mamá’s hand from his head and places it in her lap. He looks at her for a beat. Tear tracks stain her cheeks, her eyes red. The picture of his father is held loosely in her other hand. Jack reaches in the backseat for his jacket and drapes it over her. Before he gets out, he presses a kiss to her temple.

“Took you long enough,” Lissa grins once he’s settled beside her.

He runs his tongue across his teeth and nods.

She scoots closer. “Are you ok?”

Yes, he wants to say. But he looks up and there the moon is. Waning. And it should be comforting, that it isn’t full, that’s it’s not a spotlight shining only and directly on him. But—

Moonlight.

He shuts his eyes and hopes it’s dark enough that he can pretend there aren’t any tears, that there’s nothing wrong because there isn’t. There isn’t.

“No.”

Lissa throws her arms around him and he buries his head in her shoulder and, for the first time in what feels like forever, he feels safe.

She falls asleep and just before he does, he carries her back inside the car and settles in the backseat, with her on his lap and Mamá still settled in the front. Then, he closes his eyes.

And he dreams. Of a shoreline, where the sun sits low but time feels wrong. There’s no pull of moonlight, no force making his bones shiver and ache. But the comfort of sunshine is a faded memory and he’s stuck in limbo between the two. Someone whispers behind him, words he doesn’t want to understand so he keeps looking at the sea and wishing, praying for anything but night, for anyone who’ll listen, but it doesn’t come. What comes instead is her voice.

Jack, she says, and he glances up to see her, wading through the water to him. Jack.

Her fingertips ghost along his cheekbone, tracing the outline of him, reminding him. To focus. To remember.

To change.

The sun is up far before him, already moving across the sky, stretched and spread comfortably above. Not dusk, not dawn. Morning.

#werewolf by night #jack russell #lissa russell #yea yea sometimes i write #cw panic attack #cw horror elements #WOOO YES FINALLY ITS DONE GRACIAS DIOS #god i swear i've been writing this shit forever #i liked writing it it was fun #had to cut out so many extra scenes because i would've just been writing a whole ass book #i cut a longer car ride at the begining. an extended interaction with lupe. jack and lissa and some random kids walking arond town #uhh just some quirky lines with philip and a dinner scene #AND ITS STILL 8K+ WORDS I CRY

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