I understood why deers freeze on dark highways.
The Aberrant’s hands grew like headlights and the scream was like metal grinding over metal, a clear portent of death and yet I couldn’t move. Ripped from the forest, senses overloaded with something that my instincts were telling me shouldn’t exist. By the time it was upon me, all I could think was-
Oh.
Something hammered into my side. My head jerked and I was thrown out of the Collector’s warpath. The scream carried on, the doppler effect altering its pitch as the Collector continued its breakneck sprint, as if I had never been the true target.
It ran straight forward until it phased through a wall, the sound of its scream growing muted the moment it disappeared.
I lay still, my ribs aching as the sound traveled along the wall, growing distant and eventually diminishing to a point where I wasn’t sure if I could still hear it or if it was just my ears ringing.
The rules had changed. Whatever control mechanism Maria had on the Collector, it had broken and now the monster was acting entirely different. Judging by how quickly it had exited the room, its whole body was now just as dangerous as the hands.
“You okay?” Chiara called out.
I winced as I rolled over. “I think I might’ve broken a rib.”
Chiara lifted her leg, making her pant leg rise up. I got a glimpse of a pattern of black spots that didn’t have any discernable pattern, more like a Rorschach test than leopard spots.
“Sorry.”
“You’re good.”
“No, I meant sorry for lying to you.”
“You didn’t-”
I stopped talking as the screaming returned, this time from a different direction.
Chiara hauled me to my feet eliciting a fresh wave of pain to ripple through my side. I waited, ready to throw myself to either side the second it emerged. But the sound just faded away again, the Aberrant heading in a different direction.
“I lied by omission,” Chiara said, staring at the floor. “I made it seem like my Witch was the only bad one, but that isn’t true. I needed money. I ran packages for Organ. I didn’t want you to hate me, which was stupid. I should have just been honest. Every time I feel like I’m taking a step in the right direction, I just fuck it up.”
Packages? Was it Dice or something worse?
I stifled my urge to ask those questions. I didn’t want the answers. “Did you take part in their experiments?”
She looked up for a moment, startled. “No.”
“My Witch did. You needed money, you did something shitty you shouldn’t have. Fine. That sucks. But I can get over it. I don’t know your life. What I do know is that during our time together, you’ve already saved me multiple times. There’s kindness in your heart.”
Chiara’s pained expression only got worse with those words.
“There really isn’t,” she whispered. “Everything I’ve done is selfish. Even helping you. Me being kind is just a way to ease the guilt.”
“W-well… regardless, we should keep moving. Try not to get stuck anywhere we can’t dodge that thing.”
Chiara nodded and hung her head.
I led the way forward, picking my way around the wreckage of the car. As we passed, I examined the section of the car that the Collector had used its powers on. The silver paint of the exterior had remained intact, not bent in the slightest by impact. The cross-section of the interior was a mess of dark pulsating matter, like a malfunctioning A.I. had tried recreating what organs were supposed to look like.
An idea was starting to form in my head. I just needed a Wolf who hadn’t taken the drug in order to test it.
So I followed the path the larger group had taken, through a room with pool tables and a fully stocked bar. A trail of smashed bottles and liquor seeping into expensive carpet marked their path quite clearly. Some of the Wolves had clearly not cared enough about the threat of being drugged to avoid partaking in some alcohol.
“You know, Chiara, you aren’t the only person I know that worked for Organ. Nell, my Witch, did too. And she didn’t even have the excuse of needing money. As far as I know, she was fed, clothed, and housed all on Organ’s dime.”
Chiara was quiet as she listened.
“Granted, she was raised by them and she learned that anyone she relied on would be stripped away from her. She never really had a choice in the matter. But even she will readily admit that she did horrible things in the name of Organ’s vision. She hurt people, she twisted their bodies, she killed them. Isn’t that terrible? She even resented the world for consigning her to this fate. She hated the people who looked at her as just a monster. Earlier you questioned the goodness of my Witch and I bet this has you thinking I’m connected to a real villain, right?”
Chiara lifted her eyes just a fraction and nodded hesitantly.
“Despite most of the blame being on Organ’s hands, she feels the lion’s share. I feel it too, at least a portion, through our connection. Yet despite all of that, she did what I couldn’t. She changed in a way that matters. She’s doing the hard work of transforming that hate through action. It’s inspiring and it’s also so disheartening. Because I couldn’t make the same choice.”
I stopped and turned to Chiara.
“That’s how I know she’s a good person. Not because she didn’t do terrible things, but because she didn’t let herself become mired in the thought that she could never be something different.”
Chiara wiped her eyes and frowned. “Why didn’t you ever just stop to figure out what is going on with you?”
I shrugged, feeling the familiar sickening tug in my gut. “Part of me feels like it’s too late. I’m set on a path and changing now would just make everything ten times worse with no guarantee of a payoff.”
I gestured to my face. It had been long enough since Nell’s last adjustment that nothing felt off, it was just my new normal.
“I did little things that made me feel better for a time, but there’s always something important that couldn’t be left alone, some pressing threat or emergency that needed to be addressed so it was easy to just let my personal stuff slide. It isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things, right?”
Chiara looked stricken. Then she said, “I’m always running too. Since long before I finally reckoned with Kellen, my Witch. Always fucking running…”
She pushed her hair out of her face and blinked back her tears.
“Can you tell me a bit about Kellen?” I asked. “Not about the bad stuff, just… anything?”
We started walking again as Chiara sifted through her thoughts.
“I met them doing this beautiful graffiti piece. I don’t even remember what the town was called but there were probably like thirty people living there. I was passing through and just happened to cross into an alley where Kellen was painting on the back of an abandoned building. Literally no one was ever going to see the art, yet they had the most dreamy look on their face, like they were in heaven. I think I saw that and wanted to go there with them. It wasn’t like I had any attachments anyway, so moving around as much as we did wasn’t a problem. It was an adventure.”
Chiara’s eyes sparkled as she reminisced.
“We were always living on nickels and dimes, just barely scraping by, but it didn’t matter. Because what we had together was special. Kellen had the eyes to see this hidden world of beauty that no one else paid any attention to. They noticed details about myself that I hadn’t ever considered. They showed me how to love the weirdest little things.”
She fell silent as we had to step over the body of one of the Wolves. Two long finger-shaped chunks had fallen out of their stomach and chest. Barely a grazing blow, but it was enough.
Soon the sounds of the group’s animated discussion could be heard up ahead.
We entered a room that was awash with a soft blue light. The source was a large floor-to-ceiling aquarium that served as the room’s centerpiece. All manner of exotic fish were swimming around what looked like chunks of real coral. Lounge chairs and benches lined the walls.
The lighting made it hard to tell that there were spatters of blood along the walls and furniture. Two more Wolves were dead, their masks hung neatly on the back of a bench.
We rounded the aquarium to see Charcoal Mask, Fish Face, and the seven other surviving Wolves in their posse locked in a heated argument.
“As I already said, there’s no fucking cameras!” Fish Face said.
“Then how do the doors keep opening when we need them to?!” Another Wolf fired back.
“Automation, I don’t know.”
“We ruled that out,” Charcoal Mask said patiently. “There aren’t any of the necessary mechanisms. These are normal doors.”
Fish Face rounded on him.
“Blow the wall. This has gone on long enough. Every time someone gets a little too far away, something kills them, and it isn’t that damn wailing wallwalker.”
“I’m not interested in escaping. Our resolves are being tested and I’m certain mine will persevere.”
“You just want back into their pathetic special club.”
“And what of you?” Charcoal Mask asked acidly. “Why would the man responsible for blackmailing politicians in South America be here in Canada?”
Fish Face’s needle teeth snapped down around his face, shrouding him in further darkness. “You don’t understand anything about my situation. I was digging myself a way out. But the situation is on a tightrope. I’ve become like a bomb that can’t be defused. I hold the repercussions at bay with the threat that my power will ruin the lives of powerful people. But certain forces have caught wind and they are more interested in what life looks like after the bomb goes off. I need a way out. I thought I might find one here-”
He noticed us. “Well well well. I guess you two wanted a beating after all?”
“Forget the explosives,” I said. “I have an idea of how to get through the manor without the doors. Who here has good assimilation ability?”
The Wolf with mouths on his hands raised one.
“I should have guessed. We need to find a spot on the walls where the Aberrant has passed through.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Why should we listen to you?” Fish Face asked, folding his arms. “The Aberrant is probably coming straight here.”
Everyone tensed as the screaming became audible in the distance. Then it faded again.
“Don’t trust me,” I said. “Trust your Wolf powers. I don’t think the Aberrant is phasing through stuff. I think it’s replacing. And that replaced material is organic.”
“A plausible theory,” Charcoal Mask said. “Although I wouldn’t want to wait for the Aberrant to make a pass. We should spread out and check the walls, see if we can find a spot where it’s been already.”
The group spread out to check the walls.
Chiara followed Charcoal Mask to one side of the room, where he began tracing the wall with his fingers. I eyed his one arm, already fully converted into explosive charcoal.
He turned his head towards Chiara. “Something you want to say?”
Chiara stared at him. “You were talking about art earlier. Are you actually blowing people up?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“So that’s clearly a yes. Why? What could possibly be worth that?”
“Such a banal question tells me you don’t understand true art.”
“Damn right I don’t!” Chiara shouted, drawing looks from the others. “So maybe I’m stupid. Just tell me. Is it just to see the looks of horror on the people’s faces when they see it? Are you just trying to see a reaction? What truth could you possibly be scratching at?!”
The screaming began again in the distance. Muted, but that was like saying a faraway missile was quiet. It didn’t really reduce the tension.
Chiara was hyperventilating as she stared with wide eyes at Charcoal Mask.
I touched her shoulder. “Hey.”
She turned and brushed past me, walking over to a set of double doors. “We should leave, Nick. Whatever is waiting for you at the end, it isn’t worth it. We need to escape.”
Something about the carpet caught my eye. Around the doors, the carpet was darker, almost stained…
“We need to-”
The moment Chiara touched the doorknob, the doors swung open on their own. On the other side was not another room, but a wall.
A wall slicked with blood and pulp.
Arms slid out noiselessly from hidden compartments in the door frame. Five, ten, twenty… Too many. Each grafted to the wood, blending into its texture. Now they disassembled from a perfect finished piece into a waving mass of arms that seized Chiara by the face and shoulders.
She struggled as the doors began to close, drawing her into its crushing trap.
I leaped towards her and began trying to pry the hands away from her. They were strong, so strong that even leaning with my entire body weight wasn’t enough to pull one hand away. Desperation sinking in, I leaned forward and sank my teeth into the fleshy part of the arm.
It spasmed and I felt the fingers close in on me instead, catching me in the trap.
The screaming was getting louder.
There were too many. They covered my eyes, scratching my arms, dragging me into the dark. I struggled to place a foot against the wall to stop the door from closing further. My foot slipped on the smeared blood. I’d run out of room to move. Everything was immobilized, my arms, my head, my neck…
A single finger touched the mark on my neck and I felt heat flood out from that point. Immediately the grip of the hands slackened and I started to tear away from them. I felt the short fur of Chiara’s leg and blindly held on tight. I strained and finally broke free, pulling Chiara out with me.
We tumbled free as the waving arms began to sprout sharp, needle teeth. It wasn’t like when I grew antlers. These teeth violently ruptured the skin, spraying blood all over the wood and piercing nearby hands. Teeth continued to erupt until every inch of skin was covered in thin daggers of white enamel. The hands twitched and bled like they were still attached to a regular human.
My neck throbbed but the pain was a relief. I couldn’t feel the handprint on my neck anymore.
Then the scream suddenly cranked up to max volume. I ducked, pushing Chiara to the ground with me as the feeling of wind passed over my head. The Aberrant’s footfalls shook the floor. The next instant, the scream was petering out again. It was gone.
I raised my head.
Charcoal Mask was staring at the aquarium. The glass had been discoloured in an outline of the Aberrant. Veins grew across it, changing the light in the room to purple. Fish floated dead in the water, falling into neat little pieces, like they’d been toys this whole time.
Charcoal Mask’s arm thudded dully into the carpet. “I was mistaken,” he said hoarsely, staring morosely at the chunk of his shoulder and arm that had detached from his body. “We were never meant to win. Everything in this house is hers. Everything.”
Silently, the pieces of furniture in the room began to unfold. What was once a bench of wood and velvet was, in reality, a contortionist, bending out of impossible positions, limbs sliding out of wooden slots, knives reflecting the wavering light from the aquarium. Distorted by the aquarium glass, I saw faces made of flesh and wood pull away from their hiding places, looking like the halfway point of a doll turning into a real human. Murderous intent was written all over their twisted faces.
The extent of Maria’s madness settled into perfect clarity. It wasn’t enough to own it all. Her property had to know it was owned.