Unlovely- A Tale of Madness

by Risa Fey

  Mr. Mercer cleared the way to the door, and Cora ducked past him, making sure to pick up the fresh milk sitting on the stoop. She gathered the half-dozen empty bottles on the kitchen counter and nestled them gingerly into their caddy.

  A few minutes later, Cora returned with her hair more nicely tamed and the bottles clinking in their slots. Mr. Mercer accepted the bottles, bent his head, and smiled a bit too amiably, locking eyes with her.

  “You sure are lovely, Miss Himmel, if you don’t mind my saying so. Even disheveled the way you are, you’re like one of them ladies where it don’t matter if you’re done up nice or not. I s’spect a talent agent for some big modeling company’ll one day discover you. Then you won’t have no need for a small-town place like this. Well, you have a good day, now, ma’am.” He waved and retreated to his truck, grinning fondly at her all the while.

  Mr. Mercer opened the back of his truck and placed the returned caddy inside a crate. He climbed into the driver’s seat and then sped away, completely oblivious to Cora’s shock and consternation.

  CHAPTER 18

  THE DOG USED TO chase Cora in her dreams when she was a little girl. It was large and black, the muscles thick and hard beneath its short glossed fur. Its eyes were blood red, squinted into slivers that haunted the alcoves and shadowed crevasses of the rural neighborhood that it prowled in. Its master had somehow provided the ravening dog with Cora’s scent, either with one of the fallen ribbons from her hair, or a slipper she had lost during playtime.

  The hound’s legs rippled in effortless agility while chasing her, monstrous paws chewing up the earth like serrated shovels. Blending into the dark surroundings, it would gain on her at impossible speeds.

  Cora had learned early on to find a hiding spot as quickly as possible, since it would take the hound mere seconds to close the gap and shred her calves. She used to hide up trees and between branches, or in barn lofts whenever she could find one. From those hiding positions she had been able to pick the dog out by the reflections of its eyes. The evil curvature of its fangs would glitter from its spittle in the moonlight, and Cora would have to wait until the dog grew bored.

  But that was a long, long time ago, and the dog was chasing her now.

  Cora thrust her body through some shrubs and tumbled headlong into a pond she didn’t know was there. Her bare toes groped through the muck and mud below, swishing desperately behind her as the bottom of the pond fell out of reach.

  The dog was swift, unhesitating in its dive, and it paddled with all four paws, churning up splashes of greenish water in its wake like a snarling motorboat.

  Something snagged her ankle—the serrated jaws of a predator fish. Cora’s heart leaped into her throat, and the unknown beast ripped her beneath the surface of the water, the force of its pull creating a vortex of bubbles all around her. She tried to scream, flailing her arms toward the moonlit surface which shrank away with the water’s expanding darkness. There was no pain, but the gnawing progressed to a vicious snapping that jolted her awake from the nightmare like a clap of thunder.

  The wind was howling outside the walls of her room. The cottage’s wood skeleton groaned and resettled with the sighing of aimless drafts. The metal lantern hanging outside the back of the cottage screeched and squealed, rocking to and fro on its rusty hook. Cora did not fall back asleep that night, but she stayed painfully awake, alert to every creak of board and hum of the appliances.

  Throughout the following morning, even in broad daylight, Cora thought she could hear the snuffles and snorts of a stalking dog. It’s a rendling, hissed a voice. But the stealthy sounds would stop just as soon as she decided to investigate, and that only made her all the more paranoid.

  The low rumble of a growl percolated through the room as Cora sat to a sparse breakfast of cornflakes and tea. It was an unholy sound, what she imagined the thunder of Hell would sound like. It increased in volume the longer she ignored it.

  Finally, she couldn’t stand it anymore. Cora whirled up from the table—and flinched at the sight of the dog crouching inside the frame of a floor-length mirror. Its lips were drawn back, the gory teeth stained yellow and red. It was only about knee-height to her—comparatively smaller now than when she was a child—but its muscles were still bulky, corded with the powerful invulnerability of a pitbull.

  Found you, little girl.

  It grinned and snarled, nose dribbling wet. Its flaccid jowls frothed with yellow foam.

  Cora slammed into her chair.

  How did that horrible rendling get inside? And, was it inside?

  She whipped the chair around from behind her so that it stood between her and the mirror. Lifting it up so that the legs were pointed at the dog, she jabbed forward at the mirror in an effort to warn it off. But it ignored her feints and began a slow trot to the invisible barrier.

  The dog crouched in preparation for a lunge. It jumped through the glass like there was nothing there at all, and the portal rippled as if it were made of water.

  The animal changed as it crossed over onto her side. At first, it had looked like the fairly normal dog of her nightmares. But upon emerging onto her side of the glass it was transformed.

  The eyes were still red, but the body was now a corpse, a dead and fly-blown animated carcass. On one side of its flank, the ribs and parts of its spine were showing through ripped flesh. The white bones were stained with blood and some sort of necrotic black rot. The skeletal paws were feeble-looking, easily breakable by the looks of them, but its stride was as effortless and confident as a jaguar’s.

  In her panic Cora threw the chair at the decomposing dog. Instead, it shattered the mirror behind the animal in a cascade of glancing light. The dog leaped away from the breaking mirror. Its singular mind was quick to return to the task at hand, and it pawed after Cora with relentless determination.

  Her knees locked up with fear—but she knew she had to run, or else be killed. With a mighty effort of self-will, Cora wrenched free of the paralysis that had come over her and commanded her muscles to fumble over to the door.

  She threw the door open and soared from the stoop, blind to all else but the need to get away. The woods whirled around her like a nightmarish carousel of black bark and sawtoothed leaves. She stumbled dizzily left and right, skidding in the mud, and tripping over rocks that were hidden in the molder. Her arms and legs felt like they were weighted with lead, but desperation gave her the adrenaline required to keep her far ahead of the rendling—at least for a short time.

  The athletic gallop of its paws quickened behind her. Its claws beat into the dirt like war drums, tossing up clods of detritus in its wake. For all its ungainly size, the dog was swift and agile, catching close up to her heels in a matter of seconds.

  The damn beast was faster than she remembered. Its jowls whipped strings of drool through the air. It salivated as it closed in for the kill.

  A single lunge and she was down.

  Teeth gored her ankles, but her mind was in too much of a state of panic to be conscious of the ripping and the rending. There was a twist and crunch of bone, and Cora felt sick and feared for what that meant. She was being dragged backward over the dirt, and the vicious dog shook its head in deadly enthusiasm. Cora shrieked into the ground, clawing at the bloodied tussocks of wild grass that emerged from underneath her. A trail of blood stretched out before her, like a red carpet unfurling for her death. And then, she was suddenly conscious of the pain; it sliced through her legs like red-hot daggers, sawing deep into the bone.

  The crunch of shoes rushed toward them, and the dog released her in a flurry of sudden struggle. There was an enormous thud, followed by a skirling whimper. Whoever had just arrived had kicked the dog with all the force that he could muster.

  The last thing Cora heard was the distant padding of uneven paws, followed by an unbroken silence. The sun still had not risen, but the environment grew lighter with the predawn. Everything was blurry with shadows, the outlines of the trees diffuse. The clouds in t
he east were limned with soft peach colors that would soon brighten to hot pink. Cora was afraid to lift her head and look back, to assess the damage of her mangled legs. But if Thaed was there—

  Cora peered over her shoulder and saw no one. The dog was gone, along with the man that had saved her.

  Then she noticed that her ankles were intact. They weren’t even scratched or bleeding… No bones seemed to be broken, and her leg wasn’t twisted in an unnatural position like she had thought. Even the trail of blood the dog had dragged her through was gone, and the sigh of the wind dried the salty tears burning on her cheeks.

  That dog was not supposed to be out at night. Thaed had said so. It was supposed to be off somewhere, hunting with its pack.

  But hadn’t it just been morning? She was sitting to breakfast when the dog arrived… and when she ran outside it was suddenly night.

  Did a whole day pass before she ran outside? Or did she imagine the whole thing?

  Cora realized, with a nauseating lurch in her belly, that regardless of what she thought, she had been dragged across the ground if nothing else. The path of her flailing body being hauled through the pine needles and dead leaves was right in front of her face. Claw marks from her fingers streaked the dirt. Whether or not she had imagined everything else, she didn’t know—but something had certainly dragged her.

  Someone had assaulted her, and maybe Thaed had chased them off before they had inflicted any real harm.

  Returning to the cottage, she found the full-length mirror shattered, and the chair lying on its side with a broken leg. Pulverized glass lay sprinkled all over the floor, but thankfully the mess was limited to a rug she could easily dispose of.

  Switching on a lamp, Cora retrieved a broom and dustpan and started sweeping the few shards that had made it onto the wood floor. Thaed was nowhere to be seen, but she could feel his presence—his concern.

  “You saved me,” she said, glancing cautiously into one of the hanging mirrors. “I know it was you, Thaed. Why didn’t you say something? I’m grateful.”

  Thaed answered solemnly, “That dog was not supposed to be there. I feel responsible.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she defended him. “The dog wasn’t with its master like it was supposed to be.”

  Or was it? chimed in a snickering whisper. But Cora ignored it, chalking the comment up to more jealous contempt at her expense.

  Later that evening, as she curled up on the sofa, Thaed sat beside her and allowed her to fall asleep against his chest. Cora snuggled into the phantom circle of his arm, and she could hear the beat of his heart against her ear. The throb of it lulled her into sleep, and just before she slipped away into oblivion, Cora tucked her small feet beneath the shreds of her dirty gown.

  CHAPTER 19

  THERE WERE APPLES in the trees behind the cottage. The fruit was red, dappled with dew, and plump. The tertiary stems from which they hung drooped heavily, and their bright green leaves sparkled with iridescence.

  Cora selected the reddest of the apples and unmoored it from its stem. Two leaves jutted from the center of the apple, having been nibbled to rags by tiny insects.

  She shined the apple on her sleeve, and just as she was about to take a bite, a tiny hole appeared over the skin, shriveling inwards like a burn mark from a cigarette. The head of a worm emerged tentatively from the rotted center. It groped blindly about, searching for something to wiggle onto in the empty space.

  The apple’s flesh gave way a little in Cora’s grasp, sinking inward at the pressure of her fingers, and softening with brown spots. Then it deflated completely, squishing inward, the sticky juices oozing from the withered peel and gumming up between her fingers.

  The worm wrapped its segments around her finger and inched along toward her bony wrist.

  The veins on her skin where the worm was undulating became infected and started to decompose, just like the apple, blackening the surrounding flesh with necrotic tissue. Cora’s hand shriveled with the disease, and she could feel it rotting, withering to the bone.

  But, for some reason, it didn’t hurt.

  The worm stopped to work its mandibles into her skin. Cora hadn’t even thought it had the teeth to puncture skin with, but it did. After a sharp pinch on her arm, the worm attached itself, and she could feel the globular legs latching and locking into place. Its pale body began to swell, fattening off of the blood that leaked from the incision it had made. The worm grew larger and larger, until she could see the lidless beads of its eyes. Scales glistened like armor over its yellow-mottled body, and its belly was milky, wet-looking, and ribbed.

  Cora’s throat tightened upon recognizing what the worm had evolved into. Its nostrils were formed into ridged slits, the pupils sickle-shaped. A forked tongue glided out from a tiny lip-groove at the front of its snout. And when the snake opened its dislocatable jaws to hiss at her, Cora saw the pasty white of its throat and fangs.

  She was too afraid to try to throw the snake off, and so it wrapped its muscular torso around her scrawny arm like a rope of living steel. The jaws snapped shut and the knifelike fangs sank into her arm, injecting venom that worked immediately to numb her nerves.

  Cora tried desperately then to shake the snake off, but it was too tightly wrapped, the fangs burrowed in too deep. She thought of yanking it off by its tail, but she was afraid of its teeth tearing off a sizeable chunk of arm. Her arm swelled to double its size, and the venom still released in deadly spurts. She could almost feel the poisons jetting into her bloodstream.

  Sinking to her knees, Cora screeched in terror. A crowd of jeering voices came together in her mind, clamoring for attention, incoherent and raving.

  The apple fell to the ground. Its core was black and completely colonized by indiscriminate flies and wasps.

  The snake loosened its hold only when her upper arm began to wither. Loops of its body dangled on the sinewy gore of her bones and joints. As the flesh dissolved from around its fangs, the snake unlocked its jaws and then slunk down into the grass. It curled protectively around the festering apple, as if it were an egg in need of nurturing; and if any more worms were being born inside the apple’s core, then maybe it was a sort of egg.

  The verdant woods took on a dreamlike quality. Nothing in the world felt real anymore. Even she did not feel real; her consciousness was like an illusion, or a movie being projected onto a screen. The colors of the woods were all washed out, like reels of overused film corrupted by years of grain and dust. Everything looked like it was burned, and even the trees were transformed into black infernal statues that might only be found in the parks and cityscapes of Hell.

  She was scarcely conscious of Their whisperings anymore. Malformed animals crept through the tall grass in the periphery of her vision, alert but unafraid. The worm-snake writhed into a slumber where it lay, glutted and satisfied from its hearty meal.

  Cora wanted to cry for help, but when she opened her mouth nothing came out. It was too late. The cords of her voice were ruined, and the throat muscles were petrified from the venom.

  Cora realized, with a sense of quiet peace, that she was dying.

  The venom bled into her brain, into every lobe and thought-filled channel. Dead sinew, and other unidentifiable strings of anatomy, dangled uselessly from her bare bones. The disease had run its course: she was now nothing but a skeleton, made of loosely attached organs and withered skin.

  Opportune as ever, Thaed appeared, looking entirely unaffected by the sight of her.

  “Help me,” Cora begged, more with her mind since her voice no longer worked.

  With a rattling of bones, she staggered toward him. Thaed’s eyes widened fractionally in reaction to the voice being projected into his mind. “Please, Thaed!” Her sense of peace was gone, and she was desperately reaching out for him to save her.

  “Don’t you remember what I told you?” he said, stepping back. “You know the magic, Cora. Why don’t you do something yourself?”

  “But I don’t know
any magic! I’m dying, Thaed!” The segments of her spine rattled in a paroxysm.

  Thaed moved over the snake and stopped mere inches from her face. He bored his gaze into her empty sockets. “You think death doesn’t become you?” he asked in an intense whisper. “It doesn’t matter if you’re dying. We all die. But the soul I want from you will live forever.”

  The voices drowned away, and the snake was gone. Cora’s mind felt suddenly clear.

  Thaed stood like an imposing god in front of her, the only living thing in the whole universe, as far as she was concerned.

  “You should mind your dignity,” he uttered softly, in response to a quiet upsurge in her tears. “It’s all you have left for all your ugliness…”

  Cora trembled at those words.

  Thaed’s pupils were sickle-shaped, but his face was beautiful and calm. His tongue slithered out over his lower lip in a way that made her stomach turn. The gleam of his skin was almost reptilian. Cora remembered what his skin had felt like under her fingers, covered in sweat and surging with muscle. She remembered how he felt inside her: the hard, wet thing slithering around and groping on the inside as if it had a mind of its own.

  “What are you?” Cora asked, suddenly cognizant of the fact he wasn’t human.

  The curve of his mouth twitched into a broad smile. Thaed took her shoulders in his hands and drew her near so that he could speak to her private ear. He either said his name or told her what he was, but it sounded unintelligible, like meaningless gibberish.

  I am the Dark One… she heard faintly in her mind. I am you—your Pain and Madness.

  She was afraid, but still felt captivated.

  A glow of dingy light sprang out from his palm. He moved the light over her shoulders, letting the wan glow melt over her like treacle. It repaired the parts of her body that had rotted away. Healthy flesh grew over new bones, and every symptom of decay reversed. Magic light coalesced into mended flesh, re-knitting webs of veins, and re-weaving brand new lattices of nerve-endings.