Chapter Text
It had been almost a week since the incident with Rosa accidentally discovering Lincoln. There were a few easily missed signs that someone had been living under the stairs, but aside from that, Lincoln had seemingly vanished once more. When he wasn't instructing summer classes at the nearby Fairway University, Carlos was researching what kind of creature his mother could have seen. So far, the closest thing he was able to come up with wasEl Chupacabra, a reptilian monster from Mexican folklore famous for attacking whole herds of goats and draining them of their blood (the literal translation of the name was "goat sucker").
Ronnie found herself telling Sid and Adelaide all sorts of stories about her friendship with Lincoln, both good and bad. And one day at the skate park, Nikki, a very tall, rail-thin Caucasian girl who was easily the gutsiest of Ronnie's new friends, shared a rumor that the abandoned building across the street from the Casagrandes' apartments was haunted. Apparently, nobody had set foot on the premises foryearsdue to various unexplained happenings: strange noises, strange smells, warm pockets, cold pockets, etcetera, etcetera. Ronnie, of course, challenged the claim. What she didn't expect was for Nikki to challenge the whole group to spend a night in the building to prove Ronnie wrong.
Of course, none of the responsible adults would give Ronnie or Sid permission, stating various reasons why it was a bad idea. Unstable/rotten materials, rats, fleas, Tetanus, Rabies...you get the picture. However, both girls were about as stubborn as they come, so they made a mutual agreement to sneak out while everyone else was asleep.
Wearing a purple hoodie over a white undershirt and jeans, Ronnie quietly tiptoed through her apartment, opened the door, and slipped out into the hall, where Sid was waiting for her.
"You ready for this, gurl?" Sid whispered excitedly.
"Oh, I wasbornready!" Ronnie whispered back. The two turned to walk down the hall...and came face-to-face with a scowling Lily, who was fully dressed just like them. The two younger girls froze in their tracks, sweating profusely at having been caught.
"So, my suspicions were correct," Lily stated in disapproval. "What you two are doing is very,verywrong. Sneaking out in the middle of the night to meet your friends in a creepy abandoned building..." Ronnie and Sid both looked down in shame. "...without invitingme!" They looked up in shock to see Lily's broad grin. "Well, don't juststandthere! Let's get going!" Lily turned and walked away, and the two girls grinned at each other before following.
Nikki, Sameer, and Casey were waiting for them on the front porch of the abandoned building, and the rest of the group followed Nikki inside and down a set of concrete stairs. Nikki explained that she had already scoped out the building once or twice, and determined that the most stable room was the basem*nt. Ronnie could see why: the air was filled with creaks, groans, drips, and the heady smell of mold.
The center of the basem*nt was the driest, so the group sat down, unrolled their sleeping bags, and lit a cluster of large candles that Nikki just happened to have with her. After the candles were lit, something caught Nikki's eye.
"Huh...thatwasn't there before..." she noted. The others followed her gaze to the driest corner, where there was an inflated air mattress, a stained and threadbare blanket, and two ten-gallon trash bags.
"Maybe some hobo tried to set up camp and got scared out by the ghosts?" guessed Sameer, a brown-skinned boy of Middle Eastern descent with an unruly mop of brown hair.
"For that last time, Sameer,there are no ghosts!Nikki's just pulling your leg!" Ronnie snapped.
"You sure about that, Santiago?" Nikki asked with a smug little smile.
"Heck yeah, I'm sure!" Ronnie shot back. The group exchanged spooky stories for a while to pass the time. Eventually, though, they all got bored and sleepy, so they extinguished the candles and crawled into their sleeping bags.
...
Ronnie blearily opened her eyes when she felt someone shake her shoulder.
"Bobby, Itoldyou to stay out of my room," she mumbled, swatting the offending hand and turning over to go back to sleep. The hand shook her shoulder again, so she sighed and sat up. "Alright, listen, you little fungus-" Before she could complete the sentence, the same hand was clapped over her mouth. Having been jolted awake by the action, Ronnie became aware that it was actually Sid who woke her up.
"Shh!I think there's someone upstairs! Listen!" the Asian girl whispered fearfully. Ronnie was about to dismiss it as just Sid's imagination in the creaky old building, but then she heard it herself:
Someone wasdefinitelywalking across the floor directly above them!
The stairs that led to the basem*nt were nearly at the back of the building, so if you entered through the front (the only entrance that wasn't boarded up), you had to pass though several rooms on the main floor. Ronnie listened carefully. Sure enough, the footsteps were heading in the direction of the stairs.
"Sid, stay still and stay quiet," Ronnie whispered back. "They probably don't know we're here. I guess they're probably harmless, but we won't know for sure until we get a good look at them. Understand?" Sid nodded. They waited with bated breath and watched as a shadowy figure wearing a hood descended the stairs, a pair of furry creatures on a rope slung over its shoulder. Ronnie couldn't tell anything more about them due to the dim light filtering through the basem*nt-level windows.
The figure walked over to the corner with the air mattress, set the creatures on the ground, and drew a knife to butcher them. They suddenly froze and co*cked their head. The figure sniffed the air, and Ronnie winced, mentally cursing Nikki for bringingscentedcandles. Without warning, the figure shifted the knife to a reverse grip, turned around, and lunged at them.
Sid screamed as the figure tackled Ronnie, abruptly waking the others. Ronnie and her new adversary grappled with each other on the floor, the others too shocked to even attempt to intervene. Finally, Lily snatched the cigarette lighter from Nikki and started lighting the candles to shed light on the situation. The figure finally pinned Ronnie beneath them and let out a growl as they raised their knife for the kill. The figure suddenly gasped, and the knife fell out of their hand, clattering to the concrete floor next to Ronnie's ear. The Hispanic girl just laid there panting, too scared to move.
"Ronnie?" the figure asked incredulously, lowering their hood.
It wasLincoln!
...
"Lincoln?!Thisis where you've been hiding the whole time?!" Ronnie demanded as Lincoln sheepishly crawled off of her.
"Only for about a week. I was actually hiding inyourbasem*nt until someone found me," Lincoln replied, scratching the back of his neck. The air was suddenly rent by an ear-piercing squeal, after which Lily tackled Lincoln.
"LINCOLN! IT'S REALLY YOU! I WAS SO WORRIED!" his oldest sister cried with joy.
"Yeah, good to see you, too, Lily," Lincoln wheezed with Lily's arms around his neck.
"Whoa! Whoa!Back up!Who the heck is this guy?" Nikki demanded. Ronnie decided to wait until Lily was done practically strangling Lincoln before officially introducing him. When he was back to standing upright and had sufficiently recovered his breath, Ronnie walked over to Lincoln and patted his shoulder with a smile.
"Everyone, this is Lincoln, my best friend from my old hometown." She then looked back at him in shock before scowling. "Dangit, Linc! You grew evenmore!" she complained to her friend, who at this point was nearly two feet taller than her. Casey, an African-American boy with a backwards checkered baseball cap, got a good look at Lincoln and smirked.
"Wow. You are oneuglymotherfu-" he began, only for Nikki to drive her elbow into his gut sharply.
"What have I told you about your filthy mouth?" Nikki reprimanded him. "Besides, he's notthatugly. He looks more like he's cosplaying Killer Croc."
"Except it's not cosplay. It's my actualface," Lincoln said. "You see, I don't know how much Ronnie told you guys about me, but I'm only half human. My biological dad was an alien. Why don't we all sit down so we can discuss this a little more comfortably?" The others sat down on their sleeping bags, and Lincoln dragged his air mattress closer. Picking up his knife from where he'd dropped it, Lincoln started to field-dress the two dead cats he'd brought with him, to some of their disgust.
"Dude! Do youhaveto do thathere?!" Sameer complained.
"Sorry. I have to roast them before the meat spoils," Lincoln replied. "They're actually pretty tasty with a little salt and pepper."
Swallowing the bile rising in her throat, Nikki said, "Well, that answers my question of where the stray cats have been going. Why are you living in people's basem*nts, anyway?"
"It's...complicated," Lincoln said as he ripped out one of the cats' entrails with his bare hand. "Back home in Royal Woods, I was kind of an oddity. The people who already knew me and/or grew up with me liked me for who I was. Everyone else, eh, not so much. Eventually, things got so sour that I stowed away in Ronnie's moving van. I've been here ever since, sleeping during the day and exploring the city at night. I probably would've had a much harder time if Pop-Pop hadn't taught me how to hunt and set traps."
"Pop-Pop?" Sid echoed.
"Our grandfather on Mom's side of the family. Lincoln's my brother. Well, technicallyhalf-brother," Lily explained. "Pop-Pop took care of Lincoln in ways Mom and Dad weren't able to. We have a lot of siblings, so Mom and Dad both had to work in order to feed so many mouths. Pop-Pop loved all of us equally, but Lincoln was special. He was the only one of us who showed any interest whenever Pop-Pop offered to take us hunting. Lincoln was just as close to him as he was to Mom." Lily's face then drooped. "Then...the incidenthappened..."
Everyone was able to guess what happened when looks of pain crossed both Loud siblings' faces, Lincoln's in particular.
"What...happened?" asked Sameer.
Ronnie began, "It's not really something they like talking abou-"
"No, Ronnie," Lincoln interrupted. "It'smystory, so I'm going to tell it. If you trust your friends enough to tell them about me, I guess I can trust them too." Putting one of the skinned cat carcasses on a makeshift spit, Lincoln took a deep breath as he ignited his backpacking stove. "It happened when I was eight years old..."
