"Your God is a tentacled horror that wants to devour reality!"
"That's your problem!"
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An Imago of Rust and Crimson (Worm crossover)
- Thread starter EarthScorpion
- Start date
"That's your problem!"
"Maybe cripple Him a bit? God is all-seeing, so presumably He has eyes, right? And, well, He's he, so..."
But yeah, different interpretations of Heaven and its role in their life is something that can cause a rift between Taylor and Kirsty and eventually lead to a delightful animosity where they both fight for their ideals, making plans and thwarting plans of another and probably dragging a lot of people along with them for the ride.
That's something for an endgame, though, if the story would even go in anything similar to that direction.
Tam Lin
The Evolution QM
Are we going to see more of Taylor experimenting with her powers in the future?
She seems to already be having fallbacks and powers she use more often than others, so I'm curious if she already knows most of what she can do with her powers (even if it's not how she can do them)
She seems to already be having fallbacks and powers she use more often than others, so I'm curious if she already knows most of what she can do with her powers (even if it's not how she can do them)
She certainly has her "breadbasket" of tricks, although there are plenty of ways to develop them or use them in new ways.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I think part of the issue is that she's at least vaguely aware that she could REALLY screw things up if she used her power the wrong way, so she only pushes in certain directions in the heat of the moment (ie, she was worried about touching the mentally ill with her power, right up until she had a panicking Kirsty in front of her). Unless she has an excuse to take risks, she generally sticks to developing new uses for the abilities she already knows. Not that this actually makes it any safer for her or those around her, but still quite understandable.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well then she just needs to nail that worry to the wall with iron spikes and she can develop SUPER COOL NEW POWERS!
AbsolutelyHnothingUcanBgoRwrongIwithSthis.
Legend of Ruina
Growing eyes on the inside
Hey worst possible case she hits Wisdom 0, and have you seen all the cool toys the Mad get? Completely worth the cost of getting reduced to a broken shell of yourself that is compelled to repeat your greatest failure over and over and can't interact with mundane humans because they Disbelieve your very existence.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah, I'd like to know this as well.
After all, everyone keeps mentioning him, so he's gotta be important right?
Legend of Ruina
Growing eyes on the inside
Archmaster responsible for making the Mister Welch list equivalent for Awakening in setting. Flubbed Ascending super hard and therefore it became a list of things Mages couldn't do on pain of insanity.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
I'm not familiar with that version of the Mad; I'm assuming it's from nMage 2E.
Personally, I prefer the version where they were generally the product of "malfunctioned" or "defective" Awakenings, cases where something went dreadfully wrong on the way to or from the Watchtowers.
A woman on a waking world quest is struck by a car midway through the process, leaving her soul to ultimately return to a broken, comatose body. Trapped with only one toe in the living realm, the new-minted Mage quickly degenerates and deforms on a spiritual level, eventually becoming a bloated, unspeakable horror that squats in the hospice where its body was sent, sending forth feeding tendrils from its Twilight nest to harvest souls and Essence to use as metaphysical fodder. The spirits who dwell in the building are its slaves, held in thrall through a mixture of spellcraft and simple fear of being devoured, and it's only a matter of time before the Sleepers who work there fall prey to its influence as well.
Another of the Mad was broken when he metaphorically looked over his shoulder on the way home from the Kingdom of Nightmares, and one of its denizens leapt into his eyes and now hides in the depths of his soul (or at least, so he believes). Whether caused by possession or psychosis, the outcome is the same: a traumatized, out-of-control Mastigos convinced that their power's reins are held by a Supernal horror, leading to eruptions of mystic chaos that draw the Abyss like a signal flare whenever they feel threatened or overstressed.
A third seems like one of the Banishers, someone who couldn't handle the weight of seeing the world's true face, and now kills their fellow Awakened in a misguided effort to erase what they've seen. In the strictest terms, he is one. However, the truth is that he stumbled at the last possible moment of Awakening. His journey complete, his name inscribed on the walls of a Watchtower, he fell prey to a fleeting surge of self-loathing and disfigured his signature - and so, disfigured his own soul. He is an aberration now, a blasphemous inversion of what Mages are meant to be, driven to obliterate and occlude and oppose all knowledge and analysis until all is blindness and ignorance.
Where he walks, none who seek understanding are safe - scientists are driven to madness or apathy, universities collapse into misrule and corruption, government censuses & archives find their results reduced to frustrating gibberish, petty occultists are butchered, and repositories of occult lore are hunted down and erased with bloody-minded intensity. The killing of Mages is simply another way in which he seeks to bring about his personal Paradise: a world without insight or wisdom, where even the Seers of the Throne have been cast down and eradicated.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Speaking of which, Taylor noted in 3.02 that she didn't want to use her power to stop her own fear, because she was worried that it would remove her conscience as a side effect.
Then in 3.03, only one chapter later, she has a panic attack and does it reflexively.
- Location
- in the trash
Don't you know?
He's someone who has led a great many people to their downfall. He is a well known figure, though those he encounters often fail to recognise him for what he is until it is far too late. He's also really good at giving motivational pep talks.
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- Location
- Spain
Yeah right.
I will have you know that the Exarch followed their teachings, everyone last one of, them, and just look at their great sucess.
- Location
- in the trash
I never said he did it all the time!
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Look, as the Silver Ladder says; "Hugh Briss is a coward's word", and since the Silver Ladder are respectable and trustworthy, and not at all divine terrorists, we can conclude that Hugh Briss has just been accused of doing a lot of stuff that he didn't mean to do at all.
4.05 (Content Warning)
(AN: This chapter contains horror scenes that some readers may find disturbing, above and beyond the standards of this story. All attempts have been made to treat sensitive subject matters with care and sympathy.)
An Imago of Rust and Crimson
Chapter 4.05
It was ten on a Saturday morning and I was standing in a shop's bathroom on the edge of Little Tokyo. The place was only meant for customers, but I'd made sure they hadn't seen me come in. I'd needed a place to get changed, and I was just about ready.
The mirror wasn't very useful for getting changed, in the Other Place. Its glass was cracked and dirty, and dark water was creeping down the frame. Someone had scrawled a message in lipstick on the surface.
arE u shoor ur doing tHe Rite fing NOW?
Hav u CONsidered te priS thAT u mite Pay?
I still didn't know where the writing came from, or if its messages were meant for me, but... yes. I was.
I took a deep breath, ignoring the nailed-up moans of Phobia from behind me, and smoothed down my outfit. I was wearing a uniform I'd borrowed from the cops, my hair tied up in a ponytail. It didn't look very good on me, but that was nothing new. You'd probably need some kind of silly fabric-focussed parahuman to make clothes that made me look good. The main thing was that it basically fit, even if I had to wear a man's shirt to get enough length in the sleeves.
My disguise wasn't perfect. Even with my height, I looked way too much like what I was – a teenage girl dressed up as a cop. But that's because I hadn't finished yet. I took a deep breath, closing my eyes as my stomach squirmed. I'd practiced this, and it hadn't been fun at all.
A moment after I exhaled, the red butterflies swarmed straight back to me, bloody wet wings plastering against my skin and congealing into my clothes. I was wrapped up tight in a clinging layer of filth, embraced directly by the Other Place. I kept my eyes shut, but the feelings didn't go away.
I opened my eyes to a monster. I'd braced myself, but it still came as a shock to look in the mirror and see someone who wasn't me. It was even worse to see a monster, a chipped and cracked blue china face staring back.
I'd made a disguise in the Other Place. A mask of a cop. I raised my hand, watching the monster move. Loose butterflies trailed behind my movements like embers. They were the same human-headed insects of Isolation, but each of them was wearing a little mask, too.
I couldn't see my Other disguise in the real world, but I could feel it. The squirming butterflies crawled and twitched all over me, barbed-wire legs prickling my skin. Other people felt it too. Impressionist, I was going to call this. If Isolation meant no-one saw me, Impressionist meant they only saw what I wanted them to see. People felt sure that I had to be what Impressionist depicted me as – so sure that they ignored any little details that didn't fit.
I pulled out a set of mirrored aviators from a pocket, and put them on to complete the disguise. In them, I could see a reflection of my reflection. I hadn't particularly liked mirrors, before I got my powers. They reminded me of how different I was from Emma, and it wasn't like there was much point checking how I looked with her on my case. But now mirrors were useful. Even my creatures liked them. I'd discovered a few tricks I could do with mirrors covering my eyes, after I bought these shades. I'd practiced them a lot, down in my hall of mirrors.
And with that done, I headed out. I had a list of names and addresses to check off, grabbed from the school records. I was going to see how many of the ones in this neighbourhood I could get done today, because they were more clustered.
It was strange to walk through the streets like this. I wasn't hidden by Isolation, so people weren't ignoring me. In fact, I got heads turning. I wasn't sure if that was some effect of Impressionist, or whether they just watched cops here. It was hard to tell if the attention or the squirming feeling of insect legs felt more uncomfortable.
The first address on my list, for 'Megan Satou', wasn't in Little Tokyo proper, though it was close enough that the street sign had Japanese words scrawled under it. The paper taped to the main entrance of the apartment telling people to buzz for entrance was in both languages. This place didn't look like a dump from the outside. I checked the Other Place reflection for hidden nastiness, but it just revealed flaking concrete and damp. That was normal for the Other Place. It was normal for most places, come to think of it.
"Hello, uh, this is Officer Beverley Marsh from the BBPD," I said, buzzing for Apartment 201 and trying my best to sound like a calm, authoritative responsible adult. The fact that Phobia was chained up on a bathroom floor was helping matters a lot. "We'd like to speak to you."
There was a pause. Then, "Again?" a woman said, as the door unlocked. "Come in."
Again? Did that mean the real cops had got here before me?
Mrs Satou looked harassed and tired when she opened the door. I wasn't quite sure how old she was, but there was a lot of grey in her hair. "You have more questions? I told you back then, Megumi is so in trouble for not going to school."
'Megumi'? Crap. I hadn't been able to find her when even the first three letters of her name was the same. That was frustrating. My powers needed to shape up and get their act together.
"No, ma'am," I said. "It's about something else. Is your daughter in? I need to see her."
The woman pursed her lips. "Wait," she said, turning. She shouted something in Japanese back into the apartment and got a shouted response. "I will get her," she said, eyes narrowed.
Megumi herself was short, and the bangs that framed her face were dyed blue. "Yeah?" she said insolently.
I inspected her in the Other Place. Weirdly, she reminded me of Dad, of all people. This was a very angry girl. Dull smoky red flames licked over her charred body. But there was no sign of a beautiful parahuman glow, or the black-red death water.
"No," I said, shaking my head. "It's not her. Sorry for bothering you."
The mother sagged in relief. "She is not in trouble?"
"No, ma'am. We're looking for a suspect, but she doesn't match the description."
Megumi said something to her mother in a tone that pretty much had to be rude, and stormed off. Mrs Satou looked embarrassed, and gave me a look which… uh, sort of implied she was thinking I was closer to her age than her daughter's.
"That is good. She is a good girl. I try to keep her out of trouble," she said.
"I'm sure you do a good job of it, ma'am," I said. "Thank you for your time."
That was one name to cross off the list. I marked it off as I walked away. So the cops had already been down this list? That was good and bad. Good in that they probably wouldn't be surprised to see a cop asking questions. But it was bad if I was wasting my time. What if they'd arrested the killer already?
… not that it would be a bad thing, of course. But I was using my Saturday to do this. I had other things I could be doing. Sighing, I put that thought out of mind and started walking to the next address. After a moment, I stopped to exhale Isolation. I didn't want people staring at me, even if I was in disguise.
Lunchtime came and went. My search wasn't going as quickly as I would have liked. I'd had the hope that I'd be able to clear the addresses in Little Tokyo today and get back early enough that Dad wouldn't ask questions, but sooner or later I was going to have to start making some choices. Maybe if I assumed it was a boy? That would cut the number of names by more than half.
Ninth on my list was 'Luke Okada'. Another fake English first name.
In all honesty, Little Tokyo was getting me down. It had once been an industrial district, but now it was crammed to the brim with temporary housing and converted warehouses. I checked that I had the right address, an overpacked apartment building that backed onto the train lines. Every few minutes, all other noise was drowned out by the rattle of the tracks. The parking lot in front of the building had been replaced with cargo-crate housing, stacked three storeys high. They'd even knocked through part of the second storey wall to connect the so-called-temporary housing up into the concrete sixties structure. In the Other Place it was a decaying wreck, dark water running down the hole-filled walls. The Other Little Tokyo had a thick smog of depression veiling it, so very little watery sunlight crept through from the Other Place's dim sun. Yes, this was the right building, and I was looking for room 306.
I shuddered as I picked my way up the damp stairwell. There were just too many people packed in here. Far, far too many people. All the apartments – which probably hadn't been big when they'd been built – had been subdivided and new doors put in. The noise of another train outside made the windows shake. I could smell fried food and hear the sizzle of someone cooking in a hot pan. There were babies wailing and adults shouting and a rhythmic pounding against a wall. How did you live around so many people with so much noise and so little space for yourself? I'd go mad if I couldn't escape.
But even compared to everywhere else, Room 306 was not a happy room. It looked just the same as the others, but the Other Place area around the front door was caked with filth and dried blood. The muck crunched under my feet like stepping on broken glass. It spread out from the door like tentacles painted on the wall. The smell was awful.
I knocked. There was no answer. I tried again. Still no answer. Either they were out, or they didn't want to talk to a cop.
I had a new trick that would let me to check, though. Taking off my aviators, I exhaled directly onto them. Something tried to form, but the reflective surface dragged it in and trapped it, flattening it into an image of the Other Place. Mirrors helped me use the senses of my creatures without being overwhelmed by them. Instead of experiencing it myself, it was like watching it through a television. No one else seemed to be able to notice the images – no one apart from Kirsty, that is, but she didn't seem to see it properly. She just saw fire and smoke.
With the aviators back on, I could see one of the deeper layers of the Other Place. Everything was flat and grey. Dark water trickled down the inside of the glasses, like raindrops on a windscreen. The walls didn't seem to really exist, except as a shading in the air. Looking down, it felt like I was standing on mid-air. Instead, I saw swirling, twisting distortions. They were people. I was seeing them through walls. Every person was a blot on the grey place, like a lead ball on a rubber sheet. Rather than being gravity, though, these distortions were how people scarred the Other Place.
There wasn't anyone in the apartment. No people, at least. But there was a strange presence in there. I wasn't sure what it was. I tried to put words to what I could see through the purloined senses of my creatures. Whatever it was, it wasn't human. But it looked sort of human. Just… less. Less in every way. A baby? No, somehow I didn't think that. It was too… too flat to be a baby.
I pinched my brow. And if it was a baby, then it was in the house on its own. I should at least check on it.
Looking around, I made sure that there was no one nearby. Good. The coast was clear. I breathed out a cherub and stuck my hand through the tear in space it opened for me, unfastening the bolt from the inside. I was in.
I wasn't sure I wanted to be in. The walls were thick with grime and dried blood. The floor was indescribable. Everything that the outside had only implied was obvious here. I shed the Other Place as fast as I could, and closed the door behind me.
They'd cut one apartment in half to make this place and the adjoining residence, and it hadn't been a big apartment to start with. The main room probably hadn't started as a bedroom, but someone had hung up what looked like a shower curtain to split the room into two for a little bit of privacy. There were two mattresses on the floor. If this place wasn't a dump, I might have believed it was a cultural thing to be sleeping on the floor. My foot knocked against an empty beer bottle. The room smelled of male sweat and body spray and cigarette smoke and alcohol. The walls were a greasy yellow. So were the pinned up photos.
And there was an even more unpleasant undertone to the air. I sniffed, and realized that the scent of the Other Place was creeping into my nostrils even though I was in the real world. Blood. Shit. Rot. The smells scraped unnaturally across my tongue.
This wasn't a good place. It wasn't a good place at all, not if the Other Place was… somehow spilling over. I'd seen nicer homes there, places that were just damp instead of stinking, dull instead of filthy. This was a real place, where people – someone who went to my school! – actually lived. All the time.
I might have been keeping Phobia chained, but that just meant that there was an unpleasant, hollow apprehension where I was sure my fear should have been. It gnawed in my gut and whispered in my ear. All the hair on the back of my neck was standing on end and my scars were aching.
And I was getting angry. I was getting angry because people had to live like this. I was angry at the world. Anger was good. It was better than the numb hollowness left where my fear should be.
A small collection of papers were scattered in and around the beer bottles lying on the room's small table. I nudged the bottles out of the way with my gloved hands, and took a look. The one on the top was a beer-stained police form letter, dated three days ago. It was a list of instructions to follow if anyone in the household saw 'Luke Okada', and the name was filled-in with pen. The cops had already been here, but they hadn't found the suspect. I rummaged through the rest of the papers. Bills, lottery tickets, and things in Japanese I couldn't read.
Leaning forwards, I sniffed. The smells of the Other Place were stronger here, deeper into the room. Was it emanating from the police note?
All things considered, I really didn't want to look. If there was one thing that the Other Place did very well, it was hammer home human misery – and God, I felt I'd already seen enough here.
But I could smell it. I could smell the Other Place creeping into the world. And a nagging worry was creeping in the back of my skull, wondering if it might continue to intrude, all on its own. What if it started to become real, if I didn't solve whatever was happening here? What if it just never let me go?
I took a deep breath, and sank down to read that note again. What secrets was it hiding?
That was what the Other Place said. The usual gibberish, except for the bold print stamped on top:
The muscles under my left eye started to twitch. I could feel those words sinking in, the thick, black, oily letters sticking to my thoughts like tar. There was… there was some kind of power in this letter. I could feel it squirming into my brain, like I'd inhaled one of my constructs. It wanted me to call that number if I saw the boy I was looking for. I clamped my eyes shut, felt it wriggling in my thoughts, and exhaled it. A cherub emerged, one chubby baby porcelain hand clenched on a writhing black thing, and I sent it back to my base. I couldn't deal with this right now. I could poke at it with my power later.
The pressure didn't stop, even with its source gone, so I clenched my teeth and thought of iron nails and iron wire and rust. I didn't exhale those, though. I just let them clutter up, filling my skull with stabbing pains until I couldn't see or breathe and there wasn't space in my brain for anything else. I counted each second of pain, thinking iron thoughts until the squirming, burrowing pressure stopped.
I swallowed, barely tasting the air. So it wasn't just the cops. The grey men had been here. No, more than just the grey men. I was pretty sure they couldn't make something like this. It had to have been the bird woman, or someone like her.
I opened my watering eyes with a sigh of relief, and looked around. And then I yelped despite my best efforts to not make a noise.
There was a patch of black-red death-oil on the far wall. It hadn't been there a moment ago.
And then it moved. And I realised it wasn't on the far wall at all. It wasn't a patch, either. It was a figure. A sitting figure, arms wrapped around its legs, right there on one of the mattresses.
I swallowed again, and bit my lip until I tasted blood, trying not to scream. I… I… I…
It didn't seem to have seen me. Yes. And it was the presence I'd felt. The mind I'd felt.
What the fuck? It was something alive. Here, in the Other Place, but it wasn't from me, and it didn't have the beautiful parahuman glow. It was something totally separate. Something made of death.
I took a step closer to the hunched over shape, and the Other Place felt even colder. Was that just my imagination? I paced around it, tensed and ready in case it moved. Was it someone else's angel – someone other than me or Kirsty? Or was it something else? Death-oil stains got left where someone died, I'd worked out that much, but they'd just been splatters before now. Not something human-shaped, much less mobile.
This was how death looked in the Other Place. It remembered deaths, that was normal, but this was different. Worse. This looked like the Other Place was remembering a dead person. My thoughts ran around in circles. Why would the Other Place remember someone like this? What did it mean if it did?
"What are you?" I mouthed. I nearly reached out to touch it, but I stopped myself. Touching death couldn't be healthy.
It was almost like a ghost, I decided. A memory of a dead person that this room remembered. Trust the Other Place to find a way to shock me. So did this mean that Luke Okuda was the killer? This could be the… the memory of the dead boy from school, burned into the Other Place at his killer's home.
I started back when the memory rose to its feet. The proportions weren't quite right. Its neck was too thin, its arms too long. Or at least that was what I thought. It was hard to tell. Features became blurred when it was all just slick swirling black-red. Shambling, stumbling, it made its way across the room and stepped right through a door I hadn't noticed before.
Blinking, I shed the Other Place. Yes, that actually was a real door, not some weirdly mundane Other Place symbolism. I just hadn't paid attention to it, because it had been on the other side of the curtain sub-dividing the room. I'd been more occupied by the smell of the Other Place intruding on the room, the rot and the blood and the shit and the filth.
It seemed like it got stronger as I stepped toward the door, actually. I'd thought it had been the Other Place, but… no. Oh no.
Hand shaking, taking shallow breaths through my mouth, I reached out. The door creaked as I eased it open.
Bloodshot eyes stared back, bulging in a pale green and puffy face, dried blood drooling from the mouth, white electrical cables wound tight around its neck. The smell hit me like a rock between the eyes.
I didn't want to look. Not at the livid purple hands and feet. Not at the brown stains on the ground. I wanted to turn away, to see anything but the sad shape hanging there in the utility room. I kept on staring, taking in every little detail. I couldn't look away. My body refused to move. I should be scared, and I wasn't, and that was all my fault.
Nausea took over from the missing fear and I sagged down, collapsing to my knees, wrestling for control of my stomach. I couldn't let myself be sick. Not here. Even though I'd got a mouthful of the corpse-rot and I hadn't felt this bad since the locker and-
I opened my mouth and coughed out my Nausea, forcing her out in chunks even as I was still sinking into the Other Place. She pooled beside me, congealing into something like a naked version of me, covered in floor-length hair matted with blood and grease and dead bugs and worse.
Wiping my mouth on my sleeve, stomach stilled, I glared at her. She stared back, smiling with a mouth full of rotten, oozing teeth. Her too-long tongue rolled out of her mouth, crawling along the ground towards me like a slug.
"No," I growled, exhaling coils of tangled barbed wire that ensnared her hands and wrists. She screamed, a wet, gargling, putrid sound. I didn't let up. Not until I had the barbed wire around her throat. Not until she was the one kneeling.
That stopped me throwing up. That was the only thing that stopped me throwing up. I couldn't feel fear, I couldn't feel sickness, and in the hollow place left by their absence, there was only a dull, muted horror. God. Oh God. I shed the Other Place as quickly as I could and leaned up against the wall, arms wrapped around myself. I thought I could hear the electrical cables creak.
I was in here with a dead body. Someone who'd hung himself. He wasn't fresh, not looking like that. Not smelling like that. The colours were all wrong. The face was pale and vaguely green, while the hands and feet were the colour of rotten plums. The features bulged. And… and there were scratches on his neck. I could see dried blood on the white cables, so maybe he'd realised he didn't want to do it, and he'd struggled, trying to get free, but it was too late, the cords were too tight, he'd choked to death and…
… and he'd died so horribly that it had scarred the Other Place. Worse than other deaths. So bad there was an oozing shape of death-oil that had mutely stumbled in and out of this room. The room where he'd died.
I thought I recognised the man. He wasn't Luke Okada. He was too old and too overweight. But he was in some of the pictures outside. His father.
My breaths came fast and shallow. I'd chained my fear, I'd forced down my sickness, but… I still couldn't handle this. The cold, clinical seeping horror was a lead weight in my stomach. I hadn't expected a body! I just wanted to find the killer at school! I wanted answers! I wanted to bring them to justice! What was I supposed to do now, with a dead body hanging in front of me, in someone else's house? Crap. Crap.
Well, it was too late for Mr Okada. I couldn't do anything for him now, except make sure that someone found him. He could get a proper burial, at least.
Now that I knew the grey men had been here – and were handing out some kind of brainwashing letters – I had even more worries nagging at me. I didn't know if this guy's son was the killer, not yet. I just knew I didn't want the grey men getting their hands on him. Would the father have done this to himself if he hadn't been given that note, fighting with the urge to hand over his son?
No, I had to find 'Luke' before they did, and I knew where to start. I could do things with memories, and there was a memory right here, burned into the Other Place, shambling back and forth. I'd only done it once before, with Kirsty, but it should work. After all, I'd been able to feel the thing's mind, outside of the apartment. There had to be something there I could use. Some memory in the Other Place.
I turned towards the death-oil figure, and exhaled an angel. It didn't have eyes, but I was sure it was staring at me. Did I really want to do this?
Hands jammed into my pockets, I paced up and down, trying to psyche myself up. Mud and blood squelched under my feet. What worried me was the feedback, the contamination I'd felt with Kirsty. I needed to remember who I was. I couldn't become anything like the body next to me, dangling and stinking. I didn't want to kill myself. I'd never wanted that, and if I found myself thinking I did, they weren't my thoughts. It was just like the locker. Everyone said I'd gone crazy and tried to kill myself in there, but they were wrong, and they didn't know what they were talking about. That wasn't me. I was fine.
The barbed-wire angel hissed at me from beside the hanging corpse, an impatient rasp of breath behind its gas mask. "I'm fine!" I snapped back.
I didn't care what it thought, anyway. I just needed it to do what I said. On command, it grabbed the oily shadow, clawed hands latching around its wavering arm. It didn't seem to respond, but at least it wouldn't be escaping.
Exhaling onto my gloved hands like I was trying to warm them, I gathered up a squirming ball of Other Place material in one palm. And then I pressed it to the oily surface of the strange creature, and spoke. "Tell me… about your son."
The echo twisted under my hand, writhing like I'd held its skin to an open flame. It started screaming a high shrill noise which made my teeth buzz, and then black vapour began to rise off it, creeping into my mouth until-
It was tight around my throat and my vision was growing dim and I was thrashing against the cables around my legs but I'd done a too good job of it. I could just about lift up a little bit on the wall to gasp out a breath but it took all my strength and the cables were getting tighter and tighter and this had been a mistake such a mistake and I had to get my fingers under the cables but I couldn't and this was so much worse than I thought it was going to be and I needed to breathe and I'd wanted to die but not like this and… and… and…
- I let go. Of the cord, of the memory, of the creature, and gasped for breath, massaging my neck. No. That wasn't it. Couldn't let it show me that. My throat felt like it was bruised, all tender and raw and aching. I had to make it show me something else.
I exhaled again, rasping a little, and reached out.
"No," I wheezed. "Tell me- Tell me about your son. What's his real name?" This time the angel tightened its grasp.
But my hand didn't get there. The echo spoke, in a gasping, choked voice. "Matsuda. Ryo," it said.
"Good," I said, and swallowed, tasting cold blood. So, he hadn't just changed his first name to fit in. Neither of his names were the same. That probably made them illegal immigrants, here with false papers. "Now. Matsuda. Where is he now? Where was the last time you saw him? Are you going to speak?"
"I. No more."
"I need to find him," I said. "You can help me, or I'll take it from you. I'm going to find out."
"No. More," it said.
"Hold him," I ordered the angel, and squared my jaw. The memory-creature twisted in the angel's clawed grasp, trying to escape. Squirming and thrashing, it leaned away from my hand. But I reached out and touched it and-
Ryo screamed at me. I screamed back. He was crying and I didn't understand what was going on. There was still blood in his hair, and it wasn't his, thank goodness, not like last time, but who did it belong to? He was cramming clothes into a bag. The things he'd been wearing were heaped on the floor, painted crimson. I begged with him, pleaded with him, ordered him. Nothing changed his mind. As he left, he slammed the door and plaster fell from the ceiling as the hinges bounced.
I went down to the laundrette, his clothes bundled up with mine. The blood haunted me every step of the way. I whispered and muttered to myself as I dumped the bloody clothing in a washing machine. I poured bleach into the drum, rather than cleaning fluid. I knew it should destroy the evidence. No one noticed me. I was sure of it. I staggered back home, weeping, and stopped at a liquor store. I sat in my shitty apartment with the peeling walls and rotting ceiling and the rising damp, and drank and drank.
-there it was. I let go and stepped back, head reeling. I could feel tears welling up. Nothing was worth a damn. Everything good, everything I'd planned, everything I'd hoped about America was just a lie.
Angrily, I took off my aviators and rubbed my eyes. Those weren't my feelings. I couldn't let myself get lost in those external thoughts. Not here, not with a dead body in the next room. The body of a man who'd… who'd helped cover up his son's bloody clothes, and then sat here getting drunk. He'd lived long enough for the cops to check this place out three days ago, to hand over the power-laced pamphlet. And then, at some point since then, he'd hung himself in the utility closet that served as the kitchen in his cramped, stinking apartment.
Scowling, I stomped over to one of the mattresses, the one which clearly belonged to a young man. The cans of Axe were a clue. There were some hairs on the pillow, and I picked them out. The oily silhouette watched me, limp in my angel's grip.
"Let it go," I ordered as I stomped out, "and follow me." I managed to make it all the way out the door, then staggered down the stairs and outside before I collapsed, shaking in the open air. My head felt like it was brimming with the gunk of the Other Place, runoff from that phantom, and my arms felt puffy and hot with scars. I had been using my powers too much in there.
I'd never seen a dead body before. Not up close like that. Even down in the Docks, I'd only seen bodybags.
The noise of the city surrounded me, and the secondhand sunlight streaming between the ill-maintained buildings helped wash away the unnatural chill. Even with all its fumes, the air smelt fresher than anything I'd ever breathed. I sat there for a good quarter of an hour. I told myself I was thinking things over, getting my strength back. I knew I was just trying to put off what I'd need to do next.
Luke Okuda – Matsuda Ryo – was out there. He was the killer for sure, and he was on the run. Was he willing to kill again? Maybe. I didn't know why he'd done it in the first place. Even his father hadn't, and he was dead now. There wasn't any sign of a woman in that apartment; his mother was dead, or gone. I was going to be seeing that place again in my nightmares, I just knew it. Cry Baby would be put to work keeping me awake, if that was what it took to avoid going back in my dreams.
I exhaled, and Sniffer took form beside me. Her looming long-limbed bulk towered over me. "Here," I told Sniffer, offering her the hairs I'd found. "Find me Matsuda Ryo."
She leaned down over me, too-large nostrils flared. Living up to her name, she sniffed at my hand. Silently, she nodded.
"You know where he is? Just from that?"
Another nod.
"Where?"
Licking one finger, she marked damp letters on one of the decaying walls of the apartment block exterior.
BOSTON
"Boston," I repeated. He'd clearly made a run for it, heading south. Maybe hitchhiking, maybe on a transit bus. I guessed that if you wanted to hide out somewhere, Boston was a good place for that. Half the city was still abandoned and irradiated. The Behemoth attacked the place when I was about eight. Dad said that he'd heard the noise of MIT and its tinkertech labs detonating from here in Maine, but I didn't remember that.
I exhaled Watcher Doll. "Go and find him." I told the camera-headed cherub. "Follow Sniffer, and show me where he is."
I plucked off my aviators as it vanished, peering into their reflective lenses to see what Watcher Doll saw. Matsuda was hunched over a plastic table, wrapped up in a hoodie and thick layers of warm clothes. It looked like he was serious about making a run for it. If the half-eaten Big Mac was a clue, he was in a McDonalds. He didn't look like he was in much distress. Then again, Big Macs aren't that terrible.
I must be getting nervous, if I was making awful jokes to myself. Had Phobia freed herself already?
Cupping my hands over my mouth, I tried not to hyperventilate. I knew what I had to do, even if I didn't want to do it. I had to find Luke – Matsuda, whatever – before the cops did. Or before he got away. I needed to know… why he'd done it, and whether he'd even meant to. How his power worked, and what it looked like in the Other Place. Why the grey men were after him, and what he knew about them. I needed to know if he was really a criminal, or if it was just an accident.
I knew all that. I was just scared, almost too scared to move.
So I took a deep breath, and released Phobia for the second time that day. As I bound her up in razor wire, I felt my mind clear. It was obvious what I should do next. And without fear, I had anger - and I was angry at the government grey men who cared more about their investigations than the people living here. They'd seen this place, seen these living conditions. They were federals, but had they cared? No. They'd used their powers on the father. It'd probably been what had pushed him over the edge.
Well, in that case, fuck the grey men. Why did they want Matsuda Ryo? I was going to find out the truth here, the one they were trying to hide.
I had his hair. I had his name. I could find him, no matter where he went. I hunched my shoulders.
It was time to see if my Spinner Hag could open a corridor to Boston.
An Imago of Rust and Crimson
Chapter 4.05
It was ten on a Saturday morning and I was standing in a shop's bathroom on the edge of Little Tokyo. The place was only meant for customers, but I'd made sure they hadn't seen me come in. I'd needed a place to get changed, and I was just about ready.
The mirror wasn't very useful for getting changed, in the Other Place. Its glass was cracked and dirty, and dark water was creeping down the frame. Someone had scrawled a message in lipstick on the surface.
arE u shoor ur doing tHe Rite fing NOW?
Hav u CONsidered te priS thAT u mite Pay?
I still didn't know where the writing came from, or if its messages were meant for me, but... yes. I was.
I took a deep breath, ignoring the nailed-up moans of Phobia from behind me, and smoothed down my outfit. I was wearing a uniform I'd borrowed from the cops, my hair tied up in a ponytail. It didn't look very good on me, but that was nothing new. You'd probably need some kind of silly fabric-focussed parahuman to make clothes that made me look good. The main thing was that it basically fit, even if I had to wear a man's shirt to get enough length in the sleeves.
My disguise wasn't perfect. Even with my height, I looked way too much like what I was – a teenage girl dressed up as a cop. But that's because I hadn't finished yet. I took a deep breath, closing my eyes as my stomach squirmed. I'd practiced this, and it hadn't been fun at all.
A moment after I exhaled, the red butterflies swarmed straight back to me, bloody wet wings plastering against my skin and congealing into my clothes. I was wrapped up tight in a clinging layer of filth, embraced directly by the Other Place. I kept my eyes shut, but the feelings didn't go away.
I opened my eyes to a monster. I'd braced myself, but it still came as a shock to look in the mirror and see someone who wasn't me. It was even worse to see a monster, a chipped and cracked blue china face staring back.
I'd made a disguise in the Other Place. A mask of a cop. I raised my hand, watching the monster move. Loose butterflies trailed behind my movements like embers. They were the same human-headed insects of Isolation, but each of them was wearing a little mask, too.
I couldn't see my Other disguise in the real world, but I could feel it. The squirming butterflies crawled and twitched all over me, barbed-wire legs prickling my skin. Other people felt it too. Impressionist, I was going to call this. If Isolation meant no-one saw me, Impressionist meant they only saw what I wanted them to see. People felt sure that I had to be what Impressionist depicted me as – so sure that they ignored any little details that didn't fit.
I pulled out a set of mirrored aviators from a pocket, and put them on to complete the disguise. In them, I could see a reflection of my reflection. I hadn't particularly liked mirrors, before I got my powers. They reminded me of how different I was from Emma, and it wasn't like there was much point checking how I looked with her on my case. But now mirrors were useful. Even my creatures liked them. I'd discovered a few tricks I could do with mirrors covering my eyes, after I bought these shades. I'd practiced them a lot, down in my hall of mirrors.
And with that done, I headed out. I had a list of names and addresses to check off, grabbed from the school records. I was going to see how many of the ones in this neighbourhood I could get done today, because they were more clustered.
It was strange to walk through the streets like this. I wasn't hidden by Isolation, so people weren't ignoring me. In fact, I got heads turning. I wasn't sure if that was some effect of Impressionist, or whether they just watched cops here. It was hard to tell if the attention or the squirming feeling of insect legs felt more uncomfortable.
The first address on my list, for 'Megan Satou', wasn't in Little Tokyo proper, though it was close enough that the street sign had Japanese words scrawled under it. The paper taped to the main entrance of the apartment telling people to buzz for entrance was in both languages. This place didn't look like a dump from the outside. I checked the Other Place reflection for hidden nastiness, but it just revealed flaking concrete and damp. That was normal for the Other Place. It was normal for most places, come to think of it.
"Hello, uh, this is Officer Beverley Marsh from the BBPD," I said, buzzing for Apartment 201 and trying my best to sound like a calm, authoritative responsible adult. The fact that Phobia was chained up on a bathroom floor was helping matters a lot. "We'd like to speak to you."
There was a pause. Then, "Again?" a woman said, as the door unlocked. "Come in."
Again? Did that mean the real cops had got here before me?
Mrs Satou looked harassed and tired when she opened the door. I wasn't quite sure how old she was, but there was a lot of grey in her hair. "You have more questions? I told you back then, Megumi is so in trouble for not going to school."
'Megumi'? Crap. I hadn't been able to find her when even the first three letters of her name was the same. That was frustrating. My powers needed to shape up and get their act together.
"No, ma'am," I said. "It's about something else. Is your daughter in? I need to see her."
The woman pursed her lips. "Wait," she said, turning. She shouted something in Japanese back into the apartment and got a shouted response. "I will get her," she said, eyes narrowed.
Megumi herself was short, and the bangs that framed her face were dyed blue. "Yeah?" she said insolently.
I inspected her in the Other Place. Weirdly, she reminded me of Dad, of all people. This was a very angry girl. Dull smoky red flames licked over her charred body. But there was no sign of a beautiful parahuman glow, or the black-red death water.
"No," I said, shaking my head. "It's not her. Sorry for bothering you."
The mother sagged in relief. "She is not in trouble?"
"No, ma'am. We're looking for a suspect, but she doesn't match the description."
Megumi said something to her mother in a tone that pretty much had to be rude, and stormed off. Mrs Satou looked embarrassed, and gave me a look which… uh, sort of implied she was thinking I was closer to her age than her daughter's.
"That is good. She is a good girl. I try to keep her out of trouble," she said.
"I'm sure you do a good job of it, ma'am," I said. "Thank you for your time."
That was one name to cross off the list. I marked it off as I walked away. So the cops had already been down this list? That was good and bad. Good in that they probably wouldn't be surprised to see a cop asking questions. But it was bad if I was wasting my time. What if they'd arrested the killer already?
… not that it would be a bad thing, of course. But I was using my Saturday to do this. I had other things I could be doing. Sighing, I put that thought out of mind and started walking to the next address. After a moment, I stopped to exhale Isolation. I didn't want people staring at me, even if I was in disguise.
Lunchtime came and went. My search wasn't going as quickly as I would have liked. I'd had the hope that I'd be able to clear the addresses in Little Tokyo today and get back early enough that Dad wouldn't ask questions, but sooner or later I was going to have to start making some choices. Maybe if I assumed it was a boy? That would cut the number of names by more than half.
Ninth on my list was 'Luke Okada'. Another fake English first name.
In all honesty, Little Tokyo was getting me down. It had once been an industrial district, but now it was crammed to the brim with temporary housing and converted warehouses. I checked that I had the right address, an overpacked apartment building that backed onto the train lines. Every few minutes, all other noise was drowned out by the rattle of the tracks. The parking lot in front of the building had been replaced with cargo-crate housing, stacked three storeys high. They'd even knocked through part of the second storey wall to connect the so-called-temporary housing up into the concrete sixties structure. In the Other Place it was a decaying wreck, dark water running down the hole-filled walls. The Other Little Tokyo had a thick smog of depression veiling it, so very little watery sunlight crept through from the Other Place's dim sun. Yes, this was the right building, and I was looking for room 306.
I shuddered as I picked my way up the damp stairwell. There were just too many people packed in here. Far, far too many people. All the apartments – which probably hadn't been big when they'd been built – had been subdivided and new doors put in. The noise of another train outside made the windows shake. I could smell fried food and hear the sizzle of someone cooking in a hot pan. There were babies wailing and adults shouting and a rhythmic pounding against a wall. How did you live around so many people with so much noise and so little space for yourself? I'd go mad if I couldn't escape.
But even compared to everywhere else, Room 306 was not a happy room. It looked just the same as the others, but the Other Place area around the front door was caked with filth and dried blood. The muck crunched under my feet like stepping on broken glass. It spread out from the door like tentacles painted on the wall. The smell was awful.
I knocked. There was no answer. I tried again. Still no answer. Either they were out, or they didn't want to talk to a cop.
I had a new trick that would let me to check, though. Taking off my aviators, I exhaled directly onto them. Something tried to form, but the reflective surface dragged it in and trapped it, flattening it into an image of the Other Place. Mirrors helped me use the senses of my creatures without being overwhelmed by them. Instead of experiencing it myself, it was like watching it through a television. No one else seemed to be able to notice the images – no one apart from Kirsty, that is, but she didn't seem to see it properly. She just saw fire and smoke.
With the aviators back on, I could see one of the deeper layers of the Other Place. Everything was flat and grey. Dark water trickled down the inside of the glasses, like raindrops on a windscreen. The walls didn't seem to really exist, except as a shading in the air. Looking down, it felt like I was standing on mid-air. Instead, I saw swirling, twisting distortions. They were people. I was seeing them through walls. Every person was a blot on the grey place, like a lead ball on a rubber sheet. Rather than being gravity, though, these distortions were how people scarred the Other Place.
There wasn't anyone in the apartment. No people, at least. But there was a strange presence in there. I wasn't sure what it was. I tried to put words to what I could see through the purloined senses of my creatures. Whatever it was, it wasn't human. But it looked sort of human. Just… less. Less in every way. A baby? No, somehow I didn't think that. It was too… too flat to be a baby.
I pinched my brow. And if it was a baby, then it was in the house on its own. I should at least check on it.
Looking around, I made sure that there was no one nearby. Good. The coast was clear. I breathed out a cherub and stuck my hand through the tear in space it opened for me, unfastening the bolt from the inside. I was in.
I wasn't sure I wanted to be in. The walls were thick with grime and dried blood. The floor was indescribable. Everything that the outside had only implied was obvious here. I shed the Other Place as fast as I could, and closed the door behind me.
They'd cut one apartment in half to make this place and the adjoining residence, and it hadn't been a big apartment to start with. The main room probably hadn't started as a bedroom, but someone had hung up what looked like a shower curtain to split the room into two for a little bit of privacy. There were two mattresses on the floor. If this place wasn't a dump, I might have believed it was a cultural thing to be sleeping on the floor. My foot knocked against an empty beer bottle. The room smelled of male sweat and body spray and cigarette smoke and alcohol. The walls were a greasy yellow. So were the pinned up photos.
And there was an even more unpleasant undertone to the air. I sniffed, and realized that the scent of the Other Place was creeping into my nostrils even though I was in the real world. Blood. Shit. Rot. The smells scraped unnaturally across my tongue.
This wasn't a good place. It wasn't a good place at all, not if the Other Place was… somehow spilling over. I'd seen nicer homes there, places that were just damp instead of stinking, dull instead of filthy. This was a real place, where people – someone who went to my school! – actually lived. All the time.
I might have been keeping Phobia chained, but that just meant that there was an unpleasant, hollow apprehension where I was sure my fear should have been. It gnawed in my gut and whispered in my ear. All the hair on the back of my neck was standing on end and my scars were aching.
And I was getting angry. I was getting angry because people had to live like this. I was angry at the world. Anger was good. It was better than the numb hollowness left where my fear should be.
A small collection of papers were scattered in and around the beer bottles lying on the room's small table. I nudged the bottles out of the way with my gloved hands, and took a look. The one on the top was a beer-stained police form letter, dated three days ago. It was a list of instructions to follow if anyone in the household saw 'Luke Okada', and the name was filled-in with pen. The cops had already been here, but they hadn't found the suspect. I rummaged through the rest of the papers. Bills, lottery tickets, and things in Japanese I couldn't read.
Leaning forwards, I sniffed. The smells of the Other Place were stronger here, deeper into the room. Was it emanating from the police note?
All things considered, I really didn't want to look. If there was one thing that the Other Place did very well, it was hammer home human misery – and God, I felt I'd already seen enough here.
But I could smell it. I could smell the Other Place creeping into the world. And a nagging worry was creeping in the back of my skull, wondering if it might continue to intrude, all on its own. What if it started to become real, if I didn't solve whatever was happening here? What if it just never let me go?
I took a deep breath, and sank down to read that note again. What secrets was it hiding?
MATT 10:21
thAt's wat hE fort
the tenshun of tHe trateor
hoW To esCAPE So Fee's ChoiS
thAt's wat hE fort
the tenshun of tHe trateor
hoW To esCAPE So Fee's ChoiS
That was what the Other Place said. The usual gibberish, except for the bold print stamped on top:
REPORT ON HIM
INFORM
OBEDIENCE
LOYALTY
CONTAINMENT
INFORM
OBEDIENCE
LOYALTY
CONTAINMENT
The muscles under my left eye started to twitch. I could feel those words sinking in, the thick, black, oily letters sticking to my thoughts like tar. There was… there was some kind of power in this letter. I could feel it squirming into my brain, like I'd inhaled one of my constructs. It wanted me to call that number if I saw the boy I was looking for. I clamped my eyes shut, felt it wriggling in my thoughts, and exhaled it. A cherub emerged, one chubby baby porcelain hand clenched on a writhing black thing, and I sent it back to my base. I couldn't deal with this right now. I could poke at it with my power later.
The pressure didn't stop, even with its source gone, so I clenched my teeth and thought of iron nails and iron wire and rust. I didn't exhale those, though. I just let them clutter up, filling my skull with stabbing pains until I couldn't see or breathe and there wasn't space in my brain for anything else. I counted each second of pain, thinking iron thoughts until the squirming, burrowing pressure stopped.
I swallowed, barely tasting the air. So it wasn't just the cops. The grey men had been here. No, more than just the grey men. I was pretty sure they couldn't make something like this. It had to have been the bird woman, or someone like her.
I opened my watering eyes with a sigh of relief, and looked around. And then I yelped despite my best efforts to not make a noise.
There was a patch of black-red death-oil on the far wall. It hadn't been there a moment ago.
And then it moved. And I realised it wasn't on the far wall at all. It wasn't a patch, either. It was a figure. A sitting figure, arms wrapped around its legs, right there on one of the mattresses.
I swallowed again, and bit my lip until I tasted blood, trying not to scream. I… I… I…
It didn't seem to have seen me. Yes. And it was the presence I'd felt. The mind I'd felt.
What the fuck? It was something alive. Here, in the Other Place, but it wasn't from me, and it didn't have the beautiful parahuman glow. It was something totally separate. Something made of death.
I took a step closer to the hunched over shape, and the Other Place felt even colder. Was that just my imagination? I paced around it, tensed and ready in case it moved. Was it someone else's angel – someone other than me or Kirsty? Or was it something else? Death-oil stains got left where someone died, I'd worked out that much, but they'd just been splatters before now. Not something human-shaped, much less mobile.
This was how death looked in the Other Place. It remembered deaths, that was normal, but this was different. Worse. This looked like the Other Place was remembering a dead person. My thoughts ran around in circles. Why would the Other Place remember someone like this? What did it mean if it did?
"What are you?" I mouthed. I nearly reached out to touch it, but I stopped myself. Touching death couldn't be healthy.
It was almost like a ghost, I decided. A memory of a dead person that this room remembered. Trust the Other Place to find a way to shock me. So did this mean that Luke Okuda was the killer? This could be the… the memory of the dead boy from school, burned into the Other Place at his killer's home.
I started back when the memory rose to its feet. The proportions weren't quite right. Its neck was too thin, its arms too long. Or at least that was what I thought. It was hard to tell. Features became blurred when it was all just slick swirling black-red. Shambling, stumbling, it made its way across the room and stepped right through a door I hadn't noticed before.
Blinking, I shed the Other Place. Yes, that actually was a real door, not some weirdly mundane Other Place symbolism. I just hadn't paid attention to it, because it had been on the other side of the curtain sub-dividing the room. I'd been more occupied by the smell of the Other Place intruding on the room, the rot and the blood and the shit and the filth.
It seemed like it got stronger as I stepped toward the door, actually. I'd thought it had been the Other Place, but… no. Oh no.
Hand shaking, taking shallow breaths through my mouth, I reached out. The door creaked as I eased it open.
Bloodshot eyes stared back, bulging in a pale green and puffy face, dried blood drooling from the mouth, white electrical cables wound tight around its neck. The smell hit me like a rock between the eyes.
I didn't want to look. Not at the livid purple hands and feet. Not at the brown stains on the ground. I wanted to turn away, to see anything but the sad shape hanging there in the utility room. I kept on staring, taking in every little detail. I couldn't look away. My body refused to move. I should be scared, and I wasn't, and that was all my fault.
Nausea took over from the missing fear and I sagged down, collapsing to my knees, wrestling for control of my stomach. I couldn't let myself be sick. Not here. Even though I'd got a mouthful of the corpse-rot and I hadn't felt this bad since the locker and-
I opened my mouth and coughed out my Nausea, forcing her out in chunks even as I was still sinking into the Other Place. She pooled beside me, congealing into something like a naked version of me, covered in floor-length hair matted with blood and grease and dead bugs and worse.
Wiping my mouth on my sleeve, stomach stilled, I glared at her. She stared back, smiling with a mouth full of rotten, oozing teeth. Her too-long tongue rolled out of her mouth, crawling along the ground towards me like a slug.
"No," I growled, exhaling coils of tangled barbed wire that ensnared her hands and wrists. She screamed, a wet, gargling, putrid sound. I didn't let up. Not until I had the barbed wire around her throat. Not until she was the one kneeling.
That stopped me throwing up. That was the only thing that stopped me throwing up. I couldn't feel fear, I couldn't feel sickness, and in the hollow place left by their absence, there was only a dull, muted horror. God. Oh God. I shed the Other Place as quickly as I could and leaned up against the wall, arms wrapped around myself. I thought I could hear the electrical cables creak.
I was in here with a dead body. Someone who'd hung himself. He wasn't fresh, not looking like that. Not smelling like that. The colours were all wrong. The face was pale and vaguely green, while the hands and feet were the colour of rotten plums. The features bulged. And… and there were scratches on his neck. I could see dried blood on the white cables, so maybe he'd realised he didn't want to do it, and he'd struggled, trying to get free, but it was too late, the cords were too tight, he'd choked to death and…
… and he'd died so horribly that it had scarred the Other Place. Worse than other deaths. So bad there was an oozing shape of death-oil that had mutely stumbled in and out of this room. The room where he'd died.
I thought I recognised the man. He wasn't Luke Okada. He was too old and too overweight. But he was in some of the pictures outside. His father.
My breaths came fast and shallow. I'd chained my fear, I'd forced down my sickness, but… I still couldn't handle this. The cold, clinical seeping horror was a lead weight in my stomach. I hadn't expected a body! I just wanted to find the killer at school! I wanted answers! I wanted to bring them to justice! What was I supposed to do now, with a dead body hanging in front of me, in someone else's house? Crap. Crap.
Well, it was too late for Mr Okada. I couldn't do anything for him now, except make sure that someone found him. He could get a proper burial, at least.
Now that I knew the grey men had been here – and were handing out some kind of brainwashing letters – I had even more worries nagging at me. I didn't know if this guy's son was the killer, not yet. I just knew I didn't want the grey men getting their hands on him. Would the father have done this to himself if he hadn't been given that note, fighting with the urge to hand over his son?
No, I had to find 'Luke' before they did, and I knew where to start. I could do things with memories, and there was a memory right here, burned into the Other Place, shambling back and forth. I'd only done it once before, with Kirsty, but it should work. After all, I'd been able to feel the thing's mind, outside of the apartment. There had to be something there I could use. Some memory in the Other Place.
I turned towards the death-oil figure, and exhaled an angel. It didn't have eyes, but I was sure it was staring at me. Did I really want to do this?
Hands jammed into my pockets, I paced up and down, trying to psyche myself up. Mud and blood squelched under my feet. What worried me was the feedback, the contamination I'd felt with Kirsty. I needed to remember who I was. I couldn't become anything like the body next to me, dangling and stinking. I didn't want to kill myself. I'd never wanted that, and if I found myself thinking I did, they weren't my thoughts. It was just like the locker. Everyone said I'd gone crazy and tried to kill myself in there, but they were wrong, and they didn't know what they were talking about. That wasn't me. I was fine.
The barbed-wire angel hissed at me from beside the hanging corpse, an impatient rasp of breath behind its gas mask. "I'm fine!" I snapped back.
I didn't care what it thought, anyway. I just needed it to do what I said. On command, it grabbed the oily shadow, clawed hands latching around its wavering arm. It didn't seem to respond, but at least it wouldn't be escaping.
Exhaling onto my gloved hands like I was trying to warm them, I gathered up a squirming ball of Other Place material in one palm. And then I pressed it to the oily surface of the strange creature, and spoke. "Tell me… about your son."
The echo twisted under my hand, writhing like I'd held its skin to an open flame. It started screaming a high shrill noise which made my teeth buzz, and then black vapour began to rise off it, creeping into my mouth until-
It was tight around my throat and my vision was growing dim and I was thrashing against the cables around my legs but I'd done a too good job of it. I could just about lift up a little bit on the wall to gasp out a breath but it took all my strength and the cables were getting tighter and tighter and this had been a mistake such a mistake and I had to get my fingers under the cables but I couldn't and this was so much worse than I thought it was going to be and I needed to breathe and I'd wanted to die but not like this and… and… and…
- I let go. Of the cord, of the memory, of the creature, and gasped for breath, massaging my neck. No. That wasn't it. Couldn't let it show me that. My throat felt like it was bruised, all tender and raw and aching. I had to make it show me something else.
I exhaled again, rasping a little, and reached out.
"No," I wheezed. "Tell me- Tell me about your son. What's his real name?" This time the angel tightened its grasp.
But my hand didn't get there. The echo spoke, in a gasping, choked voice. "Matsuda. Ryo," it said.
"Good," I said, and swallowed, tasting cold blood. So, he hadn't just changed his first name to fit in. Neither of his names were the same. That probably made them illegal immigrants, here with false papers. "Now. Matsuda. Where is he now? Where was the last time you saw him? Are you going to speak?"
"I. No more."
"I need to find him," I said. "You can help me, or I'll take it from you. I'm going to find out."
"No. More," it said.
"Hold him," I ordered the angel, and squared my jaw. The memory-creature twisted in the angel's clawed grasp, trying to escape. Squirming and thrashing, it leaned away from my hand. But I reached out and touched it and-
Ryo screamed at me. I screamed back. He was crying and I didn't understand what was going on. There was still blood in his hair, and it wasn't his, thank goodness, not like last time, but who did it belong to? He was cramming clothes into a bag. The things he'd been wearing were heaped on the floor, painted crimson. I begged with him, pleaded with him, ordered him. Nothing changed his mind. As he left, he slammed the door and plaster fell from the ceiling as the hinges bounced.
I went down to the laundrette, his clothes bundled up with mine. The blood haunted me every step of the way. I whispered and muttered to myself as I dumped the bloody clothing in a washing machine. I poured bleach into the drum, rather than cleaning fluid. I knew it should destroy the evidence. No one noticed me. I was sure of it. I staggered back home, weeping, and stopped at a liquor store. I sat in my shitty apartment with the peeling walls and rotting ceiling and the rising damp, and drank and drank.
-there it was. I let go and stepped back, head reeling. I could feel tears welling up. Nothing was worth a damn. Everything good, everything I'd planned, everything I'd hoped about America was just a lie.
Angrily, I took off my aviators and rubbed my eyes. Those weren't my feelings. I couldn't let myself get lost in those external thoughts. Not here, not with a dead body in the next room. The body of a man who'd… who'd helped cover up his son's bloody clothes, and then sat here getting drunk. He'd lived long enough for the cops to check this place out three days ago, to hand over the power-laced pamphlet. And then, at some point since then, he'd hung himself in the utility closet that served as the kitchen in his cramped, stinking apartment.
Scowling, I stomped over to one of the mattresses, the one which clearly belonged to a young man. The cans of Axe were a clue. There were some hairs on the pillow, and I picked them out. The oily silhouette watched me, limp in my angel's grip.
"Let it go," I ordered as I stomped out, "and follow me." I managed to make it all the way out the door, then staggered down the stairs and outside before I collapsed, shaking in the open air. My head felt like it was brimming with the gunk of the Other Place, runoff from that phantom, and my arms felt puffy and hot with scars. I had been using my powers too much in there.
I'd never seen a dead body before. Not up close like that. Even down in the Docks, I'd only seen bodybags.
The noise of the city surrounded me, and the secondhand sunlight streaming between the ill-maintained buildings helped wash away the unnatural chill. Even with all its fumes, the air smelt fresher than anything I'd ever breathed. I sat there for a good quarter of an hour. I told myself I was thinking things over, getting my strength back. I knew I was just trying to put off what I'd need to do next.
Luke Okuda – Matsuda Ryo – was out there. He was the killer for sure, and he was on the run. Was he willing to kill again? Maybe. I didn't know why he'd done it in the first place. Even his father hadn't, and he was dead now. There wasn't any sign of a woman in that apartment; his mother was dead, or gone. I was going to be seeing that place again in my nightmares, I just knew it. Cry Baby would be put to work keeping me awake, if that was what it took to avoid going back in my dreams.
I exhaled, and Sniffer took form beside me. Her looming long-limbed bulk towered over me. "Here," I told Sniffer, offering her the hairs I'd found. "Find me Matsuda Ryo."
She leaned down over me, too-large nostrils flared. Living up to her name, she sniffed at my hand. Silently, she nodded.
"You know where he is? Just from that?"
Another nod.
"Where?"
Licking one finger, she marked damp letters on one of the decaying walls of the apartment block exterior.
BOSTON
"Boston," I repeated. He'd clearly made a run for it, heading south. Maybe hitchhiking, maybe on a transit bus. I guessed that if you wanted to hide out somewhere, Boston was a good place for that. Half the city was still abandoned and irradiated. The Behemoth attacked the place when I was about eight. Dad said that he'd heard the noise of MIT and its tinkertech labs detonating from here in Maine, but I didn't remember that.
I exhaled Watcher Doll. "Go and find him." I told the camera-headed cherub. "Follow Sniffer, and show me where he is."
I plucked off my aviators as it vanished, peering into their reflective lenses to see what Watcher Doll saw. Matsuda was hunched over a plastic table, wrapped up in a hoodie and thick layers of warm clothes. It looked like he was serious about making a run for it. If the half-eaten Big Mac was a clue, he was in a McDonalds. He didn't look like he was in much distress. Then again, Big Macs aren't that terrible.
I must be getting nervous, if I was making awful jokes to myself. Had Phobia freed herself already?
Cupping my hands over my mouth, I tried not to hyperventilate. I knew what I had to do, even if I didn't want to do it. I had to find Luke – Matsuda, whatever – before the cops did. Or before he got away. I needed to know… why he'd done it, and whether he'd even meant to. How his power worked, and what it looked like in the Other Place. Why the grey men were after him, and what he knew about them. I needed to know if he was really a criminal, or if it was just an accident.
I knew all that. I was just scared, almost too scared to move.
So I took a deep breath, and released Phobia for the second time that day. As I bound her up in razor wire, I felt my mind clear. It was obvious what I should do next. And without fear, I had anger - and I was angry at the government grey men who cared more about their investigations than the people living here. They'd seen this place, seen these living conditions. They were federals, but had they cared? No. They'd used their powers on the father. It'd probably been what had pushed him over the edge.
Well, in that case, fuck the grey men. Why did they want Matsuda Ryo? I was going to find out the truth here, the one they were trying to hide.
I had his hair. I had his name. I could find him, no matter where he went. I hunched my shoulders.
It was time to see if my Spinner Hag could open a corridor to Boston.
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Ah, the wonders of Sympathetic Magic.
So versatile!
I wonder if Taylor will come to accept that what she's doing is REAL Magic, and get her Witch on!
Yes, I'm aware that technically that the Mastigos are referred to as "Warlocks" and it's the Acanthus who are dubbed "Witches", but I still felt that the video seemed rather fitting.
- Location
- Spain
THEY LIVE.
- Location
- United States
I'd rather her solve small crimes than big uns
Dr. Mercurious
Strangest Person You Know
- Location
- New England
Don't you know? There are no small crimes, it just looks that way. All small crimes are actually part of one big crime which is as big as the world, and that crime, is CONSPIRACY. And what is the CONSPIRACY?
That...is The Question.
...I regret nothing.
- Location
- United States