The Dread Mother - SCP Foundation

The Dread Mother

+ Part 1

- Detection

The floor pulsed like a headache. Deep, rolling throbs pressed against the girl, the distant mumble of words like the hazy sounds one hears as a baby before the understanding of speech arrives. She groaned, curling up against her knees, shivering despite the sweat-fueled warmth of the house. Below, bodies heaved and swayed, drink-warmed flesh animated by lust-drunk wills, the thump of music and swirl of smoke providing a tantalizing illusion of public privacy. Normally she'd be with them, laughing and twisting, breathing in the smell of smoke, angst and spilled beer. Instead, she was shuddering on the upstairs bathroom floor, doubled over on her side, trying to decide if she wanted to throw up, pass out, or beat her head against a wall. The thudding music at least blunted the edge of that other sound, that even now squirmed and squeezed her concentration like a tube of toothpaste under a car tire.

She shivered, more violently, feeling that other sound suddenly squeeze, feeling like a physical force now, her eyes blurring as she mewled a weak call for help, smothered by the roar of the party before it even escaped the bathroom. She suddenly sat up, eyes bulging, as a violent wave of nausea rolled from the back of her eyes, down her sinus and sloshed into her belly like a blob of sodden, week-old oatmeal. She gagged, spitting and panting, voice gone now, absently wondering why the hell she couldn't get used to this by now, before suddenly retching, body heaving and twitching as she grunted like a cat with a hairball. She wheezed, and drooled, feeling some mass shifting and sloshing, her will all but smothered now, to make way for action, for sensation, almost able to feel her throat bulging like a toad's with the mass…but nothing. She tried again, and again, wetting through her beer-stained skirt and feeling as if she would choke, but nothing.

She felt her hand rise almost before she thought of it, watching it float up before her like a dream, moving closer and closer, vanishing a moment before feeling the fingers sliding into her mouth, her bloodshot eyes going wide. They were glassy and wet, the pupils overly wide, one starting to leak at the edge, spilling into the bloodshot blue and white like spilled ink. Something, some small part, fought, trying to keep the fingers out, knowing somehow that what they might find would be a final straw, a scar that would brook no return. As her fingers probed deeper, her jaw straining and clicking alarmingly, the beat of the music merged with her heartbeat, more felt then heard, each softly echoed from some great distance, of time or space she could and did not know. As her fingertips brushed against a softly pulsing surface, her teeth digging helplessly into her wrist, she tried to whimper again, a hopeless plea for some form of aid, mercy, anything.

Then her hand closed, squeezed, and pulled. Her eyes rolled slowly like the turning of a dead fish's belly, and she knew there was only one aid left to her.

“Anybody seen Emma?”

“Think she went up to puke or something. Why?”

“Char was asking. Are you holding?”

“Yeah, yeah, just about to head to the yard.”

“Okay, let me go tell Char and I'll be there, yeah?”

In the dim, cramped kitchen, the boy in a faded grey hoodie let his head wobble like a top in agreement, slowly sliding through the wandering bodies as he oozed away to the starlit back yard. The other boy turned as the first left, scanning over heads as the thrumming music mixed with conversation to make a washing tide of sound. The boy smiled, spotting a familiar hairstyle, and started to shoulder into the crowd. It was insane. It seemed everyone he had ever met during his entire school life was here, and everyone was drinking like a comet was hitting at daybreak. The fact that the house on one side was empty, and the other side was rough woods and creek was likely the only thing saving any of them from being cuffed and stuffed by the cops. As it stood, he cared little. He was seventeen, strong, reasonably handsome, and was comfortable enough to ignore likely consequences. He pushed through a knot of laughing young men, watching another try to pour a beer with wavering hands, and tapped the red mass of hair he sighted before, giving one errant lock a tug.

A bright, pale face whirled around to glare at him, shining like a freckled moon in the hazy light. Her eyes, bright blue and large, fixed on him with a quick-trigger fury, only lessening slightly when she saw who it was. The boy sighed, and smiled. She fit a lot of the redhead stereotypes, and had a hell of a smart mouth too…but she had ass for days and was nice enough most of the time, so it balanced out.

“Scott, don't fucking do that.” she smoldered, reaching to smooth down a curl the color of maples in late fall.

“Aww, come on, you didn't mind it before, you were telling me to pull harder and shit even!” he laughed, mock flinching away from a imagined blow, booze making him both brave and stupid.

She glowered, brows knitting together like a gathering storm, jaw bunching above her smooth, solid neck.

“Such a fucking charmer you are, Scott. I can't even get pissed at you right, you're too drunk to even understand. Why do you fucking do this shit? You know I hate these things.” she snapped, waving a hand at the packed living room.

Scott sighed, hearing the same tones and lines as last time…and the time before. Charlotte, or “Char” Carrie had been loads of fun at the start. Sharp, bright, and funny, she had a soft side that Scott had loved to see drawn out. Seeing a girl with a rep for breaking a track-and-field ace's arm shivering and moaning against him had been a special kind of fun. However over the last few months it'd turned sour, she'd been cold, demanding, and distant in turn. He knew her family situation was all fucked up at the moment, but he had his own shit to worry about. Scott had hopes that taking her out might help bust her out of whatever funk she was in. Instead she'd hitched herself to that freak Emma Schechter, and it'd gone downhill from there. As she started her speech, Scott tried to break the flow before she really got going.

“G said Emma went upstairs to puke.”

“You don't ever think…what?”

Scott grinned triumphantly. At least he'd derailed her for the time being.

“G said Emma went upstairs to puke. Or at least that's what he said.”

“…And? Did you check?”

Scott slumped over in an exaggerated sigh. It was always fucking something.

“No, I didn't check.”

“Scott, she was freaking out, I asked you to find her you dick!”

“And I did, she's upstairs!”

“No, Gahiji kind of noticed her, and you kind of listened. So maybe she is and maybe she isn't.”

“She's not my friend, Char, she's yours, if you're so worried,why don't you look?”

“I have been looking you stupid dickhead, I wanted you to help because I thought maybe you'd give a fuck about something that isn't you for two fucking seconds!”

Her voice swelled to a yell, and nearly a scream, several faces turning to watch the action, a pallet of expressions from concerned to amused. Scott tossed up his hands, shaking his head as he ignored Charlotte's raging glare, slowly turning away.

“Emma's a freak and she makes you nuts. You asked me to ask around, I did, there ya go. You wanna get all pissed off, do it, I'm going out back with G.”

Charlotte huffed, nearly trembling as Scott turned and weaved through the crowd, the music too loud to let her vent her rage appropriately, which wasn't quite boiling enough to chase after and grab him and make him listen. She growled, rising to a higher pitched near-screech at the end, and turned away, nearly knocking over some wobbling girl behind her, and silently begging someone, anyone to start shit with her.

She stomped up the stairs like a red stormfront, sending a petting couple pressing against the wall to keep out of her way. Charlotte knew she was being stupid, that Scott was just drunk, and had meant to be trying to cheer her up in his dumb way. She was being oversensitive, but it didn't make her blood thunder any less, or her vision any less hazy-red. Somewhere behind biting memories and barely unspoken rage, she could her a voice rasping “You've a queen's mien, cridhe, so you stand not to be crossed…but you've just your hands to rule and rule by, so remember the better part of valor, if you can.”

She sighed deeply at the top of the stairs, muttering curses under her breath as she tried to dial back her anger. It was just…all so much at once. And now Emma had been acting really weird…not that it, by itself, was that strange. She'd been an oddball since elementary school, but lately she'd seemed more scared and depressed. Charlotte was starting to worry that something was really, truly wrong with her friend. Composed, and at least not growling, she worked her way to the upstairs bathroom, glaring at the shut doors with muffled, occasionally moist sounds wafting through.

She leaned on the doorframe, having to nearly step over a thin boy with bright blue dyed hair laying just outside the door, and tapped on the wood.

“Heey…Ems? It's Char, are you ok? Scott said you were up here getting sick…ahh…I mean…”

She frowned, stumbling over her thoughts. She was always so snappy when she was angry, but otherwise she would think faster than she could speak. She sighed, trying to ignore the rising heat in her cheeks as she blushed.

“Ems, I'm sorry about not…not talking to you earlier, my mom was texting me, and Scott was bitching about vacation, and…I didn't ditch you. At least, I didn't mean to. Can…can I come in, please? Even if it's just to say sorry…” she trailed off, tongue suddenly thick with rising tears. She hated feel-

“She's not in there.”

The voice that came from below her nearly made her scream as she hopped back away from the door…and the blue-haired body she'd dismissed as passed out, as he rose up slightly on one arm. She stammered, blushing and waffling between angry and embarrassed. Before she could pick either side, he spoke again, rubbing his face with his free hand.

“That fluffy haired girl just ran out a little bit ago. Like, just a few minutes, she almost stepped on me. She smelled like pee.”

Charlotte blinked, his frank, bland tone seeming to defuse her for the moment.

“Ahh…thanks? Which way did she go?”

“Man, I don't know, she just blew outta there and ran off, cryin' and shit, I dunnknow. Probably went down the back stairs if ya didn't see her coming up.”

Charlotte looked down the hall, which shortly turned down into a narrow stair going to…maybe the laundry room or something, if she remembered right. As she went to step around the boy, who made no motion to shift out of the way, he let his head fall back to the floor with a soft thunk, looking up at her.

“Hey, is she an asthmatic or somethin'?”

“I-I'm sorry, what?”

“Asthma, lung problems and shit.”

“…No…why?”

“'cause she was coughing and wheezing pretty bad too. My sister got stung by a wasp in the throat once and almost died. She sounded like that.”

Charlotte's eyes went wide, a cold, heavy stone falling from her chest to the pit of her soul as her mind swam with snippets of horrifying visions. She all but leapt over the boy, eyes fixed on the fair stairs, trying to somehow see or guess some sign of her friend's passage. As she started down them, she heard a sudden scream from outside, followed by several others. Not the bright, bubbly shrieks of drunken reveals, or the brittle sharpness of rage, it was the alarmed, piercing scream of sudden, stark fear.

As she vaulted down the stairs, she somewhat hoped the screams were from Emma, and not about her.

Pain.

PAIN.

Her brain felt like an organ whose sole purpose was to experience and enhance pain. Her eyes rolled, dripping and hot as coals, her body hunched and shuddering as she slammed and bounced. Heedless, mindless, her impulses were as basic as an amoeba. So many people, so much life…but so bright, so separate and sharp, and too much light. She spilled out into cool darkness, but still too much bight…and the pain drove and lanced against her, scattering even these basic urges like birds before a leaping cat. She burbled and wheezed, curled against her chest, arms drawn up and hands over her face, even their touch as ragged and raw as splintered wood against her feverish skin. She saw faces, swirling smoke and light, and she cringed, aching and mewling as she felt her sagging belly sway and scrape in nauseating emptiness.

She swayed, recoiling, falling against someone. Words, shouts, and she looked up, reflex trying to process the face before the pain surged, flexed, and smothered her will, feeling her throat flex and bulge with roiling agony. Screams, like needles in her ears, behind her eyes, she turned, sputtering and gurgling, recoiling like a burnt leaf, shuddering as she ran along the side of the house. Even now the ache burned at her, gnawing, the pain just the goad of that empty, clawing nothingness. She stumbled as she came around the house, putting her hand to her abdomen as it fluttered like a fleshy curtain, feeling the feverish flex of muscle and spine as she pressed.

Away. Away from here. Quiet, dark, time…time to let the pain dull. Time to find fullness. Her eyes bulged, stumbling to the far darkness, unable to really understand where and how she was going. There was a voice, somewhere…an old voice, commanding, demanding, familiar but somehow unknown. It meant something, but she felt both longing and fear, even anger, before another rolling mass of pain blotted out higher thought. She screamed, a guttural, bubbling howl, her legs feeling wobbly and soft, the ground suddenly hard and torturous under her feet, feeling like her skin might suddenly burst…and somehow finding that comforting, appealing even. It might at least stop the pain and pricked and slashed across her nerves.

Voices again, that call. A known call, kind…she rose, hearing her spine crack and shift like grinding teeth, turning to look, some deep, still-functioning memory knowing that voice meant something good. She looked, hands falling away with feverish weakness, her turning making the flesh slosh and jostle with raw, throbbing ache. She looked, but couldn't see, unaware that one of her eyes was functionally blind, her pupil blown out and smeared like a oily black egg across her blood-teared eye.

Then suddenly harsh, grating sound, and light, a face twisted in almost comical horror, and her body, her pain and her will all burst like a split beehive, spilling freedom and gore into the night.

Charlotte spotted her friend by following the ripple of screams like a shark following a blood trail. First down, into the laundry room, checking out the window and seeing nothing, then back, following a new swell of screams around to the front of the house. There were people scattered about, as well as cars, and she whipped her head about, trying to scan the whole area at once. The screams started again, and she turned…to see the ragged, stumbling form of her friend Emma burst out from the narrow strip of yard between the house and high wall of hedge.

Charlotte stared, eyes wide, as her hand reflexively moved to cover her gasping mouth. Her skirt and blouse were a sudden wreck, covered with stains and rips. She was hunched over, face in her hands as she stumbled and jerked forward, her feet bare. She was covered with…cuts, or sores, wounds of some kind, leaking small smears of watery blood and push, her arms coated in a reeking, slick sheath of grime. Her hair was frizzy where it wasn't plastered to her head, her eyes wide and rolling like a spooked horse. She didn't even seem to see anyone, just blindly stumbled forward, running across the yard as people noticed and moved out of her way. She stumbled against someone, knocking them both against a parked car, and the boy she'd pinned seemed about to scream at her before suddenly recoiling with a deathly pale face and a strangled shout.

There was something very, very wrong, that was clear. For now, Charlotte's goal was simply to collect her friend, take her somewhere safe, and try to put together what all had happened. She shouted, calling out…and Emma didn't even turn, stumbling forward with the same blind drive…and suddenly Charlotte's worry rose to fear, even full panic…she seemed to be heading directly for the road.

She shouted again, and again, calling out to her, running to catch up to her, even as Emma wobbled into the road…but finally, it seemed to take hold. Emma's head suddenly jerked up, her progress stopped, and she tilted her head. Charlotte shouted again, screaming, begging her back, calling, tears springing to her eyes as she walked closer, arms out. Emma turned, finally taking her arms away from her face. Charlotte froze, folding her arms to her self and over her own face in reflexive shock. She was so shocked she didn't even think to wonder why she could see her friend so well suddenly.

A throbbing, sagging horror had bloomed from Emma's mouth. Her lower jaw was a broken, ragged mass of meat and bone, hanging in strips down the sides of her throat. The rest of her lower face was dominated by a throbbing, sloshing mass of…flesh, tissues, webworks and slimy bubbles of purples, pinks, whites and blacks, like some rotten, skinned elephant trunk. It curled and pulsed, curving down from her mouth, thicker than her swaying arms, the mass of it curling down to press against her oddly flat belly. As she hobbled, a sudden wind seeming to tug at her in slow motion, Charlotte could see the sagging flesh-trunk was connected to Emma's abdomen, well below her belly button, thick, throbbing veins squirming like fat worms under her skin. As she turned, Charlotte watched the skin of Emma's belly sway and flop, wobbling below her ribs as if she was as hollow as a gutted fish.

Emma gurgled, trying to speak around the mass that had destroyed her lower face, bust part of her throat like an overcooked sausage casing. Her teeth dotted parts of it like white nibs of tombstones on a bloody marsh. Her eyes caught Charlotte's, wide and empty, as dim and hollow as a doll. Charlotte tried to speak, a hand trembling as it left her face, trying to squeeze words to respond to this bleeding horror.

Then Eric Sho's Buick, driven by the aforementioned and significantly drunk Eric, slammed in to Emma at roughly seventy-six miles per hour. Eric had thought the house was several blocks further down, and had been trying to make up time to his hopeful booty-call. By the time he noticed the girl in the road, it was too late. He slammed the brake half-seconds behind her head slamming in to the car's windshield, bursting and splattering against it like a hefty bag full of slaughterhouse runoff. Sho slammed the breaks, car slewing and twisting to hop the curb backward, barely avoiding a rollover by clipping into a tree and finally coming to rest two doors down on the opposite side of the street from the party.

Eric stumbled out, gasping and shuddering, vomiting before falling into a heap beside the car. Charlotte did much the same, exchanging vomit for hysterical, wracking sobs and screams. She was not alone in this for very long. The rising whine of police sirens seemed to rise and fall in time with the weeping cries.

The sun beat down through the clear summer sky as if it had a grudge against the world. Heat-haze warped anything beyond the middle distance into an ethereal mirage. The town of Au Sable sweated and hid from the assault as best it could, huddling near the edge of Lake Huron in northern Michigan, the nearby woods seeming to help more to collect the heat than shield from it. Never a busy town, the city was especially empty, and not just from the heat. Some of the sweating, red-faced citizens were clad in sweltering Sunday best, despite it being a Friday with temperatures over one hundred. There was a quiet melancholy that hung in the air with the scorching heat, that seemed to muffle voice and add another layer of paralyzing lethargy. The slow, splintering procession of cars from the nearby hilltop church passed like pilgrims returning from a failed crusade.

Charlotte walked, her simple dress sticking to her legs and arms as she slowly worked her way down the sidewalk. Sweat had ruined what little makeup she'd worn, the bouquet of lilies already looking rumpled and sodden in her hands as she clutched it to her chest. Red-eyed, she sniffled, breathing in the scent of the flowers as well as the bitter taste of her tears. She'd never guessed she could cry so much, that eventually her eyes must run dry, but there always seemed to be more. The sharp embers of her confusion, anger, and pain all felt washed out and dulled, smothered under that flood of tears. She'd broken down twice during the funeral, and again at the graveside, book-ended by her mother and father, unable to even appreciate the peace their temporary cease-fire had brought. It had returned as they started back to the car, and Charlotte elected to walk home as much as for the privacy as for the distance from their presence.

She turned down her own street, having to will her head to not turn left. Just down the way from the crossing was Emma's house, the small, low house squatting with the others in the tiny sub-division. The blue door was closed, the driveway empty. The Schechter family was going to stay with relations down south, Mrs. Schechter reportedly so distraught she could barely walk into the house without crumbling into near-hysterical sobbing. She'd floated through the funeral like a ghost, looking as if she'd aged twenty years in days, responding with slow, drug-thickened words between soft, silent crying. Dr. Schechter had, as always, stood like a squat rod of iron, taking condolences and speaking softly with the attendees. He'd wept during the eulogy, but never broke, just streaming tears as he spoke of his daughter Emma. Charlotte had never seen him cry before, even when he'd accidentally shot a nail through his hand while working on his deck.

The memories welled up, and she felt that cold drop again as tightness crawled up her neck, and she forced them down. There would be her whole life to look over them…for now, she just wanted to go home, lie down, and wait for the next day to come. To make today over. To start to soften the edges of that closed casket sitting, then finally lowering down…Charlotte doubled over, strangling back more tears, gritting her teeth as she squeezed her eyes shut hard. It passed, and she continued, shaking her thick red hair and looking up into the clear hot sky with red-rimmed eyes. The pressure with which she'd shut them made little shapes and strings float in the air, black against the clear blue. She sighed, looking forward, and resumed her plodding walk. She cursed her stubbornness as she again peeled her dress from her legs, finally approaching the outer cluster of trees that ringed her home.

The home was an old, tall affair, one of the few three-story homes that hadn't yet been chopped up into apartments. Her father had said it'd been around since the 1900's, and the old peaked roof and field-stone foundation marked it as a living fossil when compared to the low, modern homes sprawling out just a few streets away. Her and her two elder brothers had lived their whole lives there, and her father had even been born there. It creaked, the windows were uneven, and the top floor froze in the winter and melted in summer. The plumbing was a museum piece, and it required nearly bi-yearly work, but it had been home. Now, she dreaded even thinking of it, waiting for the next raised voice, the next boiling argument, the next long, lonely night sprawling out like a suffocating carpet. She looked over the faded green paint, the uneven flagstone path, and sighed. The cars were already in the driveway…she must have missed them passing by, or she'd taken longer than she expected. At least nobody was shouting in the yard.

She opened the heavy brown door, kicking off her dusty shoes and placing the wilted flowers on the small side-table in the entryway. Her face was a still mask as she moved down the short hall to the kitchen, ignoring the voices rising and falling from the living room.

“Shane, look, I understand, but can't we just…wait? For just a bit, at least…a few weeks even.”

“Mary-ann, I'm not talking about this. I'm not doing this. You're here for Charlotte, and that's it.”

“What the hell is wrong with you? Our daughter just lost her best friend! They took her to the hospital because she was so messed up, she had to watch Emma get destroyed by that car! Can't you just let us be together, here, at least until she's settled? Wh-”

“If you were so worried about family maybe you shouldn't have jumped on Owen's dick, then.”

Shocked crying and more arguing wafted in, as omnipresent as birdsong to Charlotte by now. Threat, point, counter-point. A scoreboard of misery in a game that had no winner, just degrees of losing. She found a vase in the cabinets, slowly filling it in the sink nearly big enough to be a bathtub. She watched the water rise, fighting down memories of her and Emma filling waterballoons from this faucet, shrieking in gleeful terror as her father bust in with a plastic bucket full of water, laughing manically. Her vision started to swim as the water poured.

“Fuck you Shane, you can't fucking treat me like this! It was a mistake, I fucked up, I-”

“Six months is more than a mistake. And that's just the sex, all told it-”

“You fucking bastard! I had a moment of weakness, it was a work function and I was drunk, we-”

“Drunk for six months? And for about a year of flirting before that? That's one hell of a drink, Mary-Ann.”

“Like you never did anything wrong! Like I never forgave your stupid ass! Can't we just fucking wait so our daughter doesn't have a fucking breakdown?”

“Don't you dare. Don't you dare use her to try and shoehorn in an argument you can't win on your own, you-”

A scream of frustrated rage. Her dad's deep, even growl. So much crying over the last few months. He'd stood like a rock, letting the pain and sadness part around him…except once or twice, in the dead of night, where Charlotte had felt her heart twist and crack to near breaking as she listened to his quiet weeping drift up from the sheltered back yard. Now, all she felt was empty, a drifting husk as she lifted the vase and put it on the heavy kitchen table. The voices shifted, the war moving to a new theater of operations, fresh salvos of bitter hate being readied. She sighed, and sat, hanging her head in her hands. She didn't even feel like crying anymore. She felt hollow…and that word made an icy, slow roll of wide-eyed, memory-fueled terror creep slowly up her spine.

“Hey cridhe. How are you holding together?”

The soft, deep voice made her jump as if she'd been shocked, wide blue eyes staring in panic at the source. Standing beside the table was an elderly man, dressed in sweatpants and an old, long robe, holding her lilies in one hand. His head was wreathed in a cloud of soft, thin hair, like a white fog. His eyes were a washed-out gray, and the stiff bristles of a pure-white mustache shifted below a reddened, thick nose. He smiled as she stared, offering up the flowers to her.

“Saw these in the hall, figured you might want them.”

She blinked, then reached, taking the flowers and starting to place them into the vase, her face slowly crumbling back into the neutral mask. The old man sighed, hobbling over to pull out a chair, sitting beside Charlotte and putting his thin arms around her. She leaned, sniffling, breathing in the smell of tobacco and pine soap that rose from his robe. He stroked her hair, kissing the top of her head as he held her.

“I know it hurts. I know the pain…look at me, I've had to watch all my friends die. But I'm old…that's as it should be. You…it's not fair. Life's like that, but it doesn't mean we have to just lay and accept it. Cry, scream, mope, do what you need. Live. Even if it hurts, live. I love you cridhe.”

Her sniffles turned to sobs, deep and low, a heart wringing out the very dregs of agony. It felt different, somehow, and she let the brittle dam she'd build around her soul bust, weeping as her grandfather petted her, consoling her with that ghost of brogue in his soft voice. Above her head, his brow furrowed, sorrow and pain making his watery eyes squint. Yet he looked over her, past her, to the far kitchen window, watching as the sun baked the pavement, seeming to watch something in the wavering heat.

Charlotte's sobbing slowly gave way to hiccuping gasps and sighs, her head pounding as she buried it into her grandfather's chest. His worn, yet strong hands held and petted over her, trying to, in some small way, wipe away some small portion of her hurt. To spare her it. Lift it from her to bear his smattering of years left. Foolishness, but he was often a foolish man. He eased her away, tilting her face up as she sniffed.

“Cridhe, I understand. I know what you're facing. I know how hard it is.”

“Grandpa, she…I don't know what happened. I don't understand! What…what the hell-”

“I know, sweetheart, I know-”

“No! Grandpa, they didn't believe me! Nobody will say they saw that…thing, even though I know they did! The cops just said I was drunk and hysterical, but I wasn't! I KNOW WHAT I SAW!”

She panted, her ragged voice rising as the color rose in her cheeks. The old man smiled, but the edges were pinched with pain.

“I…I know, cridhe. I know. Ah, ah, before you work yourself up, I'm not just saying it. I…I know, honey. I believe you. This isn't…it's not an end, Charlotte, it's a beginning. A beginning of an end, even. I'm just…so very sorry you've been part of it.”

She blinked, staring at her grandfather. He seemed so grave, his voice wavering with indecision. He was never like this. He…almost seemed afraid. She stared, watching him tilt his head and smile, the way he did whenever he had to deliver bad news or unwelcome facts.

“…Grandpa…what are you talking about? What beginning?”

“Dad. I didn't know you were up, I'm sorry. Were we being too loud?”

Charlotte snapped her head to the entryway, now dominated by her father. He sighed, rubbing his hand through the gray streaks at his temples, leaning his broad shoulder against the doorframe. The old man smiled, his previous pained, grave expression vanishing like a spring rain.

“No, no, nothing like that, though you do bark to wake the dead. Just thought I'd try to cheer my cridhe a bit, though it seems I just made her cry more.”

“No, grandpa, it's fine, but what-”

“Is that harridan still skulking around?”

Shane shook his head, pushing off the frame and ambling over, placing a heavy hand on his daughter's back, patting.

“No, she stepped out to smoke, figured it was best to let her.”

“It'd be best to push her down the stairs, but this'll do.”

“Dad, please don't talk like that. Especially…now.”

“I'll talk as I please, lad, and especially if I'm not, which I am. That harpy is going to bring nothing but more pain to a house already brimming.”

“We've talked about this, Dad, it's not the-”

Charlotte sighed, sinking down in her chair as if she was slowly deflating. Her dad's deep, tired voice rumbled behind her, answered by her grandfather's. She closed her burning eyes as she tried to somehow just blot all of this out, her annoyance at being interrupted melting off in a see of bone-deep exhaustion.

“-means well. The project's sucking up more and more time, and the boy's are stuck in uni still. I just…I don't know. I had hoped that maybe she could be civil, in an emergency.”

“If she was that kind of person you wouldn't be here. You should hang it all, get out of here. Tell her and we and all to fuck off and see a new horizon. Take your girl and get some peace, maybe go visit the boys out on the coast? Hell, just drive around, anything is better than this.”

“It's…it's not something I can do right now. In a few weeks, once the last things are signed and we start cutting ground, then I can take some time.”

“There may not BE later time, boy! Get out of here, see to your girl, let the lawyers work, and get some fresh air. Clear both your heads.”

“There's still things to sign, and I don't want to be too far while Mary-Ann is getting moved out. I know you mean well, but it's just not something we can do at this exact moment. She-”

Charlotte abruptly stood up as she heard the back door slam shut. She wasn't going to sit here any more, especially if her mother was going to join the fray. She was too tired, and knew if things went on much longer, she'd say or do something to make everything much, much worse. She walked away, ignoring voices as she briskly walked up the stairs, sped into her room, closed the door tight, then flopped face-first into her bed. She lay there, knees and legs hanging off the edge, arms at her sides, buried in the soft blackness. Her window AC unit purred quietly, a pleasant white noise as she rubbed her face into the blankets. Her brain felt sludgy and slow.

She rolled her head enough to free one eye, her hand clumsily fumbling about until it found her phone, sliding it up until she could peer at it with one half-lidded eye. Spam, some well-wishes, she scrolled without really seeing. Something from Bonnie, begging her to call if she needed anything. Bonnie hadn't been at the party, and had been tearing into herself for not doing more to try and keep Emma away. She'd come by a few days ago after having visited Emma's parents, and cried between bouts of self-pity. Bonnie wasn't bad, just a drama queen, really. She sent a short reply, telling her she was just taking things slow for now and would let her know. Charlotte noticed a message bubble, finally, and flicked it open with a resigned sigh.

I'm sorry I wasn't there, dad's still pissed

got me locked down, says he's gonna send me to juvvie

this is so fucked up

I miss you, I'm sorry all this shit happened

U ok?

Yeah, just got back. Tired.

Sorry babe.

Fam there?

She sighed, rolling on to her back, squirming to stick her head in the cooler breeze from the AC unit. Downstairs she heard feet and voices. A sudden rise, and the clear, violently spat words of “bleeding poxy whore” wafted up the stairs, followed by shrill shouting. She tossed a pillow to wedge itself at the base of the door, in hopes to blot out more of the sound.

Yep. Been at it all day.

That's fucked.

Didn't your dad kick her out or smthin?

She's filing something, and she says she wants to be here to help or some shit

Fucked.

You ok? Like mentally and stuff?

Like, I know you're not, but with yourself and shit.

You mean am I still hysterical? No, i'm fine apparently.

Sorry babe. Everything was so fucked up. You hear about Sho?

No, what?

He tried to cut his wrists day before yesterday

Got him at the hospital now, say he's all fucked up

Jesus

Didn't know, but I get it

Super fucked.

Hey

You wanna get together soon?

Scott, I don't wanna party

Like ever

What about your lock down?

No party, just us

maybe one or two others

Real small, we go by the river

It'll be fun, get your mind off shit

Don't want fun

Want sleep

All the sleep

Sleep then

Think about it though

Yeah

Hey

What all did they prescribe you?

Let me know if you didn't take it all

Charlotte groaned, flopping over on to her belly again and letting the phone bounce out of her grip, puffing on to the thick blankets. She was really starting to wonder what the hell she'd been thinking. Scott had been so sweet, but lately he'd been turning into more and more of an ass. Maybe it wasn't him changing, but that she was finally noticing. Emma hadn't liked him, and had clashed with Bonnie over setting her up for that first date. She didn't want to admit she'd fallen for the classic “bad boy” aura, but it was one of his few redeeming features. She rubbed her face into the bed, trying to rattle her thoughts into submission, to make them as tired as her body felt.

She remembered that throbbing horror, and her eyes snapped open like startled deer.

She willed her eyes closed again, turning her head to breathe better, curling her legs up closer. The doctor had said it was stress, memory blending before and after, blah blah blah. They'd drugged her up until she stopped screaming and given her dad some pamphlets. Quietly she'd heard them talking about family histories and possible in-depth evaluations, though the details had been washed in drugged haze. She would swear on anything she'd seen Emma's face and throat split by some…meat worm thing, or something, or maybe it'd been her own self, some wound exposing-

Charlotte curled up, hard, squeezing her arms around herself. No. Nonono. She wasn't doing this again. She pulled a pillow over her head, curled in the fetal position on her soft sheets, letting the AC unit dry the sweat on her trembling limbs, and tried to will herself to sleep. Just bring a new day. Something else, something not now, she pleaded silently. More from her own exhaustion than any outside response, she began to drift, her limbs slackening, breath starting to smooth out. She heard doors slamming, somewhere, the slow tread up the stairs she knew as her grandpa's. She wondered, as sleep started to slowly drag her deeper, what exactly he'd meant. He seemed on the verge of saying something before dad had barged in. Grandpa Brian had been a professor for years and years, maybe he knew something.

Her thoughts spun and wafted like bits of dogwood fluff in a breeze, curling and drifting as she slowly relaxed. Downstairs, her parents had broken off hostilities for the moment, her in her car in the driveway, raging and smoking angrily, him hunched over the kitchen table, staring at the vase of flowers, and then down at his hands. Upstairs, Brian Carrie groaned, finishing the hike that seemed to get harder every few months, and closed the door to his lair. He leaned his back against it, staring at the ceiling, muttering silently to himself before putting his hands over his face, gritting his teeth to fight back a wracking sob. He trembled, a wheezing sigh sliding past his teeth, hissing as he cursed his weakness and foolish, doubting heart.

He dropped his hands, still facing the high, peaked ceiling, breathing deeply. He smelled incense and pipe smoke, and the musty dust of his books. There was no help for it. It wasn't his to choose, in the end. He could try to ease their pain, but in the end that's what defined life. He bore his teeth as he thought that. Life. Such a blithe term, so easily accepted and dismissed. Brian wiped the sweat from his brow, setting his jaw as he walked into his dim rooms, before stopping, and kneeling with pained slowness, wincing as the crawling spikes of pain speared in from his knees. He ignored it, bowing his head and lacing his thick, knobby fingers. He prayed, though his hands took shapes more complex than any simple joining of palms. He prayed, and on his wide table, a candle guttered and popped, sending a tiny corona of sparks into the cooling wax. He whispered, eyes closed tight, before finally looking forward again, eyes bright and sharp as they stared at the flame, hands locked in complex bridgework. He look more hypnotized than rapt.

“Please…please give me the strength to do what must be done. Let me bear this weight. Accept my paltry life, so that those I love may live. If protection cannot be, at least let their suffering be mine. Let your burning, uncaring gaze fall on I and my foes, so that both shall be consumed. Kindle the coals of my will.”

He fell to muttering silently again, finally rising with a flickering hand motion, and a sudden groan as his knees cracked painfully. He walked to the sputtering candle, and looked close, passing his fingers through the flames as his brows bunched and furrowed. Not the best…but not bad, considering. He reached and pinched out the fire, feeling the stinging ember all but squirm between his fingers, face a still mask as it singed his skin. He rolled the black char between his fingertips, lifting his face to look over the bookcase-girded room. So many years, and suddenly it felt as if he had no time left. It was unseemly for an old man to carry on so. Better yet to put the years to work.

He proceeded to sit at his desk, gathering up old, thick paper, quietly stabbed the tip of his thumb with a brass fountain pen, and set to work.

+ Part 2

- Metastasis

The next two days passed by in an exhausted, depressed fog for Charlotte. She rose late and fell asleep early, hiding in her room until need of food or bathroom forced her out. Her parents came, and went, their dull arguments sometimes drifting up to her. Her grandfather only came in once, to make sure she wasn't getting sick and bring her tea. She'd drowsed as he'd talked, feeling like a little girl again, like when he'd first come there to stay from Massachusetts, just after her grandmother had died. He had, like now, droned on in his well-honed professor voice, telling her stories of history, and places far away. When she woke again, it was already past dinner time, and she stumbled out, trailing half-remembered dreams of dusty, low temples and cold windswept highlands.

She finally emerged on the third day. She was still tired, but felt better, somehow. Or, if not better, at least more able to meet the day and function. She padded down the stairs with a mass of red hair trailing behind her like a sleepy, pajama-clad comet. As she stood at the base of the stairs, she heard the sound of water and clanking dishes. Charlotte softly padded to the kitchen doorway and looked inside. Her father's broad back was hunched over the deep sink, sleeves rolled up as he scrubbed and stacked dishes. She winced slightly, that was typically her job. He stopped, seeming to sense her in the way that parents seem to do, and turned, favoring her with a thin smile.

“Hey there kiddo. Was starting to worry you'd seen your shadow, we'd have to wait for next month.”

She smiled back almost before she was aware of it. He shook off his hands, an oddly delicate action for a man of his stature, looking around for a towel that did not appear to be anywhere. She reached, snatching one off the nearby countertop and walking over to him.

“Heh…thanks. Forget my head if it wasn't well secured. How are you doing baby?”

He reached and hugged her, smelling of soap as she hugged him back. He petted over her unruly hair, smiling down at her.

“Look at all this…that's it, we'll just have to shave it all off, no help for it.”

He started running knuckles over her scalp gently, making a buzzing sound as he mocked shaving her head. The same joke he'd been making since she even had hair, and had stopped being funny at nearly the same time…but today it make her smile, and squirm away from his hug with a playful swat.

“Stop it, that's such a cliche anyway, cutting your hair over trauma and stuff.”

“Trauma nothing, I just don't want a mouse taking up residence in there. It's nice to see you up.”

“It's nice to be up…i'm sorry about the dishes, I actually totally forgot.”

“Bah, no need to worry. I used to actually like washing dishes back when I was your age. Used to put on a tape and sing along, until your grandpa came down to yell at me to shut up. There's peace in mindless work.”

She sighed, looking at her father. The divorce had bitten in to him terribly, and he looked as if he'd aged years in just a few months. Still, he seemed a least a little happier than he had been, even if his resting face seemed to have become a permanent frown. She looked around, then up at him.

“Um…w-where's mom at?”

“Out, and away, ideally. Her motion appears to have fallen through, and she ripped out of here like a spoiled tornado. I wish I could say I'm more upset, and I'm sure I'll hurt soon, but such is life. Taking it as it comes for now. Don't worry about her, or me, you're the one I want to know about. How…how are you feeling?”

“I'm ok. I feel like I've been run over by a bus, and seeing a dead bug makes me want to cry, but I can, like, walk and stuff. So ok.”

“Sometimes, dearheart, that's all we can hope for. Help me put these away.”

She nodded, rolling her eyes as she walked over to the sink.

“I see how it is, I get a little better and you put me to work.”

“Work is good medicine, Charlotte. It's good for a soul that can bear it. Plus my back's acting up, so hop to.”

She helped, smiling despite herself. She knew what he was doing, trying to cheer her up with any kind of distraction, but she appreciated it. Soon he chased her back upstairs, telling her to at least get dressed, even if she wasn't going anywhere. She did so, grudgingly admitting that she did in fact feel better as she did so. She scrolled through her phone as she started to brush her hair, cursing herself for letting it go this long. Scott, Bonnie, a few others. Something from the school, offering counseling once the semester started. She sighed, tossing her phone to the bed and brushing more earnestly. She watched her own face in the mirror, sighing as she noticed how (more) pale she'd gotten, and the bags under her eyes that nearly looked like bruises. Her hair was stiff and dry, and fought the brush as she pulled it through. She remembered doing this with Emma, braiding hair and talking, listening to music. Her throat clenched, she didn't burst in to tears. Progress. She set her jaw, wincing as she brushed through knots, soon having her hair beaten in to something presentable. By the time she stood up, she wasn't so much as sniffling. Progress.

She went down the stairs once again, landing on the bottom with a small hop as she walked into the living room. Charlotte had decided that, if not actually happy, she was going to try to be not-sad, at least until she felt like crying wouldn't burn her eyes so much. She stood before her father, who was laid out on the couch with a book, and held her arms wide.

“Well? Look like a real human, huh?”

“I daresay a pretty one even. You look great, honey.”

Charlotte flopped into the unoccupied couch, looking around the oddly narrow, high-ceiling living room. Her father watched her a moment, before turning back to his book.

“So, is, like…mom coming back sometime? And where's grandpa?”

“No…at least not soon. Be a week or two, and she'll just be here for some things…ahh…i-it's nothing you need to worry about. Your grandpa's been hold up in his lair for a bit now, seems like he's got some project. You know how he can be. At least he's eating and such.”

She nodded, the mention of food suddenly making her painfully aware of how little she'd eaten the last few days.

“Yeah, I know…so what all do we have for food, now that you mention it.”

Her father smiled, looking over to her as he tented his book on his chest.

“Ooh, finally caught up with you did it? There's some lunch meat in the fridge, some leftover rice…go look.”

She grumbled, but smiled while she did it…her amusement melted to actual aggravation moments later, though, when she found said fridge more or less depleted, with just a few cold cuts and unidentifiable leftovers rattling around the nearly empty shelves. She quickly returned to her father, and proceeded to call him a feral savage. He laughed, argued, and at the end of it told her that he'd shop tomarrow, and if she wanted to do anything about it now, the keys were on the hook. After a short bout of mock pouting that rapidly threatened to turn into real crying, she decided to go, her father calling after her that getting a little air would be good for her, as he put aside his book and picked up his phone.

She stepped outside, taking a deep breath of the late afternoon air…and winced, wrinkling her nose. There was something bad in the air. Animals sometimes killed eachother, or died in the woods around the house, so it wasn't odd, but this smelled particularly bad, and more…fresh. At least sharper than normal, and less like rot, more like…shit, or bile or something. It wafted away after a moment, but Charlotte still took a moment to look as she walked to the car, trying to sight the tufts of fur or feathers that typically denoted a fresh kill. She saw nothing, but every so often the smell hit her again. It really did smell like something, somewhere far off, had been gutted or something. She blew air from her nose, hard, and slid into the car, turning on the “internal only” AC to try and cut out whatever that smell was. The heat was a little less oppressive, but the short walk from house to car was still enough to bring beads of sweat up on her arm. She pushed it from her mind, and backed out the car, soon driving the empty road into the town proper.

Charlotte put on music, humming along as she slowly wheeled her way to the Country Market. It was odd. Yes it was hot, but typically there'd be one or two folks out, walking or playing in their yards, doing work or something. It was totally dead, though shapes moved behind some of the windows as she looked. It reminded her of how it felt after a bad storm, the whole town reeling as it started to look for pieces to pick up. That at least had a reason, though. She tried to push it from her mind. It was hot, maybe everyone was just laying low. She sang, talking the lazy curve that lead to the market.

The parking lot was fairly full, with a few people loading cars or working their way inside. Charlotte found a space and parked, wondering if maybe a storm was coming. Whenever there was a bad storm on the way, everyone seemed to rush out for supplies at once. She breathed a sigh as she got out of the car, not realizing how much the empty streets had concerned her. She walked across the burning blacktop, passing in to the slightly cooler interior. Grabbing a cart, she started to push along the isles, trying not to just grab whatever she saw that looked tasty, even as her stomach twisted and growled. She nearly bumped in to an older lady, standing and staring over the butcher's case, and she stammered an apology as she blushed. The lady didn't seem to even notice her, at least, just staring fixedly at the clerk weighing out meats, swaying slightly as she gripped her cart already half-full of various cuts and sausages.

Charlotte frowned as she passed…she was pretty sure the lady was Mrs. Franklin, her old middle school teacher for English…she was normally pretty talkative, and knew every one of her old students by name. She hadn't immediately recognized her because she must have put on a lot of weight, her arms flabby and thick, her face puffy and almost shiny. Her hair had been down too, and Charlotte actually slowed and turned slightly to look at her again…yes, that was Mrs. Franklin, even if her hair was down, laid stringy around her back and shoulders…she'd always kept it up or braided. The clerk approached her, offering up her package, and she all but snatched it, throwing it in the cart and turning without so much as a word. It finally struck Charlotte what was bothering her so much: Mrs. Franklin had been a rather aggressive vegan. Maybe something had changed in the few years since middle school, but for her to suddenly buy what looked like half a cow's worth of meat seemed…odd. She turned her own cart, starting to push along behind her, suddenly worried for some undefinable reason.

“Oh my god Charlotte! I'm so sorry I haven't come by, but I didn't know if you needed space or whatever! I texted, you got my texts, right?”

A sudden cloud of fluffy, dirty blond curls and awkward hugging enveloped Charlotte as she nearly jumped from the sudden attack. She sighed, hugging back and pulling away with a slightly pained smile, watching as Mrs. Franklin hurried away and turned down another isle.

“Hey Bonnie…I'm sorry, I've just been kinda hibernating and stuff. Just came out to get some stuff for dinner. How are you doing”

Bonnie smiled, showing off her somewhat buck teeth. Short, plump, and with a mass of curls that grew with even the slightest humidity, she'd been Charlotte and Emma's mutual friend since grand school. Truthfully, she'd been more Emma's, Charlotte always struggled not to feel pity for Bonnie. Her father had run off after trying to kill her mom, and ended up in jail. Her mom was totally crazy, did drugs, and was rumored to sleep around. A lot. She was sweet, if a bit bubble-headed, and generally lived in her own little world. That wasn't to say Charlotte disliked her, it's just that it was tempered with the same emotions one feels taking care of an abused puppy.

“Oh god, it's been horrible, I keep crying and falling apart at the littlest things. Mom's here, if you want to say hi. It still doesn't feel real, you know? Like, I keep expecting to see her come around a corner, or call, or something. It was so fucked up. Oh, god, i'm sorry, you're probably even worse-”

And on she went. Charlotte smiled and nodded, this wasn't odd at all. Once she got going, Bonnie could be a real babbling brook. Normally she didn't mind it, but at the moment it was a bit grating.

“Bonnie, did you see-”

“-that whole thing was just so weird! I mean I didn't see anything right away, I was back with David, but I could hear-”

“Bonnie-”

“-horrible bump, like a clang, and-”

“BONNIE.”

“-it was…oh, what? I'm sorry, I just-”

“Yeah, it's fine, Bonnie, did you see Mrs. Franklin just now? At the meat counter?”

“Mrs Fr…oh, you mean our old English teacher? Where? Just now?”

Charlotte sighed, rubbing her hands against her temples briefly, where they'd suddenly started to throb.

“She was just there, buying a ton of meat, and she looked weird, like something was wrong.”

“Oh? I didn't see her…maybe she's messed up about Emma? And Sho too I guess, a lot's going on, everyone seems to be acting weird.”

Charlotte nodded as Bonnie chattered on, then actually processed what she'd said.

“Wait, wait, everyone's acting weird? How?”

“Well, I mean, not everyone, it's just…I don't know, maybe the heat, and Emma, and everything has got people messed up. Plus there was that fire out at the Brook's place, and all the heat lightning, it's getting people weird, mom's boyfriend hasn't even come over much, but David's been crazy frisky, it's really nice, he doesn't even-”

Charlotte rubbed between her eyes, feeling overwhelmed and confused. It felt like she was trying to think with a head stuffed with cotton, her sticky thoughts drifting like underwater movement. It was too much, and kept tugging at odd, idle threads she'd had, all of it just making it harder to focus on anything. She struggled to try and slow Bonnie down.

“Bonnie, Bonnie, one second, please…What the hell are you talking about?”

“Oh god, that's right, you've been sort of radio silent lately! Yeah, there's this bad heat lightning every night lately, some of the old guys are saying we're in for a monster storm, and…oh god, I'm so so sorry, I know I can be a ditz, I've just missed you and been so worried about you. When you're feeling better you should come by, or I could come visit maybe? It's been so long, I know mom misses you too.”

That helped clear Charlotte's head like a slap across the face. The last thing she wanted was to visit Bonnie's house, or her mother. Her house, a dirty, old trailer in the middle of a park full of the same, stank of cigarettes, sweat and whatever pet her mother was trying to raise at that moment. Her mother was a fat, overly-friendly woman who seemed happy to fall in love with anyone who gave her the smallest scrap of attention. She kicked herself internally for thinking it, but with Emma gone it felt like a filter had dropped away. She breathed out slowly, starting to slowly walk in the direction Mrs. Franklin had gone, Bonnie keeping at her left elbow like an excitable puppy.

She jabbered on. And on. Charlotte nodded, adding the occasional “Wow” or “That's crazy” as Bonnie remained blissfully immune to any kind of hint. She related random gossip, various personal complaints, and distressingly detailed accounts of her and David's love life. Which, going from her account, was their sex life and little else. Charlotte debated warning her about David, again, to tell her how he was basically using her as a fallback booty call at this point, but just sighed and let her ramble on. She picked out items, dropping them in the cart…and watched. There was an odd tension in the air. She caught people staring at her, now and then, or standing, rocking softly in the middle of a lane, eyes wide and glassy like sleepwalkers. It wasn't everyone, but it was very odd, and even the “normal” people seemed to be more quiet and furtive as they shopped. The locals could be shy, sure, but this seemed more like people preparing for some unknown, unnamed threat.

“-mean, it's not even worrying about stuff like that lately, which is great, but I mean, wow, ya know? I guess I don't mind either way, mom was young with me, so…whatever. Oh, yeah, remember that fire I told you about, the one out at the Brooks? They think it might have been arson!”

“Uh-huh”

“I mean, they didn't find anyone, so they're thinking maybe the dad, like, took them all off, or killed them and ran or something, isn't that fucking creepy?”

“That's crazy”

“I know, right! And they were always so creepy, remember Bryson, back before they pulled him out of school? Back in middle school? You remember how they said he tried to assault that one girl in the bathroom? And then his dad would stand and scream at people outside the bar downtown until the cops arrested him…I wouldn't be surprised!”

“Uh-huh”

“The whole place burned down, along with their barn, people are saying someone poured gas all over! They're still looking for them, and…you're not listening to me!”

“I am totally listening to you”

“Yeah, sure, so what was I saying?”

“Stuff about the fire.”

Bonnie huffed, pouting as Charlotte tossed the last few items into her cart. It wasn't that Charlotte didn't care, she just felt too drained to really deal with very much at the moment, let alone Bonnie's high maintenance. She'd woken up feeling better, but now she felt like the world was slightly tilted, recognizable, but wrong. She could feel a headache prowling around behind her eyes, and she increasingly just wanted to go back home and hide.

“Bryson was an ass, remember? Didn't he, like, try to drag you off once or something?”

Charlotte shivered at the memory. Bryson, nearly a foot taller than anyone else in the grade, with greasy blond hair, a weak chin, and a smell like an abandoned cattle barn. He'd grabbed her as she'd headed to the lunchroom, pulling her over to him and hissing to her how much he hated her through his yellow-gray teeth. He scared everyone, even the teachers, and when he'd finally gotten kicked out everyone had breathed a sigh of relief. At the time, she'd panicked, as he painfully squeezed her arm and told her that he was going to take her back to his house, and that is father would love to meet her.

For her part, she'd punched him in the stomach, then kneed him in the face when he doubled over, earning her two weeks suspension, a stern talking to from her parents, and a secret ice cream cone and congratulations from her grandpa. Bryson had gotten a broken nose, wounded pride, and ended up under permanent suspension a few months later under mysterious circumstances.

“Yeah, I guess…busted his face too hard for him to try though. Still, I don't wish him dead or anything.”

“I guess…but like I said, everyone's being weird, right?”

“I get it…listen, Bonnie, I gotta get back with this stuff. It's been great seeing you…text me or something, we'll figure stuff out, okay?”

Bonnie sulked, but accepted things, drifting back to join her mother as she waddled to the frozen foods. Charlotte waited, shortly loading her items on to the belt. She hadn't been aware of her frowning concentration until the checkout girl had asked if she was alright. She excused herself as being tired, glad the girl didn't know who she was and therefore have to accept more bland condolences from strangers. Everything felt so off. She looked as her items were rung up, but didn't see Mrs. Franklin anywhere. This had been a stupid idea. She should have just stayed home, or something…at least she wasn't tearing up, but it didn't feel as if it'd take much to do so. She gathered up her bags, and quickly rolled out to the car.

A wind had picked up since she'd been inside, but did little to dissipate the sticky, seeping heat. Sweat instantly popped out over her arms and face, and even the short walk to the car was enough to make her feel like she was in danger of melting. She loaded things as quick as she could, trying to ignore the sensation of being watched. She took a moment to wipe her forehead, and surreptitiously looked around, using her arm as a screen. A child a few cars over watched her intently from his carseat, his parents seemingly engaged in some argument. Everyone else was either coming or going from the store…she narrowed her eyes, quickly finishing her loading. Maybe it was just paranoia. She had been feeling like she had some invisible brand on her for a while now…Emma's death had just made it worse, actually. She shook her head, trying to manually scatter her intrusive thoughts and focus. Walking slowly around the car, she slipped inside, turning on the engine and letting the ac run and start to cool the burning interior. She breathed in the cooling air, rubbing her hands over her face. She was letting herself get too worked up. Something her grandfather had said, about the mind seeking context and connection where there wasn't any…she was jumping at shadows that weren't even there.

The grimy, reddened hand that slammed into the window inches from her head made her scream like she'd been stabbed.

The flesh was cracked and split, as if it'd been burned or split from chemicals, wrapped in grimy, ragged bits of cloth and bandage, the palm pressed against the window, smearing it with dirt and bits of dried blood. Behind it was a face, sunburned and filthy, ringed with a mass of hair and beard that stuck out at random angles, a mouth splitting the lower face full of the remains of black, rotten teeth, the eyes above massive and staring, pupils tiny pinpricks. A raw, sloppy voice howled out at her, the hand beating on the window as that face pressed close. She could see his nose had been damaged, or some kind of sickness was there, as some blackish-purple growth had eaten away part of the right side, leaving just a wet, pulpy hole as he shouted inarticulately.

Charlotte screamed, slammed the car into reverse, and nearly ran over the grimy man in her eagerness to get away.

As she pulled away, she saw the rest of the figure was just as shredded, filthy and decrepit as the face and hand had been. He was standing, shouting and drooling as he pointed at her car, others nearby sitting in stunned horror or trying to pretend they didn't notice. Charlotte sped out of the parking lot, watching as someone in the Country Market uniform approached the ragged man, talking on a phone. She panted, abruptly aware of the blood thundering in her ears, forcing herself to slow down. The smears of filth on her window nearly made her gag, she could nearly smell them from inside the car. She put one hand on her chest, trying to calm down. Trying to not see reflections of Emma in that ragged, broken thing in the parking lot.

Disturbed and annoyed, Charlotte sped home, ignoring that still-vile smell that seemed to waft around the house as she gathered up her groceries. She hiked up the path, swaying a moment before the sudden sound of rapidly approaching feet and jingling tore her attention from the door.

“Oh, fuck, Steve, no, please, my hands are full..”

Her words fell on deaf, or in this case more accurately stupid, ears, as the massive dog bounded up to her, nearly taking her off her feet as he rubbed and sniffed happily. He leaned against her, sending her off-balance with a shriek that brought her father to the door with a phone still held to his ear. Steve was a tremendous dog, equal parts great dane, german shepard, sheepdog and shetland pony. He also bore the mistaken impression that he was the size of a corgi. He also didn't live with the Carries, a fact both Charlotte and her father Shane stressed to the bounding dog as Shane secured the groceries and carried them inside, yelling over his shoulder.

“That damn horse, why does he always come here? I'll call the Bakers, he must have broken out again.”

“Aww, come on…he's just a sweetheart, he knew I was sad…didn't you Steve?”

The dog yapped happily, bounding and play-biting at Charlotte's hands, before dashing off a few paces, only to charge back again.

“oooh yes, you're a good boy, arn't you? And so handsome too…”

She petted the massive dog, his head nearly eye-level with hers as he tried to lick her face, the girl laughing and pushing his engine-block of a skull away. She could hear her dad in the entryway as he put down the bags.

“Yeah, no, just my daughter…no, no, just a stupid neighbor dog in the yard. Yeah. Listen, let me call you right back, ok? No, just wait, I'll be right back.”

She frowned, grabbing the dog's head and pulling it to her own, rubbing his thick neck. That was dad's work voice. That never meant anything good when he wasn't actually at work. Her father came down, dialing as he reached and scratched one of Steve's ears, sending him back to hopping and bounding.

“They're probably out looking for him again already. At least I hope so. He's going to get hit by a car one of these days.”

“He'd probably wreck the car. Was that work?”

“Was…oh, this, yeah, just…ahh, little thing, give me a second…”

She breathed out, slowly, frowning. He always passed off emergencies as “little things”, especially when he knew it'd upset people. She rubbed and petted the big dog's head as her father dialed the Baker's.

“What's going on, Steve? Do you know? Noo, you're just a big sweetie arn't you.”

The big dog suddenly leapt back, bounding about in a semicircle, before darting off the charge into the trees and brush around the house and vanish. Charlotte half-jogged after the huge dog, calling as she could hear her father calling after her, in turn.

“Honey, don't go tearing around in there…he'll turn up when he's hungry, and the Bakers…bah…”

She could hear him snarl and grumble as she stepped between the trees. She could hear the crash of brush, far ahead, and she called, to no avail. She worried, with how strange everything had been, that something might happen to the dog. The crashing died out, and she suddenly felt the heat of the early evening crashing down on her, the harsh, sharp light spearing through the leaves. She sweated freely, bits of bark and leaves sticking to her hair and skin. She felt suddenly exposed. These woods had been her back yard since childhood, but they felt different now, more threatening somehow. She took a step back, the air hot and still. Charlotte realized that, aside from her breathing, nothing was making a sound. No birds, no insects, no wind, nothing.

A soft sound made her jump, spinning to look beside her. It had sounded like something moving, or…sliding through the brush. She started to slowly back out of the wood, despite her concern for the dog. The trees didn't extend too far, and it was open fields on the far side, he was likely well in to them by now. Plus, the last thing she wanted was to deal with a snake or some kind of rabid rodent. Another sound, that same sliding noise, but this time she saw as well as heard. Several spots, some just a few feet away, suddenly shuffled and moved, as if a bunch of mice had suddenly bolted all at once…or several strings had suddenly been pulled. She stepped back, and back, finally turning to jog the last few feet away, noticing a sudden return of birdsong and insect buzzing. She came out to find her dad approaching, phone at his side.

“Oh thank goodness…the Bakers are headed to go catch him, I was worried you'd chase him all the…are you alright?”

She tried to speak, suddenly finding her throat tight and her eyes brimming, and instead just ran and hugged him, pressing her face to his chest and biting back tears. He hugged her back, a bemused smile on his face as he rubbed her back.

“Well, I can't say I'm upset at this…but what's got you so worked up? Come on, let's get you back in the house. I'm sorry I sent you out like that, I wasn't thinking…”

“It's fine…can we go inside? Today's been so freaking weird.”

He nodded, leading her in and depositing her in the living room before going to put away the bags. Outside, the sun beat down, scorching trees and birds alike. It also spread its rays over Steve, as he bounded and barked across open field, charging to the small strip of forest, just behind the Carrie's house, where Charlotte was telling her father Shane about the “weird homeless guy” who had beat on her car. Steve suddenly stopped, and walked with more focus, his massive head low. He started to growl, bearing his teeth as he froze, just outside the treeline. It would have been a shock to see him in such a posture, for those that knew him. He growled, and growled, eyes fixed on the trees as the birds chirped and sang. He snarled, then barked, once, slowly backing off again.

His gaze was fixed on one tree, that appeared to be mostly dead. A few leaves still clung, but all over the trunk had grown masses of thick, oozing mold. At least, it looked like mold, thick purple and black nets and tubes that ran along the trunk, and even in to it through pulpy, yellowed holes. When the clouds moved, and the sun beamed down directly on the tree, the mass of oozing jelly flexed and writhed, seeming to pulse like bloated varicose veins. In the branches, the mass seemed to thin out, but it was here that the dog's vision was directed, as well as his snarling protest. Along one limb, a thick, flexing tube of pinkish-white, fibrous jelly ran along to the tip of one of the smaller branches, ending in a fat, pulsing bulb the size of an apple. It flexed and bulged, ragged fringes flickering as a sharp point bobbed along the top like a cork in a bathtub. The mass throbbed and oozed some pinkish-yellow fluid, that spilled watery from a suddenly opened hole in the side.

The hole twitched, dilated open, and released a few guttural, warbling notes of birdsong.

+ Part 3

- Calcifications

Hey

u up?

Babe

What

u ok

?

It's like 1:00

Bonnie told david you were being weird

Just had a weird day I guess.

People are acting weird, and some homeless guy tried to break into my car

And now dad's having to leave for a few days

That's fucked

Why's he leaving?

He's got a big worksite down in the bay

Someone fucked up a permit or something

Now he's got lawyers raising hell

He's gotta go sort it out

Shit

He gonna make your mom come back again?

No, though he offered

I told him it'd be fine with just grandpa and I

He's cool

You should come out tomorrow then

Scott, I can't

Even if I wanted to

I can't just ditch grandpa

Wait for him to sleep or whatever

Doesn't he take care of himself?

Yeah

But

He'd be mad

And dad would be super mad

They won't know

I miss you

Please

Scott, I don't

I keep thinking about it

u gonna just stay inside forever?

It won't be anything big

That's fucked up

Fuck you

Don't get pissed

I miss you, I get dumb

Come on, just for a night

No crazy house party or anything

Promise

Please

Baby

It's too late for this

What do you want

Just come out tomorrow

We'll go to the river

Like when we first started going out and stuff

Remember that tree?

Shut up

Idiot

I don't want to have a bunch of drunks to worry about

Can it just be us?

David's buying the beer

But we can fuck off once things get going

Sneaking

Great

You love that shit though

I'm sleeping

You should too

Send me pic

Night Scott

Please

Baby

C'mon

Ok night

“You're up early. Or is that late? It's hard to tell some days.”

Her grandfather's voice made Charlotte suddenly wince, gripping the doorframe to the kitchen she'd just entered. He was sitting in the gloom of the dark kitchen, at the little breakfast table. His white hair and mustache nearly glowed in the faint light of the moon pouring in, a soft rumble of thunder pealing out as she slowly relaxed her shoulders. She'd been too awake after texting Scott, and had slipped down for a drink of water, but now felt as if a glaring “S” for secret had been branded on her chest in neon. As upsetting as it was, it wasn't unfamiliar, her grandfather had a knack for scenting when she was hiding something. Or anyone else for that matter.

“Lateish-early. Why don't you have a light on? And what are you doing?”

“A dark air for dark thoughts, one must always be aware of setting, even if one is the only actor. And at the moment, drinking tea. I might ask the same of you?”

She sighed, flicking on the light and watching her grandpa blink and wince like a cat, raising his hand defensively from the sudden brightness. Charlotte walked to the sink, then abruptly looked again at her grandfather as he reached to recover his cup of tea. A fresh, white bandage ran up his arm, from the lean wrist and up to vanish into his wide robe sleeves. Her eyes widened, both from concern and with sudden memory of that wrapped, filthy hand beating on her window. He caught the sudden attention, and smiled sheepishly, raising his arm and twisting it a few times.

“Ahh, yes, a little disagreement with the stove while you were taking sabbatical. Not quite as quick as I used to be, it seems. Don't fret, cridhe, I've survived worse, a little singe won't topple me.”

Water poured into the glass as Charlotte listened and watched with open suspicion. Just beyond the window, the leaves twisted and whispered in the wind as another peal of thunder rolled over, muttering and grumbling as it died away. She walked to stand across the table from her grandfather, holding her water and staring, while he did the same, smiling slightly.

“…you're lying.”

“A truth by any other name would smell just a sweet.”

“Grandpa, don't do that. What…” she raised her arms wide in a helpless gesture “What the hell is going on?”

He sat, watching her in turn, then sighed and hung his head for a moment, before raising it again with a wain smile.

“You're more right than you know. Hell is what's going on, or at least close enough to be a matter of semantics. However, it's not likely to last much longer.”

She stared, and slowly sat, keeping her eyes locked on her grandfather as if he'd vanish if she stopped watching him, like a startled animal. He didn't bolt, but raise his hand as she opened her mouth to speak.

“Ah-ah-ah, no, no. No more yet. First, me. Charlotte, there are good and bad things in the world, and there there are things that just are. Like floods, or tornadoes. They may kill, and ruin lives, but they're not evil in the way we think of things. All we can do is try to lessen the damage.”

He spoke, slowly moving his fingers in sinuous, repeating patterns, the same way he'd always done when she was sick, unable to sleep, or shivering with rage. She tried to fight the soft, easy waves of exhaustion that started to beat over her, but she could feel her shoulders slacken in spite of herself as he droned on.

“We and I and others like me watch, and do what we can. It had been a long time coming, but will not be much longer. I will here beg you; go with your father. Beg, cry, plead, whatever it takes, fight and go with him to his work call. Take the waters, breathe fresh air. I say this out of love, and if you love me you will do this thing for me.”

She tried to rise, managing only to shift in her chair, her eyelids feeling leaden. Her voice was heavy and slurred when she tried to speak, her tongue feeling like a sodden sponge.

“What are you doing to me?”

“Nothing that would harm you. Ever. Harm is a thing we must chose ourselves, or at least that is as it should be. If you stay, you will have nothing but pain. Your heart will break, and you will learn that it can shatter again and again, until it is powder, and then that powder can be ground finer and finer, forever. Your friend dying will seem as a blessed interlude in contrast. There is nothing to gain by staying here, only lost. Yet you are mine, and of my blood. You bore witness, so yours is the choice. Will you go?”

“Y-you…made it so dad would…leave.”

“Yes and no. I helped, perhaps, make a situation seem more urgent, however it is indeed a problem.”

“Why…what…is happening?”

“And ending. You're trying to hide from a reply. No games, no hiding. Will you go?”

“Why is…it…me…not dad?”

“You saw, he didn't. It is not a choice I may make, and I must abide. Now, will you stay?”

She was fighting just to stay awake, angry that she couldn't even feel scared, just a slow, comforting relaxation dragging her down to sleep like a lead weight. She clung to her anger, her confusion, anything to try and fight, to force her eyes open. Her grandfather, watching, seemed to smile with a small nod, a silent approval, even as he worked glyph and shape with his fingers in the air between them.

“What…if…I…stay?”

“You learn. You see and live whatever truth there is, and will most likely suffer the rest of your painful life for it. I will still fight to shield you as much as I can, but you will join yourself to this doom.”

“…I…want…to stay…”

“…I know. I'm so sorry cridhe. Allow me one last mercy, at least. Not as Acolyte, but as a man, as a grandfather who worries for his beloved.”

She tried to reply, but her vision slewed, her thoughts spinning and wandering into foggy dreams as she felt her head nod to her chest, trying to cling to drifting threads of ideas. What was this? Who was her grandfather, really? A professor in Ireland, once…but what else, who else? What…and it drifted, wandering in to mushy imagination posing as memory, even her outrage over whatever he'd been doing to put her into this state melting and sloughing away like a cake in the rain. Sleep smothered her like a heavy snowfall in the depths of winter.

Charlotte awoke with a strangled gasp, then started coughing, feeling her lungs shudder in to life like a stubborn engine being kicked back to life. She sat up, struggling with leaden limbs, feeling as if she were still half in dreams, dreams and lethargy sticking to her like a numbing film, as if she'd risen from a bed of cold honey. She rubbed her face, breathing and trying to scoop up her syrupy thoughts. She'd come home, and her father…but then…she shook her head, sighing and absently running her hand through her sweaty hair. It was so blurry. Even now…wait, what time was it? The sudden concern helped release some of the malaise that was threatening even now to drag her back into bed. She fumbled over to her phone and checked…nearly noon already. She blinked, looking at the time…why did that seem odd to her?

She looked, and realized it was still dark. Rising, she crossed quickly to her window and pulled open the curtains. A heavy, black sky roiled and bubbled with gestating storm. A near constant, muttering grumble of thunder was punctuated by the occasional flash of lightening. The wind huffed and blew, but she could see no rain yet. The pressure of the air made her slowly waking brain feel still foggy and packed in cotton, her ears and teeth feeling too-large and uncomfortable. Even with the threatening sky, she felt a wave of relief, though she could not pinpoint why. The dreams still clung to her, even as she dressed and emerged from her room, a nagging idea that she was forgetting something…that something had been denied her that she desperately needed.

Downstairs, in the living room she found her grandfather, reading a book near the big window. She stopped, staring frozen for a moment as she entered. She felt something on the tip of her tongue, some pressing…something. Like knowing she had a test but unable to recall what it was for. Her grandfather smiled as he looked up from his book to her, gently putting it on the arm of his chair.

“Ahh, there you are. I was a touch worried we'd not be seeing you today!”

“Sorry, I was just…really tired, I guess. Did I wake up in the night?”

“I wouldn't be surprised. You were tossing and turning, even yelled so much I was worried someone had broken in. Why? Found something out of place? Or perhaps your soul has not yet fully settled in?”

“What? No, I just…feel off.” She stepped over and sat on the nearby couch, feeling progressively clearer, but still confused. She felt so compelled, but could connect the emotion to nothing. An effect without cause, pressed like mismatched jigsaw pieces in a vain attempt for connection in her mind. She looked about, as much to seek some hint as to try and clear her head.

“It's so dark out…where's dad at?”

“Indeed, it is grim out…though I doubt it will break soon, for all its threatening. Your father had to leave a bit early, sadly…he stopped in to say goodbye, don't you remember? You must have been very tired indeed.”

“Oh…I didn't…that's weird, I don't even remember that. Feels like I've been hit in the head or something.”

“Dreams may be as ethereal as hope, but can still strike like a thrown millstone from the right angle. Nothing some tea and sandwiches won't cure.”

She jerked, his words catching on something in her mind like a burr on a sweater. Tea, in the dark…strange words, and shapes, a horrible awareness rising…and then gone, slipping away like a fingertip-grasped coin in a greasy hole.

“Wait, that…tea, there was something about tea…and you, it was…here, I think…”

“Well I am flattered, if it's so. They say tea dreams reflect coming enlightenment, perhaps you assign such duties to me, in the depths of your subconscious.”

He rose, striding over to help her rise and leading her to the kitchen. She followed, shaking off her daze, at least for the moment. She held the vague hope that perhaps letting it go for a moment might bring better focus in time. Her grandfather chattered on as he put on a kettle and started to bustle about in the fridge.

“I do hope I wasn't too upsetting in said tea-dream, at least. You know your grandmother once had a dream about me so unpleasant she made me apologize for my dream-self's actions?”

“That's nuts…did you end up doing it? Apologizing, I mean?”

“Of course! It was just easier, galling though it may have been, and I've always been a soft touch for those I love. Just look at all the nonsense I put up with from you!”

“Hey, hey. Weren't you the one who came crying to me because you screwed up your phone so bad not too long ago?”

“What? Slander! That doesn't even sound like me! Are you sure you're not still dreaming?”

She laughed at his look of indignant offense, even moreso when he dropped a round of cheese and was forced to scramble after it as it bumped along the floor. By the time he put together the small sandwiches, she'd all but forgotten her confusion and nameless, formless fear. Outside the storm bulged and threatened, but never bloomed, bleeding a restless energy into those that sweated and ached below. It was a good day to stay inside. Or, even better, get out, go away for a few days. In groups or alone, the town of Au Sable had been slowly emptying. For days, the call to go out and camp, spend some time at the lake, or visit relatives out of town had been drawing people from their homes. An odd, undefinable itch that made one unable to rest or hold still, the dull radiant relation to the fight or flight response.

The town wasn't emptied, far from it, but the population had dropped by more than half in less than a week. Those that remained were blissfully unaware of anything off, or beyond the point of understanding, let alone caring. The same force that caused some animals to flee before landslide and tornado, and some to simply lay down and die echoed through the residents. Some even welcomed the strange stormclouds, blindly understanding they meant…something. Something greater than themselves, at least. Truly, even the animals felt the echo, and across the town those who remained found many beloved pets either missing, or subject to bizarre behaviors and whims.

Steve the dog was one of these, though blessed with a lack of real understanding. Though he loved his home, he loved this odd new freedom as well. He had not questioned why he had been allowed free again, simply slipping out the open door rather than needing to work out an escape. He had disliked the odd smells and shapes at home as well, so this suited him. He bounded through the wood near the Carrie home, looking over brush now and then to see if the nice girl, or anyone else was about that might pet or feed him. He was denied, and continued his furious exploration. He knew there was something that made his nose twitch and lips curl out here, but not exactly what.

He came across two men in the wood suddenly, one tall, one short and bent, both crouched in the brush and seemingly as interested in the house as Steve was. However, they smelled wrong. Mean, and bad, and much like the odd shapes in the woods and basement he'd seen before. He slowed his galloping run, watching as the men spoke in harsh whispers.

“Somethin' there, then.”

“Dog. Pay no mind, boy.”

“We should hit it. Burned the house, killed the girls, fucker.”

“Bite ya tongue, boy. Homes and wombs can be reclaimed. Our blood moves yet.”

“Better making theirs move. Shane's gone, just Brian and his grand-bitch now. Stupid bitch, see her in the Cradle.”

The smaller man wheeled and slapped the taller, sending him staggering and Steve to crouch lower in the brush. Bad men. Strange, bad men.

“You call for nothing, and you speak that name not, y'hear? Brian minds his wards and watches well, he'd have us burned before we could speak.”

“Didn't work before. Why scared now?”

“Fool. That was Man's flame, just a toy to Her, but enough for our flesh. He knows it's too late, but he can't go without a fight yet.”

“So if not to harm, why're we here?”

“To be sure. To watch, and wait. We'll go to the Heartwood next, and make ready…but it's best to know where a rabid dog lies, even if you've armed yourself.”

“So it's time, then?”

“Soon enough, boy, soon enough. It's Her time, not ours, remember that. Ooh, but I do hurt so, and I hear your bloodlust. If not for Her will, I'd be crisp clay…

“Get our own back, make him bleed, make him hurt, then.”

“And that is why we wait, son. You need to watch for flesh before you can draw blood. Come, let's commune and rebuke the sun further.”

The tall man rose, starting to shuffle through the brush, but the shorter one turned and approached Steve a few paces. Steve held his ground, though his tail curled below him, bearing his teeth. There was something wrong here. Some smell that was worse than the trash bins that had treats sometimes, or even the burst, rotten animal corpses on the road. This was worse, and somehow better, and it smelled sickly and terrible. The man rose in his sooty, filthy rags, a scabbed, pus-drooling face emerging from bandages and lank hair in small, peaking patches. He rose up a hand, one finger twisted and blackened, hanging bonelessly as it beckoned to the dog.

“Here pooch, here, here doggie…come now, She loves all flesh…”

The dog lifted his head, tail uncoiling slightly to wag. His good nature fought with the base impulse to flee as fast as he could or rip the man-thing's throat out. Steve stepped a paw forward, sniffing in hope of finding some redeeming smell to go with the gesture.

The man suddenly lunged, throwing open his sodden rags with a harsh hiss. Under it was as mass of red, burnt flesh and slick bone, jutting around bits of bandage and fused wool clothes that weaved in and out of that skin like a towel trod into the mud. Below it was a great, yawning void where his belly should have been, curves of bone outlining the sodden, pulpy-black pit. That was not what made the dog run though, yelping and whimpering like a puppy. It was what emerged from the bottom of that insane, gaping wound. Masses of throbbing, pinkish-gray flesh rolled forth, like a collection of bloated fingers as slick and flexing as tongues. They lashed and separated into a weaving mass of drooling, blunt tentacles covered in rot and reeking ichor, globs of the filth dripping and splattering as they lunged at the dog like snakes, the festering ooze hardening in to a discolored, semi-clear crystal like filthy ice where it landed. The lashing growths seemed to tug and pull the filthy man like a pack of hungry, leashed dogs, a bubbling, hissing laugh escaping his mouth as he watched the dog flee. His eyes rolled back in his head as he hunched and struggled, grabbing and feeling the puffy veins throb and flex, coiling around his ruined hands. One squeezed, and tore his blackened finger loose with a slimy, sucking rip, the tip sucking and rolling inwards to claim its prize.

“Oh shush, shush now, just a bit of fun. Calm yourself now, time yet, time yet.”

He went after the taller man, still cooing and soothing the mass of horror that lived where his organs should have been.

Hey babe

Baby

What's up

You coming out?

Scott, I'm just not feeling it

I'm sorry

You said already

Come on

This is bullshit

Don't start that shit

I don't even know if I can handle shit right now

My best friend died, and shit's been so weird

You could have at least come by or something

Your dad always gets pissed

I already told people you'd be here

Bonnie and David are here

You need to get over stuff

It's hard but the world's out there and shit

Baby

You there?

You're such an asshole

I miss you

It makes me crazy

It'll be real chill

Is G there?

Scott, is G there?

David's borrowing his car

It'd be fucked to just ditch him

Fuck, I don't wanna deal with your high ass

And G always gets weird

I can't do anymore fucking weird, Scott

We'll ditch out

Fuck G

Please

Baby

Come on

So you're not gonna get high?

No way

I'm gonna knock your fucking head in if you do

Sweet

Old man asleep?

I don't know

He went upstairs a while ago, but it's been quiet

Be by the window

Me and David are coming

Oh great

Bonnie too?

I don't know

Hey, does your dad still have that whiskey stuff?

Oh fuck you, no

No fucking way

No, no, just like

A little

Like a flask or something

You're fucking braindead Scott

He got that from Ireland for an anniversary

So maybe he doesn't wait it even

I swear to god I'm not coming

No baby

Please

I'm sorry

We're coming, just watch for us

Ok?

Baby

Fucking whatever

+ Part 4

- Episode

The night sky was a moth-eaten shawl, bits of star peeking through rends in the dark clouds, the burning eye of the moon hanging heavy and full, looking somehow too large in the frame of writhing cloud. Below, along the sandy bank of a river, a fire flickered, wavering and seemingly smothered by the pressing dark. The trees rustled and creaked, and the sudden guttering of the fire brought a rise of voices from the figures huddled around it. They sat and ambled, clustered around the modest fire, some drifting away to the nearby car, or to quiet places just beyond the fire. One such figure, bearing a mass of red hair and grim expression, was perched on a small bolder, tossing pebbles into the dark, flowing river. Another, this one blond and smiling, approached and leaned beside her, eliciting no response or acknowledgment from the first.

“Char, come on, don't be like this.”

She turned, fixing him with a withering glare. She could smell the booze and pot on him. It make her stomach turn as she looked back to the river.

“I'm not being like anything, Scott. I told you I didn't want to get drunk, or high, or anything, so I'm not. Go do fucking whatever, it's what you're going to do anyway.”

Scott sighed, trying to put an arm around Charlotte, only to have it flicked away with a toss of her shoulder.

“I'm sorry babe, it's just…everyone's wanting you to be happy, ya know? Can't you just go with it? You might like it, relax a bit or something.”

She slid off her perch, turning to stare at him with flashing eyes burning with anger. She questioned, for likely the hundredth time since she stepped out of her house, what the hell had possessed her to come out here. She clung to her anger to keep from weeping in raw frustration.

“Go with it? Scott, you and David came to get me high as fucking kites, and then Bonnie decides to just talk about Emma dying the whole fucking way here. Then, THEN, I find out there's like a dozen people here, none of whom I like, and your stupid ass ditches me to go smoke up with G, again. So I am going with it, Scott, I'm going with it and I'm pissed as hell. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Scott huffed, shuffling and leaning a bit closer to Charlotte. Drugs and booze had made him bold, and also made him sensitive. Unfortunately, this expressed through his temper.

“Listen, Char, look. Fucking…I got this all together to try and cheer you up, and all you can do is bitch. The fuck is wrong with me? The fuck is wrong with you?! Emma died, and I'm sorry, but it happened and shit moves on. She broke up with Anthony for no fucking reason, and now his parents say he's missing or some shit, she was saying all that weird shit at school…she was nuts, Char. She probably wanted to get hit, and all you can do is cry because you don't have anybody to put up with your crazy shit too.”

She nearly hissed, her retort crumbling in to pure animal anger as she lunged, trying to slap or claw Scott, but he rolled and blocked her, grinning as he fended off her rage.

“Yeah, you think you're such hot shit, just because your dad's got money, well fuck that. Emma too, each of you so fucking stuck up, treating me like shit. It's so sweet making you beg and squeal, like-”

The rest of his slurred, biting words were silenced as Charlotte broke free of his grasping hands, and in blind fury favored Scott with what her grandfather had instructed her was a “Glasgow handshake”. She grabbed the front of his shirt with both hands, tugged him forward while she leaned back, and slammed her forehead squarely into his brow-bone. Her dripping rage blotted the pain, and seemed even sweet as she watched Scott's head loll back before dropping like a sack of potatoes into the damp sand. She stood, fuming over him, unaware of the tiny trickle of blood oozing down her nose from a small split on her forehead. She contemplated a thousand murders in seconds before snarling at him and turning away, walking along the riverbank and muttering angrily to herself.

Back at the fire, few noticed anything amiss, let alone cared. The bank was high, and the sound of music and conversation blotted out much, so Scott snored unnoticed and unmourned by the greater group. Some noticed Charlotte's absence at least, and one even broke away to go look for her, huffing and puffing after just a few dozen steps. Others wandered, smoked, and drank, draped alone or in pairs as space and predilection allowed. The fire crackled, leaping in time with the swaying rustle of the trees…even those that thought to look up forgot about the boiling, low sky. All this, and more, was taken in by eyes just beyond the reach of the firelight. Cold, strange eyes, hanging almost luminously over a brittle, maniac smile. It slipped deeper into the darkness after a few moments, and shortly after, a wave of rustling, slithering noise oozed and skittered through the brush in pursuit.

“Oh my god, Charlotte, are you alright?!”

Charlotte looked up, momentarily blinded by the sharp point of light that bobbed a handful of feet away. She raised a hand to shield away the light, seeing the round face and blond curly hair behind it, and finally connected voice to body.

“Bonnie? What…yeah, I'm fine, what are you doing?”

“I didn't see you so I came looking for you…are you bleeding? Oh my god…where's Scott? Are you guys ok?”

“…No. I mean…I don't even know anymore, Bonnie…”

And she broke, hot, full tears starting to roll down her face, Charlotte spilling a wandering monologue to Bonnie in stuttering, halting spurts. Bonnie sat, rubbing her back as she cried and blubbered, and Charlotte welcomed the comfort, even if she was embarrassed and ashamed to be breaking down in front of anyone, again. She mastered herself quickly, and in less than half an hour was quietly relating to Bonnie how she'd headbutted her now ex-boyfriend into a crumpled heap, then stormed off before she'd been too tempted to smash him with a rock as well.

“H-holy shit, Char…that…like, I don't even know what to say…”

They sat in silence for a few moments, then Bonnie leaned forward to hug Charlotte, pressing against her back. Charlotte sighed, letting Bonnie lean and try to comfort her, and it was a comfort if she was honest. She patted Bonnie's arms…then paused, blinking in the dim moonlit, turning to look at Bonnie over her shoulder. There was something off…actually very off. She felt…puffy, somehow. Not even fat, more…swollen, and her skin felt oddly hot, and almost…waxy, in a way. Bonnie noticed her sudden concern, and pulled away, releasing her hug.

“…What? Something on my face?”

“No, no…Bonnie, are you…uhh…f-feeling alright?”

“What? I'm…oh, well…heh, I suppose there's no point in trying to hide. Am I glowing? Even by moonlight?”

Bonnie moved back a pace, holding out her arms…and Charlotte looked at her with rising confusion. She'd not noticed before, admittedly having her mind on other things, but Bonnie had put on a startling amount of weight, just since the accident. Her normally round, full face was even more puffy and soft, her arms looking nearly inflated as well…but most alarming was her belly. It was swollen and bulging, so much so that only the biggest or loosest of clothes could even attempt to hide it. She looked pale, and her eyes had dark bags…oddly, her hands were darker, as well as her throat, dark veins standing out even in the dim gloom. Charlotte stammered for words as Bonnie grinned, actually running hands over her bulging midsection.

“I know it's sudden, and I know we're young, but…I love David, and he doesn't seem upset, so…why not, right? Plus, now I'll always have someone who will love me!”

“I…Bonnie, what…what the fuck? How long…I mean, you weren't like this at the party before…”

Bonnie giggled, putting her hands together before her. Her skin looked odd. Glossy and almost waxy in places. She seemed to be missing several fingernails as well. A rising of the wind sent the trees rustling and swaying, and clipped some of her words as Charlotte struggled with wanting to hear, and wanting to pretend somehow this wasn't happening.

“-her some of it, but we only found out a few months ago. Mom said she got big as a house with me, so I guess we just grow quick in my family! Just thing, you'll get to be an aunt! I mean, if that's okay with you, it's just so…exciting. I think I can even feel it! We don't care if-”

“Bonnie, for fuck's sake, nobody gets pregnant like that, that fast. I think you're…sick, or something, holy shit Bonnie, I…what the fuck.”

“Char, I thought you'd be happy for me, of all people! I mean I know it's kinda sudden-”

“It's not fucking sudden Bonnie, it's insane! I thought you and David…I mean what the fuck happened?”

“Jesus, Charlotte, calm down. A couple months ago, he just got…frisky, I guess. Heh, didn't your parents tell you about this stuff?”

Charlotte threw up her hands, scoffing in utter bafflement. This was wrong, everything about this was wrong. Bonnie was an airhead, but even she had to know this was wrong. She looked sick. Bad sick, like a kind of cancer or…that mass could be a tumor, or worse, and there she was, smiling and petting it like a prize cat. The trees creaked and swayed, leaves hissing and skittering as if mocking Charlotte as she struggled to frame some argument to hammer down Bonnie's seemingly blissful ignorance. She needed a hospital, she needed something, someone.

It was as she reached to push back her hair that Charlotte realized it wasn't out of place. This was because no wind was blowing.

Her eyes widened as she suddenly looked around, Bonnie's mad, smiling face momentarily forgotten, as she looked at the trees. They swayed and groaned, leaves rustling and skittering about…but not a breath of air moved them. Charlotte felt as if her very core was cracking open, as she watched the branches move and claw at the black sky of their on volition. Bonnie coughed, and Charlotte's face snapped to look at her, registering in numb shock that some black, gelatinous grime had splattered Bonnie's hand where she'd covered her mouth. She giggled, eyes wide, pupils massive, black pits.

“Oh my…heh, well, mom did say morning sickness happens whenever, right?”

Charlotte blinked, backing up a step reflexively, wanting to run, to escape whatever madness was building up before her, but knowing at some base level that there wasn't an escape. The the screaming started, rising into a sudden chorus from the direction of the party, and then she did bolt, leaving Bonnie quietly humming to her bloated, gurgling stomach.

As Charlotte ran from the fever dream her world had become, another was blooming ahead of her. As the two women had talked, the party had continued unabated. That was, until one of the boys who had slipped away to take a leak suddenly came stumbling back, moaning. He was initially jeered, taunted as a petty lightweight…until those nearby saw the blood. Then he held up the ragged tatters of his wrists, the hands hanging in clumps of flesh and bone like wet, matted hair, and the jeering turned to shouts and screams of shock and horror. These were partially drowned out by the sudden noise of the wood, the same windless motion that had alarmed Charlotte. However, under it was a softer, more careful sound that only those far from the maimed boy could hear. The sound of muffled gurgling and meaty thudding. Few noticed, and fewer still could even remark on it as the group surged to see and attempt to help the boy weeping and moaning.

Unheeded as they clamored over him, few could hear him begging through is sobs and groans. He was begging them to run.

A sudden scream from one of the stragglers turned a few heads, but revealed nothing, the source seemingly the black, empty air. The moon suddenly emerged like a great, glowering eye, throwing the scene into a silvered sepia tableau. All around the huddled figures swayed and writhed what looked like masses of fleshy roots. They squirmed along and into the ground, rearing up like ten feet tall snakes to sway in the night air. Nobody could breathe for a heartbeat. It was too bizarre, too insane for something so mundane as speech or breath. Then a muffled, gagging moan rose, and they all turned as a body to look to the source. There, on the edge of the firelight, was a squirming mass of the pulsing, flexing roots. They had coiled and crushed someone, breaking their midsection so much they barely looked human. The vein-like roots were pouring down his throat and eyes like snakes seeking a winter burrow, making him gurgle and groan. All around them, throbbing, oozing vein-root things swayed like snakes from the forests of hell.

The moon was covered, like a lidded eye, and then the screaming began in earnest.

Chaos ruled as Charlotte burst into the edge of the firelight, brushing away a thick mass of cobweb that seemed to cling to her face. She stared, seeing people running to and fro, in a blind, unreasoning panic. She rubbed her hand, and realized it was wet from where she had touched what she thought was a spiderweb…when she looked, however, there was a mass of pink and gray strands squirming in a patch of black mucus in her hand, and she screamed as she flicked it away, rubbing her hand furiously on her pants. Where the mass hit the ground, a sudden movement showed a mass of…something moving to collect it. It was shapeless, tubular and covered with pulsing varicose veins. The end split, revealing some moist, roiling mass surrounded by flabby lips, and the thing snapped up the fibrous blob like a horse eating an apple, before retracting back into the gloom soundlessly.

A boy stumbled by her, screaming as he pulled at a smaller vein-root, dug deep into his arm. It bulged and squirmed under his skin as he fought to pull it free, eyes white and unseeing as he screamed “I can feel it in my heart, I can feel it in my heart!”. Charlotte blinked, watching him stumble away, a cluster of three others a few paces off running to escape searching tentacles the size of meaty fire hoses chasing them through the grass. Somewhere, someone was begging for their mother between great whooping screams.

The civilized, cultured mind that was the fruit of thousands of years of social evolution was abruptly turned off in Charlotte's brain. Obviously it had no place here, and would likely be a detriment. The primal jelly of instinct was given control, the same will that had kept that which would become man safe in the darkness before fire, that guided from razor tooth and hunting eyes when they lived inside the food chain, not above it. Some part of her was aware that she was laughing hysterically, but this she ignored. The most basic laws returned as she moved with mindless speed, beating like a mantra made of not-words through her blood.

Darkness is Death.

More people means Safety in the Darkness.

Close places are better than Open places.

Fire is Good.

She lunged to the fire, grabbing a burning stick and ripping it from the flames, feeling her hand sizzle and not feeling or caring, holding it high, then stabbing down, waving to the sides, raising her other arm in effort to look as big as possible, laughing and shouting, snarling at whatever worming nightmare crawled outside the light. Something touched her, and without even looking she lashed the branch at it, spattering embers on her shirt and sending whatever it was away with a squelching squeal. Those unmaimed and still able to perceive realized whatever it was seemed to dislike fire, and so clustered close to Charlotte and the remains of the bonfire. All around them, a sound like snakes slithering through the waste-bin of a butcher shop seemed to grow, along with a deep, low throb, like a voice heard through a pillow.

Charlotte waved her burning branch, followed shortly by the tiny handful of people left. She was dimly aware of them, focused instead with trying to see, hear, and stab in every direction at once. Hard, needling points, bulbous cones, flexing, toothless maws and more lunged and probed from the darkness, like some endlessly headed hydra from the deepest pits of hell. One boy, trying to jocky for better position, was suddenly splattered with black and red ichor, smearing and oozing over his face. He screamed, reeling back as the smell and sound of sizzling flesh followed him as the grime started to eat into his flesh, and then the waving masses of tentacles grabbed him, dragging him howling into the dark.

She lashed and lunged, laughing, barking, the higher parts of her mind shut down as mad, animal will fought for a few spare seconds of life more. In the dimness, she saw something, something besides glimpses of the writhing, squirming carpet of vein-like growth that seemed to have swallowed the ground. She held her fire higher, sparing a few moments to snatch a better view…and indeed, there was something out there. A person, but not broken, or screaming, or worse. Someone just…standing, amid that nightmare tide. She bared her teeth reflexively. Anything these things weren't trying to kill was suspect. Charlotte was so far gone even when she saw the face, it didn't register with her at all. The droning, chanting voice was coming from it, as well as seemingly echoed from some far off place.

The figure started to speak, and it took her several seconds to finally connect the voice, face, and name. When she did, it shocked her enough to drag her out of her delirium slightly. How could she not know that eerie, cruelly smiling face? It's was Bryson Brooks.

“Just had to see. To know. Told pa to come here, yes I did, just for you all. Honor. Special place in Her kingdom. Reward for me. Mine.”

“B-Bryson?” she stammered stupidly through chattering teeth, too numb with horror to be more than simply confused.

“Yeah, you know. Remember you. Bitch. Now She's coming, and now-”

The rest of his taunting monologue was consumed, along with much of his upper body, by a sudden explosion of flame. Fire bloomed in his hair, crawled over his clothes and face, dripped from his flailing hands as he reeled back, keening and screaming as he fled. All around, it was as if a signal had been given, and the living carpet of flesh was slithering away, spitting and oozing, leaving behind barren, oddly grooved channels in the ravaged earth. There was more fire, and another blooming wave sent more worm-things retracting and retreating. Still, she could hear that sly crawling, slithering further from the roaring fire. She looked, nearly blinded, to try and see who or what was bearing and spreading inferno. Truly, she didn't care, even if it was new danger, if only for the momentary respite.

Her vision started to swim, limbs suddenly leaden as the brief release from blind, ongoing panic made way for crippling exhaustion. She could hear a voice, speaking low amid the roar and crackle of flame.

“First the father, then the son. Poetry, there, though I little like to consider my place in it.”

As she stumbled, trying to appeal to whomever it was, trying to seek some point of reason, she thought she saw her grandfather's face amid the roaring flame, smeared with soot and wearing some strange circlet around his head, flames licking through his hair and mustache without burning it. She collapsed, feeling thin, yet strong arms catch her, and she knew no more. Panic and self-preservative madness had woven a smothering blanket of unconsciousness that blotted out all but the vaguest hints of dreams. As she was drawn down into those shadowed depths, she hoped for a moment that she'd done some kind of good.

+ Part 5

- Biopsy

Pain.

Pain brought her back to awareness with all the gentleness of a fall down the stairs. Her hands ached and throbbed, her sink felt horribly sunburned, and everywhere seemed to ache like one massive raw nerve. A cool rag pressed to her head, and she pressed her head into it, groaning softly. She lay somewhere soft, and somehow knew that she was home, on the big couch in the living room. Charlotte winched, shifting and flexing to see if anything was more seriously injured. It seemed nothing was too pressing…at least that she could tell. She then could hear the sound of soft, quiet crying near her, and opened her eyes.

Beside her, her grandfather sat in one of the kitchen chairs, dragged beside the couch. His face was streaked and smeared with ash and soot, his eyes red-rimmed above two cleaner tracks of tears. She watched, and he hung his head, rubbing his face as his shoulders hitched slightly. He sighed deeply, rubbing his face and lowering his hands. She noticed now the odd rings on his hands, and the bits of wire that looked freshly pierced though his ear. He looked and caught her stare, and hung his head again, shaking it softly.

“I'm…I'm so very sorry, cridhe. Can you ever forgive me? I'm just…an old fool, who thought he could spit in the face of fate. I'm so very sorry.”

She shook her head, memories starting to bubble as her mind started to clear.

“No, it's…it's fine, grandpa. I don't…understand…wait, I've said this before. I've asked you this before, didn't I?”

“You did, child, you did. And fool that I am, I made you forget, because I thought somehow that would take you out of this, shield you from it. But I should have known better. Been better. You nearly died, cridhe. All because I kept you blind.”

She sat up, painfully, despite her grandfather's protests. She stared at his sooty, pained face, and put her hands in his. They looked so much smaller, so much older than she seemed to remember.

“Grandpa. What the hell is going on?”

“Hell is right, or at least close to it. Close enough for us.”

“You said that before, didn't you? Or close…I need you to explain. My friends just got torn to bits by…worms, or…whatever they…oh god…”

“Umbilici”, he said a wain, apologetic smile on his face as he patted her hand. “The 'official' term is umbilici, though worm-thing is in common usage.”

“What the fuck are they? Why…why did they kill everyone? Why is this happening?”

“For that, my child, we need go back rather far. We've some time yet…and I've denied you too much already.”

And so he spoke. He told her of himself, Brian Carrie, a smart lad fresh from school, who fell smitten with a very nice girl at a library. It was cliche, but he didn't mind. He was in love, and she loved him, so all was well with the world. She had been odd, yes, but he didn't mind that either. The years of their courtship, then marriage had been lovely, and he had dismissed her odd quirks, her occasional, sudden trips, and the odd exclusion by her minimal relatives. It wasn't until their child, Charlotte's father Shane, had left for collage that the truth started to seep in. He'd had suspicions, yes, but now, suddenly, her alleged aunts and uncles started coming from the woodwork, and much more friendly than before.

He begged her for her indulgence, to not pry beyond his brief details, for it would drag her through even darker and more painful worlds then she already had. They were a cult. No mere satanists, or some new-age tree worshipers, theirs was a calling harking back to the dimmest, darkest shadows at the beginning of mankind. There were arguments, resistance, but in the end he was drawn in to their cabal. He found whole worlds of new knowledge opening before him, and before long he was as devoted as any of them. He worked, and sacrificed, and lent his skill and knowledge to their work. In truth, he came to relish it, as he'd always sought the truth, no matter how painful.

“So…this…whatever it is, this is…because of the cult?”

“No, no…and in a way, yes. It's not my cult, but…another.”

“So you're fighting whatever…this evil thing is?”

“Oh, my child. No, not at all. The ideas of good and evil, these are human concepts, things we apply to ourselves, but have no meaning beyond us. A spider is not evil for feeding on a fly. A bear is not good because it protects its young. It just…is.”

“Alright, so what is this then?”

“We're getting there cridhe, we shall, I promise. For that, though, we must go much, much further back.”

“I'm glad you're telling me the truth…but we can't be waiting here, I mean…those things, the 'umbili-whatever” things could be killing other people! What if they get into town?”

“You are right, child, and death will walk and suck this place tonight…but the moon gives them strength, and we are yet weak. We must wait for the dawn, and until then, I will teach you. Now, hush your heart, and listen.”

He started to weave a tale. One he didn't know was actually true, but was true enough. Long, long ago, something came to a warm, strange world that would be called Earth many eons later. Space, time, its origins were and are unknown, and likely unknowable. However, it came and burrowed into the very soul of the world, binding itself or being bound in turn, along with others. It spread, like the mycelium of a fungus, infesting and gestating in the lonely, isolated parts of the world. In time it would bloom, forming growths that would wreck horror on all it could reach. Rooted as it was, it could not truly die, only be trimmed, like removing poisoned growths from a tree.

“Does it…eat us, then? Hate us? Why is it…”

“Do you hate the dust mites in the carpet? The mold spores that waft in the air in the basement? Perhaps, but you do not burn with it through your life. A temporary annoyance, but nothing more, and easily dismissed. That is us, to it. We are flecks of dust in a sunbeam, with even less meaning, and much more easily ignored.”

“That…that's fucked up.”

“No, that is the truth. 'Fucked up' comes later. Now, may I?”

He went on, explaining that sometimes, people rose against this thing, to buy time, to try and resist the insane nightmare it would spawn. Some succeeded, many did not, but still people tried, willing or unwilling. Her grandfather's cult was in opposition to this being. He was quick to say this did not make them good, and that they had done more than enough to be worthy of tortuous death, even himself, but they did oppose it. The primal force of fire and light stood against her wet shadows, a force of destruction to it's endless growth. The pockets and places it would bloom, they would go, burn out its heart, and then wait, staying in endless vigil to smother its growth. It did not always work, and he hinted to her that many mass vanishings and disasters of the past may have more to do with this and other strange beings than the more mundane things written in easily studied books.

“Cridhe, you remember this town, many, many years ago had a horrible fire? It burned down nearly the whole town to the ground, save a few buildings?”

“Yeah, they told us about it in school, the fire of 1911, it…wait, you mean-”

“Those of the cult faced the horror you faced, and were forced to take steps to make sure it was truly finished. It was grueling, but the ways of worship are seldom kind.”

She suddenly looked up, wincing as she took in the high ceiling, the old, plastered walls that stood around her. Outside the wobbly, thick glass of the window, the sky was just starting to shift to lighter hues, not true dawn, but a slow promise. The trees were blessedly still.

“This house…it survived the fire. But dad bought this place from some guy who moved to Ohio…right?”

“He was a fellow cultist. Our families are bound to them, knowing or unknowing. We…paid much, to allow you all ignorance. A measure of peace. We never dreamed it would come again so soon! It normally takes millennia for a site to re-gestate. Truthfully, it is my fault. I should have been more vigilant.”

“What did it? I mean…did something happen? Something go wrong?”

“Yes…and no, I suppose. For us, and anything that had any interest in being independently alive, It has gone wrong, yes. For others, those that worship, this is more or less what they want.”

“It's the Brooks, isn't it? I saw Bryson when everyone…I saw you light him on fire.”

Her grandfather nodded, glancing to the window as if he expected to see that fire-charred face staring through it.

“Indeed. A shard of the old cult that survived. Bryson may even be the child of Ama, but his father Noah is the one I'm most concerned-”

“Wait, Ama? Who's that?”

“Ahh…yes. A name for the…thing. A very old name, one of thousands, maybe millions. Ama, Gigim Ummum, Sekhmet, The Black Goat of the Wood, Shiva, Hurricane, these all grasp some portion, but mean nothing more than the name you give to a cat; useful more to the one naming than the named. Ama is the oldest I know, and can pronounce, so I call it thus.”

“Ama…What is that? I mean, where, or when…”

“The word is Mesopotamian, though the roots are much older. It means mother.”

“…Mother? What the hell?”

“Indeed. However time is drawing short…never enough, it seems. Never.”

He told her of the thing called Ama, the horrible, brooding mother of nightmares. It was life, pure, bulging, explosive life. However it was pure creation, pure growth, and while this may be beneficial in small doses, it was truly a living, breeding cancer in the heart of the world. It warped and consumed all it could, converting it into seedbeds for more of itself and its brood. Killing it would require the death of nearly the whole world, but it could be slowed, and even stopped for a time. Which was what her grandfather was now intending. He had missed the first signs, the quiet, creeping growth that had started to taint and poison the town. Too late for many, he could at least keep it from getting worse. Ama prized females, and tolerated men only as fodder, or at the utmost end of need. He pleaded with her again to not question the black rites and favors that could come from Ama, but Charlotte was already frowning with a slow realitization.

“Emma. She…I knew something was going on. She was acting so weird, and then, at the party…was that…I mean, was that thing…Ama? Or some part?”

The old man nodded sadly, rubbing his forehead with his hand, bits of ash flaking from his hair.

“I am truly sorry. She must have stumbled on to something…or fell into the hands of the Brooks. She must have resisted, right to the end, which is why the larva came out as it did. If it's any comfort, the car simply broke her body…she was likely very dead already, animated by Ama's will and her own resistance.”

“If it…no, it does not help! Holy shit, grandpa…you knew! You knew and you let people call me crazy! May I could have helped-”

She jumped when her grandfather suddenly slammed his hand against the arm of the couch, inches from her. His face had frozen in a hard mask of anger, but his eyes brimmed with tears.

“CHARLOTTE! You stop this at once. There is no use. What is done is done, and can never be undone. This path is made of blood, and pain, and sacrifice. Emma died, you lived, and exchanging these states would do no good. You chose this. I tried to make you leave, but you chose to stay. Don't rage and weep over outcomes you already knew, child.”

She stared, her emotions bubbling and turning. Anger, confusion, regret, even curiosity. She could see how much pain he was in, doing this, and it blunted the edges of her twisting consternation. She spoke slowly, trying to push past her churning heart.

“Why me? Why me, in all this? Why not dad, or my brothers, or anyone else? Why fucking ME?!”

Her grandfather's hard mask flickered, then cracked, eyebrows drooping as he lowered his head. When he spoke, his voice was clear, yet thickened with unshed tears.

“You saw, they didn't. You are…chosen, in a way. It is beyond me to rebuke this will. Yours is a question that echos to the ages, though. Why me? Why not others? I am not one who should be here. I know nothing, I cannot do what you ask…yet we are compelled. To resist the call is to invite a fate much worse than death, even if it could be resisted. This way, perhaps there will be peace, beyond the last door. I…I'm sorry, Charlotte. Truly I am.”

She knew, somehow, he was right. She could not just accept it, but she did understand, in a way. She leaned forward and hugged him, and he embraced her as well, and for a time they stayed, just…being. Letting unspoken, unspeakable emotion drift through and between them, in the way of hurting loved ones, somehow comforting despite the lack of words. Soon they released, and Charlotte felt somehow more prepared, even if she had no idea what was to come next.

“I love you cridhe, but the time's passed for that. Now, we must harden our hearts. This must be done, and we must do it, for there is no other. Life and death, these pale before our duty.”

“What is it? Ama, I mean, like, what does it…look like? Is it those things that attacked us? Like a big one of them?”

“Oh no, no…and you ask a more complex question then you know. Look at all the life of the world…which is the 'true' form of life? In the same way, Ama can take many forms, any form, truly. However, it is life, at the core. It will pulse and move with life, and…well, it may be trite, but the adage 'you'll know it when you see it' does apply…as nothing else could possibly be it.”

“That's kinda vague. Don't I need to know this stuff?”

“You'll learn, in these matters, something as finite and constricting as human speech is often far from appropriate, at best. There is a reason madmen rant and rave…it is in the hopes of accidentally hitting upon sound or verse that resonates correctly.”

“So what is it you…worship, then? Does it-”

He put up his hands, eyes wide with pleading concern as he put a finger to her lips.

“Oh no, no, no, please, no, do not…please. Let me spare you what nightmares I can. It is enough to say I worship a sort of…divine fire, if you will. Please leave it at that, I beg you.”

“…Alright. So what do we do now?”

“Now? We wait for full daylight, we ready our tools, and then we sally forth to end this before the chance vanishes forever. We will be called upon to do much. Many will die, likely even ourselves. We can not waver.”

She nodded, aware of the gravity with which he spoke, but knowing somewhere that she was still numb, likely in shock, and was just accepting what came at this point. She felt as if her whole world had broken like a lightbulb dropped on the highway, the brittle shards scattered and useless around her.

He patted her on the shoulder, seeing too much of his old self in her. Confused, lost, but determined somehow to make a go of it. He wrestled with a feeling of regretful pride that threatened to choke him, but instead he rose, and lead her to the stairs. He lead her to his rooms on the top floor, and there he, Brian Carrie, Keeper of Fire, tried to teach her in a few hours what he had sacrificed several lives and most of his own to learn.

+ Part 6

- Growth

The sun rose and burned over a quieter town. It appeared to be any other sleepy morning, but there were some oddities. A car, left abandoned in the middle of the road, doors open. A open front door, swaying to reveal smears of stains and ripped, broken wood. A fence shattered into a yard as if struck by a car, but with no tracks beyond odd, swooping scrapes in the dirt. Even the animals were subdued, birds hopping along the ground, dogs and cats panting, yet seeming unable to seek shade or rest. Keening notes, high above human hearing, tortured and drove, spinning and pulling anything with a spine into restless action. Barely anything remotely human remained in the town. There was a greater need.

Steve the dog ambled and swayed, unable to find cooling rest anywhere. He stumbled, wandering, his mind buzzing and scattered by the nagging, biting call. Around him stumbled and walked other animals, foxes, raccoon, even bats slowly crawling, helpless, along the ground. Normally he would have relished the chance to chase and bite so much rare prey, but now he just walked. He knew something was wrong, something was bad, like when he had eaten that fat toad as a puppy and nearly died. He just wanted someone to help, anyone, anyone to make him feel better, anything.

He loped and tripped, rising to stumble more, slowly passing in to the woods surrounding the Carrie house. Somewhere in his steaming, ravaged brain he knew there was solace here. As he walked, he shook, and splattered what looked like droplets of sweat over the branches and trees near him. He dripped more as he walked, feeling the sodden weight of his fur dragging him down. The other animals looked the same, great beads of glistening liquid dripping and rolling from them. Steve knew something was wrong, even if he did not and could not understand the concept that dogs don't sweat.

On he stumbled, trying to bark, but making just a panting wheeze. Behind him, the liquid seemed to shimmer…then harden into a glossy, clear crystal, hanging like gluey ice.

Charlotte and her grandfather emerged in the early afternoon, and she shivered despite the high, lingering heat. Her eyes were wide and staring, the pupils pinpricks, slowly adjusting to the light, a smear of dried blood just below her nose. Her grandfather looked somehow both stronger and weaker, his bearing full of purpose, but his own eyes were those of a man who has seen death hold out his bony hand in welcome. They walked down the stairs in silence, and Charlotte busied herself in the kitchen as her grandfather went to the basement. She worked, securing chemicals, bottles, water. She carefully kept everything separate, and then wondered if it would really matter. Why not just mix, and drink, be free…she laughed, hearing it decay into a strangled sob, gritting her teeth as she leaned over the sink, shaking with emotions she could barely frame into thoughts, let alone words.

A sudden hand on her back made her spin, a bottle of bleach raised high. Her grandfather stood there, smiling wanly. She lowered her bottle, staring at him, her face pleading for some sort of understanding. He frowned, then smiled apologetically, gently touching her arm.

“It does get easier. Not easy, but easier. You're my granddaughter, if anyone can endure…it's you.”

She sighed, unclenching her jaw and leaning against the sink. She looked, and saw the gas cans, bottles, and powders he'd taken up from the basement. She shook her head, looking at the floor.

“Grandpa…I don't think I can do this. I just…”

“No need for that now. We're past that. We may succeed, we may fail, but we will do this. Hell or high water.”

She nodded slowly, drawing breath to add her assent, when a sudden, strained bark snapped her head to look out the window. Steve was outside, stumbling and shuddering, mouth wide as water seemed to pour off him, as if he'd just jumped from a pool…something struck her as deeply wrong, but she turned and moved, ignoring her grandfather's protests as she tore open the door and ran outside, calling to the dog.

He stumbled a few feet, then fell down, panting and shivering. Charlotte ran and knelt, unsure of what to do, yelling for her grandfather as she tried to determine what was wrong. She put a hand on the dog's head, and then yanked it away with a shout. Whatever it was covering the dog, it wasn't water. It was thick and sticky, like mucus, but clear, and had an unpleasant, unyielding texture. The outside had felt brittle and hard, like barely-frozen ice cubes with still-liquid undersides. She went to reach again, and her grandfather roared from the porch.

“BY THE BURNING ONE DON'T TOUCH IT!”

She flinched back as if struck, turning just to see him launch from the steps and grab her around the waist, hauling her back and falling in a heap several feet away from the dog. Steve watched, eyes clouded, trying to bark and just panting feebly.

“Grandpa, he's dying, we have to do something!”

“And you'll die too if you get too close! Look!”

He pointed, and she suddenly noticed the others. Along the woodline, and out into the road, animals lay panting and dying, covered with the same slimy, clear ooze. Cats, dogs, birds, mice, all lay, eyes wide, gasping for air as the slime seemed to shed endlessly from their bodies. Just in their driveway, a deer lay, shivering and grunting, eyes glossy and white-filmed.”

“Oh…oh my god…”

“No, child. Not yours, or mine. Not here.”

“What…is happening to them?”

“It's taking them. It's likely reached all it can, but man and beast are different…it can be more direct with them.”

She covered her mouth, trying not to watch, but somehow unable to look away. The clear ooze started to thicken…then shimmer, like evening sunlight on a cold winter lake before the freeze. Slowly, the animals stopped panting and gasping, the coating turning into a clear, hard shell around them, fixed as if in clear amber. Inside, they seemed to shrink, or decay alive, hair giving way to raw flesh, pulling away from the crystalline shell. Limbs and skulls seemed to deflate, coiling and pulling inward into the central mass of increasingly shapeless flesh. Within seconds, all that lay in those glassy prisons were small, wobbling blobs of raw, flexing meat, even the bone seemingly dissolved. These writhed and bulged, before slowly starting to shrink, like pudding being sucked down a drain, accompanied by a soft sound like squeezing a soggy loaf of bread.

Within minutes, there was nothing left of the animals, just some small cracks in the ground, and the transparent, brittle shells that they had left behind. They, in turn, started to crack and crumble bit by bit, falling and decaying into wispy white fibers that slowly drifted away. Charlotte watched, eyes wide, soul awash with a boiling tide of emotion. Fear, horror, anger, fascination, disgust, they and more fought within her, leaving her in simple, blank shock. Her grandfather started to rise, helping her stand bonelessly, patting her shoulder as he started to guide her away, giving the softly decaying crystal outlines a wide berth.

“It's alright…you'll learn, no matter what you've seen, no matter how bad…there's always something new. You can't let every little thing unhinge you, now. Too far for that now…”

They gathered up the bags and boxes where her grandfather had dropped them near the door. She helped mechanically, silently loading the car as the still, hot air filled with the soft crackles and pops of the slowly decaying shells. Once it was loaded, she sat in the car, staring silently ahead, but her face slowly shifted from blank shock to a harder, angrier frown. Her grandfather entered, started to speak, then stopped as she turned to look at him. He smiled, petting over her unruly hair as she started the car.

“Ahh…there's my cridhe. You know, you had the worst temper when you were just a babe. You'd howl and scream for hours…I told your parents that you'd grow up fast, just so you would have more of yourself to be angry with. I told them yours was a fury that could burn the heavens down. I hope I was right.”

The car wheeled from the driveway, a small swirl of decaying white fibers trailing in the wake as it drove toward town. Aside from the engine, it was silent, not so much as a cicada breaking the boiling-hot stillness. The sun pressed down, like an angry, feverish mouth, bleeding and blistering with anger and heat. The grass and trees looked brittle and dusty, as if they were transplanted from some far-off desert rather than the wilds of northern Michigan. The air warped and trembled, the air laying sodden and heavy, like a sweat-soaked shirt filled with freshly cut hair, clinging, damp, and prickly on the skin. Should anything have lived that could still hear that had not already fled the growing nightmare, if they had pressed their ear to the baked, scorched ground, they might have found the silence was not total. There was a sound, as if from a far-off train, or some deep-boring mine.

It sounded almost like the rumble of heavy, labored breathing.

The sun was well past its zenith by the time they stopped the car seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Open fields and distant woodlands spread all about, separated by wavering lines of fence rows and trees. Charlotte and her grandfather Bruce were both grimly sitting in the front seats, smearing with dust and soot. Their work had been simple, yet exhausting, and not without its own peril. The town was uninhabited, but not without life. Her grandfather had explained about Umbilici, and how they could connect, attack, and change, but seeing them in daylight, even in the gloom of dark power stations and homes, had been a fresh horror. Now they sat, numbed and staring, yet knowing the work was far from done.

Bruce sighed, tapping the wheel, and looked to his granddaughter. Charlotte was ragged, staring out the window blankly, but not with the cold emptiness of horror as before, but just the dull, throbbing void of exhaustion. He reached and patted her back, eliciting a wain smile from her. A good, solid girl…but so much more to do. He rubbed her shoulder, looking out on the empty, crisp looking fields. No living thing much bigger than a fly stirred the wavering, hot air.

“Alright cridhe, nearly done now. We've just a bit to finish, but I need you to wait here.”

“I'm not leaving you, grandpa.”

Her voice was cold and level, and he knew she wouldn't budge. He smiled despite himself, proud and chagrined at the familial stubbornness.

“This isn't for talking, child. It's simple tactics. We come from two sides, we spread out and we have a better chance of success if something goes wrong.”

“Didn't you tell me only a fool divides his forces? Especially when outnumbered?”

“That's only if you plan on surviving the battle.”

The words hung in the close, still air, dragging out Charlotte's swarming, barely-suppressed fears like an anchor ripping through the thin ice of a newly frozen lake. She fought it down, however, pressing away the scrambling, gnawing fear if only to look somewhat composed before her grandfather.

“Is it really that bad?”

“The fact that we're alive now is shocking. They can…sense me, in a way. They'll be more attracted to me, and less likely to notice you. That's not to say you'll have a walk among the flowers, but it should be at least possible.”

“…I don't like this. I thought you said you weren't going to keep trying to shelter me.”

“I said I couldn't shield you from this, that you were chosen. And even if I did, then I misspoke. I will still use what breath is in my body to defend you from this nightmare, whatever the wills beyond my own call for. Please, just allow me this indulgence.”

She frowned, sighing and leaning back in the seat, slowly shaking her head.

“…Alright. It's not like I can really stop you, is it?”

“That kind of haughty resignation will carry you far in life. Now, again, what do you do?”

“Ugh…We go out, and wait until just around sunset. Then, when the signal goes up, I go to the spot in the woods, and smash some rock that's supposed to be there. And don't die.”

He smiled, patting her head, which she twisted away from in mock indignation.

“That's right. And then run. Run for all you are worth. And you must do this. Whatever you see or hear, you cannot fail in this. The nightmares here, they are not easily bested by our base reality, but the heat and light can make them sluggish. Still, they have servants, and…other things, that may come against you. Avoid them if you can, but defend your life to the utmost.”

“I know, you told me all this…but I don't know why we didn't bring guns or something!”

“Guns will be largely worthless here, and can give a lethal sense of security. I have given you what you can bear for your safety…but you must be cautious. As much as gunfire can alert, so can other things. Once you use them, your secrecy will vanish, and that is truly your greatest defense.”

Charlotte nodded, leaning against the window, then wincing away from the searing glass.

“I know…I'll be careful, grandpa. It's just…what the hell, you know?”

He watched her a moment, then leaned and hugged her, petting over her hair as he closed his eyes. His face crumbled into a mask of twisting pain and fear a few moments before returning to its old placidity. He pulled away, holding her at arms length as she looked at him quizzically.

“Whatever happens, Charlotte, you must do this. And you must know that I love you, with all my heat.”

“O-of course, grandpa…but you're scaring me, now, what's wrong?”

He shook his head, smiling softly, then turned and opened the car door, hopping out and grabbing two duffel bags from the back. He then returned to the open doorway, smiling as he stood.

“There's much, much better things to be scared of in this world than me, Charlotte Carrie. I'm just an old man with a burning heart that lived too long. Wait half an hour, then break for the wood and wait. Whatever comes, follow the plan. I love you to Hali and back, cridhe.”

And with that he was gone, slamming the door and bounding out into the dry field like a much younger man, the vague sounds of a jaunty whistled tune wafting quieter and quieter as he headed to the far wood. She watched, and felt some deep, as yet undamaged part of her soul twist and reach, begging for this not to be, for him to come back, to just leave all this. It was chained, however, by her will, and knowing how much was now at stake. She sighed heavily, feeling sweat roll down her neck and back. The heat felt like a mass of nettles rolling over the skin, sweat smearing soot and dirt in black rivulets and splotches. Tiny crystals of salt glinted on her forearm, and she brushed them away with a sudden, memory-spawned fear. She watched the clock, mumbling to herself the protective mantra her grandfather had hammered in to her earlier.

Her one solace was the idea this Ama thing was suffering even more.

“Nearly done, boy. Git your ass moving.”

“Nhggg. Hurt. Hurt bad. Need something”

“Oh you poor thing. She asks for a little help, and all you can do is whine. Least you'll see sunrise if you do good, don't bitch.”

“You're old, almost spent anyway. Big deal. Blessing andURK-”

“There we are…quiet that flapping mouth of yours. Twice honored, and all you can do for Her is wag your jaw.”

“GHHHRRRRHHHH”

“Shaddap. You been hurt worse shavin'. Brian will be along, and soon, so you do your damned job and let your daddy work, now. Fire is pain, should be used to that by now. Snap ya fuckin' tongue at me again, though, and I'll squeeze it out and feed it to Her, so She can mock your stupid self with your own voice. Now GIT MOVIN'”

Bryson Brooks fought free of the horrors trying to pry into his mouth and eyes, and went skittering into the brush, leaving a trail of blood and globs of black ichor. Noah watched, absently scratching at his cheek, and peeling off a sodden strip of flesh, revealing nude jaw and teeth. He cast it aside with all the care of a man dismissing a hangnail. His filmy, shrunken eyes closed, and he felt the squirming, gnawing mass in what was once his guts turn and writhe. Not long now, and he'd be back with Her, again, at last. Let the boy carry on…provided they could deal with that sun-worshiping bastard Brian Carrie. He couldn't stop things now…but it was possible he could bring an early close, which was just as bad.

Below his bony, crumbling feet, the earth shifted, and rose, falling softly in a slow rhythm. He leaned down, spread his arms to the dirt, and pressed his lips to the dry, swelling ground.

It was early evening, the sun a blob of molten steel in the sky, and among the trees it felt more like some tropical jungle than a northern forest. At least the trees somewhat screened the piercing rays, but helped trapped a thick, humid layer of heat that clung to the body like damp cobwebs. The eerie, close silence was almost worse, broken only by the occasional insect sounds and Charlotte's seemingly too-loud breathing. She worked her way through the brush and ferns, trying not to notice how all the plant life looked either brittle and dry, or almost cantankerously swollen and lush. Her mind was like a wild animal, trying to race off and skitter in whatever direction it could, and she forced herself to ignore the oddly warm, soft ground, the silent wood, and her own roaring sense of fight-or-flight screaming to bolt from this place.

She still felt this was stupid. Not just splitting up, but the basic idea of staying here one second longer than they had to. The two of them had prepared areas and set charges all over town. Then, they'd cleaned parts of the town that were worst effected-

Cleaned. She paused a moment, smiling strangely. Was that her hiding from reality, or just repeating her grandfather?

They'd killed…things. Some that were once human, some that never had been. The horror had gestated for weeks, maybe months, before this final manifestation. Her grandfather had explained that this was like a cancer…leave any small portion, and it could grow again. All had to be burned. It had been done before, in 1911, and left the town a smoking, uninhabited ruin…and so it would need to be again. The sounds…screams, pleading, disdainful cursing…she shivered, despite the heat that drew sweat from her skin in dripping waves. Her soul recoiled from the idea, but she knew somehow that it was needed. That all of this needed to be purged, burned to bedrock and erased. Hopefully for another hundred years, or more.

Charlotte crouched in the brush, feeling ferns stick to her arms as she squinted and peered into the marching wall of trees. There was nothing…but not too far ahead she knew there was a clearing. It was always a spooky place, reputed to be indian burial grounds, or a satanist's hotspot, depending on who was doing the telling. Only the bravest had ever gone there, and generally dismissed it as just a spooky clearing with some old rocks…but they rarely went twice. She knew now that what had been worshiped there was no devil or spirit, but something older than even the Potawatomi, who had shunned the place as a meeting ground of the cursed windigo. Now, her grandfather said the Brooks clan, or what was left of it, were working to accelerate the awakening.

She sighed, leaning as she crouched against a tree, before pulling away again, feeling the wood under the bark mush with unwholesome pulpyness. She didn't relish the idea of confronting Bryson, or his father Noah, but if all went to plan they would barely know she was there. She worked to reign in her thoughts, but they kept spinning, following every dark path, giving weight to every fear. A sudden sound, a low, trembling rumble made her nearly scream, before she strangled it back down. Everything seemed to be watching her, like a host of daggers hanging inches from her neck. She started to creep forward again, freezing a moment before widening her step to avoid a fleshy, glossy thing that may have been pretending to be a root.

Her heart was hammering so much she expected the whole wood could hear it, and she gripped the small stone in her pocket tightly. A faded, warped star was scratched on it, and she again questioned her grandfather's earnest statements that it would keep her safe and hidden, at least from casual observation. Even now, it somehow didn't feel real, like-

“Char! Oh my god, why are you out here?”

The sudden, familiar voice made her snap around, eyes wide and staring, grasping and raising a chunk of tree branch at her feet defensively. Not twenty yards away stood Bonnie, smiling with her head tilted to the side. Charlotte blinked, momentarily struck dumb at the sight. She stood in what looked like a dirty nightgown, a small thicket of brush before her, letting just her head and shoulders emerge to be seen. She looked…bad. He skin was sallow and puffy, her face bloated as if from bee sting, and her hair hung in matted locks along her neck and face. She raised her hand to wave, and the fingers were black and dripping with some clear fluid flecked with pink.

“B-Bonnie? W-what…are…are you ok? What…”

Bonnie giggled, and moved closer, the thicket pulling and tearing at her skin, but she seemed not to notice. There was something off about her motion that put Charlotte on even higher alert. She seemed to glide, as if she was drug along on a rail, rather than simply walking.

“Oh, yeah, I'm fine…I mean, it's been kinda weird, but I feel better than I have. No morning sickness at least! A couple of us tried to find you, but it's like you just dropped off the earth!”

Her cheery tone put Charlotte's teeth on edge. This was wrong, there's no way…at the fire, everyone had…there was no way.

“Bonnie, what are you doing here? What…how did you get away from the party?”

“Oh that, yeah…it was fucked up, David said G must have gotten some bad shit or something…you totally freaked out! But it's okay now. You know, I was thinking, maybe you and Scott should try for a baby too! I mean, then we could be pregnancy buddies!”

“What the hell are you even talking…oh…oh my god…oh my FUCKING GOD!”

Charlotte's response melted into an uncontrollable scream as Bonnie finally moved out of the thicket. Her lower body was a ruin, legs torn and shredded to ragged strings, the pitted bones of her ankles sticking out of dry, shredded stumps, each drifting nearly a foot off the ground. Behind her squirmed and roiled masses of thick umbilici, flexing and bulging in rhythm up to where they seemed to connect and vanish behind her, supporting her like a puppet. Her lower chest had been flayed open, and inside squirmed and flexed more of the oozing, pinkish tentacles, the shredded nightgown hanging in tatters like pus-soaked bandages.

Worst of all was her stomach, the churning, flexing mass of which hung down nearly to her knees. It was black, shot through with massive, pink veins, and roiled as if a mass of bricks were being churned under that puffy flesh. The skin had split along the center, like a half-lidded eye turned sideways that extended from her exposed ribs to that sloshing underbelly. No eye peeked out, however, merely a knobby, pinkish-gray wall of flesh, shot through with white fibers and black, throbbing veins. A bulge the size of a softball emerged at the top, and rolled underneath a moment before Bonnie's blackened hand patted it, sending it submerging back.

“Oh don't be like that…I know I've gotten big, but it's not like you have to scream about it! David's really happy now, too! He was a little upset for a while, but now he's so supportive. We understand now…life is a blessing, and we're a part of that now! You should be to! I mean, just look!”

She turned, and Charlotte barely managed to choke back another scream, owing more to shock than her own will. Her back had been…torn away, the back of her skull, her spine, everything gone, replaced by a rooted mass of tubes and throbbing tissue, the lengths of it supporting and carrying her like a ventriloquist's dummy. They twisted, bulged, and she spoke, gesturing to the wood. Charlotte noticed, in a mad moment, that Bonnie's eyes were not blinking, and had not been this whole time.

“We have a chance to be part of something so much bigger than us! Not be stuck in this little town forever…to have a family, to be free! I don't really understand why you're shaking like that, I know it's weird, but life is like that sometime right?”

“O-o-oh my g-god….Bonnie…what fucking h-happened to you?”

“Hush now. Don't be silly. I know you were never really my friend, just hung with me because of Emma, but she couldn't handle everything, so now we can be real, true friends!”

She started to approach, gliding on those slimy tubes, and Charlotte recoiled, flinging her chunk of wood at Bonnie, only to have it batted away by a lightening fast flicker of tentacle from the brush below her. Her mind twisted and gibbered, trying desperately to not be part of what was happening, and in a brittle spark of clarity that comes to those in panic for their lives, she gripped into her pocket and tore out the star-marked stone.

Bonnie stopped, frowning. She did not recoil, or burst into flames, but she stopped and that was enough for Charlotte, who started backing away, bouncing off a tree, but not daring to turn away. Bonnie frowned, pouting her lips as if she'd dropped a cone of ice cream.

“Oh. Well that's…I'm sorry you feel that way. I was really hoping we could be friends, or even more. Oh well.”

Charlotte tried to speak, but could not find her voice, and suddenly Bonnie started to shake, jittering like she was having a mild seizure, but her eyes stayed open, locked on Charlotte. There was a oozing, sliding sound, like meat being pressed through a small tube, and masses of the umbilici seemed to bloom around her, for a moment like the rays around a religious icon, before abruptly whipping around, coiling and gripping over her, bending her at an impossible angle, even as they carefully gripped and cradled that bloated nightmare of a belly. Then, with the sound of a set of guitar strings drawn too tight, it pulled away, the whole mass suddenly ripping back into the woods like a rubber band, crashing through brush and against trees…and then it was gone, the still, hot wood standing as if it had never been.

Charlotte sank to her knees, her mind a fizzled blank, the stone burning hot in her hand as she stared in mute shock. She felt her brain trying to shut down, trying to smother and erase everything in a comforting, coddling blackness, but she fought it, knowing that if she did would bring a fate so much worse then blissful death.

She knelt there, on her knees, arms boneless at her sides, and struggled even to remember to breathe.

+ Part 7

- Terminal

Brian Carrie knelt in the wood, and dwelled on what would likely be the last sane thoughts he ever had. Sacrifice was such a grand term, but remote. Something that others did, or standing for the minor self-denials that made up polite society. Now, though, he stood on that cliff, and was disappointed to find himself wavering. It was not that he feared death, more his worry for others. Mainly his granddaughter. She had been thrust into this, expected of so much and provided so little…perhaps he should have instructed her more, done something different…but that was the way of self-pity and hindsight, and well past him now.

Ahead, he could hear the tones of calling, words spoken by things that had never known humans, nor ever become them, but had endured all the same. They licked and squirmed in his ears like questing leeches, and he muttered his own, guttural mantra if only to snatch a moment's peace. The Brooks were fools, but dangerous ones. In the way a blind pig may find a truffle, they had accidentally helped seed the right conditions for Ama's emergence. Now, they stumbled forward blindly, guided by the thing somehow. Noah was dead, or as dead as Ama would allow…and likely Bryson was it's spawn, or at least devoted to it. No matter, now. Just stumbling blocks on the long path, nearly at an end.

He leaned back, and raised his arms to the burning, reddening light of the sun. Whatever his worry, there was no time. One more moonrise would damn more than just this little town. It had to be now, and he had to trust Charlotte to do her work, as others had trusted him, all those long years ago. He droned his rites, feeling the heat rise in his flesh like fever, his vision blur as tears were forced from his eyes. If there was to be an end, then let it be as this. Striking the candle of life to one great, burning flash, and then smoke and ash.

He lowered his hands, drew forth a heavy, copper pot, tore off the lid, and poured a thin, syrupy liquid over himself, the goo coating over him, flecked with gold, copper, and red. He did this again, and again, until he was coated inches deep, the substance oddly never seeming to touch the ground, sticking to him like a second skin.

He called forth to the great burning light of Cthugha, The Burning One, The Remote Sun, struck a match, and was consumed with the fire of his own soul.

Charlotte ran. She ran, knowing she should yet creep, and hide, but she despite this. She had to escape her own memory, and while she truly could not, she could at least distance herself from the place of her most recent horror. Her mind slithered back, trying to call up the images, the sounds, that horrible, boneless swaying of Bonnie's ruined legs, and she paused a moment to punch a tree, the sudden pain at least obscuring the memory. She took a moment, catching her breath and trying to quiet her thundering heart. Her hands trembled, her legs felt weak and shaky as she stumbled to lean against the tree, panting as she leaned her head back and closed her eyes a moment, grasping a moment of quiet, dark exhaustion like a man lost in the desert grasps a bottle of water.

She was close, now. Noises wafted through the swaying, puffy trees, some human, some much less so. Charlotte listened, trying to judge the distance. It was unlikely, despite her mad dash through the wood, that they had noticed her yet. The trees were riddled here and there with pulsing, slick veins and gurgling bulges, like some sucking cancer was claiming the forest, tree by tree. Even the insects had vanished, the only sound coming from the dry leaves kicked up by her feet, the odd errant breeze, or other, much more loathsome things slithering and coiling in the underbrush. She opened her eyes, pushing off the tree abruptly as she looked over the bark. It seemed, for the moment, untouched, although it like many others was shedding dry, blackened leaves. It was as if it was early fall, not the height of a scorching summer.

A sudden rise of sound made her crouch, eyes wide as a startled deer as she listened. Voices, wandering through the trees…at least two, and others that could have been voices, but were much more bubbling, guttural and deep. They couldn't be more than a hundred yards away, though it was hard to judge. It seemed as if the forest had somehow expanded, but most likely she had wandered a serpentine path in her fear. It couldn't be much longer now. Already the sun was lowering, filling the sky with a burning red glow. It seemed to ooze down, painting even the air in a reddened haze, as the voices rose and fell, calling in some strange tongue, only to be broken by a sudden, harsh bark of english.

“Boy! Go check again, I can feel eyes and wills. Git out there now, go!”

Whatever reply might have come she missed, as she kept low and started to move to a more dense stand of trees. She reached down, and drew up a stone, egg-shaped and the size of a softball. It fit nicely in her hand, and at least made her feel a bit less defenseless. She crouched down, sheltering in the clustered trunks of the trees. She waited, holding the stone with both hands under her, unsure of what she expected to do with it, but some primal thing telling her to keep and grip it close. She watched, forcing her body to be still as a rising crackling and rustle of underbrush signaled a slow approach. It sounded like footsteps, at least, not the lighting slithering or slow, gurgling crawl that had ghosted about her until now. That was good. At least, she hoped it was.

She felt a cold drop in her belly as Bryson Brooks pushed into view, leaning against a tree and scanning ahead. He was just as repellent as she remembered, and bore horrible, scabbed burns from the torching her grandfather had given him. Most of his hair was gone, one eye milky and oozing, a hand looking blackened and useless at his side. She did not realize she was bearing her teeth, and had risen the stone to her chest. The madness that had slammed down on her at the bonfire seemed to come again, but much colder, less frantic. As Bryson pushed off the tree, striding slowly into the brush, her eyes narrowed, and she started to creep around and between the trees. No horror here, no unknown. Just the oldest foe, the Enemy, the Other. A confrontation was madness, and nearly sure suicide, but in this moment she was visited by the madness of ages, the force that drove the first human to strangle his unknown cousin, and would hear no argument.

Bryson, for his part, continued in ignorance and annoyance. His father still barked and droned behind him, and he sneered as he peered back for a moment. He'd be dead, fully dead, before moondown, so Bryson would put up with his prattle for at least that long. His time as over, and now he would get to lead. He'd have to establish a new clan, prepare the rites anew , sure, but it was well worth it for the power. Bryson smiled, and drew a long, thin knife from his belt, wincing as the charred scabs on his arm shifted. He hoped that Carrie bitch survived. He'd like to take some time with her. Pare her down to a limbless nugget and use her to sire a fresh brood. Maybe her father would come back in time, and he could make her suffer all the more. Mind awash in atrocity, he kicked and stepped through the brush.

He hummed, licking his tongue over his pitted, black teeth, comforting himself with his imagined glories. Had he been more attentive, he might have heard the rustle of leaves behind him.

He was leaning between a pair of trees, tapping his knife against one, when Charlotte broke from the ferns and leaves and lunged, rock held high above her. She intended to be stealthy, but could not suppress a rage-fueled shout as she swung, causing Bryson to suddenly turn, to catch the weighty stone squarely against the side of his head. He howled, collapsing between the trees, and swung with his knife, glancing against Charlotte's arms, yet still drawing lines of blood across them. She hissed, but did not recoil, raising the stone again and bringing it down. Bryson squirmed away, and for his efforts caught the stone against his back instead of his skull. A brittle, deep crunch as it dented his spine brought out a strangled yelp, and he felt an alarming numbness seep down his body.

Charlotte fell upon him, driving her knees into his hips as she raised the stone again. Bryson was trying to speak now, but she could and would not hear, ignoring his stream of curses and pleading. She brought it down again, bashing it against the back of his skull and slamming his face into the dirt. Still he struggled, but pinned below her, and between the trees, he was trapped. She reeled back, gripping the stone tight as she smiled the grin of the reaper, hair like a burning halo in the evening light.

However, her blow never landed. Bryson suddenly…rippled. His whole body bucked and twisted, as boneless as a worm, and tossed her off like a child. She fell on her back, still gripping the stone, and scrambled to her feet as Bryson contorted, rolling up from the ground like a rearing up snake, only to turn and stand over her, gripping his knife as his body twitched and stretched back into shape. He smiled cruelly at her, blood and dirt smeared over his face. Charlotte stared, watching him smile and slowly wave his knife, seemingly unconcerned with the sizable dent in the side of his head. He sneered, watching her crouch and stare, skittering back as he approached.

“You stupid fucking bitch. You think we die like you? Stupid. We live. You die. Eventually. Gonna take my time, go-”

A sudden, sharp boom drowned out his taunts, a swelling fireball cresting far off in the direction of town, followed by another, and another. Smoke started to rise, as the charges and bombs Charlotte and her grandfather had set started to ignite the town, searing and burning away the growing, grasping corruption that had taken root there. The booms were echoed moments later by a deep, throbbing rumble below their feet, coupled with a bass throb that was felt more than heard. Bryson stared at the fire blooming in the sky, eyes wide, Charlotte momentarily forgotten as he felt something sharp twist and writhe deep inside his chest. His mouth worked noiselessly, eyes twitching as they stared, finally catching his voice and speaking in a harsh whisper, feeling blood fleck his lips as he did.

“No.”

Charlotte attacked like a wild cat, lunging from pure desperation and clouting Bryson directly on the forehead with her stone with all the force she could muster. He squawked, feeling his skull crack and deform as he stumbled back, suddenly blind in one eye as the orbit collapsed and shredded it with broken bone. He lashed with his knife, falling to one knee as he reached to cover the ruined eye with his free hand, screaming as he felt the long-forgotten sensation of true pain wash over him. This was wrong. This was all wrong. He howled, but was silenced as Charlotte smashed him again, this time slamming the stone hard enough to embed it in his skull. He grunted, then fell on his back, his one remaining eye staring blankly up at the burning sky.

Charlotte screamed and hammered at him still, ripping the stone free and smashing him again and again, blood splattering and misting over her as she beat and snarled at Bryson in a raging red haze. Finally, when his face was a concave puddle and his skull a ragged, blood-oozing bag, she slammed the stone in one final time, and moved away, gasping and heaving with shivering breaths. His body lay still…for a time. Then, movement arose, but not from his dead, boneless limbs. Under his flesh seemed to rise and squirm masses of twisting, writhing things, like a cloth doll of a man stuffed with millions of worms seeking freedom. They did not seek in vain. Slowly, but with rising numbers, massed of black and pink worms, like finger-sized leeches bloated with blood started to erupt.

From his shattered head, his wounds, any place they could find escape they came, burrowing through his flesh in their haste. Charlotte watched, the horror snuffing out her fury,and she recoiled, stumbling back against a tree and retching dryly. The worms squirmed and twisted, trying to escape, but before they made it more than a foot from the body, they suddenly stiffened, coiled, and lay still. Within seconds they started to decay, falling to small, brittle piles of ice-clear crystalline dust. Charlotte gasped, wanting to turn away, but afraid of not being ready for some new horror to emerge. For several minutes the tide voided from Bryson's body, until finally it slowed, then stopped. All that remained was a drift of slowly dissipating dust, and the collapsed, flattened bag of skin that was once Bryson Brooks.

Charlotte gagged, spitting bitter bile against the tree before wiping away strings of drool and blood from her face. She recoiled, seeing his blood on her, and tried to wipe it away, only to find her hands and clothes just as splattered and smeared at the rest of her. She looked at her hands, and gasped wheezing laugh. Leaning against the tree, she looked to the sky, tottering between exhausted laughter and sobs. She clenched her fists, leaning over and pressing them to her face, gritting her teeth as she grappled with her mind that threatened to abandon all to the gnawing, growing peace of insanity. There was another, farther off boom, and a fresh blossom of fire rose in the sky. Already the smell of smoke was wafting into the wood. She looked, watching the slowly drifting trails of smoke in the sky, and it was enough. A moment of reality long enough to center her, at least for a time.

She turned from the dead husk, and stumbled deeper into the wood. The branches had begun to sway in the still air, and she could barely muster the will to even notice.

Charlotte plodded to the edge of the clearing hollow eyed and blood streaked. The smell of smoke was already thickening in the air. A raving, lunatic voice growled and screeched from within, seeming to try and drown out the booming roars and crackling from the town. She stared, blinking, trying to make sense of what she saw. The clearing looked like the bottom of the ocean of hell. Great strands and ribbons of flesh stretched and swayed in the air, reaching nearly to the withered treetops. Things that were once human shambled, or lay twitching, many snarled in the masses that had pushed from the ground. Around the clearing stood stones and blood-soaked totems, and near the center the decayed, raving figure of Noah Brooks screamed and roared a mass of guttural sounds. Masses of tendrils swayed and danced where they emerged from his gaping wound of an abdomen, rising and falling with his alien screeching.

Charlotte watched, and found her mind simply refusing to accept the scene. It washed over her with a detached reality, like someone in deep shock holding their own severed hand and being confused as to what it was. She looked, and saw just inside the clearing a low cairn of rocks. Many of them seemed to be the old ones that had stood in the haunted clearing, but moved, and added to, now crowned with a fresh addition. It was a ball of glossy, pitted black stone, like wet onyx, roughly the size of a bowling ball, with a mesh of pulsing veins veiled over it. It was the one. Somehow, it was an anchor pin, a point that helped fix this nightmare to the world, and while alone its destruction would not be enough to banish the Ama, with everything else it would be as the final boot to the fingers of one clinging to the edge of a cliff. Or so they hoped. Seeing all this, now, she felt so woefully unprepared. The swaying masses of kelp-like flesh twisted and coiled, one suddenly lashing out to wrap around a tree, before flexing and crushing it to splinters like someone twisting a stalk of celery. Her hand went to the star-marked stone in her pocket and gripped it tightly.

Noah turned and looked at her, his face just a skull with a few wet rags of flesh draped about it. His ribs hung like a shattered set of blinds, the slithering mass of tentacles shifting to press and grip the ground, dragging Noah forward a few feet. She shifted herself, moving closer to the stone pile and the black orb, keeping her eyes fixed on the light that burned in Noah's nearly empty sockets. He paused, finally silent, only the meaty sliding and squelching of the red tendrils filling the air. She could be to the stone in less than a dozen leaping strides, but she'd seen too much now to trust that. The nearest ribbon was maybe thirty feet away, but she had no doubt they could stretch. She hoped her grandfather had accomplished whatever he had intended, as now she knew she had spare seconds before the stalemate broke. Almost before she willed it, she found herself speaking.

“I killed Bryson.”

Noah stared, a trembling creeping into his arms as the mass keeping him upright seemed to squirm and twist with a fresh, frustrated intensity.

“You slattern whore. Fool he was, but worth a score of you. You can't even understand what you've done. She loves us. She wants us to be together.”

“I've seen her love, fuck you, and her.”

Noah smiled with what was left his lips, leaning to pet over one throbbing tentacle with a fingerless stump of a hand.

“That's just a perk, child. But not for you. Just death, for you now.”

He reared back, and Charlotte vaulted toward the stone, nearly closing her eyes for fear her terror might slow her steps. Noah's tentacles bunched, and started to drag him forward with horrifying speed, skittering like a drop of water on a white hot pan. A sudden bloom of light nearly made Charlotte stumble, and then she did as the whole grove of flesh seemed to recoil and flex as one. But not at her. As she stood again, she saw a mass of light had suddenly bloomed beside the clearing. It was a tower of fire, but so bright it left black splotches in the eye, piercing like the sun. Noah recoiled, howling, and Charlotte sprinted forward, drawing out the small rock from her pocket as waves of searing heat started to wash over her.

Noah lunged, all but throwing himself at the fire, a torrent of blasphemies erupting from his broken throat. The fire pulsed, and started to bubble, spheres and shapes moving under the flames, before erupting. Jets and rivers of fire poured out, one mass of nearly liquid flame pouring over Noah, who produced a screeching howl of pure pain and frustration as he was pushed back, the flames pouring into his ruined body. The fire spread, splitting and moving like a living thing, coiling around and against the fleshy ropes, breaking off in small masses, which bounced and skittered like squirrels, leaving patches of ash and flame in their wake. The roar and screams where nearly a physical force, and Charlotte stumbled to the stone pile, covering her ears and holding her head to keep it from bursting. A questing mote of fire the size of a cat skittered close, and darted to ignite the leg of her pants before bouncing away to be swallowed up by a larger mass. She screamed, silent as it was in that cacophony, and kicked at the fire that felt as thick and cloying as mud until it fell free, only to slink away like a drop of white hot mercury.

She stood before the stone, nearly blind and deaf, feeling the ground starting to heave and turn below her feet. Spots swam before her vision, and as she raised her tiny, smooth stone, she half hoped that this would somehow kill her, and bring an end to the nightmare. She brought it down, smashing stone to stone, and there was a brief moment of clarity. The crack seemed to echo, and echo, reverberating far beyond this little clearing, seeming to grow in volume rather than recede. The mesh of veins twitched, then melted like a lump of candy floss in a boiling pot. The black ball shivered, then bloomed with masses of pink cracks, bulging apart around puffy, fever-pink flesh. The a wave hit her like a truck, force propelling her back like a bomb, blotting out fires and shredding the nearby tentacles. Charlotte was propelled back, smacking into a tree with her back and then falling several feet to lay motionless on the ground.

Her limbs twitched, and her thoughts wandered and turned. She was much smaller, and consumed with fever. Barely able to move, hurting, helpless. She tried to rise, but the agony pulled her down. She only wanted a cool drink, something for her head. Where was everyone? A sudden voice, distorted yet familiar, forced her to open her eyes.

“No resting cridhe, my heart. You need to run.”

She looked and wreathed within the roaring tower of flame there was a figure, outlined like an eclipse. It was her grandfather. His hair was white hot fire, his eyes boiling globes of heat, his skin starting to flake away like crisping paper, but it was him. She stared, and managed to stumble to her feet, crying out and nearly falling again as she felt her back grind and crack. He smiled, nodding softly as he stood, a living wick for the consuming fire. She would have cried, if she had any tears left, but she called out, knowing it was useless. She wavered, wondering if it might be better to just cast herself into the flames as well. At least then she wouldn't have to remember anymore.

The ground suddenly bulged before her, cracking and roaring as a mass seemed to force up like bubbles erupting from water. A poisonous smell followed, wet and feted, reeking of old blood, viscera, and the cloying sweetness of fermented plants. It filled her with a consuming, animal fear, every cell in her body commanding her to flee, and she was forced to comply, stumbling and crawling away as the ground rose and rose in a swelling dome. The ground vibrated below her, and a chorus of crashing trees rose around her. She scrambled away, missing a hollow, collapsing trunk by inches, the ground heaving as if trying to toss her off.

The air suddenly filled with the surging sound of a sodden, rotten tarp being torn in half.

She turned, looking, and froze, eyes and mouth stretching wide in naked horror. A great, knobby mass of flesh had split the earth in two, shedding it like a seed pod. It throbbed and shuddered, the cancerous gray flesh webbed with black and pink veins. It churned and shifted, flexing as the tissue continued to swell from below. Thick tendrils hung from the flesh, which in turn coiled around and in to figures. People, some little more than lumps of flesh, hung like tassels around the titanic cancer. Above, they swayed and coiled, many charred and flaccid, yet still swaying with corrupt life. A sound pulsed from it, in waves with the reek of sour blood, a bass pulse rising to a deafening squeal. Spurting rivers of vileness poured from the titanic cancer, filled with squirming shapes, splattering to the ground. It rose dozen of feet over the treetops, like some hellish parody of the setting sun, spreading corruption instead of light. It was the dire mother, the womb of hell, the black goat…one part, one of the endless, eternal wombs of Ama.

Her body moved, seeking preservation her mind could no longer comprehend. Her eyes saw the fires start to surge and spread, leaping onto the mass of flesh and waving over it, even if her mind registered little. She scrambled and fell, dragging and running her way forward, fire spreading quickly, the ground collapsing and pitted. Fear drove her on, and it was only when she put her hand on a mass of embers, sizzling into her hand, that she finally screamed and started her flight in earnest. She fled, ignoring her pain, narrowly avoiding collapsing ground and bouncing off trees. She fled away, trying to run from her memory even as she ran from the fire and horror. All around her was the crash and roar of rent earth, blooming fire, and the gurgling roar of the Ama.

She flung herself free of the wood, and into a bare, empty field, the sky awash with smoke and the dying rays of the sun. She tried to run, screamed as a lance of pain slammed from her shoulders to her feet, and fell. She lay on her belly on the ground, panting, and started to crawl, finally stopping when she could force her limbs to do no more. She gasped and panted in the dirt, digging her fingers into the earth, her throat feeling raw and scorched. She rolled over, staring at the sky, as great towers of smoke reached and spooled into the air. She stared as oblivion descended around her, and she welcomed it, be it sleep, madness, or death.

+ Part 8

- Remission

“Just take it easy, honey. Do you want to rest a bit?”

She shook her head, leaning it against the car's window. Outside, open fields and patches of trees rolled by with comforting monotony. It had been weeks since the fire. Emergency crews had found her, nearly dead, as the fire had consumed the town with an almost willful fury. It was days before she was coherent enough to speak, and even then she had little to say. Leaks from old mines, built up gasses and the like were blamed, a terrible event, but in the end just a small town in rural Michigan. Good for a few days of concern, but easily forgotten by the world at large. There had been many questions, and a quiet discussion at her bedside with strange men in suits, who implied a greater knowledge but said very little, and left when her father had returned.

Her father had come nearly in time with the emergency teams, and had been with her from the moment the crew had allowed him. When she spoke for the first time, asking if she could use the bathroom, he had cried like a child. They had mourned her grandfather together, lost in the fire that had consumed their home as well. She felt a pang of regret, keeping the truth from him, but knew that even if he could understand the truth, it would give no comfort. She had lost her hair, broken an anatomy's thesis worth of bones, and a laundry list of other trauma, but had recovered enough to at least leave the hospital. She had insisted, as the sounds and smells of the hospital had kept her teetering on the edge of raving fear. Now, the road stretched forward, and she gave herself to the hypnotic blandness.

Her father had said they'd be staying with family for a time, before finding a new home. Not her mother, but apparently cousins or thereabouts, distant but welcoming for this trying time. She had her suspicions. One night, a man had come to her bedside, and spoken to her. She was part of this world now, and would need to know much more. She was bound, as much as her grandfather was, and could have no hope of escape. Better to embrace, but running would end the same. All returned in time. He had been a plain man, soft and balding, but his eyes had glowed like candle flames in the dark, and nobody had seen him enter, or leave. She had her suspicions as to who these “relatives” might truly be.

“Are you sure? We have a while to go yet, we can pull off somewhere, find a hotel? Is your back hurting again?”

“No, dad, it's fine, I'm fine. I like the road.”

“Alright…you've always been such a tough kid, but don't push too hard now.”

She sighed, nodding and running her hand over her short, fizzy hair. She'd expected to be more upset by that, but was too glad to simply be alive to mind overmuch. Now they rolled on, from one life to the next. Her mother had tried to come, but Charlotte had told her to leave. One petty stab among many, but it gave her a cold joy. Outside, a small town came in to view, and her dad started to chatter about getting fuel and something to eat. She closed her eyes, mumbling her agreement, as they drove.

Above them, the sun hung low and hot, seeming to follow the car like a questing eye.