He looked upward, admiring the knotwork tooled into chipped granite. Really, this might not be bad for the project. Maybe he’d get a few shots after it was over; he had to do the project whether his partner turned into a zombie or not, after all.
How sad, everyone will say. Poor Tim Maclaren, remember him? Another victim of academic stress at the university.
Elliot’s skin pricked, but he didn’t feel as excited as he should. Disappointment was a bitch. “What do you think?” he asked, to lure Tim closer. He didn’t feel like struggling.
Tim stepped up beside him. No hesitation. Mundane bastard.
“I have to ask you one question,” Tim said.
Elliot looked at him, taking his hands out of his pockets, ready.
“Did you fuck him before or after you sold his soul?”
A tsunami of consciousness—starting in his brain and falling to his feet. His heart stalled.
Tim met his eyes—there was no fear in him.
God. He knew all along, and he came here anyhow. Elliot tried to mentally drag himself back into submission, under control. “Before,” he admitted, though he didn’t know why. He only knew that it felt good to say it. That he was, in some overwhelming, black way, thrilled.
Tim blinked at him. His eyes were wet, like some fucking sweet little hero in a romance novel. They practically glowed. “Why bother?”
Elliot smiled. “It’s important to have standards.”
Tim smiled back; that ugly, twisted smile.
Elliot knew he should do it now; reach out, shove Tim into the wall, watch him disappear, listen to them have their little feast. Get what he’d come for—another twenty or so years of perfection.
But he wanted something else, something more, now.
“You never feel bad about this, do you?” Tim asked.
Elliot couldn’t answer that; he couldn’t recall feeling bad about anything, ever. So he answered with someone else’s words: “Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe.”
Tim chewed at his lower lip. “Who said that?”
“It’s from Richard III.”
“You have that underlined?”
Elliot barely kept from flinching that time. “Yeah.”
“Think you missed the point. But that’s all I needed to hear,” Tim said, moving suddenly—too suddenly —for Elliot to realize what was happening.
A rough hand on his shoulder, something knocking hard against his knees in the back, buckling them. He pitched forward, and the wall rushed to meet him.
It was like belly-flopping into a pool, but instead of cold and wet, it was cold and stale. A thick clinging sense of nothing all over him. He spun, though he didn’t know if it was head-over-feet or the other way around.
An invisible hand stopped him, shoved him hard against an equally invisible wall. His head slammed off it; a deafening crack inside his skull, lights behind his eyes the only thing he could see. That cackle, a hundred cackles, shuddered not just through his head, but through his veins.
“You can’t take me,” he mumbled through the confusion. Something wet dripping down his neck, in his hair. It was hard to concentrate on anything else. He shivered, and the icy hand—three times the size of a normal one—pressed harder against his chest. His lungs groaned under the pressure. “We have a deal.”
Stale autumn wind on his cheek: We have a new deal. We take back what we gave you. We give it to the new boy.
Tim’s awful fucking smile.
A cracking in his chest, but not of bones. An invisible barrier gave way, a shock to his soul that wracked his body. The hand pushed through, grabbed at him inside, then drew out his self.
He saw his body in the dark as it dropped to its knees, then fell. He couldn’t even scream.
Tim curled around himself, leaned against a ramshackle stone. The air wasn’t as cold anymore, but he still shivered. He could hear Them inside, eating, still hungry. There was no enjoyment in Them, just ravenous emptiness.
He should have left, but he was frozen. His face felt wet, but he didn’t think he was crying. He just sat, staring at the picturesque mausoleum in the dark and hugging his knees to his chest, reciting snatches of things he’d read over the last week in his head, trying to find the one that would save him. Tennyson was no good anymore, but neither was anything else. And then there was the shuddering feeling he got every time Shakespeare appeared.
When they were done, he heard that voice in his head—the one from last night, cold and silver. You may take him back. We are finished.
The wall before him shimmered, knotwork blurring. Elliot stepped through, looked right through him with electric eyes. Something dark and viscous trickled down his forehead, from his shining hair. His fine, full lips were an appalling shade of gray, chalky skin stretched too tight over high cheekbones and forehead.
Tim’s vision blurred.
Would you like some of what we took from him, or something else? Charm magic, perhaps, to counteract your… defects?
Tim choked a little. “I don’t want anything.”
A moment of silence, a ripple through the air. Confusion.
Tim forced himself to his feet, retrieved his pack. Movements stiff, body numb. He avoided looking at the still-beautiful thing that used to be Elliot. “And I don’t want him back. He’s yours.”
It was important to have standards.
The first few steps were the hardest. Past the oblong stone they’d photographed, past the cigarette butts they’d pressed into the ground. Toward the angel with the crumbling wings and the weathered rocking horse, the weight of his camera bouncing reassuringly against his back.
HUNGER PAINS
Myrrym Davies
Early evening sunlight filtered through slatted ceiling vents, highlighting the cobwebbed rafters with a dim, orange glow. The rest of the attic lay shrouded in shadows; moldering boxes and cast off furniture lining the walls like cloth-draped sentinels, guarding the room’s hidden secrets. Sarah ran the beam of her Barbie flashlight over stacks of dusty crates and discarded sundries, a satisfied grin creeping onto her face.
There was bound to be some cool stuff buried there. It was just a matter of finding a way past those bulky boxes and boring old furniture.
She swung the flashlight in a slow sweep and spied a couple of crates she felt she could squeeze between. Her grin widened to a smile of anticipation as she headed towards the back of the room. Today, she would find something really special.
She could feel it.
Sarah might have missed the box had the beam of her flashlight not glinted off its latches. It lay in the farthest corner of the attic, half hidden behind a stack of brittle newspapers, its leather top coated in a thin layer of dust. Sarah blew a stray lock of dirty, blonde hair out of her face and aimed the light at the box, a grin dimpling her cheek as she inspected its cracked, brown casing and tarnished hinges.
Treasure!
Setting the flashlight on the floor, she grabbed the handle with both hands and pulled. Excitement bubbled in her belly as she dragged the trunk from behind the papers, revealing a row of discolored catches along the front. Images of possible treasures flitted through her mind: photographs, curling and yellow with age; clothes from a forgotten era; colorful costume jewelry. The box could contain anything. She would not know until she cracked the lid and peeked inside.
Sarah released her grip on the handle and circled to the front of the trunk, examining the pitted catches. Four simple lever clasps—easy enough to open, provided they had not rusted shut. She lifted the first three with no trouble and gazed at the fourth, a grin spreading across her dust-covered face. This was the part Sarah loved most: the moment of discovery. She loosened the final clasp, reached for her flashlight and raised the lid.