Chapter Text
He first noticed it all began to shift when Keanu went missing. Then Ted. And soon followed Bill. He had named them all despite his grandfather and father telling him not to. The cows were supposed to go up for auction, and James Proudstar wasn’t supposed to get attached to them. Names, they said, made it harder for ranchers to do what they had to do. As if owning a name would stop James from caring about another. But the auction had come and gone over fifteen years ago, and the cows had somehow survived it. They had outlived his parents, his brother John… even his grandfather. Owning a name seemed irrelevant when death came… and besides, as if owning a name would’ve stopped a young James from caring about the cows either way.
The cows, Keanu, Ted, Bill, Death, Reeves, and even Gladys* were all gone now. The cows had been the last of what made Nowhere Ranch, home to the Proudstar family for almost seven generations, home for Jimmy. Gave him a real reason to come home when he wasn’t on a mission for X-Force or the X-Men. Of course, there was the odd friend or two to visit and even the ceremonies he’d attend from time to time, but he felt like a ghost here now. Just a haunting reminder of that day. The one that the entire reservation and town of Camp Verde acknowledged in their own little everyday rituals, consciously or not.
As with most things in the Verde Valley, Jimmy had learned to just accept that things were always meant to be a little odd. I mean, who came up with this design? It was nestled in the heart of Arizona, between the Grand Canyon and Phoenix. Highway I-17 came up over the mountain nd cut through and divided the valley into the town of Camp Verde and the Camp Verde Reservation. The reservation is no more than a small village and a small patch of land on the other side of the highway, which was reserved for Cliffside Casino, the Cultural Center, Sonics, and the Heart’s Frybread Stand.
Just up the road and around the bend from the Heart’s Frybread Stand was Montezuma Castle, a relic of an era long before the Yavapai or Apache were ever brought to the Valley. For a time, his dad had worked as a security guard/tour guide there for some extra money. Now, back to the town of Camp Verde, and just down the road from the casino was where John and James had gone to school. The high school proudly vowed “Home of the Cowboys!”, which, despite his family being literal cowboys and living on a small cattle ranch, always felt like some type of humiliation ritual for all the little Yavapai and Apache kids to participate in every school day. Truly a testimony to the harmony between the demographics of modern-day Arizona.
Now, if we were to hop back over the I-17 and venture past the reservation, we would stumble upon the Out of Africa Wildlife Park. Yes, the Verde Valley did, in fact, have lions, giraffes, and bears. And just further east was the lunar training site for the lunar rover and Apollo 14 crew. Though that wasn’t marked on any map, if you knew, you knew.
That’s where James was now.
Looking for Bill.
And that’s where our story truly begins.
The young mutant- Oh yes! Another fun fact about the Verde Valley, it was home to Arizona’s first known mutants - John and James Proudstar. A reservation, the home to the cowboys, a casino, a castle, an African safari, the lunar site, mutants, and now a case of missing cows. And that was just his childhood…
Given all the oddities he had expected from life, one of the things James could not accept, however, was Bill’s disappearance. He’s the last one left.
James crouched low, the desert dirt crunching beneath his boots. The lunar training site stretched out around him, silent and pale, the late-August sun having burnt the sparsely grass-covered field. It had been several decades since this place had been used. When NASA was practicing for its space missions, it was nothing but rocks, or so Grandpa Proudstar claimed.
The hoofprints were there, leading off into the south side of the field. Clear . Bill was always westbound when he slipped through the fence. He usually stopped at the Verde River. The farthest he’d ever gone before was the lunar testing site. James had followed along the river, stupidly assuming Bill would be there. The air felt thick. He could taste the storm on the horizon even though there was barely a cloud in the sky. Which was to be expected, it was the middle of monsoon season after all. James wanted to get back to the ranch as soon as possible before the rain began; he wasn’t in the mood to outrun a storm. Not that I couldn’t.
Then he heard it.
In the distance, to any regular human, inaudible, but it wasn’t the rumble of thunder he had been expecting. At first, it was like a microphone’s sharp and high-pitched squealing that cut through the stillness of the Valley. He winced, tilting his head with a hand to his ear. The sound wasn’t entirely outwardly. It was vibrating in his skull, making his teeth itch. Then came the static. A jagged rush like snow on an untuned TV. Like the one Grandp Proudstar refused to get rid of. Then just beneath it all, impossibly, the stuttered, mechanical cry of a dial-up tone.
The hell…?
The sound howled once more, as if alerting someone, and the Verde Valley answered. Echoes bounced from mountain tops to the cottonwooded hills, but the way they bent, the way they lingered, wasn’t natural. James’s stomach tightened.
Then, as quickly as the sound came, it was over, the echoes faltering off into a low-electric sizzle. Then silence.
That’s when he saw him.
Bill.
Thirty yards ahead, sprawled out like he’d dropped from the sky. His white hide gleamed under the desert sun, perfectly intact save for—
James froze. He didn’t need to get closer. He already knew...
…But he couldn’t stop himself.
His legs carried him forward, each step deliberate, each blade of grass earning a soft crunch that gave way to the stony dirt Bill was lying in. There was no blood. Not a drop. Bill’s jaw was peeled back, flesh exposed, as if something had excised it with surgical precision. His stomach was swollen, grotesque, bloated past reason. Same for all four of his legs.
James’s mouth twitched. Bill’s eye, facing toward the sky, was open, but the eye itself was gone. He had seen this before. Not in life, late at night on the couch beside his grandfather, watching the History Channel. Because where else could you watch a show about bullshit conspiracy theories? It had been on this one episode of Ancient Aliens. Grainy photographs of cattle mutilations, presented with solemn voices, and that one alien guy from the memes saying exactly what you’d expect a guy like him to say. Aliens . Then there were those stories he had heard coming out of Oregon, all those bulls going missing, just recently, too. He had heard stories about ranchers getting bewitched, even their animals all turning up missing and found dead with strange markings or just straight up bones.
No matter where he heard the story from, every cow had the same signs, more or less.
No blood. Exposed flesh. Lying on its side. Bloated body.
James crouched beside Bill, every muscle in his body straining. His fingertips hovered just above the cow’s hide. Warm . Too warm for how long Bill could’ve possibly been lying here. It had been less than an hour since he noticed Bill wasn’t on the ranch.
James looked up. The Verde Valley stretched out endlessly in every direction, quiet and bright. But the shadows seemed longer. Wrong. It could only possibly be 2 p.m. Yet the shadows stretched out as if it were mid-evening. Impossible, given that the sun was in the right position for it to be 2 p.m.
The static sound from before shook down the length of his spine. The symphony of frequencies hit him all at once. This time louder and more pulsating, more painful. His eyes darted around the area; he was alone except for Bill.
Within the frequencies, he just barely made out a familiar shriek, “ JIMMY!”
James swiveled his head back around, and in a flash, Bill blinked.
A pale-blue eye met his.
Then the world went dark.
***
The sea was angry. Sharp and breaking against the coast. Howling echoed through the Cassidy Mausoleum. It came from the forest; if she cared to, she could pinpoint the exact location, as well as the height and relative age of its owner. As it presently stood, Theresa Cassidy had not but one more care left for any mortal of this realm. Save perhaps, Monet St. Croix, who was tucked away somewhere in Cassidy Keep. And perhaps, Groundkeeper Eammon. And of course - OH SHUT UP!
Terry was tired of her own racing mind and contradicting itself day after day, hour after hour, minute by minute as she stood in the crypt. She didn’t have a real reason as to why she stood in the family mausoleum. She heard Eammon in the kitchen, the kettle softly clinking against the stove top. I could be inside. Taking that bath just as M had suggested. Resting.
Always resting. Theresa was used to being on the move. Every day was different. Every new assignment came with new problems to solve, new people to understand. Then all at once, during her final mission with X-Factor Investigations, it all came crashing down.
Suddenly, there was nothing.
And it was perfect. For about a day.
Then it was hell.
And it had been hell ever since. The days ticked by in blurs. She knew it had been months by this point, but she was still there in that one perfect day.
Theresa reasonably knew she should move on. But to where? Not to even mention the how and why of it. Could someone actually move on from that kind of perfect day? Why should they? How do you move on from hell? I could ask him… he’s been there and back again. Oh, but she didn’t want to remember that day either.
Dead and surrounded by nothing but the dead. Theresa absentmindedly dusted the placards. Not that they were dusty, she came in here every day, sometimes three times a day. Probably the most time a living person’s been in here. She thought as she brushed over her mother, Maeve Rourke’s, placard. She was buried beside her father, Sean Cassidy. Room on the other side for Moira MacTaggert if she cared to join them. Theresa averted her eyes from the placard underneath her father’s. She always saved his for last.
So she moved on with her dusting. In spite of it all, “it” being her entire childhood, she still cared for Uncle Tom’s placard, too. It was out of habit, as she had always helped him and taken care of him when he needed it, well into her late teens. They had mended their relationship before he passed- mostly.
As mended as a relationship with a former-mutant jewel-thieving-underground-druglord-who-hid-his-niece’s-identity-from-her-father-(his cousin)-and- raised- her- as- his-niece-,shipped-her-off- to- an- anti-mutant- Catholic- boarding -school -to- hide- his- nefarious -activities-,where-she -developed- a -drinking -problem- at- age- 13-, and- only- wanted- her- back- once- her- powers- were- revealed, -and- then- decided- to- train -and-use -her -abilities -to -commit -international -crimes- and-only-revelead- her- parentage-once-he-was-sent-to-prison could possibly be.
Theresa could dust off the rest of her family’s names; there were levels and levels of names by this point. The Cassidy family had lived and died here since 1185. But she hadn’t known any of them. Only their names and places in history, some of their faces, as she had their portraits still lining the walls of the Keep. Every day, Monet asked her about one of them. Theresa even surprised herself by how many of their names and fates she remembered.
She came back to the most important and newest placard in the mausoleum, the one that had no body, just a name, and a perfect date.
“Sean Madrox.”
Theresa paused mid-dust, the quiet of the mausoleum pressing against her ears. The howling stopped…so has the…sea? Terry raised her eyes to the open door; the light from the kitchen was still on, but she couldn’t hear Eammon. She couldn’t hear M humming as she did her nightly skin routine. She couldn’t hear the cat prowling the gardens. She couldn’t hear the hum of the light bulb she left on in her own room.
She heard nothing but the silence.
Her fingers frantically massaged her ears. She flexed her jaw. Let out a sigh. Nothing.
As her heart pounded and all she felt was the thud in her chest, Theresa heard it.
At first, it was faint, almost drowned by the ocean wind that was, well, should have been there. A high-pitched whine that made the hairs on her arms rise to attention. It wasn’t natural; it wasn’t part of the would-be wind. She tilted her head, trying to locate it, but the sound seemed to be everywhere at once, echoing in the crypt, bouncing off stone walls, the hollow floors of the Keep.
Static followed. A crackling, electrical hiss that reminded her of old radios her father had tinkered with. And beneath that, impossibly, the stuttered tone of a dial-up connection.
Her chest tightened. Something about it made her skin crawl. Something about it was… familiar. She shivered, remembering late nights listening to her mother’s old cassette recordings, to her father’s voice on the wind, to the strange frequencies the Keep sometimes seemed to hum with when the sea was angry. The groans and hollows of the forest.
A shriek struck through the cacophony, “ JIMMY!” It decrescendo through the multiple levels of the mausoleum until only a faint hum of “....jimmy…” came back to her. She dropped her duster. The wooden handle hitting the floor reverberated as if attached to a speaker.
A heartbeat passed. Then a dread chill ran down her spine. I heard that… It had been clear, distinct. A voice cutting through the static and hum.
“Theresa…”
She froze, her palm flatly on the mausoleum door she had been pushing open. Her mind raced. A light breeze crossed the nap of her neck. The sound came again, more insistent, like a ripple through the Keep itself.
“Theresa… it’s me…”
Terry’s breath hitched. She didn’t recognize the voice, and yet it tugged at something deep inside. Something primal, instinctual, almost like a memory she never had but somehow understood. She couldn’t see anyone in the mausoleum, couldn’t even feel the warmth of another body. And yet, the voice was there, calling, urging, pulling.
Static and the dial-up tone flared around her. The crypt seemed to stretch and twist. Shadows lengthened despite the mausoleum overhead light remaining steady. The air smelled of sea salt and earth and something… else. Something like copper.
Terry stepped back from the door, the pulsating sounds making her nauseous. One hand at her chest, steadying her heart, the other brushing alongside a cold stone wall, trying to stabilize herself. Her pulse pounded. The Keep had always been strange, but this…this was something else entirely. Something alive. Like in the forest…
She blinked. The placard in front of her, her son’s placard, seemed to quiver, the letters faintly glowing in a soft blue hue. The name itself echoed alongside the rhythm of the frequency, vibrating in her chest. Only a shadow crossing over the glow drew her out of the moment. From the darkness from the other end of the crypt, a crow burst forth, wings thrashing in impossibly rapid beats. It flew toward her with uncanny speed. Its feathers glinted blue-black in the dim light. Her eyes locked on the crow’s, unblinking, determined, luminescent orbs.
She gasped, instinctively reaching out to shield herself yet break the bird’s attack. Her fingers lightly brushed its feathers, and then the world blurred.
The crypt, the keep, even the ocean’s howl had all dissolved into an impossible silence, a vacuum of color and sound. Theresa felt herself lifted, unmoored, pulled forward into a weightless darkness. Somewhere far off, faintly, she thought she heard it again.
The voice, calling, insistent, familiar… and terrifying.