#yes my dad is papa nihil in my phone

[mymomtheghoul]

Shout out to Papa Nihil! (he won't be able to hear you otherwise.)

[anamelessfool]

A Naming (part 2 of 5)

Rated Teen, Papa Emeritus II’s Son and Family

Tags: Halloween Hijinks, Eldest Kid Anxiety, Suburban Dad Secondo, Disabled Secondo, Post-Retirement Life, Magic Rituals, My AU with Seocondo being Papa from 2001-2008

CW: Underage Drinking

Paul is at the party. He gets a little too over his head. And he can't completely blame the punch.

Dedicated to @kissingghouls thanks for cheering me on you’re my little Hell Pumpkin🎃 I’m on AO3 with all my other fics but Tumblr gets mad at me when I post links check out #anamelessfool halloween tag for the prev chapter

The first thing Paul noticed when he approached the house party was that he was the only person not in costume. Even the most leather-necked of linebackers attempted something with a Ghostface mask perched on their heads. Everyone around him looked big, capable. He distracted his nerves by typing in his phone.

Paul L: I'm here

Dana: 🙂

Music thudded softly from within as he climbed the stairs. If he didn’t look to either his left or right he could pretend that he was confident about his choice of no costume. Yes, it was some sort of defiant, anti-establishment sort of thing. But they had just witnessed him exit a car driven by his father and piled high with little kids and their sugar-fueled screams, so perhaps the rebel act wasn’t very convincing.

Dana waved from the front door, ushering him in. He darted in like he was escaping some oncoming storm, and she the only chance at rescue. Inside the fairly large house was packed with most of the upperclassmen shouting over some punk rock cover of Monster Mash. “Hey, so happy you’re here.”

“Thanks for inviting me,” he replied, and at once he slowly removed his hands from his hoodie pockets.

“A freshman… You invited a fucking freshman?” Right. Dana wasn’t the only person here. A sour looking boy tossed the hair from his head, his mouth a thin line.

“Relax, he's cool,” said Dana with a small smile. Paul felt a warmth flood his entire body. “He’s most of the orchestra pit.” Dana was the lead role for the fall play. And midway through Act II he could get a clear view of her singing at the front of the stage. She was just as beautiful now, all dolled up in some kind of half-hearted witch getup that gave her the excuse to have glittering goth makeup.

“Yeah well what do you play then?” Asked the older boy.

The better question was what Paul didn't play. His father was a prodigy on piano but dabbled elsewhere. Paul took after his grandfather Nihil, who somehow despite his foggy brain took to every instrument like a duck to water. “Guitar, bass guitar, piano,” Paul listed and his confidence started to crawl back. “All percussion. Some violin. Trumpet. I'm learning saxophone because Mr. Baxter needs one for the Spring show. And…that's it. So far.”

“Wow, no wonder you’re a shut in,” quipped the boy before melting back into the crowd.

“Asshole!” Dana jokingly swatted at him as he left, then turned back to Paul with a wince. “Sorry. Hey. Make yourself at home. Go get some punch, okay?”

“No, he’s right I’m…not really out there…”

“First time for everything, right?” Dana held out her hand and he took it, deciding he’d be okay with dying right then and there. He floated along beside her as she led him to the punch bowl and ladled him a glass. “Just have fun, Paul.”

Yes. He was going to have fun. He didn’t dare want to let her down, and that fifteen foot walk from the foyer to the dining room was one of the greatest things that had ever happened to him. Partygoers wandered in and out around him but their voices were muffled from the pounding in his ears. The music felt miles away, at the bottom of a lake. At last he recognized someone coming towards him, an older kid named Brian who he spent most of his time with in the orchestra pit.

“Yo! You came!” Brian grinned. “No costume?”

“No time.”

“That’s cool. Hey… you want a little…excitement…” Brian whipped out a flask from his jacket, leering.

“I mean um…” Maybe it would do something with his nerves. And he didn't want to spend the rest of his life known as the fucking freshman invited out of pity. He was cool. Talented. Able to hold his liquor. He was supposed to have fun: Dana’s orders. “Um, sure.”

He tipped the punch down his throat, perhaps a little too fast. There was very little burn at all to scold him. As Brian kept talking to him, his mind kept floating away. He squeezed his eyes shut, leaned against the wall but nodded all the same like nothing was the matter. A stupid smile began to creep across his face as Ben talked and kept introducing him to the girls that wandered by. How may Poison Ivy costumes were there? At least five. Or was he meeting the same girl over and over? The red cup creaked in his hand as he held it like some sort of safety rope.

“Since dawn of time the fate of man is that of lice…” His father's voice unmistakably seethed out from the playlist. Paul looked desperately for the exit but the windows and doors swam unsteadily in front of him.

“What, you scared?” asked another girl dressed as Poison Ivy. Yes, he had seen at least three others in the past hour. “It's Ghost, you ever heard of them? You like metal?”

“HELL SATAN! ARCHANGELOOOO!”

“Yeah a little bit,” Paul said. “I don't think they're real metal.”

“His name’s Secondo, actually,” explained the kid who had attached the aux to his phone. “Yeah, he's out. His brother is in. They say now he's a…hey man what’s up with you?”

“Yeah, I know him,” Paul slurred with a slight giggle. “That's my uncle. Haven't seen him much, though.”

The kid peered suspiciously into Paul. “You…know them?”

Paul flashed a fuzzy smile and moments after speaking he wished everything was a dream. “Yeah. The guy singing. He's my dad.”

“What?” yelled the kid, and more party guests wandered over. “What, he's your dad?!”

“He uh…got sick. Retired.”

“He will ascend to the heavens! Above the stars of God! Hell Satan!”

A few phones whipped out from pockets and Paul watched in growing horror how every one of these upperclassmen started typing into search engines. A boy held out his phone and Papa Emeritus II glared out at them all. “This? This…is your dad?”

Paul smiled painfully. He decided never to drink ever again. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, I've seen him around! Holy shit!” A girl laughed and flashed another photo for them all to see: A photo of his father in shades, flanked by two women dressed as sexy nuns. “Is one of these girls your mom?”

“And he like, chops up dead bodies now,” said another kid. “You got dead grandmas in your freezer yeah?”

“Well, uh, my dad doesn't chop up the bodies, that's my mom’s job—” This was going nowhere, but the spiked punch made Paul plod on. “Yeah there's um a big difference between mortician and funeral director ya know my dad sorta just handles the documents….for the state….” He ended his statement with a careful sip.

“Holy shit this kid is a fucking riot.”

More partiers began surrounding him, and through his dizziness he was completely certain they were there to laugh at him. Voices swam in and out.

“Who’s that? Oh yeah, the gravedigger kid…”

“Wait, have you seen the music video? And your Dad was in that? Dude there were naked chicks in that video dude!”

“Yeah, uh…I guess…yeah…” Paul was ready to die. He waited for some holy lightning bolt to come down from on high, but if anyone noticed that his own mother was also featured in that video he would do the job himself.

The Aux kid was fully grinning. “That’s amazing dude, amazing, he’s literally Satan, dude—“

“He’s sorta boring, actually,” Paul threw in. His solo cup was thoroughly demolished. The sugar mixing with the alcohol was making his stomach turn. Perhaps vomiting would deflect all of this attention to the more ordinary embarrassment of destroying someone’s living room carpet.

“That means he knows spells.” Dana emerged from the shadows, flanked by some equally attractive friends. Her black lips pursed as her heavily-shadowed eyes gleamed. “If he's the devil he knows spells, right?”

“It's not real,” stammered Paul. Her gaze made him weak. “Well…it's…sorta real…”

“Real? It's all fucking real, no way! Have you seen him do spells?!”

Every morning, an odd musical chant. Every evening, another droning mantra. The man would not shut up about the weather and piles of his journals were scattered around the house. No flicks of wands or fairy dust or leaping demons. No fireballs or bursts of healing light. Just the sound of his father droning syllables and a disgusting collection of animal skulls and jars filled with rusted nails and weird smells. “Yeah, I guess…” And of course, Paul would not shut up. He could not, with how everyone was paying attention to him. He had to get out of this. And the only way out was through. “I can do them too, you know.”

***

Sandra was snuggled up on the couch with the on-call phone when Paul returned.

“How was it? So happy you went.” On the television two men chained in a filthy bathroom argued and came to the realization that yes, one of them would have to amputate.

“It was alright. Any…calls?”

“No, just little ol’ me alone,” Sandra replied, sitting up. “And Ed checking in to tell me the guys brought all the kid cousins out for a late dinner.” She rubbed her eyes, refocusing on the men screaming on the television. “The sequels didn’t compare to this one. Gratuitous. Real fear is all just head games, ya know? It’s all just…in the mind.”

“Yeah well, good night then.” Paul hugged her then walked down the hallway, glancing quickly back as he passed the door to his room and silently slipped into the office.

Secondo always kept a lamp softly illuminated in the corner. Paul moved soundlessly across the beige carpet to arrive at the TV hutch. His fingers trembled as he gently untangled the red ribbon across the knobs. Secondo was miles away surrounded by screaming children in a busy pizza place but still Paul was certain he’d hear the smallest disturbance. Maybe not his flesh and blood father but the Eye would.

The hutch opened and light shone across the crystal skull in its nest of dead flowers. The strong scent of frankincense and charcoal wafted across him, fleeing into the air like a freed spirit. In Paul’s heightened mind everything inside seemed much more foreign and terrifying than usual. Some sort of large, milk-white snake floated in a jar in the far back. There were stacks of rocks, rose petals in a stone urn before bundles of feathers arranged in a bouquet. A few mummified hawk claws hung on a string. Daggers were arranged like surgical instruments on top of a rabbit skin. A series of small journals were crammed where a VCR should go. And buried deep within, the golden goat head of Baphomet peered from behind a collection of railroad spikes, their arm raised as if scolding him for daring to do all this.

The topic of the admonishment was not necessarily betraying his father’s trust. The deepest shame the statue bestowed on Paul as he rummaged around it was the fact that all of this trespassing was done in the name of impressing some mortals the boy decided was worth the cost.

Paul knew his father barely worked with every material in his collection, but he had to make a good impression. His new friends wanted to see some magic, so a decent show of arcane wisdom was essential. He chose a thin deer’s tibia as his wand. An oddly shaped chunk of rainbow obsidian would make a decent centerpiece. He collected some chalk into his hoodie pockets along with a few dried rose petals and a black candle.

Now for the book. Paul was so distracted with worrying about his plan that he hadn’t really sat down and considered exactly what kind of magic he’d actually want to do. There were too many books on the shelves for him to skim through in the small scrap of time he had before his mother checked on him. He struggled to unwedge one of his father’s journals from the VCR shelf, and at last he had a sample of what he actually could do.

The front of the journal was dated: Oct 1999- March 2000. Inside was a mishmash of charts, sketches and the impeccable script handwriting of Secondo himself. Beautiful, but incomprehensible. Long strings of text were arranged in lattices, grids, and atop each other in a flurry of swirling ink. Some pages were perfectly mirrored, others held odd anagram symbols and ciphers.

All In all beautiful, but worthless.

There was not a whole lot of time. Dave was waiting down the street with everyone in the car and he had to think fast. Paul knew that luck and destiny were huge components to magic rituals so perhaps the book he picked out was the one that he needed to use. He’ll figure out which page later. He tucked the journal into his back jeans pocket and closed the hutch, carefully retying the red ribbon to the best of his memory. He turned to go and his father’s framed diploma fell off its nail and onto the floor.

Paul sucked in a breath. Nothing in here was an accident. Everything had magical Significance. He picked up the frame, staring past the large crack on the glass: …conferred upon MICHAEL LEIDER The degree of MORTUARY SCIENCE AND FUNERAL SERVICES. Paul returned it to its nail, apologizing to the piece of paper before sneaking out the room once more.

After climbing out his bedroom window Paul met up with the car of kids waiting for him. They squeezed him in the back between the door and an athletic junior boy, who leered at him as Paul attempted to get on his seatbelt. It was Dana’s warm smile from the passenger’s front seat that finally calmed his nerves.

“I thought you lived at the funeral home,” A boy stuffed in the opposite corner of the backseat called across the car.

The car lurched forward and Paul gave up on finding the seatbelt buckle. “Nobody lives there, my mom’s family owns the place.”

“So like, you ever see a ghost there?” The boy beside him had eager bright eyes but his breath absolutely stank.

“Well, everyone there is dead so like their soul’s moved on somewhere else so there really wouldn’t be any… y’know, ghosts—“

“Come on,” chided a kid from the hatchback trunk. He reached out and grabbed Paul by the shoulders, the other boy beside him hooting.

“Fine, yeah, I did see a ghost.” Paul’s voice was terse as he stared hard at the road. He had been mostly sober for an hour now, psychically punching himself for ever getting involved in a caper this stupid. Too late now. “It was…some old woman. By the freezers. She had old time clothes on.”

The reverent awe that descended on the kids in the car would have made a past version of himself swell with pride. But now he just felt sick.

A little too sick.

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