WnW 8.15

I wanted to cry. I wanted to curl up in a ball in the space behind the stairs and just sit there until I turned to unfeeling stone.

Instead, I did what I always did. I just kept moving.

My attention settled on the strip of flesh that snaked from the second floor to the first before vanishing under a doorway. Flat and pale, it was as if a blank sheet of flesh had been printed out of a machine.

I went up to the door the flesh went under and tried the polished gold handle again.

It turned with a click and the door swung open.

Light spread across the interior right to left like a page being turned. It was just another room among the many in this house, the facade of a place inhabited, as if the people had just left on vacation and would be back soon.

My eyes followed the sheet of flesh as it meandered through the room, underneath a small table with a vase on it, then into a vent in the floor.

Stepping inside, I peered down the vent. The flesh disappeared into the darkness. Whisperings filtered up from the depths. Gently, I knelt onto the soft carpet and held my ear to the vent.

It was a multitude of voices, hushed and reverent.

“Lurks… Noise… Crawl… Don’t touch… Someone… “

A burbling sound ripped my focus from the vent. The skin in the middle of the room had just begun to move. It rippled and mounds of flesh grew and shrank, like the ground beneath it was pushing up through it. The mounds began to take shape, pushing outward into more definite outlines and ridges, growing taller, until it began to look like a person.

A nose and mouth tore holes into the flesh, like details being added to a clay sculpture. Joints began to flex and fingers emerged from the stumps of limbs. Finally, a pair of eyes cracked open. A sexless, hairless figure had emerged from the flesh.

Its gaze settled on me.

“Ah,” it croaked, “an agent of the united force?”

“Who are you?” I asked numbly.

“An observer. I was sent by my country to see the result of this conflict and report back. Soon I will retreat into the earth and await retrieval.”

“But the result hasn’t been decided yet.”

The slit of the mouth tilted to one side. “Then you are unaware of the fate of your allies. Your ranks are compromised. They’ve all but been extinguished.”

Nell. I could feel her fighting. She was utterly focused, dealing with threats on all sides. Was she alone out there?

“That’s-”

A scream cut me short, echoing off walls from far away. It sounded like Capiz.

“Be on your way. Unless you desired this outcome,” the thing said before melting back down into the skin.

No time to just breathe and think, I followed the noise. Down one hallway and through a series of rooms. It felt like I was on a wheel, running and going nowhere. Living things darted at the edges of my vision but every time I glanced to the side they disappeared. The eyes of the Broken-Neck-Man were prickling my skin. It felt like even the paintings were staring.

I stumbled, tripping over something on the floor. At first it had just looked like a ridge in the carpet, but then I blinked, my blurry vision clearing, and it revealed itself to be a corpse. A sob caught in my throat. It was the soldier, Galen, his neck torn to ribbons by countless long cuts at his throat. A short distance away, another soldier sat in a chair, slumped over to show deep stab wounds all along their upper back.

Capiz’s screams weren’t stopping. It felt like she hadn’t even paused to breathe.

More bodies lined the next hallway. They seemed to tumble out of hidden recesses everywhere I looked. A pressure was building in my chest. It screamed to be released.

Rounding a corner, I saw her, kneeling in the middle of the room, her shield of plates whipping around her as she looked straight ahead at a blank wall, screaming endlessly.

“Capiz!” I shouted. 

She didn’t hear me. I pushed forward, shielding myself from the storm with my own white bone armour. It didn’t have the same resistance as last time. The plates battered against me but failed to do any damage as I pushed through.

I seized her shoulder. “Capiz!”

She fought me, frantically pushing and writhing. I tried to hold her still, to get her to recognize who I was. There was an animal look in her eye, like a spooked horse. I let my armour recede.

“It’s me!”

The pieces of her storm swooped low, flying closer than ever before. One cut her arm on its path to me. I didn’t get a chance to defend. The plates hit me in the chest, knocking the wind out of me. I tried to twist out of the way, but they were already digging into my flesh.

Then like a wire had been cut, her screams stopped. The plates clattered to the ground in unison. She felt terribly warm in my arms. I looked down in horror to see the blood gushing from wounds on her abdomen.

She met my eyes. Not out of a need for connection or comfort. No.

It was terror. Laying eyes on a threat for the last time as her eyes went still and lifeless, her skin as pale as her armour.

My vision felt fragmented. Her eyes. Her fingernails broken from scratching against my armour. Blood everywhere. All over me. My bones were stained with it. 

Bones Shaped into sharpened points.

I let her drop to the floor in a muted thud.

No no no no. This isn’t real. 

I looked again. Her blood covered my hands, yes. But the sharpened points were gone. Had I just Shaped again?

Out of the corner of my eye, Capiz’s face looked like Nell. Then Kay. Then the Witch who had shot herself in the head outside of the manor.

I squeezed my eyes shut and that only made the whispering grow louder, like tinnitus that you couldn’t block out in the quiet stillness of night. It grew louder and louder until it was a wall of deafening accusations from the dead. Always getting closer but never touching me.

The pressure broke whatever it had been pushing against. My strength, my will, perhaps something more tangible. It didn’t matter what it was.

“I’m done,” I declared to the bodies.

That was it. No more fighting. I could only hope that Nell would make it out alive.

I ran away, searching for some reprieve from my madness. Things began to slide out of the walls. Not just the Broken-Neck-Man but the other spectres. It was as if they sensed my weakness, knowing now was the time to close in. They had been given physical form, their features mashed together into disfigured revenants with eyes only for me.

Something took a rattling breath and I flinched, whipping around to look. Half a bloody face watched me from a corner and then it was gone. I tripped over something and crashed to the ground, my face hitting the carpet.

I rolled over with a groan and was met with the dead eyes of… a soldier. But for a second I’d seen my mother, dead on the floor. I scrambled backwards.

I’m done. I’m done with everything.

Bile rising in my throat, I backed into a door that gave way. I turned and crawled inside. 

A bathroom, for staff perhaps, one with sinks and stalls. I hauled myself up to the sink and vomited into it. The distraction of the gorge pushing up my throat was momentary. The second I opened my eyes, spit dripping from my lips, I saw something in the reflection large enough to encompass floor to ceiling slithering towards me.

I staggered into a stall and slammed the door shut before collapsing onto the toilet seat and bringing my knees up to my chest. Something slithered inside of my throat and I retched, coughing and sputtering. My fingers scrabbled around, searching for anything that could end the nightmare.

They closed around my phone in my pocket. I pulled it out and was surprised to find that I had reception. I didn’t have many contacts, enough to fit on just one page. And through my swimming vision, I could read only one. Mom.

I hit dial and raised the phone to my ear as something scaly rasped against the stall wall.

“Nick?” Her voice hit me like a wave of soothing water.

I took a shuddering breath. “Hey Mom.”

“Hi Nick! Gosh, it feels like it’s been so long since I’ve heard your voice. How are you?”

“Um…” Tears stung my eyes.

She was quiet for a moment. “Oh honey,” she said gently, “Not good? Do you want to talk about it?”

“Things… are kind of hard right now,” I said miserably. “I don’t know if I can keep going.”

“Okay.”

I blinked. “Okay?”

“Okay. That’s fine. You don’t have to keep going. Come home to us. Take a break. It sounds like you need it.”

I got halfway to a smile. “I don’t think this is the kind of thing I can leave and get back to.”

“You’d be surprised how many things in life can wait until a little later.”

Her warmth made a deep, heavy guilt rise up in my chest. “I-” my breath hitched as I started to cry. “I think I’m a bad person.”

“No. I know you’re not a bad person,” she answered simply.

“I hurt people.”

“Everyone does. But I can tell by your voice and the fact that you’re saying this, your kindness is still intact. You have a heart.”

I realized that despite my distress, my heart wasn’t pounding in my ears anymore and the full body tremors had stopped. A black bug crawled along the bathroom floor but somehow I could tell that it was real, not a hallucination.

“God, Nick. It’s the most frustrating thing, being your mom. How am I supposed to help you if you don’t tell me anything?”

That tugged at the corners of my mouth. “This is helping. More than you know.”

“That’s good. Do you need anything? Can I send you cookies? Or chocolate? There’s a bakery I’ve been visiting recently near the apartment. There’s a lovely young woman working there, very cute and kind and-”

I groaned and leaned my head against the wall. “Mom!”

“I just don’t want you to be lonely.”

“Thanks… I miss you.”

“I miss you too, Nick.”

That heavy feeling was still there. “Hey Mom?”

“Hm?”

“You know how my body is… different? I don’t know how much you’ve been learning about Shapers over there.”

“It’s hard for me to comprehend, but I’m trying to learn. There’s a mother living with her daughter here. Another refugee family from Sillwood. Her daughter has horns.”

I found the courage to ask, “Would it hurt you if I came back and I looked different? Or if I acted different from what I used to be like?”

“Of course not. I would still love you.”

That heavy feeling melted away and I let out a sigh. Then I sat up and pushed the stall door open with my foot. 

The bathroom was normal. Nothing ominous slithered at the corners of my sight. There was a bit of blood on the counter and as I poked my head out, the dead soldier was still out in the hallway. The horrors persisted, yes, but I’d regained my nerve.

“Thanks Mom. That means a lot. I feel a lot better. I think I’m going to go now.”

“You’re doing great. I know it. You never had any trouble being independent. Even when you were small.”

Armour crackled up around me, forming a familiar striking figure of bone in the mirror.

“Bye Mom.”

“Bye sweetie.”

I hung up and took a deep breath. It felt like the first time I’d breathed normally in ages. Like I’d had water in my lungs and it was finally gone.

“Okay,” I said to myself. “I’m back. Time to fight some monsters.”