The Rabbit Man, page 11
“The Order of Sybill seconds this motion,” the cat replied.
“The Order of Morgana is in agreement with this motion,” the hawk said. “Thank you all, and apologies for causing any distress this evening, Thorton. And I trust your human is unharmed?”
He nodded.
“Good. We shall all take our leave now.”
He watched them disappear into the shadows, unable to believe what just happened.
“You’re welcome,” Edmund said. “Try not to ruin this wonderful opportunity, Thorton.” He flew off leaving him alone and stunned.
When the shock wore off Thorton returned to Timmy’s room and curled up next to him in bed. Maybe he’d wait a while longer before he ran off to a new home.
Hound of the Moon
He lay alone in the alleyway; his only comfort the blanket of darkness night provided. A cold breeze rushed through the brick buildings bringing the stench of rotten garbage and human sick to his nose. But that was the least of his worries.
Nestling his head against a pile of rubbish, he looked up. Thin gray clouds drifted through the night, revealing a brilliant silver moon. He’d always loved the moon; its soft silver glow made the degradation of his city seem less so. Gazing up at its light he felt hope and allowed himself to daydream of someplace better.
The shaking in his limbs lessened, the burning pain fading into nothingness. Smiling to himself, his heavy eyes rolled into the back of his head. “Goodnight moon,” he whispered as events long past flashed behind his eyelids.
***
In a small and shabby apartment that reeked of stale alcohol and urine, there was a TV, its senseless noise and flickering lights filled the hollow space. Empty bottles and needles littered the floor. Tattered furniture sat among litters of trash and dirty clothes. A picture of a savior that never came hung on the wall. His soft eyes scrutinized everything; his smile never fading at the horrors he witnessed.
There were three little siblings tucked in close, and a mother on the floor, their small, empty stomachs struggling to sleep.
“Hush,” a man whispered in his ear. “Quit your squirming or I’ll kill your sisters.”
The little boy stifled his cries. He didn’t understand why his mother’s friend came to visit him, or why it hurt so much. Sometimes after his visits, the boy would wake to find blood in his pajamas and hurt for days. The little boy never understood what was happening or why he had to keep it a secret.
What he did know was the man was capable of hurting them, he’d seen the man hurt his mother until she bled from her cuts and then fell asleep for hours. He believed this man when he said he would kill his sisters, so he did as he was told and stopped squirming.
That night his mother discovered them. The man was finished and pulling his clothes back on, laughing at the mother as she watched from the doorway.
“What have you done?” she asked. “What are you doing to him?”
“Nothing I haven’t done before.” His laugh grew louder. “Don’t look so shocked. Why did you think I kept supplying you when your payments dried up?” He pushed past her and went for the door. “Let me know when you need another hit.”
With the man gone, his mother screamed and yelled. Crying and furious, she pulled the little boy from his bed, rousing his sleeping sisters. Throwing him to the floor, she hit the little boy until his face swelled and bled.
“You little faggot! How dare you? He’s mine to fuck, not yours!” She threw him into the wall. “What do you have to offer him that I don’t?”
After that night, his mother’s friends’ visits came less and less, trickling into memories and nightmares. This gave his mother another reason to be angry with him—she blamed him for the loss of her supply. Supply of what, the boy didn’t know but she reminded him every day. She told him he was dirty, and it was his fault the man stopped coming to visit. He shouldn’t have invited him to his bed.
***
Ten years later, the boy had dropped out of school. With a ratty backpack stuffed with clothes and a toothbrush over his shoulder, he fled the rundown apartment where the man used to visit him. The small two-bedroom abode had grown over full with his siblings and his mother’s addictions, paraphernalia littering the floors and unnamed visitors constantly drifting in and out. Now that he was on his own, school was no longer important. Only survival mattered.
Walking ten blocks through apartments like the one he left behind, he found what he needed. The old brick building with steeples rising into the evening sky, he’d found the one place that was supposed to be safe in this part of town.
He sought sanctuary in the church.
Using his backpack as a pillow, he lay on the hardwood pews under the high, drafty ceilings. It was uncomfortable against his sharp bones, and yet it was the most comfortable he’d felt in his entire life. Smiling, he knew he was safe. He’d made it out, and tomorrow he would keep walking out of town to his new life. Eyes drifting close, the sweet escape of dreams was within his grasp.
“Ah!” a shrill screech echoed across the tile floors. “Get out! Get out now, you filth, or I’ll call the cops!” a spindly old woman armed with a splintered broom handle yelled across the church. “We’ve had enough of the likes of you coming in here! Vandalizing the altar! Stealing from the charity box! Committing unspeakable acts on sacred ground! Get out!”
Jerking awake, the boy grabbed his backpack and ran. Fleeing into the cold night, he wandered the streets. Dark, empty, and haunted. He was alone with only the silver moonlight to guide him. He never forgot the feeling from that night, as if someone, something in the shadows watched him. He felt like he was prey being stalked—he didn’t sleep at all that night.
The next night he found refuge in a shelter, he hadn’t gotten as far away from town as he’d planned. After one night, he stayed another, and then another. He drifted between various safe-havens, slept in bedbug-infested and stained sheets. The other inhabitants fought, spoke to nothing, and indulged in their vices.
It wasn’t long before the predators discovered he was alone and vulnerable. The older vagrants paid his bunkmate to make himself scares, then came for him in the early hours of dawn. Beating and tearing at him, they held him down and mounted him, cackling at their cruelty. The commotion caused the shelter workers to raise the alarm. The predators ran off in a panic. And the bunk mate lied saying the boy was being paid for the acts.
With cold metal cutting the warm flesh on his wrists, he was hauled away in a flash of red and blue lights and charged with prostitution. Once he was let out of jail, they tried to send him to foster care. Having heard the horrors that befell children in the system, he ran again. This time he was careful to avoid the shelters and the cops.
Living on the streets, he made his living selling the only thing he knew others desired. He avoided the pimps and dealers as best he could. He knew once they were involved, the terrors of his life would truly begin.
Walking alone in the cold nights, he felt eyes watching him, shadows followed his every move. He tried to ignore them. There was nothing supernatural about this life, just the unyielding cruelty of humanity.
His nights were long and cold. He soon turned to pipes and needles to drown his pain. But it never lasted. He needed more and more to numb the hollowness in his soul and the hauntings in his life. For once, he didn’t care that the shadows were watching him.
***
Laying in the alley, the boy’s vision was hazy, nothing came into focus. The only thing he saw was a silver glow in the distance. The moon—he just wanted to see the moon again. So beautiful, so pure. Its silver light always illuminated the darkness for him.
Somewhere through the fog, he was aware of pain. His arm was on fire. No, it wasn’t fire. Fire wouldn’t hurt so much. The veins in his arm were collapsing.
The pain intensified, but he could not move. His heart rate grew rapid while somehow feeling impossibly slow. His chest tightened, he couldn’t breathe; he was drowning in a pool of air.
He allowed himself to succumb to the darkness, finally having numbed his pain, it was almost over …
“Hello, Charles,” a deep voice came from the shadows. “Charles—that is your name, the one your mother gave you before she forgot it in her crack-laden mind. The name you yourself refuse to allow others to know.”
How do you know my name? he thought.
“Oh, Charles, I know everything about you.” A figure emerged from the dark corners of the alley. A tall and slender woman in an amethyst-purple suit and long black trench coat. Her voice washed over Charles like warm silk and her eyes blazed with purple flame. “I know how your mother sold herself and her children, pathetically chasing her next hit into depravity. I know how she knew what the dealer was doing to you as a child. She even offered to sell you to him for more drugs. I know how you ran away, trying to look out for yourself in this cruel and unrelenting world.”
Through the numbness in his body, Charles felt tears slip from the corners of his eyes.
“I know how you tried to stay clean, no matter the depravity you faced. But it became too much. And now, here you are, dying in an alley of trash.”
Why are you saying these things to me? Charles thought.
“Because while your body may be broken and dying, your mind is still good, your spirit is strong,” the woman said. “As it happens, I am in need of a strong spirit. You see, I have a hound, a beautiful body full of power and raw muscle, but it needs a spark, something to power it. I’ve been watching you and I think you’d be perfect. Think of it, all those who abused you, held their power over you—you’d be bigger and stronger than any of them. You’d never be a victim again, you could even enact revenge on the lot, if you wanted that is.”
What?
“You’d need to do some errands for me, of course, and mind you, don’t get caught while avenging yourself. We’d be partners of sorts, you and I.” The woman kneeled close to his head. “Oh, Charles, that poison is about to stop your heart. I won’t be able to offer you this deal once that happens … I need your answer. Do you want to be given a second chance? Do you want the power you never had in this miserable, mortal life?”
***
Flashing blue and red lights illuminated the alley, casting deep shadows across the heaps of garbage. The face lying among them was cast in a deathly glow of the colored lights, its face hollow and sunken, eyes purple, cheekbones threatening to pierce through the paper-thin skin. The face was forever contorted into a look of ghastly horrors, eyes wide and mouth agape.
Fin felt ill, it was his first week, and this was his first body.
“Typical,” the senior officer huffed. Kneeling in the garbage, she inspected the needle protruding from his bony arm. “I can tell you this kid’s whole story just by lookin’ at him. Poor family, most likely exposed to abuse at a young age. Ran away, trying to get away from it all, and found himself in a worse hell than he’d left. Got mixed up in drugs, prostitution. The two feed off each other until it killed him. Damn kid never had a chance.”
“What about the foster system? Surely CPS could have helped him.” Fin said.
The older woman looked at him, her eyes full of pity and dubious judgment. “Your naivety would be cute if you weren’t a cop, Fin. The first thing you gotta learn, rookie, is that the system is broken. Has been for years. People out here are hurting, and the system that’s supposed to help does nothin’ but kick ‘em while they’re down.
“If he’d gone into foster care, who’s to say his foster family would’a been any better? CPS can’t be there all the time to check on ‘em. And people lie. Oh, yeah, they lie all right. Anything to keep up their sick games, toying with an innocent child’s life.” Giving the young body one last look, the officer got up from the garbage-riddled ally. “Common rookie, we got wat we needed, time to let the coroner finish wrapping up the deceased. We need to stop and get some coffee before going back to the station, we’ve got enough paperwork to keep us up all week. If we’re lucky, Detectives Black and Bert will still be up. We can order pizza with them. Mind you, I’m gettin’ my own. Ain’t no way I’m eatin’ broccoli pizza—somethin’ just ain’t right with that boy’s taste buds.”
***
The woman held a golden amulet. It was larger than her palm and carved with a fierce hound howling to the moon. Beneath the golden luster, the amulet glowed purple. She brought it to her lips and whispered, “Déno aftí tin psychí me aftó to sóma.”
She opened the amulet and the dull purple glow intensified, filling the room. It dimmed, revealing a great hound with glowing purple eyes. A huff of breath escaped its flared nostrils. The body trembled and its limbs flexed as the spirit within tested its new body. Breathing harder and faster, it placed its feet beneath its body as the chains that were holding it up fell away.
Grunting, Charles stood on a hard stone floor, regarding himself in the wall of cloudy mirrors in front of him. On four powerful legs, he stood more than ten feet tall, his chest broad and covered in thick gray fur. His snout was long and full of fangs, his paws larger than a man’s head and tipped with pointed claws. His eyes were dark with a deep purple glow.
Charles gaped at the mirror in disbelief. Was that really him?
“How do you like it?” the woman asked.
“It’s terrifying and strange, but I … I love it.” He looked at the room around him, it had high ceilings with great pillars. Carvings and statues were lit by large metal fire pits strategically placed across the floor. And there was the woman, standing at his side, her head reached his elbow.
She’d changed since approaching him in the alley, her suit had been traded for a billowing purple gown. A black headdress adorned her head and long brown curls were piled atop her head.
“Who are you? How were you able to do this? Where are we?” Charles demanded.
The woman’s laugh sounded like bells. “We didn’t have time for proper introductions, did we? I am Hecate, goddess of a time long forgotten. I won’t bore you with a centuries-long biography but know that I was once the keeper of spells and magic for the gods and humanity. After witnessing their petty squabbles, centuries of their schemes, not caring who was harmed, I left. I took the spells and magic with me and now use them as I wish. And now you will join me. You shall be my hound, an extension of myself and my will.” She smiled at him. Her lips were painted dark and spread wide over sharp teeth. The purple fire in her eyes roared and her form began to vibrate.
Her purple suit gave way to long flowing robes, her neckline plunged to her navel, and golden ropes wound around her waist and hips. She grew taller and her body split into three. Not three fully independent bodies, but a single body with illusions of other women’s torsos and heads on either side. Sometimes they moved independently, sometimes they held the same movements but delayed. When she spoke again her voice echoed, vibrating with power, “Now you are in a form created by the gods, you can lay eyes upon the true form of a goddess. Are you ready?”
“For what?”
“To test your new body.”
He snorted and stamped his paws. Adrenaline rushed through him, flexing his claws, he threw back his neck. Massive cords of muscles flexed taught as he opened his snout and felt a howl rip from his throat. The noise was eerie, ringing hard in his sensitive ears. At first, it terrified him to know he was capable of making such a sound. It was foreign to him and yet it came so easily. It invigorated him.
With a flick of her wrist, purple smoke engulfed them both.
His lungs contracted but no air came, his muscles tensed and his body trembled against an invisible force. He was being crushed.
In a blink it was over.
Dew, sweet grasses, and leaves filled his senses. He could smell the damp earth; it’d rained here hours prior. He heard the leaves rustle in a light breeze, the night worms boring through the soil, and nocturnal birds taking flight among the branches above. All of it flooded him at once, overwhelming him.
Sickly sweet smoke came next and a bell-like voice followed, “Breathe deep, my hound. Slow and even, breathe through it.” Hecate stroked his fur.
Involuntarily, his hackles went up. She soothed them away, coaching him through his breath. In and out … In and out … He could still hear every movement and smell every organism, living and dead, but with every breath they became background. Tertiary knowledge he could choose to ignore or use to enhance his current situation.
His nostrils flared and his hot breath danced on the cold air. He opened his eyes. The thick canopy above blocked the silver moonlight from painting the forest floor, yet he could see everything. It was different than sight as he knew it. The foreground was sharper, yet the peripherals were still clear. His range was greater than anything he’d ever experienced. He rolled his eyes back and forth, growing accustomed to the nauseating upgrade.
Charles learned his new scenes faster than he’d learned anything before in his life. He assumed that was a perk of being in a body built by a goddess. Snorting, he shook and raised his head, then his front paws balancing on his hind legs. He let out another howl.
Birds and rodents scurry in fright. He felt the dead leaves shaken from their branches fall around him.
Falling back to all fours, he lunged forward into a run. His claws dug deep into the damp earth, soil, and mud coating his paws. Cool air filled his lungs as he zigged and zagged around the trees. His new feet were large and his legs awkwardly long. He tripped and slid across the forest, slamming into trees several times before he mastered his new appendages.
Hecate and her three bodies floated alongside him, shouting encouragement and tips.
Next, he tried his hand at climbing. Running at full speed, he leaped at a tree. His great claws tore at the bark as he slid down it. Flexing his fingers, his claws dug inward stopping his momentum. After a few clumsy tries, he was able to bound up the branch kicking off with his powerful back legs.
