I’m not sure why the words have this effect on me, especially considering just minutes before, I was silently pleading for him to leave. Release me and go. Run away before I can hurt him like all the others. That’s not what I really want. I crave him in a way I’ve never felt about anyone else. Or maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome. Can that even happen this quickly?
“Why?” I gasp, trying to hold back the sobs forming around the lump in my throat.
“I don’t belong in this world as a human, playing house. To be with me is to embrace death. Embrace terror and every dark piece of your soul.”
“Haven’t I already been doing that?” I shout. No longer willing to hold back my emotions, letting them break like waves against my tongue. “Haven’t I stared into the darkness long enough to become it?”
His icy gaze holds mine, but the emotion behind it is unreadable. Black mist pours from him. His silhouette goes fuzzy and vibrates rapidly. Rearranging itself into an unrecognizable shape. Vines covered with large thorns circle around him, twisting in on themselves. Pure terror shoots through me, and I can’t hold back the tears anymore. Full sobs rack my chest, every survival instinct screaming full volume for me to escape. My body begs me to get as far away from this abomination as possible.
Through the mist, I catch a brief glimpse of a human skeleton body, but with the skull of a deer as a head. Antlers reaching out beyond the edge of his misty veil. Claws jut from each hand and his feet turn to hooves, but the image is gone as quickly as it came. His form disperses, replaced by scattering shadows.
My heart beats wildly in my chest, and I feel my consciousness become hazy. My muscles freeze. I’m going into shock. The last time I felt like this was after my first kill. I remember the pure panic that filled my lungs as that first body bobbed in Devil’s Pool and I was sure it wouldn’t sink.
Just when I’m on the brink of unconsciousness, the shadows wrap around me. Threads of darkness start at my ankles and then wind up my legs, bringing a tingly, sleepy feeling. The sensation spreads through every nerve, similar to when my legs go numb from sitting too long. Calmness follows, washing over me as the shadows swirl at the apex of my legs and continue up over my stomach, encircling me. Shadowy tendrils work their way up my torso, pausing briefly at my breasts and then caressing my neck. My eyelids droop with heaviness, and my head nods despite my best attempts to keep it upright. The shadows, whispering in my ears, make their way to my lips, slinking their way in. A welcome intrusion. And everything goes black.
CHAPTER TEN
ripp
Oh Mattie, such a stubborn little bug. She held out much longer than I expected. Most humans surrender to shock and madness almost immediately upon seeing my true nature. She put up a good fight, but her human psyche was still no match for what she watched me become. My body shifts back, piece by piece, to its human form, leaving my shadows to steep in their torment.
I stare at her unconscious body, hanging against the ties that bind her to the bed and keep her prisoner. She’s beautiful. Sublime, even dirty and bruised. I could search these woods for a thousand more years and never come this close to perfection again.
I carefully undo each tie around her wrist and ease her onto the bed, covering her with the black quilt that was bunched down at the edge. I trace her cheek with my finger and tuck stray strands of wild hair behind her ear. Mattie lets out a little sigh of contentment. Her soul is dark, and I know that’s why I’m called to it, why I hunger for it. The urge to feast upon her is still almost unbearable. She’d satisfy me like no soul before her.
I could end this all now, suck out her soul and be done with it. I could go back to both existing and not existing out in the woods, my paradoxical reality, continue to roam in my tormented duality, but now that I’ve felt her, been inside her there’s a loneliness, emptiness, a void placed inside this vessel that carries me. All these human emotions that normally hold no meaning for me now pound against my bodily prison.
A scream of frustration rips from my throat. An overwhelming urge to tear her limb from limb, before sinking back into the void I came from, burns through me. Each muscle of my human body trembles violently. If I could die, she’d be the end of me, but she can’t be with me. No mortal can. Their bodies are too weak. Their lives are so fleeting and shallow, little blips on an endless timeline, meaningless insects that are completely unaware of the swirling cosmos around them.
Can I stay with her, knowing I’ll end up killing her? Dare I stay out of a selfish need to keep her for eternity and risk accidentally filling her with too much of my darkness? The horror of my true being would slowly leech out and strangle her a little more each day. Her light, however dim, would snuff out, just smoke in the wind.
I pet her head gently with my shadowed fingers, wanting so badly to dip them inside her again. Feel her warmth and wetness surround them. Use my shadows to fill up every hole, every void she possesses. A moan slips from me. I need to devour my little bug again, but if my restraint slips even a little, I’ll suck her soul right out of her sweet pussy.
There’s only one choice: leave. I can still watch her from the woods, protect her and admire her without destroying what little time on this plane of existence she has left. But I can also leave her with a piece of me, a piece of my magic — a thread that ties her to me still.
I head to her kitchen, shadows and mist billowing out behind me, darkening her hall. I search through the cupboards for something small I can make a charm with. I’ve seen humans try to make similar items before. They have their trinkets and potions that do nothing but make them feel better. They hang bottles from trees like they would protect them from entities like me. I’m older than the Appalachian mountain range itself, but they somehow expected me to be unintelligent enough to get trapped inside a bottle.
Most humans can’t call upon the old magic that would truly protect them. The best they can hope for is smoke and mirrors, only able to keep spirits of their own dead away. However, since I’m entirely made of it, I’m able to summon it and use it in ways humans only see in their darkest nightmares. I can leave Mattie with a small piece of all I wish I could give her.
Her kitchen is full of jars half-full of liquid, small potted plants, and candles leaking wax onto their surfaces. Bundles of twigs tied together in strange shapes hang from the ceiling. On the wooden countertop, I find a small vial full of bay leaves and lay them out, ready to discard them. Then, on second thought, I stuff them back in. Bay leaves, with their ability to banish unwanted energy, would strengthen my protection charm for Mattie. It’s a risk should she one day find me as an ‘unwanted’ presence, but one I’m willing to take. The stirring inside me recognizes our connection, a bond unlike anything I’ve ever experienced or deemed possible.
My shadows curl up around me, and I break a small piece off one tendril to place inside the bottle. It swirls around the leaves and crushes them into a powder so fine, it aerosolizes with the swirling mist. While it’s still churning, I mutter the protection spell in a language foreign to human ears. A flickering light appears in the center of the mist, like a lightning bug captured inside a glass, just like my little bug.
I cork the vial and wrap a piece of string, long enough to make a necklace, around the top. Heading back to her bedroom, I pause in the hallway. Sighing, my lips pull in tight through my teeth, but I know what must be done. I have to leave before I destroy her. My presence alone will slowly chip away at her sanity until there’s nothing left but madness, shattering her mind into a thousand pieces. The logic in it doesn’t make it easier to ignore the song her soul sings to me.
I place the charm on the nightstand next to her bed and bend down until I’m face to face with her. Her soft breaths are warm on my skin, and her eyes gently stir behind closed lids. She’s so fucking beautiful. She’ll wake soon and likely be sick from the terror that overtook her body. I kiss her gently on the forehead and whisper, “My name is Ripp, little bug.”
Then, I disappear.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
mattie
Anew layer of frost crusts the top of the dead leaves beneath my feet. The crunch of them echoes across the otherwise silent woods as I walk along a strangely familiar path. An unknown longing draws me further into the darkness, even though I shiver from the chill in the air. I rub my hands along my bare arms as I walk, searching around me for something I can’t describe.
I call out a name in a language I can’t understand, but I seem to know whose name I’m speaking. I grasp at the knowledge, but it fades away into the dark recesses of my mind. I call out again, pleading to it, hoping whatever it is will save me before I freeze to death as winter approaches. The more I shout, the more the name becomes indiscernible. The word garbles, twisting and warping in my throat before I can utter it out loud.
A low, unsettling hum fills the woods, and I start to run. Shadows fill in behind me, their tendrils snaking out from the bramble of twisted vines. They brush the backs of my ankles as I stay just out of reach. A cloud of black mist appears before me, and I let out a silent scream before it swallows me whole.
