by Scott Hale
Does the blood speak? Does the flesh make promises? Can it? Will it? The ghoul glances at Mr. Haemo. Even with his thousands of eyes, the bug won’t make eye contact. He feared him because you were supposed to fear him, and he still does, but not in the way the mosquito expects him to. He killed four Night Terrors without breaking sweat, and he can spellweave without any effort. But he had chosen the ghoul for a reason. He said it was to infiltrate the remains of Brooksville Manor, to find the Night Terror encampment and the homunculus stationed there, but the ghoul knows there is more to it than that. The ghoul is needed. He can harbor blood and flesh of the Night Terrors in a way the mosquito cannot. But if Mr. Haemo can turn him into a blood slave to control, why the cordiality?
So, after hours of silence, the ghoul breaks it: “How long have you been watching me?”
“A long time.”
“I didn’t know.”
“That’s the point.”
“Why?”
Mr. Haemo shrugs. He’s not going to give him straight answers from here on out.
“You could’ve shown yourself sooner.”
“It wasn’t time.”
“For what? What were you waiting for?”
“Things to be in their proper places.” Mr. Haemo cracks his knuckles. “I’m old. I was here before the Trauma, and I’ll be here buzzing along well after it. Waiting is nothing.”
The ghoul mumbles, “Can you see into the future?”
Mr. Haemo looks at him. “Only if it’s already happened.”
“The hell does that mean?”
“Bloodlines are timelines. They grease the Dread Clock’s dark hands. I know them well.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Mr. Haemo pokes the ghoul’s nose with his sharp finger. “I’m the abortion that survived.”
The ghoul shakes his head, says, “Don’t cut yourself on all that edge.”
“I grew too slow,” Mr. Haemo says with a sigh. “I could have shown the Old World such a good time.” He spits out a wad of blood. It forms a name: Herbert North.
They begin to make their way up out of the river. The bank is dusty and crumbles beneath their weight. When the ghoul stumbles, Mr. Haemo takes his hand like a child in a crowded mall and helps him along.
The ghoul feels sick constantly equating the bug to a parent.
At the top, they stop. The sun sits low over what once was Brooksville. The ghoul hasn’t been here in untold years. It is unrecognizable to him. There are no buildings. Every building, of which there had to have been thousands, is gone. It is a field of craters and vermillion veins filled with ramshackle huts and the ramshackle shufflers who might call them home. The ghoul counts thirty people in total, but there may be more farther on. In the field is a field of their own; crops—corn, potatoes, and wheat—and plants—Null, Respite, Antagonist, Numb, and Warmth.
This is a community, and everywhere where he’s gone, he’s seen nothing but an intense need for community. Humanity has been traumatized. God left, and those that didn’t chase It, chased one another down, and chastened. Seeing the crops and the people here, the ghoul thinks there may be a chance at reconciliation. There may be a chance God will come back.
The ghoul snaps out of it and says, “What is it? A homunculus?”
“Manmade,” Mr. Haemo says. “They are the original flesh fiends. The original Night Terrors. Their progenitors. They were supposed to be a perfection of humanity, a mold to teach more conscious, free-thinking creatures—”
“Night Terrors.”
“Yeah. They were supposed to guide and educate the Night Terrors into working with humanity. But you’ve seen how that’s worked out for everyone.”
The ghoul nods.
Mr. Haemo stretches his wings. “The thing is the homunculi are completely capable of spellweaving.”
“That’s what you do.”
“That’s right. And something bio-organic such as themselves shouldn’t be able to do that.”
“Can Night Terrors spellweave?”
“Only a rare few.”
“Why do you care what homunculi can do? They don’t seem to be any threat to you.”
Mr. Haemo snorts. “They’re not. But I want what’s inside them. I want to know how they do it. I want to know what Ødegaard did. I want what’s in them. I want to hear its secrets and promises.”
Several Corrupted in the field turn and take notice of the ghoul and the mosquito. Quickly, they hurry away from the riverbank and settle in behind a few large trees that lead into the woods farther on. Maidenwood, that was what they used to call it. Now they don’t call it anything at all.
“I can track Corrupted. I can’t track Night Terrors. That doesn’t sit well with me. They’re up to some fucked up shit. I want to keep tabs. I want to be there when the blood spills.”
The ghoul doesn’t buy Mr. Haemo’s last line, but keeps that to himself.
Mr. Haemo presses his claw against one of the trees, says, “This’ll do,” and then, with both hands, grabs the bark and rips outwards. The tree opens to him like a womb, and inside, waiting all along, as if it’d been there all along, is the red, shadowy light of Exuviae.
“Have to wait until nightfall. Have to teach you a thing or two about a thing or two until then.”
Mr. Haemo steps into the tree.
The ghoul follows after, never even considering the fact he could run.
Unlike Earth, Exuviae is unchanged. The ghoul emerges from the red, shadowy light onto the hill where they’d sat around the cold campfire. The fire is still there, too, frosting the air with its flames. Across the golden way, the convent’s bells peal, and the ghoul has a suspicion they might even be for him and the bug.
Mr. Haemo takes a seat beside the fire.
The ghoul does the same.
“Put on the Night Terror.”
The ghoul’s attention drifts back to the convent. Small shapes in habits are climbing across the roof, leaving behind what appears to be patches of hair in their wake.
“Put it on,” Mr. Haemo demands.
The ghoul closes his eyes and opens his mind. He goes to his flesh closet and finds the Night Terror there. He slips into her skin. It’s no different than anyone else’s. Without the violent entitlement, the Night Terror is no different than any other Corrupted—Corruption withstanding. He will not be convincing as her. He doesn’t even know her name.
“Yep, that’s her,” Mr. Haemo says.
The ghoul opens his eyes and looks down. His figure is bulkier than his natural frame. He has breasts, but he’s long since gotten over that shock. What throws him off more than anything else when he’s a woman is the looks he gets, the way conversations change; how what’s between his legs is simultaneously celebrated and debased. Monsters had better manners than most Trauma-born men and women.
“Her party was sent out from Brooksville Manor to observe the transubstantiation of Lillian into Mother Abbess Priscilla or whatever those bible thumpers have decided to call her. She was a captain.”
He tosses the ghoul the ram skull. “Put it on.”
The ghoul catches it, does as he’s told. The skull is bulky and digs into his head. It’s not comfortable, but no one ever said the life of a flesh fiend was.
“You saw what happened with your own eyes, thanks to me, so you don’t have to BS that part of it. We’ll have to cover you in blood to explain why you’re the only survivor.” Mr. Haemo snaps his fingers. “I’ll cover you good.”
The ghoul shifts the mask. It smells of rot.
“But Night Terrors are freaky little fuckers. You’re going to have to play the part to a T, or you’re going to get pinched. I’d say put on your best Nazi impersonation, but knowing you, you’ll start speaking German and heiling away. So…” Mr. Haemo’s proboscis extends to its full length. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
Mr. Haemo stands. At seven feet tall, wings expanded and proboscis erect, the mosquito is gargantuan to the sitting ghoul
. He steps around the fire, goes up to the ghoul, and says, “Open your mouth, baby.”
The ghoul doesn’t.
“I’m not jerking you around about what I can teach you. I’m going to show you right now. I’m going to give you a taste. You’re going to possess this Night Terror. It’ll be temporary, and you’ll still be you in there, but you’ll also be her. All the way.”
The ghoul opens his mouth enough to speak. He is muffled as he says, “What you’re going to teach me… can it be undone? The real thing?”
“If someone knows you well enough and gets inside your head enough, like moi, yeah. But other than that, you’ll be awash in ignorant bliss. Lucky you.”
“You’re not going to turn me into a blood slave, are you?”
Mr. Haemo laughs so hard he starts to cough. “You’re already doing everything I want. You’re the best blood slave I could ever hope for. Open your mouth. You’re going to like the way she tastes.”
The ghoul doesn’t budge.
Mr. Haemo reaches out, takes him by the throat, and digs all five claws into his neck, penetrating the skin and muscle.
“Open up,” the mosquito says. “You’ve come too far for a change of heart.”
The ghoul, gasping, opens his mouth.
Mr. Haemo rips his claws out of his throat, and the wounds heal instantly.
“Don’t forget to swallow,” Mr. Haemo says, touching the tip of his proboscis to the ghoul’s mouth. “Spitters are quitters.”
The ghoul closes his eyes. He sees his family in the dark there. Ava, Zoey, and Faye. He wants to tell them he’s doing this for them—a family man’s favorite phrase and justification. But the truth of the matter, he’s not doing it for anyone or anything, but to drown and die in the undertow of ignorant bliss.
He opens his eyes in time to see what appears to be a magnified germ drop from Mr. Haemo’s proboscis onto his tongue. The green, spiked orb, surrounded by tens of floating globs, stabs its way toward his mouth. Panicking, the ghoul clamps his teeth down on his tongue to stop it. But the germ scales his teeth like walls and melts into his gums.
Everything does not go black. Everything becomes everything. Innumerable images flood his mind at an incomprehensible rate. Memories he cannot possibly have coalesce and co-exist alongside his own. He feels his mind splitting apart. New cavities are created. His body shakes. Or rather, her body shakes. Their eyes roll back in their head. Auditory hallucinations, or maybe just remembrances, wrack his skull. He, she… they are foaming at the mouth. A seizure in the wake of this schism.
Mr. Haemo grabs the ghoul, or the Night Terror, and starts to chant frantically.
This was not how it was supposed to go.
5
The ghoul’s brain itches. He imagines it splitting, like cells dividing. Trying to reconcile his thoughts with the Night Terror’s is getting him nowhere. His mind aches in the way puzzles make it ache during that one insurmountable step before being solved. He knows he can do it, but he doesn’t know how to do it, so he lets the process take him where it wills.
He returns to the moment of her death. She is staring him down, except in his eyes, she sees a moth staring back. It reaches out to her with bladed fingers.
Memories mount one another, each one trying to secure their place at the top of an infinitely growing pile of experiences.
He goes farther back. He’s smaller now—a child—because the world is larger than it should be. He’s in a swamp. White tupelos sit swollen on the shore, getting their fill of the placid waters beyond. Thick, brightly colored tussocks decorate the ground, like fallen pompoms from a clown’s suit. He turns, because the memory turns, and finds a village behind him—Traesk, likely. There are huts as far as he can see, which isn’t very far, given the Night Terror’s height and being nearsighted.
He hears something. She moves forward. Night Terrors cross paths with her, but pay her no mind. She rounds corners. Her fear becomes his fear. They are panting together. Someone screams out.
The screaming melds with moaning. Traesk gives way to the texture of blushing flesh. They rear back from a sweating neck to a sweating body. The naked woman beneath them is on her belly and bound, and Corrupted. They tug on the rope to tease her. The woman is begging for them to stop, but instead, they go all the way in every-which-way they can.
The woman cries out in pain. They laugh, and grind themselves against her backside, going purple with power. Someone whimpers. They look up. More Corrupted lay on their sides bound to one another in the corner. They are covered in blood. Their faces have been turned into a pink mash. They are upset that one of them is still alive. It is embarrassing.
The memories shift. They sit beside a fire, their hand in the hand of the female Night Terror beside them. They are teenagers, and they are in love; a deep, stupid kind of love; the kind that could rival electricity if such a force could be put to use for things other than fawning and fucking. The ghoul doesn’t think this. The Night Terror thinks this. She thinks this as she remembers this moment for him from another moment later in her life. She is dead, but inside him, she is alive.
The swamp puts on a show. Fireflies take to the black stage and fill it with bioluminescent bravado. They drift across the air, making shapes that only these two young lovers can find meaning in. They squeeze the girl’s hand. Her name is Callie. She is a vulture.
They lean into one another and, going in for a kiss, miss each other’s mouths. They close their eyes and try again. Callie’s lips are wet and slightly chapped; kissing her turns their insides in the best way possible.
When they pull away, they are back in Six Pillars, in the house of Filipa. They are on the ground in the kitchen, a ghoul on top of them, tearing at their throat. Callie is coming down the hall to save her.
They die. They live.
Traesk screams. It has been this way all day and all night. Fifty Corrupted lie in a chain, their heads hacked from their bodies. The public execution has every Night Terror in attendance. The elders insist for them to remain calm, but the hot blood has made them hot, and soon they are down on all fours, reveling.
They step up to the Corrupted on the chopping block. They grab him by the back of his hair and scream into his ear, “Where is it? What’s its name?”
The Corrupted tries to wriggle. Another Night Terror, the Dog, steps up to him. The Dog takes two fingers and plunges them into the blood collected around the block. Then, the Dog shoves them into the Corrupted’s mouth, enough to make him vomit. He does this, over and over, until the Corrupted is the color of a stillborn baby and there is nothing left in his stomach.
“Lacuna,” he says, bawling. “Off the c-coast from Nachtla.” He heaves. “God f-forgive m-me.”
They laugh and step on his neck.
“I love you.”
They are in the Night Terror’s room. They are tucked into bed. A candle burns on the windowsill, its flame moved by the heavy air coming off the swamp. Their mom and dad are in the room. She is sitting on the edge of the bed, holding their big toe from over the blanket. He is standing near the door, smiling in the shadows; his arms crossed, covered in a thick mat of hair they always like to pull on to make him mad.
“We love you, too, Emvola,” Mom says.
Brooksville of years after and hours before bursts through the floor. It is the morning of their death. They are underground. The Monkey (Caine), the Lion (Rusaf), the Boar (Domuz), and Callie, the Vulture, stand at their side.
In front of them there is a massive hole, like an abscessed wound. It is covered in a wreath of millions of feasting maggots. In front of that stands a strange creature. A sexless, genderless humanoid without any armor or weapons. Its eyes are like two cracked marbles still covered in the grit of the games they’d played. Its hands are clenched. Liquefied maggots drip from the creases. There is already a large puddle of the creatures around the humanoid’s feet.
It is a homunculus. They know this. Very few do.
“Do not intervene,”
the homunculus says. “Without the Lillians, there is no telling what the next dominant religion will be. We need not taunt Exuviae.”
They nod.
“Kill no one. Rape no one.”
They and their companions grumble ridiculously, like sitcom actors.
“We must be better if we are going to make the world better. Go, now, and see history.”
“What about the Maggot?” they say.
“The Maggot knows me well, Emvola. If it is here, I will find it. Go, and be more than what you are. I trust you.”
I trust you. The statement makes them feel that deep, stupid kind of love again. I trust you. They can’t remember anyone ever saying that to them in their entire life. Most had never been given cause to. I trust you. They throw their arm around Callie’s shoulder and squeeze her into them.
They walk out of Brooksville in a series of choppy vignettes. When they reach Six Pillars, they are sixteen again. They are sitting on the chest of their first Corrupted kill. The heart has already been removed and placed in the proper bag. They will be a full member of the tribe soon. She picks at his skin and slips a piece into her mouth. The elders have recently forbidden cannibalism, stating that it could lead to genetic defects in future births. But the Corrupted and Night Terrors are not of the same species, and how does that saying go?
Oh, yeah. That’s right.
Old habits die hard.
4
The ghoul goes it alone. He came out of the mental stitching by himself. He’ll carry this conjoined consciousness on his own. He’s had enough of his mosquito chaperone.
One hour; Mr. Haemo had warned he had one hour. As he follows the river to the final resting place of Brooksville Manor, he counts the seconds in his head, her head—their head. Emvola, the Night Terror whose life he now possesses, is quiet at the moment. Her last thought was that she was dying. Now, she cannot understand why she isn’t. He wonders what will become of this ghostly mind inside his own. Can it form new memories? And when this hour is up, what will stay behind, disguising itself as his own recollections?
