epilogue 2
He comes around on the second day in the hospital, but doesn’t manage to hold onto consciousness until the day after that. The room isn’t bad. No roommate, and a big window that looks down over the town. His arm is sore from the IV, but that’s not so bad either. The sun looks like it’s barely just risen, and Otter is curled up and sleeping in a chair in the corner - he’s wearing his scrubs, so he must have just finished a shift. Austin wonders how long it’s been since Otter went back to the apartment, how long it’s been since he changed out of those scrubs. Maybe it’s better not to know.
Richard is there, too, hovering several feet off the floor in front of the window. He has his fretting face on. Austin tries to sit up in bed and flinches as a twinge of pain shoots through his stomach. He decides to settle for turning his head in Richard’s direction instead.
“Hey Dad,” he says quietly. “I’m alive, you know.”
“Well,” Richard begins, but pauses. He turns around to face Austin, but can’t seem to look straight at him, blinking at the wall instead. “Yes. Welcome back.”
“How long has he been here?” Austin asks, nodding towards the corner, where Otter is starting to stir.
RIchard shrugs. “Not long. A few hours. He’s been coming in between shifts to see if you’re awake yet.”
“Otter,” Austin says, raising his voice to a normal volume. “Hey.”
Otter blinks himself awake slowly. He yawns and stretches in the small chair, his legs sticking out at odd angles that can’t possibly be comfortable. But he probably has a lot of practice at sleeping in hospital chairs. A grin spreads across his face when he sees Austin watching him, and he stands up, unfolding all six feet of himself.
“You’re up! How do you feel?”
“Like I got stabbed in the stomach,” Austin says glibly. Otter laughs, relief spreading across his face plain as day.
“Don’t be a dick. I was worried.”
“I mean, I feel pretty sore,” Austin admits. He looks down at his hands, taking in the scratching and bruises. “How deep did the knife go?”
“The knife didn’t puncture any of your organs, if that’s what you’re asking. You just lost a lot of blood, and needed stitches. Plus frostbite treatment.” Otter comes over next to the bed, leaning over to kiss Austin on the forehead. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Is the other guy, uh, did he make it out okay? And Grace?” Austin presses. He doesn’t think that he hurt them too badly, when he wasn’t himself, but maybe he was wrong.
Otter nods. “They’re both fine. The guy - Landis, right? He’s been here for a few days, same as you. Apparently he bit his tongue almost in half to escape police custody. They’ve got an officer outside his room around the clock. I think they’re still trying to figure out if they can put him in jail or not.”
They shouldn’t put him in jail. He was trying to stop the lake the only way he knew how. Austin closes his eyes.“Do you know if they swept the lake yet? For the bodies?”
Otter shakes his head, but Richard says “They didn’t find anything. No bodies, no bones.”
Austin sighs. The lack of evidence might not be enough to get Landis out of jail time, but that’s still something, at least. And he could always talk to Monty on Landis’s behalf, try to explain to her that the reason Landis was killing a handful of people was to stop something much larger from breaking free and wiping out the town, but Monty wouldn’t understand. Monty understands black and white, murderers and victims. Evil entities and possession might be a bit much for the police to wrap their heads around.
“What are you thinking about?” Otter asks.
“I don’t want Landis to have to go to jail,” Austin says slowly. “He didn’t want to kill anyone. He killed them because - you know the whole forest spirit thing from a few months ago?” He pauses and looks at Otter, only continuing once Otter nods. “There was something like that, some monster, in the lake. And because Landis was killing people for it, it stayed in the lake. It didn’t come out here and start killing people.”
Otter chews on this information for a minute. “How do you know?”
“It possessed me.” Austin sees Otter’s eyebrows knit together in concern, and has to look away from him to keep going. “For a while. Because Landis didn’t kill anyone…whatever was binding it to the lake got weaker. It used me to destroy the binding altogether. If Landis hadn’t stabbed me and caught it off guard enough for me to force it out, it would have come into town in my body and killed everyone here.”
“Jesus,” Otter mutters. Richard looks nonplussed - Austin imagines that he’s heard worse. Seen worse, even. It must be hard for anything supernatural to surprise you once you’ve been burned to death by Satanic cultists.
“Yeah,” Austin says. “I really don’t want Landis to do time for all that.”
Otter fidgets, rubbing his forearms and combing his fingers through his hair. “You think the…whatever was in the lake is still out there? Where did it go after it was in you?”
It’s a good point, something Austin hasn’t considered yet. He was afraid that pushing the entity out of his own body would only send it into Landis, or Grace, but none of that happened - he stayed conscious just long enough after being stabbed to make sure the presence had dissipated entirely. But now that it’s unbound, where did it go? Back to Hell, or wherever it’s from, maybe. Hopefully.
“I don’t know,” he says out loud. Naturally, it does nothing to alleviate Otter’s concern, but it’s the best answer he can give. “Do you mind, uh, giving me a minute with Richard? I need to figure out what to do about the Landis thing.”
Otter jumps. “Oh! Richard’s,” he lowers his voice conspiratorially, “here?”
“He’s been here, yeah.”
“Well, I’ll leave you two alone, then.” Otter straightens up and tugs on his scrubs, trying to smooth the wrinkles on them with his palms. “I should go find your actual nurse, anyway, and tell her you’re awake.” He lingers in the doorway, looking at Austin again. “I’ll come back later to eat lunch with you if you want?”
Austin smiles. “That sounds awesome.”
He waits for the door to swing all the way shut, and Otter’s footsteps to recede down the hall, before he looks at Richard. There’s a funny look on Richard’s face, halfway between knowing and concerned, like he already knows what Austin is thinking about. They watch each other for a while, Austin turning the idea over in his head. Is it worth it? To get someone I barely know out of jail? He did save my life, maybe I owe him this. His eyes flick towards the telephone on the table next to the hospital bed.
“He’s going to know where I am if I call,” he says weakly, aware before he says it that it isn’t a good excuse.
“If he’s any good at all, he already knows where you are and has someone here looking after you,” Richard counters.
Austin thinks a little longer. “The Department can…just do stuff like this, right? Take jurisdiction from the police?”
“Oh, absolutely. As long as there’s cause to believe that the crime is supernatural in origin. And just the fact that you were possessed while investigating…” Richard trails off, chewing his bottom lip. He looks worried again - like he didn’t mean to bring up what happened. “Well, that’s more than enough cause for them to take over, in any case.”
So this is the only way to do it. Austin sighs again, longer and louder than before. He feels sick with anticipation. What’s going to happen when he hears Jacob’s voice on the other line? What’s going to happen when Jacob hears his voice? Is he going to yell at me? God, I hope he doesn’t cry. I’ll hang up if he cries.
“I can give you his secret number,” Richard offers. “The one for national emergencies. He has to pick it up if it rings.”
“Great,” Austin says, half-smiling with an exhaustive amount of effort.
He tugs the phone across the table, closer to the bed, and balances the receiver against his ear, punching in numbers as Richard dictates them to him. It starts to ring after a moment. Austin hears his pulse in his ears in the silence between rings, his heart thudding heavily in his chest. He grips the receiver with white knuckles, ignoring the sting of the cuts on his hands, and when he hears the tell-tale click of someone picking up on the other end, his breath sticks in his throat.