Eat the Night

by Tim Waggoner

  She kept her head lowered and her voice soft and toneless as she spoke.

  “You’ve already died once. You’ve seen the Gyre for what it is. You know there’s nothing after it save an endless void. There will be no rebirth, no matter how many sacrifices you make or how many rituals you conduct. You can’t win.”

  Maegarr didn’t respond right away, and she knew she’d gotten to him. She felt a surge of triumph, but she kept her emotion from showing: head down, body limp, her overall appearance that of a woman utterly defeated.

  Maegarr surprised her when he finally responded.

  “Maybe you’re right, darlin’. But I’ve come too far and sacrificed too much not to finish what I started. Besides, if it doesn’t work, we’ll be no worse off than all the other assholes who died before us.” His voice became colder. “Now shut the hell up and let me get this over with.”

  He began reading from the book, the same words Debbie remembered from that long-ago night in the real Placidity, and which Joan had first heard in last night’s dream.

  “To see is to know. To know is to die. To die is to become nothing, and Nothing is Everything.”

  The music increased in volume as Maegarr conducted the rite, and Jon’s hands tightened on her shoulders. The Durg shifted their bodies back and forth, mandibles clacking in their excitement, while the Faceless sat silent and still. While Maegarr chanted on, she thought of something he’d said earlier regarding the Faceless.

  They’re merely echoes formed from the substance of Shadow, as is this place.

  This place, this version of Placidity, wasn’t real. Not in the way Joan understood the word. Debbie had studied the occult during her time with Maegarr, so she had a better understanding of that aspect of existence called Shadow, although she knew she only grasped the basics. But they both understood one thing. If Maegarr could manipulate Shadow to create things, then why couldn’t she?

  She pressed her hands down on the bare earth floor of the Pavilion and dug her fingers into its moist soil. She closed her eyes and pictured a pair of objects that she wanted to hold in her hands. She concentrated with the power of two combined wills, putting all their psychic resources to the task. The handles would be hard as steel and cool to the touch, their edges so sharp they could cut through stone without becoming dull. And they would be black—as black as Shadow itself. Nothing happened for several moments, and she thought she’d failed. But then she felt the soil growing firm in her hands, coming together, merging, fusing, taking on the forms she desired.

  She withdrew a pair of shadow daggers from the ground and smiled for the first time since waking in this place. She thrust the blades behind her and into Jon’s legs. The blades entered his flesh as easily as a hot knife into warm butter. She yanked the daggers free, spraying the air with thick black goo, and then she jumped to her feet.

  The music still played, but Maegarr had stopped reading from the book.

  She spun around in time to see Jon rise to his feet, black ichor running down the sides of his legs. He moved awkwardly, tottering from side to side, as if his legs might collapse beneath him any second. His features had contorted into a mask of fury, and although the Joan part of her saw no sign of the man she’d married in that face, still she hesitated. This was Jon’s body, and that meant there was a possibility he was still in there somewhere, right? If she killed the creature, would she be killing Jon—the real Jon—as well?

  That fucker raped you! Kill him and be done with it!

  That was Debbie’s voice, and while the Joan part understood how she felt, she didn’t know if she could bring herself to do it, even if by not killing Jon she brought about her own death.

  Jon could barely speak with his broken jaw, but he let out a roar of rage as he raised his hands, fingers curled into claws, and rushed toward her.

  She saw something happening out of the corner of her eye, and she quickly glanced in its direction. The air seemed to bend, bulge, and then tear, and a chubby man slipped through the opening. He wore a white shirt stained with blood, black pants, and black shoes, and he carried a pump-action shotgun. She thought he looked familiar, although she couldn’t immediately place him. He stopped when he saw what was happening, and as the rift in space closed behind him, he chambered a shell, raised the gun, and fired.

  The meat between the right side of Jon’s neck and his shoulder disintegrated, tarlike blood exploding into the air. The blast spun him sideways, and his injured legs slipped out from beneath him. He hit the ground hard, and although he immediately tried to get up, he’d lost too much blood—or whatever the crap sludging through his veins was—and he slumped back down and lay still.

  She turned to look at the man with the shotgun.

  “Hi. I’m Kevin. We met earlier today. I was, uh, pretending to be a power company worker, but really I was observing your home because of…of…” He seemed to finally notice she was naked. He broke off speaking, looked her up and down, and—although it was hard to tell in the blue-green light cast by the torches—she thought he blushed. She must have made quite a sight—naked, cut, scratched, bruised, bitten, and holding a pair of night-black daggers. She must’ve looked as much of a monster as anything here.

  The Joan part of her remembered him now. The awkwardly cute guy she’d spoken to in the driveway when she’d come home early from work. What the hell was he doing here, and carrying a shotgun, no less? Not that she was in any way ungrateful for his help.

  She gave Jon’s body a quick glance. She hoped for his sake that Jon Lantz had ceased to exist the instant the thing—whatever it was—had taken him over. She hated to think that his personality might have still remained somewhere in there, aware of what the thing that controlled his body was doing, but unable to do anything to stop it. Either way, his worries were over now. The Joan part of her would mourn him later. Right now she had work to do.

  Kevin was looking around, taking everything in. Maegarr, the Faceless, the Durg… But what really caught his attention was the row of bodies hanging from the rafters behind Maegarr. She wasn’t sure why, but she had the impression that he knew them.

  “Your people?” she asked.

  He nodded, not taking his gaze off them.

  “Want to help me take out the bastard responsible for their deaths?”

  Kevin turned to look at her and his mouth formed a grim smile. “Absolutely.”

  The two of them turned and began walking toward the stage, she with her daggers, Kevin with his shotgun. She didn’t know if their weapons would be enough to go up against Maegarr, but she supposed she’d find out soon enough.

  Maegarr watched them approach, his eye tendrils flailing in agitation.

  “This doesn’t change anything, Debbie. All you’ve managed to do is slow me down a little. I’ll have to start the rite over, but that’s cool. My friends will distract you long enough for me to finish.”

  He snapped his fingers and the Faceless stood.

  “Do you really think they’re going to follow your orders?” she said. “They may only be echoes of people long dead, given form from the substance of this place, but they are echoes of those people. People who died knowing you lied to them, that there is nothing beyond the Gyre but the Vast.”

  Kevin turned toward her as she spoke this last word, alarm on his face. She ignored him and continued looking directly at Maegarr.

  “Go ahead. Give them a command. Tell them to run forward and tear the two of us limb from limb. Or tell them to rape us in every way imaginable until we’re bleeding to death and can’t move. Go on. I dare you.”

  “Uh, Joan…” Kevin said. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “You heard her!” Maegarr shouted to the Faceless. “Fuck them till they’re dead!”

  The Faceless didn’t react.

  “DO IT!!!” he screamed.

  None of them moved.

  She grinned. “Told you. And now I’ll tell you something else. I’m not the same woman you knew in Suriname. And
you made a big mistake when you tried to take away my home.” She gripped the shadow daggers tighter. “Say hello to the Vast for me.”

  She continued moving toward the stage, Kevin keeping pace with her.

  Maegarr’s eye tendrils were waving so furiously now that they looked as if they might shoot out of their sockets. But then they slowed down, until they finally stopped moving and withdrew back into his head. He made a gesture and the music cut off. His shoulders slumped and he let out a long, weary sigh.

  “Fuck it,” he said. “Take them. They’re yours.”

  At first she thought Maegarr was trying to control the Faceless again, but she realized she was mistaken when the Durg entered the Pavilion and began scuttling toward them from all directions.

  She and Kevin didn’t have time to discuss strategy. He started blasting Durg as they came and she sliced and hacked at them with her shadow knives. Durg fell dead around them, and some of the others, caught up in a frenzy of bloodlust, stopped to devour their fellow comrades. But not all. The majority of Durg kept on coming at her and Kevin. She had to protect Kevin twice while he reloaded, and before long he shouted, “I just loaded the last shells!”

  Both of them were wounded and bleeding by this point, although none of their injuries were immediately life-threatening. She didn’t see how she and her new ally were going to survive this, though. There were too damn many insects. And behind them, standing untouched on the stage, Maegarr watched them fight on, laughing the entire time. It was that laugh more than anything that made her more determined than ever not to let the sonofabitch win. Not just because of what he’d done to both parts of her—Debbie and Joan—but for what he’d done to so many others. Jon, Allison, Wes, Kevin’s friends, and all those poor people who died in Placidity so many years ago.

  And that’s when it hit her. She didn’t know if it would work, but it was the only chance they had. She drew in a deep breath and yelled a single word as loud as she could, putting all her energy, all her will, behind it.

  “Help!”

  The Faceless had remained motionless after standing, but now they began moving swiftly. They raced forward to engage the Durg, and within moments the Pavilion became a blood-drenched battlefield as groups of Faceless yanked out Durg legs and pounded the insects to paste with their fists, and Durg sank their mandibles into soft flesh, tearing off limbs and ripping out organs.

  Maegarr wasn’t laughing anymore.

  He grabbed The Book of Masks, tucked it under his arm, then turned and gestured. The air behind him began to ripple and distort, just as it had when Kevin had appeared. Maegarr was preparing to flee.

  “Kevin!” she shouted.

  Kevin raised the shotgun, aimed at Maegarr, and fired.

  Maegarr’s back exploded and he was knocked face-first to the stage. He dropped The Book of Masks and it thumped to the stage near him. The spatial distortion winked out the instant he was hit and it didn’t reappear. The Durg and the Faceless continued fighting, but they no longer seemed to care about Kevin and her. She ran to the stage, hopped up, and hurried to Maegarr. She dropped one of her daggers to free up a hand, grabbed him by the shoulder, and turned him over onto his wounded back. He took in a hissing breath when his shredded meat hit the stage floor.

  “Guess that’s what I get for making my new body too real.” He said this slowly, gasping the words out as if he didn’t have much air left. His eye tendrils didn’t reemerge, and she found herself looking into two deep hollows of darkness, and wondering what—if anything—Maegarr saw through them.

  “You got me, darlin’,” he said. “I have to admit it. But you know what they say about rock ‘n’ roll. It’ll never die.”

  “Want to bet?”

  She raised the dagger she still held and brought it down in single swift slicing motion. She then grabbed hold of his hair and stood, lifting his severed head off the stage. She carried it to the edge and held it up high. Black blood dripped from the neck stump onto the stage, making a not altogether unpleasant pattering sound, like rain.

  “It’s over.”

  She didn’t yell, didn’t so much as raise her voice, but the few Faceless and Durg that still lived stopped fighting and slowly turned to face her. The Pavilion’s floor was covered with mutilated bodies, both Faceless and Durg. Kevin’s shirt was covered with blood and ichor, but he looked well enough for the most part, and he gave her a weak smile.

  She tossed Maegarr’s head out into the Pavilion. It landed somewhere among the dead bodies, falling between them and becoming lost to sight. She let her dagger fall to the stage, and then she climbed down and walked over to Kevin. She felt suddenly weary, and she stumbled, nearly falling. Kevin dropped the shotgun and rushed forward, catching her just in time. He held her for a moment, looking into her eyes. And then, as if remembering once again that she was naked, he blushed and let go of her.

  “You must be cold,” he said. “I’ll give you my shirt.”

  He started to unbutton it, but she reached out and stopped him.

  “Don’t bother. Your shirt was already a mess when you got here, and it’s way worse now. Besides, I’m so covered with gore, it would probably slide right off me.”

  Kevin looked down at his slashed and blood-stained shirt, then he looked back up at her. He shrugged and continued unbuttoning his shirt, and when he was finished, he removed the disgusting thing and tossed it to the ground.

  She started to laugh, but then she saw that his shirt didn’t hit the ground. Instead, it passed through it, as if the ground was no longer solid. Kevin saw this too.

  “I was afraid of that,” he said. “Maegarr made this place out of Shadow itself, shaping it through the sheer force of his will. Now that he’s gone, this place can’t sustain itself. We have to return to the real world while the passage back still exists. If we don’t…”

  “We’ll disappear too,” she said.

  He nodded. “We’ll be absorbed into Shadow, like everything else around here.”

  She looked at the surviving Durg. Now that Maegarr was dead, they seemed quite placid. They had begun to dispose of the corpses of both their kind and the Faceless, only they ate slowly, without any hint of ferocity. They reminded her of cows grazing in a field of grass.

  “But not them,” she said.

  “No,” he confirmed. “They belong in Shadow.”

  She looked at the remaining Faceless. They stood motionless once more, and she had no idea if they were thinking or feeling anything at all.

  “They’ll disappear because Maegarr made them, even if in the end they refused to serve him.”

  “Yes,” Kevin said.

  She grew thoughtful then. What would happen to her once she returned to the real world? Would she still be a fusion of Debbie and Joan? Or would the Debbie part of her vanish, leaving nothing behind but a memory that would, in time, fade, as all memories do in the end. She liked this new version of herself, though, and she would be sad to see it go. But there was nothing she could do about it. Unless…

  She stepped over to where Kevin’s shirt had disappeared, crouched down and reached toward the spot. Although it looked as if the ground there was solid, her hand passed right through. She withdrew it quickly, afraid that she’d find her hand had dissolved into Shadow. But it was intact. She tried to wiggle her fingers to make sure and was gratified to see they responded. She looked around then. Some of the coldfire torches were gone, as were a number of benches. She looked up and saw empty patches in the Pavilion’s ceiling. She should’ve been able to see stars through them, but all she could see was darkness.

  It didn’t have to end this way. She’d been able to create those super-sharp daggers from the substance of this place, and if she could do that, who’s to say she couldn’t do more? She concentrated hard, harder than she ever had before, drawing on the power of her two wills. And then she reached down once more, and this time her hand came in contact with solid earth.

  She looked up at Kevin and grinned. He smile
d and shrugged.

  “I was getting tired of my job anyway,” he said.

  CHAPTER 9

  Music drifted forth from the speakers. Not Maegarr’s, and not any music that had ever been heard before. This music came from within her, and it was slow, soft, and gentle. The coldfire torches continued to burn around the Pavilion. She’d considered changing their blue-green color, but she’d decided she liked it after all and left them the way they were. She’d left the sky alone as well. She liked the night, found the darkness comfortable, soothing.

  She’d resurrected the Faceless, and they sat quietly on and around the benches, listening to her music, thinking whatever thoughts they were capable of. They might be only echoes of people who’d once lived, but that was okay. Echoes had a right to exist too.

  The Durg were out there, somewhere beyond the torchlight. She could hear them moving around sometimes, clacking their mandibles once in a while. Shadow was their natural habitat, and they would always be nearby. But she didn’t mind. She was actually starting to grow rather fond of them.

  She sat on a comfy couch—a new addition of hers—on the stage, The Book of Masks in her lap. There was a lot of interesting stuff in there, a lot more than Maegarr had ever used. There was a great deal of potential here, and once she figured out how to use the entire book, things were going to get interesting.

  She was still naked. She didn’t see any point in wearing clothes here. Kevin was naked too. He sat cross-legged on the stage next to the couch, eyes closed, swaying in time to her music. She still didn’t know exactly who she was. Debbie? Joan? Both? But she’d decided it didn’t matter. She was she, and that was enough. More than enough.

  She sighed in contentment. It was good to be home.

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