Chapter 11
Ygnacio
I taste life everywhere in the house. In the tang of sweat from lithe bodies entangled and panting on the third floor, on the exhales of dreamers caught in heavy sleep.
Voices move from room to room, permeating the walls like the smell of something tender and rich, something that has been simmering in its fatty juices for hours on the stove.
It makes me tremble with hunger.
The house itself is soothed by use and movement. The routines of industrious creatures in its belly have rocked it to sleep. Its curiosity fades. Its awareness folds in on itself, lulled by seductive slumber.
But I remain famished.
I itch. I twitch. I crawl. Agitation drives me from room to room, from shadow to shadow, from floor to floor.
If I had a mouth, it would be slick with saliva each time a warm body brushed past me.
Each time one entered an empty room, its throat defenseless and soft.
If I had hands, they would fly forward to seize delicate necks.
How I yearn to feel the give of flesh beneath my fingertips.
In life, I snapped chicken necks for my mother; I lust for larger game.
How I would feast on the life that gushed forth in a rich, fizzing froth.
I would gorge myself until I was full to bursting.
It’s not fair.
I have no mouth, no hands. No ability to touch. The hunt is long, and I have but two tools at my disposal: patience and nightmares.
The faraway voice of my father hums in the shadows: patience. His favorite of his many virtues. He would not approve of how I unsheathe it like a knife and lie alongside it in the dark, waiting.
But it does not matter what he thinks, for he is dead, and it is his memory that propels my hunt. For it is his fault that I remember that I once had a father. That I once had a mouth and hands and a heart that beat. I hunger for that more than anything else.
Once, I climbed this mountaintop. Once, I could look at the sky and breathe. I thought about tomorrows, knowing they would be changeable and distant and roiling with life, not knowing how fragile a concept they were.
Until they were snatched from me.
At night, in my aerie, I spin the webs of my revenge. They are the delicate handicraft of decades, of centuries. Lacy and fine, slim and fatal, their black weight ready to fall on sleepers and trap them in steely spider silk.
Each night, I spin and I cast my nets. I wait. I wait for the darkness to sink into weak minds. I wait for flies to crawl into my trap, for them to stick, for them to writhe with fear and then go still, hearts throbbing madly, as I encase them in darkness.
When the moon is high beyond the clouds that wreathe this cursed mountain, when the sleepers are lost to oblivion, I hunt.
Minds crack open in slumber, spilling their contents—both fresh and foul—into my fingertips.
There are so many sleepers in this house now, so many dreams to sift through.
Night by night I seek my quarry. I cast aside the fanciful dreams of the innocent, of the weak—no, that is not what I seek.
I seek a tougher hunger. Someone whose dreams are thick and meaty with rage.
There are so many to choose from. Hair light and dark spills across fine pillows. Dreams tangled with envy and greed pour from pale temples. So many of them are grasping, so many are needy.
Night after night I paw through the sins that sleeping minds leak into the darkness.