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[color=lightgray][b]“Smokin’ in the Boy’s Room”[/b] (part I)
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[color=limegreen][b]TWELVE YEARS EARLIER[/b][/color]
[color=limegreen][sup][b]October 3, 2013[/b][/sup][/color]

[INDENT][COLOR=SILVER]Why was it just [b]so hard[/b] to get a foot out the door in the mornings?

Her arms full of bookbags, lunch boxes, and the travel mug of coffee that she absolutely refused to surrender, Lynne Baker was a cop watching as peace and order broke down around her.

Her high schooler was at war with her hair, which had gone on for twenty minutes too long already. Which had put her middle schooler behind in [i]her[/i] morning routine.

And then there was the little man, her elementary schooler, who insisted on picking out his own clothes in an ongoing fashion show of just how mismatched or tacky she was going to tolerate before she caved and just let it happen.

Directing traffic at Halsey and 212 wasn’t this chaotic. And that was saying something.

Just as she thought that she might be getting a handle on herding the cats, or at least two of them, out the door, she heard her oldest call out.

“[i]Mom![/i] Where are your keys?”

Handing her middle daughter her bookbag and lunch, Lynne started to answer, “By the...” In the midst of trying to get Benny together, the woman paused. “Wait, why do you need my keys?”

“[i]Mom![/i]”

[i]Christ[/i]. Were they going to be doing [b]this[/b] today? She’d just made sergeant. She [i]could not[/i] be late today. “You are [b]not[/b] practicing driving in my patrol car!” the woman snapped impatiently.

Risking a quick sip of her coffee, the woman pointed for the older girl to get it in motion and out the door, finally shutting the front door just as the bus was coming around the corner.

“All right, go go go,” Lynne urged, hurrying the younger pair along. “Cora, get in the car,” she said, not looking back over her shoulder at her oldest as she ushered the others onto the bus.

“So I can...”

“[b][i]Passenger[/i][/b] seat,” Lynne stated flatly, looking away from the bus to confirm that the teen was doing as she was told. Which, was a rarity in itself.

She heard the bus door close, turning her head only to see it pull away.

She didn’t even watch as it turned the corner. Had Corky and Benny been waving to her? 

She hadn’t even hugged them or said that she loved them. Because she thought that there would be time for that later.

[i]Why hadn’t she just taken the time to say that she loved them?[/i][/COLOR][/INDENT]
[center][color=black][b]* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *[/b][/color][/center]
[color=limegreen][b]PRESENT DAY[/b][/color]

[INDENT][COLOR=silver]It was known as Lanely Point. 

In the mid-1800s, it had been known as Lanely Park. People would come here to picnic. 

Then, one day in 1884, a young, white girl had gone missing. They never found the body, but a prominent businessman named William Jeffries Jennings had been quick to point the finger at an awkward black teen named Gus Goodman.

By all surviving accounts, today Gus would probably have been diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum. But in the 1800s, he was just deemed by the community as [b]damned odd[/b], which was damned all the same. 

The accusation stirred up a fervor in the town, rapidly transforming into a mob that was all too eager to direct its rage at the vulnerable black community. The resulting lynching was a brutal affair, with the non-verbal Gus dragged through the streets to the large tree here. 

Racial lynchings in New Jersey had been few, making the incident a blot on Bludhaven’s history in the state. Only the more famous incident two years later in Eatontown had directed public attention away from the blood on Bludhaven’s hands. If you knew about the Goodman lynching, you were probably from Bludhaven.

And if you were from Bludhaven, you knew not to talk about the Goodman lynching.

Four years later, another young white girl went missing. Except this time, she managed to get away and finger her attacker – William Jeffries Jennings. Unlike with Gus Goodman, Jennings was arrested, put on trial with actual evidence, and convicted. Before his execution, he confessed to several other kidnappings and murders, to include the one for which Goodman had been lynched.

The city never apologized to the Goodman family. As far as anyone in Bludhaven was concerned, it simply never happened. 

Don’t talk about it. Don’t teach about it. People will just forget the whole thing.

People stopped coming to Lanely Park. The city stopped maintaining it. Few came here. Memorials to Gus faded with memory, but the innocent blood spilled and the murderous righteousness with which it had been committed lingered still. 

The perfect place for a Hellspawn.

The headstone looked as though it had been rough hewn and carved by hand.[/COLOR][/INDENT]
[center][sub]HERE LIES[/sub]
[b]JASON TODD[/b]
[sup]1977 - 1989[/sup]
[i]NOW FUCK OFF[/i][/center]
[INDENT][COLOR=silver]She’d first come here twelve years ago.

On her hands and knees. With absolutely nothing left or nothing to lose. Cried to the point that she couldn’t cry any more.

Desperate? [i]Desperate[/i] didn’t even begin to describe the state that she’d been in.

She met the Ghost only a year before. A beat cop who’d been told not to respond to a service call, and opted to not listen.

It had proven to be a lesson. About who people were behind the masks. Not the ones vigilantes wore, but the ones people in the department wore. 

About the badge and what happens when it shields the criminals rather than the people.

She wound up looking down the barrel of a service pistol in the hands of the sergeant who had been her mentor on the force, and the one that had told her to look the other way. When she didn’t, when she wouldn’t, he was prepared to make her children orphans.

Except he wound up dead instead, and Lynne had discovered that the Bludhaven ghost was very real. Either a demon from heaven or an angel from hell. 

She’d asked where she could find him once, and he’d told her to come to Lanely Point if she’d ever needed him.

When she’d come here, she’d been filled with doubts. Stumbling across the headstone, it was more than obvious this was the ghost’s grave.

And it had a name on it. Some time later, as a lieutenant, she’d finally looked into it. A kid murdered in a drive by outside of a church. The son of a two-bit crook and a crack whore, both in the orbit of [b]Ma Gunn[/b] and both with rap sheets longer than her entire body. What did that do to a kid?

Was this some kind of [i]spirit of vengeance thing[/i] or some shit?

She wasn’t sure. Not when she’d come here the first time or now.

[i]“Get your short ass up here,”[/i] the woman snapped, her breath materializing as she spoke. 

There was always a chill in the air here. As if this spot was where Hell had frozen over.

Green flames came up, spreading out from the grave, as the headstone was consumed in the eldritch light. The acrid scent of brimstone burned at Lynne’s nose as she found herself looking into the glowing green eyes of the black-and-white costumed kid, his gangly frame masked by the red cape that seemed to move on its own.

[color=limegreen]“[i]What!?[/i]”[/color] the ghost snapped back, sending Lynne back to the memories of her own children at that age. 

“Let me guess, you’ve just [b]been in the ground[/b] the last three days?” the woman barked, more accusatory than she’d intended. The frustration was slipping into her voice.

The mask seemed to melt away, locks of black hair framing the tween’s face as he shifted so that he was seated atop the grave marker. [color=limegreen]“You complain when the dead [b]don’t[/b] stay in their graves. You complain when the dead [b]do[/b] stay in their graves – I feel like I can’t win here,”[/color] the boy tossed back flippantly.

In response, Lynne just threw the local newspaper at him.

The headline on the front page read: [b]SCHOOL BUS VANISHES. POLICE WITH NO LEADS.[/b]

The boy’s green eyes moved from the headline to the woman’s tear-streaked face.

“This time we bring them home,” she said flatly, her voice thick with emotion.

[b]“All of them.”[/b][/COLOR][/INDENT][/hider]