Chapter Text
Ewan had blown in to Nowhere like a tumbleweed; a rumpled and reedy creature with a mop of black curls and a narrowed, dark gaze that seemed in constant motion. He brought with him the scent of ozone and the threat of a calamity. He was tired, worn down from the travel and a string of sleepless nights. His clothing was threadbare and simple, revealing none of the small, thin frame beneath it. If a person had cared to look at him close enough, they would have seen the deep shadows under his eyes. They might even have felt the buzzing, ethereal energy that hovered over his head like a storm cloud.
He attracted no attention upon his arrival. Nowhere, Michigan was just large enough that a strangers presence wasn't exciting news. It seemed to be a mostly a liminal place where many passed through but few stayed or settled. No one batted an eye when stepped off the bus, armed with only a heavy canvas backpack strung across one thin shoulder.
At first it seemed that Nowhere was like everywhere else he'd been. Sure, it lacked the oppressive wet heat of the Southeast, or the aggressively desolate landscape of the Planes, but truly it was just as nondescript as the last city where he had stopped to rest. It had the same dull-eyed, uninterested people, the same jungle of mirrored skyscrapers, the same muddied smell of desperation and damp pavement. Nowhere seemed like a place that would be easily forgotten. The soullessness of it made him sigh, anticipating a dull few weeks spent meandering about the small metropolis. Had he a choice, he would have continued along his way.
Alas, he did not have a choice. His body was worn down from the road and he'd spent the last of his meager savings on vodka and a winter appropriate coat. He would need to stop here to replenish himself both physically and financially before moving on to, hopefully, greener pastures. Gritting his teeth, he resigned himself to his fate. He didn't intend to stay long. He never did.
Ewan's nomadic lifestyle had begun at the age of seventeen. The routine was always the same. Run. Find an anonymous enough place to take shelter, work, rest and then run again. It was the only way to keep It at bay. If he stayed too long in any one city, It would find him. It crept closer with each passing hour until he could almost feel it reach out its hand to sink its claws into his flesh, like a monster or a devil or perhaps something even more sinister.
Truth be told, Ewan had no real idea what It was. It could be a He or She or They. It could be something entirely beyond the concept of gender or humanity. He only had a bone deep certainty that if he became complacent, it would find him and then something awful and irrevocable would happen. He had to stay ahead of it.
So he moved, never getting comfortable, forgoing all but the most surface level of human interaction. He was untethered. A feather in the wind. He had been up one side of the Country and down the other. For all he was lacking in formal education, the years of travel had given him a wealth of world knowledge and grit. As scrawny as he was, Ewan was tough, intelligent and resilient. You didn't spend years living off street smarts and odd jobs without developing a robust set of skills that few could boast. He had honed those skills, learned to be cautious and watchful - not just of whatever strange forces haunted his dreams and stalked him like some kind of large cat in the shadows, but also of people and their endless questions.
Ewan could lie. He could lie very well. He could manipulate. He could make people like him and just as easily forget that he existed entirely. He was adept at slipping into sleepy villages and carving out a place for himself only to disappear a few months later as if he's never been there at all. It was an odd talent, but a necessary one. For a while, Ewan had made it something of a game. Time, however, wore the novelty of it down and standing on the sidewalk outside of the bus station one a cool Michigan evening, Ewan acknowledged that he was, in fact, quite lonely.
Perhaps that is what made him stay.
It might have been the surprisingly lush landscape that encapsulated Nowhere. Ewan had been pleasantly surprised to find that while the city itself was a bleak concrete mass, the outskirts of the town were green and dark. He had always found himself more at ease in woodlands, lulled by the scent of earth and pine. A fifteen minute walk took him into what seemed to be seldom touched forest, dotted by old farms and the occasional slice of civilization. The droning noise of downtown gave way to the near electric screeching of the cicadas. The tense muscles of his back and shoulders began to relax and for the first time in weeks, he was able to breathe deeply.
It might have been the ease in which he found his bearings that persuaded him to stay. As if this odd little town with its odd little people had been waiting just for him.
His first order of business whenever he landed in a new city was to secure a safe enough place to sleep. Over half a decade of drifting had helped him identify the best spots for him to lay claim. He was lucky this time around. He didn't need to stand in line at shelter, fuck his way into a stranger's home or bed down in some dilapidated, abandoned building. While he could, and would do any of those things again if necessary, it was vastly preferable to simply find a motel that was kind enough (or naive enough) to allow him to pay his way when checking out.
He found one such place in the Homestead Motel-West. It was a rather run down but clean structure located just off one of the State highways, surrounded by large swathes of wetlands. It was marshy, muggy and despite the chill in the air, the mosquitoes were out in force. The motel itself was hopping. This was mostly due to the dive bar connected to the backside of the building. Ewan could hear the twang typical of modern country music leaking out of the closed, heavy metal door. The scent of cheap beer and sweat got stronger the closer he came.
After securing a room, the bar was his first stop. He quickly located the rather haggard looking barkeep and in exchange for a warm, greasy meal and a small portion of the evening's tips, he spent his first night in Nowhere busing tables, cleaning dishes and hefting kegs of beer up and down the uneven stone steps of the bar's basement.
He should have simply faded into the background, another nameless service worker there to wait upon the patrons while they drank away their troubles. The problem was, Ewan was a very pretty boy. Even covered in a fine layer of dirt from the road,with lines of fatigue marring his face, there was no denying the chiseled, handsome bone structure. Years of disordered eating may have made him skinny, but there was a gracefulness to his movements that made both men and women alike give him second glance. Those fine features had the curious patrons buying him drinks and handing him small glasses of grain alcohol. It tasted like varnish but numbed the soreness in his body and carried away his worries . As such, he found himself singing along with the very mediocre fiddle band that had taken up residence on the bar's small corner stage.
It was there that he was discovered by Doreen and Cora Garren.
If Ewan were to be brutally honest with himself, it was Doreen and Cora that made him stay. He had been without family for a long, long time. So long that he could barely recall the exact color of his grandmother's eyes. He remembered, though, what it felt like to belong and from the moment the Garren's had laid eyes on Ewan they had claimed him as their wayward son. Doreen's brand of no-nonsense tough love had been perfectly balanced by her wife's more doting nature. He'd fought them in the beginning, giving all sorts of attitude and being generally unkind towards the pair. They had been unwavering in their insistence, refusing to take no for an answer. They did not allow his jibes or cutting wit to deter them in what he would later call his "domestication".
They had made it so, so easy for him.
They gave him a job. Doreen had inherited several franchise businesses from her late father. One of which was a 24 hour gas station that needed tending. Ewan found that he liked to see all the comings and goings, taking note of strangers and gossiping with locals. The shifts were easy. The pay was good and he had access to all the free caffeine his little heart could ever want.
They gave him a home. Within a month of his arrival in Nowhere, Cora and Doreen had moved him into the loft above their barn. It had been converted into a small, studio apartment with a full bathroom and central air conditioning. It was the nicest place he'd lived since he had left his grandmother's home as a child. As he acquired more and more things - blankets, books, posters, artworks, even knickknacks, he began to see the space as his.
Along with two, new motherly figures he acquired several individuals who seemed determined to push their way into his life, creating chaos in his otherwise perfectly crafted bubble of isolation. Havar, Flynn and Dani were all employed by Doreen and after being formally introduced, they refused to let him hole up alone in his loft. They followed him around, brought him cups of coffee and insisted on dragging him about the city to show him the best and most secret spots.
It had chafed him, at first, to realize that he'd been unofficially adopted. That was something he had longed for as a child and now, when he hadn't even been looking for it, a strange sort of family had fallen into his lap. So he stayed, but with the wariness of a tomcat crossing a frozen lake, ready to flee with all haste at the slightest crack.
Family came with shared evening meals, and lectures about his health. It came with inside jokes and late night snuggles. Havar and Dani would curl their bodies around him like some sort of shield in the twilight and it seemed to keep all his demons at bay. It came with hungover breakfasts and people who would simply not stay out of his business. Despite all of this, they never asked for an explanation. They didn't demand to know his past or how he had ended up drifting aimless and alone. They simply accepted him and helped him to build a life that he hadn't thought possible.
It was because of this that he forgot about It. As he rooted himself to Nowhere and forged new connections, the overwhelming sense of dread, of being hunted, faded away until it was only a small tick in the back of his mind. The need to run, run, run had morphed into a curious desire to settle. His fear was replaced by affection, his cynicism by hope and to his delight the nightmares that had stalked him for so very long were silent.
Until they weren't.