2019.

As she waited for her appointment with the Crimson Wraith, Gracie returned to her copy of Nights of Justice:

No definitive consensus exists regarding the precise inception of the Crimson Wraith’s career. He did not, after all, trumpet his arrival to the major media outlets of the day. The earliest known police report to mention his name dates to 1942 and originates from a witness statement concerning an attempted robbery. The witness, one Miss Agnes Addison, described a “phantom in red” who emerged from a cloud of smoke to intercept two young men fleeing a recently burgled jewelry store. She described the figure as “terrifying.” 

 Overcome by shock, Miss Addison lost consciousness and awoke some time later in the arms of a TCPD officer, who had arrived in response to the alarm. He found the culprits trussed from head to toe, and Miss Addison gently laid upon the sidewalk, her handbag tucked beneath her head as a makeshift pillow.

About ten minutes to midnight, Gracie headed downstairs and heard Kevin chuckling along with a muffled sitcom laugh track. The sound came from the study, which she would have to pass on her way out back.

She hadn’t told anyone about her invitation from the Crimson Wraith. Although it seemed like everyone at Finn Manor knew him, the letter came just for her and it came sealed, so maybe she should keep quiet about it, even if their meeting place was Kevin’s backyard.

The door to the study stood open, and as she approached the sounds of paired laughter, she found Kevin sitting with his feet up, bag of microwave popcorn in his lap, wearing a pair of pajamas she guessed cost more than her entire wardrobe. On a side table that probably usually held buckets of ice for chilling champagne, Kevin had placed a tablet on which a television show was playing. 

He noticed her in the doorway and paused his show. “Not too loud, am I?” he asked, as if he had been watching TV next door to her bedroom instead of down a staircase and two hallways away.

“No, you’re fine. Good show?”

“It’s won awards.”

“Nice.”

“You want a late night snack or something? Stephen’s gone to sleep at this point, but you know…” He shook his popcorn at her.

“That’s okay. Just felt like stretching my legs.”

“Sure. Of course. I get that.”

How did this guy seem so normal? Rich people weren’t supposed to be normal. Here he was, as mundane as anything, not a hint of twisted debauchery to him. Surely, there at least had to be something creepy in the basement, right? 

But what was really weird to Gracie was how she noticed there was space on the couch beside Kevin, and, for just an instant, she got an image of herself sitting down there with him, sharing that popcorn, watching a sitcom where everyday folks work their gosh-darned best to live a good life and take care of each other, one day at a time. It wasn’t a romantic image, just being there and being herself with someone who felt okay being himself and everything being just fine. 

That image had never been her life. It was more foreign than the butler providing in-home room service or going for a ride in an antique luxury car. 

Having this peaceful space where terror of what fresh hell was going to happen next didn’t have to hang in the air like evil potpourri, where there wasn’t that constant threat of shouting and fighting and things being thrown, where she didn’t need one eye looking over her shoulder to see who was going to screw her over next but in fact had total fucking strangers going out of their way to be helpful, and not because they were getting paid to — it was like Bizarro World, everything upside down and backwards from her own. 

Or was hers the Bizarro World? Was this actually how things were supposed to be?

She left Kevin, and the sounds of the show and his laughter returned as she made her way out the back door. The flashlight on her phone helped her find her way down the steps, down the garden path, and back towards the family plot.

Graves in the backyard. Oh, right. This was definitely the Bizarro World.

As she approached the Finn Mausoleum, Gracie saw no red-cloaked figure among the headstones, so she called out softly. “Hey, Crimson Wraith? You here? It’s midnight. I know that’s kind of your thing…”

Then she felt a coolness around her ankles and looked down to see wisps of fog curling past her boots. Gracie stopped and stood as it thickened and rose up to her knees.

Of course he was right behind her. It was the creepiest way for him to appear. But, even unsurprised, Gracie flinched when she heard his hollow, echoing voice in her ear. 

“Please, turn off your light.”

“Feeling shy? Afraid I’ll post pics of us online?”

“Please,” he repeated.

“Fine.” Gracie switched the light off of her phone and pocketed it. “I’m going to turn around now, ok?”

“You may.”

And there he was, a spectral shape shrouded in darkness, his cloak blood red where it was touched by moonlight through the trees, the shape of his skull barely visible in the shadows of his hood. Even though she’d seen him before, even though she knew to expect him, Gracie felt an instinctive fear clutch at her as she stared into the blackness of those empty sockets.

Then he said, “You saw your roommate today.”

“Yeah. I did. And her boyfriend. And everything is pretty fucked, so I guess I’m going to prison, and he gets to keep making Kristen his punching bag.”

“That may not have to be your fate. Or hers.”

“Really? ‘Cuz I’m not seeing any way around it.”

“A judge might consider dropping your charges or reducing your sentence if certain factors are in place.”

“You mean like if Zack says, ‘Hey, sorry, judge. I’m really the bad guy here’? Yeah, I don’t see that happening.”

“People have a change of heart sometimes.”

“Not that I’ve seen,” said Gracie. “In my experience, an asshole is an asshole is an asshole, pretty much forever.”

“There’s a lot you haven’t seen.”

“Hey, I’ve seen a fuckton more than you would have any idea about. So, don’t go telling me what I have and haven’t seen, okay?”

He took a step toward her. “What a terrible thing that is.”

“What?”

“To see so much that nothing can surprise you. To know the score before the game is even played. That is a terrible, terrible thing, and I am sorry that it happened to you so young.”

Gracie swallowed. “Well, maybe a few things have surprised me, just recently. You, for instance. And your friends.” She gestured to the mansion.

The Crimson Wraith nodded. “They have surprised me too.”

“Okay, so let’s say you want to surprise me a little more, huh? Say there’s a chance things can work out differently — like, a really, really small chance. What would that look like?”

“First,” he said, “It would involve me asking your permission to help you, and to help you in the ways that I know how to help.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I would like you to trust me.”

Trust was a precious commodity for Gracie, rarer than gold. She didn’t like to give it away, but there was no denying the Crimson Wraith and his people had done all right by her so far. “Do I have a choice?”

“You do. I will not take further action unless you want. You can leave things to Bradley and the courts, and he is good at what he does. He’s honest, and the District Attorney respects him. That counts for a lot.”

“Say he pulls off a miracle for me. That’s great, but Kristen…”

“We cannot make her leave him.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because she is choosing to be with him, and she continues to make that choice. Sometimes people are drawn toward that. They hurt themselves with another person’s hands. However, he might choose to end their relationship, with proper persuasion.”

“Persuasion?” For someone who had talked her down from further violence at the apartment, it sounded an awful lot like the Crimson Wraith was suggesting that Zack might end up “sleeping with the fishes,” the way mobsters said in movies.

But instead of answering her, the Crimson Wraith asked, “Will you let me help you?” 

Was this what that Faust guy felt like? Or Robert Johnson meeting the Devil at the crossroads? An otherworldly being offers to make a deal, and the terms of that pact seem suspiciously vague. Act too eagerly, and you can lose your immortal soul without even learning to play rock and roll.

Except, no matter how sinister the Crimson Wraith liked to present himself, everyone who she had met in connection to him had seemed so kind and not-shitty, even Danny and his fried bologna sandwiches. None of them made her skin crawl like the guys who came up to her on the street, saying she looked hungry and asking if she had somewhere to stay, or make the pit of her stomach ache like the girls who said Gracie should come meet this cool new friend of theirs and then never were heard from again. No, her gut told her that this was actually okay, bizarre as it might be.

Well, Gracie thought, what do I have to lose?

“Ok,” she said, “Let’s do this.”