by Ian Fortey
“No matter what,” Abigail said, joining the other women. Vincent could see the halo of blood magic about her like an aura, blending in with the blue primal magic and creating something new. The longer the two women were bonded, the more their magic seemed to comingle.
“No,” Selena said, a quiet gasp of defeat. She looked at Mary-Ann. The three witches stood together, primal energy brewing beneath their feet.
“You cannot break our coven,” Abigail said.
“You have broken it, Abby. You want to steal my power to hurt innocent people. That is not our way!”
“I want to save lives, Selena. And look what you are doing. You have bonded your very soul to a necromancer. A monster who traffics in Death itself. That is not our way. That is the opposite of who we are and what we do. I am not the betrayer.”
Primal shackles erupted from the earth, grasping at Vincent’s wrists like hands. They felt like silk but held strong like iron. The same shackles held Dezzy fast at the mouth of the cave.
“Speculum aspectu,” Selena whispered. Her magic swirled up and around them all like a wave, splashing over everyone. As it subsided, it left Selena in its wake, standing free and separate next to Vincent. She was wearing the same robes she had worn when he saw her body in the field.
“Hey, look at you,” Dezzy said, still oddly cheerful despite their predicament.
“It is just a mirror spell,” Selena said. “I am not really here. But I would face my betrayers with my own eyes, not someone else’s.”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Selena,” Abigail said. She walked through the wide-leafed green plants around the trees by the cave's entrance, getting closer.
“Is that what you all think now?” Selena asked, looking at each of her sisters in turn. They had not moved since Abigail arrived.
“They very much think what I think now, Selena. After you tried to turn them against me. More proof that this necromancer has corrupted you. I will not allow anyone to betray us again.”
“There’s blood magic in them,” Vincent said. He could see it in each of the women. Like a tiny, red star above their heads, glimmering in the failing light of day.
“You enslaved your own sisters?” Selena asked, disgusted.
Abigail rolled her eyes.
“My word, I just said don’t be so dramatic. I don’t have time for them to stumble into clarity on their own. So, I’m doing it for them. I’m ensuring that our plans are able to pull through and the Goddess herself is backing me up!”
“Maggie has made you a fool,” Selena said.
Abigail’s hand shot up and trees bent aside, exposing the sky. The moon was already visible, pale and ghostly, with the sun still illuminating it.
“She has given me the power to end this here and now. If that is not validation of the highest order then what is?”
“Oh man, she’s in for a serious surprise,” Dezzy said.
Abigail’s raised hand balled into a fist. Dezzy’s lips grew together, flesh bonding to flesh until his mouth no longer existed.
“Talking is tiresome. It’s time for you to die, Mr. Donnelly.”
The earth shook beneath Vincent’s feet. He stumbled in the grip of the shackles and fell to his knees. Dirt and rock erupted as a tree grew forth from the ground at his back. The tiny limbs extended up and out at a rapid pace. One of the branches weaved up and under Vincent’s left arm, while a second branch shot under his right. They raised him from the ground and the shackles pulled with them, spreading his arms out and then fastening him in place. He hung several feet above the ground, his arms pulled back and secured to the tree.
Selena had risen with him, her reflection tied to his physical body. She floated in the air like the ghost she was, while Dezzy was pulled to the ground as roots snaked across his body, binding him in place.
“You are a killer,” Abigail said, approaching the tree that bound Vincent. Her voice was like ice, and he could see the seething blood magic coming off of her. A thin, pale arm rose out of her back.
“A murderer of women,” she continued. The second arm pried itself from Abigail’s back, the flesh peeling away like meat being sliced from the bone.
“You are an abomination, Mr. Donnelly.”
Maggie Huxley’s face rose up from Abigail’s back. Her hair was disheveled and her skin waxy and pale. The side of her face was encrusted with old, dried blood, and her broken neck made her head hang at an odd angle.
The spirit pulled free of the living witch’s body, standing before the tree at Abigail’s side. Her eyes stared up into Vincent’s. All he could see in them was hatred.
“I will tear my sister's power from your flesh, inch by inch, and burn the waste as they burned my sisters of old,” Abigail said.
“Abigail, you are not the monster this woman has made you!” Selena pleaded.
“Listen to you! Maggie is a monster? You were the one who discovered her. You were the one who wanted to save her life. And now we are monsters? You have lost your way. And it is mine to find.”
“Abby, please,” Selena begged. She hovered in the air next to the tree as Abigail stared up at Vincent.
“No more,” Maggie said. She closed her hand into a fist. Red energy exploded and ensnared Selena. It swirled around her like a twister, with Abigail’s primal energy joining it, creating a storm that sealed her in.
Selena tried to cast a spell, and the red energy surged into her mouth like mud. She gagged on it, and the words died in her throat. Abigail ignored her entirely.
“What are you afraid of, Mr. Donnelly?” Abigail asked. “What makes your blood run cold?”
“Brace yourself,” Fix said.
Vincent struggled in his bonds. The shackles holding Vincent were immoveable. There was not even a bit of give. He tried to see the way the primal energy flowed, to hold it together, but it meant nothing to him. He couldn't grasp it or change it at all.
“What would you rather die than face?”
Maggie and Abigail raised their hands as one. The swirling mixture of primal and blood magic flowed upward like a river, defying gravity. It saturated Vincent’s shoes and seeped in. He could feel it on his flesh, at once cold and hot. It crept up over his ankles and shins, then surged up past his knees and thighs. It felt like Jell-O that had been set on fire, and the sensation only grew worse.
“What scares a monster?”
The burning cold consumed Vincent’s lower half. He gasped and writhed against his bonds.
“Try to calm down,” Fix said.
“Easy for you to say,” Vincent replied. He looked at Selena, still trapped in the magical storm.
“We’ll get through this,” Fix said. He didn’t know what was happening any more than Vincent did. But it was nice of him to say those words.
The cold fire felt like it was bubbling over Vincent’s chest. The pace slowed by the time it hit his neck. Vincent tried to keep his breathing calm. The freezing and burning grew more painful with each passing moment.
Abigail stared up at him, her eyes fixed on his. Maggie Huxley did the same, her head lolling to one side on her broken neck. Her eyes held nothing but malice. Vincent strained, raising his head. He scraped the back of his head against the tree. The searing cold rose unabated across his throat like a slimy, hot hand, then up over his chin. He stared up at the darkening sky.
The mixture filled his mouth like a thing alive. He tried to spit it out, but it had no true physical form. It was a thing with no substance, no real mass. It coated his tongue like hot oil and wormed its way down his throat, scalding his insides. He screamed, and it pushed into his nostrils.
He felt like he was being choked, but the air still flowed. Suffocating but still able to breathe. The mixture covered his eyes, and then a moment later, his entire body, inside and out, freezing and blistering at once. The outside world vanished in a frenzied rush of red and blue. There was only pain after that. Only pain.
Chapter 8
He sat up. He was not alone. Selena sat cross-legged on the ground, staring back at him. Blood had clotted around her nose and the corners of her mouth. Next to her sat Bogdan Dalca, his throat torn to shreds, his robe washed in blood from the wound. It was dry now, black in the night.
The others sat with them. The bald man, the tall man, and the child. All of them were maimed and bloodied. All of them were staring at Vincent.
“Selena, what’s going on?” Vincent asked. Her eyes were black on black. Her skin was the white of death. Her lips parted ever so slightly, as if to speak. A small, segmented worm crawled from between them, wriggling its way out. In the light of those bright stars, it glistened with congealed blood.
“Fix?” Vincent asked. There was no answer. The five corpses were arranged in a semicircle, with Vincent in the middle. If they leaned close, they could have touched him.
“This is not a memory,” he said to them, as much as to himself. This was something else.
He thought he should be somewhere else. He was doing something else. Or he had been. But he could not remember what.
“What was I doing?” he asked quietly.
“Murder,” a faint whisper answered. Hot, moist breath tickled the tiny hairs in his ear, and he flinched away, moving towards Dalca as he looked over his shoulder into a familiar face. His own face.
“I don’t—”
“Murderer,” his double whispered. His own face, his own eyes, looked back at him. His mouth bore a joyous smile, thin black lines running down from each corner of the mouth to the chin. His eyes were the same black on black as the surrounding dead. The flesh was textured and glossy, woodgrain running underneath it.
Vincent tried to scuttle away. But Bogdan Dalca’s hands grabbed his wrists. The Vincent double capered a moment, its body bent down to look at him, hopping from one foot to the other like it was trying to dance on strings, a sick marionette in action. The arms were too long, and so were the legs. They looked too thin and spindly inside the loose clothes it wore.
“Murderer!” the puppet version of Vincent said with a childish giggle. “MURDERER!”
Vincent pulled away from Dalca’s corpse, rolling to the side and then scrambling to his feet. He got up quickly and turned on his heels. The five dead had all turned. They were in a semicircle around him again. Behind them, back lit by the bonfire, puppet Vincent crept like a spider on its long legs and arms.
It rose to its feet, its black eyes still staring at him. It held a long, thin filet knife in its hand.
“Murderer!” it hissed. Another knife appeared in the other hand. It dragged the blade through Selena’s flesh as it stepped over her. The skin parted like a ripe tomato, oozing thick, dark blood.
The puppet crept over on its long, gangly limbs. Vincent backed away to the edge of the clearing. It clacked its wooden jaws, dead eyes locked on him. It lashed out with its knives, stabbing Dalca’s eyes and shaving a thick slice off of Selena’s cheek. The meat fell onto her lap as vitreous fluid gushed from Dalca’s eye down his face.
The puppet pulled the knife slowly from Dalca’s eye. The blade made a wet sound as it was being pried free. Vincent winced, his pulse racing. The puppet raised the blade slowly, and a fleshy, human tongue came out from between the wooden lips. The tongue slid up the blade, licking the rancid jelly even as its flesh got split in half.
“Murderer!” it laughed, shoving the corpses aside and running towards Vincent.
Vincent fled. He pushed into the tall grass surrounding the clearing and ran as fast as his legs would carry him. The sound of the puppet trailed close behind, its long wooden limbs clattering as it bounded through the dry grass. The blades of grass were like whips against Vincent’s face and arms. They scraped and lashed against him. His breath came in heavy, panicky gulps. There was no sense of direction, no sign of a place where he might find refuge. But he had to run. He had to escape.
Green and black surrounded him on all sides. The dark of night and the overwhelming field were the world, along with the sound at his back. The frenzied clacking of wooden teeth and wooden limbs. The rustling of the grass as it gave way around Vincent and the puppet at his heels. The muscles in his legs strained as he worked them as hard as he could. Nothing looked different on either side or dead ahead. He had no idea how far the field stretched on or to where it might lead.
His chest burned as he sucked in deep breaths. His legs pumped and his feet slammed the hard-packed dirt. The end of his shoe snagged on a tangle of roots and he lurched off balance, collapsing in a heap to the ground.
The rush of the grass fell silent. The wooden clacking had stopped. There was no sound save his own deep breathing and the blood rushing in his ears. He covered his mouth with his hand, trying to stifle the sound of his breathing as he listened to the silence. There was nothing.
Vincent slowly lowered his hand, trying to keep his breathing measured. He placed his palms in the dirt and lifted himself slowly, carefully, from the ground. He turned his head from side to side. The surrounding grass stood tall and undisturbed. He looked over his shoulder. The trail he had made stretched behind him into the darkness.
He exhaled in slow, purposeful breaths. He needed to stay quiet. As quiet as the dead. With hands still planted on the ground, he rose to his knees and closed his eyes, allowing himself a deeper breath. His pulse still raced, but he felt he had a moment to relax now.
He closed his fingers in loose soil, feeling clumps of dirt and stone. He flexed his hands and then pulled them into fists again. Dirt slipped between his fingers. He felt it, thick and heavy. He tried to flex his hands again, but the dirt held firm this time. Vincent opened his eyes and looked. Fingers from the dirt were laced into his own. Hands beneath the soil held him.
The soil before his face shifted. He tried to pull up, but the hands held strong. Something in the ground shook and then moved. Black eyes opened as the wooden face of his puppet double lifted out of the dirt. It was inches from his own face. The wood creaked, like a boat at sea or a house in a stiff wind. Its mouth curved to a wide smile.
“Murderer,” it whispered.
Vincent screamed and pulled as hard as he could. The hands would not release him. A third hand pushed up out of the soil and wrapped around his back and over his shoulder. A fourth came from the other side. Two more hands gripped him around the waist and pulled his body down flush with the earth.
With the wooden face next to his own, he could feel the cool, smooth texture of the wood against his cheek. The fingers on each hand dug into his flesh.
“I’m going to rip the power from your body,” the puppet whispered in a woman’s voice. The fingers punctured flesh. He could feel them probing into his muscles as he screamed again.
***
Selena battered at the swirl of energy holding her in place. The blood magic had bolstered Abigail’s power and made it something foreign and unintelligible to the dead witch. She could not counter Abigail’s spells because it was as though she had rewritten them in a new language.
She could feel pain overwhelming Vincent. She was still tied to his body, to his soul, even if the mirror spell had made her visible. Abigail was attempting to pull Selena’s power from him; to strip Selena’s essence off him. She did not know what effect that would have on Vincent or herself. Abigail seemed satisfied to have them both destroyed.
Charlotte, Mary-Ann, and Sandra were as still as statues at the cave’s entrance. The power flowed from them to Abigail. It was like she was using them as batteries, sapping their strength to add to her own—just as she planned to do with Selena.
The sky had almost fallen to the blackness of night. The moon was bright and full as the last rays of the day’s light vanished beyond Widow’s Cave to the west. If Abigail knew Marchosias was in the ca
ve, she seemed unconcerned. She thought the moon was a gift from the Goddess. She had no idea what a mistake she was making. The werewolf would return to his full strength quickly under the full moon. And even Abigail would be no match for the unbound demon. They were all going to die.
The binding Abigail and Maggie had done was powerful and prevented Selena from casting out at all. But it did leave a small opening. She could still cast inward.
“Finis,” she said to herself, letting the primal energy flood her prison. The mirror enchantment shattered, and her worldly reflection winked from existence.
The world grew dark. Selena stood in a field of tall grass. Vincent’s screams echoed through the night.
“Vincent!” she yelled, unable to see him.
He screamed again, the sound of someone in sheer agony. She ran through the grass, following the sound until she came upon him. He was face down in the dirt, grass flattened around him. Multiple thin, wooden arms peeled the flesh from his back, tearing it like fabric. A creature buried in the dirt held on to him like a spider, each arm tipped with a clunky hand.
The flesh of his back was open and exposed. Blood ran down his sides. Selena couldn’t help but gasp. The bones of his spine and ribs were visible and the wooden hands were pulling away meat in chunks.
The spell Abigail had cast was familiar. It was the Everlasting Nightmare. The fears of the victim made flesh. But the blood magic had corrupted it and made it more. It had transcended fear and illusion. It would kill Vincent and lay him bare for her and Maggie to do whatever they chose. They would pry Selena’s magic from his exposed soul like picking seeds from a watermelon.
She approached the creature and pulled one of the hands away, snapping the thin wooden limb and throwing the hand into the grass. A face that looked like Vincent’s but made of wood shrieked at her from the dirt. Black eyes glared as she lowered her foot onto the face, stomping again and again until the hinged jaw broke away from the head and one of the glossy back eyes collapsed into the skull.
