#''jack"

[residentsofhollowville]

A neon green door covered in shifting eye-like fractals and neon cobwebs appears near Jack and opens up hesitantly, Amelie standing in the doorway.

He's immediately on his guard, his hands out as if to defend himself from them, but it doesn't look malicious, not this time. It's not grinning or giggling or trying to deceive him, it's just there, looking almost friendly.

"Why are you here? What do you want?"

[residentsofhollowville]

A train rattles into Hollowville's nearly abandoned train station, carrying a few dozen pounds of coal and a couple of dubiously human passengers. Jack sits cross-legged on the roof, waiting for this rust bucket to slow down enough to jump off.

He turns to Marione with a tentative smile on his face.

"You ready?"

[residentsofhollowville]

A neon green note phases in in front of "Jack". On it,with handwriting so curly it's almost spirally,these few words are written:

"Jude is waiting for you¡!"

Instead of a signature, there's a spirally eye at the corner of it.

He catches it. It feels so insubstantial that it could blow away on the wind if he let it.

"Well, would you look at that."

He grins a pained, broken grin and lets it dissolve in his hands. Under any other circumstances, he'd be scared sick, but he knows Judas. He's had a destructive bent since they were children. If Amelie had dared try and compel him like they did to Jack back in the cafe, he wouldn't have bothered with bluffing or empty threats. He would've acted, immediately and violently.

"Amelie, I don't know if you can hear me," he calls, "But if you can, know this. I will find my brother, and when I find him, I'm coming right back home."

Wherever "home" is to people like them. Anywhere but Hollowville will do at this point.