Morbid Metamorphosis

by Lycan Valley Press

  The monster snarled at Ivy beneath its exquisite mask; festering boils oozed behind full red lips the man leaned down to kiss. Ivy growled, a guttural sound that rose unbidden from her depths, and the monster and its prey hurried away.

  Ivy stalked to the door and knocked. Locks unclicked more slowly than she wanted, and the building’s shadows stormed the aperture as it opened a fraction. A vivid green eye, perfectly outlined in black kohl, peered out at her. “Yes?” An accent Ivy couldn’t place.

  “I’m Ivy.” She didn’t smile; it frightened people now. “The priest sent me.”

  The woman said nothing, but that one green eye spoke a language all its own – there was knowledge in it, power. An indecipherable whisper drifted from the woman, and the shadows reared back as if struck.

  The door opened just enough for Ivy to squeeze through before it was locked behind her. The inside was as nondescript as the outside – two dark-brown couches, a large wooden trunk operating as a coffee table, and a door at the rear with an intricately carved tree whose leaves, Ivy was almost sure, had shifted when she’d brought the breeze in with her.

  Nothing adorned the walls, and no shadows plagued them. The woman stared at Ivy; dressed in an indigo robe that accentuated her curves, her black hair fell in long curls past her shoulders, but it was those eyes that held Ivy spellbound

  “You have danced with it,” the woman said simply.

  “Yes.” That quiet admission gave birth to Ivy’s fear, taking root in her gut, it infected every part of her like the parasite it was.

  “Do not be afraid.” Even frowning, the woman was beautiful. “You will come to no harm here.” She stared over Ivy’s shoulder for a long time. “We will stay in this room,” she finally said. “No mirrors.”

  Ivy nodded. She’d smashed all the mirrors at home; she knew what lingered behind her, she didn’t need the reminder.

  The woman motioned to one of the couches. “My name is Diana,” she said as she sat opposite Ivy. “The priest… it was an unkindness you bestowed, one born from desperation, no doubt.”

  The priest…all that blood. Ivy pulled her coat tight around her; even beneath the layers she could feel her ribs straining against her skin – hunger pains no longer prodded her to eat. She frowned; had she remembered to feed herself today—

  “Ivy.” Diana’s tone was that of a mother scolding her child. “Do you need my help, or do you not?”

  “I do,” Ivy said. “No one believes me. No one will give me answers.” She glanced at her grazed knuckles and smirked. “Almost no one.”

  “You have been… demanding help from the wrong places.” Her gaze flicked over Ivy’s shoulder again, eyes narrowing. “You should have come to me sooner.” She stood: a graceful movement. “I have what you need, but the items do not come cheap.”

  Ivy removed the wads of cash from inside her coat and placed them on the trunk as Diana moved toward the carved door. “Ten thousand.”

  Diana stopped, keeping her back to Ivy. “The price was fifteen. This is not a simple task you undertake.” The branches hewn into the door whipped back and forth in consort with Diana’s irritation. “The tools and my knowledge come at a fair price. You were well aware of this.”

  Ivy reached into another pocket. “It’s all I could get. I have jewellery. Emeralds and diamonds. Gold.” Ivy placed the three rings atop the cash; fear of failure skittering through her veins. “Please.”

  Diana turned, staring past Ivy’s shoulder again.

  “You see it, don’t you?” Ivy said, unable to stop the tremor in her voice, unable to turn and face the thing that had been haunting her since that night three months back. “You see it.”

  Diana said nothing for a long time before finally dropping her gaze to Ivy’s. “I feel it. It’s marked you.” She returned to the couch, sitting as gracefully as she’d stood, and not once looking at the treasure on the trunk. “You defied the natural order of things, Ivy,” she said not unkindly. “You are here when you should not be.”

  Ivy’s fingers traced the scar at the back of her skull. “It took from me. It ruined everything. I was just doing my job when—”

  “People die every day,” Diana interrupted. “Doing their jobs, driving their cars, sitting on the toilet. It does not matter—”

  “It matters to me,” Ivy said, her hands clenching as fury began to burn along the pathways of her fear. “Me.”

  “Your anger has no place here. It serves no purpose.”

  “Purpose?” Ivy spat the word. “Anger has kept me alive. Anger brought me to you. And anger will see me get what I’m owed.”

  One perfectly manicured brow arched provocatively, a smirk ghosting Diana’s lips. “And what is it you’re owed, Ivy?” She raised a hand, stopping Ivy’s answer. “But know this, once you tell me, the door is open and you must go through. There is no going back. Others have tried and failed. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” She understood better than Diana ever could, but Ivy would come back; back to who she had once been, back to a world where monsters didn’t acknowledge her as one of their own.

  “Then speak the words, child.” Diana leaned forward, almost hungering for Ivy’s answer. Black curls fell past the woman’s face, casting it in shadow, and, for a moment, Ivy swore a wizened face looked back at her. “Tell me, what is it you seek?”

  “My soul. I want it back.”

  ***

  Ivy tightened the bandage on her left hand then checked her watch as she hurried along another forgotten street of downtown Bonneville. Midnight, Diana had said, when the lines between yesterday, today and tomorrow blur. That’s when Ivy would find her way to the Slipstream.

  There were no street signs in this part of town, and she consulted the map Diana had drawn then took the next left. Her boots echoed dully on the cracked pavement – a lonely sound on the winter night’s air. But if the last few months had taught her anything, when it came down to it, right down to it, you walked this life alone.

  The weight of the knife – athame, Diana had called it – in her right coat pocket reassured her; the three coins in her left pocket a muted jingle that held a tempo out of step with her own.

  Ivy turned the corner and stopped in her tracks. Tenements, battered and broken, lined both sides. Shadows swarmed the street, misshapen blots of ink on a decaying canvas.

  She moved cautiously down the middle of the road. Everything seemed… hazy, indistinct, the light from the crescent moon struggling to put a face to what lay below. She glanced over her shoulder: a world of sharp edges and hard lines.

  Ivy scanned the street ahead and found the lamppost – rusted and twisted and blind. A line of weeds ran from the deformed post across the pavement and disappeared into the shadows. She edged up to it, her heart hammering against her ribs. Ivy knew this fear more intimately than she’d known anything else.

  Her right hand closed around the coins in her pocket; one burned hotter than the others, just as Diana had said. She removed it then unwound the bloodied bandage. The cut across her palm was deep and needed stitches, but it was the price for passage. Still, seeing her blood flowing into a wooden bowl, and Diana’s refusal to explain her need for it, had set a foreboding deep in Ivy’s bones.

  She closed her hand around the coin, the danake, coating it in her blood as Diana had instructed – it would ensure only she could pass. “More rules.”

  Crouched at the line of weeds, she checked her watch. Any second now.

  The buildings began to shift beneath the shadows – there one moment gone the next, only to rise again. She took a breath, hesitated a moment then recited the words Diana had taught her. “One coin beholding a world that’s unfolding.”

  She flicked the coin as one would a marble. It skipped over the weeds, rolling along the road and cleaving the darkness like a blade through flesh. Ivy gave chase. The coin bumped over cracks, swerved around potholes, but remained true to its course.

  Ivy’s boots thumped loudly on the road,
but the silver piece accelerated as she did. The coin sped down a dip in the road then was propelled into the air, into the darkness, and disappeared.

  “No!”

  She raced to the spot, but it was gone. “This is bullshit!” The danake was supposed to lead her to the Slipstream, to the veil between worlds. Sure, the street that had been so hazy and unsure was now rigidly firm, but it was still the shitty part of town.

  Ivy screamed her rage, honing its edges to a poisoned point. Desperation had made her an easy mark. “I’ll kill you, you bitch. I’ll fucking kill you.”

  She had a knuckle-white grip on the athame, but no memory of removing the knife from her coat. Taking a deep breath, she willed calm, returning the blade to her pocket and forcing her fingers to relinquish their hold.

  Frowning, she raised her hands – blood still coated her palm but the cut was now a thin scar. What the hell’s happening?

  She closed her eyes and tilted her face to the sky. Another deep breath and she opened them. The crescent moon was gone, replaced by one that sat full and fat in the clear night sky. But it was the arcing brushstroke of stars that brought on the panic. The terror. It rose hard and fast, driving her blindly forward.

  The stars.

  Old Billy Nevin.

  The staccato beep of Billy’s heart monitor thundered in her ears, and she fled from it now as she wished she had then. But she was back in the ward, back in the room with that… that… thing floating above her patient as it had lowered its dreadful face for a final kiss. Ivy had seen the fear alight in Billy’s eyes, his mouth drawn impossibly wide. But it hadn’t been a scream that had ripped from Billy’s throat.

  Stars. That’s what she’d seen. A beautiful cosmos expelled on the gossamer of the old man’s last breath.

  That thing. That dreadful thing. A rippling host of obsidian that defied logic. Skeletal fingers gripped Billy’s jaw as it drank, the light slowly leaving the old man’s eyes.

  She’d gasped and it had turned her way…

  “No!” Ivy wrenched herself into the present, curled her hands into fists and beat them against her legs until she drew to a stop. Hands resting on her knees, she concentrated on her breathing until it steadied, until she found that dead zone between her emotions.

  Fear and rage, that’s all she now had. Primal emotions. Survival traits. And the gestation between the two was getting shorter the longer she stayed… less whole. It would drive her to madness, to the end of a rope or the sharp edge of a razor blade. But she refused to let that thing win, not after all she had suffered.

  Ivy straightened then stumbled back. The buildings were gone. All of them replaced by stone clock-towers as far as the eye could see. Each pointed roof stabbed into the sky at varying heights – some small and squat, others monolithic, but all bore a clock-face near its apex. And all told a different time.

  She turned in a slow circle, mesmerised. “Not in Kansas anymore.”

  “It’s quite the spectacle, no?”

  Ivy spun to the voice.

  A young man leaned against a tower whose tip disappeared into the night sky. Dark hair slicked back, his pinstriped pants, crisp white shirt and black suspenders looked straight from the 1920s. He pulled a pocketwatch from his pants, completing the picture. Flicking the casing open, he whistled softly. “You’re quick.”

  Ivy slipped her hands into her coat and breathed a sigh of relief; her knife and remaining coins were still there.

  The stranger pocketed his watch then pushed from the wall and strolled into the middle of the street, stopping opposite her. He grinned. “Run, did you?”

  “Who are you?”

  He slipped his hands into his pockets, imitating her, studying her. “Question is: who are you?”

  Ivy stared into bright blue eyes ringed with fatigue, but she could see no monster lurking beneath his skin. “I asked first.”

  He dipped his head. “Quinn.”

  She made him wait. “Ivy.”

  “You’re not, though, are you? Not really Ivy. Not anymore.”

  His words ignited a spark of anger she knew all too well. “I know who I am.”

  “No,” he said with a shake of his head. “You know your name, but you haven’t been you for a while. That’s why you’re here.”

  Her hand tightened on the athame. “Where is it?”

  “Where’s what, my dear?”

  “Don’t play games with me,” she said through gritted teeth. “Where’s my soul and the thing that took it.”

  He rocked back on his heels, spreading his arms wide. “Could be anywhere in this tourist trap.”

  The spark was now a wildfire in her gut. “You think this is a joke? That thing left me two emotions. Two.” Did he flinch at that revelation? She stepped toward him. “Fear.” He countered her advance. “And fury.” She mimicked his smile. “Which do you think I’m wearing now?”

  “You’re mistaken.”

  “Am I?”

  “You lie,” he said. “It will be your undoing.”

  “I can’t lie here. It’s an automatic forfeit. I know the rules.”

  “Liar!” His rage wasn’t as pure as hers; his was tainted with doubt. “It leaves you a shell. It takes everything.”

  “No,” she said. “I remember everything.”

  And she did. The warmth of piss coating her legs as that writhing black mass had come at her. Fast. So goddamn fast. She’d stumbled back. Tripped. She’d never forget the sound the back of her skull had made when it hit the tiled floor of the hallway, nor the stars that had built behind her eyes as the darkness closed in. And she remembered that dreadful face floating above hers, its mouth wide as her soul was sucked away on a breath of a thousand screams.

  “I remember everything.” Fury. She wore it like armour as she pulled the athame from her coat. “Where is it? I won’t ask again.”

  His gaze flicked to the knife then back to her. “You think you can best it with that?” He snorted his derision. “It’s a Reaper.”

  “I want what’s mine.”

  Some of his bravado had returned, and he stood his ground. “A soul holds enormous value. It won’t be surrendered.”

  It won’t be surrendered easily, Diana had told her, but it could be done.

  Quinn smiled again – a smarmy, dirty thing. “It will own you completely.”

  Her rage burned white-hot; Quinn knew nothing. The Reaper hadn’t left her fear and fury purposefully. Dying in a hospital had its perks. She’d been shocked back to life before it could finish the job. Diana had said she’d upset the natural order of things, but it hadn’t been Ivy’s time to die...

  She started to laugh. It was a strange sound, hollow and emotionless, but it had the desired effect. Quinn’s jaw set, his brow furrowed and his hands balled into fists.

  “Shut up,” he growled.

  “It owns you.”

  “I said shut up!”

  “You couldn’t see it through,” she spat. “You’re just a scared little man.”

  He jumped at her, but she knew it was coming and sidestepped him easily, bringing the athame around and slicing him across the ribs. He howled. Truly howled and it stopped Ivy in her tracks.

  Quinn turned to her, his rage now matching hers as he drew an almost identical knife to the one she held. “I’ll kill you.”

  She held her athame firm. Ivy might not see the monster beneath the mask, but monster he was. “And I’ll do what I need for what’s mine.”

  He raised his left hand. A thin scar ran across his palm. “You think you’re the only one?”

  Others have tried and failed. How many had Diana sent through?

  “1923,” Quinn said, as if reading her thoughts. Blood continued to blossom on his shirt as he circled to his left; Ivy circled with him. “But you’re the first to make it this far, I’ll give you that.” He grinned. “You’re my ticket back to that bitch.”

  “There’s no going back,” Ivy said, maintaining her distance, her mind racing – the conn
ections were there. Think, Ivy!

  “My blood’s gone, but she still has yours…” He lunged, but in a world full of monsters, Ivy had learned to move fast, and she sliced his hand that held the knife, kicking it away when he dropped it.

  “Stay back,” she said, her anger rising with her voice as she stared into eyes that held pure hatred.

  “I’m going to ride your blood right back through her door,” he sneered, cradling his injured hand. Droplets seeped through his fingers, hissing as they hit the road.

  A deep rumbling sounded from the way she’d come.

  Crashing. Crumbling. Brick and stone.

  Closer. Louder.

  The ground began to shake.

  Quinn charged, a roar thundering from him.

  Ivy moved on instinct, thrusting the athame into his gut as he punched her in the jaw. Pain flared up her face and she staggered to her right, dragging the knife with her. The blade ripped free, eliciting another howl, but it was soon drowned out by the looming barrage.

  Then she saw it. The shattering of the clock-towers. They fell like dominoes, crumbling into massive heaps of destruction.

  Fury fled.

  Fear claimed her.

  She turned and ran, not looking back when Quinn cursed her. Ivy scanned left and right, looking for something, anything that would give her shelter. Save her. The ground rocked beneath her; she stumbled but kept her feet. Her jaw throbbed a steady beat, and she tasted blood. When her hands began to shake, she shoved the athame into her coat; she couldn’t afford to lose—

  There.

  A door. Ajar. She charged forward. Death was coming in thunderous step, fast now. Very fast. Ivy glanced up at the clock-face: 12.47am – her official time of death. This was her door, and Quinn had tried to stop her reaching it.

  She shouldered it open. Darkness – thick and absolute. She stepped inside then turned back to the street.

  Quinn was half-running, half-stumbling, blood oozing over the hand to his gut, terror in his eyes. He glanced over his shoulder and Ivy followed his gaze. Like heat shimmering off the pavement, a shockwave chased him down. That was the Slipstream. It wasn’t one place but many. An ever-shifting maze designed to keep her and any other seekers from reclaiming what was theirs.