by Scott Hale
But he wasn’t alone. He heard sounds coming from the back wall. The ghost followed the wall with his hands, until his hands fell away and much to his delight he found a second wall, a cheap trick of perspective, directly behind the first.
He leaned against this second wall, raised the dagger overhead, and snuck down the hidden passage, to the pocket of rotten, orange light at its end.
At the end of the passage, there was a heavy door, and behind it, a torture chamber. He remembered the place. He might have even seen it once, in a past life.
Vincent was at the center of the room, naked. Drenched in sweat and fully erect, he was staring between the legs of the equally naked, table-bound pregnant woman that lay before him. His brother was shaking, breathing heavily. Vincent looked as though he may have done something he finally regretted.
“I didn’t think it were possible,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. A tongue of blood squirted out of the woman’s uterus and onto his feet.
“Oh good,” he said, noticing the weapon in the ghost’s hand. “Perfect. Let me use it.”
Underneath the table to which the woman was strapped, there was the head of a moon cat. Yes, he had seen this place before. He had seen this Night Terror, too. He searched his memories for moments that existed outside these last few dreadful hours, but all he found were vague shapes of things waiting to be defined by even vaguer interpretations.
It hurt the ghost’s head trying to figure it all out, so he handed Vincent the dagger, by shoving it through his neck.
“Ed… Ed.” Vincent covered the spewing split with his hand. The dagger slid out and clinked on the ground. He stumbled sideways, and fell to the ground.
Whimpering, he said, “Why? I don’t deserve…”
To give Vincent time to get comfortable for the long sleep, the ghost turned away and faced the Night Terror. She wasn’t moving, he saw that now, but that didn’t mean she was dead. With all the blood that had poured out of her, her belly had shrunken some, too.
The ghost stepped closer to the table and rested his hands on it. Beyond the swollen lips of the woman’s sex, something was moving, trying to get out.
“Get… away,” Vincent warned. “Kill.” He spat out a mouthful of blood, and died.
The ghost grabbed the dagger off the ground and leaned in between the Night Terror’s legs. Small, clawed fingers pushed through the woman’s throbbing folds. Sniffling and low rumbling growls could be heard. A tremor shot through the woman’s glistening body.
A bucket’s worth of hot, stinking blood oozed out of the Night Terror. The ghost stepped back as a malformed head pushed itself out of the engorged hole and screamed. The baby’s lips were thin, its small teeth crooked and pointed. It had large eyes, one red, the other black. Its body was gaunt, severe, as though the act of living would be a great pain to it. Wailing, the infant, tearing at its mother’s womb, worked itself free. It smacked against the surface of the table and rolled in the splinters that stuck it.
The ghost considered the fiend. It was too large to be an infant, and too hideous to be human. He thought about putting it to sleep, but he didn’t know its name, so he couldn’t take it to the place where he took the others. Besides, its mother’s body had all the nutrients it needed, and the ghost didn’t want any part of her to go to waste.
King Sovn and Queen Magdalena were already dead in their chamber when the ghost arrived. Archivist Amon and the Eel were standing on opposite sides of the bed. Amon held a hammer, the Night Terror a sickle. The ghost’s mother and father had been split open, throat to stomach.
Amon smiled, and beckoned him into the room. “No offense, Edgar, but you were taking too long, and, well, you’re no match for your mother. Would be a most disappointing end to this complicated plan.”
“Edgar?” the ghost repeated the name Amon had called him. “Do I know him?”
“You do.” Amon stepped closer to the ghost. “Come to the mirror. I’ll show you what he looks like now.”
The Archivist took the ghost by the shoulders and led him across the room, past the murder bed, to the large, spotless mirror near the vanity.
“If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll find nothing about yourself has changed.”
Edgar stepped in front of the mirror and saw what he had become. The ghost had gone, and this is what remained. From his shaking head to his shuffling feet, he was coated in wet blood. From it, his skin had a radiant, crimson glow. He was Corrupted through and through, from flesh to bone.
The obvious question was ‘Why?’, but instead, Edgar asked morbidly, “Why didn’t you kill them all yourself?” He clawed at his skin, trying to get the blood off his hands and face. But like the Corruption on his right arm, it stayed.
The Eel laughed and left the room. Before he did, however, Edgar noticed the pained way he walked, and the dark bloodstain on the backside of his trousers.
Amon turned Edgar around to face his parents. Their intestines were intertwined with one another’s; a grotesque display of affection.
“To use you, without this—” Amon took out a small piece of a vermillion vein, “—I have to break you. I don’t want to use the veins. That’s no way to build a following.”
Tears streaked down Edgar’s bloody face. “I’ll just kill myself.”
“You might, but I don’t think you will. You’re too stubborn. You’ll want to salvage this, somehow. To spite me.”
Edgar thought about slashing the old man’s throat, but for some reason, it didn’t seem worth it. He stared at his mother and father. A sharp, gnawing pain chewed through his heart. His stomach dropped into the same black pit he was certain his soul now belonged to.
It felt wrong to grieve, because he would have killed his mother and father all the same. But maybe not. Maybe it would have been different. He could have stopped himself, or like Amon said, his mother could have stopped him.
His chest felt as though it were caving in. His legs gave out and he hit the ground. He remembered each one of them—Lena, Horace, Auster, Audra, and Vincent—and the games they used to play, the conversations they used to have. He remembered how much he loved them, how much he had sometimes hated them. He remembered what they were and would no longer be. He remembered what he had done and would do again.
Edgar tipped his head back and screamed. He screamed until his throat was raw and his lungs were burning, and he didn’t stop until he was sure all of Eldrus had heard him.
“Derleth, our Night Terror friend here, will see you to the Divide. After that, another will show you to the Nameless Forest.”
Amon bent down, and grabbed Edgar by the chin. Holding his head still, he forced two feet of vermillion vein into his throat. The growth wriggled, and then it adhered to his insides, like a tick.
Edgar didn’t put up much of a fight. The concoction he had drunk before, in the Archivist’s tower, was still in effect.
“I won’t kill anyone else,” he finally said.
Amon nodded and patted his back. “It’ll be easier next time, because they will deserve it. The Nameless Forest will help you along the way.”
“And what you put inside me?” Edgar touched his throat. He was too drugged to do much, other than be detached from it all.
“It will help you forget, and also remember, or maybe nothing at all. Could just be a placebo.” Amon shrugged. “You’re going to do what you would have done, with or without it. You’ll just come to terms with what you are a little more quickly than the rest.”
Edgar had a hard time following what the old man was saying, so he mumbled, “Why me?” He fell forward, his lips to the cold tile of what was now his rightful chamber. “Why didn’t you do this sooner? Years ago? Why me? Why the fuck did you make me do it?”
“I’ve waited a long time, Edgar.” Amon, apparently not liking his attitude, shoved more of the vermillion veins into his mouth. He laid the last curl atop his tongue, like a holy host. “And my time is limited. I don’t know what is going to happen
to me. Alexander Blodworth made an interesting proposition, and so did Crestfallen, which is unusual. Worst comes to worst, you die, and the royal family of Eldrus is wiped out. I can work with a clean slate.” He sighed, and gently slapped Edgar’s cheek. “This hurts me, too. I loved all of you, more than I thought I would. We are family, after all.”
“Fuck you. Fuck you! We are not family!” Long strands of saliva ran from Edgar’s mouth to the floor.
“Mmm, more on that when you return.” Amon patted his back again. “You have enough to think about.”
Edgar began to feel the effects of the vermillion veins take hold. His consciousness began to slip farther and farther from his grasp. “Why do you want… the Nameless Forest?” he said, drunkenly.
“I really don’t,” Amon said. “But you will, eventually. I just want you to bring something back from it.”
“Get it yourself.” Edgar spat on Amon’s robes.
“I would, but I don’t think I could survive the trip. That place is beyond our control. But not yours.”
Edgar laughed pathetically. “I just have to kill the rest of my family, right? The ones that were abandoned there. Like in your stupid fucking stories.”
Amon snapped his fingers. “I’d say you’ve gotten pretty good at that, so don’t complain.”
Derleth the Eel heeded the Archivist’s call. He returned to the room.
“Get him ready,” Amon said.
The Night Terror forced the gore-covered king to his feet. “I hope you cut off your brother’s wretched cock.”
Again, Edgar looked at the dark bloodstain on the backside of the Night Terror’s trousers. To Amon, he said, “Is this how you treat all your allies?”
Several shoots of the fabled veins ran up the Archivist’s neck, into his ears. “Strange how everyone acts differently with the vein inside them. You turn into something quite snarky. Allies? Derleth here didn’t think much of my offer to join our mission, but your depraved brother quickly changed his mind.
“Enough talking, Edgar. It’s a long journey between here and my home, and we haven’t the time to waste.”
CHAPTER XV
Edgar was alive, but he wished he wasn’t, because he remembered everything. It would have been easy enough to blame Amon for what he had done, but the killings hadn’t stopped with his family. Under no influence, save for his own need to survive, he had left one crime scene to travel across the continent to create another.
Whether or not the vermillion veins were truly the cause of his actions was irrelevant, because like blaming the Archivist, it didn’t bring to life those he’d brought so easily to death.
Edgar had been awake for almost an hour, but he didn’t dare show it. He kept his eyes shut, his body still, and his breathing to a minimum. Awful, unspeakable atrocities had ushered him into the Nameless Forest. Why would the end result be any less awful or unspeakable? But this wasn’t the end, Edgar realized, because one ruler still remained: the one who claimed dominion over Blackwood.
He opened his eyes, because after all he had done, he knew he had to see this through, to salvage the wreckage of his ruins. He lay in a white field, surrounded by white trees, beneath a maelstrom of white clouds swirling across the sky.
At first, he thought it had snowed, but when he reached out, he found fabric. It wasn’t snow, but satin—a single piece of white satin, stretching out in every direction, covering everything.
“How are you feeling?”
Edgar sat up and turned around. Behind him, between the tops of two trees, Crestfallen floated, her dress the source of the fabric that had woven itself around this part of the Forest. At the foot of the trees between which she was suspended, there were innumerable bloodstains, smears, and splatters.
“You’ve done me a great service,” Crestfallen said. Her voice was higher than he expected.
“I killed your children.” Edgar came to his feet. The blood on the cloth began to move.
“I would’ve done it myself, but I loved them too much. It was time, though. They made me something I never wanted to be.”
A burning sensation flared within Edgar’s throat and chest. He could still feel the open wounds and tears inside him from where the Arachne spawn had dug itself in. Where was it now? And had it left anything behind? He covered his mouth and, to stop himself from vomiting at the thought, said, “What will happen when this is over?”
Crestfallen smiled and leaned forward. The curls of her long, dark hair swept across her face, so that Edgar could see only her hungry eyes. “We’ll be free to do as we like, until we can’t.”
“Did you choose me?” Edgar asked. “Did you choose me to do this?”
Crestfallen shook her head. “Amon did. He chose them all.”
The blood on her dress bubbled out of the fabric and popped, spreading the red stains further across the fabric.
“I’m not the only one. How… how long has Amon been sending my ancestors? How many times has that son of a bitch tried this?”
Crestfallen shrugged. “He is a persistent thing. Imagine his surprise when I told him I wouldn’t fight him anymore.”
An arm shot out of the dress and pushed the rest of its body free. The bloody, glistening thing lay there, adding more color to Crestfallen’s fetid canvas.
Edgar, unafraid of nothing but himself, took a few steps forward as the full-grown, newborn creature crawled in circles on the dress. “What are they?”
“The blood in us all,” Crestfallen said. With a sigh, she slowly descended from her place between the trees, until she was eye-level with Edgar. “It’s everyone that’s ever come, every child I’ve ever had. They’re my family, our family. My first true family. Silas, Martin, Anansi.” She held out her hands. “They’re finally here now, too, with the rest. Where they should have always been.”
Shaking his head, Edgar said, “We have no common bond, you and I.”
The blood-borne creature melted back into the fabric.
Crestfallen laughed so hard that the dress tightened over the landscape. “I drank so much of Novn’s blood that I have more royalty in me than you do in you.”
“So you are the ruler of the Nameless Forest?”
“No.”
The Woman in White disappeared. The cloth darkened, and more blood rose to the surface. All at once, what had been white was now crimson.
“A mother has to keep her home together. My boys didn’t know what they were doing for the longest time. Without me, the villages would have fallen apart, and there were people, and more children to rule. I thought my sons would have a better world in here than out there.
“I wasn’t going to let my only chance, the only good thing I’ve ever done, die. Edgar, we could have done so much more, but we’ve been in the Nameless Forest a very long time, and it wore us down. I couldn’t leave my sons until they were dead, but they wouldn’t die. I fought Amon tooth and nail every time he sent someone in, because I knew he would tear our home apart. But after a spell, I knew it had to be done, and no one sews ruin better than Amon Ashcroft.”
“You’re insane,” Edgar said, watching as cracks spread across the sky. “How could anyone live in a place like this? Why would you want to?”
“Watch your world from mine, and you’ll say the same thing about it,” Crestfallen said. “What happens here has already happened out there untold times over. We accept our places as slaves to chaos. You deny it and then cry, ‘Why?’ when the blood comes out. But things like this can be hard to see for those who stand so high above the rest.”
“So after everything, you’re just going to give this to me? That’s why I’m here, right? To take the Nameless Forest.” Edgar’s hand became a fist as he remembered Audra, and how soundly she had been sleeping in her bed.
“I don’t care what happens here anymore. I have my boys. I have nothing to prove to myself or my sister anymore.”
Sister? Flecks of the sky floated down around him. “No, you don’t. Not all of them. There’s sti
ll the village of Blackwood.”
Crestfallen smirked. The dress contracted and lifted her into the air, so that she loomed over him. “The only son in Blackwood is the one you’ll call yours. Find him. He’s been waiting so long.”
Edgar furrowed his eyebrows. He started with a maddened giggle and then broke out into a full-blown bout of guffawing insanity. “My son? What the fuck? What are you…? I don’t understand. What the fuck are you two doing to me?” He punched his leg, dug his feet into the bloody satin. “I can’t do this anymore. God damn it, I can’t!”
“Yes, you can.”
Crestfallen tugged on the sides of her dress. All at once, the fabric retreated inwards. As it did, Edgar slipped and fell onto his back.
“You know exactly what is happening. You killed your family, and you killed mine. Eldrus and the Nameless Forest are yours. And now you may go to Blackwood and claim your reward.”
“No one is going to follow me.” The dress continued to suck inward, causing Edgar to flip and turn over. “Especially not the Nameless Forest.” He clawed for purchase on the weave. “It doesn’t work that way.”
Crestfallen pulled the miles of red satin upward. She spun it around herself, much like the Arachne would their webs.
“The Nameless Forest is a cancer that retained some of the qualities of the thing it grew out of. If it hadn’t, the Dread Clock would have torn this place apart the moment it started ticking when the Trauma dropped it here.
“Did Amon tell you of the Vermillion God? If not, you’ll see it soon.”
“Bullshit,” Edgar said.
Crestfallen ignored him. “The Binding Road is stable. The untamed tracts are stable. Each of the villages are stable, too. All of that is because of the Vermillion God’s presence and what the Nameless Forest absorbed from exposure to It. A rigid dedication down to the smallest molecule, but only in places, where not even the Black Hour can break through.
“It’s not complicated. In the Nameless Forest things are, or they aren’t. It just depends what has dominion over that place. You killed the rulers of the villages. Therefore, the villages are yours to rule. Just like your world out there. You conquered them, and your supporters will convince them to follow you. My only stipulation was to keep the land in the family.” She winked. “And now that you have it, don’t let that pretty little whore snatch it away from you.”