Epilogue
The surrounding woods of the Osborn home was eerily quiet for the time of night. Only the occasional critter could be heard rummaging through the house, tucked away and settled deep in the country side of Upstate, New York. The wind barely made a whistle against the glass windows, with most of the enclosing trees keeping the draft at bay.
Still, the sounds managed to encroach through the walls of Harry’s bedroom, even with his windows sealed shut.
“—Q1 starts in January for OsCorp, we’ll be wrapping up the fourth quarter next month. But with your enrollment in the fast course classes not taking effect until this week, it unfortunately puts us behind schedule—”
The ambient noise of the woods, at least, gave him something to focus on. Anything to distract him from the drone of the voice that played through his open laptop — his eyes fixated on the screen ahead, but his attention long gone elsewhere.
Chirps from the crickets and croaks from the frogs were far easier to deal with then the never-ending harangue that sounded from his earbud — only one tucked into his ear, the other hanging loosely down his chest.
“—the successorship will need to roll out immediately after, perhaps on the same week you conclude your semesters. You’ll need to juggle both simultaneously. We won’t have a minute to waste, and thankfully marketing already has everything prepared for launch when that day comes—”
The only thing worse than the voice that kept talking was the source of who it belonged to; a man not much older than his father, but aging a little more ungracefully along the way. The harsh, deep lines that etched a permanent frown on his face spoke more about his personality than anything else ever could.
“— and once you complete the GED courses, something I anticipate to happen no later than the end of January —”
Suddenly, Harry’s focus snapped back.
“Uh, sir —” Harry cleared his throat a few times, finding his voice to be dry and crackly from disuse. He straightened his back against the computer chair he sat in, going so far as to bring the laptop a bit closer towards him. “That’s–that’s only a few months away, isn’t it?”
If it were at all possible, the man on the other side of the video call seemed to frown even deeper than before.
“Correct,” he simply answered.
Harry darted his eyes side-to-side; uncaptivated by the belongings in his bedroom, but desperate gather his thoughts into a string of coherency. Every time he tried, the answer slipped away from him, stolen by the uptick of his pulse.
He couldn’t have heard that right. Not if his calculations were correct, right alongside the calendar date at the bottom of his laptop.
“I…” he trailed off, feeling his brows grow tighter with each passing second. “I can’t get all that done in just a couple months, Mr. Smythe.”
There was a rise of panic that began to hitch in Harry’s chest. It only thickened by the expression that filled the screen of his laptop — unimpressed and unbothered, as cold and callous as he knew the business man to be.
“And why not?” Spencer noticeably cocked his head to the side, giving sight to the grandiose room he occupied. If he leaned just a little further to the left, Harry would’ve been able to make out the ridiculously large, spiral staircase that led to another floor up. The Smythe mansion was no small feat, that was for sure. “You dropped all your extracurricular’s and electives, correct?”
Harry shook his head to clear his thoughts, only to nod just as fast.
“Uh, yes, sir,” he managed, forcing a hard swallow after. “Yes, I did.”
A few audible clicks of a mouse sounded through his earbud, none of which came from Harry. The passing second could’ve been an eternity with the silence that followed.
“No, you didn’t,” Spencer finally said. The screen share of their video call displayed the man’s desktop at the bottom of Harry’s laptop, and with a single click, Spencer enlarged it to occupy most of the screen. “I suggest you don’t take me for stupid, Harrison. And perhaps it’d be in your best interest to realize that you have no ability to hide secrets from this point forward. Not in your position.”
Harry just scarcely held back a wince at screen share. The man wasn’t kidding; every bit of his academic agenda was listed in full view, and as if to add insult to injury, Spencer waved the pointer of his mouse at the detail in question. He even highlighted the portion afterwards, ensuring Harry had no other choice but to see what he spoke of.
“Okay, but —” Harry grounded his jaw. “I can finish that in a few—”
“Drop the environmental law course,” Spencer ruthlessly interrupted him, moving the screens aside to clear way for his face. Harry would’ve much preferred the screens stay in focus — they were a little bit more pleasant to look at. And that didn’t say a whole lot. “It won’t gain you any extra points on your GPA, and it’s only going to hinder the speed at which you can begin your CEO leadership training.”
“Sir, I—!” Harry huffed out his next words in a hard breath. It took a second longer to regain his composure; long enough that Spencer stared him down, the deep wrinkles on his skin only intensifying his look of displeasure. No wonder his dad liked this man so much; they were one and the same. “I’d really like to complete that course, Mr. Smythe. I’m nearly finished, I just have to submit two more —”
“And I just had to listen to Mr. Osborn put his offspring on a pedestal for his successorship when we both know it should be my boy taking this company by the reins.” Spencer could’ve let spit fly with each word he spoke, and Harry swore that even with them being miles apart via technology, he would’ve felt the dampness spew on his face. The bitter anger was palpable, the webcams they spoke through doing nothing to deter as much. “Alistair would excel in all the places you can’t , Harrison. And yet here we are.”
Chirps from the crickets and croaks from the frogs kept the silence from deafening their ears. Harry took a moment to focus on it, listening as each critter made sounds from a distance, and using it as a distraction from how hard his teeth bit into his tongue.
If his dad’s head board-of-director noticed the aggravation, he didn’t give it so much a second thought.
“You’re going to drop the course,” Spencer went on to say, with hard clicks of his keyboard following suit. “You’re going to complete the GED courses by mid January, now, as to not impede Q1 anymore than you already have. And you won’t focus on anything else unless it’s OsCorp related. Am I understood?”
Harry’s reluctance to answer was obvious in the way he refused to look back at the screen, looking out his bedroom window far longer than any excuse could justify.
“Yes, Mr. Smythe,” he eventually answered, each word spoken through tightly clenched teeth.
It wasn’t right away, but with passing time, Harry looked back to the screen of his laptop. He quickly discovered that the only thing worse than Mr. Symthe’s frown was, indeed, his smile. Every bit creepy as he could imagine it to be, plus some after the fact.
“Good. Very good.” Spencer leaned back in his chair, placing both hands down in his lap with a grin that managed to spread his cheeks wide. “It’ll take some hard work, but we’ll make a man out of you yet, Harrison.”
A beat fell.
“It’s Harry, sir.”
The only thing louder than Harry’s voice were the crickets from outside.
Spencer noticeably raised an eyebrow.
“No,” he shook his head, “it’s not.”
Before Harry could make any comeback — not that there was much he could scrounge up in the moment — Spencer straightened his posture until his back was ramrod straight, gathering the files around his desk in a clean, fluid motion.
“I’ll see you bright and early in the morning, Harrison.” Spencer didn’t bother looking at the camera as he spoke. Nor did he bother with any further farewells — ending the video call no sooner than his last word escaped his mouth.
Harry immediate slammed his laptop shut, not waiting for the video call to officially end — and using such force he wouldn’t be surprised if the screen cracked in six different places.
“Robotic-obsessed freak.” Not a second later and he gave the computer a middle-finger. Followed by another with his other hand. “Alistair would excel in all the places you can’t," he mocked. "Yeah, if he wasn’t so busy trying to get your robots to fuck him...or whatever. You’re both so weird!”
Pushing himself away from the corner desk with enough force to send his chair wheeling across his bedroom, Harry resisted a sigh that would’ve otherwise blown right through the windows — closed shut or not.
The sigh wound up as a groan, ripping through his chest like gravel against stone. The last few weeks had been hell. Literal hell, in his honest opinion. Between being uprooted from Midtown right when he was starting to feel comfortable at school — for once in his life — then everything with his dad, combined with this shit —
Harry scrubbed a hand down his face, rubbing until his skin felt sore. It didn’t matter. It was late; if he didn’t get to sleep soon, he’d regret it in the morning. He learned the hard way, sometime last week, that no amount of energy drinks could pull him through the soulless, tedious meetings Mr. Smythe had all but shoved him into last minute.
The company was desperate to make it look like his dad was suddenly retiring and not —
Harry scrubbed harder at his face with another groan smothered into the palm of his hands. It didn’t matter. Nobody could know his dad was sick, or else stocks would tank and investors would panic — quote, from Spencer-Jerkhole-Smythe himself.
All they cared about was the money.
Which meant Harry had to play the role of ‘pretend like your successorship was planned all along’, which meant being shoved into every aspect of OsCorp they could squeeze him into; completely careless to the toll it was putting on him.
It was the most exhausting thing he’d ever endured. He didn’t think he’d wish it on his worst enemy.
At the very least, he needed to try and get some sleep. The stress of everything had kept him from getting a good nights rest for...well, forever now.
If he had to be honest, it all went back to the day his mom passed away.
A hard shake rattled his head left to right. Harry didn’t have nearly the mental capacity to deal with that right now. Trying to sleep was a far easier task than opening that can of worms.
Besides, it wasn’t like there was anyone around who would listen to him talk about it. He was alone, and not just in his bedroom. He’d been uprooted from school, disconnected from his friends — no real family. It was all business, just like his dad wanted.
In a couple months, he’d be gone too.
Harry wasn’t sure he’d notice the difference whenever it finally happened.
His bedroom door was closed, but for some reason, Harry spun his chair to look at it anyway. A frown noticeably creased along his forehead as he stared at the panels on the door; the old mahogany wood catching a glimmer of the ceiling lights and glistening the polish along the way.
The faint sound of crickets somehow got louder in a moment that had no other noise.
Slowly, almost hesitantly, Harry stood from his chair. The floors took the brunt of his weight with retaliation, sounding a heavy creak as he made his way to the door.
There was something about the Osborn ‘weekend-get-away’ house that Harry always liked, ever since he was a kid. It was full of luxury items and filled to the brim with his dad’s rich expenses, but it was also an old home. Built long before he was ever born, and never torn apart for silly things like ‘an open space design’ — something his mother would always mention her disdain for.
She was the one who insisted they buy the property. Always telling his dad that they needed to get away from the city, that Harry needed to get away from the city. It was her idea, her vision — her hope of bringing the family closer.
It was also the only thing of hers that his dad kept after she passed away.
Everything else, all the way down to his wedding ring, he destroyed.
The old home didn’t take lightly to Harry’s footsteps. The floorboards creaked as he approached his bedroom door, the houses age speaking to the foundation; each step somehow louder than the next. He wasn’t sure why he took extra precaution in ensuring the door barely made a sound when he opened it, or why his steps fell more timid and light-footed as he entered the hallway.
He couldn’t put a finger on it, but something felt off.
Harry followed that feeling until it led him to the opposite side of the house, through the kitchen and past the foyer — into the living room where the fireplace was still lit, but the flames were left unattended.
A frown that would’ve put Mr. Smythe’s displeasure to shame managed to cross over Harry’s face. He paused halfway out of the living room, staring at the sparking embers for a time that felt far too long, and yet far too short for what it actually was.
“Dad?” he eventually called out, though not nearly loud enough for anyone to hear. It barely even slipped past his own ears; the flickering flames were much louder, and the crackling of wood splintering apart sent a shiver down his spine. Even with the heat pouring from across the way.
Something wasn’t right.
His dad never left the fireplace unattended.
Not like this, not with tinder at its hottest and the flames nearly reaching through the steel screen. It was untamed; each twirl of fire blew through the iron design of the gate, rising past the fireplace mantel and leaving streaks of ash and soot across the white paint.
It nearly hid the small, glass vial from view.
If Harry hadn’t paused for as long as he did, he would’ve never seen it. Sitting on the edge of the mantel, catching licks of flames that only grew stronger — bearing a heat that began to form beads of sweat against Harry’s forehead.
“Dad…” Harry forced his voice a bit louder the second time around, “you still here?”
Even as he spoke, he never looked away from the small, glass vial; his eyes narrowing until they were mere slits, trying desperately to see past the fire that rose over the mantle and obscured it from view.
The flames were strong, but Harry could still see that the vial was empty. He reached forward to grab it, stopping only when the flames got too close to his hand and caused him to pull back, quickly.
“Damn it!” Harry quietly cursed, flapping his hand in the air to cool of the sting of the burn. Giving it a quick look, he saw that his fingertips had taken the most damage — already red and tender from the brush with fire. “What the fuck, dad…”
Harry looked back up at the fireplace mantel, his brows only knitting tighter together as his confusion ultimately prevailed over his anger. As often as his dad used the fireplace — which was often these days, ever since his diagnosis started taking his health away from him — he never, ever let it get like this.
Especially not here. Not in a house tucked deep away in the woods, where a single piece of burning paper could light the whole forest on fire.
“Dad!” Harry followed up his yell with a stomp of his feet, already crossing down the hallway that led to the furthest end of the house. “The fire’s still going! What do you want me to—?”
The sound that overpowered Harry’s shout was enough to root his feet in place, halfway down the hallway and an arms length away from the door to his father’s bedroom.
He froze. Not just his legs, not just his body — Harry’s heart skipped a beat and his lungs missed a breath, spasming with desperation for the neglected inhale of oxygen.
If he didn’t know better, the sound he heard was akin to a growl.
“Dad?”
A pause.
“You okay?”
The hallway fell quiet, the walls too thick to leak in any noise from the outside. There was no chirping of crickets, and as Harry took a single step forward, the floorboards fell to half their volume. The creak that sounded barely cut through the air.
Harry reached for the doorknob.
The next sound he heard was definitely a growl.
“Shit! ” Harry whispered, hastily pulling his arm back. He closed his eyes and he forced a steady breath, followed by another before regaining his composure. “Dad? Hey, you in here?”
So close to the door that Harry could press his ear against the wood — and he did, timidly and cautiously — it became easy to hear the sounds that slipped through the cracks.
A wet, choking guttural tangled with unintelligible words; something mixing animalistic with raw, agonized, human.
Harry furrowed his brows. No different than how his dad never left the fire unattended, he never left the doors open — not when wildlife could so easily sneak inside, quick to make them dinner before they could grab the nearest weapon to defend themselves with.
As much as Harry wanted to believe what he heard coming through the door was some kind of animal that got inside, the noise laced far too well with his father’s voice to be anything but him.
A hard swallow shook his throat.
“Dad,” Harry tried raising his volume, forcing the shake out of his voice where it instead trembled his hand. He knocked twice against the wooden door — hard. “It's me. You okay?”
The answer came in the form of a quiet, sloppy, and damp,
“- f'ínє...’rísσn.”
Even with his ear pressed against the door, Harry barely made it out. It was his dad’s voice, unmistakably, yet it was too distant to catch onto.
He frowned, his brow creasing deep.
“You sound sick.”
The sounds didn’t let up, stealing any chance at a response that may or may not have come. Harry gripped the doorknob again, his wrist twisting hard to open the door.
“D͝oN’Ţ!” The distorted voice tried to shout from within, each word saturated with liquid. “D̡o̡n’t̀ ḉṏ͡ṁḕ ̴ḭ͡Ṇ̢ , Ӈɑɾ̨ɾí̷Տ໐ղ."
Harry didn’t let go of the doorknob.
But he also didn’t push the door open.
“Can you just tell me if you’re okay?” Harry tried to peak in through what little gaps were between the doors hinges. The bedroom light was on, but it was impossible to make out anything inside. “Do I need to call for help?”
A sudden CLATTER! sounded from the other side, and Harry was mid-breath when he pushed the door open, too fast for it too squeak.
Almost immediately, the door was thrust back towards him — slamming shut with an echo that went past Harry and through the living room.
“I sαí͜d ͝d҉σ͏n͞’͢t̴ cσmє ̷í̡n!͘”
Harry took two steps back — one step a stumble, the other out of anger. He stared at the door with a tight line between his forehead, and a scoff pulling his shoulders back taut.
The time that followed didn’t matter to him. Harry waited to see if the door would re-open; at any point and at any time.
The sounds from inside only grew louder, coiled with a clammy mist that didn’t exist on the cool, autumn night.
Harry craned his head behind him, looking down the hallway that had nothing to offer expect a dead end. The fireplace was deep within the living room, and the living room was out of sight, closed off by the walls of the corridor.
And yet Harry could see it, burned into his mind no different than the burning wooden logs it lit ablaze.
“I saw something.” Harry spun his head back around, his voice sharp on retort. “On the fireplace mantel. Some kind of...some kind of glass jar.” He took a step forward, but the floorboard didn’t creak. “Did you...did you take something? Are you having...having some kind of reaction?”
Sizzling embers filled the place of any words, the sparks of burning embers crackling through the house from the distance of the living room. The fireplace held no mercy in the highest heat of its kindling; savage and wild without anyone to tame to its flames.
A few seconds passed, with only sibilate moans from behind the door pilfering the silence that would’ve followed. Each groan drowned in submersion of its own secretion; bubbling with every inhale, and rasping with every breath out. Making the next beat of Harry’s pulse harder and heavier than the last.
“Dad?” Harry hated the way his voice squeaked towards the end. He quickly kept talking to power through it. “Are you —? Should I call someone?”
By the time Harry had reached the door again, with his hand resting loosely against the doorknob, the sounds from within had changed. His ear barley pressed against the wood, his skin failing to touch the door, and yet he could hear the noise inside.
It grew louder; stronger.
It mutated — gurgling morphing into sizzling, and choking turning into seething.
“Dad...something’s wrong.” Harry turned the doorknob, slowly. “Talk to me. Please.”
There wasn’t an answer.
It was then, and only when his ear pressed flush to the door, that Harry realized the crackle of fire he heard wasn’t coming from the living room.
“That’s it.” With the knob already twisted loose, Harry pushed the door open. “I’m coming in —!”
"Ӈɑɾ̨ɾí̷Տ໐ղ, ́D໐ղ'T!"
The door SMACKED against the wall at the force Harry threw it open, completely uncaring when the doorknob slipped away from his sweaty fingers.
The multiple picture frames that lined Norman’s bedroom walls fell loose from their placements, crashing to the ground and shattering glass along the way.
Three landed down at Harry’s feet. He failed to notice them; his eyes blown wide, seized frozen by the sight up ahead.
“...dad?”
Harry barely got the word out of a constricted throat. The sound was weak against the flames that sizzled fiercely, reflecting back at him with orange and red glow lighting up his pale skin — no fireplace close by for its source.
“W-what...what h-have you —?” The smell of burning ash stole Harry’s voice from him — a harsh cough tore through his throat, followed by many more.
The reek of burning flesh was overpowering. The stretch was unbearable, and Harry ducked his nose into his forearm to escape it.
Still, all the while, he didn’t look away.
He couldn’t look away.
Not as his dad kneeled in the middle of his own bedroom, with fire rising off his skin like steam to a boiling pot. Coming out of him, emerging from within. Covering the ceiling with black soot, filling the room with the smoke of skin ignited, blistering away — a hardened shell beneath barely visible under the flames that only grew hotter, larger.
Harry didn’t think it was possible for his eyes to get any wider.
They did, glistening with liquid both due to both flames and fear; and his next breath never left his chest as he took in the hideosity of what he saw.
“W-what...what did…” Harry stammered between gasps for air, stumbling inside one staggering foot at a time.
He stepped right over the broken picture frames, further shattering them along the way.
The shards of glass ripped right through the photo, tearing it in two; dividing an old print-out at a crooked angle — the edges now jagged at the blunt force of laceration.
Norman shot his head up towards Harry, with both hands digging deep into his scalp.
“ ӇคrriŞ໐ຖ …” he growled, too wet for the flames that burned his body dry. " ƓƐ͠Ť ØЦŤ͠ .”
Harry froze in place, petrified at the sight — the fire that seeped out of Norman’s mouth, burning his tongue black, engulfing his eyes in flames. The fire came out of his body no different than each panicked breath that came out of Harry’s mouth, quick puffs of panic clamping his chest tight.
He couldn’t move, couldn’t run. Couldn’t do anything other than stare; unsure if the terror was making him see things, or if there was truly something green beneath the melting flesh that poured off Norman’s body.
“What…” Harry stepped forward only to step back. The flames were growing hotter, reaching out with increasing intensity. “W-what have you —?”
The eyes of fire looked at him, latching on firmly.
“̧ƝƠƜ, ӇƛƦƦƖŞƠƝ!̲̞͇̟͉”̪͙͎̖̲ ̜
Norman yelled, each word spitting with searing embers.
“̧̧̧Ɽᑌ₦!̲̞͇̟͉”̪͙͎̖̲ ̜
Harry spun on his heels before the shout ever crossed his ears, his hips twisting hard but his foot slipping on the once-glossy photo near the door.
A single stumble was all that time needed, taking his stride from him — a passing millisecond, at most.
Harry never got to the hallway, never made it out the door.
The flames reached out, swallowing him without mercy, consuming him in one large mouthful of a blazing inferno.
A scream ripped through the bedroom. The roar that erupted through the flames devoured the sound whole.
The fire never let up; passing over the body of the boy, sweeping over the length of the room.
Swirls of fire stemmed from a beast once human; muscular and grotesque, looking down on Harry with horns on his forehead as big as the young boys body — towering over him, hunched over with the ceiling forcing his back hooked, and each protruding bone of his spine breaking through the roof.
The flames erupted from his curled fists, burning down the walls and igniting the floors on fire. They left no corner untouched, scorching the home with a feral and savage force.
The picture burned alongside it all, the gloss of a family photo melting underneath the heat — torn in a place separating a mother who hugged her son, and the father who stood next to them both.
The flames ate the picture away.
Norman threw his head back and howled, his mouth erupting with the tendrils of flames, and the green husk of a demon’s body set free.
The Green Goblin
will return in
