Nameless: The Darkness Comes

by Mercedes M. Yardley

  “I don't have to believe anything you say,” I spat.

  He backed away, eyes averted.

  “You’re a demon, and demons lie. I knew it from the beginning. I…I made a mistake when it came to you.” My eyes burned, but I wasn’t going to cry over a demon.

  “But you trusted him?” Mouth yelled, and his voice echoed in the room. Even the shadow had gone silent, listening. “You trusted Reed, and what did he do? He can’t even tell you.”

  “I’m warning you,” Reed Taylor said.

  Mouth roared and screamed a word I didn’t understand. It wasn’t of this world.

  “You’re warning me? You’re warning me?” He surged forward, grabbed Reed Taylor’s good arm and yanked up his sleeves. “Do you see this, Luna? Do you know what’s pumping through his veins right now? Do you have any idea how much?” He pointed at the Tiptoe Shadow, sharing Reed Taylor’s body. “Enough to affect this guy, right here. And do you see Sparkles over there? Where’s Lydia, huh? Where is she, when the person who is supposed to be taking care of her is passed out on the floor?”

  “I did this for Lydia,” Reed Taylor yelled back. His eyes were burning with a fury I hadn’t seen before. His body writhed against the hold of the Tiptoe Shadow. “I did this for Lydia, and I did it for you.” He looked like a wild man. I tried to move away.

  “Oh, tell her,” the Tiptoe Shadow cawed. “Tell her how you and the mother lay together at night and talk about her. And you laughed, and laughed, and laughed. And in the other room, the New Luna cries in loneliness and fear. But who comes to her? I do. I don’t leave her alone, no. There are, mmm, songs, and stories and things to tell her. About the dark places, and the fun we shall have, and why nobody loves her but me, the one who crawls under the covers with her when she hides and—”

  “Stop it, you monster!” I screamed and tore at the hands around my neck. “You’re disgusting and vile, and I don’t want anything to do with you! Uninvited! Uninvited!”

  “You are all alone,” howled the shadow. The pits where his eyes should be burned brightly. “This one, he betrays you for another woman. That one, he betrays you for me. Who is here with you? I am, I am, I am. Who has always been by your side? Me, me, me!”

  “I was there, too,” Mouth said, and it was so quiet that I barely heard him. The shadow sucked in a breath. “I was always there. Your father let me. Me and one other, the demon you met in the House of Horrors. We watched you grow up. We were careful. We were respectful and kept our distance. I wanted a friend. The other demon wanted to see what life was like for the living. We—”

  “They watched when I killed your father,” the shadow wheedled. His voice had thinned and wormed its way into my ears. “They watched and didn’t say a word, didn’t help him. The way he kicked, and his eyes bulged, and his fear was so delicious. And that second when he thought, ‘I’ve made a terrible mistake’…Oh, oh! I could feast on that moment for eternity.”

  Tears were running down my face.

  “Is it true?” I asked Mouth. “Were you there when my father died?”

  “I was.” His voice was so quiet that I had to hold my breath to hear it. “I was there. I didn’t want him to go alone. I wanted him to know I’d take care of you.”

  That squeaky voice again. “He wasn’t alone. He was never alone. We were together, he and I, and when he struggled and his tongue swelled and fell from his mouth, I held his hands. I wrapped myself around his body good and tight so he could, mmm, feel me, and know how together we were…”

  “Stop it,” I screamed. I covered my ears with my hands. “I don’t want to hear anymore.”

  Mouth flowed up to me again, and his voice was very kind. “Your father loved you and Seth very much. It didn’t work out like he had hoped, but he took his life in order to save you. Just like…just like Reed is planning to do.”

  “What are you talking about?” I looked at Reed Taylor. “What’s he saying?”

  Reed Taylor’s eyes were still full of green fury.

  “I joined up with this demon because I wanted to help you. I thought, if it’s a part of me, I’ll be able to sense the rest of them, right? Only I can hear what it’s thinking. And I overhear it think that if you kill yourself while connected to it, it dies too.”

  My father.

  “Your father. I know his death wounded you inside, made you fracture in a way that can’t be healed. It’s never going to fully heal, Luna,” he said when I tried to interrupt. “But now you know why. He was hoping to kill the Tiptoe Shadow, take it with him. Only it didn’t work.”

  The Tiptoe Shadow giggled madly. “He tried and tried.”

  I felt my face go pale. “You were planning on killing yourself?”

  Reed Taylor shrugged his good shoulder.

  I didn’t know what to say. I felt like crying.

  “After everything I said? You were willing to do this for… Are you frickin’ crazy? How am I supposed to live without you?”

  “You’ll do just fine, babe. You always land on your feet.”

  He grinned, broken and battered and torn almost beyond recognition. My eyes traveled from him to Mouth, who looked stricken, his body slowly healing itself.

  I made a decision.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  It hurt me to see the ones I loved damaged like this. Seth chased away, Reed Taylor broken, Mouth angry and helpless. All of these people, brought together involuntarily because they cared about me in one way or another. Each, in their own way, only wanted to help.

  “Luna,” Mouth said, and he sounded worried. “Why are you looking at me like that? What are you thinking?”

  I reached for his hand, smiled. I ran my fingers down his cheek. “Thank you for everything. I hope you know how special you are to me.”

  “Luna,” he said warningly, but I had already turned away. “Reed Taylor, I…”

  There wasn’t anything more I could say. His gorgeous greens that had gone frightened and worried and were now narrowed with resolve. He was perfect. He was my everything. How can you explain that to someone?

  “I love you,” I said simply, and then turned to the Tiptoe Shadow. “Demon,” I screamed, and spread my arms wide. “Taste the Mark. I invite you in.”

  “Luna, no,” Reed Taylor shouted, but the swirling, crashing noise of wind and thunder drowned everything out. It ripped at my clothes, tore at my hair. I squeezed my eyes closed.

  “The Mark,” shrieked the Tiptoe Shadow. His voice was horrifyingly close to my ear, and I gasped. “She’s mine.” I felt the long fingers disengage themselves from my neck.

  I couldn’t take it any longer. I was dangerously close to losing my nerve. “Do it. Do it now,” I screamed, and glared at the shadow. His long tongue lolled out of his face, licked his chops. It was long enough to wrap all the way around his head.

  “With pleasure,” he rasped, and his fingers spread, plunging firmly into the Mark.

  I shrieked, launched up onto the balls of my feet by the pressure and the pain. My eyes were wide, wild, and I couldn’t control my arms, my legs, my heart. I couldn’t close my mouth or stop the sounds coming out of my throat.

  “Mmm,” moaned the shadow and drove his hand in deeper. I felt him push into my brain, into my lungs. His darkness flowed through my veins, forcing my blood to cling to the walls of my arteries in horror and self-preservation.

  Reed and Mouth both shouted, waving their arms and trying to get my attention. I saw Reed Taylor try to wrench himself free of the shadow’s hand, but I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t move. All that existed was agony and the hatred that coursed through me. Reed Taylor had been right: it was hatred the Tiptoe Shadow thought of as love.

  The wind hissed and roared, filling my ears as the demon’s thoughts filled my head. I saw myself as a little girl, tasted my own fear. It tasted just right, tasted so good…

  I fought to keep myself at the surface. I couldn’t go through all of this and have the demon divert me from my purpose. Demons lie, don�
�t they? Twist things and make things seem different from what they really are. Panting, I battled with my trembling hand, struggled to slip it inside my pocket and pull out my folding knife. I flicked it open with my thumb, realizing dully that the crazy voice in the wind I kept hearing was my own.

  Your father had tried to kill himself, oh yes, but, mmm, it didn’t work, you see. He didn’t know. Didn’t know the secret. Didn’t know there must be love and want and that desire, but more than that, there must be blood.

  Blood.

  Blood, the invisible presence had repeatedly told me that day at work. I’d drawn that extra vial of blood, slid it into my pocket…but what was I supposed to do with it? I remembered the look on Mouth’s face when he realized what I held. His anger when he exploded the vial. So angry. Far too angry. How could that small vial possibly affect him?

  I’ll show you, Luna You. Mmm, I’ll show you why.

  I didn’t want to see, but I did. The images poured into my brain and twisted my stomach. Oh no.

  Oh yes. So close. And now, mmm, it is too late.

  The knife stopped inches from the side of my neck. So even if I do this, even if I kill myself right here, right now…

  I won’t, mmm, go with you. I’ll move on to New You, and other puppets. Oh, they will be so sad. Putting you in the dirt where things will grow on your skin. I’ll creep behind them and run my fingers down their spines. Forever.

  Despair. Anguish and hopelessness flooded me. If I had managed to take you with me, I thought, using the blood…

  You would have destroyed everybody in the line under me, yes, Luna You. And he loves you.

  I dragged my eyes to meet Mouth’s. His gaze was serenity in the chaos, his robes whipping around his wispy frame. The sorrow in his eyes surpassed anything I had ever seen. He saw my realization and the corner of his mouth quirked slightly.

  The knife shook in my hand. I heard Reed Taylor scream my name over the wind and rage, but I couldn’t tear my gaze from Mouth’s.

  The Tiptoe Shadow tsked inside of my brain. So fickle, girl. Never saw him when you were young. Never saw him when you were older. Never saw him when he stood before you, telling you what he was and how he felt. And now, mmm?

  The demon scraped his long nails over my soul. The layers peeled, split, were torn and shoved aside like pieces of sliced flesh. I saw my fingernails blacken as he ran underneath them.

  The demon’s high giggle made my back arch in disgust. I saw my father thrashing, kicking at the end of his rope. The demon splayed his final thoughts before me. Realization that the demon would merely leave him and float away, that it wouldn’t be taken down like he had hoped, merely slowed down for a while. It would end here, his children orphans, his daughter to be tormented by the being who now grasped him by the hair. His death was for nothing. All of the torture, the second-guessing. Seth’s anger, my loneliness. He had died thinking he was saving us, but he didn’t know about the blood. I had nearly left Lydia the same destitute legacy my father left me.

  The knife was pulled from my hand. I hardly felt it leave my fingers.

  I…I’ve made a terrible mistake, I thought.

  The demon laughed. Your father said the very same thing. But you belong to me now.

  He forced his way into my soul utterly, and it was more than I could take. The bombardment of pain, the ugly memories and thoughts and whims that flooded my being. The Tracing, it burned, it scorched, it ached and hungered for the filthy soul screaming to feed it. By now I was screaming again, too. Then the darkness became too heavy for me. It covered my eyes and my nose and filled my mouth. It became everything.

  Chapter Fifty

  I opened my eyes and gasped. The stabbing between my shoulder blades was too much to take. Every nerve was raw, a silver blade raked down each centimeter of skin. It felt right somehow, like hitting somebody on the head and killing them felt right, like running your car into a retaining wall felt right.

  “Let me die, let me die, let me die,” I screamed. I writhed on the floor, trying to cover my head and curl my body into a protective ball.

  “I have you,” Reed Taylor shouted to me over the noise. Wind roared and howled. No, not wind. The Tiptoe Shadow. The shadow and somebody else.

  Mouth.

  My eyes rolled up in my head. Reed Taylor gently shook me.

  “Luna, stick with me. Mouth managed to pull most of Tiptoe out of you, but it won’t last long. I have to tell you something, okay? Okay?”

  My lips pulled back from my teeth and my body convulsed from the agony, but I struggled to meet his gaze, blinked.

  He tried to smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Baby, I’m sorry. About everything. All of it. But I have to tell you something very important. Can you remember?”

  I was trembling so hard that my body kept cracking against the floor. Reed Taylor gathered me as closely as he could.

  “Lydia’s safe with a friend of mine. I left a message on your phone telling you where to find her. Cecilia and I,” he said, nodding his head toward her body in back of the house, “we got high together. The needles are in the other room. Tell the police I called you, and when they come, you need to show them everything. Understand?”

  I was blacking out again. He shook me, took my face in his hands and kissed my mouth desperately.

  “Listen. Show them the needles. Show them our marks. They’ll give Lydia back. Cecilia’s unfit. I’m sorry I got her back into it, but I did it for you. You and Seth and Lydia.”

  My eyes cleared. I could almost focus them on his beautiful face.

  “I didn’t know how else to help. It was the only thing I could think of to do.”

  He hugged me, rubbed his scruffy chin in my hair. “I love you,” he said. He kissed my face again and again. “I do. I see what you see, and you’re braver than I ever could have been. But maybe I can stop it.”

  He set me down gently, looked at me with the same eyes that made me fall in love with him.

  “Goodbye, Luna.”

  His face hardened, and he stood up. I was still jerking on the floor, my jaws clenched together so I didn’t scream the house down, didn’t bite my tongue in two, didn’t start shrieking out the vile visions the demon flooded my memory with.

  Reed Taylor put his hand on Mouth’s shoulder. The demon turned and they exchanged a look. It was a look that terrified me. I tried to reach out to them, but my body wouldn’t respond.

  Reed Taylor pulled a hypodermic needle from his pocket. It was full to the brim. Mouth nodded his head once and flicked his eyes in my direction. He raised his arms to the sky, tipped his head back, and screamed something into the wind. The pressure on the Tracing immediately deepened.

  The Tiptoe Shadow growled and snapped at Mouth with razor teeth. Mouth didn’t budge, but stood his ground, still chanting his indiscernible words. Reed Taylor bowed his head and injected himself with the needle.

  There was a tearing, ripping sensation on my back. I shrieked, flailing my arms as I tried desperately to flip onto my side, keeping my shredded back and the demon’s protruding hand from touching the floor. And then suddenly the pain was gone.

  The pain. The itching feeling. The open, broken part of my soul that had been the demonic Tracing. It was closed for the first time in months. I covered my face and breathed a sigh of relief. The Mark was gone.

  “Wrong,” squealed the Tiptoe Shadow. It skittered on broken little legs. “Wrong puppet. Wrong puppet!”

  Another voice, deep, yelling in a way that made my stomach twist. Reed Taylor, driven to his knees. The shadow’s long arm twisted out of his back. It emerged from the Mark that, until just now, I had been wearing. Mouth had somehow used his power to transfer my burden to Reed Taylor.

  “No!” I scrambled to Reed Taylor, ran my fingers though his hair, examined the bloody holes in his back. The Tiptoe Shadow’s pointed fingers fit perfectly. I glared at Mouth. “No, no. How could you do this?”

  “Step back,” he said, and wrapped his dar
k hand around my wrist. He couldn’t get a grip. I pulled Reed Taylor into my lap and rocked him back and forth. His eyes were already pinpricks, his breathing shallow.

  “Luna!” Mouth said loudly, and I looked up at him though my tears. His eyes were agonized. “You have to let him do this.”

  “Do what?”

  My brain wasn’t working right. I saw Reed Taylor’s agony, saw him being overwhelmed by not only the demon but the Mark. Darkness flowed out of the many holes in his arms. The Tiptoe Shadow thrashed, unable to pull itself away from the temptation of the Tracing, feeding on pain and sorrow in a frenzy even as it felt Reed Taylor’s body dying around it.

  “Luna!” Mouth’s voice had an edge of desperation that pulled me out of my cloudiness. “He’s doing it for you! You have to let him make this sacrifice.”

  I didn’t have words. I simply wailed.

  “Stupid puppet! Stupid, broken puppet!” The Tiptoe Shadow spun on the ground like a top. His eyes found me. “Back to my Luna doll,” he trilled, and Mouth grabbed my hand.

  “Come with me. Now,” he commanded and tried to pull me from Reed Taylor’s dying body. I shook my head, but the demon bent down until we were nose to nose.

  “Blood, Luna. Blood.”

  “Blood? But…”

  “We don’t have time. You need to trust me.”

  I looked into his eyes. Wiped my face with my sleeve, staggered to my feet, and ran after him. We ran past Cecilia, through the room with my father’s corpse and into a back room. Several used needles were strewn on the floor. The room was dirty and grungy, and the headless demons who were trying unsuccessfully to grasp the needles only made it worse.

  “Take one,” Mouth said. His voice was loud in the relative silence of the room. “You need to collect Reed’s blood while he’s still joined with the demon.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You have to.”

  My knee-jerk defiance took hold. “I don’t have to do anything! I just watched somebody I love kill himself, and now you want me to stick needles into his corpse and—“