by Risa Fey
Cora ran from the cottage, not bothering to clothe herself. All she was cognizant of was the need to get away from that vision of Hell.
She didn’t know it had rained recently, and puddles of sticky mud impeded her path. She spoke a word, a magic word that would make the mudpits solid, and they hardened into mudcracks at her command.
Thaed followed Cora, breaking the solid mud with his heavy tread—a ghost that would never leave her, and never let up on the chase.
Cora flung herself against the well, trembling and crying uncontrollably. Throwing her head over the opening, she gazed into the abyss. She thought she could make out the haunting, disembodied screams of other people, and she wondered why she would be hearing that at all.
Are those the voices in my head? she wondered.
“Jump down. They cannot follow you here.”
But…but what if They’re real? she asked. What if They jumped down, and are all dead because of it?
Cora felt herself being dragged over the ledge by a magnetic force that was too strong for her to resist. It sucked like a black void in outer space, too powerful for her to withstand.
Cora uttered another unintelligible word of power and wrenched herself free, then fumbled to the ground, splashing in the mud.
“The voices are trying to deceive you,” Thaed said. “Don’t listen to Them. They want to keep you and me apart. Throwing yourself into my world is the only way we can be together. You have to trust me. This is the only way.”
“Did you kill her?” Cora asked, remembering the red smeared over the mirror and the liquid dripping from his hands.
“Kill who?”
“The girl pretending to be me.”
“Ah…” A calculating pause. “Yes. I did.”
“Why?”
“Because… that fetch was not really you in the flesh.”
Cora wiped her dribbling nose with her wrist, then reflected on the situation for a moment. “I’ll die,” she said, in a rare moment of mental clarity. Even as she was saying it, however, she could feel the groundswell of his anger.
He spoke directly into her mind. “You will not die. How many times do I have to reassure you? I want you, Cora. Only you. Or would you leave me to marry the dead remains of your doppelganger?”
She almost felt like she was sick in the head. The illness came on strong, potent as delirium, and a red-hot mania came over her.
“Thaed. I’m afraid to jump down. What if the voices are warning me?”
“I’m not going to ask you again. I’m telling you to come.”
She cowered at his impatience. Her head felt heavy like a boulder, and she could hardly lift it.
“Lovers are meant to be together,” he whispered, feverish with annoyance. “If you want to be free of Their torture, if you want my help, then come! I can’t do anything otherwise. Unless you do what I tell you to do, I cannot help.”
Cringing, Cora nodded in agreement. “Alright.” Her teeth chattered, though she wasn’t cold. “I’ll do what you say. Just, please… Please, Thaed, don’t hurt me…”
Relaxing, his rage abated, and Cora crawled slowly over the well. She sat on the ledge with her legs hanging down the shaft. It was impenetrably dark all the way down. Her heart rammed fearfully in her chest, and the blackness seemed to heave like a living gullet, rippling and yawning like the great throat of a sleeping dragon.
The devil is a dragon. He’ll devour you.
The din in her head was beyond deafening now. It took a mighty effort for her to comprehend his next words: “I’m the only one who loves you, Cora. I’m the only one who wants you. No one—not even your mother and father—were there to protect you like I was… I would die for you. I would kill for you… Would you die for me…?”
His voice took on an unexpectedly sinister quality, rasping with the harshness of hostility. “Go on… Jump. I can’t wait—Why are you waiting? Use the portal. Kill yourself. Now. Before it’s too late.”
The dark was sucking her down, all the way down. The well elongated and expanded around her, enfolding her naked body with its teeth. Cora was too terrified to scream.
“Jump in!” he shouted angrily. His vehemence exploded like a bonfire, making her leap with fright.
Before she knew what was happening, her feet disappeared into the dark, and she was writhing over the stone. His arms were around her throat like the tentacles of an octopus. His breath was hot like a dragon’s roaring against her neck, oozing with the fumes of Hell itself.
And yet, Cora could not see anything in front of her. No man; no dragon; no devil; no wailing Cthulu.
Nevertheless, his feelers were all over her face, scribbling wetly over her nose and into her mouth. He was no longer a man, and no longer a dragon, but a sea monster. She wanted to shriek, but could not because his feelers invaded her mouth.
Gravity gave way. There was a moment of suspension.
Cora felt herself freefalling down the tunnel, the world turning upside-down around her. She struck the crown of her head against slick stone. A crack resounded in her ears. His tentacles constricted around her limbs like sea snakes, and the blackness of his ink smeared over her vision.
A crash as sharp as knives shattered over her skin. The ocean’s roar was in her head. Thaed’s hungry animal panting was in her ear.
Lights flashed behind her eyes, possibly from the head trauma. The ubiquitous water stabbed through her throat, at first stagnant, but now alive and roiling in eddies down her esophagus. It surged and siphoned like water down a pipe into her lungs, and it wriggled like a nest of eels. She opened her mouth to let out a cry, but he was in her, invading all the gaps inside her body with his watery spume. He eventually topped off her lungs, filling her with a deluge of his ecstasy, and he laughed delightedly for all the fun that he was having.
Her heart rammed like a rabbit’s in its panic, lacing her every vein with the futile, short-lived fire of adrenaline. Her head cleared, and in that moment she knew his name.
Madness.
Nyarlathotep. The Crawling Chaos.
He consummated his union with her, overshadowing her mind, blackening her thoughts with his insanity. He twisted every dreg of breath out of her body, and wracked her full of convulsions, draining every bit of her strength and hope.
Cora twitched. It was all that she could do before oblivion. Her fragile limbs jerked involuntarily, and a thread of remnant air bubbles swirled up like butterflies from her mouth. She could not move. Inky water smeared over her eyes, and Nyarlathotep covered her with his gelatinous appendages, jealous of anyone who might look at his new bride.
The look on her face was that of utter incomprehension. Her mind grew still and calm like the water that surrounded her.
And then Nyarlathotep was bored. The watery torture he had just delighted in hadn’t lasted long enough.
He shook her corpse futilely with his bloated limbs, churning up small eddies, but she was too far dead to be aware of his fondling.
He stared at Cora’s blank face in the solid darkness, and he smiled at the memory of her beauty and warm skin. She would soon be bloated like him, the eyeballs filmed over with the slime of parasitic growth. She would soon be stiff and fat as a slug. He caressed a stray feeler over her cheek, and his many ravenous mouths writhed.
CHAPTER 22
THEY FOUND HER sitting woodenly in the rocking chair beside the fireplace. Her expression was bland, emotionless, and her eyes did not react to any of their movement. One officer waved a hand in front of her face, but she did not blink. Another tried to ask her questions, but she did not respond.
“Catatonic,” was the diagnosis.
“What’ll happen to her, I wonder?” one of them asked, as the paramedics checked her vitals and prepared the gurney to transport her to the hospital.
“Well. She isn’t going back to her family’s home, not after what happened,” said the officer’s partner.
“What happened?” Mr. Philips asked.
�
��You see that photograph over there on the fireplace?” The officer pointed to a picture of a middle-aged couple on the shelving. “That’s her mother and father, I’m guessing. I recognized them immediately. Wife killed her alcoholic husband with an iron, claiming the alien gods made her do it. Their daughter was missing, although the wife kept raving about her being abducted by the aliens. That was a couple of days ago, and I think we just found the girl.”
Mr. Philips stared at Cora as she was being placed onto the gurney. “I had no idea…”
“They found bits of the girl’s diary. Suspected abuse, and it might explain how she looks now. Pretty girl. But enough battery and neglect would make anyone look the way that she does now.”
“Why won’t she say something?” Mr. Philips asked.
“Don’t know. Could be either shock, or something else wrong with her. Might even be schizophrenia. From what you told us, it sounds like she might have been hallucinating. But we’ll let the professionals decide on that one. First, they’ll make sure the child she’s carrying is alright. All the mental stuff will probably be lowest priority for now.”
“Strange thing, really. I don’t remember her looking pregnant before.” Mr. Philips scratched his beard. “Where do you think her mind is? It’s like she isn’t even there.”
“Doesn’t matter,” was the answer. “She’ll be back soon enough, hopefully, and it’ll all be a distant nightmare.”
One of the officer’s smiled at the old man. “It’s a good thing you followed her home today after that spat you had. Otherwise, who knows how long it could have been.”
“Well, I was worried… after the odd things she blurted out back at the shop.”
“And now you’re without any help around the shop again, aren’t you?” The officer gave him a knowing look as Cora was rolled into the ambulance. “How about you give my son another shot? I set him straight about how he acted the last time he worked for you. He won’t run out on you again.”
“I’d rather not.” Mr. Philips scratched more at his beard. “When she’s all seen to, I want her to have one less thing to worry about. She’s going to be a single mom, on top of everything else she’s been through… I’d like her to have a job waiting for her when she is ready.”
The officer stared sideways at him, nodding his head at the generous idea. “He’ll work for free, then. I’ll make sure of it. After all, I think he owes you.”
They turned at an unexpected commotion.
Cora was sitting straight up in the ambulance, eyes bugging out. Her lips were moving, and she gasped as if she couldn’t get air into her lungs. The team of paramedics set to assessing what was wrong, but when it was obvious she couldn’t breathe, they attempted to clear her airways. Her legs kicked out at them involuntarily, but then she collapsed into the cot, eyes flooding full of tears.
Cora choked and coughed. Green water spilled out of her mouth.
“And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished, for the small hours were rent with the screams of nightmare.”
~H.P. Lovecraft
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