Evan continued to grow in my arms. My urge to hold onto him, to protect him, struggled against my growing fear and revulsion as I felt his body shift and expand, growing large and heavy enough to slide out of my grasp and thump softly to the floor. I started to reach out to him again, but something in me recoiled at the idea of touching him. With everything going on, could I even be sure this was my son anymore?
So instead, I took a step back as a hissing orange glow blossomed out in the hallway. It was the thing that looked like Cody carrying a lit gas lantern into the room. The light cast shifting shadows as the lantern shifted and swayed with her steps, making the room and the woman look vaguely sinister in the ever-dancing dark. Meeting her eyes, I saw she was smiling at me.
“It’s hard, isn’t it? You may think I don’t understand, but I do. You’re confused and afraid, and a part of you wants to just run away. Be safe. Another part feels guilty though. Because wouldn’t you be abandoning your family?”
I wanted to deny what she was saying, but how could I? I glanced down at Evan, at what should have been Evan. The thing on the floor was naked and the size of a man, curled up in a kneeling, rocking ball. Bending down to try and see the thing’s face, I sucked in a breath. It was all run together. The arms and legs weren’t just folded up tight, but were flowing together like some kind of melted clay. I couldn’t make out a face, but how could this be human, let alone my little boy? Heart hammering, I took another step back and turned to glare at the creature that looked like Cody.
“What did you do with my son?”
Coming within a few feet, she sat the lantern down on the floor and gave me a smirk. “That’s your son there.”
I shook my head. “That’s a fucking lie. That’s a monster. You’re both monsters.”
She shrugged. “That’s very subjective, you know. But your son is very special. Chosen, if you will.”
“Chosen for what?”
She frowned slightly. “Again, the answer to that will vary depending on who is asked. Some would call him an Outsider—a monster to be hunted and killed. Others, an ascendant being worthy of being worshipped. Those that put the seed of potential in him…well, they have other plans. But to me, he is just one thing. A way to escape. A means of survival.”
I stared at her. “What does any of that mean? Who are you?”
Slipping her hand into her pocket, she pulled out something large and shiny. It took me a moment in the flickering light to recognize it. The key that Evan had thrown up before. “It’s easier to show you, I think. The time has come.” Bending down swiftly, she drove the key into his neck. I started forward with a yell, but it was too late. The key had sunk bloodlessly into the thing she claimed was my son and was gone before I could reach them.
Blinking and shaken, I stumbled back. “What…what is this? This can’t be real.”
Chuckling, she gave me a glance as she traced a large rectangle on the broad back of the now-shuddering shape beneath her. “Reality is overrated. And it has very little to do with the true nature of things.”
My voice shook as I watched her finish the shape and step back. “What’ve you done?”
Her eyes found mine again. “Found a door to my prison and turned the key.”
New light flared to life, a thin but growing line of sickly green light that oozed from the line she’d drawn in the thing…in Evan’s…back. I felt my mind give a dangerous shudder as I took a step forward, attracted and repulsed by the impossibility before me.
I was no longer looking at that strange, broad back or even abstracted lines of green, cancerous light. Now I was looking out onto a field of dying sunflowers lit by an orange and emerald sky. In the distance, I saw the dark, hulking shape of a house, fingers of smoke trailing off of it as though it had been through a fire, its skin the dark grey and black of ash. I was so transfixed by that terrible place that it took me a moment before I registered the movement closer by—the swift nodding and crumbling of sunflower heads as something crawled toward the open gateway.
Letting out a startled cry, I stumbled back even as a long-fingered pale hand pushed out of the opening and grasped the thing on the floor’s back. This was followed by a second hand and then a cold but beautiful grime-covered face—not that of a woman but of something both less and more. There was a delicate precision and perfection to her features that was accentuated by the dirt and soot covering the naked form pulling itself out onto the floor of the room, though I realized as I took it all in that some of the marks weren’t dirt, but spiderwebs of cracks at some of the joints as well as the thing’s lips and eyes.
Those terrible eyes found me for a moment and then swung away to where Cody…the thing that looked like Cody…was kneeling down and extending her own hands as she spoke to me.
“It may be hard for you to understand, but is the…” The two figures reached for each other like twin sides of a reflection, intertwining their fingers. The speaking Cody-thing gave a spasmic shudder and then she was gone, a softer, deeper feminine voice finishing the thought.
“real me.”
She met my eyes as she finished pulling herself through the portal, and as she cleared it, the thing that once looked like my son gave a gasping shudder from somewhere inside that running flesh as the doorway closed and the back became a back once more. I glanced toward the door, my body tensing to run, when I saw her shake her head slightly.
“No. Not yet. I can’t let you leave until this is finished. And I think you know I can stop you.”
I trembled. “I just want to go. Please let me leave.”
A smile played at the corner of her lips, now free of cracks or blemishes. “And abandon your child?” She chuckled. “Or have you decided this isn’t your son anymore? That is more convenient, isn’t it?”
Glaring at her, I shook my head and pointed at the shivering shape on the floor. “That thing can’t be Evan.”
She gave a small shrug. “As you like. Whatever you call him, he’s exceedingly rare. Even among those that have a seed, most never awaken to it. And to find one that can create a doorway? Usually happens once a generation, and the last one died just last year. She was an exceptionally talented little girl, but I couldn’t find her in time. Escape for me only truly became an option more recently.”
Swallowing, I tried to weigh my options. I could try to run or fight her, but I didn’t doubt her ability to stop me. I could try talking to her, either to convince her to let me go or turn Evan back or something, but what could I say to this monster that I didn’t even understand? Lowering my eyes, I stepped back to the wall and slid down to the floor. All my bones felt too heavy now, and my mind felt fragile, brittle somehow. I should have just stayed quiet, but instead I heard myself asking something.
“What are you?”
There was a small sigh and then, “There’s no real word for what I am or even what I was.” I saw her rest her hand on the thing’s back out of the corner of my eye. “But there are a few minutes still before he can be of use again, so I don’t mind telling you a small story. Perhaps it will help you understand.”
When I said nothing, she began.
Once there was a thing that looked like a man. He wasn’t a man, and he hadn’t always looked like one, but when I first saw him, he looked like an older gentleman named Richard Murphy. And I saw him for the first time the moment I was born.
He had fashioned me from a medical learning dummy, a manikin, and brought me to life with a portion of the raw magic that he used and was. I think I began as a tool and experiment, but over time I became a companion and a servant. I loved him once, before I knew him well.
As I learned and grew, I became more real. I had my own ideas and drives, and a hunger for more than I knew. For a time, I had a family. The man’s granddaughter and her father became my responsibility, and in my way, I loved them, even as I kept them in a prison of Richard’s making. I was their guard, but I was also a prisoner myself, and I fulfilled both roles very well.
But the thing that made me has many enemies, and some of those enemies, too weak to destroy him, sought to trap him instead. Even though he had taken the form of another, younger man, they found him and burned the house with us all inside. I tried to get them out, but something kept us bound to that place no matter how hard I tried to escape. I watched the girl I’d come to think of as my own cook to death in front of me.
Seeing that…I wanted to die too. But no. My maker is too clever. He could not pull us out, so he pulled everything, including the house, somewhere outside the world. Dreamed us a small dream filled with sky and earth and sunflowers while he made his plans to be free again. He is terribly smart and patient, and in time, he got exactly what he wanted. A beautiful Lark that gave him the power to escape that place once and for all.
Despite the strangeness of my nature, I am in many ways my father’s daughter. I’ve known for some time that he would abandon me in a moment if it suited his needs, and so I’ve worked to find a way to free myself from not only that place but from him and the leash that held me for as long as I’d been alive.
When he would send me out into the world, I would learn what I could. Touch what I could. Gather those scraps of knowledge and power that he cast away because his own reservoirs of both were so great that it went unnoticed. I tried various forms of suffering and sacrifice to gather enough magic to survive when I was left on my own. Mirrors and midnight rituals. Dopplegangers infiltrating a hundred lives and sewing seeds of terror and pain and death. I’ve never had the same thirst for such things as my maker, but I appreciate their power and utility, and I will use them as I must to survive.
She patted the thing’s back. “I think it’s ready.” Using a delicate finger, she began to trace the borders of a door across its flesh again. “This will end it, I think. He’s just not as strong as the Emily girl was.” The manikin frowned slightly. “This will be meaningless to you, but I really don’t have a choice. If I stay here, he’ll just find me again. I have to go where he won’t follow.”
“Fuck you and your apologies. What have you done to Evan? And where’s my wife?”
Her eyes flashed for a moment. “Don’t mistake my sympathy for regret. I’m not apologizing for what I’ve done. Just explaining that your suffering, the suffering of your family, is necessary and not arbitrary cruelty.”
I snorted. “Just necessary cruelty.”
She smirked. “Exactly. I needed Evan. Needed time to prepare him. And I needed your fear and pain to feed me long enough to make this all possible. And for that I am grateful.”
“What did you do with my wi…oh God.”
His back had opened again, and standing up slowly, I could see the edge of a chamber filled with black and crimson marble. I glanced at the manikin and saw a troubled expression on her face. Was that fear?
“What is it?”
She looked at me with a frown. “Not where I expected to enter, but I don’t have the time or energy to try again.” The mound of flesh holding the portal was starting to shift and collapse even as she said that last. Eyes widening, she lunged forward and began to crawl through the doorway.
Something flared up in me—some combination of insane anger and fear. No, she wasn’t going to leave like this. Take everything from me, destroy my family and just escape? I dove at her, grabbing her legs even as she began to pull them through the gateway and onto the dark marble floor.
“Tell me! Where is my family? Where is Cody?”
She kicked me off easily, sending me sliding across the floor with white-hot chest pain that left me gasping as I tried to crawl back toward her. Fully in that other place now, she looked out at me for a moment, her expression slightly sad.
“Go to where the accident happened. Into the woods there. Look for water where there should be none.”
A deep voice intoned from that other place, making the woman-thing jump.
“Welcome to the Nightlands. I am called the Baron. What are you called?”
She turned and stood gracefully, offering a strange bow. She had never showed any sign of self-consciousness in her nakedness since crawling out of that other place, but now she looked not only embarrassed, but terrified.
“I am Mariso…”
And then the door was gone, the thing that might have once been my son sinking into a spasming pile of ruined meat that began to split and ooze as I looked on in silent horror. I stared at his remains for a few minutes, not quite daring to touch them but afraid to look away, telling myself over and over that it was not him and never quite convincing myself.
When I finally made myself move, I didn’t stop moving. I ran outside, got in the car, and began driving to where Cody hit the tree.
I called Jesse and asked him for directions out to the exact place he’d found the car. He didn’t ask why, but he did ask if I was okay. I didn’t know what to tell him, so I told him the truth. No, I wasn’t okay. But I needed to see where it all happened. He offered to come meet me out there, but I told him no. It was something I needed to do by myself.
His directions were good and I found the spot fairly easily. There was the tree at the edge of the road, just like she’d said.
Cody: Drove into a ditch. Hit a tree. Fucking stupid. Think a tire blew out. About to get out and check the car and then call wrecker. Am okay. I’ll call in a bit. Love you.
My stomach twisted, growing cold as I saw the small piles of dark mud scattered around nearby. They stood out in sharp relief from the normal dirt in the area, and as I looked around for more, I saw a faint but perceptible trail of the strange filth leading back into the woods.
But why? Had something come out of the woods? Or had Cody gone in for some reason? Why would she?
Cody: I think I see me.
Oh God.
I follow the trail of black earth back through the trees. There are a couple of times I almost lose sight of it in shadows, but then I see it again and continue on. Minutes pass as my breath becomes more labored and my heartbeat tightens into the steady rhythm of my growing terror and dread. What am I going to find out here? Her alive and safe? Just asleep? Of course not. I’ll find nothing or worse. And I’d be better off if…
The trail led to a giant dead tree.
The roots of the tree were massive, reaching far out of the ground and elevating the bottom of the trunk three feet or more off the ground. I had the thought that maybe it was caused by massive erosion, but I dismissed the idea swiftly. This wasn’t a normal tree. It…none of it…was right. And I somehow knew the trail ended there.
Barely able to breathe, I took out my phone and shakily turned on its light before heading between the roots of the tree. The interlocked network of wood and leaves had gaps big enough to pass through, and underneath there was an open space at least three feet tall and ten feet across. Nothing but sandy colored dirt punctuated by small piles of the darker stuff. No signs of Cody or that she’d been there at all. Just bare dirt and…The thought fled as water hit my hand.
I looked up into Cody’s staring grey face. She was floating in water, a massive pool somehow floating against the ceiling to this bottom chamber of the tree. I barely even registered the impossibility of what I was seeing anymore. All I saw was her, and I drove my hands upward, plunging into the warm water I found there and placing my palms against her cold cheeks. I already knew she was dead. How could she not be dead, after all? This wasn’t about saving her. It was about not abandoning her in some strange, dark place where that other thing had left her.
Pulling her forward, she came without resistance, the water running down my arms before finally bursting, sending Cody falling the rest of the way into my arms. I think I was crying by that point, but everything was wet and painful and all I could do was rock her in my arms and try to keep this memory of the last time I had or did anything that would matter. I would get her out of this place, and after that I didn’t care what ha-
“S-Steve?”
I blinked and looked down to see Cody looking up at me. “Ohh…oh God. Cody? Can you hear me?”
She coughed wetly and gave a small nod. “Yeah. I just…I feel weird. Was I drowning?”
Sobbing, I gave her a hug. “I think maybe so. But I’ve got you now. I’ve got you.”
That was three days ago. Cody’s coming home from the hospital tomorrow. Aside from some water in her lungs and slight signs of malnutrition, they can’t find anything much wrong with her. Even her memory is intact.
For the most part, at least. I asked her that first night about what happened after the accident. She says she remembers texting me the first time and then calling for a tow truck. She’d just hung up with them when she thought she saw someone looking at her from behind a tree. Cody stopped there for a minute, a look of bewildered fear coming to her face at the memory.
“I think she looked like me.”
I nodded. “You texted me something like that.”
She frowned. “I don’t remember that really, but I remember getting out and calling to her, and then something about her making me very afraid. Wait, there was a man. A man had come up in a truck and suddenly that woman…she was naked…she had run past me. I think she hurt him. I remember hearing him scream.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “I was so scared. I tried to get back in the car, but she came in through the window. I think she…stuck her hand down my mouth? I don’t know. I just remember knowing I was going to die and never see you or Evan again and then everything was gone.” I went and sat next to her, rubbing her shaking shoulders. “Did that really happen?”
I tell her parts over the next three days. About what had happened and how much time had passed. About how the thing that had looked like her was gone, and as far as I knew, so was our son. I kept expecting her to get afraid or angry at me. Accuse me of lying or hurting Evan or something else. But she never did. Last night, I finally asked her why.
“I think I was still connected to her, somehow. She was using parts of me to make the thing that pretended to be me, and that let me…I don’t know…dream parts of what was happening. Enough to know what you say happened is true.” She buried her face in her hands. “Enough to know I don’t want to remember any more than I already do.”
I stopped asking questions after that.
Tomorrow we leave here, but we don’t really go home. I’ve already reported Evan missing and given my statement to police. I’ve also gone and packed up some things, and we’re going to be living in a rental until we find a new place. Too many memories and bad things are tied to that house now, and if we’re ever going to be happy again, we need a fresh start.
It may sound like we’re running away, and I guess we are. But we need a way to escape. To forget. And by forgetting, maybe survive. And if we’re lucky?
The things that haunt us will never find us again.
---
Credits
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