by J M Guillen
“Simon said we were safe!” Alicia’s eyes rolled wildly. “Safe! But they chased me. They chased me wherever I went.”
“They?” I turned to her and placed one hand on her shoulder.
Alicia wouldn’t quite meet my gaze, her eyes flickering about.
My heart sank.
Shock? Maybe. Hell, if Alicia had slipped a cog from the sight of this thing, I understood.
I felt like I’d failed a saving throw myself.
“Um, Bax?” Rehl’s voice held a forced calm. “The ladder.”
“Yeah,” Baxter responded. “Back here. Come on.”
Rehl grabbed Alicia by the arm and dragged her away.
I didn’t watch them, keeping my gaze on the miscreation on my floor.
The top portion writhed, only vaguely resembling a canine. Spindly lengths branched out from the rising body, three or four insectine joints to each. At the end of those appendages, the creature formed gross approximations of grasping, gangled fingers, overlong and possessing far too many joints.
It dragged itself forth from the pool of sludge and wheezed through its alien orifice. It opened two soulless eyes, empty pits of scarlet hellfire.
“What do you want?” I steeled myself, stepped from behind the cash register, and took a couple of strides to my left. That put my back against a wall of books, but I hoped it would help the monstrosity focus on me instead of my friends.
Oh, the smell. Foulness boiled off the thing.
“Want,” the creature gurgled. It flipped toward me, oddly segmented limbs sprawled at bizarre angles. Inhuman hands on the ends of slender grasping arms pulled it along on the floor.
Horrifically, it just kept coming.
“Shepherd.” It turned its inhuman maw toward me as it gurgled my name.
Fuck! I broke out in a cold sweat. It took everything I had not to run.
But I couldn’t. I needed my friends to get to safety, needed to know what the… thing wanted.
“You were sent by Lorne.” I took a trembling step to the side. How had it found me? I’d been so certain the Aegis would keep Mister Lorne in the dark. Even Garret the Ass-hat had only found me after I’d screwed up, and I hadn’t had any accidents tonight. Except…
The spider-hound hadn’t found me, had it?
It had found Alicia.
“Lorne.” The wolf-faced miscreation turned its eyeless face and cocked its head. “Get. Bring.”
“Yep,” I sighed. “That’s what I thought.”
“My master holds legions of servants! Another will come in my place!” Lorne’s last little pet had cried as Simon handed it its own ass.
“You guys are worse than the Billy Goats Gruff,” I complained.
Before I even had the barest hint of a plan in place, the building quaked again and scattered bits of dust and debris.
I stumbled back half a step and caught myself on the wall of books.
“Gruff,” the vulpine insect gurgled as it crawled toward me on insectine arms. “Gruff.”
A sharp burst of splintering cracks sounded from the front of the store.
“What is that?” I snarled, fighting down the terror the thing emanated. I glanced around and noticed a small fissure had appeared on the wall opposite me.
From that fracture, pustulent ooze dripped, black as midnight. Even though just a rivulet, it writhed, trembling as it ran down the wall.
“No.” I took a step away.
It pooled on the floor before my eyes, moving with an odd purpose. A slender pseudopod jerked and twitched as it reached out of that puddle.
They chased me, Alicia had said.
They.
“Liz rolled for initiative.” I relaxed my mind and mentally reached for my secret strength.
The moment I touched it, the bracelet also burst to life, a joyous echo of the tempest, the maelstrom of Wind that thundered within my mind.
“You should probably move along.” Honestly, I was just blathering as I tried to buy myself a moment. In the depths of my imagination, I called forth the Empyrean Seal I relied upon the most: The Seal of Oeriim.
The first creature regarded me for a moment, then lurched forward.
It struck surprisingly fast. Several sharp, spindly talons on the end of its spider-like legs swung toward me as it screeched, a high, keening wail.
“No!” I hissed, my hand held up in negation as I released the Wind.
Around me, those Empyrean sigils burst into a series of turquoise brilliance, burning with otherworldly light. Sourceless gusts tore around the room, whipping papers free from the register area and lifting comic books into flight.
The lumbering horror stopped abruptly as it slammed into an invisible wall of air.
Its malformed head pressed against the unseen barrier, and its mouth opened unnaturally wide. It suckled against the barricade as it scraped at the floor with dozens of sharp fingers.
“Holy—!” My heart pounded as unreasonable terror burned in my veins. Just looking at the thing made my gorge rise.
I kept part of my mind focused on that wall; Wind didn’t like to remain in the desired shape. Still, I had known this trick for a while now—easy enough even without the special mojo in Simon’s gift.
“What about now, fucko?” I whispered sharply.
“What?” it whisper-gurgled. “What, what, what. What.”
Behind the beast, the second dribble of sludge had formed into a pool, similar to the first. Already a figure had begun to birth its way out of the putrid blackness. It looked not unlike a canine skull that dripped with foulness.
“What.” The first pseudopod reared itself up high and flattened against my wall of Wind. Its mouth eagerly pressed against the nothingness there, showing me a maw that held a circle of tiny, hooked teeth.
As I stood there, eyes wide with mute wonder, a familiar CRACK shattered the quiet of the store. I turned sharply at the sound, my heart in my throat.
“No.” My gaze darted around frantically. “Please no!”
With another echoing CRACK, space itself rent around me, torn into fragments that flapped in an unholy wind. Darkness sundered its way through my store, and a thunderstorm of twilight shadows broke upon the world, shattering like a wave of gray filth.
That darkness howled. It screamed. It cried nameless names from the edge of existence.
Just like the hotel, and the anime room, another world intruded upon my own. A gloom-filled, shadowy place devoured the store itself.
“Oh no, no, no!” I whirled. That grayness spread across the floor, the walls of my store, stealing color from everything it touched. The store aged around me, the wooden beams cracking, the tile splintering.
The door, now aged beyond use, shattered into splinters as it burst open. A horror stepped through, a horned creature of wet ooze and insectine limbs that made me stagger.
Can’t— Primal dread rippled off the thing, wrongness that roiled in my stomach.
“Elizabeth.” Its words were like the grating of great stones, the purring rumble that large predators can create to strike terror. The amalgam of man, beast, and arachnid held a thick, wooden stave before it, a series of crimson runes inscribed along its length.
“Um, hello.” I scrambled away from the humanoid figure and tried in vain to count how many spindly arms bent and sprouted from its torso. Odd tendrils of putrid darkness—the same substance that had formed pools on my floor and birthed monsters—oozed from the abomination. Its face remained hidden, save for two scarlet eyes.
In the center of its forehead, a glyph shone, burning a furious crimson.
I gaped. The unnaturalness of the thing shattered any concept of nature, of basic biology. It had no mouth I could see, yet it spoke, as if such things did not concern it.
“You have met my hounds, I see.” That primordial voice thrummed through me. “I bid them seek you only. The Gaunt Man would not have his prize slaughtered, I think.” Several of the mutant’s insectine appendages twitched, almost as if i
n annoyance.
“Kind of you.” I took a careful step toward the hallway.
“They are innumerable.” As he spoke, the world trembled again, and the dark reflection of my store quaked. I watched as first one crack and then another, appeared in the wall and ceiling respectively.
Immediately, that loathsome muck dripped from the crevices.
“Innumerable. They will follow you to the ends of existence.” The words skittered in my mind, like insectine burrowers. “Surely you can see the folly of attempting escape.”
“One would think.” I glanced down, not willing to meet the horror’s eyes.
“Even if you escape me, another would come.”
“Is the next Billy Goat Gruff even bigger than you are?” I glanced behind him, wondering how far I’d have to run to lure him from my friends.
“Mirth will not shelter you. Not now.” From the two new cracks on my walls, filth and darkness poured into pools on the ground. I had no doubt that in mere moments, wolfish, insectine abominations would be birthed, writhing abortions of visceral terror.
I had to forcibly turn away. Just watching them made my gorge rise.
“Your situation is impossible, Elizabeth.”
“Liz,” I corrected numbly. “And perhaps not.” I reached for the Wind, trembling.
“You must have learned as much.”
“Well,” I raised my head to the houndsman abomination. Raw, liquid terror coursed through me the moment we locked gazes. “I have this thing about never learning my lessons.”
“Do you? Do you find such a choice to be wise?”
From upstairs, Alicia screamed, a wail of terror and agony. That cry struck me in the gut, an elemental, primal thing of burning pain.
“The choices you make might affect more than just yourself, Elizabeth.” The Houndsman simply gazed at me, its eyes enigmatic. “Perhaps you would reconsider?”
5
“Fuck. You.”
I had no idea what the creature had done, but I could guess.
While I stood and chatted, he had sent some of his hounds behind me, after my friends as they hid above. If he held them, he must have reasoned, I’d easily agree to his demands.
They would be all but helpless.
I spun in place and kept my wall of air intact. It took focus, an amount of mental discipline I might have lacked a few months ago. Now, however, with the bolstering of the Aegis on my wrist, it felt almost easy.
“Elizabeth,” the Houndsman’s voice warned, “do not turn your back on me.”
“I don’t take direction well.”
I sprinted, reaching full speed in three steps. Even though I stood in Mister Lorne’s sideward nightmare, I knew the basic shape of space remained the same. This had been true every time he’d sent one of his sweet little messengers.
The pull string had become a rusted chain where it dangled from the ceiling. Knucklebones’ walls were now solid brick. The trapdoor looked old—as old as everything else in this place, but it still pulled.
The ladder dropped but creaked and groaned with protest.
“Trapped,” the being behind me gloated. “Nowhere to run.”
“Running is what I do best.”
“We shall see.” The thing paused, then struck its stave against the floor. “Gyrmmnin.”
The word burned in the air and branded my mind with an eldritch sign.
The terror gestured with one hand and its fingers twitched into arcane patterns.
Pain. Pain like fire, like knives in my eyes.
I gasped and turned around and—
My wrist. The bracelet on my wrist buzzed and crackled with the fury of dozens of angry hornets.
That pain stabbed again and I fell to the floor as if I’d just been knocked flat with a sledgehammer.
“What?” I gazed blearily around and realized what happened.
It had shattered my wall of Wind.
“Oh. Oh, good.” I froze for a moment as the Houndsman stepped forward, horrific unreality burning in its eyes.
“You know not what you dally with.”
The building quaked again. Dust fell from the ceiling, and cracks appeared in the wall on my left.
“No.” I pushed myself up and glanced at the miscreation. “Just no.”
“Yes, child.” It strode forward, confident, almost mechanical in its awfulness. “The time for sport is at an end.”
Before it took two steps, I grasped the Wind again and rose shakily to my feet. The bracelet sang against my skin.
The moment I had a grip on the Wind, I brought to mind another of the Empyrean Seals, the Seal of A’grimm. Currents circled, a miniature thunderstorm in a tumult, a hurricane of fury. That power exploded into the Empyrean symbols and cast a cobalt glow around the room.
I hurled the knife, threw it even as the Wind whispered in my mind. I shaped every gust of air around me, and whipped that knife at the speed of a gunshot.
The blade struck it in the chest and tore through the aberration.
“AAAACK!” Wet, dripping blackness splattered on the walls around it, and the creature roared, staggering several steps backward.
Staggered but did not fall.
“Stupid little bint.” The monstrosity shook its head as it regained its balance. “Perhaps the Gaunt Man shall not have his prize. Perhaps she shall die, screaming.”
No time for snark. I scurried up the ladder, primal terror burning in my chest. Once there, I stared down, eyeing the wounded Houndsman.
And I pulled the trapdoor shut.
6
“Guys?” I stepped forward.
The room glowed with gentle light and shadows stretched off into the murky distance. The sideways-nightmare version of Knucklebones’ attic stretched before me like a labyrinthine, haunted library.
Here, instead of strands of white lights, white candles burned, stacked on ancient bookshelves. The room still held all manner of odd bits of detritus: oil lanterns, a table equipped for taxidermy, and tapestries along one wall.
As I stepped forward, I kicked at a scattered pile of small, inhuman bones.
In the darkness, something tittered.
“I’m ignoring that!” I canted one ear, hoping to determine the direction of the sound. “I didn’t hear anything weird and creepy, because there’s nothing weird and creepy here.”
As hoped, silence responded.
“Good.” I wasn’t interested in meeting the locals or taking my time to dig through the shadows for souvenirs.
Where did the hounds go? I had assumed the horrific creature below had sent his vassals up to capture my friends. But, thus far, I saw no sign of either.
I went forward a few steps and frowned when I realized I had no way of knowing where my friends were. If this were simply the attic, I knew exactly which direction to go. But now towering bookshelves loomed over me, intersecting each other in a dizzying array of confusion. They might have gone anywhere.
“Guys? ’Licia?” I called softly as I trotted into the half-dark. I hoped I’d kept the panic out of my voice.
No response.
Maybe we could break the window, if it’s still there, I reasoned wildly. I dunno if I can fly other people out, but Feather Fall? Maybe. It’s only a story or so.
“Liz!” Baxter called from the darkness near where the desk used to be. “We’re over here!”
A desk still stood in that spot, an ancient roll top construction that looked older than I felt.
The two guys stood near the desk and gaped at Alicia, who stood close to the canopy bed, gazing blankly at nothingness.
“The window,” I gasped with a wild gesture.
It was still there, although in this hall-of- mirrors version of reality it had become a giant, stained-glass thing.
“If we can break it, we can get down into the street! It’s the only way to get away from him,” I explained.
“Him?” Baxter turned to me. “What the hell, Liz! What’s happening?” He flung his arm about. �
��Why does the attic suddenly look like an evil wizard’s lair?”
“It… It’s just like in the anime room. Remember how reality changed into… into somewhere else?”
“Oh, God!” The color drained from Baxter’s face. “No!”
“Maybe use the chair?” Rehl lifted the heavy old chair by the desk. “I can break a window with this, I guarantee it.”
“Do it.” I nodded. “I dunno if I can take care of the spookiness downstairs, but I’m certain I can’t take it and watch out for you guys.”
“Okay.” Rehl nodded once. “That’s the plan then.”
“No.” Alicia’s tone was light, airy. The ring in her voice sounded otherworldly.
“No?” I turned to her. “Did you have a better idea?”
“Yes.” She gazed at me for a long moment. “I do have a better idea.”
“Could you—?”
“Liz?” Rehl hefted the chair. “If this is our play, we should move.”
“It is, but—” I didn’t take my eyes off Alicia, staring off into dreamland again. “What did she scream for? Earlier, I mean.” I turned to Baxter. “I thought the wolf-things came up here.”
“No.” He held his hands up, completely baffled. “Rehl and I were trying to figure out a plan. Alicia seemed more than a little addled.”
“We were talking, and then she screamed and fell to the floor.”
“She was too large.” Alicia’s voice sounded drastically different than any I had ever heard before, petite in an almost fairy kind of way. “Too much at first.”
“Who?” I took a step toward Alicia, everything else forgotten. “Who was too large?”
Rather than answer me, Alicia turned her head toward the desk. I followed her gaze down to several stacked and dusty tomes, an ink pot, and…
…and the puzzle box.
I’d haphazardly fiddled with the thing as I read and had almost solved its mystery. Now it lay wide open, empty.
“She had it in her hand when—” Baxter gestured all around us, “—everything changed.”
“Alicia,” I stepped closer to her and put one hand on her shoulder. “What have you done?”