Chapter Text
Jacob Hopkins did not “believe in magic.” Everyone got that wrong.
He didn’t believe in Satanic meddling or witchcraft, at least not in the way the Puritans that settled Gravesfield did. He didn’t care for cryptids and ghost stories. He wasn’t on the side of the religious cranks who protested outside the newly-opened Magic Circle when he was in high school, and he wasn’t among the new-age clientele who frequented what was now a fixture of downtown Gravesfield. To him, the former were paranoid fools and the latter harmlessly misguided.
No, Jacob didn’t believe that magic was real. He knew it was real like he knew the sky was blue. It was an objective, observable fact that magic- and by extension, witches and demons- existed. Unfortunately for him, that’s all he knew, and a little knowledge can be just as dangerous as complete ignorance.
What solid facts, what tangible evidence did Jacob Hopkins have? Barely anything, as it turned out. Buried under mountains of frenzied speculation and folklore research, hidden behind a comforting pile of data, the list of knowns was very short. The Were-Owl was real, and its “human” form was a crazy bag lady and serial nuisance whom the police could never seem to catch. Marilyn- or maybe “Eda,” Jacob wasn’t sure which one was her real name- could cast spells to defend herself, dropped magical litter, and disappeared for months at a time into the woods north of town. Her pet owl wasn’t a flagrant violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act but some kind of wooden totem, brought to life with magic and (this was a sore point) imbued with enough intelligence to escape or avoid any trap Jacob laid for it.
In some ways, Jacob Hopkins was incredibly lucky the day his car broke down on a rural stretch of highway in Gravesfield County. He’d seen the Were-Owl and escaped with his life and a clear photo, even if he’d lost two lug nuts, a tire iron, and a good pair of pants. He had come face to face with the unknown and escaped, rattled and damp but otherwise sound of mind and body, and now he wanted answers . His options and resources might be limited, but he was damn well going to get those answers anyway.
This, to say the least, would cause problems.
Mostly for Jacob.
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It was evening now, a slight increase to the darkness signaling that the sun was setting behind the clouds. The drizzle that began in the afternoon had matured into a late-summer rainstorm, heavy and persistent. Rain hammered on the venerable roof of the Gravesfield Historical Society building, rushing down the slates and gushing in waterfalls past the ivy-covered bricks. Gusts of wind rattled the window panes and groaned in the mighty oaks outside. Inside the building, the storm was a dull roar, the gale reduced to a gentle susurrus that wrapped around the ears like a weighted blanket and warned against leaving the safety of the indoors.
If anyone driving by through the downpour noticed that the lights were still on in the building, they paid it no mind: the lights were often on after hours. The curator liked to stay late. His house was better protected, but the staff room and attics of the GHS building were his workshops and armories, home to his surveillance system and constantly-expanding pile of evidence. He would go up to the cupola to work on the traps— nothing could fly in this weather, so he was safe from ambush— or just watch the rain fall over Old Gravesfield, definitely not humming his own theme song. He could practice with swords where nobody could see him, study the items that Marilyn had dropped over the years, make some headway on research for the next rotating exhibit, and generally prepare for an inevitable confrontation with otherworldly enemies while also convincing the museum board that he was worth keeping around.
Today, said curator was staying because that confrontation had finally happened. Even by his own low standards, it had gone extremely poorly.
Jacob sat in the bottom of the gibbet where he had been for an hour, making no serious attempts to escape. He hadn’t been unconscious for long, but it had taken the better part of an hour for him to recover from a state of pure shock. Even now, he was having trouble comprehending how badly he’d screwed up.
This was far from the first setback— and not even the worst [1] setback — on his search for truth. The hero has to overcome trials on his journey, and there are worse trials than being the local “I Seen It” guy. Over his short career on the thin tweed line, Jacob had been arrested twice, banned from nine businesses and two internet forums, broken three bones, and gotten lost in the woods more times than he could count in defense of Earth. He soldiered on through the bruises and the ticks and the insulting nicknames the Gravesfield County Sheriff’s Department came up with, focusing on the incremental gains he’d make: A feather here, a footprint there, each clue proving that the threat was real and that he was on the right track. On paper, today’s events should have been more than enough to keep him going. Mathematically speaking, this was the most success he’d ever seen at once: even if the demon had escaped, he had collected more useful data in one day than he had in the past year. The terrifying woman who locked him in the cage was probably going to destroy his cameras, but she hadn’t taken his hard drive or his phone. So why was he still sitting in the bottom of the cage?
He was confused , that was why. Utterly bewildered. Completely gobsmacked. Flabbergasted beyond mortal ken. A litany of other adjectives that didn’t get close to describing the maelstrom inside Jacob’s brain. None of this made sense.
Why was he doing this? It wasn’t all that complicated, really. Firstly, Jacob was scared of the aliens, plain and simple. He would never admit this to anyone else, not even if the woman with the sandal came back to interrogate him, but he couldn’t lie to himself about it. It wasn’t the heady cocktail of triumph and terror from earlier in the day or the blind fear of the day he met the Were-Owl, but a slow, persistent dread that had been his constant companion ever since. Whatever defenses he erected against this fear, no matter how many theories and traps and plans he had, it never went away. Secondly, Jacob wanted to be a hero more than anything. He wanted it so much it hurt. What would he do if he gave up and went back to school? Get an MA and hope to move to a bigger museum? Let the Martians win? Pass up this opportunity to do something that only happened in books? Unacceptable. The longer he stayed, the more he needed that victory. Of course he remained vigilant, of course he kept going back into the woods no matter what. These two goals, security and glory, had kept him on the hunt for the past four years through trials and tribulations that would have broken a lesser man, he was sure.
He’d spent two years as a Flat Earther[2] to make sure nothing was getting in and out of Gravesfield by air. Last year, he’d bought that suit of armor and wore it as he traipsed through the woods, hiding cameras in trees and narrowing Marilyn’s escape route destination down to that abandoned house, prepared at every turn for a duel to the death with an alien. He scraped together equipment and inhaled solder fumes to set up a surveillance network, nailed horseshoes, cut witchmarks, poured salt, burned sage, joined and then got kicked out of the Western Connecticut Historical Fencing Society— anything he could do to make sure that on the day fanged death finally leapt at him, he would not only survive but win a legendary victory.
Where did that get Gravesfield’s mightiest hero? Locked in a cage after getting the daylights beaten out of him with a shoe. Jacob was surprised to feel his eyes prickle, tears of pure frustration threatening to leak out as he stared at his bound hands. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. It wasn’t fair. The words of the veterinarian— probably not a real government agent, now that he came to think of it— echoed in his head.
“A lot of bad guys say that.”
Maybe this was worse than spending the night in jail again.
Outside, the rain continued to pour, and a distant rumble of thunder promised that the storm was just beginning.
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1. That place of dubious honor was held by an incident from just over a year ago, back when he still thought the Were-Owl was coming from the colonial cemetery. That ranger just had to find him after he’d spent two weeks wiring all those tasers to bear traps. Jacob had gotten away with a reduced fine and community service after the judge nearly laughed herself off the bench, which was a good thing. Probably. He guessed. [↺ go back]
2. Three months pretending to believe so he could borrow the telescope and radio equipment of a group from New Jersey, more than a year passively convinced that the ice wall theory held water before he realized what was happening, and then six weeks carefully extricating himself from the company of people who were so completely bonkers that they even believed in gnomes. [↺ go back]