We are Wormwood

by Christian, Autumn

  "Francois!" I called.

  I laughed, stumbled, and grabbed a light pole to keep myself from falling. It didn’t matter I was on a sacred mission, I couldn’t help myself.

  "Do I know you?" he asked.

  "You never called me back. You were going to teach me your French tongue.”

  I stuck my tongue out at him. He pulled the girl away from me, shielding her ears with his hands. He must’ve shed the Francois persona; being a Frenchman could only take you so far when you didn’t know French.

  As I laughed, choking, clinging to the light pole so I wouldn’t fall over, baby spiders flew past me, riding the air currents.

  “What are those?” the girl said. “What’s wrong with this city?”

  I followed the spiders because it seemed like the kind of sign to follow. Invisible webbing stuck to my eyelashes, my mouth.

  The current split them into two paths, one heading toward an alley, the other toward a bridge. A few spiders flew into my hair, and then leapt off and swirled above my head. I followed them into the alley.

  It was a dead end.

  I stood next to a pile of fetid trash as the spiders blew past me and into the air. I looked behind me to the street. Francois and the girl were there. Francois was talking to someone on the phone.

  “Yeah,” he said. “She’s here.”

  “Who are you talking to?”

  “You better come and get her. I’ll make sure she doesn’t go anywhere.”

  “Fucking fuck,” I said.

  I curled my fists and was about to head toward him, when the demon found me.

  Her hair, my baby’s hair, dark and hot with magic, came to me from above. It was living hair, stained with black ichor - wild things growing there. It grasped me by the wrists as her insects spoke softly to me.

  “Come here.”

  The girl in Francois’ arms saw the hair winding itself around me, and she burst into tears.

  The demon’s hair pressed itself into my eyes, nose, and mouth. It tied itself around my waist as if winding me up for a dance, then pulled me upwards.

  She led me up the alley, down the street, and through a collapsed window. I cut my feet on delicate glass and junkie’s needles. I bled across platform ladders, dirty boards, and toppled bars. I walked through heaving, whiskey soaked skins that used to be human. I went down an elevator shaft, her hair lifting me so that I walked on the ceiling. My feet left behind bloodied prints.

  She took me down a flight of staircases. My hands burned against the railing as she hurtled me from one wall to the next.

  She opened a door and I flew down the long, gray hallway. I flew into an abandoned hotel basement. She released me on the floor and her hair retracted.

  I found her kneeling beside a rusted, reignited boiler.

  The demon did not belong here underground, in this heated box of metal with her skin cooking. She wore my boots, thick woolen socks, and one of my sweaters. She wrapped herself in layers of scarves and chunky gloves.

  “I thought I’d lost you,” I said.

  She folded her arms and turned her face to the fire.

  “You will,” the demon said. “I just wanted us to have a little while longer together.”

  Her hair drew me close. I buried my head in her soft sweater and felt her jagged bones underneath. In all the layers of my clothing, she no longer smelled like herself.

  “I won’t let her take you.”

  “There are things greater than both of us. She’s one of them.”

  “I’ll kill her,” I said.

  “You have to stop fighting. You can’t fight her.”

  “I should have known. It was you The Nightcatcher wanted all along.” I said.

  “We couldn’t have known.”

  I wouldn’t admit to myself I couldn’t save her. Kill The Nightcatcher? I couldn’t even kill the thing inside me that I hated.

  “Why did we have to come here?” I asked. “Maybe I could’ve saved my mother. I should’ve never set fire to our tree. Maybe it was a gateway out of this hell.”

  “You’ll drive yourself mad,” she said, “with what could have been.”

  She clung to me like a child and I rocked her. How small she was, how well we fit together. For all I knew she’d been in the crib with me when we were infants, our clumsy feet reaching out for each other, past bedtime, both of us eating spiders like children sometimes do.

  “You can’t go,” I whispered. “You’re all I want. Please.”

  She stroked my hair. She pressed my forehead to her own, and, though she was sweating, her skin chilled me to the touch.

  In her eyes, the Wormwood star collapsed. When I tried to look away she tugged on my hair.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Not now.”

  I cupped my hands underneath her chin. The demon’s mouth parted.

  Pay attention, this is what it feels like to lose your shadow.

  Ke-ke-ke-ke-ke.

  She slipped her webbed tongue into my mouth and her insect noise vibrated inside my head. Burning. Pulsing. She kissed me again and again. Until the fire in the boiler dimmed and a chill crept over her.

  The smell of machine oil.

  “You need to go,” she said.

  “No.”

  Her hair hissed and wrapped around my wrists and ankles. I coughed up black hair, billowing hair, as she pushed me toward the exit. Needles and spiders scraped against my skin. I braced myself against the doorframe with my arms and legs.

  “You can’t make me leave.”

  “She’ll kill you,” the demon said.

  There was a sound like a bullet train. No, the sound of a stampede. The sound of a great rushing wave. It was the sound of hell. Forget the wailing and of teeth, hell was a rushing noise that intensified until it replaced the blood in my head.

  The demon’s hair released me. It was as if someone reached through the wall behind her and grabbed her by the back of the neck. Her eyes were wide and empty, her throat exposed. She swallowed. And although I thought the crushing noise would kill me, I heard her as if she spoke beside me.

  “Lily,” she whispered. “I’m afraid.”

  I will fight this. I will fight The Nightcatcher. I am weak and ready to fall apart, but if you come for my demon, I will destroy you. I will plunge my fists into your face, if you even have a face at all. I will tear you apart with my teeth, even if your skin is made of metal.

  I ran to her. The floor stretched between us, the basement walls collapsed like they were set props, made of paper; there was a great darkness like deep space beyond them.

  The demon had been dragged across the floor, toward the darkness beyond the wall. Oil oozed underneath her. The oil grew a face that chewed gashes in her cheeks and tore her clothing apart.

  She reached for me.

  It seemed as if I’d run for miles across the boiler room before I gripped her arms. I tried to pull her away, out of the oil sucking her hair into its mouth.

  I screamed.

  They can’t take you from me, demon.

  Demon.

  “I won’t let you go,” I said. “I promise.”

  You’re all I have left.

  Maybe my curse was that everyone I ever cared about would look at me with those eyes - eyes that, if they had mouths, would gasp. Eyes calling for help, windows to the soul, shutting me out forever. They said, “You could have saved me Lily.”

  “You could have saved me by staying away.”

  The Nightcatcher dangled a fake paper moon in the darkness like a fucking smile.

  The Nightcatcher pulled her across the floor toward an infinite nothingness where there was nothing to fight, nothing to kill. I stumbled as I tried to hold onto the demon. My arms ached. Everything in me strained. If there’s any blood left in me, take it from me. Quick, tie my hair to your hair. If I can’t pull you out then I will go in with you.

  But the darkness was her darkness and I wouldn’t be able to follow. It would sew me in a bubble, separate our fin
gers, split my nails apart. Out there, I could be destroyed in any way The Nightcatcher pleased. I imagined her laughing, but there was the only the terrible sound of rushing, boiling, gushing, incoherent noise.

  She’d collapse the earth on us to get the demon.

  The darkness swallowed my demon in pieces. It could’ve taken her all at once, but it taunted me. It wound up her legs. I wouldn’t let her go. It wound up her waist. I wouldn’t let her go. This was a bad horror movie, baby. Let’s wake back up in our tree. I promise, this time I won’t run when you show me the glittering insects in your lap.

  I won’t let you go let you go let you go.

  Her face transformed into a rigid mask, her mouth half open and her eyes burning red. Her face didn’t even belong to her anymore.

  Nobody could endure that much fear and keep their face.

  The darkness, like a molten case, crawled up her spine. I tried to tear it off her. It burned my fingers. I tried to pull her back from the invisible grasp by the hair, but her hair was a dead thing without magic, and it wouldn’t respond to my touch.

  As The Nightcatcher dragged her further across the floor, the demon left behind dead spiders, smeared beetles, mottled feathers spattered in dried blood.

  She was slipping through my fingers.

  I couldn’t hold on.

  I fell to my knees, skinning them on the concrete floor. And I started to beg.

  “Please,” I said, “I’ll give you anything. I’ll be your slave. Please. Anything, just don’t take her away from me.”

  But there was no response except the howling noise.

  Please.

  I never got to tell you.

  Anything at all.

  The demon opened her mouth to speak.

  But she couldn’t speak. The darkness spilled down her throat like the silt bottom of a river. Even as it burned away my muscle and exposed the bone of my ruined hand, I didn’t let go.

  See Nightcatcher, I won’t let go. See.

  The Nightcatcher grabbed the exposed bones of my hand and squeezed until they snapped.

  I let go.

  She pulled the demon away.

  I tried to run after her, but the concrete walls slid back into place. The boiling noise rushed away. I slammed my hands against the wall once, before collapsing.

  I was left alone, on my knees, panting, surrounded by the shells of dead insects. I wanted to scream, give her back, give her back, but I couldn’t even speak.

  And I knew they wouldn’t have been able to hear me.

  What was that throbbing? Was she back? Wait, no, it’s only the blood rushing through my ears. If adrenaline had a noise, it would be white noise, searching for a way to burst out of my throat.

  I crawled up the stairs I’d floated down. I walked through the empty hallways of the hotel above the boiler room, dragging my feet, squeezing my hand to feel if the bones were broken.

  I felt them shifting, fragmented, but no pain.

  I hoped to catch a glimpse of the demon upstairs. A sound. A strand of hair. Some reminder. One last chance for me to save her.

  But she was not there.

  I walked out of the hotel. I stood still for a long time on the street, shivering and shaking, my hands drained of blood.

  Nothing we’d done to keep The Nightcatcher away had worked - running away from home, the sigils, the rituals, the hunter’s bow.

  My demon was gone.

  I walked away from the hotel. I turned the corner.

  In the middle of an empty street, in broken shadow and glass, waited the machine.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  WHEN THE MACHINE SAW me, it opened its mouth, a rusted jaw on springs, a black Hades of a mouth, and it roared.

  I ran and it chased me.

  It was so cold, I couldn’t feel my legs. There was a great emptiness underneath me. I called for help. I called and called, but nobody came. The machine screamed behind me, the sound of its gears like a locust swarm; I kept running. This lone street wasn’t the only thing I found abandoned; it was the entire city. Neither a person nor a car passed me. The streetlights exploded. The skyscrapers shut off their lights, covering the city in greasy pools of shadow. This wasn’t a city anymore, but a facsimile of a city, a stage-set after hours. A fog overtook the streets, obscuring any sense of direction I might have had.

  The machine called my name. In its rusted tongue, my name sounded like a bleeding pet.

  Lily.

  I ran down alleyways, thick with fog. My heart pounded my rib cage until it ached and cried out. My body wanted to curl up and tremble on the ground. I’d had too many sleepless days, too many bleeding days. There was only so much blood that could be bled, only so many veins that could be ripped apart, before they couldn’t be put back together again.

  “I don’t have her anymore!” I called out, but it didn’t want the demon. It wanted.

  Lily.

  I lost my way. Every skyscraper and storefront I ran past loomed dark, blacked out, the fog obscuring every window, every street sign. The machine always stayed right behind me. If I turned to look, I would see a nightmare - maybe my mother’s face in the center of its crooked machinery, her eyes gouged out, on leaden spikes. Or the dark river, boiling red, in its metal stomach.

  I couldn’t look behind me. I couldn’t slow down. I’d seen its mouth open, and knew it wanted to swallow me.

  Lily.

  A thing that said my name like that would know all the right ways to hurt me.

  I found the ocean sitting in cold lightning. It would’ve fried my skin if it touched me. I ran down the middle of the city bridge, usually congested with traffic, now abandoned. My shoes fell apart. I ran onto glass and rocks, and through dirty water.

  When the machine rolled onto the bridge, the bridge swayed. It swung me from side to side. My back hit the railing, and I had to grab on or else be thrown over. The machine breathed heat through its rusted gears.

  The bridge swung again, pushing me off the railing. It would outlast me. It was a machine, and I was a broken girl with half her guts spilling out of her chest. The entire city shut down for it to chase me. There was no demon to save me. No Saint Peter. No witch.

  When the machine screamed, my organs twisted. Its infinite hunger shrieked through my blood. It was Lily shaped hunger. Maybe The Witch thought she’d been building this machine to protect me, but The Nightcatcher slipped inside her head. It fed her the hatred of me. She never knew she was building an insidious mechanism to destroy me.

  I imagined that inside its stomach was a rotting pool, a prison for me. The machine would carry me around inside its stomach forever, roaming the world as I dissolved. Just like one of Phaedra's carnivorous plants, once you were swallowed, there was no way to get out. “Crawl into me,” the machine whispered, crane-head, breaking sockets; “Aren't I seductive enough for you? Crawl in.”

  It wasn't only the machine bearing down on me, but the entire city. I felt the skyscrapers close behind, windows snapping like teeth. They'd fall on top of me and tear me apart.

  They'd speak:

  “Without your demon, you really are so very weak.

  “The first thing to go will be your feet. Sore feet, blackened on the bottom, stuck with glass and dirty needles. They'll disappear right out from underneath you.

  “Then your hair. That red hair boys want to snort like Adderall. It'll come off in patches as you run, because the wind touches you like an acid.”

  I made it across the bridge.

  It groaned and its cables snapped. I ran toward the sea, through a maze of buildings. I reached the warehouse district, gray buildings, shuttered windows, lonely metal cranes.

  Momma would never know what happened to me. She'd never know.

  I couldn't run much longer.

  I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. For everything I couldn't do.

  I ran through an open garage door of a warehouse. I saw the garage button on the wall, and slammed my palm down on it. The garage do
or began to close. The machine screamed.

  I turned away from the closing door. In the dark, I struck a railing and my body vaulted over it.

  I hit the bottom of the warehouse's empty concrete floor with a crack. The garage door closed. I lay still, my arms clenched, waiting for the machine to crash through the building.

  But there was only silence.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  MY PANICKED BREATH drifted through the empty building. It'd been abandoned and all of its stock cleared away.

  No one would come for me.

  I didn't want to move and discover I'd broken my spine. For a long time I waited for the machine that didn't come, choking on dust.

  I thought something moved in my periphery, shifting near the wall.

  "Hello?" I called out.

  I started coughing again.

  I rolled onto my back. Pain, pinching and hot, shot through my body. But, I managed to stand and stretch. I hadn't broken my back. Maybe a pinched nerve, some bleeding, but that wasn't anything new. I stretched until my joints popped.

  Maybe the machine was gone.

  I made my way along the wall in the darkness, feeling with my fingers until I grasped the stair railing. I climbed the concrete steps to the second floor. I skirted along the wall until I moved past the garage, and found a window, its metallic blinds pulled down.

  I reached out for the blinds. Hesitated. My fingers shook.

  I touched the blinds then slowly, carefully, peeled them back from the dusty window.

  The machine sat outside, silent, head extended. Waiting.

  I reeled back from the window. I sat on the concrete floor, or else I would've fallen.

  The cold came. Fear-cold that couldn't be taken away, because I had no demon to comfort me. It started in my fingers and toes. It worked its way to my chest. I could've been sitting underneath a glacier.

  I pressed my hair against my eyes and mouth.

  Already my tongue felt dry. I had no food or water. I had no phone. No way to contact anyone. There was no way to get out of the building without the machine knowing and coming after me. Grabbing me. Crushing me. Eating me.

  This was the end of the story, then. The hunter goddess never gets to her palace in the forest. She never prepares a feast for her demon and gets to whisper, "eat of these blood and jewels, eat of me." She never gets to lead a trembling fawn to water and snap its neck for the wolves to devour.