by Kit Hallows
Then it began to jitter and flap upon the concrete floor, producing a thick oily pool of blood.
When I looked again, I saw a two-headed cow thrashing at the creature’s feet, its eyes wild and white.
“Great.” I ran as the sound of knives scraping along the concrete floor followed and the light of sparks glimmered upon the ceiling. Blind panic surged through me; I had to force myself to look back.
The creature was gaining fast. The flash of its knife-like fingers sizzled blue and yellow against the wall of endless gloom that arced up like a wave behind it.
24
I had no weapon, nothing. That realization brought another; I was no longer astral. Somehow, I was here, corporeal. As if this place had conjured a vessel to contain my roaming spirit.
Which meant I was vulnerable.
I scoured the hall as I ran, searching for a means of defense. Tiny silver spirals began to dance on the surrounding walls, matching the patterns on the cuffs of the knife-creature’s sleeves.
The witches had been here. But was this entity their creation, or the artist’s? Or something else, something dark spawned by the mad fizzing light of the crazed, drug-addled man’s subconscious?
Scrreeeeeeeeeeeech
The clatter of knives grew deafeningly loud and its immense shadow prowled across the floor and eclipsed my own. It was almost upon me.
The sword of intention. If the witches had summoned the knife-creature…
Burning hot pain exploded across the back of my shoulders and I turned to find one of the knife-like claws raking my borrowed spirit-flesh. “Give me the sword!” I cried.
You need my help, the insidious voice inside me whispered. Yes?
“Yes, help me! Help us. Now!”
I needed to fight. Buy my other time to do whatever he could. I turned and kicked out. One of the creature’s knees buckled under my blow. I heard a loud snap and the thing clattered to a heap, its head smashing into the ground with an almighty thump. The tiny cracks in its pebble head grew to glowing fissures and the candles in its eyes flickered like a Jack-o'-lanterns. It wobbled to its feet, its knife-like fingers almost taking out my eyes as it swiped at me.
“Give me the sword!” I commanded, backing away and forcing myself to focus.
If this place could conjure painted sharks then surely anything was possible.
The entity slowed and cocked its head, as if listening to hidden, silent instructions. I harnessed that moment, closed my eyes and joined with my other. Together we imagined…
… the hard pommel of the sword of intention clasped in my shaking hand.
My hand dropped with a sudden weight and I looked down to find the sword of intention by my side, fiery orange light crackling across its blade.
“Kill!” The order echoed along the walls, both mine and my other’s voice entwined. The sword pulsed in my hand as it rose up and thrust itself deep into the entity’s chest. The creature shuddered and stumbled forward, its knife-fingers arcing toward my throat.
I pulled back as its blades sliced the air.
The fire in its eyes blazed, almost blinding me as I wrenched the sword from its chest. I stepped back as it lunged again, its knives glancing across my coat.
A scream of woeful despair rushed from the wound in its chest. A woman’s voice.
A witch? Was it being controlled remotely, like Tom’s assassin had been?
My eyes flitted to the silver spirals on its sleeves and I thought of the Hexling and how I’d bested it. I slashed down with the sword, lopping off one of the creature’s knife-hands.
Another cry issued from within it, this one wracked with agony. And then its other hand came up and cut me deep in the chest, its blade glancing off a rib.
I cried out as I booted the creature's other leg, relishing the sound of cracking as it gave way under my rage. Then it toppled to its knees and bobbed like a spindly grotesque mannequin.
Cut! I lopped off its other bladed hand. It clattered to the ground and skittered away like a scissoring steel spider. A low, heavy wail came from the gash in the creature’s chest and as I glanced into it I saw a pool of black, and the distant oval shaped gleam of a face. A woman’s face.
Not Wyght’s, but one of her servants busy operating this nightmarish poppet.
“I’m coming for you. All of you,” I cried. Then I swung the sword without command and dealt the killing blow, chopping off the creature’s head. It struck the floor hard and deep ear splitting cracks ran across the floor. Slowly, the flames in its eyes extinguished, producing waxy tendrils of smoke.
I saved you, my other whispered. Remember this. I sent him away, his protestations fading as he slipped into the background. It was true. He had saved us. And I wondered, not for the first time, where exactly I’d be without the dark stranger lurking within me.
The strings of lights in the corridor ahead twinkled and gleamed as I strode on, my conjured sword clenched in my borrowed hand, my heart racing hard.
25
A door slammed behind me. A door in a wall that hadn’t been there before.
I ran back and wrenched the handle. It opened onto a rough barrier of dusty nailed wooden boards. Somewhere on the other side, someone hummed a half familiar melody. I pressed my ear to a gap in the planks but the song tapered off, as if the singer knew they’d been found out.
As I peered through the crack I could see that the corridor I’d just traveled down was gone and, in its place, an abyss of solid darkness. There was no going back; my only option was to continue on. I plowed ahead with determination, but slowed as large square objects appeared on either side of the hall. Televisions, old and clunky, their cords whipping across the ground like thin grey snakes, their pronged plugs flashing like coppery fangs in the gloom.
The screens burst to life as I passed and static blared from the speakers with a sound resembling sandpaper frantically scrubbed against hard dry wood. Tiny flickering lights swarmed and glowed like fireflies behind the arched bulging glass.
I could hear music. It seemed to be coming from a new door that had materialized at the end of the corridor. It was ajar and bright golden light spilled from the gap. I pushed it open and entered a room with a raised platform against one wall. Five mannequins had been arranged upon it. Two held acoustic guitars, another pair were poised with violins and the final figure had a double bass suspended from a shoulder strap. They tapped their plastic feet as they nodded their heads in time to soft, lounge music and I watched their empty expressionless eyes follow me as I passed.
I needed to get out of this place before its cloying insanity warped my mind. I spotted a door on the far side of the stage that opened onto a flight of narrow wooden stairs. This was it, the way to reach Miles. Each step creaked and groaned as I hurried toward the upmost floor.
At the top was a tall spacious room, the rafters stretched up further than I could see and before me a short modular wall hung with paintings. A crowd stood before the display and as I peered between them I could see the paintings were identical to the ones I’d flipped through in Miles’s studio. Colorful well rendered canvases with spattered ink and discordant disturbing images of pyramids, snakes and dark doors injected into them like violent exclamation marks.
“Hackneyed,” said a woman to the gentleman beside her.
He nodded and replied, “Cliched dross.”
Both of the critics were incredibly lifelike, yet neither of them were real.
I slipped past, made my way to the end of the gallery and turned to enter an adjoining one. The paintings there were wide and bright. Most of the scenes were rural, but each held unsettling details; a tiny glassy eyed frog with missing legs perched in the reeds, an ornate child’s bedroom with toys and dolls that had horribly human eyes, happy families sprawled out on the ground with chalked outlines around their forms, their heads inclined toward the viewers.
“None of these are even remotely original,” said a tall man to the studious-looking teenager that stood besi
de him.
“Yes, they’re quite tiresome,” the teen said as he pulled out a phone and glanced at its screen. “There’s another exhibition not far from here. The work there is of a much higher caliber.”
As I turned the next corner, a towering canvas filled the entire wall. A forested landscape with cobalt blue mountains, and a silvery lake. The same lake I’d crossed to get here. There was no pier in this rendering, just an immense black door stretching up from the water to the sky above. I moved on, scanning the crowd for Miles as I made my way down another passage. The pieces here was mainly inky scrawls and scribbles. I watched as they grew more complex, slowly etching themselves upon the paper, as if being drawn by ghostly hands.
The crowd sighed, swore and tutted as they ambled past me. They were eerie. Unreal. Not as they appeared.
Then I found Miles, at the far end of the room, slouched in a broken armchair. The sides were rent open, stuffing slowly tumbling from the holes and drifting away like tiny clouds. “Hi,” I said.
He looked up but as soon as he tried to speak, his teeth fell from his lips and clattered to the polished wooden floor. A laugh burst forth from the crowd and rippled through the throng like a rumor.
“It’s not real,” I told Miles as I noted the tear-stained tracks that ran through the grime on his cheeks. “None of it is, except you and I. The rest is your imagination.”
He gazed down at his teeth, his eyes filled with bewilderment and shame.
“Put them back. Just think it done.”
He closed his eyes. The teeth scattered along the floor faded away and reappeared in his mouth. “Thank you,” he said. And then stared at me sharply. “You can see me?”
“Of course.”
“No one else can. They just stroll by, pointing and laughing at my work. They say hateful things. As if I’m not even here.”
“But you are here.” I tried to give him a reassuring smile. “Just like I am. At the moment we’re bound inside your imagination, trapped in a living dream that we need to find our way out of.”
“Who are you?”
“Morgan Rook. I came here to bring you back home, but first I need to know who else is here?”
He nodded to the crowd. “Just them.”
“No. They’re part of you. Figments of your mind, a manifestation of fears by the look of it. I'm looking for an intruder. A woman, most likely, with a silver tattoo.” I placed my finger to my wrist.
His face turned as white as chalk. “I shouldn’t speak about her.” He glanced around. “She told me not to. And she was very specific; paint the door and keep your mouth shut.”
“What door?”
He stood and nodded for me to follow. We made our way to the center of the gallery. A huge canvas was suspended over the floor, near a stepladder and paint spattered drop cloth.
A black door stretched from the bottom of the canvas to the top. It was so meticulous and detailed I could feel the layers of paint that made up the wood grain, but one of the panels was missing in the upper right-hand corner. “Why didn’t you finish it?” I asked.
“I got scared.” Miles looked even more haunted now. “I heard something, on the other side of it. Someone’s waiting there. Someone I don’t want to see.” He gestured to the gallery. “I stopped. That’s when all the people came and started taunting me and laughing at my work. Before that there was no one else here. Apart from her.”
“It's a punishment,” I followed his gaze to the crowd. They looked real. Very real. I strode over to one, an elderly man in a sharp suit, and placed my hand on his chest. It passed through.
“What the fuck?” Miles’s eyes grew wide. “What the actual fuck?”
“He’s not real.” The man gave me a vague look of disgust. “None of it’s real. Listen, we need to leave.” Before you finish that painting. I had no idea what purpose that doorway was meant to serve, but it was clearly nothing good if the Silver Spiral had ordered Miles to create it.
The overhead lights flickered, and the crowd’s faces transformed into long, pinched demonic visages. Burning red eyes flashed, as they bared their fang-like teeth with pure unbridled hatred.
“No!” Miles screamed. “I’ll do it!” he cried, grabbing a brush from a trough of black paint and beginning to climb the stepladder.
I grabbed his sleeve. “Wait!”
“If I finish the piece, they’ll leave me alone. She’ll leave me alone.”
“No, she won’t. The Silver Spiral never leaves loose ends, and if you die here, I die too. So put the brush down and help me. We need to get out of here.”
“How?”
“Paint another door. A different one.” I glanced around and found a canvas leaning against the wall. It was blank but for a single iridescent feather carefully rendered in one corner. “Not black. Do you have any other colors?”
“I have every color there is.” He held up the brush and stared at the bristles. The black paint that soaked it transformed to magenta.
“Good.” I thought of Sindaub, how he'd transported us from the Embersen house to his shadowy demon realm. If it worked for him there was a chance it could work for us too. “Paint another door, imagine your studio on the other side of it.”
“Will that work?”
“Yes. If you believe it. This is your nightmare, Miles. Reimagine it. Quickly.”
Miles sketched a rectangle, then he filled it in with elegant fluid strokes until it resembled a tall magenta door with a delicate golden handle. He'd left it ajar and through the gap I could see the other Miles, the real one, sitting before his canvas, staring into the mirror that had been taped to his hand. “Good.” I clenched his shoulder. “Now, push it open and take us through. Will us back to the real world, and when you get there, open up your eyes. Got it?”
“My eyes are already open.”
“No, they’re not. You’ll need to open them again, trust me.” I glanced behind us as the sound of shuffling feet approached. The demonic mob were coming in one solid, shambling mass. “Think, Miles. Fast!”
26
We slipped through the door into Miles’s studio and I thought we’d made it, until I noticed the shadows in the corners, shadows that fell in impossible places. The whole studio looked fresh and wet. Painted.
I glanced back to the doorway, the demons from the gallery were still shambling toward us like a horde of zombies. They’d be upon us in moments. “Open your eyes!” I shouted to Miles as I let myself drift from the lifelike body I’d inhabited within his mind.
He gaped at me in horror. “You’re a ghost!”
“I’m not a ghost. But I will be if they get a hold of us,” I nodded to the horde as they staggered ever closer. I’d left my sword behind when I’d slipped out of my borrowed form. Which meant I had no defense.“Wake the hell up.” I glanced around, searching for a way out of his mind, but there was none.
The door creaked and one of the entities from the gallery stepped through, the others following close behind.
“Wake up, Miles! Now, or we will die!”
“How?” He screamed as the mob spilled into the room. Then I saw it, the almost imperceptible glimmer of the thin, translucent silver chain. It encircled his ankle and stretched off into the gallery. The witch that had slipped into his mind had bound him here. I glanced around the painted studio and spotted a scalpel in a toolbox. “There.” I pointed. “Use that. Cut the chain. Put everything you have into it!”
Miles stumbled to the toolbox and as he pulled the soft wet scalpel out, it solidified in his hand. “Hurry!” I cried as the mob closed in.
He hacked at the chain and glanced back bewildered as one of the demons reached for him.
“Cut it,” I cried. “Sever the chain.” But Miles lashed out with the scalpel, opening a wound in the entity's throat. The gushing tear pulsed as ink and paint spattered the air.
“The chain, Miles. Cut it! Now!” The demons reared behind him, filling the painted room. Miles began to turn toward them, to listen
to the treacherous drone of their derisive chatter.
“Focus!” I screamed. “Cut the fucking chain!”
He sawed at it. Slowly it crumbled and fell away and then his painted world lurched and I found myself falling through a blood-red backdrop.
I pulled the astral glasses from my eyes as the world brightened and the studio transformed from painted to real.
I blinked my eyes again and again then reached up to pull the glasses off, but they were already in my hand. I glanced around. The magenta door was gone, along with the murderous demons that Miles had unwittingly set upon us.
Dauple glanced up from his seat in the corner, set his book down and whispered something to the bluebottle fly buzzing around his head. Then he opened his coat and it flew inside. He gave me an embarrassed smile. “Just a new friend I made. It got a bit lonely in here, with you two living corpses.” Dauple stood and stretched. “Glad to see that black door’s gone now. I didn’t like it. There’s nothing good on the other side of that, I told myself. Nothing good at all.”
He was right, the shadowy apparition was gone. Miles sat frozen in his chair, his eyes wide as they stared at me. “What the fuck’s going on? I dreamt of you. Just now.”
“It seems your dreams are coming true.” I took the scalpel from his toolbox and cut the string that held his hand up and the duct tape that bound his fingers. “Where'd you get the spice?” I asked, as I pulled the packet from my pocket. “And who stuck this mirror to your hand?”
