Chapter One Page One, Neil and Dave, Downtown

“So, just like that, the…”

          “What?”

          David’s head turned like a dog, pointed itself at an open alley. The alley in question was dark. The pavement at the bottom was appropriately slick with water, although from rain or mist it was unclear. It wasn’t a particularly misty or rainy day. Just one of those mysteries, Neil had long since decided.

          So there was David and Neil, out at night in the Downtown. On the street they stood upon were primarily antique shops, but also privately owned restaurants and thrift stores. David and Neil had never been inside any of them. David primarily liked Downtown because it was far away from home, and Neil liked Downtown because he thought it looked nice. Neil also occasionally imagined he was a detective of the sort found in serials from the 20’s and 30’s, and that whenever they were Downtown it was a Night Off The Job, or an opportunity to relax. Neil hadn’t voiced this dream since he’d been seven, but that hadn’t diminished his dreams or aspirations, and so they were, as Neil stood, at age sixteen.

          And at the moment, David was pointed like a Setter at the alleyway before them, where there issued a pair of voices, held in a constant conversation, one never giving way to the other. Neither David nor Neil could properly understand either of the voices, and since David cared to overhear, he stepped closer.              “What?” Neil asked. He’d refused to move from the wall they had chosen to lean against while David had told his story.
          “You hear them,” David said, “It sounds like some villains."
          “Villains?” Neil asked. For a moment he forgot how silly the word sounded. He was Dowtown. Downtown is where detectives could find ample supplies of villains.

          “One of them has the roughest voice I’ve ever…,” David said, trailing off, both in his voice and in the way he started walking towards the alleyway. Neil followed after a moment unsure of whether or not he actually wanted to go forth and uncover what it was David was after.

          Neil could hear the voices clearer as he stepped after David, keeping one foot ahead of the other at all times. His legs were tense, as he figured he’d need to break off and make a run for it at any moment. Detectives did that.

          “Candle Crown?”

          Neil looked at David, even though it hadn’t been David that’d said it. It’d been one of the voices ahead. David looked back at Neil, “The fucking Candle Crown,” this spoken in a whisper.

“The Candle Crown?” Neil whispered back. It stirred memories. Ghost stories told at campfires. Going into bathrooms and turning off the lights and chanting incantations intended to rouse the spirits of the dead. Those kinds of memories.

          “The Candle Crown,” the second voice affirmed, “The Mason’s son found it, if you’d believe it. Found it in, uh, the tunnel by Gebirr bridge. You know the one?” This one wasn’t the one with the rough voice. This villain’s voice was tinted with the accent of the region, which is to say, an accent between Boston’s and New York’s, even though Falling Rocks was at least two hundred miles away from either city, at the closest.

          “Yeah,” the other said. And his was a voice that sounded like gravel, or more accurately, like a voice that’d been used to smoking cigarettes in quantities that were supposed to kill most living things.

          David turned around with a raised eyebrow, his mouth open as though to make an announcement, but then the other villain replied, “The Mason’s son says that only Jamie is to look after it. Something about Ember Horrors. I don’t quite get it. Jamie always seemed like a normal kind of guy. What does he know about Ember Horrors that I don’t?”

          “Jamie’s fuck-deep in Ember Terrors,” Mr. Coalchest said, as though the statement were normal.

          “Isn’t he though?”

          David turned, “Sounds like a couple of goons,” he said.

          Neil knew that David knew all about which words would get Neil interested in things. David even knew exactly which words would make Neil not be afraid of things Neil was typically afraid of.

As David crushed his cigarette under his shoe, he added, “We need to get closer.”

“Need?” Neil asked, “Need’s a pretty strong word for the situation here. I think we certainly can get closer.”

David already did get closer, but Neil hung back. His phone chimed once, and David looked back in horror before diving behind a dumpster with a noise that was at least three times as many decibels as Neil’s phone had produced. Neil didn’t wait to see what the two goons ahead would do. Goons would do what goons did.

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