Fallow Heart

by K. C. Finn

  She cleared the calls and texts away one by one, trying not to read the opening to their questions and apologies. Her face ached, dried of all tears in the last five days. Now, she tightened her jaw and carried on clearing. It was better this way. Safer for them all. When Huw got better and was released from hospital, she wouldn’t be there to hurt him again. Even better than that, she’d twice woken up to find Kasabian putting her back in her bed. No more sleepwalking, or at least no more outdoor sleepwalking. The world was safe from her demon side at last.

  There were two missed calls from numbers that Lori didn’t recognise, and each of them had left a voicemail. She was trying not to listen to her voicemails in case the sound of her family left her too upset, but the new numbers had both rung in the middle of the night. They wouldn’t be family calls, that much she knew. Lori toyed with the screen, watching it slide up and down. Perhaps it was time to clear the messages anyway, before they clogged up her phone. She tapped the little tape icon for voicemail, listening first to the insipid robot who announced her inbox:

  “You have twelve new messages. First new message:”

  Her grandfather’s voice was the first on the line, his tone less stern than she was used to.

  “Lorelai, it’s me again. Whatever you’ve done, you’re our family, my love, we-”

  Lori hit three.

  “Message deleted.” The robot sounded pleased. “Next new message:”

  She held her breath for the microsecond that followed. There was a sniffle on the line before the voice even started to talk, and Lori knew that sobbing hitch of breath too well.

  “Sweetheart,” Mum started.

  Lori hit three, a little harder than she’d meant to. It went on like that, with Lori’s throat clogging every time she heard the distress of her nearest and dearest, until a message popped up with a voice she didn’t know so well. It was a refined tone, with an accent she couldn’t mistake:

  “Miss Blake, it’s Matilda Vane. I’m calling about your absence from the treatment centre this Tuesday. Your family tells me that you’ve left home, but that doesn’t mean you’re no longer entitled to your treatment. The D.C. can still help you, Lorelai, better than you can help yourself.”

  Lori scoffed at that. Matilda was leaving a number for Lori to call back on, so she saved the message and let the next one play. Granddad again. She hit three at the beginning of his words this time. If she had to hear one more ‘sweetheart’ or ‘love’ or ‘darling’, she might chuck the phone across the room. None of those words fitted her anymore. How could she be anyone’s darling, when she could fling a man through a doorway, or force ice-burns into people’s flesh at will?

  The final message was another unusual voice, and it took Lori a long moment to place it. She hadn’t heard enough of Marax’s smooth tone to pick him up first time, and she had to play it through twice to know what he was talking about:

  “I got this number from Greg. Only a reminder to let you know I’m around. Come down and see me sometime, Lori. You won’t regret it.”

  She glanced up. The rain had drained away, leaving stark white sunlight that showed up all the grime on the window. For the last few days, Lori had been sleeping and watching TV on her phone, trying to shut down and stay away from the world beyond that dirty pane of glass. And she’d been doing one other thing when Kasabian wasn’t around. Today, he’d almost made her feel bad for it, talking about the way he’d managed to separate himself from the beast within. She got to her feet all the same, dusting herself down and throwing the phone onto the makeshift bed. She clenched her fists a moment, tensing her body, letting it relax again.

  Lori walked to the bathroom, where four mirrored tiles had been glued to the wall by the last legal tenant of the bedsit. One of them had a crack running through it, so she stood a little to the left to be able to see herself. In the mirrored bathroom of the Greasy Spoon, she’d always turned out the lights when she could. Her body tensed again at that memory. That seemed so long ago, back when Pauline was alive, and Lori’s biggest worry was not catching sight of her own backside in a reflection. Here and now, she wanted to see as much of herself as possible. With a quick glance back to the doorway, she stripped off her top and leggings, standing in her underwear.

  With eyes closed, Lori focused hard inside her head. Brian’s face rushed by, his smug look and self-satisfied swagger before she’d put him outside. She channelled how she’d felt, reaching out to grip the sink’s edge hard with her fingers. Those fingers had dug into walls and made them crumble. The pressure of her hands had split a pew of solid wood, when the burn of Holy Ground had made her heat rise. She’d never have set foot back in St. Werburgh’s if she’d realised that was what had set her off that day. She thought about God, and the ideas Marax had given her about angels and demons. Ryan Wade’s head on a spike.

  It led her to Walker. Lori felt a rush in her blood and she held onto it, concentrating on the way the energy coursed all over her. Her pulse shot right down to her toes, and the heat that came back up her bare legs to seep into her spine. Sweat trickled at her neck, small hot droplets on her chest and back. Walker, with his suspicion and pressure. Locking her up in that rotten interrogation room. Talking to Granddad behind her back. He was on the beast’s trail, was he? Lori gritted her teeth, thinking of that block-headed shadow he cast wherever he went.

  She opened her eyes, and for a second she saw it in the mirror. Her face, but not as she knew it. A red glow right in the centre of her dark eyes. Shadows encased them, shiny and black like bruises. The cracks in the skin were crimson, raw-looking but not painful. She leaned closer, inspecting her face, seeing the jagged lines on her cheekbones and jaw where the skin became serrated. Her hair was much the same, and she had no bumps or stumps amongst them. Further down her body, the blackened skin continued in patches, and even as Lori looked at it, it started to fade away. The fire in her blood sank down, and she watched the flesh shifting from muscle back to fat, lowering itself back into place around her belly. Her thighs even shrank a little as they became pale once more.

  The world spun for a moment. Lori clung to the sink, clasping for the tap to run some icy water. It sprang to life with a splutter and a scream of metal, and Lori cupped her hands to splash it all over herself. The heat of transformation, even partial, was excruciating afterwards. She gasped and splashed for a few solid minutes, hanging her head over the sink whenever her stomach gave a lurch. There was nothing much to throw up, of course. Kasabian was right, she was rarely hungry these days.

  The transformation wasn’t full. She couldn’t make it last. Lori gave her wet body a cursory glance before she turned away from the tiles, retrieving her clothes. She dragged them on again, her mind racing with the messages she’d heard. There was no better place to understand her condition than by going to see Marax again. Lori felt a quiver in her chest at the thought, a flash of Kasabian entering her head. She’d never mentioned that night she stayed out, Marax or the Faunus, or even the frostbite on her mother’s skin. Kasabian knew nothing. Today, he’d told her the truth about his demon side, and she’d nodded along without giving the newest details of hers, and it had tied a new knot in her intestines.

  Lori brushed her hair back into a ponytail, gathering some things into her bag. As she laced up her shoes, she took in a breath, nodding to herself. Later, she would tell Kasabian everything. He deserved that much, after all the kindness he’d shown her. For now, she would go to the only other place she knew her family couldn’t find her. Lori’s phone flashed on the bed, and she saw the photo of her Granddad and Huw that she used for his contact picture. She watched it ring in silence for a long moment, then it faded back to black. She picked up the phone, shoved it into her bag, and headed for the fire escape.

  She clanged down every step, hearing the echo of the metal as she had when Kasabian had gone out every morning. There was a time when she might have been frightened of the three-storey height she was walking down, but now her body felt like it ha
d a steel skeleton. She had a place to be, determined feet carrying her down the escape and past the local paper shop that the stairs were hidden behind. As she rounded the edge of the shop, Lori swung back suddenly, her knee knocking a little wooden billboard about a foot high. It belonged to the shop, but there were no headlines plastered on it yet. Too early in the morning for the sleepy people of Chester to care about the news.

  No matter where she searched by the side of the river, she couldn’t find the entrance to the tunnel. It was afternoon by the time Lori retreated into town, seeking the above-ground doorway next to St Mary’s instead. Perhaps someone would hear from below if she knocked. As she rounded the corner by the nursery, she found the place in full swing. Little humans were racing to and fro inside the building’s painted windows. A small girl pushed her nose up against the pane as Lori passed, make her nostrils flare like those of a pig. Lori tried to smile, but her face ached with the effort.

  She turned to glare at the spire of the church across the road, then spared a glance for the cobbles under her feet. Maybe there were graves here, places where the ground was once holy. Lori edged around the cobbles, clinging close to the nursery wall, until she stood in the place where she and Owe had been the other night. The place where she’d watched the hulking, shadowed form of the Faunus being shoved back into Hell. It didn’t want to go back, or at least it had looked that way. Here was nicer, perhaps. Was it much of a deal, really, to be sent to a world where the Faunus was considered small and relatively harmless? Lori felt a pinch in her spine.

  The broken gate beckoned. Lori dared a few steps nearer to it, ankles wobbling on the cobbles. The tightness in her chest grew the closer she came to the church, but she clutched at her heart and pressed on until the gate was within touching distance. The mossy stone looked as though no-one had handled it in centuries, and the green peeling paint of the gate revealed a layer of ruddy rust beneath. Lori reached out, her arm aching, and wrapped a few fingers around one of the posts in the gate.

  Everything altered. The pain from the Holy Ground vanished so quickly that Lori staggered. It was like being drunk and having soberness catch up with you instantly. Her spine tingled with a sudden jolt, her mind alert and powerful. She clasped the gate-post, then reached out for the wall with her other hand. As she pressed her palm to a square of stone through the gate, a delightfully cool sensation washed over her. Energy pulsed into her flat hand, like plunging into an icy jacuzzi. The pulse bubbled up her arm, ebbing and flowing with the tide of power. She was cool and strong, but a new kind of ache had awoken in her heart.

  Through, said the voice in her head. It was less sinister, more desperate than she’d ever heard it. Through.

  “You couldn’t survive there yet,” said a voice behind her.

  Lori didn’t jump, not even a flinch. “Hello Marax.”

  She let go of the wall and the gate together, racing quickly from them both before the churchyard made her hurt again. Marax was standing at the door that led down into his haven, propping it open with his lithe body. Lori looked him over again, thinking about what Addy had told her. Someone else’s body. Some poor human’s body. He gestured with a thin arm, his silver suit shining in the stark light. Lori did as he beckoned, walking past him into the dark corridor beyond the door.

  “You keep it dark even in the daytime?” she asked.

  He shut the door, plunging them further into shadow. Lori looked away from the sconces on the wall, feeling her way as her eyes adjusted to the lack of light.

  “Hell’s pretty dark.” He chuckled softly. “It feels more like home for me if I keep the lights low.”

  “But you have human eyes now,” Lori said.

  Silence walked with them a few paces. Lori heard the soft tread of Marax’s shoes behind her, growing closer. She forced her own step not to quicken, fists clinging to her t-shirt. Marax sighed, and the tail-end of the breath tickled Lori’s hair.

  “Yes.” Another pause. “I daresay you’re better at seeing what’s what down here than I am, now.”

  The cavern expanded ahead, and Lori side-stepped out to let Marax pass. His slim feet picked their way across the ruins in the rock, the silver suit turning blue by the sconce-light. It shone like a galaxy. Lori’s stomach fluttered, and she rubbed it slowly. Marax walked a few feet away before he stopped, looking over his shoulder.

  “Well, I know you came here for something?”

  He was standing nearest to the archway where Allardyce had vanished the other night. It had sharp hanging stones like the teeth of a great beast. Lori swallowed.

  “I want control of my demon side.” Lori planted one hand on her hip. The other toyed with the loose fabric on the chest of her shirt. “I want to know how to transform, and how to stop transforming when I don’t want to.”

  Marax raised a brow.

  “Your demon… side?” He added the last word in a hiss.

  Lori nodded. Marax laughed. His head craned back with a short bark, hands clasped together. Lori flung her arms down, shoulders dropping.

  “What?”

  Marax shook his head.

  “Come with me.” He turned to walk into the tunnel’s mouth. “There’s so much that you don’t understand.”

  Halves, and how they don’t make wholes

  “Do you know what the difference is between demonic possession and demonic hybridity?” Marax asked.

  He sat behind a weathered oak desk about three feet long, elbows resting on deep scratches in the wood. What clawed beast had made them, Lori couldn’t guess. They were in a sub-chamber off the tunnelled walkway. It was much smaller and better lit and, without the blue Mysteries overhead to give the place its glow, a faint orange hue bathed the room. Lori looked into Marax’s eyes, hooded by his brow. She saw the glossy sheen that she had seen before. That little something that told you he was different.

  “Possession is what you have, and hybridity is what I have.” Under the desk, Lori was pulling at her fingers. Though it was cooler underground, they were slick with sweat from her fidgeting. “So I guess…. Possession must be happening in the head.” She paused, running her teeth over her bottom lip. “But hybridity’s in my head too so… that can’t be the difference.”

  Marax leaned closer, resting his chin on his steeple of fingers. “What do you mean, it’s ‘in your head’?”

  Lori looked at the desk. She reached for it, tapping the edge, running her fingers over the nearest scratches. The chair she was in had them too. It rocked on the uneven ground, forcing her to lean forwards to keep it steady.

  “I hear voices. Telling me… bad things.”

  “Specify,” Marax said. His voice had not altered. “To do bad things or bad things about yourself?”

  Lori scoffed, her chest jolting a moment.

  “Both.”

  From the top of her peripheral vision, she saw Marax lean back in his chair.

  “And you didn’t have these voices before you became Sown?”

  Lori shook her head, but paused. She looked up to find Marax smiling his ugliest smile at her. His eyes shone, arms folded.

  “Well…” Lori shrugged. “I don’t know. Yeah. Voices that told me I was gross for being so fat. Voices that told me to shove a bully’s head down the toilet when he called me a lard-arse bitch for the fifteenth time…”

  She rubbed her arms, then clutched them.

  “But-”

  “But what?” Marax interrupted. “What’s so different about now and then?”

  “But now I can actually do those things,” Lori snapped back. She bellied up to the table, pushing her weight against it. “If the voice in my head says ‘break that guy’s neck’, I can do it. With my bare hands.”

  She caught her voice as it broke. So many horrified expressions passed her way. Brian. Huw. Her mother. One finger rose on Marax’s hands. He pointed it at her and grinned.

  “The difference is physical. Possession puts two minds in one body. Hybridity is two bodies controlled by one
mind. You can be in control of yourself, Lorelai, but only if you stop thinking of the demon as separate to yourself.”

  Kasabian’s confession came swirling into her head. The sadness in his eyes when he’d talked of his mother. She tried to remember the details of his ‘mind over matter’ idea, but it was a little over an hour ago now.

  Her head ached. “That’s not how I’ve heard it.”

  “So amuse me.” Marax opened his arms, still grinning. “What rubbish have the D.C. filled your head with?”

  Lori paused. It wasn’t clever to correct Marax about where she got her information from. Kasabian was always nervous, always running from the Cervinae. She didn’t want to put another demon on his tail.

  “I heard that if you separate the demon part with your mind, you can stop it coming out,” she said. “It’s like meditation or something.”

  Air pushed hard at Marax’s lips. Lori watched them flap as he broke into a peel of laughter. He slammed the desk so hard that it moved a few inches towards Lori, digging into her gut. She readjusted herself, leaning back in her chair. Marax’s eyes gleamed with water as he rose a finger to each, draining the tears away.

  “Forgive me, I’m not the most tactful creature.” His smile was wide and toothy. “To do that kind of separation, you’d have to cut off a whole section of yourself. At best, it would give a human mind severe schizophrenia.”

  Lori’s throat tightened.

  “The voices you hear are simply the darker side of your human mind.” Marax waved a hand. “Switching them off is denial. What you need is to be able to accept and hear all the voices. Then you have control over which ones you listen to.”