After what happened downtown, Tim went right back to thinking about how and where to make his next public appearance. He was starting to feel a little bit desperate - Christmas was already less than two weeks away! He could practically feel that precious time slipping through his branch-fingers. It was hard enough when Mindy had told him she could only help him on the weekends, and he waited impatiently all week for his next shot at trying to do some good. This past week, it had been even harder. He couldn't stop counting down the dwindling days: 14, 13, 12... But when Saturday finally rolled around again, things got tense.
Mindy had been avoiding the subject for days, but when Tim pressed her on it, she finally, hesitantly, put her foot down. "I just don't think it's a good idea for you to keep putting yourself out there like that," she explained. "Anything could happen. And I do mean anything, now that we live in a world of magic spells and curses and stuff. You've got less than a month to go now before your appointment, which is a hell of a lot better than most people are getting. Please, Tim. I know you're getting restless and all, but all you have to do is just ride this out, right here where you'll be safe. Where Callie and I can keep an eye on you - and yes, before you ask, she's okay. I swear, I'm on the verge of convincing her to come back in here and help you again..."
It had not been easy for Tim to convince Mindy to reconsider that stance. She kept saying her mind was made up, and no matter what he said, she was not going to drive him around anymore. "I mean, I can't believe I agreed to strap you to the roof of my car in the first place," she admitted after a little more arguing. "What the hell was I thinking?"
But that wasn't enough to get him to back down. "Okay," he said, after listening to another 58 reasons why it was a bad idea to let him out of his confinement. "You don't have to drive me this time, that's fine. I'll just take the bus there instead. I mean, I've never ridden it before, but how hard can it be? I'm sure I can figure out how to put the coins in the slot."
She gave in pretty quickly after that.
Okay, so he'd been bluffing a little bit with that line of argument. He was pretty sure he wouldn't have been allowed on the bus for purely public safety reasons, given that he could neither sit down nor hold on to the straps. But he wasn't willing to give up on an opportunity like this. The local airport was the best public place he could think of that hadn't already turned him down or tossed him out, and it was exactly the type of place where some holiday cheer was sorely needed. People waiting through long layovers, people who just missed their connecting flights, people who were a long way from home.
Home. Even before Halloween changed everything, Tim wasn't sure what the word meant to him anymore. It had been a couple years since he moved to this city for work, but it still didn't feel like home to him deep down. The places that cropped up in his dreams were the places of his childhood, which were all hundreds of miles away, and so were all of his family members. He hadn't seen any of them since last Christmas, when he took a red-eye flight out of this very same airport, and it was starting to sink in that he definitely wasn't going to see them at all this year.
To Tim, the apartment he lived in now was not a special or nostalgic place, it was just a convenient roof over his head. But it felt a lot more like a home now. He had neighbors who weren't just anonymous sources of noise, faces in the hallway he couldn't match to the names on the mailboxes. They were friends, or at least they could be, and when push came to shove, they cared for him like family members should. It all clicked into place when Mindy finally agreed to drive him to the airport. "Promise me you'll be more careful this time," she said when she dropped him off at the baggage claim, and he realized he was recoiling from her nagging tone like it was coming from his overbearing mother. He thought that tone would be gone from his life when he moved out - and he certainly never felt that emotion when his supervisor flatly put another stack of assignments on his desk. And he never, never, in a million years, thought he would miss hearing it...
Those thoughts tapered off and out of Tim's mind as he stumbled along the jazzy-patterned carpet and into the main concourse. But he clung to that wisp of a good feeling as he searched for the perfect spot to stand, where people would be sure to notice him. But he could see that he was not the first person to have that idea. There was a sign taped up that said "RELIGIOUS AND PROTEST GROUPS: CONGREGATE ALONG THIS WALL". And if you followed the arrow with your eyes, you would find the ones they were referring to. Five or six people were lined up there, most of them holding some sort of pamphlet and trying to get passersby to take them. Tim could only make out the words on the closest man's sign, which read "GOD HATES SHAPESHIFTING DEMONS - REPENT NOW!"
Tim sighed and looked for a spot further away from that guy, thankful he wasn't paying attention right now. He'd been through a few weeks of moping around, but now he felt so ready to accept this change into his life. Even now, the world seemed warmer and more welcoming than it had before Halloween, if only because his previous existence felt so cold and deadened by comparison. But just about everyone else seemed to sharply disagree... He would have to show them that there was nothing to fear, except maybe fear itself. (He couldn't quite remember where he'd heard that line from before.) And that was exactly what he had come here to do, he reminded himself, bucking up his confidence as he settled on a good spot to stand in.
And Tim's suspicion that this place would give him a receptive audience turned out to be more accurate than the times he went to the mall or downtown. Maybe it was just that the people here had lots of time to kill while they waited for their flights. But he actually had some success in striking up conversations - some of them more cheerful than others, admittedly - with a few of the people who passed. Right now, for instance, he was speaking with somebody who had obviously been pretty dramatically changed on Halloween, too.
"I know how you must be feeling with Christmas coming up," he said to Tim. "I get exactly the same thing, man. And I'm not even a reindeer, I'm a white-tailed deer, but people don't seem to know the difference. I mean, I didn't know the difference either before this happened to me, so I guess I can't blame them for that one. But yeah, this is a tough December for me, too. It was a little bit of a relief when hunting season ended last week - not that I was planning to go wandering around in the forest on all fours anyway, but still. The Christmas stuff, though... I'm sure it must be even more difficult for you."
Tim was more than happy to let the chatty deer, teetering gingerly on his hind hooves as he tried to keep standing upright, monopolize the conversation. It was about the human connection - even if the human part was a little hard to see. But he had to respond to that last part. "I'm actually trying to stick to the positive side of things. I mean, somebody's got to, right?" He explained why he'd come out here and what he was trying to do, and was met with a growing look of surprise on the deer's otherwise totally inhuman muzzle.
"Seriously? Man, I could never do something like that. I've had kids call out to me 'Rudolph! Rudolph!', and I was about to go run and hide. But I gotta give you props. The world needs more people like you, especially right now..."
Tim smiled warmly when he heard that, but as the deer went on and on, his attention involuntarily wandered. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he spotted a familiar face. But that couldn't be right. It didn't make any sense. What would she be doing here anyway? But as the woman walked out of his peripheral vision and started to pass right by him, he couldn't deny any longer what his eyes were telling him. Right there in front of him was his older sister, Carla. He almost panicked at the sight - he hadn't told any of his family what had happened to him. Since he normally went months at a time without contacting them, he figured he might get away with never acknowledging it, and just showing up for Christmas next year without having to explain where he'd been. He certainly didn't want her to find out like this. But he calmed down when he remembered that Carla would not possibly recognize him in his current form, and he slid his focus back to the deer, who clearly had not noticed that Tim had stopped listening.
"...and anyway, I gotta get going. My flight should be leaving soon. See, maybe if I was a reindeer, I could fly all by myself this time of year, right? But seriously, my haunches are killing me when I try to stay upright like this. I definitely have to go and check in at the gate before I can't stand up any longer. Otherwise, they'll probably try and put me in the cargo hold! But it was great talking to ya. See you around, Tim!"
"Take care!", Tim called out as the deer sauntered away. But his ringing voice came out just a little too loud, and he only realized it when the woman who had almost passed him by completely suddenly turned, clearly recognizing the sound of it. Uh-oh. She'd probably heard the other guy calling him out by name, too. She whirled around on her heels and stared directly at Tim, her brow furrowed as she tried to make sense of just what she was seeing. But he knew very well that his sister was not slow to figure things out...
"Oh my god," she finally said, after staring at him for what felt like a lifetime. "Timmy? Seriously? Is that you?"
For a moment, he thought he could lie his way out of this one, tell her she had the wrong person and that would be that. But he knew that wasn't going to work, not when she could hear the one part of him that hadn't changed - his voice. So he dropped the idea as quickly as it had come to him. "Hi, Carla," he responded instead, realizing just how nervous he sounded a second too late.
"Well," Carla said, "I guess that explains why nobody's heard from you in a while." She was still standing several feet away, in the same posture she'd been in when she stopped in her tracks and turned around. She seemed afraid to get any closer, like there was a possibility he was contagious.
"Y-you noticed?" Tim hadn't lived under the same roof as Carla since he was 14, and right now, he felt about as mature and as confident in himself as he did back then. She'd always been a bit of an intimidating presence, even when they were kids. And last he heard, it was serving her well in the business world out on the East Coast.
"Yeah," she replied, with a distinct note of frustration in her voice. "We noticed. The first thing that stood out was that you didn't call Mom on her birthday. I tried to remind you before it was too late, but, well..." She was already tapping at her phone, and in a few seconds, she was able to hold it out in Tim's direction and let him read the screen. Each text she'd tried to send him was met with a reply that said "Your message could not be sent. Please check that you have dialed the correct number and try again." He got the idea well before she pulled the phone back out of his face. "Ever since that happened, Mom's been freaking out, while Dad keeps trying to convince her that maybe there's just something wrong with your phone. But I figured it had to be something like this, even if I couldn't have guessed... this if you gave me a million tries. Do I even want to know?"
"It's... a long story." Tim desperately wanted to change the subject, and he managed to think of a new one just in time. "What are you doing here in town? I thought you'd either still be in New York or going to visit Mom and Dad."
Carla shrugged. "They needed somebody to check up on the regional office, I guess. I was told it's been total chaos out here ever since the branch manager got turned into an action figure or something. But the reason I volunteered for it... well, to be honest, I was gonna try to drop in on you while I was in town. You know, make sure you were okay. But I didn't think I'd check that off my to-do list this fast..."
Tim knew what the obvious next question out of Carla's mouth would be, his own words repeated back to him with a different emphasis: "What are you doing here?" And he really didn't want to explain his ideas about 'spreading Christmas cheer' to somebody he knew would not hesitate to laugh in his face. So he cut her off with a question of his own, although it didn't feel much less embarrassing to ask. "You're not going to, uh, tell Mom and Dad about this, are you?" He felt, for the first time in a long time, like the pleading eight-year-old who'd just broken the vase. He realized he'd just used exactly the same words to his sister now as he did back then.
She made a face that suggested she was considering it. But eventually, she made up her mind. "Mmmm, no," she said coolly. "But you're gonna have to. Eventually. I mean, did you really think they weren't gonna notice? That you could just get turned back and say 'oops, sorry I was gone for so long' and no one would question it?" She sucked air through her teeth. "It's probably for the best that they don't find out right now, though. When I flew in for Thanksgiving, it seemed like they'd been doing nothing but watch cable news every day since Halloween. They bought into all the stuff about witches hiding under people's cars, waiting to jump out and change them, shit like that. I had to send them a couple Snopes articles, and I don't think they believed me."
Tim's eyes darted back over to the guy with the "REPENT" sign for a moment, then shot back to Carla. "You mean they're..."
"Yeah," she said. "So I'll do you a solid, Timmy. When I visit them for Christmas, I'll tell them I was too busy with work to go looking for you. But when this is all over... and hopefully, everybody else has calmed down a little bit... you have got to tell me how the hell this happened. And Mom and Dad are gonna want to hear all about it, too."
Tim couldn't help but let out a groan.