Okeydummy

The one who stayed

The watcher at the gate

First seen: Not in the Yard — not yet. When every soul that walks is home, he'll be standing at the ofrenda gate, looking down into it.

✦ STATS

Toughness0/10

never wrangled — the Arc passes through him and lights nothing

Swiftness0/10

he hasn't taken a step since he stopped

Stillness10/10

the one thing in Halloway that doesn't move at sunrise

Menace1/10

he's not in your way. He's in the gate's.

✦ ABILITIES

The Threshold

He stands exactly where the others went through, and never goes. He can't be brought home — the gate already has him, and it's keeping him on this side.

The Light Beneath

The glow under him is the gate's own, and it's cold. Stand near it long enough and you'll swear it moved.

✦ FROM THE FIELD GUIDE

Every soul the Waits bring home goes the same way: up the path, through the ofrenda's marigold gate, and gone. None of them look back. Okeydummy — Los Muertos #7458, one of the collection's twelve 1 of 1s — got as far as the threshold, looked down into it, and stopped.

He's been standing there since. Mouth open, eyes lit from below, the light under him the cold blue of a soul that hasn't gone home yet — and won't. The town has tried to move him. Old Snast says the Arc goes through him like lamplight through a window. Whatever he's looking at, it isn't in Halloway, and it isn't behind him.

So the Chalk keeps one mark it will never make, and nobody in the Waits calls that a failure. He isn't lost. He's watching. What he sees down there, he hasn't said.

Then the Chalk filled, and the gate stood open both ways, and the town found out what he'd been looking at. Horns. Eyes that don't blink. The ones who woke on the wrong side of the gate had been pressing at it from underneath the whole time, and he was the only one who'd looked down long enough to see them.

He still hasn't moved. The Diablos come through beside him a few a night and he lets them; that isn't his job. His job, as far as anyone can tell, is to keep looking — so somebody knows when the last of them is through.

✦ HOW TO SURVIVE IT

▸There isn't any. He's no threat, and no help. Walk your muertos past him; they don't seem to mind.

▸Don't take his stillness for peace. The Waits' oldest hands say a soul that stops on a threshold has seen a reason to.