My heart pounded as I looked at the pieces of the Wolf scattered across the floor. Their expression of shock was permanently etched on their face.
The Aberrant moved and I didn’t want to look. But even out of focus, it dominated the space, its presence feeling like a pressure on my eyes and lungs.
Alone. No powers. No Nell to bail me out.
It felt like my first encounter with the Pianist and Chase. But I hadn’t been backed into a corner back then. I’d had a choice, however fleeting. Every time I remembered that fateful night I wondered if Chase had used his powers on me since the beginning.
The emotion-dampening drugs weren’t as good at negating fear as Chase’s power. My legs felt weak. It took everything I had just to look.
Its stretched face leered at me. The eyes of its victims were embedded in the folds of its strange arms. Why?
The strange, perfectly preserved slices left after the Aberrant passed through its victims. The taking of eyes. What was the point?
The instruments in cases. The car parts rotating on pedestals in this very room. The point wasn’t utility or art. It was all just collecting. Souvenirs. Trophies on display. Maria wanted to keep us.
The Collector took another step towards me and growing larger in my vision, demanding that I look at my executioner. But the space between its legs grew larger too. With my memory of my first Aberrant encounter fresh in my mind, I thought, could it work again?
What else was there to do? I had to try. The polished floors were slippery enough. Just run in, drop, slide right between the legs. There was a chance, right?
The space between us shortened along with the space between my breaths. C’mon. It’s our only shot. Three more steps and I’ll go.
The Collector’s spidery toes planted down.
One.
“Let’s go,” I breathed. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s gooooo.”
Two.
My body felt like a spring wound tight.
Three-
The door behind me clicked. Someone grabbed my waist and hauled me backwards. The Collector lunged, reaching for the mark on my neck. I felt its cold touch.
Then I was tumbling along the floor before sliding to a stop. The Collector’s upper torso and head were obscured by the open doorway I’d just been pulled through.
Then Chiara slammed the door shut.
I lay in silence, waiting for the Collector’s head or hands to push through the door. But the seconds ticked by and it didn’t emerge. The breath I didn’t realize I was holding came out as a shaky exhale.
“Thanks.”
Chiara didn’t meet my eyes as she helped me up. “Don’t mention it. Let’s keep moving.”
I felt my upper arm where the cold touch of the Collector still lingered. As I prodded at it, a small line formed, carving out a circle of flesh. The chunk came off into my hand with zero blood or pain.
Chiara and I both stared at it.
I decided to pocket the piece. Luckily it wasn’t a large enough wound to mess with my range of motion. My arms and legs felt heavy, like I’d just spent all that energy I’d been building up. “I mean it. Thank you. I didn’t think you would come back. You didn’t seem keen on helping strangers.”
“I…” Chiara trailed off. Her gaze fixated onto the mark on my neck that still prickled unpleasantly. I hovered my hand over it and she looked away.
“What’s it look like?” I asked casually.
She put a hand on her own neck. “There’s a handprint. Red. And it’s like I can see everything about it in high definition. The hairs on your neck. The texture of your skin. The blood rushing beneath it. It’s like your pulse is a drum, calling to me.”
I snorted. “Like a reverse-vampire? Funny…”
My skin crawled as I took in our surroundings. Semi-transparent curtains hung from the ceiling down to waist level. Blurry and vaguely humanoid-shaped things surrounded us from behind them, lit from below by lights embedded into the floor. The silhouettes were stationary, but that didn’t stop me from thinking they would start moving the second I took my eyes off them.
Slowly, I pulled back a curtain. The silhouette turned out to be a statue, made in that same classical style I had seen at the entrance of the house. It depicted a crying woman. Her tears were rivulets of silver that ran down her face and body, forming the gleaming disc that she stood upon.
Chiara watched our backs as I pushed through the layers of curtains. Statues stood in their individual curtained off rooms and something about it felt very lonely. Sometimes instead of statues it was a sculpture of ill-defined form or a framed blank canvas. Sometimes what lay on the other side was a simple piece of furniture, a chair or a sofa, lit eerily from below so that their shadows cast onto the curtains.
Sure the craftsmanship was more impressive, I didn’t doubt that any of these pieces were more expensive than any furniture my mom had kept in our house, but I still didn’t see the point of displaying them like this.
I pulled aside the next curtain and froze. Chiara bumped into me.
“Wha-”
There was a person sitting in a chair. Their head leaned heavily over the back, as if baring their neck. Their skin was pale and blueish, with mottled marks over their hands that draped across the armrests.
I moved around the chair, giving it a wide berth. The person was wearing an wood unpainted mask with a pointy nose and fake teeth carved into it. This was one of the Wolves.
“Look at the neck,” Chiara whispered, pointing.
The neck had deep purple marks spread across it, with visible deformations. They’d been strangled to death, their windpipe crushed so they couldn’t scream for help.
“This isn’t the work of the Aberrant.”
“No. It’s not.”
Chiara and I whirled to face the new voice.
A new silhouette stood behind the curtain, taller than the statues, but it wasn’t the same height or proportions as the Collector. The person stooped and lifted the curtain.
It was the Wolf with the single ink-black eye peering out from behind their tentacle mask.
“I was with a group including this one,” she intoned in a deep voice. “We passed through this area. I had thought they went their own way, but it appears they found their final resting place.”
She moved closer and reached down to close the eyes of the corpse. Her fingers were wrapped in the same dark tentacles as her face. The lack of a proper pupil should have made it difficult to tell who she was looking at, but I could feel her gaze on me like the heat of a fire.
“I was waiting to see if the killer would return.”
I tensed.
“Neither of you have that potential.”
She lifted a finger to point at Chiara.
“One too mired in the dark of their mind to change.”
The finger drifted to me.
“The other, too flighty and superficial to untap their potential.”
They lowered the hand and crossed their arms. “Mm. What a disastrous pairing.”
Chiara had one leg ever so slightly raised with just her cat-like toes still touching the ground, as if prepared to kick. “What are you, some kind of psychic?”
“Organ has long harried me in an attempt to acquire my cooperation and thus gain access to my Shape. Or alternatively, they would have me killed so that I can not hinder them. They are the reason I have no connections to use as collateral, and simultaneously, Maria holds the key to wiping me from their tracking records and letting me finally have a chance at a new life. But it is now clear she never intended to make good on that promise.”
I gestured to the corpse, perfectly leaned back in the chair, as if they had been placed that way after death. “Did you know they were going to die?”
The tips of the tentacles glowed and wriggled around the woman’s face cast in deep shadow, like a personification of the eclipse. “I do not receive visions. I see potential. I know the ways it builds up inside a soul. I’ve seen it enough times to predict how it will spill out when the vessel bursts.”
Okay. Creepy.
“So there’s another threat then, besides the Aberrant,” Chiara said, looking around nervously.
“This entire house leaks malice. A ‘gu’ that could only result in great death and suffering.”
“Do you want to come with us?” I asked. “Strength in numbers and all that.”
“Rid yourself of that curse and I’ll consider it in the future. For now, you should be on your way before the tall one arrives.”
It took me a second to realize she was talking about the mark Angler Fish had given me and not the brain worm I was using drugs to cope with.
Chiara backed away and lifted the next curtain and I followed.
“Bony one.”
I turned back.
The strange Wolf’s voice was kind as they said, “You cannot keep this up forever. Make the choice. You won’t regret it.”
That hit me like a punch to the stomach. There was a part of me that wanted to scream at them, to tell them that they knew nothing about me. Instead I just brushed past Chiara and kept moving. It frightened me that the urge was there. I might react differently when the drugs had worn off.
More statues. More furniture.
Chiara was quiet. Probably for the best. If the Collector was nearby, we’d hear it.
But the tension the strange-speaking Wolf had left me with was eating at me.
“I’m not positive that I’m not leading us in circles,” I said, trying to inject a little humour into my voice.
“You’re doing good. I have a good sense of direction.”
I paused briefly. Behind the next curtain was the Disfigured Wolf. A slice of him anyway, propped up with metal supports that leaned against the surface of the cross-section that divided him from head to groin.
Maria’s staff worked fast and without being seen, at least by us.
I kept moving.
“Is this a bad time to ask for your pronouns?”
I shot her a look over my shoulder. She shrugged.
“What gave you the impression that I’m not a man?” I tried to ask the question lightly, but it ended up sounding bitter.
“I didn’t want to assume. But… The nails, the hair, the face. I thought you might be nonbinary? Then that octopus lady made those comments. But you don’t have to answer. I just wanted to be polite.”
“I don’t have an answer to give. I do try to change who I am, I’ll admit that. But it just feels so impossible. Maybe…” My heart squeezed in my chest. “Maybe if I was a more perceptive person, a more decisive person, maybe I could have changed before things felt set in stone?”
Chiara patted my shoulder and I flinched, before realizing the mark was on the other side.
“You should avoid touching me. You heard what that Fish Face said. It’s a trap.”
“I don’t really care.”
“Got a death wish?”
Chiara didn’t respond.
I stopped and turned to her.
“Hey, I didn’t mean-”
“I kind of do,” she said, sidestepping a statue of a man missing his head. “I’ve just been scraping by these last two years. It’s like, I thought life would be over when my Witch died, but then it just kept going. And I don’t have the slightest clue why.” She crumpled up the fabric of her vest with one hand.
“One day my heart is going to get so heavy with guilt that it falls out of my chest.”
“Maybe it will start to fade one day?”
“What if it doesn’t? Do I suffer through a hundred bad days just to hope I get a good one? A thousand? The guilt keeps piling up. I keep making stupid decisions. It might be better if I just stop, before I hurt more people just to-”
Chiara stopped herself as we arrived at a door. She tested the handle and it turned without resistance. Just before she pushed it open, she met my eyes.
“Those questions you have, I can’t answer them for you. But just so you know, straight people don’t ask those kinds of questions.”
We entered onto an indoor racetrack. The asphalt surface was pristine, there wasn’t a single tire track, despite the sleek sports car parked on the other side of the oval track. Spectator stands lined the edge of the room. There was a skylight letting in a beam of light onto the roof of the car and there were a few Wolves gathered around it, looking up at a Wolf who was clinging to the edge of the skylight.
I recognized the masks of Fish Face and Charcoal Mask. As we approached, the Wolf up above dropped down and slammed into the roof of the car, denting it slightly.
“Fuck, I couldn’t keep my grip.” It was the Wolf with mouths on his hands and the infinite symbol mask. His eyes slid over to my neck like it was a shining beacon. The other Wolves were looking too.
Fish Face turned and saw me, making a face. “Oh. Great. You lived. That means the Aberrant is on its way, we better move.”
I just flipped the middle finger at him and ignored the intense stares.
“We’re close to the outer edge of the mansion,” the Mouths Wolf said, pointing to one door. “You could blow through a couple walls and get us out of here.”
Charcoal Mask straightened. “I won’t be doing that.”
Fish Face frowned. “Why the fuck not?”
“Because my goals are more important to me than a danger-free existence. I thought you all would be in agreeance on that point.”
Fish Face gaped openly at him. “You seriously think she’s going to grant your wish?”
“There’s a chance. That’s enough.”
“You had us all fooled into thinking you were logical. Fucking idiot.”
“Mm.” Charcoal Mask ran a hand over his arm. His sleeves were rolled up and I saw that his arm up to the elbow had been converted into the charcoal material.
“I can picture it so vividly. The thought sets my heart ablaze like nothing else. If I could only get my hands on that Shape. To think I could slow down my perception of time and watch my art take place over the span of hours, days even, instead of in the blink of an eye. It’s worth the risk to see that.”
Mouths Wolf’s eyes widened behind his mask. “This sick freak is blowing people up, isn’t he?”
“Ignore him,” Fish Face growled. “As long as the doors are locked we need his-”
As if on cue there was a click and a door swung open.
“How the fuck does that keep happening?!” Fish Face yelled, pivoting around. “We’ve checked for cameras, bugs, trackers, there’s nothing. How does she keep figuring out where we are?”
“Let us go,” Charcoal Mask said.
Despite the chilling accusation and his lack of any denial, the other Wolves still followed him.
I started forward and Fish Face held up a hand to stop me. “Not you. Lead the Aberrant away from us. Run a couple laps on the track, give us a better head start.”
“Seriously?” Chiara said, giving him a death glare.
“Really,” he responded, deadpan. “You aren’t gonna try anything. I can take on two powerless Wolves with my eyes closed.”
Chiara stood by me as we watched them go.
“You aren’t going to go with them?”
Chiara again didn’t meet my eyes as she shook her head.
“I don’t get why you’re sticking with me.”
“How much does your Witch mean to you?” she asked abruptly, doing a little jog on the spot.
“Everything.” The answer came easily. I idly tried the door handle on the sports car and found that it was unlocked.
“Then you want to escape?”
“I already explained why I’m here.” I touched the flower on my shoulder, feeling the bump of the closed petals.
My heartbeat sped up as I saw motion through the open doorway we had come from. A shadow, getting darker as it walked through the curtains.
“I’m rooting for you. I really am. I want you to succeed, although I’m not sure what that would mean for me…”
“Get in the car.”
“What?”
The Collector emerged, the final curtain falling to the floor in the outline of its silhouette. It stooped under the doorframe, careful not to push its head through the wall. The brim of a wide hat brushed against the sides. It was a different colour, a cool-toned blue, but otherwise the hat was identical to the one we had seen before.
As it straightened again, able to fully stand upright on the race track, I saw the sneer of Maria’s mouth.
“Get in the car, now.”