“Dad? Daddy?”
Monica’s eyes have found me now, pinned me before I could think of an escape or an excuse. She’s been crying, and it’s clear she’s terrified. I want to go to her, comfort her, but now’s not the time. I can’t show weakness, not in front of the manikin. Not in this place.
The manikin is guiding my granddaughter forward easily—what little will Monica has left is being used to tearfully stare at me in pleading, confused fear. I go to give her a hopeful or comforting smile, but stop myself. It would be a lie. There’s no comfort to be had in this place, and even less room for hope.
Instead, I stand up as they pass and silently take Monica’s hand, giving it a squeeze as I realize that a doorway has opened at my end of the long room. It’s taking us deeper into the house now. Deeper into its master’s domain. I glance back at the simulacrum and it gives me a warped, dead-eyed smile. I could try to fight it. Get us out of this place.
Its smile widens as though it can hear my thoughts. In this place, maybe it can. I’m much lesser here, and while I likely could have hurt or destroyed this thing in my world, in this one…I just look away, my chest aching with fear and shame.
“It’ll be okay, baby. Just…Just stay quiet and let me try to fix this, okay?” We were passing through the threshold into a dark hallway of what looked like a home of sorts. The walls were hung with photos and paintings, and as we passed a doorway, I caught a shadowed glimpse of what looked like a little girl’s room.
My own little girl shook as her breath hitched and a sob broke free. “She…sh-she killed Matt...These…these red things came out of her and ate him…oh God…it was so quick…I…I…couldn’t help him. I was so scared, and he screamed and then it was over…oh no, what…how are you here? Poppa, what is this?”
Poppa. She hadn’t called me that in years, and the word that had brought so much warmth and joy in the past now felt like an icy dagger sliding gently into my heart. Why hadn’t they stood up to Burke before now? Or done more to protect her?
“Because you’re a bad person. A bad, weak person that only thinks about himself. Even Regina, for all your supposed affection for her, is disposable, isn’t she? Because everyone and everything is just a means to an end. You call it being tough and pragmatic, but that’s a lie. All you do is lie and use, use and lie. And murder. Don’t forget about all the lives you’ve ruined and taken. And for what? You aren’t even strong enough to save this poor girl. A girl that you’ve betrayed since the moment she was born.”
I freeze, the simulacrum’s words lashing across me like a burning scourge. Eyes blazing, I spin toward the thing. “You shut your filthy mouth. You don’t know me. You don’t know why we do what we do.” It just stares at me placidly, a small smirk playing at the corners of its cracked mouth. At the edge of my vision, I can see Monica watching me too.
“What…what does she mean? Are you part of this? Part of what’s happening?” Her eyes roll as she looks around at the house we’re in. Time and space were strange in this place—it felt as though we had been simultaneously walking for mere moments and yet had been here for a very long time. I realize we’re downstairs now, nearing what looks like a front door. “Oh, God? Am I dead? I must be if you’re here. Is this Hell?”
The door swings open as the manikin gives us a forceful push forward, her voice brittle and sharp with what sounds like some cancerous species of joy. “Hell is a relative term. As is suffering.”
I stumbled through the door with Monica, still hand in hand. One footfall was on a porch of ashen wood, and then the next was thirty feet away into the blackened field that surrounded the house. I looked around, disoriented, and saw that Monica was there, but there was no sign of the simulacrum. Not that we were alone. Regina had somehow made it here ahead of us, and was clearly in the middle of an argument with Burke that had been interrupted by our arrival.
The man-thing turned to look at us. “Ah, here we are. Just in the nick of time.” He flicked his gaze at me before settling onto Monica. “We haven’t actually met before, Monica, much to my chagrin. But I can already tell we’re going to get along very well. In fact…”
“Burke…please, let’s talk about this. I’d like to renegotiate our terms. To your favor, of course.”
He snickered as his eyes found me again. “Oh? Is that right? Perhaps you’d like to offer something similar to your dear wife?” He gestured to where she was glaring at him, clearly furious and terrified. “Initially, she just offered the Consuela girl you’ve been promising for months and a…” Burke glanced back at Regina, his tone mocking, “…what was it? A tribute per day for a year? All fully enured?” Turning back to me, the thing gave a wink. “But when I appeared unmoved, she threw you in for good measure.”
I looked past him to Regina, whose eyes had widened as she shook her head in denial. But I knew better. Burke was many things, but I’d never known him to lie. The same couldn’t be said for Regina. Besides, what would be his point? He had no need for leverage in a place such as this, where he held such sway.
As if to underline that point, Monica was suddenly ripped from my grasp as she was yanked by an invisible force toward Burke. No, not her. He wasn’t going to take her. I tried to draw on the trickle of power I could still feel to protect her, to thwart her trajectory somehow, but the only result was sharp laughter from the man-thing.
“Seriously Remus? Is that half-hearted attempt the best you have to offer?” Burke wasn’t even looking at me—he only had eyes for Monica as she floated in front of him in frozen terror. “Poor girl.” His face took on a look of mock sadness. “You know that your grandparents are to blame for all of this, right? Your boyfriend, your parents, your sad and lonely life? They’ve been preparing you, enuring you, all your life, just for this moment.” He glanced at me as he broke into a grin.
“They did it out of greed and selfishness. For scraps of power and knowledge. They murdered your parents, and were going to give you to me when you were a little girl, but for whatever reason, they reneged on that agreement.” He looked toward Regina. “Perhaps they thought to broker a better deal or leave me here to starve.”
He chuckled. “And I am hungry. So very hungry. And I tell you all of this, which I assure you, is the truth, not out of any kindness or sympathy, but because the thing I feed on, the thing we all feed on here, isn’t food or blood or even belief.” His smile widened as he fixed his gaze on Monica again.
“It’s suffering. And I always find that the best suffering can be found in showing things as they truly are.” He reached out a hand and turned Monica in a slow spin toward me. “Look at Remus there. You know your grandfather better than most, right? You know in your heart that what I’m saying is true.”
I didn’t want to look at her, but found my gaze pulled to hers nonetheless, as though I was caught in the gravity well of her newly-birthed hate. Oh, she knew. Maybe she’d always sensed it. Always lied to herself that it wasn’t so while slowly distancing herself from the people that professed to love her. It’d always been one of my greatest fears—that despite our love for her, she would see through to the inner darkness we both harbored at our core. And whether that had been true or not, she clearly knew and believed enough now. Enough that, as she stared, I could feel her silently damning me.
I’m sorry, baby. I already damned myself long ago.
Forcing my eyes away from her, I fell to my knees among the dead sunflowers that surrounded me. “Please, Burke. Please. Take us instead.” I swallowed and went on, ignoring Regina’s yell of protest. “Take us and leave her be.”
The thing looked genuinely surprised at this. “Interesting. But no. All you’ve done is ensure we pick the fruit now rather than later.” Lines of darkness swelled around him, and for a brief, terrible moment, I caught a glimpse of its true nature.
My God. We never understood what we were dealing with. What is…
The lines shot out, a dozen hungry, questing tendrils diving into Monica and wrapping around her. I tried to stop it, attacking him now with my own meager power, but he barely even staggered at my attempts. When I tried to run toward them to attack him physically, I found myself frozen in place. Across the distance, Regina was statue-still as well.
And then Monica was gone. Crushed to so much spent, black ash as Burke stumbled back a step. He bent over, hands on his knees as he panted like an animal. “So…so…wonderful.” He looked up at me with a fierce grin, drool dripping from the corner of his mouth. “She really was worth the wait.”
I wanted to scream and cry, to curse him, but I couldn’t stir at all anymore. Burke went to say more when he suddenly stopped and stood up. “We’ll have to put a pin in this for a moment. More guests are arriving.” He smirked. “Back with you momentarily.”
I felt a jolt as I was pulled downward, drug down into the black earth where the sunflowers and my dead baby lay. For a moment, I hoped I’d suffocate there. I could do much worse than dying then and there in that place. At least it might be an end to my own suffering.
But no. I didn’t need breath in this place or Burke was sustaining me. Either way, I could still smell the sour earth around me and feel things squirming into my clothes and against my skin as I struggled in vain to break free. Above me, I could hear new voices. The man’s voice I didn’t recognize, but the woman’s…wasn’t that the Connie girl? A cold realization washed through me.
We’d been such fools. Burke had arranged all of this. He wasn’t just calling in our debt for a meal. He was planning a feast. A feast large enough that…
That he would finally be free again.
There was screaming up above now. I could feel the thing’s power burning like a malignant star up there—Monica’s pain and fear had made him much more than he’d been in years, and I could sense he was still feeding. First on the man, and then…
Wait. There was someone else now. Someone new. Someone…different. There was a brief fight? And then this new one called out to Burke in a voice that penetrated the black earth.
“Take me. Let…let her go. It’s me you want.”
I felt my stomach tighten at the rage and malice in Burke’s response. “You arrogant little shit. You think this is a negotiation? You think you’re in a bargaining position? I’m God in this place. My will is the law. Just because you are useful to me, it doesn’t change anything.” He was feeding on the girl Connie now. “I don’t need your permission to take you, Daniel. Your natural talent and resistances mean very little other than a slight delay. I’ll feed on her, on the fools that led her here, and then we will conclude this…annoyance. You just stay there. I’ll be with you shortly.”
The girl was dead now, and I felt another brief battle of wills above my head. But it was no use. Burke was far too strong. And the man-thing’s words hadn’t escaped me. He meant to feed on me and Regina as well. Of course he did. He hadn’t just been enuring Monica over the years, seasoning his meal with layer upon layer of pain and loss.
He’d been preparing the two of us as well.
I felt myself tumbling down a well of despair deeper than I’d known was possible. I’d always defined myself by my will. By my knowledge and my power. Then later, when our girl came to us, I came to also be defined by my love for her.
But…it was all gone. My baby was dead, and died knowing we were the cause. My power was nothing in the face of this thing, and I was coming to realize how little I actually understood. I was broken, just as he’d always known I would be. Planted in the ground until he was ready to harvest me. What a pathetic…
And then something changed.
It was subtle…something powerful but very still, as though it didn’t want to announce itself as it slipped into Burke’s world. I reached out all my senses, trying to learn what it was, whether it was some new horror or just more food for the monster, but to my surprise, it was neither. It was a woman that…I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I thought she was trying to help the one called Daniel.
Burke sensed it too. While it was only a momentary distraction, that was enough. I focused all my remaining will and power in one last attempt to break free, and for once, it worked. Shooting out of the earth, I didn’t hesitate. Dirt coated my eyes and ears, but I didn’t need to see or hear to find what I was looking for. It was the tumor in the center of this field, blazing with power like a black beacon in the hazy orange not-light of that place.
I surged forward, drawing on my own lifeforce as I poured everything I had into a series of complex attacks. Blinking, I saw that Regina had freed herself as well and was battering him from the other side. In all our years together, neither of us had pulled so deeply from our own reserves. It would likely kill us, but what did it matter? When everything has already been taken, what else did you have to lose?
The attacks were getting through Burke’s protections now, if only a little. Maybe if we could just…
Two black tendrils grasped Regina and ripped her apart. Burke wasn’t even looking at her or me. He was staring out across the field, his face contorted into a mask of rage. And when he spoke, it felt as though his voice was splitting me in two.
”Lark! I can smell you! I know you’re here! Come out so I can see you when you die!”
I redoubled my effort for one last attack, but he was too quick, and before I even knew what was happening, I was back in his grasp, hurtling toward him until I was inches away from his face. He was covered in a light sheen of sweat, and one thin line of blood trickled on his cheek, but the only other sign of exertion was his heavy breathing. As he stared at me, I realized his panting wasn’t due to pain or effort.
It was hunger.
When he pulled me closer and leaned against my ear, I knew it was almost over. Any moment he would consume me, and as horrible as that was, perhaps then I’d be past knowing or caring or feeling.
He whispered to me, breath hot on my cheek. “It doesn’t work like that, Remus. When I eat you, you’re still in here. Still caught in your last moment of perfect pain. Forever.” He pulled back, meeting my eye. “And I’m tempted. I really am.” He glanced past me at the field. “But I have other uses for you. So for now…”
I was suddenly falling to a wooden floor. Looking around, I saw I was back home, kneeling in the room that had been Monica’s when she first came to us. That door, that damned door that shouldn’t have ever been there in the first place, was already fading from view, and I found myself stumbling toward it, beating against the wall as I cried out. It wasn’t long before I collapsed to the floor, shaking and crying.
I’d lost everything. Spent my life telling myself I knew the risks and the prices to be paid. That whatever it took, so long as I never strayed from the path of my will and ambition, the rewards would outweigh whatever was spent.
But I see the truth of things now.
It had begun as the delusions of an arrogant young fool who felt certain he was special. So special that he was entitled to these hidden worlds he’d begun to see the faintest traces of in the things he read and the rituals he undertook. These became the lies of an older fool—a sunk cost fallacy, if you will—of a man who had seen and done too much to turn back. I’d always known my fear and ego were weaknesses, even back then, but I’d misunderstood how they made me weak. That they were blinding me from the truth.
That the thing I’d spent my life seeking, traded my soul for bit by bit, was terrible and unknowable. Ruthless and calculating and patient in ways I couldn’t begin to fully fathom or appreciate. And worst of all, it was endlessly, horribly hungry.
People always talk about how close they came to almost dying. They would have been in a wreck if they hadn’t swerved at the last second. Their heart would have given out if the doctor hadn’t caught that funny flutter. If it had been only two days earlier, they would have been there when the store got robbed.
But though they may not realize it, they aren’t talking about almost dying. They are talking about surviving. They’re bragging that through their actions, the actions of others, or the blessing of some miraculous luck, they beat what the world through at them. They won. They looked into the abyss and lived to tell the tale.
And it’s a fucking lie.
Because really seeing your own doom isn’t something you talk about. It’s not an interesting anecdote you tell at parties or over dinner. It isn’t a story you tell to boast or entertain or usually even to teach a life lesson to someone you care about. Not because nothing could be learned from it. But because seeing the truth of your own destruction is a deeply personal thing. It’s the reason that soldiers don’t talk about the worst shit they’ve seen. Why the person who is tortured doesn’t want to remember it. Why, if you manage to survive at all, you don’t ever, ever want to talk about what the world had waiting for you in the dark.
And I’m telling this now, sharing what happened to me and others, not to brag or teach you, but simply as a warning. So there was a point to all this…horror. But it’s so damn hard.
Part of it is the pain of thinking about it. The guilt of what you could have done different. All the things you’re to blame for. The shame of what you sacrificed to come back at all.
Because you always give something up. Always.
When it pulls you down, you don’t come back whole.
“Do you understand?”
“I think so, yes.”
“And will you come, Ms. Westgate? Will you and your uncle come and help me stop this thing?”
An uneasy pause and then, “Where are you?”
“It’s a small town. An old, rotten place. Called Empire.”
---
Credits
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