by Kit Hallows
Lily shook her head. "No, they won't. We're fully aware that the Organization has precisely no idea where you are." She nodded to the butcher. "Take him-"
I leaped to my feet, feigned a right, dodged the swipe of his cleaver and sprinted toward the door.
Then I stopped, dead in my tracks.
The boy lingered just beyond the threshold, his round glasses reflecting my wild, desperate stance. I backed away and a damp, fleshy hand grabbed me around the throat. I barely had time to register the pain. The butcher squeezed. Black and white dots danced before my eyes and my chest began to tighten. I dug my nails into his fleshy hand as I tried to pull it away.
"Release him, Marek," Lily commanded.
He let go, and I fell to my knees, gasping for breath. This wasn't going to end well.
"Okay. Let's start the extraction," Lily said. "Once we've broken you, you'll lose some of that ire and spite."
"You better hope-"
"Morgan," Lily cut me off. "It's over, you're beaten. Fight it or concede. One will hurt more, the other will hurt less but the outcome will be the same. It's up to you." She turned to the butcher. "Take him for his first session, drain him by half. We'll save the rest for later." She nodded to the boy. "Come, we need to subdue the new arrivals."
They left together as the butcher reached for me. "No games," he said, in a thick, Eastern European accent. He seized me by the shoulder and led me away.
I only noticed one other door in the short passageway, outside the cellblock. The butcher punched a button on the wall and with a pneumatic hiss, a panel slid open onto a large circular room.
A dozen padded chairs had been installed around the circumference and brass cylinders were positioned behind each of them, just like the set-up I'd seen in the other lab.
He jerked me toward the wall and shoved me into a chair. Then he grabbed a heavy strap and held me down as he secured it over my chest. With the push of a button the chair slowly tipped back into a reclined position while he bound my hands and feet. "Don't move."
A large glass tank dominated one section of the room. The smell that wafted from it was earthy and rancid. It held a foot or so of cloudy water and at first glance I thought the thing was just filthy, then I realized it was brimming with thick black leeches.
I scanned the room for a means of escape as he pulled on a pair of chain-mail gloves, grabbed a silver tray and headed toward the tank. Slowly, and carefully, he prised leeches off the glass and dropped them, one by one, onto the tray with a wet, fleshy thud.
I began to struggle, hoping to loosen the straps, until he snapped his head my way. "Move and I'll make you hurt." He set the tray down and stood over me. I tried to sit up, but he pulled out a chisel, and held it to my eye. "Stay." He growled as he shoved me back.
"Fish on a dish." He held up the leeches and I got the impression he said the exact same thing every time.
"They're not fish," I said. "Just so you know." My stomach turned as they slithered across the slick surface, drawn by the scent of my blood. Or maybe my fear, or both.
He ignored me, toddled off and returned to the table with two round pills in his sweaty palm. "First, an apéritif." He laughed, revealing his spiked teeth once more. All I could think about was how much I looked forward to smashing out each and every one as soon as I got the chance.
"Fuck off!" I tried to twist away as he grabbed my jaw, forced my mouth open and thrust the pills inside. I squirmed and tried to spit them out, but he repositioned his hand, clamping my jaw until all I could do was swallow.
"There," he said. "Now, enjoy the ride."
40
The effects of the drugs seemed almost instantaneous. It began with a distant roar. As if some great, towering wave was sweeping toward me, smashing pebbles and rocks, as it eroded everything in its path. Then a thick flavor of cotton candy and mud overwhelmed my mouth and crept up into sinuses. I swallowed, closed my eyes and tried to fight the rush that pulsed through my stomach, heart, and throat as the din of the wave rose to a crescendo.
When I opened my eyes, I was somewhere else.
A room almost as tall as it was long. The walls were a stony snow-cloud grey and immense tapestries hung from great hooks. The woven scenes depicted purple-blue mountains, lush green forests, and glittering oceans all contained within gilded frames. The pristine marble floor stretched out like a black and white checker board from where I stood, all the way to the tiny doors at the very end of the room.
I inhaled the cool, fresh clean air and gazed back to the walls, noticing the tiny stains spattered out like a map of stars across the smooth hewn stone. Minuscule spots of dark, nicotine-yellow rot.
Music began to play and I turned to find a woman sitting on a cushioned bench behind me. She wore a long copper and teal striped gown. A plague doctor's mask covered her face as she played the great golden harp resting on the floor before her. Her fingers plucked the strings in soft, delicate movements, as if she were flicking the strands of a spider web, and the music it produced was slow, beautiful and utterly bewitching.
I looked up as the tiny doors at the far end of the room opened, and a figure entered. A man, his form almost translucent. He wore a white shirt under his merlot frock coat and dark flowing hair tumbled to his shoulders.
I'd seen him before.
I fought to summon his name and my thoughts were as slow as molasses, but finally it came.
Stroud.
He walked across the floor in calculated measured steps, while a long procession filed in through the doorway behind him. I cringed as they drew closer.
They all wore dark robes, and each one had their throats marred with a scarlet gash that oozed down like a sheer red scarf around their pale emaciated necks. As they passed, people of a more common class approached. They looked like peasants, their clothes homespun and their bodies crooked from years of toil. Mud and soil stained their clothes and clung to their hair, as if they'd just risen from their graves, and the earthy stench of death filled the air as the silent parade drew ever closer.
The harp quickened and the procession of the dead and damned moved faster. They kicked their feet up and down as they stomped in perfect unison with a din like claps of thunder.
As they closed in, I could see Stroud's translucent grin and his sly, watchful eyes. He started to speak, but the scene flashed and vanished before my eyes.
I was back in the lab. The butcher leaned against a far wall and stared at his phone. I tried to move but my limbs felt hollow and numb.
As if they weren't even there.
Was this real, or...
In a flash of blue-white light I returned to the chamber. The music had stopped and the procession was gone. I stood, mesmerized by the dirt and dead curled leaves that stretched out in a wide swath of decay. Time slowed. I had no idea if I'd stood there for minutes or hours...
Light flashed and as it faded I found myself back in the lab. The butcher was gone and in his place was the boy. He was perched on a table in the middle of the room, eating a rotten-looking apple and I could feel his eyes as they stared from behind those black mirrored glasses. He dropped the core and clapped his hands together...
I found myself back in the chamber. The harp played, though the harpist was gone and the melody had changed to that of a nursery rhyme.
Wee Willie Winkie.
The doors flew open from across the sea of marble and a man emerged from the darkness. He wore a long white nightgown and cap, and carried a red candle that spluttered above the ornate silver candlestick in his spindly hands. He stepped slowly towards me, as if on tip-toe, his face so washed out by the light that I couldn't see his features.
It was only once he'd reached out to me that I knew who it was.
Tom.
"Wake up!" he whispered. Then he vanished, taking the room with him.
I flinched as I found myself back in the lab.
The boy stood over me. My features looked frenzied in the reflection of his deep black glas
ses and I felt his malevolent, ancient eyes upon me. He gave a wide, appreciative grin, and drank my terror in like nectar. "I only took a spoonful," he said as he licked his lips, reached down, and pulled a leech from my neck.
I couldn't help but scream. The pain was unbelievable, like a cellar of salt spilt into a fresh, bloody wound.
He held the leech over his boyish lips and his small forked tongue flicked out. Then he squeezed the bloated thing until its juices oozed out in tiny incandescent blue beads and dripped into the chasm of his mouth.
When he was done, he dropped the leech on the floor and squashed it beneath his shiny black shoe. "Thank you," he said, as he snapped his fingers, and sent me back to the chamber.
It was dark and the harp resonated with a soft old melody, unknown and yet strangely familiar. A memory came, inspired by the refrain.
I stood among a choir of children I'd once known. We sang. Words tumbled from my lips, words to a song about a dragon that had fallen in love with a comet. The story of how it had flown from our world and become lost amongst the vastness of the stars, doomed to never find the one it had fallen for.
That memory gave birth to another and I found myself alone in a small sparse room. A huge battered book rested before me, its pages filled with symbols and glyphs that carried the knowledge of dark, terrible things.
I glanced out the window as I studied. Beyond the glass were my friends, miles away, in a place far beyond the tall, imposing palace walls. A place that felt like another world. I thought of the great green land we'd come from, and how it still swayed wild, free and untouched by this dry, sanctimonious place. I hated it here, tucked in the looming shadows of the brittle black mountains. I despised the formality and privilege, and the narrow, tiresome ways of the people in this realm.
Except for one. The girl. The beautiful, sickly girl. She'd never said a word to me, I was only seven after all and she was several years older, but I'd fallen under her spell the first moment I'd seen her. And then more so on each of the rare occasions our paths crossed.
I found myself obsessed with her gaunt, beguiling face and her long golden hair. I wanted to know her, to learn the secrets I sensed behind her eyes. Finding her had not been easy, but the books my father raised me to understand had taught me how to hide, sneak and be one with the shadows. Unseen by all except my ever watchful parents.
I bristled as I recalled the time my mother had caught me mooning after the girl. I'd never seen her so furious. She'd screamed at me to stay away from the wretch. That she was deathly dangerous. Since then I'd been stuck in this place, confined to my room until after dark, when the girl was safely tucked away within her chamber.
There was little to do during these long days other then study or practice. If I was lucky, I might pass a little time with the old knight. He was good to me. Somehow, he seemed to accept me for who I was and when he had time to spare, which wasn't often, he'd talk to me and teach me swordplay. How to attack and defend, as well as the proper stance and posture for combat. It was fun, even when the old wooden swords left my hands raw or riddled with splinters.
I looked up as the door creaked open and my father appeared, his face lost in the shadows of his hooded robe. He didn't acknowledge me as he strode past. "We must leave," he announced, then he vanished into his room and returned with his battered old trunk.
"Why?" I asked. The thought of leaving the palace filled me with an odd mixture of joy and sadness. "Have you finished your work here?"
"Yes, my work is done. For what it was worth." He threw books into the trunk and began to pull down the charts that he'd hung upon the walls. The serrated black letters and arcane symbols seemed to jump across the paper, hidden away as he quickly folded them up and tied them into bundles.
"What's going to happen?" I asked. The air felt fraught. Like a storm was coming.
"Dark things," he said. "Dark things and endings." He began to turn my way, but before I could see his face, a great light exploded before me and...
I found myself laying on the floor of the lab.
The boy stood over me, pulling a leech from my face. As he yanked it free a fresh burst of pain overwhelmed me. "I loosened the straps and you flew right out of the chair." He shook his head as he placed the leech in a brass box, closed the lid and set it upon the table. "Follow me," he said.
I couldn't move.
The boy turned back, his mouth set into a scowl. "I said follow me."
I forced myself up. The room spun, and I toppled back to the floor. I'd never felt so weak, empty, or lost. "I don't belong here," I said, even though I couldn't recall deciding to speak the words. "I should be in that other place."
The boy strode toward me and jabbed his finger at the wound the first leech had left on my neck. The pain was like a shock wave. White stars exploded before my eyes and the howl of agony that spilled from my lips seemed like it had come from a stranger.
"Get up," the boy demanded. "Get up, little man."
"I want to go back..."
"You don't belong there. You don't belong anywhere. You're a nobody, a nothing." He raised his hand and I flinched away. "Now get on your feet and follow me."
I lumbered after him as if I were a child. My strength gone, my will drained away. The only thing I wanted to do was lie down, sleep, and never awaken.
The boy locked me in my cell. I welcomed the darkness and fell to the cold smooth floor. My eyes closed as I curled into a fetal position and listened to the distant clatter of the heavy steel door.
The light went out and just as I thought I was alone in the blackness, a low, soft, woman's voice crept out from the next cell. There was no comfort in the rhyme she sang, not a scrap. And even though I couldn't understand her words, I knew their meaning was dark and terrible.
"Please stop." I crawled across the floor, to get as far away from the adjoining wall as I could. But she continued singing, her voice rising in an insane, broken melody.
A lullaby for monsters.
41
Time lost all meaning as I lay curled and broken upon the floor, the only light in the world the thin meager line that spilled out under the heavy steel door. I closed my eyes and slept, and woke, and slept and woke. Occasionally I heard the woman's song but I had no idea if it was real or the remnant of a fevered dream.
I'd never felt so empty, weak and disembodied. Reduced to little more than a fragment. A scrap of soul waiting to be released from limbo, so that I could drift away to whatever lay beyond. Hopefully to nothing at all.
Get up. The voice I'd buried deep inside me stirred. Get up and fight.
I ignored it. But it continued to gnaw at me, even though it was weaker than it had ever been. Like a blazing fire that had burned away to mere embers.
The woman in the next cell whispered. I still couldn't understand her words. They seemed to be little more than hisses that slithered from the darkness, chilling me to my core. Cruel, clipped laughter rang out. I ignored it and clamped my eyes shut. Pictures flashed before me; images from another world and a life that may or may not have been.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
A small bird with round beady eyes pecked at the arched, latticed window that overlooked jagged black mountains.
"Please stop." I opened my eyes as a harsh light winked on over the glass ceiling and illuminated the boy standing in my cell. He smiled as he rapped his bony knuckle on the wall.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
"Hello," he said. "Sounds like you're ready to give up the last of yourself."
I was. He could have whatever remained, I didn't need it. As I crawled toward him, the voice inside me growled with a terrible, furious vehemence. Get off your knees and fight! I looked up to see if the boy had heard it. If he had, he showed no sign. He just glanced down at me through those black glasses, as cold and hard as an insect's eyes.
Get up!
I threw my hand against the glass wall to steady myself as I knelt, my face mere inches from his. And then the voice inside roared
through me, "Fuck off and die!"
The boy returned my defiant grin. "Good, I like disobedience. It means we get to play a little longer. But first I want to introduce you to an old friend of yours. She's a real scream." He clicked his fingers and the lights came on in the next cell.
It felt as if someone had driven a barbed knife through my gut.
Elsbeth Wyght lay curled on the floor, her long dark hair matted against her white gown. Her face was chalky pale, highlighting her mad, dark roving eyes. She muttered, flinched, and her legs spasmed, rattling the length of iron chain bound to her ankles.
The three witches from her coven lay slumped in the cells beyond. None of them moved. They just stared out, their eyes wide with horror.
"Okay then," the boy said, "I'll leave you two to catch up." He stepped out of the cell, snapped his fingers, and the wall slid shut, sealing me in. Then he nodded to me, thrust his hands into his pockets and walked back to the steel door, whistling a cheerful tune. Moments later he was gone, leaving me alone with my nemesis and her coven.
White hot anger lent me the strength to climb to my feet. I stared down at her. She laid on her side like a wounded animal, mere inches away and yet I couldn't get my hands on her. My growing rage ignited all the fire that was left inside me. I slammed my palms on the wall and screamed. "I'll fucking kill you!" I punched the glass, over and over, until finally she looked up.
Her drug-addled gaze swam around the cell, before falling upon mine, and I saw a vague spark of recognition in her eyes. Her manacles clanked as she stood and shuffled toward me.
"You?" she said. "It was you that brought us out here?" Wyght spat on the floor and placed a finger against the cell wall, her long discolored nail faintly tapping upon the glass.
The fire inside me continued to swell, waking the distant parts of my soul that the leeches had failed to extract. "Yes. And I killed your sick little sister, Sorina. Once she'd served my purpose." That wasn't exactly how it had happened but it was my only means to wound her further. "And I'm going to kill you too." I slammed my palm against the wall.
