Dante DeCervo's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The storefront stayed quiet after Ozzy left. Dante had two weeks and no crowd. A safe haven needs people who want to come. So Dante made a plan. They would turn the empty walls into a show. They would sketch the place grand, print the drawing, and sell it to the highest bidder online. One buyer could fund the first month. Proof the dream could draw money meant proof it could draw a crowd. Dante sat on the dusty floor and opened their sketchbook. They drew the storefront as it could be. Black-and-silver walls. Repeating arches. A palace built from sharp angles. The pencil moved fast. Nightmare Parade watched over their shoulder, twice their height, skull tilted. "You drew a door inside the door," the Stand said. Dante looked. They had. Past the first arch, a smaller arch. Past that, another. The drawing folded into itself. Each room held a smaller copy of the same room. Dante kept drawing, and the shapes kept repeating, deeper and deeper, with no end. "Stop," Nightmare Parade said. "It doesn't stop." Dante's hand shook. The pattern pulled at their eyes. Rooms inside rooms inside rooms. Their stomach turned. They dropped the pencil and the page kept seeming to move. The door opened. Ozzy walked in, trench coat open, a folder under his arm. Their brother. The detective who had risked his badge for this place. "You've been here six hours," Ozzy said. He saw Dante's face. "What's wrong?" Dante held up the sketchbook. "I can't finish it. It keeps going." Ozzy crouched and looked. His eyes moved into the drawing and stayed too long. He blinked hard and set it face-down on the floor. "That's not a storefront," he said. "That's a maze." "I was going to sell it," Dante said. "One buyer. Enough to start." They laughed, thin. "Nobody buys a thing that gives you a headache." Ozzy didn't argue. He pulled the folder out and dropped a photo on the floor. A missing child. A boy from his case. "I came because I'm stuck," he said. "I don't believe he ran. Somebody took him." Dante stared at the photo, then at the face-down sketchbook. The repeating rooms. A place that hid things inside itself. "The drawing," Dante said slow. "It wasn't mine. It wanted to be drawn." Ozzy frowned. "You're tired." "No." Dante turned the sketchbook back over. The deepest room held a small shape. A figure, curled. They hadn't drawn it. "Ozzy. Look where it ends." Ozzy looked. His face went flat and still. He recognized the shape. The plan was dead. No buyer, no sale, no proof for the crowd. Dante had two weeks and one less day. But now their brother's missing child sat at the bottom of a drawing that drew itself. The haven would have to wait. Something had reached through the paper, and it knew Ozzy's name was next.