Book of madness, p.2
Book of Madness, page 2
“What did that fucking monster do—”
Her voice cut off as the blackness spread outward and rapidly covered her entire body in a cocoon of shadow. She collapsed to the sidewalk, writhing and screaming in agony.
Two
Randal had been aware of Shadow since childhood—he’d been born with the Eye, had inherited it from his parents—and he’d spent most of his time since living on the edge of it. You didn’t survive Shadow by being stupid, and it would definitely be stupid—and quite possibly suicidal—to hang around here another second. He didn’t know what was happening to Jess, but he doubted there was anything he could do to help her. But before he could start running, the cocoon’s black turned to gray and fell away from Jess like dust. No, not from Jess—from what Jess had become.
A gigantic mouth filled with needle teeth, bloated toad-like body suspended on hundreds, perhaps thousands of tiny insect legs, no eyes, nose, or ears. Her tongue was still mottled and gray, and still covered with phase-worms, but it had increased in size to be proportionate to her mouth. The giant tongue extended, licked the lips, and then the mouth spoke.
“More!”
The voice was thunderous, the mouth acting like some kind of flesh megaphone. Randal gritted his teeth in pain and slapped his hands over his ears. The air that blasted from the mouth as it spoke stank like a combination of rotting meat, festering wounds, and blood-infused shit. Randal—hands still pressed to his ears—whipped his head to the side and a gout of vomit shot from his own mouth. It arced through the air, splattered onto the street, and a dozen two-inch-tall homunculi raced out of a nearby sewer drain, fell upon the vomit, and began scooping handfuls of the horrid muck into their greedy mouths.
Randal—not thinking, just acting—removed his hands from his ears, spun around, and began an adrenaline-fueled sprint down the sidewalk. He heard a clicking-rustling sound behind him, and knew that the thing that had been Jess was coming after him. It shouted again, louder this time.
“More! Moooooorrrre!”
Randal didn’t know what the mouth wanted, but whatever it was, the fucking thing wasn’t going to get it from him, not if he could help it.
He ran faster.
So did the Mouth.
Pedestrians—some Shadowers, some ordinary humans—flung themselves to the side as Randal and the Mouth came toward them. Normal people might not possess the Eye, but here in the Overlay, they could see into Shadow, if only dimly, so while they couldn’t get a clear look at the Mouth, they sensed something bad, real bad, was chasing Randal down the sidewalk, and they hurried to get the hell out of the way.
“More-more-more-more-MORE!”
Randal was still operating in full panic mode, body functioning on automatic, but his brain was slowly coming back online. Images flashed through his mind, scenes from an old kaiju movie he’d watched on TV when he was a kid. A crowd of screaming people running in the middle of a city street, fleeing from a bipedal lizard-like behemoth that was supposed to be some kind of dinosaur but was clearly a person wearing a not-very-convincing rubber suit. Even as a kid, Randal couldn’t understand why all those people were running in front of the monster. They would never be able to run fast enough to escape the creature and would likely end up stomped into goo. What they should have done was run sideways, so they could get out of the monster’s path. It was no guarantee that they would survive, of course, but it would at least give them a chance.
Sure enough, everyone in the movie got stepped on by the giant monster.
Idiots.
If Randal had been smart enough to recognize a bad strategy when he was a child, he sure as hell could recognize it now as an adult. The Mouth was panting as its thousands of insect legs propelled its bulk down the sidewalk, and Randal could feel its hot, fetid breath on the back of his neck. It was close. Too close.
He darted to his left.
But just because he was starting to think again didn’t mean that he was thinking well. The street was on his left, which meant that he ran straight into traffic. Drivers swerved, slammed on brakes, sounded their horns. Some of the conveyances—at least those that were semi-alive—roared or shrieked in alarm or fury. The world was a blur of motion, and Randal dodged this way and that, sometimes stopping, sometimes running all out, and when he reached the other side of the street, he was shocked to discover that he was not only alive, but also uninjured. He looked over his shoulder, hoping to see a vehicle slam into the Mouth and reduce it to a mass of torn flesh and shattered bone.
No such luck.
Despite its ungainly appearance, the Mouth was far lighter on its insect feet than Randal expected, weaving between oncoming vehicles with inhuman speed and grace, all the while shouting, “More, more, more, more, more!”
“Fuck!”
Randal turned, saw an alley, dashed toward it, plunged into darkness. The space between the buildings was narrow, and he stretched out his hands, fingers extended, trailed them against the brick on either side to guide him. The rough surfaces abraded his fingertips, but he didn’t care, not even when they began to bleed. He encountered trash along the way—cans, bottles, wadded-up fast-food wrappers—kicking some objects out of his path, nearly tripping over others. As he neared the end of the alley, he heard a solid thud as the Mouth hit the entrance, followed by strained grunting as the creature attempted to shove its bulk into the space between buildings.
Randal whooped with exhilaration. The fucking thing was too big to fit! With time and effort, it might eventually shove its way through, sides rubbed raw and bleeding. But he’d be long gone by then, and the Mouth would have to find someone else to attack. Randal didn’t care who that unfortunate sonofabitch might be or what might happen to them. He’d still be alive and that was all that mattered.
He exited the alley at full speed, but as soon as his hands lost contact with the walls, his balance faltered. He stumbled forward, arms waving in the air in a vain attempt to steady himself, and then he pitched forward. He hit the asphalt jaw first—a sharp jolt, a flash of white light behind his eyes, and then pain so intense that for several moments it blotted out the world. The fall had knocked the wind out of him and, with an effort, he pushed himself onto his back and lay there, gasping for breath, skull throbbing as if someone had hit him in the head with a tire iron. Nausea twisted his gut, and he rolled onto his side so he could vomit without choking himself. He gagged a couple times, but while nothing came up, the action caused the pain in his head to intensify to the point where he feared he might pass out.
There were no lights here—none that worked anyway—but the sky was clear, and a bright half-moon was out. Even so, the backs of the two buildings the alley bisected were featureless shadows, but there were large shapes near them that he took to be dumpsters. Were there any dogeaters rooting around in there, searching for food? Dogeaters, as their name clearly indicated, preferred feasting on canines, but when they couldn’t get dog, they settled for whatever meat they could find, wherever they could find it. Sometimes that was in the trash. Other times it was on the bodies of humans stupid enough to wander where they shouldn’t in the Overlay.
He heard a scuttling-scraping then, coming from the building on the right, and he nearly pissed himself. A dogeater? The sound grew louder, and he realized it wasn’t coming from the ground, but from higher up. He looked at the rooftop of the building on the right and saw a large dark silhouette appear. It was too big to be a dogeater—they resembled young adolescent humans—and he’d never known a dogeater to climb. He supposed they could if they wanted to, but as far as he knew, they liked to keep to the ground, just as their prey did. Then the silhouette bellowed.
“More!”
Randal whimpered.
The Mouth slid over the rooftop’s edge, but it did not fall. Instead, its tiny insect legs gripped brick, and it sped down the side of the building. The motherfucker had been too big to move through the alley, so it had climbed up and over the building instead. Now it was coming for him again.
For an instant, he considered closing his eyes tight and letting the damned thing have him. Wasn’t it what he deserved for ruining so many lives with Darkgaze? And wasn’t it poetic justice that one of his victims would become his executioner? But he couldn’t bring himself to let the thing kill him. Not because he didn’t want to die, but because he couldn’t stand the thought of those needle-teeth piercing his flesh. And what about his mama? He couldn’t leave her alone. She needed him to take care of her. Fresh adrenaline flooded his system, and he sprang to his feet and began running again. His head pain and nausea were gone, temporarily countered by the adrenaline, and he felt swift, strong, unstoppable—until he heard the Mouth thud to the asphalt behind him and resume its pursuit.
This couldn’t be happening. He’d lived most of his life on the edge of Shadow, and while he’d been in danger many times, he’d always escaped, and he’d never believed he was ever actually in danger of dying, not really. But now, death was right on his ass, propelled by thousands of scuttling insect feet, and he knew it would only be a matter of moments before the creature was upon him. His life didn’t flash before his eyes—did that really ever happen?—but he did feel a deep sadness that he’d fucked it up so badly, coupled with anger that his soul was going to be sent to the Gyre in such a ridiculous fashion—chomped to death by a giant mouth. It might’ve been funny if the prospect weren’t so terrifying.
Look to your right.
The thought wasn’t his, felt like an intrusion, as if originating from somewhere outside himself. But he did as it commanded and saw an old two-story building that appeared to be on the verge of collapse. It leaned to one side, surface dotted with dark mold, brick crumbling, grime-streaked windows shot through with cracks. The front door hung askew, above it a sun-bleached sign, painted letters flaking and barely readable: Mr. Joy’s. Randal wasn’t familiar with this place, but that didn’t mean anything. The Overlay was like the edge of a beach, where the ebb and flow of the tides rearranged the landscape, depositing some articles—shells, seaweed, dead fish—and removing others. Mr. Joy’s sounded ominous, even for Shadow, and the building was obviously suffused with Corruption. Randal would be taking a great risk if he entered the place, but he’d be taking an equal risk if he remained outside. But inside, the Mouth would be in danger as well, and that made entering Mr. Joy’s a gamble worth taking.
Randal ran to the door and pulled it open. The last hinge holding it to the frame broke loose, and the knob was yanked out of Randal’s hand as the door crashed to the ground. His vision couldn’t penetrate the darkness inside, and he knew that anything could be waiting for him, perhaps something far worse than the horrid thing that had once been a woman named Jess. But it was die now or go inside and live a few moments longer. No choice at all, really.
He hurried inside and was quickly swallowed by darkness.
Seconds later, the Mouth followed, shouting “More, more, MORE!!!”
Randal moved forward cautiously, arms outstretched, hands searching until he found a wall. He pressed his back against it and stood very still. The Mouth possessed no eyes that he’d been able to detect, yet it had followed him with ease. It seemed to have no nose either, nor any ears. So if it couldn’t see, smell, or hear, it had to use another sense to track him. It possessed a tongue, so maybe it tasted the air like a snake. Or maybe it used touch, sensing vibrations in the ground through those thousands of tiny feet. He hoped it was the latter, otherwise the thing would extend its oversized tongue, lap the air, and be on him in an instant. He held his breath and wished he could somehow slow the beating of his heart. His pulse was machine-gun fast—rat-a-tat-rat-a-tat—and sounded loud as cannon fire in his ears.
He waited, listening.
He heard the Mouth enter the building, legs scuttle-scraping on the floor, and then it fell silent. Was it listening, just as he was? Or was it moving slowly, doing its monstrous version of tiptoeing? Randal thought of the way centipedes and millipedes moved, with silent, rippling grace, beautiful and stomach-turning. He imagined the Mouth moving like that, gliding toward him, slowly, inexorably . . .
Whether by instinct or dumb luck, Randal pictured the Mouth coming at him and quickly stepped to the right. He felt a gust of air as something large hurtled past him, followed by a loud whump as the Mouth struck the wall where he’d been standing only a moment before.
“More!” it shrieked. “More-more-more!”
Randal moved farther into the darkness, not caring if he blundered into some object—a chair, a desk, a lamp—just so long as he could put some distance between himself and the Mouth. But he was lucky and collided with nothing. Fear became anger, anger became fury, and he shouted, “What the hell do you want?”
As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized his mistake. Whatever senses the creature used to navigate, Randal had just given away his position. He flung himself to the left as the Mouth rushed forward, insect legs no longer silent. For an instant, Randal fell through the darkness, and he imagined that there was no floor, that he would fall and keep falling through black nothingness for eternity. Then he hit the floor, landing on his right side. The impact caused his shoulder to burn like fire and reawakened the pain in his wounded chin and head.
The Mouth’s jaws snapped shut on empty air, and it let out a roar of frustration. It spoke then, but this time it didn’t say More. It said, “See!”
I’m a fucking idiot.
Randal thrust his hand inside his inner jacket pocket, grabbed the half dozen vials of Darkgaze he still had, and hurled them toward the Mouth. They hit the floor, glass shattered, and the Mouth moaned with need. The creature scuttled forward and began lapping up the liquid, tongue moving across the floor with the sound of a straight razor being sharpened on a strop. Shhht, shhht, shhht . . .
This was his chance. While the Mouth was preoccupied with feeding its addiction, Randal could escape. He had no idea what effect Darkgaze would have on a creature that didn’t possess eyes—obvious ones, anyway—and he didn’t care. All that mattered was that he had an opportunity, and he was going to make damn sure he didn’t waste it. He rolled onto his hands and knees, jaw clenched against the pain in his shoulder and head, then swiftly rose to a standing position. He saw a silver glimmer of light in front of him—faint, but detectable—and, hoping it was moonlight filtering in from outside, he started running toward it.
One stride, two, three . . . then his left foot struck something thick and heavy lying on the floor. He stumbled and fell, but he managed to put out his right hand in time to prevent himself from hitting the floor with full force. Sharp pain lanced through his wrist, the arm buckled beneath his weight, and although his landing was gentler than it might have been, he still ended up on the floor again.
The licking sounds stopped. The Mouth was silent for several seconds, then it screamed “MORE!”
Randal had no more. He’d thrown all his remaining vials at the Mouth.
I am absolutely fucked, he thought.
The Mouth started toward him. Clik-clik-clik-clik-clik . . .
Out of desperation to do something, anything to try to defend himself, no matter how futile it might be, Randal spun around on the floor and felt around for the object he’d tripped over. He found it—solid, rectangular, like a large brick—and grabbed hold of it. He swung it wildly, with as much strength as he could manage from his awkward position on the floor. He felt the object slam into something huge and fleshy, followed by a bright flash of crimson light. In that brief instant of illumination, he saw the Mouth recoil, and he also saw what he was holding.
A book.
The light vanished, leaving red afterimages floating in his vision. He stood and held the book before him with two hands, wielding it as if it were a shield. He steeled himself for the Mouth’s next attack, but it didn’t come.
Holding onto the book with his left hand, Randal reached into his right pants pocket and removed his phone. He activated the flashlight app and directed its illumination toward the Mouth. The creature lay on its back, small insect legs kicking the air, tongue lolled to the side, white froth bubbling past its lips. Then the Mouth spasmed once, twice, and fell still. Randal watched with horrified fascination as the creature’s body began to liquefy. The process happened swiftly, taking no more than twenty seconds, and then the Mouth—no, then Jess—was gone, meat, bone, and organs reduced to a slowly spreading pool of foul-smelling ichor.
Randal stood there, headache and nausea forgotten, and stared at sludge that had once been his client. Had Darkgaze done this? Had Jess taken so much of the drug over time that her body could no longer take the strain and mutated into the Mouth? And when he’d given her his remaining vials, had the overdose finished the job by destabilizing her physical form?
He remembered the lean man in the once-white preacher’s suit, remembered the swirling darkness where his eyes should’ve been. Randal had never seen the man before—no way he’d forget seeing someone like that—but Corruption had poured off him in waves so strong they’d felt to Randal like physical blows. Whoever the bastard was, he was powerful as hell, that was certain. Powerful enough to turn Jess into the Mouth—especially if her body was already susceptible to transformation, thanks to her drug habit? He thought it likely.
He doubted that the man with the black-hole eyes had been responsible for Jess’ ultimate fate, however. The creature had been full of energy and ready to devour him, right up the instant when Randal had struck it with the book. The book! He’d forgotten that he still had hold of it. His flashlight app was still on, and he directed the beam onto the book’s cover. The volume was bound in what he first took to be leather, but the color, a sickly yellow crisscrossed by scars and stitch marks, told him that the binding was actually human skin. There was a title printed—tattooed?—in black letters on the cover.
