by M. V. Stott
Apparently over their uncertainty, the creatures rushed me. My world became blue flames and writhing, suckered limbs, as death’s guillotine came crashing down on me.
21
I assumed I was dead.
Well, you would, wouldn’t you?
I was on fire and about half a second away from having three blood-thirsty creatures tear me to pieces.
I was dead.
I was an ex-Joseph Lake.
Which meant that I wouldn’t be going round Chloe’s later with a fresh toothbrush tucked into my coat pocket.
Damn.
In that moment, that was the thing that stung the most.
Not my death, not my murder at the tentacles of three complete bastards, but the idea that something just beginning, something potentially wonderful, was about to be cut off at the knees.
I’d been infatuated, or in love, or in lust, or all three, with Chloe Palmer ever since I’d first laid eyes on her. It was a Tuesday. Just a normal, boring, run-of-the-mill Tuesday, and Doctor Alex Kurd was showing a couple of the new recruits around the hospital. I was up a ladder prodding at a light fitting as they passed by.
As she passed by.
We met properly the next morning, when I drove my car directly into the back of hers. She was stationary in the car park at the time.
She could have been furious. Should have been. But as I waved my arms around, trying to desperately inform her of the bee that had distracted me and caused the accident, she did the strangest thing. She began to laugh. She didn’t shout at me. Didn’t swear at me. Didn’t report me. She just laughed, and I found myself laughing with her.
I was too much of an awkward fool to ever do anything about it of course, so the years rolled on and I set up shop in the Friend Zone. Which was not at all pleasant at times, particular when she’d choose to confide in me about her latest man. Her current bedfellow. Those times really slid a shard of ice in the old heart, but then I’d feel guilty for how happy I was each time those short relationships spluttered, coughed, and died. She’d be on the couch, red-eyed, stuffing ice cream into her face hole, and I’d be nodding sympathetically while my insides did a vigorous interpretation of Riverdance.
From time to time I got the feeling she was waiting for me to ask her out. To finally make my feelings known. But the longer time went on, the harder it became.
And then at last.
At last, at last, we’d gotten past all that. She liked me. She actually liked me and knew for sure that I liked her.
We’d done the kissing!
And now here I was, dead and massively annoyed that the great romance of my daft life was over before it could begin.
What rotten, shitty luck.
It was all coming together nicely, and now I was just another dead person.
Damn, damn, and double-damn with a cherry on top.
I realised I wasn’t actually dead when something prodded my side and I opened my eyes to find the fox looking up at me, axe in hand.
‘All hail, the saviour!’
‘Oh, not you again.’
I tried to move but realised that I was affixed to a giant tree by thick chains.
‘Wait, I’m alive. I’m alive, aren’t I?’
‘All hail, the Magic Eater!’
‘I’m alive! Chloe Alison Palmer, I am alive!’
This was possibly the happiest anyone who had just awoken to find themselves chained to a tree had ever been.
‘I have him chained to the Tree of Anguish, do you see him, Red Woman?’ said the fox, projecting his words at the rolling red fire of the sky.
I was back in the strange place. What had he called it, the fox? The Dark Lakes? With its fields of bones, fire for sky, and bloody grasses.
‘Is this my time? Shall death be my friend at last?’ said the fox in a small voice.
‘Why am I here again?’ I asked.
‘Twas your choice, not mine,’ he replied. ‘I did not bring you here, you brought yourself as doom descended.’
I wriggled beneath the chains, but they only seemed to tighten as I fought them, as though they were alive and resisting my struggle.
‘That’s because they are,’ said a voice I recognised. I twisted my head as far as I could, to see the woman approaching with her bright, red hair.
‘Living chains? Right. Do they have a name? It’s rude not to introduce yourself to someone, you know.’
The chains gave me an extra squeeze that momentarily prevented me from breathing.
‘Point taken,’ I said, wheezing. ‘No more trash talking the magical chains.’
‘Look, here he is again,’ said the fox, pointing at me with his axe. ‘Surely now? I have done my duty, yes? Done and done and done and my weary body craves its prize.’
The Red Woman crouched before the fox and extended a pale hand, scratching at him under the chin affectionately. ‘Your time will come. Your time will end. But not yet.’
The fox was close to tears.
‘Is there a reason you’re keeping the poor sod alive?’ I asked.
The Red Woman stood and turned to me, walking slowly forward.
‘Do you know who you are yet?’
‘In a lot of trouble?’
A small smile. She was truly stunning, but something about her made my stomach squirm.
‘It is starting to become clear though, yes?’
She reached out, her long, elegant fingers like feathers of ice across my cheek.
‘Am I… magic?’
Her thumb stroked my lower lip.
‘Oh, you’re so much more than that. Shall I show you your future?’
‘Depends. Is it a nice future?’
She smiled again. ‘Oh yes. It’s… delicious.’
She placed her right hand against my forehead and—
I stride across the face of the earth, a giant, a beast. My skin ripples with flames, my eyes black holes that see and judge and own all.
Screams caress my ears. This is my music. The music of fear. Of pain. Of the world bending to me. This is my food. I swallow it down but my stomach is never full. Never satiated. Never satisfied.
The Uncanny rise to block my path, and I eat them. I tear them in two and drink their power. I feel their bones crunch between my teeth and I think that this is good.
The end, the end, I am the end. And I am the beginning, too. A new, dark beginning. From the ashes I sow shall rise a new world. My world.
At my side is the army of the dead. My army. We step from the Dark Lakes and shake off the water, and all the world burns and fear and fear and fear and—
‘Stop!’ My head hung loose and I gasped for air.
‘Was it not beautiful?’ asked the Red Woman.
‘What was that? What was that... thing?’
‘It was your choice. You will remember that. You wanted it. You want it. Become the Magic Eater.’
What was this? Besides terrifying and perplexing, obviously. A trick of some sort? What was it the Red Woman was trying to get me to do? I wished someone would just give me a straight answer.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Also, these chains really chafe, could you just let me down? And your hands are freezing. A sign of poor circulation; I’d see a doctor if I were you.’’
‘Look what you have become. A chattering fool, blind to your true purpose. Your true destiny.’
‘All hail the saviour,’ cried the fox, and the sky of fire roared its approval.
22
The buzz of a strip light.
I sniffed and caught a smell I knew all too well. I was laid up in a hospital bed again.
My eyes creaked open. Someone was sat on a chair at my bedside.
‘Chloe?’ I said, my dry throat cracking.
‘Afraid not,’ replied Detective Maya Myers.
I sat up in surprise. Maya handed me a plastic cup of water, which I took after a moment’s hesitation and downed in one.
‘Thanks. Thank you.’
Ma
ya remained leaning towards me, her eyes narrowed.
‘How about now, Mr Lake?’
‘How about now, what?’
‘Don’t you dare give me that bullshit,’ she replied, with venom. ‘People are dying. My partner, Detective Samm, has been murdered. And now you’re discovered, unconscious in an old woman’s house, and the old woman it belongs to is dead upstairs. Same MO as the others. As Sam. So why don’t you start giving me some answers before I start knocking teeth down your throat.’
Well, that was certainly to the point.
‘I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill any of them,’ I replied.
She snorted, kicking back her chair as she stood. ‘I know that. You might be many things, but a killer you are not.’
‘Well, thanks. Thank you. Just as long as that’s clear.’
Maya lunged forward, grabbing me by the collar of my hospital gown and pulling me forward.
‘Tell me what you know.’
‘I can’t!’
‘Tell me!’
She shoved me back and turned away in disgust.
‘I don’t know what I can say.’
‘Why? Who’s got something on you? We can protect you.’
‘No one has anything on me. It’s just that you won’t believe me. Even if I tell you everything I’ve seen, or think I’ve seen, you won’t believe a word of it.’
Maya sagged and slumped back onto her chair.
‘Just tell me. I lost my partner. Lost another partner. Just tell me something. Anything.’
For the first time since I’d met her, Detective Maya Myers looked small. Uncertain. Defeated, even. It didn’t look right. This wasn’t her. She was strong. I found myself telling some of the truth without even making the decision to do so.
‘Do you believe in monsters, Detective?’
She looked up at me, eyes wide. ‘Monsters?’
What was that I saw in those eyes?
Was that… recognition?
‘You do know, don’t you?’
‘Joseph, tell me about the monsters.’
It was at that moment that the door to my private room burst open and a woman I’d never met before stormed in. Her hair was pulled back, the smart suit she wore, fierce, and the briefcase she clutched, shiny.
‘Stop talking,’ she said. Well, ordered. Every sentence she spoke was a blunt instrument.
‘Who are you?’ asked Maya, and the woman handed her a card.
‘Belinda Washington. I am Mr Lake’s lawyer.’
‘You are?’ I asked, quite flummoxed.
‘I am. Detective Myers, have you been questioning my client without proper legal representation present?’
‘I just—’
‘I’ll take that as a yes. Do you intend to charge my client with anything?’
Maya looked at me. I shrugged.
‘No, I do not,’ she replied.
‘In that case, Mr Lake, I suggest you get up out of bed, collect your belongings, and follow me out of this building.’
Maya looked at me again, clearly not done with questioning me. In all honesty, I wasn’t done with her either. When I mentioned monsters I’d seen a look of recognition, not a look of confusion, or anger. What did Maya know about monsters?
I really wanted to find out more, but Belinda Washington hustled Maya from the room as I dressed. When I stepped into the corridor, only my mysterious lawyer was waiting for me.
‘Let’s go,’ she said.
‘Yeah, I don’t know who you are, so forgive me for not just following blindly on, it’s been a strange few days.’
‘Come along,’ she said. ‘I’ll fill you in on the drive. Your car is outside, you can drop me off.’
‘My car? How did my car get here…?’
I watched, bewildered, as she turned sharply on her black heels and strode away. Now a smart person, after all he’d experienced, would not have followed her quite so willingly, fearing some sort of trap might be looming on the horizon. So what did I do?
‘Hey, wait for me.’
I threw my long coat on and chased after her.
As we pulled away from the hospital, Belinda Washington sat silently staring out of the windshield.’
‘Sorry, but when didn’t you take me on as a client? Did Chloe hire you, or…?’
‘No one hired me, you tool.’
I turned to her in surprise, only to find that smartly dressed Belinda Washington was no longer sat next to me, her briefcase balanced on her lap. Instead, it was the mad homeless woman, a can of strong lager balanced on her lap.
I did a little scream and jerked the steering wheel.
The Uncanny Wagon swerved this way and that, almost hitting a tree, and then I parked up and turned to the woman, my back pressed against driver’s door.
‘It’s you!’
‘You’re welcome. I just saved your miserable hide from a prison cell.’
‘No. No, you didn’t. Maya wasn’t going to arrest me, we were just talking.’
‘Oh.’ The woman opened her can, took a sip, and shrugged. ‘We all make mistakes.’
I looked at her warily, trying to find any hint of the person she’d been moments before.
‘How did you…?’ I waved my hand in front of my face.
‘With difficulty. A little illusion magic, a little confusion magic. It stings like a fucker to keep it up for that long. I’ll be pissing blood tonight.’
‘Magic? That was magic? Magic-magic?’
The woman sighed. ‘Well, duh.’
‘Okay, I’m just not overly accustomed to really-real magic, is all.’
‘Well what d’you think you did to those three soul vampires earlier? Tickle them to death? Idiot.’
‘“Idiot” seems a bit uncalled for.’
‘How about I punch you in the face again?’
‘No, that’s okay, I’m fine with idiot.’
‘Too fucking right you are,’ she replied in a low grumble, turning her attention back to her cheap can of lager.’
Wait a minute.
‘I’m sorry, “soul” what now? Did you say “soul vampires”? Was that the thing that you said that I’m just now fully registering? Soul vampires?’
She nodded.
‘You don’t remember me yet, do you?’
‘Yes. I do. I’ve been seeing you all over the place for weeks.’
‘No, you don’t remember me. My name’s Eva Familiar, and it’s really very, very shitty to make your reacquaintance.’
‘Right. Okay. I sense a lot of hostility in you, Eva. I’m Joseph.’
‘No, you’re,’ she paused to burp, ‘not. But idiot will do just fine for now, idiot. Now, shut up and drive me home.’
‘You know, you’re a very mean lady.’
‘Thanks, I do try.’
She collapsed her empty can on her forehead and threw it out the window. Only the window was closed, so the can bounced off and fell in my lap, leaking its remaining contents onto my crotch.
‘Right then,’ I said, and started up the car.
23
Shortly after setting off again, the woman, Eva, fell asleep.
When she’d announced her intention to take a nap, I’d pointed out that I was supposed to be driving her home, and as I had no idea where that home was, a few directions might be in order. She’d assured me that I’d find the way if I just drove, and then promptly fell into a deep snooze that no amount of shaking, shoving, and shouting could rouse her from.
And so I drove.
At first I felt a fool.
I just drove blindly out of Carlisle and into the belly of the Lake District, taking turn after turn at whim. And then a strange sensation began to creep over me. I felt like I wasn’t taking random turns at all, but like my hands and feet knew exactly where we were going. As though they were making my decisions for me, and that I just had to leave them to it and we’d get where we were supposed to be going.
I felt like if I thought too much about it, I’d throw off the t
rick and drive us into one of the region’s great lakes, so I tried to distract myself. It wasn’t difficult, considering all of the recent calamities I’d suffered.
I thought about the Red Woman. The thing she had shown me. The thing that had felt like me, but couldn’t be. The monstrous beast with skin of fire and dead eyes that sought to lay waste to everything it saw and replace it with something terrible.
The Magic Eater. That’s what she’d called it. That was what the fox had said, too.
Magic Eater.
‘Stop!’
Eva’s voice snapped me out of my musing, and I stomped my foot on the brake, bringing the Uncanny Wagon to a screeching halt.
‘Jesus Christ, don’t do that! This poor car has been through enough.’
I stroked the Wagon’s steering wheel gently, as though soothing a frightened cat.
‘This is it, we’re here,’ said Eva, pushing the door open and shambling out.
I peered through the windscreen to see nothing.
Well, not nothing, there were hills and trees and all the rest, but nothing that looked like a dwelling.
I got out of the car and looked around for something I might be missing.
‘Exactly where is this home of yours, Eva? Is it a home or more of a bivouac sort of a situation?’
Eva turned to look at me strangely. ‘Christ, don’t tell me even your eyes are fucked.’
‘My eyes are just fine, thank you. A1 vision, sharp as a sharp thing.’
‘Nope, you can’t see shit, idiot.’
‘Tell me then, what exactly am I missing?’
‘The blind alley in front of you.’
Oh god, not only was she magic, she was insane.
‘We’re in the middle of nowhere, there are no alleys. You need buildings for alleyways. Streets. All there is around here are hills, fields, rocks, trees, and lakes.’
‘Is that so?’
‘That is absolutely so.’
‘Look again,’ said Eva, and then she touched my arm, causing me to yelp as a static shock pricked my flesh.
‘What d’you call that then, idiot?’ she asked, pointing in front of us.
The entrance to an alley was open in front of me. A gap between two other things that you could walk down. Only, the two things weren’t other buildings, this alley was like a gap in, well, in reality. It’s sort of hard to explain as it’s impossible. But there it was, and it was only visible if I looked directly at it. If I twisted slightly, there was nothing, twist back, and oops, a wrinkle in reality. A crack in nothing.