There was only one “him” it could be.
The monster under the bed had found us.
85
The wind yanked the thin sheet of itself out of the tunnel, racing ahead of the darkness. It fled on waves of stagnant, bone scented air, shoving itself through crevices and sprinting through parchment-lined mouseholes.
The wind was a thin, tiny, fragile sheet of itself. It was so small that the gaping mouth of the horror would consume it like the maw of a whale shark swallowing microscopic plankton. The dark creature wouldn’t even know it had devoured the wind. It would only be one of many sparks of light extinguished as it bled free from the catacombs.
The wind whimpered. It pulled its tendrils inward, hurriedly yanking itself away. It could feel the stain of the dark creature gobbling good and replacing it with horror. That was why the girl had called it “the horror.” That was what it was.
Even the wind, a majestic, wondrous, courageous being, fled from the darkness.
Boy?
Boy?
Where was the boy?
He would fight this thing. He would know what to do. This was why the clouds had gathered. This was what he’d been waiting for. The boy had been grappling with horrors and hideous strengths his entire life. He would fight and save the wind from the creature that wanted to consume it.
The wind knew instinctively that if the thing caught it in its mouth, it would not be wind anymore. It would not be anymore. It would fall into darkness and the horror of death, separated from everything good—from winter sunshine, from freshly mowed grass, from a puppy’s pink tongue, from the splash of milk in the boy’s afternoon tea, from the boy . . .
If it was swallowed, it would lose itself.
It trembled and sped through a bone-filled pit, fluttering dust. It sneezed and then cringed as the horror paused and turned toward it. The wind pulled itself tighter, hurrying to hide in the dead, parchment scented walls.
Then the horror turned and raced toward the ash-pillowed mansion. The cruel one and his father had already fled. They’d burst from the mansion, the cruel one’s eyes wild and triumphant. The cruel one’s father had smelled like a snake who’d just dined on a nest of rats. They were jubilant in their terror and blind in their triumph.
The wind didn’t follow them.
The horror swept through the mountains of ash and the burned furnishings. It created a blizzard of ash. It roared and blew the ash outward, uncovering the mansion’s charred remains. Banisters, columns, and metal furnishings were unrecognizable. Instead, they appeared as twisted, burned skeletons. The horror gobbled the ash and the pain. It yanked the remains into its wide mouth, and then it grew.
Beings with eyes might only see the horror as a black amorphous creature with hills of sludge-gray larvae leaking from its open gut, but the wind didn’t have eyes. It saw in the way that water saw, or the sun saw, or spirits saw. It saw what was outside as well as what was inside.
The thing was dark and hungry and evil. It fed. Its larvae fed. Everything it ate made it grow larger. Every bite of fear, of pain, of anger, of hate—it all fed this thing. There was enough in this city to feed the creature so it would grow to the size of the tallest mountain or the deepest, widest lake.
If that happened, there wouldn’t be good anymore. Not the glint of winter sunshine, nor a slick turtle shell to slide down before landing in a cool pond. Not even a bicycle’s streamers to tangle in or a deer mouse’s tail to wrap itself around. If this horror swallowed the city, it would swallow all the good with it.
Was this what the fawn-like one had meant when she’d said the world would become a place without wind?
Terror shuddered over its thin, stretched-out being, and the wind moaned.
Where was everyone?
The girl and the spider-minded one were in the tunnels under the beds. The lullaby night monster was stalking them.
The trickster had dived into the river and conjured a speeding torpedo thing. He was rocketing through the current, racing toward the lucky one’s apartment.
The solemn one was dancing a death dance, illusion flashing as quickly as his blades. He’d flickered like a candle’s flame through the city all day, appearing and disappearing, leaving only death. “Bard!” the Clarks had screamed as he’d swept through them. “He’s a Bard! We’ve been betrayed! Tell the—” The solemn one had always been good at becoming whoever he wanted to be.
The citrus and pearl dust scented woman was kneeling in the park’s grass, playing with her puppy. She called its name and laughed when it jumped into her arms and licked her chin.
The trickster’s father was standing over the slaughtered bodies of six Bard cousins. “It was the Clarks,” he said, vengeance in his stance. “Or the Ward.” But of course, it had been the solemn one.
The leggerock was swallowing his Furtig and gathering his creatures.
The solange-eyed one was glancing out his fortress’s windows. Then, leaping up, he grabbed his swords and called his Smiths. He stalked from his fortress toward the descending storm.
