1. Dan #2
Sometimes, Dan understood a bit of his father’s resentment.
Dover wasn’t a big town, despite not being far from Boston.
That meant people either knew each other or knew about one another.
Dan’s parents had split up not long after his birth, and while Burt had assured him that it wasn’t Dan’s fault or because of the curse, Dan always suspected that his mother figured something wasn’t quite right and skipped out.
When he was younger, Dan had school friends, but their interests diverged as they got older, and Dan became increasingly aware of the need to keep his family’s secret.
He and his father got along with the exception of any mention of the curse, and Dan turned to books and the internet for companionship as he got older.
And me. You have me, Wally spoke up in his mind, stoutly loyal.
Dan smiled. Yes. You’re my best friend. It was true, even if the bond he felt for his other side was something his father wouldn’t have understood.
We’ll be okay. Just wait and see. Wally was a relentless optimist and always seemed to know how to lift Dan’s mood.
He had never figured out why his father hated the daemon heritage so fiercely.
Dan wondered if he blamed it for his mother leaving, or if he just resented not being able to be like everyone else and needing to keep a secret.
His dad refused to discuss his feelings, just like he wouldn’t talk about the abilities themselves.
As close as Dan and his father were in other ways, that silence was a chasm they could never bridge.
Dan finished his coffee and set the cup aside. After the chase through the woods that morning, he knew he should tune into a popular regional podcast called Cryptids and Creatures that covered sightings, fan theories, and plenty of unhinged opinions.
He puttered in the kitchen for the first half hour of the show, prepping food for lunch and dinner, but kept an ear open to the flow of conversation.
“Caller number six, you’re on the air,” the host announced.
“We almost caught one this morning.” The man sounded breathless with excitement. “My buddy and me were out for a walk and we saw something really weird through the trees. Like some kind of monster or space alien.”
“Can you tell us what you saw?” the host questioned.
“It was tall—really tall,” the caller said. “With creepy long legs like a black spider and a big, round head. And the eyes, oh my God, they were gigantic, and they glowed.”
“Did it chase you? Were you in danger?”
The host knows how to suck in his listeners with engineered drama, Dan thought.
“We got the drop on it, and we chased it,” the caller replied. “Musta known we had shotguns, because it ran away. No telling what would have happened if it had turned on us.”
“You might not be here to tell the tale,” the host agreed, oozing support and empathy. Dan rolled his eyes.
We weren’t going to harm them. Why is he telling lies about us? Wally’s voice sounded in Dan’s mind, sounding hurt.
Because he’s a dickhead. They’re all dickheads, Dan replied silently.
“What happened then?” the podcast host asked.
“It ran into one of the caves, and we lost it,” the man admitted. “There are a slew of caves up there, and they all connect. Maybe that’s where it lives.”
“You were both lucky to escape with your lives,” the host replied. “Folks, if you’re in the woods, better keep a sharp eye out for the Dover Demon. It’s on the prowl, and it might just want to meet you for dinner.”
Dan sighed and closed the browser window to silence the podcast. It was pretty much what he had learned to expect whenever he was unlucky enough to spark a sighting, and he knew it would mean he would have to wait longer than usual before he dared shift again, even in another location.
Wally stayed quiet, and Dan figured his other side was probably sulking. He couldn’t blame him, but Dan didn’t have the luxury. He ate a sandwich for lunch while he read a couple of chapters of a new book, then spent the afternoon working before calling it a day for a late supper of fried chicken.
He felt restless and unusually lonely, both of which Dan chalked up to the aftermath of his escape that morning. While it hadn’t been nearly as skin-of-the-teeth as the podcast guest made it out to be, it had rattled Dan and brought old fears and worries to the fore.
Nights like this, Dan wished it was easier to manage friendships around his secret. He had come to accept that his supernatural gift—he refused to think of it as a curse—was a lot like being a lighthouse keeper, living in solitude to fulfill the role of a guardian.
He had thought about getting a dog, but they seemed to sense his otherness and stayed on alert around him.
Cats never even gave him a chance before bolting.
Dan couldn’t afford to let anyone in Dover get too close.
No one seemed to have ever figured out Grandpa Steve’s dual nature, but Dan didn’t count on that luck holding too much longer in the internet age.
Dating was equally fraught. Dan had realized he was gay as a teenager, which meant he was also likely to be the last of the Dover Demon line. He was even less willing to explore the dating pool near Dover than he was to bare his soul about his supernatural abilities.
Frustrated and unable to shake his mood, Dan logged into his favorite online role-playing platform and hoped he could find a game to join. No one on the RPG sites used their real names, so playing offered a way to be social without risking revealing too many personal details.
The one exception was Ranger, a player Dan had cautiously gotten to know well enough to exchange real first names. His was Quinn, and he was someone who made Dan feel at ease, comfortable enough to have real conversations, if not to share secrets.