31. Chapter 31
Chapter 31
I followed Goose into the winding tunnels and caverns, crouching and crawling in some places. I assumed that a creature of shadow who tried to have at least one of the ghost lights in his fur so I could find him among the lurking dark knew more about this place than I did. It was a better plan than wandering about in the pitch black, hoping that I found whatever it was I thought I was looking for.
There was something deeply unsettling about the idea that while I might be following Goose . . . What was Goose following?
After what seemed like hours in the dark, we slithered into a wider part of the tunnels. The floor beneath my feet was level, and it felt almost like set mason and stonework beneath my slipper-covered feet. I turned around, trying to get my bearings. The ghost lights cast a soft pale-blue light over everything and only pierced the black a few feet away.
“What is this place, Goose . . . ?” I asked with a growing sense of danger lurking around me.
The shadows here were not just deep and hungry. These shadows seemed to be alive and malignant in their skulking. They skittered from the soft blue lights and ducked behind what looked to be an old console table.
A drawer in the center of the traditional greenwood-style table sat open and askew on its track. A quick look into it yielded an old fire steel that was coated in a near inch-thick layer of grey dust.
“Little lights, if you take a rest on the ceiling and return to me, I’ll sing you another song.”
Tittering like bug wings buzzing was the response, and the lights scattered to find little nooks to rest in. I was pretty sure the ghost lights were not, in fact, bugs. But what they actually were, I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to let them do their job. Some things weren’t worth picking at the edges.
It took a few tries to strike a spark from the fire steel, but once I got it, the ember nibbled happily on the wood that served as my torch, routing the shadows and banishing them into the deeper pockets of the hallway.
I found more torches in inlaid holders on the walls and lit them all. Goose was none too pleased with this but settled at my ankle as I took in the crumbling hallway around us.
“This must have once been part of the palace,” I whispered down to him, setting my hand on his head, seeking the idle comfort the connection offered.
The portion of the area was not large, maybe forty feet long and ten feet wide. The walls were plastered, painted what looked to be a soft green with dark wainscot woodwork that had discolored with time. What looked like it had once been perhaps a stairwell down to this level had a collapsed ceiling full of rubble. A portrait of a woman had at one time presided over it, the ghost of her outline swallowed by the ravages of time, kept us company as I searched for a way out.
At the far end, the plaster of the wall was crumbling, revealing the barest hint of slatting behind it. Beyond that slatting, I could feel the soft breath of clean air.
“Here, Goose. Here. Can you fit through that?” I asked, calling him over to the fist-sized hole in the plaster and the finger-width slats. Goose examined the hole and huffed. “I’ll take that as a no. Okay. Maybe if I opened it up some more.”
I set to work, snapping a leg off the console table and using it as a hammer. It was slow going. Though the wall was older than it had any right to be, it devoured three full legs before I had a hole large enough for both Goose and I to fit through. My hands ached, blisters and abrasions having cut into the soft flesh somewhere around the second leg.
I prayed silently to all the Fae gods I could remember the names of that, when I began pulling and levering at the slats to break them open, the whole palace wouldn’t come down on my head. One by one, the ancient dry boards came apart like the ribs of a long-dead beast.
Goose, for all his help, busied himself with chewing on the broken pieces of leg I had chucked behind me.
“This will have to do, Goosey. And you better have a plan after we get through this because I have no clue what’s on the other side or where we go from here. But I’m exhausted, and my hands are starting to bleed.”
Why I was talking to a smoke dog was beyond me, but it made me feel less alone in this uncertain darkness.
Goose made his way through the hole with no issues, as expected, but I eyed it dubiously.
Before Rictus, I’d have been able to slide through that with no issues at all. But with the extra padding and curves on the body that housed me, I wasn’t confident in it. I did my best to pull through, stretching and contorting my way slowly through the hole. A jagged board caught my back and tore open one of the freshly healed slashes, and I hissed in pain, falling from the hole a few feet to . . . carpet.
Soft, luxurious, woven carpet was beneath me. Dust did not jump up to assault me for my audacity. The scent of must and age did not linger here. But something cold did. Something cold and angry with my intrusion. The air frosted with my panted breaths, and my hair steamed with my body heat.
Goose positioned himself in front of me, pushing me back into the corner as he snarled.
The sound of his threat was deep, loud, and terrifying. It rumbled the pebbles around me, making them rattle against the bare stonework off the edge of the carpet.
I wish I hadn’t left the torch in the other room. I wish I hadn’t fallen in, and I wished I had looked where I was going. Blind faith had never been one of my follies, but here I was, shivering in an unnatural cold as I wedged myself into a corner, Goose protecting me from some unseen threat in the darkness.
Something hard tapped, scraped, and slid along the stonework. The sound bounced around the frozen, dark passageway and rattled into the collapsed hall behind us.
Goose responded to it with a bark that was less of a dog bark and more of a tiger roar punctuated by the snapping and gnashing of his massive jaws. His entire body rippled with anger and deadly purpose, strung on a single thread of a leash.
The sound broke the stillness again and then was deafened by the carpet as it slid with the thing’s movement.
Goose launched himself into the darkness, melting into it as if he had never been there. Only the sound of his jaws snapping, his roaring growl, and the strange screeching and chittering filled the hollow dark as I cowered in the corner.
“Fuck this,” I whispered as the battle in the hidden darkness raged on. “Little ghosties!” I called into the hole and hummed a few bars of “Rock-a-bye Baby.”
They came streaming in, filling the cavern with their ghostly blue light.
I should not have done that. I didn’t want to see what was playing out before me.
Goose was no longer the massive tame dog but an amorphous blood-spattered black beast that streamed and flowed like an avenging river destined to drown its foe. A creature that was part rose bush, part spider was battling him near the edge of what looked like a steep drop off into the abyss. The two circled and lashed out at each other.
“Hang on, Goose,” I whispered, struggling against the boards of the slatting.
My hands screamed in agony, fought against the abuse I was visiting upon them, as I strained to pull a length of the wood from the wall. I had only managed to pry a small sliver of iron from the door, and I had no clue if it would work like it had with The Raven. But I had hope. I had hope and not much more because luck was never on my side .
I tumbled back as the spider landed a painful blow to my friend, who whimpered in the dark.
“Fuck you. No one hurts Goosey boy! You ugly fuck!” I screamed at the spider. It turned, bloodred roses blooming in its face as eyes over forearm long fangs. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. I hate spiders. I hate them so damned much!”
Reaching behind me, I caught hold of the bit of shirt that had torn and yanked as hard as I could, pulling down a strip. The small sliver of iron was wedged into the end of the board and lashed as tight as my bleeding hands would allow.
“Alright, creepy. Let’s dance.”
The ghost lights followed me as I advanced on the spider, who twitched between the looming, rippling form of Goose, and the tiny dirty human who was brandishing a very sad excuse for a caveman’s spear.
Smarter than any spider had a right to be, it came for the weaker target. All eight legs scuttled across the hall, barreling toward me.
Goose wasn’t going to let that happen, with the soft target of its enormous black abdomen facing him, he latched on, teeth solidifying out of the smoke as it bit down.
I was not a trained fighter. I fought by Detroit rules: Survive at all costs. Any target is a target when it’s life or death, and a twenty-foot-tall rose spider was absolutely life or death.
I aimed for the easiest target. The bright red rose eyes.
As it grew closer, I shuddered with revulsion as I watched thousands of tiny human-like eyes with red irises blink at me from the petals of the roses.
The stench reached me before the first of its legs swiped at me. It smelled of the same sort of rot as the iron bite The Raven had doctored, mixed with a sickly, cloying perfume of crushed, sunbaked roses. It smelled like the world’s worst funeral parlor, and my gagging didn’t help.
Had Goose not yanked the spider back a foot with a snarl, that leg would have caught me easily. I stabbed blindly, catching and dragging my makeshift spear across one of the huge legs. I hadn’t expected it to be able to do much damage. I had expected it to distract the spider from attacking Goose and allowing him to do the greatest amount of damage. But the moment the iron pierced the hard exoskeleton, the entire leg began to rot from the inside out. Sick veins of black ichor reflected the eerie blue ghost lights dancing in and out of my hair like a ghastly halo.
A hissing scream of pain and anger shook the chamber, and the spider turned back to me, lunging for me. This time, it connected, piercing my shoulder straight through, knocking me to the ground and impaling me on the end of the leg.
Misery ripped through me as tiny glass-like hairs worked themselves into the wound, and with every pound of my rabbit of a heartbeat, they pumped new waves of bitter pain into me. A guttural, deep groaning scream poured from my throat and shredded it as surely as my shoulder was shredded.
Weakness tore the spear from my grip and scattered it a few feet away from me, spinning in the low light.
I whimpered, frustration and agony pumping through me.
The spider whirled around as Goose lashed out again. The scent of fresh bloodied flesh mixed with the stench of rot and decay and made me sicker as the spider whipped me around with it. I was in the worst place, between Goose and the spider, dangling from the hard rod of its leg as it reared back and threatened Goose.
Goose hesitated, a sense of his gaze falling on me as if he was unsure of how to attack his enemy, save me and himself, and not harm me all at the same time. The spider sensed this hesitation and lunged after Goose, pushing him over the edge of the chasm it had come from.
“GOOSE!” I screamed as I watched the last of the tendrils of smoke and shadow slip over into the silent depths.
He was gone.
Just like that, my shadow was gone.
Just like that, the one creature that had been with me through all of this was gone.
My heart went with him into the still darkness. If it had shattered, there would have been pieces left in the empty blackness that consumed my heart. I didn’t even know I loved that stupid thing, but with him gone, I realized I had loved him more than I should have. He had become my Cricket snake. The stable thread that bound me from one nightmare to another and held me through it all even when I didn’t want him to.
“You disgusting piece of fucking shit,” I hissed, turning my eyes to the spider. It chittered, flailing me in the air as if celebrating its victory.
That leg had to come down eventually, and this bug was about to meet Detroit when it did.
It happened slowly. The leg I was impaled on began lowering, and I straightened my body, engaging every single one of my muscles as it came down. I angled myself to catch my feet on the stone floor.
The moment my foot touched the ground, I let my thighs gather strength. As the leg came down, folding me in half, I bellowed and pushed up, working against the strength of the spider trying to slam me into the stonework.
The snap of the spider’s leg shivered through my body and shredded my mind, chasing spots of black and purple into my eyes.
My head hit the floor at the same time as my shoulder did as I rolled away from the shrieking, snapping beast. Every roll and tumble wedged the shard of exoskeleton farther into my shoulder, and pale golden blood covered the floor in a stuttering streak following my rolling body.
This was it. This was how I was going to die. The spider was turning on me, clear venom pooling and dripping from its fangs.
Rage washed through me. Rage at the injustice of it all. Rage that had been stuffed down deep and turned into bitter poison from my childhood. Rage at all the pain and suffering I had lived through boiled into my body and coalesced in a spark behind my eyes. If I was going to die, I was not going to be a satisfying meal for this asshole. He would choke on it, and if there was a god anywhere, I would give this shithead indigestion.
I was no longer fighting to survive. I was no longer fighting to save my friend. I was fighting for the sole petty purpose of inflicting the maximum amount of suffering and punishment. When an enemy stops struggling for survival and, instead, begins to fight for the pleasure of your pain, that was where true nightmares are born.
I grabbed the first thing my hand found and launched myself at the spider, screaming all my rage and pain, stabbing wildly. I felt the improvised weapon sink into flesh, and I kept stabbing, flailing, and smashing, as blood, mine and the spider’s, bathed me in gore. I felt fangs piercing my legs as I kicked and screamed.
I was beyond human speech. I barely even felt human anymore. I felt like a weapon. A mindless weapon, slashing and battering my enemy ignorant to the tearing of my skin. Blind to the blood, gristle, and bits dripping from my hair. Completely unaware of which one of us was making the haunted sound that kept echoing off the stones.
All I was aware of was the sick squelching of the spider’s head as I slammed into it with whatever I was holding, widening the gash. I hit something hard in my way, and I shoved my fist in, ripped it out, and kept pounding.
Every time someone had beaten me for someone else’s lies. Every time I had been handed a trash bag and told to get out. Every time I had to slide between the rails of a porch and run out into the woods to spend the night in the cold to avoid being raped. Every time I had watched as someone I thought loved me lied about me. Every time someone I thought cared about me believed them. Every time I had to watch the Ard Rí fuck someone. Every blow I had taken from him. Every slice of The Raven’s knife.
It all poured out of me until I was an empty vessel, until all the hurt, pain, and betrayal were gone. Until there was nothing left of me but the hollow shell of a body that didn’t even belong to me. That thought that I wasn’t even going to have the basic luck to die in my own body elicited a final savage crushing of the sludge that was once the insides of the spider.
I fell back, falling a few feet to my ass. The spider had gone still sometime between ripping and pounding. I hadn’t felt it—or me with it—fall to the ground. I hadn’t felt anything. And I still felt nothing .
Not even the deep gouges in my calves that bled milky golden blood seemed to ache or bother me. The spider was slowly starting to liquefy. My shaking hand, covered in acrid green gore, let go of the shard of iron.
“Go figure. The first time I have a bit of luck, and it’s on my deathbed. Cheers. The universe does have a sense of humor.”
The ghost lights danced around me, spinning and swirling at a dizzying pace, as I lay back to await death. I could feel life leaking from me, gleefully running away from the battered body before the pain of my wounds could find me.
I closed my eyes and let the cold creep into my limbs as my mind wandered. It found a single golden thread and followed it to the memory of The Raven’s smile. The way it flowed up to his forest gaze and crinkled at the corners. The way his soft thunder voice rumbled through my chest as he spoke. The way our bodies fit against each other. The sweet way he held me when he had found me under that bed. The gentle way he kissed the top of my head. The way he had known me better than I knew myself.
I didn’t want to admit it then. I didn’t want to admit it ever—that, every day I had gone up to work, I had hoped to catch a glimpse of him. I didn’t want to admit then the way my stomach twisted with nerves and excitement every time I heard his laugh in the corridors. Or the way my knees felt weak when his warmth was close. I didn’t want to admit that I hadn’t known I would like any of the ways he touched me and that I had, in fact, loved every single way he touched me.
Every single caress. Every single brutality. Every single atrocity and kindness was a rich buffet that had fed and succored me. That had built me up from the ground and helped me find my legs when I thought they would never be mine again.
My ego, my pain, my anger had all kept me from admitting any of it. Had kept me from cherishing any of it. Had kept me pushing him away in hopes that he would come back and somehow that would prove to me that he would stay .
It was so much easier when they left before I had a chance to want them, need them, crave them. And he had stayed. That fucker had stayed, and I had let myself feel things for him. I had let him crawl into my heart, and now that it was slowing down, I would never be able to enjoy that. I would never be able to tell him.
A soft wind blew through the chasm like a distant howl.
Blackness chased away the dancing ghost lights. And I fell into its velvet embrace and let it take me away from the shattered body that had been forced upon me. Let it envelop me and hold me in the false warmth of it. I let the darkness lie to me because the alternative was to stay and live out the last few agonizing moments.
I liked myself too much to force myself to endure the ending of my own body. So, I went into the black and did so willingly.