Most members of my kind consume such flesh a handful of times throughout their lives, usually to permanently secure a form they like. Others do it regularly because they have a murderous taste for it.
I’ve resisted so far, and yet with the threat of the Barrow-Man looming over us, I find myself creating a mental exception to the rule. The idea of losing Beresford’s body and never being able to take this form again is unacceptable.
I left him in the charmed room because I thought he would be safe there. The only person I allowed to jeopardize him was Sybil. I thought that if she found him and destroyed my link to his body, it wouldn’t matter, because our relationship would be over anyway. Without her, my existence as Beresford would be meaningless.
Now that she knows the truth, she isn’t the primary threat any longer. The wight has become a far more imminent danger.
Even if he manages to ensorcel someone, to trap them under his growing influence and force them to summon him, he should be contained to Wormsloe for a while. An entity of his species can be forestalled by certain natural boundaries or shapes, like rivers, hills, ravines, mountain ranges, or the borders of forests. Sometimes even a good stone wall can prevent them from passing unless they are invited through an open gate and lured with offerings of raw meat and sugar or honey. But with his magic and his intellect focused on Sybil and me, I have no doubt he will eventually find a way to walk freely through this land.
Waiting for him to come after my collection would be idiotic. I need to secure Beresford’s form as my own, permanently, and I need to do it now, while Sybil is asleep. She shouldn’t have to watch.
I head back into the game room to collect the ring of keys. Sybil didn’t question me about the nature of the bloodstained key, though I have no doubt she will once she has had time to rest and accumulate more questions in that clever mind of hers.
When she asks, I will tell her that I had a source in the city, a woman gifted with the ability to charm objects with dark magic. She could only perform a handful of such charms each year, and she charged a small fortune for each one. I found her through the memories of the original Beresford, who used her to charm a few pairs of shackles, an iron muzzle, and several torture tools. Beresford wanted inescapable bonds, a muzzle thatonly death or his word could remove, and sadistic implements that would cause supernatural levels of pain.
After the woman charmed the telltale key for the blue door, I sucked out her soul and brought her body back to my estate in a large wooden chest. She’s hanging in a back corner of the collection room. Magical qualities like her dark energy or Grandmother Riquet’s protective influence do not transfer to me, so although I possess her knowledge, I don’t have the right kind of power to cast the dark charms for which she was known.
Some might say that devouring her soul was a waste of a valuable resource. But I despise the work she did for the original Beresford. She was complicit in the captivity and torment of his victims, so in my mind, she was no better than the wight.
When I unlock the blue door, the charm on the key resets, and the bloodstain vanishes. I enter the room, pushing my way between the hanging bodies. After I’m finished with Beresford, I will transform into the wolf and dig a great hole in which to bury some of the other corpses. I won’t be able to take those forms again, and their memories and skills will fade from my mind, but that will hardly matter.
I’ll keep the old gardener for his knowledge of plants and incense, and I’ll keep the thief that broke into my house, the one who lent me his skills with musical instruments. Sacrificing the rest of the collection will please my wife, and that is all I truly care about.
Once I’ve reached Beresford’s body, hanging at the back of the room, I unfasten his harness. I catch him before his big form crumples to the floor, and I hoist him onto my shoulders.
Despite my strength, it’s no easy matter maneuvering him through the room and out the door. By the time I reach the stairs, I’m sweating and panting. I let him slide off my back and drag his naked carcass down the steps and into the kitchen.
After shutting the door, I stir up the fire, light a couple of lamps, and clear off the huge kitchen table. Then, with a grunt ofeffort, I haul Beresford’s carcass upright and slam him down onto its surface.
It would be so much easier if I could drag Beresford outside, transform into the two-headed wolf, and devour him with its gigantic jaws. I can place a bite and suck out a soul in any form, but to assimilate someone permanently, I must be in my original form as a matagot, or in the form of the thing I am devouring.
When I ate the she-wolf, I was in matagot form, so it was a simple matter of swallowing everything—spirit and body all at once. When I killed the old mare, I bit her first, tasted her blood, and took her soul. Then I changed into her form and devoured her, bite by bite.
In my culture, the consumption of a new permanent form is a lengthy ritual that can take days, because every bit of the body must be devoured and the bones must be sucked clean. It’s a process that’s intended to be savored. If the consumption is too rapid, the matagot may fall into a deep sleep afterward, an unconscious state that allows the flesh to be fully absorbed as part of the matagot’s metaphysical being.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time to do this at the proper pace.
I survey the bulk of the original Beresford, my mouth dry with distaste. “I wish you weren’t such a gigantic bastard.”
Staring at him won’t make him any smaller or more palatable, and I need to start the consumption process before he’s been out of the charmed room for too long. I strip off my clothing and transform into my shadow-shape. Whenever one of my forms becomes too glutted, I’ll switch to the other for a while.
In my matagot form, I am more creature than man, and it’s easier to consume the more grotesque parts of the carcass, like the copious amounts of hair and beard I have to swallow. I start with the head, tearing off the scalp and beard with my teeth andgulping them down. My fangs and claws aren’t very large in this form, so it’s difficult work to rip off the skin and dig out the eyes, but I manage it. My long tongue is barbed, perfect for sliding through eye sockets and scooping brain matter out of the skull’s interior.
When the skull is bare, empty, and licked clean, I strip the skin off the corpse’s chest, swallowing it and leaving the meat. I eat his cock next, then the balls. By the time I’ve finished with the hands and feet, my matagot form is growing full, so I switch to Beresford’s form again.
If I had time, I would cook the meatier parts of the body—breast, thigh, buttocks, shoulders. I’d fry his liver and kidneys with salt, oil, and onions. Make a feast of it. But there is no time. There is only biting and chewing and swallowing. Tearing the muscle. Gulping the tendons. Stripping the bones and sucking them dry.
My human stomach grows tight and swollen, aching from the glut of meat, so I switch to matagot shape again. I slurp down the intestines like noodles, keeping my mind carefully blank while I do it.
It is as necessary as it is disgusting.
The body cavity is empty of entrails when I change forms again. The tightness of my human stomach has eased a bit as the flesh is absorbed, so I can handle another serving.
I stand at the kitchen table beside my own devastated carcass, devouring myself. I can only imagine what Sybil would think if she came down here and interrupted the process. I pray to any gods who might be listening that she’ll remain asleep until it’s done.
I carve long strips of pink flesh from Beresford’s right forearm, forcing them down my gullet one at a time, swallowing the pieces whole when I can. My jaws are weary from chewing, and my belly is bloated. When I feel as if one more bite will make me vomit, I transform into the matagot and continue.
Gnaw. Rip. Bite. Chew. Swallow.
