In Times Of Want

by Marie O'Regan

  Mark followed Saul’s gaze, and told himself, afterwards, that he couldn’t be seeing what he thought. Couldn’t be staring into the face of the blaze’s victim. She was looking straight at him, her expression one of joy – and hate.

  He shivered. There was a grating noise, and dust showered the floor before the fireplace, although he couldn’t see where it came from.

  “Don’t look at it!” Saul pushed forward and took hold of the painting, pulling it from the wall and casting it into the flames. The wind screamed, and the fumes pouring off the painting as it was consumed were sucked straight upward. The canvas shrivelled up and burned to a crisp, the frame’s embers joining the coals as they glowed with a fierce heat. Then the wind seemed to funnel straight back down the chimney and into the library, hitting Saul full force and throwing him back across the room. He slammed into the wall, and Mark saw the light go out in his eyes as blood erupted from the split on his scalp, pouring down his face. His body went limp and slid down the wall, landing in a heap on the stone floor. The wind vanished as quickly as it had come, and all was still once more.

  Alex screamed; Mark whirled round.

  “Alex?” She’d fallen forward, over the arm of the chair, and Mark brushed the hair back from her forehead as he eased her back in the chair so that she was more comfortable. She was unconscious now, moaning in her sleep. The first faint traces of purple could be seen on her jaw-line, creeping ever upwards.

  Saul’s body moved. Mark watched in horror as the mound of cloth squirmed, giving the monk the semblance of sentience once more. Something wet ripped, and a pool of dark fluid welled around the body. Mark moaned.

  Still the body moved, accompanied by sucking sounds, and Mark’s feet failed him as he saw what looked like the monk’s hand – bloody still, but just bone now – inch away from the light, eager for the dark recesses of the room.

  The movement stopped, and Mark realised he was sitting on the library floor in a pool of his own fluid. He’d wet himself.

  “Soon,” Alex muttered, in that voice that was so unlike her natural one; and Mark cried out as if he’d been struck.

  What was going on in this place?

  The stones creaked and moaned, bewailing the ruin that was coming for them all – long years had they held the monks’ secrets, and in all that time their inhabitants had been left alone. Now the Beast was awake, and would destroy them all.

  Now that she was back.

  Down the halls things crept, woken from their slumber by the painting’s destruction. Held fast for so long, encased in stone, they inched their way towards the library where they sensed their rebirth was imminent. Somewhere deep within the building’s heart, something rejoiced.

  Peter huddled in his bed, covers pulled over him. He prayed for redemption, and for the Good Lord to deliver them all this night. He sobbed as he prayed, words almost unintelligible in his fear. “Dear Lord, protect us from the Beast, help us to protect the innocent; to hold them safe from harm…”

  Something laughed in the darkness. “You’ll need more than prayers this night, boy!”

  Peter screamed as a mist enveloped him, the ice of its breath freezing his own. He felt himself squeezed tight as the creature’s embrace grew stronger, and was still aware when his bones started to crack under the pressure; when blood bubbled up in his lungs as splinters from his ribs pierced them over and over; as his heart ruptured and its beat faltered to a stop, blood erupting from a mouth that breathed its last.

  The creature sighed in delight, and rose from the body in a mist now crimson with gore. Features could be discerned, if only dimly; slivers of flesh and bone more solid here and there among the mist.

  “Soon,” it said.

  Mark crouched on the library floor, listening to the sounds of destruction that raged around him. He whimpered as things skittered behind the skirting boards, watching clouds of dust as they fell from the ceiling and out of gaps in the walls; gaps that seemed to be growing wider by the second.

  “Mark?” The voice was weak, but it was undeniably Alex. Thank God, Mark thought, as he faced her.

  She was even frailer now, if that were possible. Skin and bone. He quailed at that; felt ashamed for recoiling, even if only slightly.

  Her brow creased, and she fought to push herself into a more upright position. “I had the strangest dreams…”

  Mark went to help her, shocked at how light she was. Her bones felt like twigs under her clothes, flesh stretched thin across them – almost wasted away. “You did?”

  “There was a woman; at least I think it was a woman. She seemed to know me…”

  “Any idea who she was, love?” Mark had an idea this question was more important than they yet realised, and was half afraid of the answer.

  “No,” Alex said, voice full of regret. “But I get the feeling I really should. There’s something so familiar…” Her voice tailed off, and she stared into the flames, all concentration on them now.

  Mark stared at the painting, inexplicably back on the wall, undamaged, wondering what it was that had frightened Saul so badly the last time he’d gazed at this. It took a moment for that knowledge to sink in. The woman was gone. The poor soul who’d been burnt at the stake wasn’t tied to the pole in the middle of the fire any more. He moved closer, saw that the ropes were still there, looped around the pole’s base – and the flames were licking hungrily at the twigs and branches piled high around it. But the woman (witch?) was now nowhere to be seen.

  “Remember…” The word was little more than a whisper, but Mark spun round as if possessed.

  No one was there. Alex was watching him, eyes hooded, a half-smile on her lips.

  “Alex? Did you hear that?”

  She sighed, then looked up at him – with someone else’s eyes. Mark shuddered as he realised Alex wasn’t with him anymore, the creature had taken her place. “Alex is… elsewhere, for the moment.”

  Mark fought to keep calm, keep this – thing – talking while he figured out how to help Alex, get her back where she belonged. Far away from this God-forsaken place.

  The creature inhabiting his girlfriend laughed at that. “You are right, boy. God forsook this place many years ago.”

  “Why?”

  The creature sat forward, Alex sneered as it growled at him. “It would be better to say He forsook me. He let them burn me, as a witch, let them damn my soul.”

  Mark cringed. “You’re a witch?”

  The creature inside Alex shook her head. “Not then, no. I was just… different. I had some skill in healing, a sixth sense… the monks believed I was evil.”

  “And they burned you? For that?”

  It nodded once more. “It is as you say. They burned me, for that.”

  Like a puppet, Alex’s body lurched upright, then jerked around the library, examining shelves and walls with eyes that should have been sightless, but somehow saw even though Alex herself didn’t. Couldn’t. Not with that thing in control. Something rapped on the door and it flew open, the wind it admitted soughing through the room in an instant; the fire dimming under its assault. Alex traced the mantel with her wounded hand, leaving a trail of blood along the stone. There was a crash as the mantel broke free and fell to the floor; releasing what it had held prisoner for so long – the eyes in that skull glowed with a fire that spoke of its desire to hurt, to seek revenge. Alex moved into the centre of the room, still controlled by the… thing that walked in her flesh.

  Mark shivered, and the thing laughed with Alex’s mouth, her features still blank and unknowing. “But oh, the things I learned after they’d burned my body.”

  Something was crawling towards her, he saw; the floor seemed to be covered with creatures Mark couldn’t put a name to – even if he’d wanted to. The light flared a little brighter, and he shivered as he realised the creatures were something else entirely, not even alive. Bones inched their way along the stones, clacking their progress towards this beast. Some were ancient, by the look of them, resembl
ing the thing that had bitten Alex. Small clouds of dust rose from the midst of these, as the bones shook off the remnants of their erstwhile prisons, eager for a newer, wetter home. Others… were harder to look at, dripping with the fluids that had erupted from their vessels as they were ripped free; flaps of flesh hanging from them as they crawled, sweeping the stones into a bloody mat that heralded the coming of a new mistress here, in this place.

  The creature laughed when it saw Mark’s expression. “Don’t be so squeamish. I won’t always inhabit this, your partner.”

  Hope dawned in Mark’s eyes. “You mean, you’ll let her go?”

  “Of course. I have no wish to hurt my daughter, my only flesh.”

  “What?”

  Realisation began to dawn as Mark stared at Alex’s body, inhabited now by a much crueller mistress. He saw the spider-thin scars she’d had since infancy, legacies of a fire, she’d said. Mark looked again at this creature within her; its features now superimposed over those he loved and knew so well – eerily similar, he could see.

  Mark stared at the painting once more, then turned back to Alex. “But the fire…”

  “You should have listened to Saul, boy. Evil didn’t end with the burnings long ago; it still persists.” The creature smiled, and looked down at her daughter’s form, relishing the blue fire that rippled up and down its length. “Saul himself set the fire that damned me, picked my daughter from the fire that birthed her, when I went into labour because of the pain.”

  Mark stared. “You were pregnant when they set the fire?”

  She nodded. “Now who was evil, and who maligned? He hid her! He stole her from me; hid her where he thought I’d never see!” Keening, she lifted her arms and allowed herself to float free of Alex, who collapsed on the floor at her feet. Mark rushed to her, pulled her clear, and cradled her in his arms as he sank to the ground. Bones chattered as they approached. Mark watched in fascination as, one by one, they were swept up into the maelstrom that had been Alex’s mother, once upon a time. Now her form was clearer, denser; the bones and gobbets of flesh that clung to them gave her solidity, bringing her nearer in flesh… bringing her properly into their presence. To her daughter.

  “Give her to me!” it roared, and reached for Alex.

  Mark shook his head, too frightened now to speak. He pulled Alex tighter, and groaned as he felt the scratches of bones not yet absorbed by the Beast. He brushed them off as best he could, from himself and Alex, struggling to remember how to pray. “Dear God,” he started, and the Beast screamed.

  “Do not try to escape, she’s mine! Your God can’t help you now, this place belongs to me!” She howled once more, and dust fell from the walls. A crack appeared in the floor by its feet, snaking its way towards them.

  Mark began to cry – then stood tall once more, determined to defend Alex even to his own death. “You can’t have her,” he said, and made the sign of the cross, and the walls themselves shuddered.

  The creature hissed, and gestured at Mark. Unseen things plucked at his clothes, and he batted them away, unconcerned. Then he glanced at Alex, and his gaze hardened as he sighed, turning to face the Beast.

  “You can’t have her,” he repeated. “She’s beyond your reach now.”

  “No!” The Beast shook its head, and Mark flinched as something – flesh, bloody bone, he wasn’t sure which – struck his cheek. It hissed as it burned its way down to his neck, but he barely noticed.

  Mark gestured, and the fire blew towards the Beast in a great cloud of destruction... to no effect. The Beast seemed to feed on its flames, bones knitting together and flesh growing more solid in its warmth.

  Alex moaned; Mark tightened his grasp on her. He could feel the heat snaking through her body; see its evidence in the traceries of her scars – growing redder and more livid by the moment.

  She opened her eyes, then, and Mark nearly dropped her – fire blazed in each pupil, no trace of his Alex remaining. She forced herself upright, and when she laid a hand on his arm to pull his grip loose, he nearly screamed. The heat was unbearable.

  “Alex!”

  “What, love?” Her words were soft, kind, but her actions belied them. She pushed him back, smiling as the flesh on his arm hissed and sizzled – as she stood she turned her gaze on the Beast that stood in the remnants of the fire, triumphant.

  Mark fell back as Alex released him, and as he hit the floor he saw what was left of Saul dangling from the Beast’s grip, the creature almost solid now, a myriad of bones (both hers originally, he guessed, as well as from her victims tonight) – fixing themselves in their allotted space on her dreadful frame. She stood before them clad only in a robe of smoke, and the smell was awful – a mixture of charred flesh, fresh blood… and decay.

  Mark lay there, choking for breath, but couldn’t move as the Beast gestured and his beloved Alex began to move forward. As she drew closer, a weird metamorphosis seemed to be taking place – the Beast was growing more substantial, and Alex… waning. That was the only word which could adequately describe this, Mark thought. She was growing smaller, frailer – less there, with every passing second. A gout of flame bellowed from the hearth and she was lost in its midst; Mark’s wail went unheard by all but the Beast, who simply smiled – an expression so far from humorous Mark cried at the sight. When the flames died down he was relieved to see Alex was still standing. But her clothes were gone now, the last scraps of cloth glowing gently as the flames died down and they melted away to nothing. Her bare skin was livid, traced head to toe in a network of fine white scars, more than he’d ever seen before – the fire seemed to have brought them out, somehow, undone all the operations and skin grafts she’d told him had been necessary after her… accident.

  Except it hadn’t been an accident at all, had it?

  The Beast laughed, then, and stared down at him. “Finally you see the truth.”

  Alex had reached it (her) now; and stood beside it unconcerned. The creature draped an arm around her shoulders, and Alex smiled in approbation, basking in her mother’s attention.

  “The monk told the truth when he said evil still exists,” it said. “And it’s true they burned me for my ‘crimes’, which were no more than a few love spells, some healing – until they burned me.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Mark replied. “Why would you have been burned just for that?”

  The creature laughed. “Let’s just say they disapproved of one of my ‘cures’. I brought a man back from the dead, reunited him with his love – his murderer wasn’t happy since he’d wanted the girl for himself.”

  “You raised a corpse?” Mark blurted.

  “Technically.” The Beast stared down at him, lost in thought. Mark said nothing, knowing he was safer that way. He couldn’t help gazing over his shoulder at the painting. Where she had been.

  The creature shrugged, a gesture that struck him as disturbing in its ordinariness. “I wasn’t to know how he’d return.”

  That simple phrase told Mark all he needed to know; she’d raised a man from the dead with complete disregard for the consequences, and he’d come back wrong. “What did he do?” he asked.

  “He attacked his love, destroyed his murderer… several neighbours before he was stopped.”

  There was more to this, Mark knew. “He didn’t kill his lover?”

  “No. He spared her for the sake of her unborn child.” The creature glanced at Alex then, and the tale was finally told.

  So that’s it, Mark thought. Aloud, he merely said, “You?”

  Now she turned the full force of her gaze upon him, and he fell back, terrified. There was no pity to be found here, he knew, he had no recourse but for Alex... if she even remembered him. As if she’d heard him, she focussed on him properly and looked sad, lost even. As if in response, her mother’s grip tightened around her shoulders. Alex flinched, aware now of the truth of her situation.

  “Alex?” he whispered.

  She made as if to move towards him, but the creature
grabbed her arm. Alex mewed in disgust and tried to get away.

  The Beast clung tighter, and Mark saw smoke escaping from between its fingers as it fought to keep hold of its offspring. Whatever glamour had held Alex fast in its grip was gone now, and she fought to break free, to reach him.

  “Let her go!” he shouted, launching himself up and forward, ready to do battle.

  He grabbed Alex’s other arm and pulled, causing her to scream in pain as the two opposing forces fought for her possession. Mark was helpless against that strength, and had to let go. Crying, he sank to his knees before Alex, and rested his head against her legs. “I’m sorry,” he cried, “I’m so sorry.”

  The creature pulled Alex away, forcing another cry from her. “Come, Alex,” it grated. “Come to Mother.”

  Alex screamed, then rained blows on its head, forcing it to free her. She fell backwards, and landed in a heap on top of Mark, who still cowered on the floor before them. “Never!”

  The creature roared, the ground starting to rumble; flagstones falling around them under the force of her displeasure.

  Alex groaned, and spread her body over Mark’s, taking the brunt of the falling masonry in an attempt to protect him. “Mark,” she whispered. “Mark!”

  Mark struggled to focus – a stray stone had clipped his temple, opening a gash there. His head throbbed as he fought to pay attention. “Alex? Wha…”

  “There’s no time, Mark, listen to me.”

  He nodded, groaning at the pulse of pain unleashed in his skull. “I’m listening.”

  “This is my fault,” she said. “She came back because of me. For me.”

  He said nothing; there was no arguing with the truth, and both of them knew that now – knew she was, somehow, this thing’s daughter.

  She pushed him, gently; made him sit up. “You have to go. You have to get out of here.”

  “Alex, I can’t! I won’t leave you…”

  The thing roared once more, and the heavens answered in kind. The storm was directly over them now, the sky itself trying to abate the force of this monster with the sheer weight of water it was throwing down on them. Lightning lit them all in stark relief, and Mark knew the strangeness of that vision would remain etched on his mind forever. Alex, naked and bloody but defiant still, knelt before the crazed creature that once had been her mother – and loved her still in its own demented fashion.