Floyd Flanders once said: 'I warned you, Spencer.' ~ The Scarecrow.

SPENCER

Today. It's today. There are no more excuses. I know, I know deep down that he will be back, but in the past I have waited years for that event and I can't stay here in this dilapidated hole awaiting that great happening. I need to get out.

Of course I'm a fool. I should have checked up on things before now, disappearing children, murders, but leaving this place wasn't really part of my plan. I had no way to check on events which could have been unfolding just outside my door. I have the occasional plan which hasn't been formulated and numbered and annotated by Floyd. I can make my own and I'm quite good at it! But this wasn't part of the rough scribblings of a plan I had formulated in my muddled mind. I wasn't really going to be packing my bags, toothbrush and razor included, and using the keys I'd hidden. I had no real intention of doing that or I would have driven off as soon as I knew that the keys fitted the car and that the car wasn't rigged to explode – (which I didn't think of at the time, but really wouldn't have shocked me) but now my belongings, what there is of them, are stuffed in the trunk of the car and my pillows are resting on the back seat of that same car with a green and red quilt folded neatly next to it.

I'm leaving.

I have money. I have cash. I have rather a lot of cash, actually. Floyd uses banks, but seems to have money hidden away all over the place and I've had a month of searching and during that month I've found enough, more than enough, money to keep me going for probably a good few months. I will have to be careful what I buy. I will have to sleep in the car. I will have to be oh so very aware, but it's possible. I also obviously have money in the bank. I can access that easily enough, but will Floyd use that to track me down?

Sitting in the car, I've made myself laugh again. Floyd need my banking details to track me down? Who am I trying to fool! He'll just sniff me out. He'll wrap his fingers around the tendrils of scent and emotions and he'll wind it in and there I'll be at the end of it, apologising, on my overly used knees, begging him to understand why I ran and left no message for him. Trying to get him to love me! Need me!

All of this is for Sam. All of it! Has it ever been for me? How much have I given up for that thing called Sam? How much? Everything? I've handed Floyd over to him with not much more of a whimper. Pathetic! Stupid. I'm a grown man and maybe I've had a few – more than a few – but not too many problems in my past, but to hand over the only man I've ever loved to a child… to allow that to happen and then be pulled in by it? It makes me feel ill thinking about it. I would be locked up if the authorities knew. I'd never be released if they knew the true depths I had sunk to.

The car doesn't have that new smell to it. I doubt it ever did. It smells of cheroots and cloves. It smells of something which makes my nose tingle and my eyes try to water. I don't know why. I'm not sitting here on the leather car seat crying. That's not what the tears are. It's maybe the irritation of the fumes, those smells which bring back oh so many memories. Good memories! Good and bad, I guess, but for now good things come flooding into my mind. The cloves. He started chewing on them to sweeten his breath. I mentioned to him once that his breath stank like something dead had crawled into his mouth and taken root. Or perhaps it was that I recoiled from him once. He tends to speak very close. Close enough that I can feel his lips brush mine, or directly into my ear, licking at me as he talks his sweet words. Maybe I recoiled from that. I can't really remember what actually happened, but he took note. He did something for me. Didn't go so far as brushing his teeth or using a mouthwash or flossing, but he did start to chew cloves. That was for me. That was something Floyd did, thinking only of me. As I sit here in the car I think of how he would run his fingers down the side of my face, or gently over my neck. I think of the way those fingers seem to pick out all of the places where he knows… he knows that I like that. That gentle and loving side of Floyd. It's not mentioned much, I suppose, but it's there. I couldn't love a man as deeply as I love Floyd if there was only pain. Sure, I know… pain is part of it too. That rush of adrenaline. That spike I feel… that tightening of something which flows through me. Like a drug.

I wipe at my eyes with my fists.

I'm angry.

I'm so damned angry. How did it come to this point? I hardly know now. So many things happened. So much.

And again Sam. Sam who can twist time and make things start from the beginning. Start the pain all over again from the very first punch, twist, pinch and bite. And there is so much spinning in my head. Too many confused backgrounds that I hardly know who I am now. Am I the Spencer who met Floyd for the first time when I was out investigating murders with the team? When Princess was there. Those scarecrows. That was just another twist which I am sure Sam had something to do with.

Did I first know Floyd when I was coming home from school and the bullies knocked books from my hands and he stepped forward, giving me a lift home on the back of his bike. Big brother love… that didn't last either.

Was Floyd really around when I was a baby? Did he watch from the shadows as I was brought home from hospital with my parents? Did he sit in the dark in my bedroom as I lay there in my crib… watching and waiting? Have I always known Floyd?

I remember… I can truly remember that first kiss. The dimple. That kiss on my lower back. Just above my right buttock. I was still a child. That kiss on the corner of my mouth. I was no more than twelve at the time and it meant nothing, obviously meant no more than my mother kissing me on the cheek, or a ruffling of the hair my father used to give me when I was small. Contact of that sort with my father was rare. It makes me shiver… makes my arms come out in goosebumps when I think of it. Why was my father so reluctant to have physical contact with me? Oh I know what Floyd has said, but I also know that Floyd lies… they drip from his tongue like honey on a hot spoon… soothing words. Such soft and soothing words.

I start the car. Tears, whatever caused them, have dried up. Gone. They're not magical things like Sam's. They can't lure anyone in. They mean nothing. They don't smell of roses or taste good… at least not to me. Floyd says I taste of that honey I just spoke of. Lies again. I don't. I'm very sure of that.

Not being a complete idiot. Genius. Certified. I don't go directly to where we put up the posters for the circus… not near to where JJ lives. I go out in the opposite direction. The windows are tinted. The car is legal – as far as I am aware it is. I know advertisements for the circus – Freak Show – whatever it was, I know they were posted other places, so it's there I go first. There is nothing. I walked these streets with a stapler in one hand and a wad of papers in the other. I know I stuck them to trees and other useful places. I know I did. Now I am parked up staring at the tree I remember putting one of them on and there's nothing there. Nothing. Not even a staple with a thumbnail sized bit of torn paper lodged under it. There really is no sign that anything had been put there. I looked. I got out of the car and had a close look. Not so close that it looked like I was some drunk or insane person talking to trees, but pretty close. If something had once been put there, it was now gone. All of the places I've checked. Nothing.

It's to the library I go next. Not my local one. I drive for over an hour before I get the courage to park up properly and go to check old newspapers and reports of missing children.

Not being a fool, I check all reports of all crimes. I make note of it all. I cover pages in my handwriting in the notebook I bought in a small store just down the road. Pages of reports which mean nothing to me. Burglaries, muggings, illegal acts carried out in all places. I write them all down. If I'm asked, I need not to just have missing person's reports, and I do have some.

Marie Benarche. She went missing some two months ago, but the missing person report only went in last month. I underline it for some reason. She had been walking back alone from a night out with friends and never made it home. They won't find her. I know that. She's dead somewhere. I'm very sure that it has nothing to do with Floyd, but I'm also very sure that she won't be found. Not now. Not so long after she was last seen. I grit my teeth at this. A whole month went by before she was reported gone, disappeared… vanished. Four weeks and no one noticed. She had friends. They were not good ones, obviously.

Dave Wisbeck. Drove off last week after an argument with his wife and hasn't been seen since. They're looking for his car. He was an elderly man. I don't underline this one. It has no relevance to anything, but then nor did Marie. I think that Marie just makes me feel sad. A young girl, not missed for so long. Dave, a man in his eighties… probably lost his way. They will find him hiding out in a motel somewhere.

Leo Jacks. A street worker. He went off with someone last week. That I underline. A young man. The picture shows long blond hair, big eyes… blue eyes. A small face and a small person. Yes, this one I underline. A whore.

For the geographic area I'm looking in they are the only ones who have been reported missing. At least the only ones to make it to the newspapers in the area of interest. No children have wandered off. No missing children of FEDS. Nothing alarming. Which in itself alarms me slightly. I move onto people who have been arrested. Again nothing which I need to concern myself with which again actually is the cause of concern. There seems to be no sign that Henry was snatched from the circus… This brings me to looking for that place. Where is it now? Where has it moved to? I search for it.

Nothing.

There is nothing at all.

It never seemed to have existed. It wasn't advertised in the papers. There was nothing going on at the site Floyd had told me of. Was it all lies? Was it something to keep my quiet? To stop me asking more questions? That easy way I avoided being part of it. The way he allowed me to stay at home. Now it all feels so wrong.

There is something which I note in my head. I don't write it down. I've no need to. I'll remember it. I'll actually remember all of it. No real need to have spent so much time writing useless notes which I will never want or need. A lad was found. They don't know who he is. A teenaged boy with dark hair and eyes. Battered. Beaten. Found walking at the side of the road. They don't know who he is. They don't know where he is from. He's in hospital. His face peers out of the page like a virus. I might not have discovered what Floyd has been up to, but I sure have found Sam.

o-o-o

SAM

Have you ever had to dig yourself out of hell? Maybe. Perhaps you've done that, but I mean actually literally. I mean actual hell, not some depression or fucking bad time you may or may not have had. I don't mean lack of money or a car breakdown on a wet and windy or snowy night in the middle of nowhere. I don't mean escaping from a psychopath who has you tied to a chair in a shed in a cemetery. Not that sort of hell. I don't mean the deep darkness which encroaches minds and forces people to stay in bed for a week. Not that sort of hell at all. I mean real hell. The place where the monsters are as real as time. Very real. Can't escape that. Not really. Not ever. But I managed somehow. I'm not sure how the merry fuck I did manage because I thought I was buried alive somewhere, but I saw light! I saw it creeping around the corners and through the planking of the coffin I was in and then I managed to push up and escape and I'm not kidding you, not one tiny bit, that the condition I was in then was a new hell. The sort of hell you would understand. My fingernails were ruined! Broken. The varnish chipped to fuck and the actual nails split and damaged and I just hope they'll recover. I really do because they look a mess right now and such a mess that I don't really want to talk to anyone. That's not even starting with the state my face and hair was in when someone finally found it in their cold hard heart to call for help for me. No they didn't offer me a lift, but I was told by the cops who did stop for me that someone had made a call about me. Looked like I needed help. Fuck you! Just because my hair was a mess and my makeup totally gone to ruin and my clothes were dirty and ragged, just because of that shit doesn't make me someone who needs help. What I need is Floyd. And he's nowhere to be seen. I'm not talking to anyone. I don't care how many times they ask me my name or where I'm from, I'm not going to tell them. It's not their business. I don't know if I should tell them anything. I don't know if I'm on some FED list of wanted and dangerous people. I don't want to be picked up by some old fart and either told everything is going to be fine (because how can it be when I have a zit on my chin and my nails are a ruin), and I don't want to be picked up for pimping my arse out or some other imagined crime because believe me I've not been doing anything of the sort. I'm not some pity party to be raved over. I'm not what I appear to be.

I am Sam.

I am hell spawn… and Floyd's spawn too.

That makes me special in so many ways that it would make you vomit just to think about it and no one here is going to look at me and think I am anything but some run-away shit from some trailer in the back of nowhere.

I know someone will contact me. I really do. Until then I'm keeping my silence. Oh for sure I'll let my needs be known. I'll talk that sort of crap to people but when they ask for my name and that sort of thing, well, no, that's not about to happen. Not until I have word from Floyd and word will come. If we are in the same world at the same time. Maybe we're not!

Oh fuck.

I'd not thought of that. I might be in a different time-line to Floyd and/or Spencer. I'm not really going to think too much about Spencer though, because I don't think he'd be doing too much thinking about me. Even though I would, you know? I would if I thought he had a care for me, but he doesn't. Frankly, I don't for him either. We've never been best of friends. Not ever. Can't see it happening.

That's beside the point though. Maybe I'm like in a different world. A different place and same time, or it might be the same world but a different time.

I keep asking for a watch. They gave me a small digital bit of plastic crap and I told them it was no good. That I needed a wind up thing and they thought it was because I couldn't tell the fucking time! I know more about time than anyone. I can smell it. I can see it. Not just the flickering numbers on a plastic watch, or hands on a ticking clock up on the wall, I can see it. Actually see it in the air around me.

So I'm waiting.

Waiting for Floyd.

Time is always on my side.

I can wait as long as it takes.