The queen spat the blood pouring down her face as she spoke, her voice betraying the pain she suffered. “My eyes are baubles, I’m better off without them. I’d rather be rid of the foolish things, anyway. They give the wrong impression. I can still see you, little killer. Your fires are still burning plenty bright. If you’d do me the enormous kindness of holding still, I’d like to eat you now. It’s a long climb back to the surface, and I’m going to need all the protein I can get!”
The claws of her left hand barely missed my face, instead sinking into the boulder beside my head—so much for my theory on bones losing fights with stone. She retrieved her claws with remarkable ease and wrapped them around my neck. Lifting me from the ground, she held me at arm’s length, hoping to disembowel me with her other hand. My sisters flashed their steel smiles, and I dropped to the ground as they severed her claw at the wrist. “Was your hand a mere bauble, as well?” I asked, using both hands to peel the giant claws from around my throat.
“It’ll grow back,” she returned. “That’s not the first hand I’ve lost to a knife.”
The queen was fond of charging at me when a more nuanced battle strategy eluded her, so she came at me again, shrieking. Despite her lack of finesse, she succeeded at crushing me against the boulder with her enormous bulk, pinning me between herself and the unwavering stone. Sisters back in hand, I thrust them into her distended belly. Using the boulder to brace myself, I pushed them forward with all my might, plunging them deeper into the heavy folds of the queen’s gut. She shrieked as my arms delved elbow-deep inside her, my sisters making a playground of her vital organs. The queen shot back reflexively, holding her gushing midsection with her one good hand as she stumbled away, finally collapsing to the ground.
My father’s blackening shadow fell across the prone monstrosity, adding a substantial measure of weight to the queen’s efforts to shrug off gravity. I strode behind Miss Patience as she crawled through piles of glowing embers and sizzling bits of flesh, finally collapsing against a cavern wall. “Born of nightmares and fresh apple pies. You are surely a perplexing creature, Black Molly Patience. I must admit, I’ve come to both loathe and admire you, simultaneously and in nearly equal measure. While you may have once been an artifact of the Deadworld, your hunger has made you a tar pit of sorts, filled with the fossils of the bygone Darkness. You are, after all, what you eat.”
Miss Patience laughed, little more than a gurgle. “I . . . suppose you might be right, at that. I hope you win this thing, little killer. You’ll find my kill list in my sleeping chambers . . . provided you haven’t blown that to smithereens as well.” She paused for a moment, grasping ragged breaths. “I really thought I was going to take the prize. That dream of starving wolves—who better than I to appreciate that? My poor . . . poor beasts. I suppose it’s better that you killed them all. I’d rather not have them outlive me. They’d have no hope of surviving without me.”
Sightless eyes or not, it was hard to gauge her face in their absence, but her voice took on a resigned tone. “I’m . . . flattered you held me in such high regard. I just wish the Darkness had sunk a little deeper into my old, wretched bones. Every time I sat down to a meal of madness, I could feel such wonder fill me. But then I’d swallow . . . and it would all disappear. After the Darkness receded, it became more and more difficult to find meals like the ones I’d enjoyed. Eating became so horribly empty. Worst of all, I forgot the words to my song. Perhaps— “
My father was quick. I doubt she sensed him coming.
Her corpse was brilliant, and I would take no credit for it. I left it where it lay, sprawled out and in mid-thought.
I made my way through the injured underground, spying the furtive movements of ancient things as they picked through the ruin for the ripening corpses of cannibals. Apparently, the rot-eaters beneath the earth held no grudge against me for ruining their supply line of meat, which suited me fine. I was eager to be done with cannibals and ghouls and mutants.
A short time later, a slight breeze had found its way into the cave. I saw the queen’s kill list drift across my boot, its names clearly displayed. I picked it up, sat down upon a pile of old bones, and transferred the names to my own list. I crossed off Miss Patience’s original, less inspired name and moved my eyes to the next.
Tom Hush. I couldn’t wait to meet him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The funny thing about the next name on the list was that I already knew it, as did most people. Tom Hush lurked the labyrinthine hallways of darkest folklore, having done so for as long as I could recall. My first inclination was to assume copycat had taken the name for himself, spreading nightmares behind a lushly antlered mask. Yet, of the many killers I knew to be roaming the countryside, I could think of none brazen enough to take up the name. Of course, the title could simply belong to a man with a wonderfully folkloric name, having nothing in common with the infamous daemon at all. But the chorus of whispers that purred behind my thoughts said differently.
I shrugged off the hungry shadows and smoldering ruins of Lastrygone, leaving it to the oblivion I’d fashioned for it. I made my way westward for several days, hoping to learn more about the myth of Tom Hush, as my dreams had been disappointingly absent of any meaningful signposts—of late, they had been concerned only with the wonderfully dark subjects that typically populated them.
As I passed town after town, deliberately avoiding large cities and their inherent loathsomeness, I analyzed the arrangement I had—perhaps rashly—entered. I was now killing on a mystery’s behalf, hoping dreams would flood from the wounds I inflicted upon the Deadworld. But after the many deaths fashioned by my own two hands, I could only feel the world congeal, ever-hardening for its absence of liquefying dream.
The Crucifier, The Mad Mercenary, a nameless Wolf, untold numbers of living nightmares, an entire village of degenerate cannibals and their loping beasts, and the near-legendary Black Molly Patience herself. All of them, my beautiful bouquet of dead flowers, handpicked.
And now the Shepherd of Wolves would have me slay what appeared to be the living embodiment of one of the happiest, darkest myths known to me. Through it all, I had only the reddest dreams to assure me of the righteousness of my path. And while dreams have never misled me—despite what the Queen of Cannibals may have suggested to the contrary—I was growing more and more leery of nightmares dripping with the skin of wolves.
After many more days of wandering, I finally came upon a circle of trees, bent in stature and sallow of color, completely denuded of their fall coats. Immediately, I realized nightmares had routinely traveled through this small, leafless space, and that some of the visions may have become entangled within the grasping limbs, awaiting picking like dark ephemeral fruits. It was plain to see that if I was to receive a proper dream, it would be in this place, though I had to be careful not to allow my excitement to offset my fatigue.
As I entered the crooked circle, I could feel their cold shadows playing across my skin, trying to find a handhold upon my soul, to lift it from my flesh and use it to cover their naked, emaciated frames. But my soul was anchored by shadows far darker than theirs, and the mad grasping proved futile. I was dreaming before I knew it.
I walked through a dimly lit hallway, passing creatures whose shapes were too wild to describe even by their own shadows. The darkness abandoned any attempt to represent them—only confusion resided where should have fallen some semblance of obstructed light. When I reached the end of the hallway, I found a giant window far larger than should have been permitted by the trim dimensions of the corridor. It looked upon the entrance to a massive and feral woodland—it was one of the most spectacular forests I’d ever laid eyes on, inside or outside a dream. The trees were like an army of leafy monsters that had paused mid-march.
I gazed through the window for some time, searching the dense tree line, following a wide beam of moonlight that moved among the treetops like a spotlight
. After a time, something began to draw close to the edge of the forest—it was gigantic and terrible, older than the light that tried in vain to penetrate the thick canopy of trees. The lesser creatures of the woods fled its approach, followed by the lean and ferocious barons of the forest. Even the moon seemed to retreat from it. The forest inhaled and held its breath, waiting. Something stepped from behind the curtain of silence, and—
I awoke violently to the sounds of gnashing teeth and throaty growls as something ripped the dream out of me. I jumped up from where I lay, the hot light of the blazing sun pouring through the circle of trees. Not a single merciful shadow fell across me. I was in full view and covered in the sick warmth of unfettered daylight. I had been left like the debris of a wolf-kill—scattered, ravaged, exposed. Far beyond the pain thundering behind my temples, I could hear the wet sounds of my dream being devoured.
I had yet to completely grasp the logic behind the game of dream-swapping, but it was clear something had eaten the dream right out from my skull. I was equally sure the event was nothing less than another killer who had come to that point on his list where appeared my name. But this was no average killer—it was a true Wolf. And from the impression I got, it was a big one. I smiled at the thought.
I moved on, walking ponderously for some time, rolling over this new dream-eater in my mind. When I next looked up, the sight I beheld brought a warm memory to mind—one harkening back to the conclusion of the Great Darkness.
The entire world stood balanced on the very lip of complete madness back then, secured by only a single strand of spittle. But the madness was not of the purest variety, only the reactionary insanity ignited by commonplace minds crushed into the spaces of merciless revelation, without the slightest application of imagination for proper lubrication.
This particular memory concerned the March of the Scaremen. I remember precisely where I was when I heard the story come over the radio. The rain had been lightly falling on the rooftop of a house I had entered, and I was enjoying the fresh food I’d discovered stuffed inside a refrigerator in the basement.
The voice on the radio described them as “unholy deformations of the human condition, congeries of twisted anatomies assuming the most horrific shapes and positions one most likely couldn’t imagine, all of them posed via the assistance of sharp implements and other stabilizing materials, like wooden stakes and barbed wire.” The voice went on to report that the sculpted bodies had been created “for reasons that seem to relate to the scaring-off of people, like some variety of macabre scarecrow.” I sat in the shadows, chewing slowly, listening intently. “Reports are still coming in, but preliminary investigation puts the numbers in the thousands. From everything we’re hearing, it sounds as though a nightmare has taken up residence in the hills surrounding the city of Paleton.”
That very evening, after the occupants of the house had returned, I used their bodies to create an homage to the Scaremen of Paleton, who had marched wicked and solemn from nightmare into waking.
That same sense of wonder I’d felt back then came upon me now, as a large, foggy cornfield filled with ordinary scarecrows opened up before me. I could imagine their artificial bodies overfilled with ripening human meats, surmounted by heads that partook from a multitude of unrelated species. As I moved closer, the fog retreated from me, giving the illusion that the fabricated monsters were on the march, shambling toward me through the cornstalks.
I was somewhere in the middle of the massive field when I heard a well-aimed whisper from the rolling fog. “Hi,” said the sad little whisper.
“Hello,” I responded.
“Come here,” the whisper said, eagerly.
“Certainly,” I assured it, moving further into the mist and corn.
“Hurry,” the voice continued. “You’re almost there. We’re waiting for you.”
Gradually, the fog mixed with blood and the corn turned crimson. Hordes of dead cattle were strewn about, their insides scattered everywhere. “Don’t pay them any mind,” the whisper said. “He did all this, but he doesn’t want you yet. So don’t worry, okay?” The whisper inflected genuine concern.
“I rarely worry, little whisper,” I responded, matching the whisper’s concern with genuine honesty. Eventually, the corn hallways fell away and revealed an unobstructed view of a stable. The doors to the structure had been ripped from their metal hinges and repainted in blood.
“He did that, too,” the whisper indicated.
“I assumed as much,” I said. “I will also assume that all the animals in the stable are dead, along with whomever owned this farm.”
“Oh, yes,” the whisper confirmed. “Quite dead. That’s what he’s like. Not much I can do about it, anymore.” Its tone grew mournful. “He killed me.”
“That’s too bad,” I offered.
The whisper led me into the farmhouse. The bodies inside were almost unrecognizable as human—they had been mindlessly disorganized. As I continued to follow the whisper through the house, I noticed that all the intervening doors had been blasted open, as if some gigantic creature had rampaged through the structure. There were signs that the corpses and damaged objects had been gnawed upon.
“Just a little further, now,” said the sad, dead whisper. “We’re almost there.”
“Very well,” I said.
As I ascended the stairs to the upper levels of the farmhouse, I was passed by a small pack of red-mouthed coy dogs, apparently tempted into the house by a free meal. We moved to the third story, my journey occasionally punctuated with more ruined bodies and wild, hungry dogs.
The darkness clung to the hallway of the third floor as if it had dried upon its walls. I could barely see the ladder that led up into the attic. Whispers drifted down from above. “Here we are,” the little whisper said. “Come on up. Its ok, you’re safe. We promise.”
As I climbed the ladder, I was certain that the smile stretching across my face glowed. I emerged into the attic, and the darkness transformed into crows. They took wing through a large hole in the ceiling. The pecked remains of more corpses lay heaped into corners.
“Up here,” said the whisper from somewhere beyond the hole in the ceiling.
“As you wish, little whisper.” I climbed up, making my way to the rooftop. The sky was a vault of deepest gray.
“Now, look,” my host instructed, hissing out from somewhere deep within the chimney to my left. I gazed across the countryside, my vision pushing the haze from its path, and I spied all the glorious death. Spread all around the distant fields, glens, and meadows were the corpses of untold numbers of persons and animals. Fires burned in the distance, lines of distant houses bleeding smoke into the blackening sky. Cars and trucks stood motionless in the middle of the one road that cut across the countryside, their operators crumpled beside them, red and wrecked.
“He wanted you to see, to appreciate what was coming for you,” the whisper informed me. “He said that he’ll be coming for you soon, but not quite yet. He wants you to have time to run. He really likes a good chase. I’m very sorry about all this, but he drew your name.”
“No apologies necessary, little whisper,” I replied. “I completely understand. But may I trouble you to send a message to the creature that killed you?”
“Yes, of course,” the whisper said. “What would you like him to know?”
“He drew the wrong name.”
The whisper, which was quite likely the killer himself—split personalities were as common as colds after the Darkness—had already silently departed when I heard the first sirens. I was surprised to see the throngs of police cars and other emergency vehicles. I had traveled the wilds between cities for so long, I’d almost forgotten about the formal consequences of murder.
As for the whisper, he was no one I recalled, but the sheer scope of his work spoke to a thoroughly practiced monster, well versed in the ways of killing and vanishing
. And I must admit that at first, his brushstrokes seemed hopelessly uninspired, merely the feral craft of a common thrill-killer. But when I looked out from that high vantage, beyond the crows and corpses, it all came together into a finely woven tapestry of death and solidified purpose.
The killer had deliberately recreated a scene from one of my memories. No doubt the image had been somehow preserved within the dream the killer had stolen from me. The memory seemed to be a selection from some portion of my dimly remembered past, as it possessed no context, just texture—bodies and ruins and fire. It was a distant and time-yellowed recollection, and carried with it the smell of burning flowers.
All that I recalled beyond the image and the fragrance was that my mother was present in the memory. I could clearly see her standing atop a distant flowered hill, surrounded by fire and death. Her lips were glistening like wet sunsets, and her eyes swallowed the sunlight into bottomless oceans of blackest ink. Flower petals, burning and delicate, blew across my view of her. The rest of my family was there, standing at the top of the killing hill, the sun burning behind them all, turning their silhouettes into the blackest shadows light can conjure.
The Wolf had proven his reach, and it extended all the way into my past—there was nowhere I could hide from him. Or at least, that’s what he’d have me believe. In truth, I was grateful for the artistic recreation of my memory. And the method of its execution did high honors to my family, as I was certain they were as impressed by the feat as I was.
In addition to stealing a glimpse at my memories, the killer had also deprived me of a clear view of my own prey—though it was strange to think of a mythological figure as prey. I could see that the mechanics of the Game were ever changing, tightening, better enabling the separation of wheat from chaff. However, the dream that I had presumably taken from Tom Hush had not been entirely stolen, as I had awoken with a small portion of it still intact. The dream seemed less like the nocturnal art of a legendary horned demon and more like a dream merely inclusive of its imagery. So I returned to my original thesis—the Tom Hush on my list was merely a pretender to the otherworld, not the supernatural entity itself. If true, then I was seeking out a man, which of course was a tremendously disappointing hypothesis.
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