7. Cinn
seven
Cinn
N ow that it was time to begin, the panic set in.
If someone had told Cinn just a week ago that he’d sign up to deliberately fall into the dark place, the place he lived in fear of most days of his life, he’d have laughed in utter disbelief.
The shadowrealm.
It had a proper name now. It was a real place. It wasn’t all a figment of his imagination.
Although, the handful of times something—or someone —had returned with him had proven that to him before.
The very first time it had happened, that he’d shadowslipped , was his thirteenth birthday. Two weeks after ‘the river incident’. He’d been trying to wake his mum up from where she’d fallen asleep on the sofa. He could still see it now: her pale face partially obscured by greasy hair, hand outstretched towards the empty wine bottle on the floor.
She’d promised him pancakes.
Pancakes from that diner down the road. They’d never been able to afford them before, but she’d promised him because it was his birthday .
So he’d shook her. Gently at first, then violently.
The more he shook her, and the more she failed to wake up, the more unsteady his breaths became, until he was sure he was about to suffocate.
The light in the room faded, even though it was the middle of the day, and then, all of a sudden, he wasn’t in his living room at all .
Cinn only very briefly slipped into the shadowrealm, that first time. He’d found himself in a kitchen, a similar shape to their own. It even had the same sink and the same cream cabinets. He met an old man there. A rather nice old man. He’d given Cinn his newspaper, and Cinn read it, even though it was twenty years out of date and there were lots of complicated words he didn’t even attempt to read. He sat at the old man’s breakfast table with him until he decided he should probably try to get home, which is when he jumped off the stool, fell through the man’s kitchen floor, and promptly awoke in his own flat.
If only all his trips had been that peaceful.
He already knew that today’s certainly wouldn’t be.
Cinn followed Julien through the cottage, halting when Julien paused outside of a door.
“Hold on.”
Julien slipped inside the room, and returned with a framed photograph, a double portrait. Cinn’s focus shot straight to a younger-looking Julien. In the photo, his mouth was open in a wide grin, white teeth gleaming as he beamed at the photographer. His arm was slung around a girl with the exact same shade of blonde hair as his own—albeit slightly curlier. She was pretty. Béatrice was pretty.
“It will help to hold her image in your mind.”
Cinn nodded and gently took the photo from Julien. The Julien he saw before him today was so starkly different from the Julien in the picture, and he couldn’t help but pity him. Though he was fairly sure Julien would not want that.
“And what exactly am I asking her if I see her?” Yo Béatrice, you involved in any terrorism plots lately?
Julien hesitated. “Darcy says you should just focus on making contact today. Seeing if you can actually find her there.” He clamped his lips together .
In the dining room, Darcy instructed Cinn to lie on the empty, dark wooden table, as if it were a makeshift operating theatre. He did so, feeling foolish, like a spectacle on a stage. After a moment spent staring up at the dark beams of the cottage’s ceiling, he sat up to find the others not focused on him at all—they were rushing about, lighting candles in an efficient, practiced manner.
“But what will the candles do?” Cinn asked.
“Oh, those are just for atmosphere,” Darcy replied, wiggling her fingers in the air.
Cinn resisted palming his face.
“But this isn’t,” she added brightly, waving something in his face. “This is aged white bark from a paper birch tree. Over a hundred years old.”
Cinn frowned at the gleaming white material. “Seems unlikely.”
“It’s infused with luminaquartz. We’re going to use it to link Béatrice’s magnet item to your body.” She broke off a small chunk of bark and ground it with a mortar and pestle.
“So… after we begin, will the shadowmotes suddenly appear?” Cinn was dubious.
Darcy flicked through a thick leather-bound tome. “I don’t think you’ll see the shadowmotes until after you slip. Also, in order to prevent you bringing anything back with you, Cinn, we’re going to draw on your body with some special ink. Usually we’d draw a protective circle around you on the floor, but my research suggests this will be even safer. Do you mind removing the top half of your clothes?”
Cinn stared at her. “You’re joking. What the fuck is this freaky, culty, ritual shit?”
Julien snorted, but Elliot scowled at Cinn, practically snarling, “Just trust her. She knows what she’s doing.”
Grumbling, Cinn shimmied out of his hoodie and T-shirt. Although he wasn’t shy about showing his body, he couldn’t remember the last time anyone had seen his naked torso, and he had to fight not to cover it with his arms. Already he could feel Julien’s burning gaze cataloguing the tattoos usually hidden under his baggy clothes. He prayed the colour of his cheeks wasn’t betraying him.
The last thing that remained was his new protective gold band. It would have to come off—the whole point of it was to stop him slipping. Noir had said for him to ‘tell’ the metal circle to release itself. Cinn sighed and gripped the shiny object tightly, enclosing it with his other hand. He focused all of his energy into imagining the metal was pliable under his touch. He imagined it thinning, widening enough to slip it off his wrist. The electric tingle dancing under his fingers told him it was working. When he pulled his hand away, the bangle was ever-so-slightly larger, and slipped off him with ease. He placed it next to himself, feeling slightly smug.
Darcy turned to Elliot. “Have you got the aethraven ink? One of you two can copy out the symbols, though. You know what my drawing is like. I’ll end up removing his liver or something.”
Elliot produced a small jar of thick black liquid and a thin artist’s paintbrush.
“I better do it.” Julien’s hands shot out, snatching both items from Elliot.
Elliot opened his mouth—to protest?—and then crossed his arms, stepping back from the table with a sulky pout. “You were happy to let me do it on the floor in the library,” he mumbled.
“That was because we were playing with toys. This is serious business.”
Julien certainly had a serious business look about him as he eyed Cinn’s exposed skin, which prickled under his gaze. Julien propped the book Darcy passed him on the table and studied it for a moment. He pressed one cool hand to Cinn’s bare skin as his other dipped the brush into the ink jar, then made feather-light, deliberate strokes, brushing intricate patterns onto him that he couldn’t comprehend. Perhaps he’d have fared better decoding the symbols if he wasn’t finding Julien’s proximity, Julien’s touch, and the orangey scent of Julien’s hair so overwhelming that it was frying his senses, just like that moment on the garden bench earlier.
He closed his eyes, but that just made every sensation even more powerful, including the feel of Julien’s fingers pulling his skin taut—was he deliberately kneading Cinn’s muscles with his fingertips, or was Cinn imagining it?
Each wet stroke of the brush sent a shiver down Cinn’s spine, the cool ink tingling against his skin, leaving behind a trail of heat in its wake. Just when it was getting to the point where he was biting back inappropriate sounds, Julien announced he was finished.
“We’re going to use this treasured item of Béatrice’s as a ‘magnet item’ to help draw her to you.” From his pocket, Julien produced a silver locket—the oval type that often housed pictures inside—engraved with moons and stars. “She wore this every day.” He turned the locket around to reveal the other side was charred and blistered, once smooth metal now warped and blackened. “Until the day she died.”
Cinn flinched as Julien placed the cool metal onto his stomach, in the centre of the inkwork circle he’d created, looking Cinn dead in the eye as he did. Cinn swallowed, unsure of why this simple action was eliciting such an intense reaction from his body—so much so that he had the sudden urge to promise Julien he’d keep the locket safe for him.
Darcy held the mortar with the powdered luminaquartz in it, then spat in it.
Cinn let slip a sound of disgust. “Is that going on my body?”
“Preferably, yes.”
“Did you have to use spit?”
“Apparently, yes.”
Cinn sighed. “Just get on with it, then. ”
The ink already felt strange, his body being so exposed even stranger, so what was Darcy’s spit added to the mix? Cinn just wanted this entire ordeal over as quickly as possible now. He was already fantasising about stepping into his new bathtub in his fancy bathroom later.
Darcy rubbed the paste into the middle of the inked ring, then coated the locket with it before pressing it firmly into his flesh. The chain link tickled his belly button.
“I’ve prepared a compound for you, to stimulate your body into slipping.” Presenting a small circular tin containing fine, light brown crystals, Darcy continued, “It’s a bit like an adrenaline shot, but you’ll feel the effects slightly slower.”
Cinn eyed the dubious powder, remembering the Frostbite she’d used against him the other day.
“It’s this, or we stress your body in other ways. We could try electric shocks, or—”
“No, no, this is fine,” Cinn said quickly. “As long as it’s medicinal.”
A pause. “Sure.” Darcy offered him the tin. “Rub a fair bit on your gums.”
The taste was vile, reminiscent of burnt copper and bitter herbs. The urge to grimace was strong when the synthetic compound sent a tingling sensation through his mouth, alike to tiny sparks dancing on his tongue.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then he felt the thump, thump, thump of his heartbeat steadily increasing.
The cool ink on his skin prickled.
Suddenly, he was slipping.
First went his hearing—replaced by a low buzzing.
Next went his vision, as the world faded at its edges.
Finally, the sensation of falling.
Falling….
Backward s
Backwards
Backw—
This trip was markedly different from Cinn’s other episodes of shadowslipping.
For a start, this was the first time he’d deliberately slipped, the first time he was entering the space for a purpose .
Usually Cinn would arrive screaming, heart pounding, body shaking, eyes darting wildly around to see where he’d ended up this time and who he had the pleasure of meeting.
Although each experience had been slightly different, nothing had ever been so visually striking as where he found himself on this occasion.
Often, his surroundings took on a warped version of his current reality—or, a version of reality that the host spirit had lived in—but this time, Cinn found himself in a city. A distorted city that lay in ruins, a surreal tapestry of chaos painted in shades of ominous red. Colossal skyscrapers, larger than he’d ever seen, stood like twisted sentinels, their jagged silhouettes etched against the blood-red sky.
Bizarre crimson vines snaked like arteries of some massive creature across broken buildings and crumbling asphalt. They were all over everything, as far as his eye could see, the red tendrils coiled around structures, thorns pulsating with something, some energy Cinn somehow understood to be… malevolent. The very ground seemed to writhe with their presence. It was like Cinn had stepped into one of the sci-fi horror movies that he’d watched in his childhood—but hopefully his trip would end more happily than Alien .
Choosing a direction at random—it was hard to see far into the distance, everything being obscured by a thick, ashen mist—Cinn walked, eyeing the fractured and uneven tarmac that shook under each step. Twice he had to stop to calm his beating heart. You’re safe. They’ve got you. But did they? Should he really be so trusting of three random strangers, especially as one or two of them were proven assholes?
He pressed on regardless.
Strange shadows danced along the cracked surface.
Buildings leaned at odd angles, defying the laws of physics, their windows casting sinister glows.
Whispers echoed through the broken alleys.
Then a sudden compulsion struck him, and Cinn looked up, past the towering skyscrapers, into the hazy red mist that coated the sky.
He wished he hadn’t.
The moon! It was… broken. Shattered .
Fractured pieces of the orb hung suspended beyond hazy crimson mist.
A celestial mosaic of destruction.
Each shard emitted an eerie glow, casting beams that painted the city below in crimson shadows.
Every molecule in Cinn’s body froze as he stared at the moon, the jagged edges of the broken lunar puzzle taunting him.
Something floated past his vision. Something tiny, something dark.
A shadowmote! Shadowmotes in fact—several more blinked into existence.
How could they appear to be made of pure darkness, but still emanate light? He reached for one, and held in a breath as the shadowmote moved towards his hand, landing on it like a butterfly. Like it was attracted to him. How had he never noticed them before? Because you were too busy having a panic attack and screaming at the spirits to get away from you.
Another shadowmote drifted nearby, and he reached out for that one too. As soon as his hand reached its field of orbit, it floated over to join its friend .
Cinn collected three, four, six, ten. “Hello there,” he whispered. Could they hear him? Were they sentient? Would Darcy or Noir know?
As if in answer, they vibrated before flying off his hand and fading away.
He took a few steps onto the crumbling asphalt, moving towards the nearest red-ivy-covered wall.
That’s when he felt it. The presence.
A subtle shift in the air sent icy shivers down Cinn’s spine, an intangible whisper of evil that curled around him like a phantom breeze. Unseen eyes seemed to pierce through the red mist, and an ominous weight settled in the pit of his stomach, the unspoken promise of something that lurked just beyond the frayed edges of his perception.
A ghost of a breath hit the back of his neck.
He ran.
Sprinting through the disorienting landscape, Cinn’s footsteps pounded against the shattered ground of the once-city. His pulse raced in tandem with his hurried strides, the ghostly breath lingering on his neck hauntingly, urging him forward.
Turn around.
Face it.
See what you’re up against.
But it was Tyler’s, don’t give them an inch , Cinn , echoing through his mind that gave him the final push.
He turned.
An amorphous black mass, a shapeless void that seemed to defy the very essence of form, hovered a distance away from him. No discernible features adorned its shadowy surface, only an indistinct darkness that absorbed the surrounding red glow, rendering it an abyssal silhouette.
Cinn’s breathing became a series of choked, ragged gasps as the creature moved closer and closer towards him. It moved with an unsettling fluidity, tendrils of inky darkness extending and retracting in a grotesque dance. The air seemed to congeal in its presence, and as it drew nearer, an oppressive coldness enveloped Cinn.
Hisssssssssssssss
Then everything fell apart. Literally—the ground below Cinn started to give way, its already precarious form shaking and throwing up thick dust. Cinn’s gaze darted around, his eyes landing on shadowmotes floating nearby, watching the scene.
“Help me!” he screamed at them, and they zipped closer, but then stopped.
He gasped, glaring at them like that would help.
Then one shadowmote in particular caught his eye. It was looking at him. And Cinn felt it as if it were a part of himself. He pulled it towards him, and miraculously, the other motes followed, as if magnetised together. The ground gave another almighty shudder. On instinct, he flung the motes towards the increasingly large splits in the tarmac.
The shadowmotes multiplied. First dividing into two, then four, then eight, each emitting their dark glow.
Soon there were hundreds, thousands even, all heading to the same place—the splintering earth that was surely about to collapse any second. For a moment the ground reminded Cinn of a piece of pottery that had been broken and then glued back together, for the motes had filled the cracks with a glowing seal.
Hisssssssssssssss
He’d been so focused on the disintegrating ground, he’d almost forgotten about the monster. If it touched him, would he bring it back to his reality, just like he had done only a few nights ago? At least that had been recognisable as a ghost. A murderous ghost, true. This… thing, however ? He couldn’t risk bringing it back with him, no matter Darcy’s promises that it couldn’t happen.
Glancing around for more shadowmotes to draw on, he found the air now empty of them. Had he used up his finite supply? As the creature’s inky tendrils lurched towards him, he stumbled backwards, tripping over something and falling to the ground, hand flying up in a futile attempt to protect himself from the creature.
A repulsive amalgamation of decay and sulphur hit his nostrils.
Hisssssssssssssss
There was nobody to hear Cinn’s primal scream, but he unleashed it anyway as the black mass changed shape to become a voracious void, a hungry maw desperate for its prey.
A flash of light to his right.
The bright—oh-so-blissfully bright —light grew and grew to the point of blinding him, forcing Cinn to close his watering eyes. Was this ‘the light’?
Well, if this was it, it had been… something.
A warm hand wrapped around his and squeezed.
His eyes opened slowly to reveal the absence of the monster, and the blurred outline of a woman with a shade of blonde hair instantly recognisable. She even had her brother’s grey eyes.
“Béatrice?” Cinn practically screeched.
Blinking to clear his vision, he scanned the length of her body, clothed in a sparkling -silver sequined dress. This, and a silver headpiece, created the sense she was in some sort of costume. No visible injuries jumped out at him. The spirits he saw when he shadowslipped sometimes had obvious ailments, but Béatrice’s body, although pale, looked unharmed.
“Béatrice?” he asked again, slowly.
Her grip on his hand tightened, and she opened her mouth as if attempting to speak, but only silence filled the air. Frustrated, she repeated the futile effort, widening her mouth until Cinn glimpsed her tonsils, mimicking a soundless scream.
“It’s okay!” Cinn grabbed her shoulders to calm her down, but as he did so, his fingers sank deep into her, her flesh turned to putty in his hands.
Darkness enveloped him.