Love. Love is a poison. This may sound like melodrama, but I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the years pondering the nature of love, its benefits and detriments, and the conclusion I’ve reached is that it functions much like many toxins both natural and unnatural.
It appears benign at first. Even desirable. But that sweetness doesn’t bring strength or wisdom. It doesn’t vouchsafe your health or ward off disaster. No, quite the opposite.
It weakens you. Makes you foolish.
It strains your heart and sets you upon destructive paths that you would never have taken if following the pragmatic dictates of your own, self-preserving will.
And given enough time, enough love, it will kill you as surely as any other poison might.
I thought I understood love when I first met Regina. We were only twenty at the time, and we knew from the start that we were meant for each other. Part of that was because we ran in the same circles—budding occultists that weren’t afraid to step beyond the bounds of the law or supposed “common decency”. But the main reason was that we complimented each other so well. We challenged each other, pushing past the others in that group and those that followed. It gained us insight and power, longevity and glimpses into worlds and Realms beyond our own.
We were in our early seventies when we decided to have children. We were both ninety-eight when we decided the time had come to murder them. That had been the plan all along, of course. The spheres we travelled in…you didn’t pay in time or exacting ritual. Not even blood would do. No, when you dealt with the Inner Dark, suffering was the coin of the realm.
Torturing someone physically is easy, particularly if you have the skills and knowledge we’ve acquired over decades of study and practice. But true suffering…it’s more subtle, isn’t it? Destroying someone slow enough that they know it’s happening…perhaps even think they deserve it…well, that takes time and talent.
Our son, Ennis, was kept alive for six months before we couldn’t sustain him any longer. We sustained our power with that…at least for awhile…but that was all. The membranes that stretched before us, occluded and begging to be penetrated as we went deeper in, to the real source of all magic…they didn’t budge an inch.
When we killed our daughter Alice and her husband two years later, we expected more from it. We took our time with it, chipping away at their lives for months, eating away at their sanity and their faith. By this point, we’d made certain…commitments to the man in the brown suit. Back then he was called Richard Murphy, though that name held no more sway over him than Burke does now. He was granting us a portion of his power, but in exchange, we had to…tithe. At first it wasn’t onerous, but then we realized he was not so easily satisfied.
Not that he was wholly unreasonable. When we finished with our children and went to him for a boon, he didn’t kill us on the spot or bind us for feeding at his leisure. He just gave us a small, terrible smile. Told us that we’d misunderstood the nature of suffering and its value in these matters. It wasn’t enough that we make others suffer—that way led to little real power or sustenance for him.
No, we had to suffer along with them.
We had one last chance. Our granddaughter, Monica, was coming to live with us. We would have to not only enure her for unimagined pain and torment of every kind, but we would have to find some way to do the impossible.
We would have to love her.
That had been the problem before, Murphy had explained. We didn’t love our victims, even when they were our own children. They were only assets. Resources to be expended and discarded. What real value could such offerings have?
We talked about running, of course. Hiding from the thing in the brown suit. But there was no more chance of eluding him than there was in confronting him. So we went along with our only available option, a plan we both agreed was doomed to fail.
Monica came to live with us, and at first we treated her very well. That was all part of it, you see. We had to try and elevate this child that had already lost much. Make her feel joy and safety and hope. Only then could she truly appreciate the loss when everything was stripped from her again.
It was going well, and before long we were ready to start using one of Murphy’s tools, his simulacrum, to lay the groundwork for her impending pain. Nightmares that weren’t nightmares, slowly tainting and preparing Monica to last far longer than the others had. The night it visited her the first time, I remember thinking that, with how well everything was going, perhaps Murphy would be satisfied with the child, even if we didn’t love her. After all, how could we be expected to…
That’s when I heard Monica cry out. My heart thudded in my chest, and despite everything, I had to fight to not rush in to check on her, to comfort her. I waited in my chair, knuckles white as I clutched the arms, hearing that little girl scream and cry for her parents, and then as she woke up more, for me. After a couple of minutes, she ran from her room and found me in the den, pretending to be asleep as she pulled herself up into my lap and hugged against me, a small, shivering ball that just wanted to be told it was all a bad dream.
So I hugged her back.
I hugged her back, and I comforted her, and I got her ready to return to bed under Regina’s disapproving glare. I ignored it. So what if I felt some sympathy for the little thing? Wasn’t that exactly what we needed? To care about the lamb we carried to slaughter?
But perhaps my wife saw more than I did. Because by the third night, I was running to Monica to answer her calls. I could see the outline of the door…that thing’s door…still fading out of sight as I went to Monica’s bed to smooth away her tears and reassure her it was all a bad dream. It lasted for two weeks before I couldn’t take it any longer. We moved her to another room over Regina’s protests. She’d come to care for the child some too, but she was always the more pragmatic of the two of us.
“What will we tell him? That we’re not opening our house to him any longer? That we’re not letting the manikin in? That this child, which he has given us as a last chance remember, is no longer available as an offering?” She snorted. “I’d say we should just kill ourselves, but we both know how little good that would do.”
I sighed and patted her arm. “I know. I know all of this. But we’ll have to figure out something. Make a new deal with him.” Shaking my head, I looked away from her terrified eyes. “I know it’s bad. But…it just can’t be her, okay? You see that, don’t you?”
Her expression softened slightly. “It makes no sense, but…yes, maybe I do.”
The door didn’t open without her in the room, and for months we heard nothing from the man directly or his minions. We still made tithes, and we worked to make them meaningful, but nothing seemed to work. We could feel his presence—watching us, waiting for the time we became more useful as food than servants. Regina and I never talked about it, but we knew that every day we were closer to the maelstrom that would come and pull us away into some dark hell.
And then the feeling of being watched, of impending doom, it just…stopped.
We learned that Murphy…he now went by Burke…had been trapped somehow. Sealed away in a black house in another reality. Imprisoned for…well, if not eternity, hopefully at least for a very long time.
We couldn’t believe our luck. It was like a prisoner getting a pardon during the long walk toward the electric chair. For a time, we didn’t even practice any magic. We spent time with each other, with Monica, and we were all happy.
For a time.
But people are who they are. Regina and I…we had our own hungers to sate. It wasn’t long before we were back to trying to delve deeper into that other world. So we had two lives now. Our secret life together, and then our life with Monica. I would have thought that they couldn’t co-exist, or that one would naturally be false and hollow, but I don’t think that was so. Yes, Monica grew more distant as she grew up, but that’s only natural. No, I think for the next few years, we truly had it all.
Until the house started appearing to us.
Burke was slowly pushing his way back into this world, but he needed more power to break whatever was binding him to that place. He told us—first in dreams, then in visions, then in-person…that he was calling in our debts. We were terrified. Even in his weakened state…well, we started back to tithing right away. But nothing we did was enough, and we’d already decided that we were going to do what we could to keep Monica out of it, to keep her safe, even if it meant leaving her entirely.
So that’s what we did. Regina faked her death. Later, I faked my own. We still used the house as a mystical tether for certain things, but most of the time we were traveling, making tithes while searching for something that could stop the thing that haunted us for good. Over the last three years we’ve destroyed dozens of lives—but it’s barely made a dent. We’ve been growing weaker, and Burke is strong enough now he could take us whenever he wanted.
He’s shown us how to make doors to his prison. Small tears he can pull victims through on a more regular basis. Victims that he selects and deems palatable to his needs. We never know who it’ll be until he tells us, but our theory is that as long as we’re compliant, we remain useful, and as long as we’re useful, there’s a chance.
A few months ago he wanted us to enure a young man named Jerry. We were happy to oblige, but as time went on, we realized this one was different. He didn’t want to feed on this one directly. He actually had us stage a suicide. When I asked why, the man-thing had just smiled at me, his dark eyes boring holes until I looked away.
It was because Burke didn’t want Jerry. He wanted the man’s sister, Consuela. Why…or how he even knew about her…about any of the people he chose…I don’t know. But he wanted us to hunt her, drive her toward him, and then…well, he said he’d take care of the rest.
So we did. We were sure that, given how special this girl seemed to be, it would count enough to free us from him, or at least put us back in his good graces for a time. We worked for months, subtly pushing her toward the particular place and time that he’d prescribed—all the time making her think it was her idea, and that despite being on the run, she was still in control. Surely that would be enough.
But then, the same day that Connie was first in the sleep experiment, Burke summoned us. Told us that we had to prepare. That Monica was coming home, and it was time for us to pay what was due.
I’d like to say we argued. That we tried to fight him. But we didn’t. We nodded, our eyes lowered, and walking across that field of sunflowers to the door leading back to our world, we were already plotting how we would do it.
We aren’t as clever as the thing that calls itself Burke, but we are clever enough. We rekindled the door in Monica’s old room, the door that shouldn’t have been there, connected to a dark place in the black house that serves as the thing’s prison. The air is cold and stale in that place, and as I stand in the shadows of its far end, I can see my Monica peering in. Stomach churning, I plant the seeds in her for what is to come. For what must come.
The next day, the man returns. He’s irrelevant—some boyfriend or husband that has blundered into a story that doesn’t belong to him—and his presence irritates me. In part because it is Monica we need to claim and give as offering. In part because…because he is an artifact of the life we are destroying. A life we helped foster and cultivate. The life of a person we both love.
He doesn’t see me when he comes into the room. His eyes are on the simulacrum, and I remain unseen when I wish it to be so. He has a good face. It’s kind, but not overly weak. Even looking at this creature, he’s afraid, but not terrified. Not yet, at least.
When he runs from the room, it’s to head off Monica. I find myself both frustrated and relieved. I want this over with, but every moment I can delay Monica being taken…well, it doesn’t matter. The manikin is looking at me now.
“The time has come to end this. I’ll go to them tonight and take her.”
I frown. “How? Aren’t you bound to the house like he is?”
She chuckled, the noise sounding icy and far away. “Oh, no. I go out quite frequently. All I need,” she gestured to the door at the far end. It was open. The man had been panicked when he ran out, and he hadn’t shut the damned door. “Is a crack to slip through.”
I lunged forward, trying to reach the door before the simulacrum, shut her in. Regina was five miles away, ready to pull me to her if I needed it and she was able. I could get her to carry me to her, maybe get Monica and that man away too and…
She was too fast. Streaking past me, she took the time to offer a mocking, cracked smile before shutting the door in my face. It may have been my imagination, but I think her eyes were different. They were becoming light blue—the same blue as our granddaughter’s.
I’ve tried contacting Regina, but I’m not strong enough, particularly in this place. I’ve considered going deeper into the house, but…I’m so afraid. I’m terrified of what’s coming for me and Regina, and knowing that we deserve it just makes it worse. And Monica…I like to think I’d save her if I could. Not that it matters. None of us can be saved.
So I sit alone in this room, stewing in my guilt, my fear, my terrible, poisonous love. I think I lost my soul long ago, but as it turns out, I still have more to lose. Hours pass, and then the door opens. Monica walks in, followed by her naked double. The manikin smiles at me with Monica’s lips.
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Credits
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