He took a deep breath, the air full of the scent of machine oil, of blood, of copper, and of something else, something sweet. Then he walked inside.
That sweetness hit him again, the unmistakable smell of rum, his mother’s drink of choice. It dragged a memory from his head, something he hadn’t thought about in years: him, running through the house chasing the puppy that would later be named Donovan, skidding into the kitchen and swiping a full bottle from the kitchen counter. It had smashed, soaked in through the floor, through the chipboard of the cabinets, through the wallpaper. The house had reeked for weeks, but his mom hadn’t been mad. She’d hugged him, told him it was okay, checked his feet for broken glass.
Because everything had been new. Everything had been new.
He had no idea what that meant, something itching at the back of his head, some long-forgotten truth, something that felt wrong.
Movement up ahead, something big, something that seemed to fill up that ocean of darkness at the end of the corridor. It writhed like a nest of leeches, dozens of them coiling, sliding wetly over one another.
“See anything?” said Pan.
Marlow turned to her, and that’s when he saw them, on the far side of the pyramid—a lumbering beast whose bloated belly dragged on the ground like the skirt of a wedding dress. Knotted around his neck was a woman, a girl, her tiny body twisted and knotted and scarred like it had been fed through a wood chipper.
“Not this asshole again,” said Marlow.
Pan spun around, fists bunched, in time to see Patrick throw his sister to the ground and start running, the ground actually trembling with the force of his footsteps.
“Go!” yelled Night. “I got this.”
Patrick roared, halfway to them. His giant hands flexed, ready to rip Pan’s head off a second time.
“Go!” Marlow echoed, running out of the house. “Just—”
Something coiled around his waist, ripping him inside so hard he thought his spine would snap. He grunted, seeing Patrick’s catcher’s-mitt hand wrap around Pan’s face.
Marlow just had time to mouth her name.
Then the door slammed shut, and there was nothing but the boundless dark.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Patrick came at Pan like a freight train, too quick for her to react, his giant hand snapping shut around her face and starting to squeeze.
“No!” she screamed into his filthy palm. She was lifted off the ground, Patrick’s other hand around her arm and pulling hard. She could feel the immense power there, feel the fabric of her start to tear.
And over it all she could hear him laughing like a two-year-old pulling the wings from a fly. He was going to kill her, and when she came back he was going to find her and do it again, and again, and again.
“No!” she yelled, and this time she opened her mouth and clamped her teeth around Patrick’s palm. She bit, and she kicked, kicked, kicked until she hit bone and the laughter stopped.
Patrick ripped his hand away, leaving a piece of it in her mouth. He still had her arm, though, and he slammed her into the ground. Her head hit rock and her thoughts kept going, sinking into darkness. Only for an instant, then she was back, hoisted into the air, Patrick’s sagging clown face grinning down at her.
“Why don’t you stay dead?” yelled Night, jumping onto Patrick’s back. He grunted, letting go of Pan, too slow to grab Night as she hopped onto the ground. Pan scrabbled around the side of the pool, watching Patrick’s obese body jiggle as he chased Night. It was only then that she saw that the front door of the house was closed.
Where was Marlow?
Night screamed as Patrick managed to grab her hair. She ducked, almost scalping herself as she twisted around him, breaking free. She drove her foot into the back of his leg and he juddered onto his knee. Pan ran to them. She had no weapon but she drove her fist hard into the back of his head. Patrick groaned, toppling like a felled tree.
“Patrick!” screamed Brianna. She was scuttling across the pyramid like a spider, her knotted limbs clumsy and out of sync with one another, but surprisingly effective.
“You take her,” said Night.
No problem. Brianna was faltering already, her stunted arms collapsing beneath her. She face-planted just as Pan reached her, struggling to recover. She looked up, her face a patchwork doll’s, even her eyes ridged with scars. But Pan could still see the girl she’d once been.
“I’m sorry,” Pan said. “I’m so sorry.”
Behind her Night was laying into Patrick with a vengeance. He was trying to get up but his bulk was stopping him. His face was turned to her, infinitely monstrous but still his. Past the madness, past the rage, there was just Patrick Rebarre, a boy who’d loved his sister so much he’d followed her to hell.
“I never wanted—”
Pain lanced through Pan’s ankle before she could finish. She yelped, seeing Brianna there, yellow teeth sunk deep into her skin. Tugging free, Pan staggered back, but Brianna followed, a lunatic hunger in her eyes. Pan’s foot struck something and she fell, landing on her back. Brianna didn’t hesitate, climbing awkwardly up Pan’s legs, across her stomach, biting her hard in the chest. Pan screamed, trying to push the girl away, but Brianna’s claws were under her skin, hooked there like ticks.
“He never lets me eat,” she was screeching, spraying the words out along with Pan’s blood. “He never lets me eat.”
Pan hit her, the strike driven by terror. Brianna’s head snapped to the side but she lunged forward again, her bloodstained teeth going for Pan’s throat. Pan hit her again, then opened her own mouth and lunged for Brianna’s face. They bit as one, agony riding a burning path up Pan’s neck, her teeth scraping against Brianna’s skull. The girl bubbled out a scream, scampered back. Blood as black as ink dripped over her terrified face.
Pan felt like she had the weight of the underworld on top of her but she managed to get to her feet. She pressed a hand to her throat, stemming the blood, then she kicked Brianna hard in the head. Pan reached down and picked Brianna up by her waist. The girl was a husk, so easy to lift that it took Pan by surprise. She lifted her above her head and skirted around the black pool. Patrick was still taking a beating but he wasn’t planning on staying down, his huge arms quivering with the effort.
“Here, boy!” Pan yelled.
Night jumped off Patrick’s back, and he lumbered slowly to his feet. His head was a mess, and it took him a moment to notice what Pan had in her arms. When he saw Brianna there, he roared—a sound of pure fury. He dropped onto all fours, running at her like a bear.
“Oh shi—”
Pan ran, too, racing for the edge of the pyramid. She skidded to a halt, nearly tumbling over herself. The ground was only just visible below, masked by clouds.
“Brianna!” Patrick yelled. He was almost on her, kicking up a great plume of dust in his wake.
She didn’t stop to think, just turned and threw Brianna as hard as she could. The girl tried to grab Pan, tried to stop herself, and for an instant her momentum nearly pulled Pan over the edge. Then her finger-claws popped free and she was falling, tumbling into the clouds. Pan ducked, Patrick a blur of blubber as he barreled over her.
Pan watched him fall, his descent almost graceful. But she turned away before he hit the ground.
“Nicely done,” said Night, limping over and rubbing her knuckles.
“They’ll be back,” said Pan.
“He’ll have to regenerate,” Night said. “It will take time.”
“You see Marlow?” Pan asked.
Night glanced behind her, as if only just noticing he was gone. She shrugged.
“Not like him to miss a fight.”
“It’s exactly like him,” Pan said. “I think he went into the house.”
“Then I guess we should go help him,” Night said.
She was already walking, and Pan followed.
Everything ached, her heart felt on the verge of stalling, but she had the feeling that if they walked thro
ugh that front door then everything would end, one way or another. At least this way she might be able to rest.
And the thought of it, of not having to fight anymore, was so comforting that she didn’t feel the tremor beneath her until it almost knocked her over. The entire pyramid was shaking, and there was a noise beneath her, an industrial growl growing louder and louder and louder until the air shook with the force of it.
“Get down!” Night yelled, throwing herself to the ground. And it was good advice, because a supernova of black light detonated from the middle of the pyramid, and with a final, catastrophic roar the house exploded.
STRANGER
The house was eating him.
It was eating him whole, its black tongue wrapped around his torso and reeling him toward a throat of absolute darkness. Marlow fought, drummed his fists against it, but it was dragging him too quickly, hard enough to knock him against the wall, then against the ceiling. Plaster dust rained down on him as the house wrenched him deeper, past the living room, heading for the kitchen. He tried to call Pan’s name but he was moving too fast, he couldn’t get the word out.
He smacked his head on the top of the kitchen doorway and his thoughts scattered like crows. Then he was slowing, the pressure on his ribs growing weaker, then disappearing altogether. He fell to his knees, fireworks exploding in his vision, the pain like a demolition ball swinging between the two sides of his skull.
Marlow.
The voice was a whisper, so close that it might have come from inside his own head. He blinked away the tears, tried to make sense of what he was seeing.
He was kneeling inside his kitchen, a room he’d known his whole life. But where there had once been counters, units, an oven, a sink, there was now just a seething mass of shadow. It covered the floor, the walls, and where the ceiling was supposed to be it ballooned upward like a circus tent. The shadows moved like leeches, squirming against one another, the motion making Marlow’s stomach squirm. Two of those strands of liquid night approached him, coiling around his face like the fingers of a blind man, as if they were trying to work out who he was.
Only they knew, because that voice came again, breathing his name. He noticed how quiet it was here, the sonic boom from outside reduced to a uterine heartbeat. There was only the soft whir and click of the Engine, that and the wet, sliding madness of the moving shadows.
Marlow.
The voice was pushing into his right ear, insect sharp. He shook the pain away, angling his head to the side.
Somebody was standing there.
At least, he thought it was somebody. It was too dark to be sure, and those shadows danced and played in front of the figure, around it, so that it seemed to flit in and out of existence. It was a man, he could tell that much. A man so worn by time and ravaged by age that he looked like a corpse. He hung in the corner of the room—literally hung, as if he had met his fate on the gallows there—and looked down at Marlow with a face forged from sadness. He opened his mouth, more of those whispers scuttling out and climbing inside Marlow’s head.
You came.
The man groaned, his lips stretching too far, his tongue lolling out. His voice carried such a sense of grief that Marlow felt it explode inside his chest, the tears a hurricane that battered against him. But he wouldn’t show weakness, not here. He couldn’t.
The hanged man twitched, jerking like a puppet on a string. He was making a noise that might have been laughter, might have been sobs. The coils of shadow that held him seemed to tighten, an anaconda strangling its prey. Marlow thought he heard the word careful in the confusion, spoken in a hundred different whispers.
I can’t, said the man, and the shadows knotted themselves even tighter, making him groan again. He was waiting for you, Marlow. He has been waiting for you for so long. You should not have come.
Who was waiting? Was there somebody else there, hidden by the night? Marlow squinted, making out the top of the hanged man’s head and something resting on it. It looked like a hand, too big, too many joints, the fingers actually penetrating his skull, fused there. Marlow followed it up, seeing a wrist, then an arm, and sure enough there was a shadow above the man, deeper and darker than the rest. He had to look away after a second because whatever stood there radiated something evil, something that made Marlow feel like his heart had been crushed.
I tried, said the hanged man, and he was weeping now. I tried.
Something replied to him, a sound that was almost too low for Marlow to hear—like a church organ playing a subsonic note. It thrummed through him, making his stomach flutter into a cramp.
No, said the man, his voice growing weaker by the second. No.
“What’s going on?” Marlow asked.
That noise again, and the shadow behind the hanged man moved, bending forward into the room. Marlow could make no sense of it, there was no face there, no body, just a shape—and a cluster of eyes that burned like inverse suns, which dripped negative light.
“You,” Marlow managed to say, recognizing it from the pool, from the way it had watched him with those spider eyes as he forged a contract. “The Devil.”
He’s not the Devil, the hanged man said. He is a Stranger. He thrashed against the darkness that held him, tendrils of shadow sliding into his mouth until he choked on them. The figure behind him loomed even closer, the room growing so dark that Marlow wondered if he’d been blinded by it. Two more fingers of shadow wrapped themselves around him, seemed to crawl inside his skin and coil around his ribs, his spine. The same subsonic noise rolled across the room, as powerful as thunder, and Marlow understood that this thing, whatever it was, was trying to speak to him.
He didn’t understand the words, but he knew what it was saying. It rang like a clarion where his soul had once sat, loud enough to shake the world to dust.
WHAT IS IT YOU DESIRE?
The hanged man loosed a muffled groan, began to twitch and shake again. He was chewing on the shadows, spitting out gobs of black fluid.
Do not listen! he wailed. Do not listen to him!
WHAT IS IT YOU DESIRE?
If you listen then it’s all over, please!
Marlow slammed his hands to his ears but it didn’t do any good, the voices battling inside his head like artillery fire. He tried to move but the shadows wormed their way even deeper inside him, wrapping themselves around his organs and turning them to ice. He was shivering so hard he thought his teeth would shatter.
He has to see, said the hanged man. He was tearing at the darkness that held him, his stick-thin arms pulling chunks from it. The shadows inside the room were moving toward the man, a flood of them, like they meant to drown him, and the hand that held his head like a bowling ball tightened even further, his skull making a sound like a glacier shearing in two. But his determination was relentless. He looked at Marlow, growling, You must see. You must see.
“See what?” Marlow said.
The man ripped free of the last scrap of shadow, tried to take a step across the room only to be pulled back. He tried again, the crown of his skull actually coming loose, peeling away like the top of a boiled egg. The Stranger uttered its foghorn cry as it attempted to restrain the man, bind him in darkness. And it was working, there were just too many shadows. The hanged man stopped fighting, held out a hand to Marlow.
You have to see the truth, he said. It’s the only way.
Somehow Marlow found the strength to move. He pushed himself up, the ground writhing beneath his feet. He was almost lost now, submerged in darkness, but that hand was still there, held up like a drowned man reaching for the boat.
It’s the only way to beat him, the hanged man said, his voice just a gurgle now. He stretched forward, something dripping from the bowl of his skull. His eyes began to roll up in their sockets, like they were trying to see what had been done to him, but that hand still reached forth, still reached for Marlow.
Marlow threw himself across the kitchen, swiping shadows out of the way. He ran, he reached, and he g
rabbed hold of the hanged man’s hand.
ONE LAST BREATH
The change was instantaneous—one moment he was in the stomach of his old house, battered by night, the next he was standing in a sun-drenched woodland, pigeons cooing in his ear and a gentle breeze blowing through his hair. He couldn’t breathe, the shock of it paralyzing him until he literally smashed a fist against his chest. He sucked in air that smelled of blossoms, turning in circles and feeling the grass beneath his feet, sharp and warm.
“Where am I?” he asked, his voice older, grainier. It startled a pigeon and it broke from the canopy, its wings clapping. “Looks like heaven.”
Not heaven, said the hanged man. The beginning of hell.
Something inside his head shifted, and he felt somebody else take control, steering him out of the woods and onto a dirt track that ran between hedges. He could feel an urgency that didn’t sit with the rest of the illusion, a panic that came from nowhere. Then there was a distant scream and he started to run.
Smoke was rising from behind the bushes, clawing its way into Marlow’s nose. He skidded around the corner to see a house—a cottage, really, small and thatched. It was on fire, the heat searing Marlow’s eyebrows even though he stood thirty yards away, the inferno so fierce that it took him a moment to see the children in the flames.
There were five of them, four boys and one girl, the youngest maybe eight, the oldest no more than fourteen. There was something familiar about three of them, something really familiar. Marlow knew them, but he couldn’t think from where. They hung from the windows, screaming.
Panic raged inside Marlow, one he knew didn’t belong to him but which he felt with every iota of his being. He opened his mouth and howled, breaking into a run. But he was too slow. The cottage was old, made of thatch and stick, and it took only seconds for the flames to swallow it whole. One by one those faces vanished into the smoke, until the last scream was lost in the roar.