An Invocation of Monsters (The Void Book 2), page 26
There were sounds around me, high ululating calls and wild chanting.
I had to open my eyes. Even though everything hurt, I had to know what was happening.
My left eye refused to move, my drying blood freezing the lid in place, but I managed to crack the right open without being sick.
It took me several long minutes to be able to keep it open—everything was trebled, then doubled, then slowly began to take form as I forced past the pain and tears.
The stone circle of the cliffs lay in front of me, a bonfire raging at its center.
I was tied to a beam that had been erected before the circle, and I looked down at my bound body, seeing that I was wearing a plain white dress and had been draped in flowers.
I didn’t want to move and give away that I was awake, because the Wendigo Society was all around, dancing counterclockwise around the circle, screaming and chanting in a language that made my head hurt.
I needed to be whole to face them, but with my hands bound, I couldn’t heal myself quickly. I could only hang here and let the power work slowly.
Wishing it could go faster, I watched them dance in front of the setting sun.
The sky was a deep gold, and the light of the sunset made the lake look like blood.
I saw Willow’s long mane of blonde curls flash by, followed by Kase’s narrow form, then Joseph and Mary.
They wore all white, flower crowns on their heads, but their skin was painted red from head to toe.
Then silent, seething panic set in.
It was still day.
My monsters could not face the light and live. I had to get through this on my own.
And I could do nothing while I was bound to this beam.
I began working my wrists, trying to loosen the ropes holding them. It was coarse rope, burning my skin as I moved, and I was afraid to work faster. The movement of my shoulders would give me away, and it was impossible to work delicately with the amount of pain I was in.
Mary let out a wild scream, prostrating herself before the bonfire, and I felt the sickness turn my stomach again.
Oh god, I was going to puke. I would die here choking on my own puke.
No. I held it back. Whoever had clubbed me, I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of knowing that’s what killed me.
You are half a monster, I told myself. You can get through this. Providence didn’t bring you here to fail now.
But I didn’t see what I could possibly do to change anything. I was trussed tight, the ropes cutting into my wrists, tied to this damn beam like a pagan offering.
That struck me so hard I couldn’t breathe for a moment.
I was tied and dressed like an offering.
Surely they weren’t that crazy… but ‘surely’ hadn’t worked out for me so far in the time I’d been visiting the Lodge.
I tried to open my left eye again, only succeeding in sending pain shooting through my skull.
The switch to English took me aback.
“Now as the sun sets, spilling blood on the water, we do as it bids,” Mary screamed, prostrate before the flames. Her hands worked at her face. “With flesh and blood, we open the door! We invoke the guardian, to come forth and hear our pleas!”
When she rose, it seemed like an apparition rising from the flames. A deer skull, licked with tongues of fire, its sockets dark and the points painted red.
She rose to her feet, a stone knife gripped in one hand, wearing the skull over her face like a mask.
Oh god, no.
I had been wrong the entire time. My hatred for Joseph had blinded me.
Mary was the Hunter.
She stepped to the edge of the cliff and Willow knelt first, looking beatific. The last sliver of sun on the horizon made her hair glow like beaten gold.
“My life for the Void,” Willow intoned. She was smiling, her hands held out palms-up like she was being blessed. “I offer my blood to invoke the guardian.”
“I accept,” the Hunter intoned.
Mary dragged the knife across her throat.
Willow choked, sputtered, spewed crimson. It sheeted down her front, painting her dress the color of her body.
She never stopped smiling.
Mary gently touched her shoulder, and Willow went over the edge of the cliff.
I could almost imagine I heard the splash as her body hit the water.
Kase knelt next, and I gave up on trying to be quiet.
It was impossible to make myself heard through the thick gag in my mouth, but my struggles couldn’t have gone unnoticed. Joseph continued dancing, his eyes flashing across my ruined face as he passed.
He couldn’t block out the sight of Mary cutting Kase’s throat next.
And, unlike Willow, Kase did not look sainted and beatific at the thought of dying.
He looked terrified, his face white as milk, tears running down his cheeks. God, there was cherry cobbler still smeared on his mouth.
I recalled what he’d said in the orchard: for the last… something.
Jesus. He’d meant for our last meals.
He stumbled over the words, each one striking me in the heart.
“M-m-my life for the V-Void. I offer my b-b-blood to invoke the g-guardian.” He almost couldn’t get through the sentence.
Mary waited patiently for him to finish stuttering the sentence out over a sob.
Then she cut.
His blood gushed out, spilling a puddle across the circle. Mary gently tipped him over the cliff’s edge.
My god, what a fucking waste. Poor Kase. He hadn’t wanted this; he’d just wanted to see the Void, not be a sacrificial goat for this crazy bitch.
If I had just seen what was before me… I could have saved him.
Joseph finally slowed to a halt in front of me, his eyes looking distant and crazed through the mask of red he wore.
“Now we offer a new lamb, one pleasing to our masters,” he intoned, reaching out to me. “We offer her body, her blood, her bones, her mind, and her soul. In death, she will serve you. In death, she will open the door for us. Master, we invoke you with the sacrifice of this woman.”
Mary strode forth, her hair swinging beneath the deer skull. Her stone knife glinted with wetness.
Instead of stabbing me, she quickly stepped up behind Joseph, drawing the dagger across his neck like a striking snake.
The shock in his eyes was real. He clutched his throat, trying to contain his life’s blood, but Mary had cut too deeply.
It poured out of him, staining the stone, even as he sank to his knees.
“W-what?” he choked out. “Why?”
“I offer this man to the Other Side.” Mary’s voice seemed to echo from within the skull. “I offer his worthless blood. I offer his faithless flesh. I offer his meager bones, and his wasted mind. I offer his barren soul.”
She kicked the dying Joseph in the side, then grabbed the collar of his shirt and dragged him to the cliff, heaving him bodily over the edge.
Even from that distance, with the bonfire crackling between us, I heard her whisper, “You stupid bastard.”
I struggled harder, opening wounds on my wrists, feeling my own blood drip down my fingers and patter on the stone behind me.
The last sliver of sun lit Mary like a demon.
She turned around, and I felt her eyes searching me from within those blackened sockets.
My heart was slamming against my ribs, my lungs so constricted they were tight balls of pain lodged in my chest. From a distance, I could think clearly, but here and now… no.
I was just another animal caught in the mindless panic of a trap.
Mary tilted her head.
“And you, my lovely little monster… your blood will be the greatest offering of all. I could do no less for the one who should have been my own daughter.”
38
Elle
She stepped forward, the knife held at her side.
“Yes, I should have been your mother,” she said conversationally. She was twisting the knife in her grip, the blade flashing with each rotation. I was already anticipating the sensation of it biting into my throat. “After all, I have been through the doors countless times. Thousands, perhaps… not enough to preserve my youth, but to keep me alive for a very, very, very long time.”
I could just see the flash of her teeth beneath the skull as she grinned.
“You see, I was the first one Sophie brought through,” she confided. I froze in the midst of my struggles, unsure if I’d heard her right.
Mary… or in this case, Marie.
The pushy, greedy little shit.
“Yes, I thought that might surprise you. For as much digging as you did, I’m surprised the concept didn’t occur to you sooner. You are aware, of course, that the Void preserves you from the flow of time. Once Sophie brought me through, I knew I was destined to learn more about this new world. She even agreed to create a door that would stay open, so that one day we might visit each other.”
Mary laughed and shook her head. “Silly little bitch. You have no idea how much convincing it took to get her to do even that.”
She came closer, my skin tingling all over as I awaited the sting of the knife. I refused to close my one good eye.
If she was going to kill me, she was going to do it with me watching her and blaming her.
So this was it. She raised it…
And cut the gag.
Mary tore it away, plucking the coarse fabric from my mouth and tossing it aside.
I coughed, dragging in a deep breath. The inside of my mouth was dry and tasted like dust.
“Don’t look so hopeful, Elle,” she said, wiping her hand on her bloodied dress, as though my spit was worse than the blood of innocent lives. “You are still going to be my sacrifice tonight, but as so much of this story involves you, I feel that you deserve to hear it.”
“Oh?” I asked. My voice was thin and weak, but fuck it, I wasn’t going out without saying my piece. “So I get to hear the villain monologue before I die? Lucky me.”
It was impossible to read her expression, hidden as it was behind bone, but Mary didn’t strike me.
“Yes,” she said calmly. “I am not the villain, but I will certainly tell you what you should know. I was born Marie Vaughn in 1841. I grew up here. Everything you see around you…” She held out her arms. “All of this was my playground, until the day I met Sophie.”
That tiny sliver of sun disappeared beneath the horizon. I held back a smile.
Soon, my monsters could come.
“I grew up surrounded by the occult,” Mary told me. “When I met Sophie, I thought I’d found someone who would understand me. She seemed… rather more amenable to it than the other girls in our boarding school. I extended an invitation to my home. And when she got here, I begged for a month before she would open a door for me.
“And that’s when I realized that my ‘friend’ was in fact no friend at all. Sophie believed she was better than me because of this power. Even though I grew up knowing far more than she ever would…” Mary’s voice grew thick with bitterness, and she stopped talking for a moment, clutching the knife so tightly her knuckles were white.
“She thought she was better because she was bred from a monster,” Mary hissed. “My mother spent years amassing her knowledge and collections, passing it on to me, but what did this matter to Sophie? By dint of birth, she had the ability to open these doors, but she didn’t want to share the knowledge or power.”
I coughed again, my throat tight with pain. “Maybe because she knew you would abuse it? Who can really say?”
Honestly, if I’d been in Sophie’s shoes, I wouldn’t have wanted to open a door for this bitch, either.
Mary smiled coldly at me from under the skull. “I can say, as I was there, Elle. I was there in 1853 when she opened the door for the first time. But she did not want to leave it open, no, not at all. She wanted to keep the power of the Void and the Ones Beyond all to herself.
“I never spoke to her again after that summer. I never saw her. But I did keep tabs on her. While Sophie was living in Essex, I was exploring another world. While she matriculated in the Miskatonic University, poring over dry books, I made my first breakthrough. It required my sister’s life, but then, she wasn’t good for much else.”
I stared at her, feeling sick again.
So Tessa Vaughn had never made it to adulthood. Her psychopath sister had killed her.
“After Sophie graduated, she bore her first child. Felicity Marsh,” Mary added, watching me pale. I knew that name. My grandmother had died before I was born. “While she was breeding herself, I was continuing with my life’s work. I dug into the history of this place with the intent of creating a record of what would transpire here.”
Ah. I remembered that the author of Deepwater was Marie Vaughn. I had never dreamed she would still be living.
“Eventually, I had dug up all I could. I watched as Sophie continued on with her life, with her children, and then it occurred to me: perhaps she had entered the Void once more. Perhaps she had gone seeking monsters to sire her children. And I realized I could not let that stand. If she was attempting to breed an heir, then there was a chance that one day, that heir would return to Deepwater with the intent of taking this door.
“I needed my own door. My own monster. I needed my own heir.”
She bared her teeth at me, and the sight of it made my skin prickle again. At any moment, she could stop talking… and then the sacrifice would begin.
I begged my monsters to come.
The stars were out. The sky was dark.
They were nowhere to be seen.
“But time passes differently when you can never truly die. I threw myself into the Void, taking all the knowledge I could absorb, hunting for monsters and finding nothing. But one day, when I emerged…” Mary laughed. “I found that Sophie’s children were adults, and they now had children of their own. I waited patiently, hunting, biding my time, and then one day I found a new name on a list of Miskatonic attendees.”
“You psycho stalker,” I said, but it lacked bite.
I was in too much pain, and the fuzziness in my head was worse now.
It felt like the air itself was pressing in on me.
“Indeed,” Mary said cheerfully. “It’s amazing how much a singular obsession can accomplish. I signed up for the exact same courses as Gillian Marsh and maneuvered myself right into her path. My God… it was like looking at an image from the past. She was Sophie incarnate.
“And she was hungry for the power, too, in a way Sophie never was. Did you know that your mother directly caused the death of at least one faculty member?” Mary asked, examining the edge of her knife. “Oh, yes. I would hate for you to die believing she was an angel. She would lie through her teeth, fuck anything that moved, if it meant she could access things she had no business getting her hands on.”
“I’m aware she was a pretty shitty person,” I said evenly.
“Yes, I suppose you would be. I did have Willow deliver Joseph’s journal to you, so you could see a first-hand account of what an utterly remorseless bitch she could be. You were never more than a means to an end for her, Elle. At least I tried to love Desirée as best I could, although the girl was never worth much.”
“So you never found a monster to breed with?” I taunted her. “Some heir.”
Mary frowned at me speculatively. “She was my second experiment. I brought a man here, conceived her here, birthed her in the Void. I had hoped that proximity alone might grant her some of Sophie’s abilities, but… sadly, it did not. She did serve a purpose, though: though entirely lacking in any magical ability, she posed as my mother when it came time for me to enroll myself in the Miskatonic. It was easy to convince my new ‘Society’ friends that I was the third generation of a long line of witches. They were so gullible.”
She sounded almost fond when she spoke of how she’d lured them all here.
“It was, in fact, Gillian who made me realize I would never have a complete grasp on this door without a monster. She found one almost immediately, and she was so hungry for more of the Void that she agreed to bear his child without a second thought. And how furious she was when he cast her out, citing her greed as a curse.” Mary shook her head sadly. “But you were perfect. You were what I should have had.”
I curled my lip. The idea of this creature for a mother was even more abhorrent than the fact of what Gillian had been.
“Gillian was so angry that she cut herself off from this world entirely. She married that poor, besotted Benjamin and vowed never to open a door again. But of course she couldn’t stay away. She returned every summer, trying to tear her way through the door again and failing every time.
“But you were to be raised with no knowledge whatsoever of your history. I decided to allow it. I could have killed you while you slept, crushed your precious little infant skull like that—” She squeezed hand into a tight fist. “But I chose to let you grow up and see what you would become.”
“So what did you do with Tasha?” I tried not to sound desperate, but fear was creeping through me in tendrils that dug in deep.
Where were my monsters?
I had to keep her talking.
“She was yet another failed experiment.” Mary shook her head. “Obviously, Gillian had a genetic talent for reaching another world. But poor Tasha was only ever a girl in over her head. I brought her here. I tied her down in a cave, and cared for her. In a way, I suppose I had hoped that her presence might lure a monster to Deepwater. But she just ended up as that thing, mad and twisted.”
“I can’t believe you have no remorse for any of this.” I didn’t have to fake the disgust I felt for her.
Before she spoke, Mary swatted absent-mindedly at her ear. I wanted to do the same.
They felt like they were about to pop, the air closing in.
“There is no remorse in the pursuit of knowledge,” she told me. “What could they have possibly become? Nothing. I alone held all the keys, all the knowledge… I just needed one last thing. You.”
