Mr. ‘Legs’ here was a car accident victim. One nearby. He’d hurt his legs, his girlfriend or wife or sister or something had been in the passenger seat, dying.
Could I reason with him?
Probably not, I decided.
Could I do something, given the chance to talk? Maybe.
But I couldn’t afford to make too much noise and give the ogre-troll thing a chance to home in on me. I didn’t trust the shotgun to work, and I did believe that a missed or ineffective shot would get me killed.
Besides, I suspected I’d need what I had for the Hyena.
Well, I was camouflaged in glamour. Whatever that was worth. It wasn’t helping much against these Others, but it was very possible they were using other senses to track me.
Was that my bias at play? I was human, so I thought in human terms when camouflaging myself? My own bias would influence the glamour, in turn…
Alright. Moving very slowly and very carefully at my position on the branch, I ran my hand along my arms, across my face and over the top of my head, raised one leg to sweep my hand over the glamour I’d painted there…
I could see a brassy highlight here and there, where I’d made contact, deeper shadows.
I had no idea if it would work.
I whistled, a small, tentative sound.
The big thing turned to face me, drawing one hand back.
The whistle echoed, faint sounds a short distance away, bouncing off the trees.
The thing turned, first one way, then the other.
It wouldn’t fool anyone or anything that was thinking straight. The false sounds were too faint, the sound I made still too distinct. But this thing wasn’t thinking straight. It was purely reactive, every action undertaken with blind aggression.
“Tires squealing,” the ghost said, but he didn’t move his mouth. A thought uttered aloud?
The ghost was still directly beneath me. He was the real problem.
More problems, I could tell, were on their way, attracted by the voice and by the violence of the big ogre-giant thing.
They weren’t here yet, though, meaning I had a moment.
Was I supposed to rationalize with this very confused spirit? Or take a different tack?
No time to waste.
“You killed Day,” I said.
Whispers of my voice echoed through the area. The brute snorted and grunted, lashing out at air, before stepping a little bit away from me.
“Day! No!”
“You fucked up,” I said, injecting a note of anger into my voice. “Day’s dead.”
“Please, Day! My arm, it’s not supposed to hurt like this!”
“Why are you talking? Who’s listening besides yourself? Day is dead.”
The ghost went momentarily quiet.
Which only made it easier to notice that other spirits were drawing nearer, some murmuring. I could see glimpses of them through the trees.
“My arm, it’s not supposed to hurt like this. Hurts more than anything else. It’s your fucking fault, Day!”
More volume meant more attention from the locals.
I needed to think simpler. I needed to break this pattern, and the way to do that was… what?
Get him back to his usual pattern?
“Your arm isn’t supposed to hurt like this, and you’re not supposed to be here. Think,” I said. “Think, where are you supposed to be?”
“I… the car.”
“There isn’t a car here.”
“I… I’m trapped. My legs are crushed. Nobody’s coming.”
The mention of his legs made pain emanate outward. The brute lashed out, but the different sources of noise were confusing it.
“You were in an accident,” I said. “What are you going to do?”
Move it along. Push him to follow the script.
“I’m… need to get my phone, call for help. But it’s not where it’s supposed to be. Day’s dead. Oh god. My arm hurts. Why?”
I wasn’t sure, but he seemed a fraction fainter than he had.
He was coming to pieces. Every time he mentioned his legs, he reaffirmed the imprint he’d made in the world. Every time the arm came up, though, he was running headlong into dissonance, into something that didn’t fit him and his existence.
Question was, would his anger and restlessness drive him to keep pursuing me, despite everything else, or could I get him back on track, using some metaphysical survial mechanism?
“You can’t reach your phone. What’s the next step?”
“My arm, it hurts.”
Not a bad thing, if he was unraveling. But it was taking too long, and I only had thirty seconds to a minute at best.
“What’s the next step?” I asked, again.
“Get out, get away, the car might blow up. Have to get up, get away.”
Cars didn’t really blow up, but that was the narrative. The image that was Mr. Legs here.
“Then hurry,” I said.
I could see the image distorting, a gap, a flaw. A scene trying to play out and glitching on some fundamental level. An interruption in the script.
“Hurry,” I repeated.
My voice echoed through the trees. The giant punched a tree where the sound had bounced off it.
Not necessarily a good thing. More were coming. I might very well have cut off my head to spite my face. Or whatever the appropriate metaphor was for attempting to solve one problem and creating a bigger one.
If I couldn’t handle two Others, how was I supposed to handle four? Or ten?
He was replaying the script, stuttering.
“Hurry,” I hissed the word, pushing him to try again. If he broke down enough, I could slip free. But I couldn’t jump down to the ground if he was right there, to grab me, or hit me full-on with whatever he was made up of.
He tried again, a little more distinct. I could hear him now.
“I can do this, I just have to push hard enough, squeeze myself free-” glitch. “-My arm, it’s not there.”
“Try,” I said.
“Where’s my arm?”
“Try,” I said, once more.
I was nearly out of time. Others were now drawing closer, getting caught up in one of the same tangles of branches that had slowed me down. Except they didn’t care about making noise. Not ghosts. Men and women in white, features bland and blanched by pain, their clothes stained red around gouges where sharp blades had penetrated the cloth and flesh beneath. Intelligent enough to be distracted by the sound. Perhaps intelligent enough to look for me and find me.
The ghost began to struggle, jerky movements, replays of scenes. This time, however, he simply skipped the scenes where he’d used one arm to help pull himself free.
He screamed, an agonized sound, somehow folded over or partially wrapped aroud something that wasn’t present here, and blood began to pour, flooding the snow around him. His legs were tearing, his wound where the arm had been torn off joined them in how it bled openly.
I felt the same pain in my own legs. Each time I’d felt his power, I’d felt like something was being used to pulverize my kneecaps. Now I got to experience what it was like to try and heave those pulverized limbs free of a vise.
My vision swam. It was bad enough that I nearly let go of the branch.
I could hear a growling echoing around the area.
The Hyena.
No.
When I managed to heave in a breath, gasping for air like I was drowning, I heard that same sound echoed. The noise had been my own, echoed.
I saw the ghost pause for rest, and fragments of bone slid out to protrude once more through the flesh around his knee. He screamed.