Charles didn’t dare linger in the village. He wandered the northward trail, searching for a good tree to rest under. Exhausted, he slumped on a log and lay his head against a tree trunk, throwing his bag onto the wet earth. He never noticed it before, but as the fog lifted, the Midgewater Mires was littered with the ruins of half-sunken cottages, splinters of moldy reds, greens, and charred browns, left to sink in the mud. Moth-eaten banners leaned askew as the faint odor of gunpowder wafted through the air. Before Charles could even consider the possibility of swamp beasts and scavengers or to seek a different spot, he was already fast asleep.
And yet, Charles would find no rest here.
Doubt wormed its way into Charles’s mind. He was naked in the dark, alone, racing down a narrow corridor with neither light nor junction. Something was giving chase. Once more, his footsteps sloshed in shallow water as caltrops narrowly pierced the surface, blades coated in blood. Foul bows raked against strings as brass blared maddeningly into the liminal abyss. Charles was at the mercy of his own thoughts as spoken by another.
So many were killed that day. They didn’t have a choice, and yet he took his life in a fit of rage. You cannot change that. No matter how hard you try, no matter where you search. The throne is abdicated. What are you waiting for? Who will you become?
He turned his head, trying to spy the evil giving chase, but saw nothing save his own shadow extending for miles—until something stirred in the depths. A pale face emerged from the blackness. Made of broken porcelain, its lips cracked into a devious smile as if basking in his terror. But as Charles squinted, he saw his own face in the phantom.
What are you running from? Where will you go—?
He awoke to cold sweats and the howling wind. A moment’s silence passed. It was time to carry on. Charles followed the muddy trail to a clearing in the woods, where the moon shone bright in the night sky, shimmering against the misty soil. He noticed tracks in the mud, a pair of massive crow’s feet, though as to where the thing had vanished, he could not say. He heard something draw near. Trees snapped and fell in the wake of a monstrous thing. Then he saw it.
Grand and cumbersome, it was less of a house and more of a chateau on fowl’s legs. Such limbs stood as thin stilts among the trees, knees bent in unnatural angles, its house leering as a monstrous edifice. Crimson light emanated from its windows, like bloody eyes staring out from pools of blackness. It was built in a manner alien to architectural planning, with staircases to nowhere and doors to sheer drops, as if designed to perplex, or perhaps it was trying to masquerade as a prestigious estate, as a creature in its own right. Regardless, the chateau took a knee, tilting to the side as if beckoning Charles to enter.
The door creaked open. He treaded lightly.
The interior was far larger than he’d expected. Charles was greeted by shelves upon shelves of strange potions and ingredients, ranging from eye of newt and baboon’s blood to pickled pig fetus. Sides of cured pork and other less savory meats swayed with the hut’s every step, as did hanging gardens of nightshade, poison oak, and a hundred other ingredients meant to pervert the decrees of fate. The floorboards moaned under his feet as if every step fell on a dying old man. Toads croaked in baskets as mice scurried about the drawing room floor. Between the reek of thyme and sage, Charles’s nostrils were flooded to the point of nausea, and yet, the smell of boiling flesh and spices carried from the kitchen down the long, hazy hall.
“Come, come,” said a thick drawl. “You’ve done well to seek us out.”
“Well,” Charles managed, “you weren’t easy to find—”
The door slammed shut behind him. Charles passed by the dining room table, which was draped in a crimson cloth and a cornucopia of pastries, roast beasts, and steaming pots of jambalaya, flanked by skulls and candleholders in a grotesquely appetizing banquet. He didn’t dare pluck a grape, remembering the grim fables from his foray into medieval studies. In the kitchen, Charles was greeted by a crone stirring a cast iron cauldron with a ladle.
“So, you’re Mama?”
“Clever boy,” she sneered. “Welcome to our home, Charlemagne.”
Tangled locks hung low to her breasts, woven with bones and strange wicker fetishes. Her face was covered with a tattered black veil adorned with a ram’s horns. She wore a tight corset that would’ve asphyxiated any mortal woman, but she had no need for air. Legless, she hobbled on pegged stilts, leaning on a blackthorn cane, like a puppet animated by a madwoman’s will, and was several feet taller than Charles. From under her hood, her thin lips stretched into a diabolical smirk. She drew a great knife caked in foul bile, only to wipe it clean against her blood stained apron. As grotesque as she was awesome, a pair of pearlescent eyes gleamed down at her guest as if torn between curiosity and ravenous hunger.
“What did you call me?” he asked.
“Charlemagne,” Mama gestured wide, “the first apostle and severed hand of God, one who carries the burden of his sacrifice. The ravens told us of your coming. How far you’ve ventured into the wilds, miles upon miles from the polluting air of civilization. My sisters and I smell a grave desperation about you.”
“You’re not wrong.” Charles eyed the walls, which were covered in masks, round and cubic, splattered with paint and blood, a gallery of sorcerous fetishes. “Where are your sisters, anyway? Figured there’d be three of you.”
Two “aunties” emerged from the shadows; one, a shriveled hag in a long scarlet hood, the other, a corpulent maid with a basketlike mask. Neither said a word. Mama lifted a pair of steel shears to her lips and opened wide. Charles felt a bead of sweat trickle down his brow. She snipped off her own tongue as if relishing in his discomfort and passed the slithering organ to the eldest witch, who placed it between her jaws with a sickening squelch.
“We’re out tending to the good children,” the old hag said as if given a sudden voice. “You’ve met the little lads and lasses before.”
“I know,” Charles said, “that’s what scares me.”
“They’re under our care,” she snarled, “the war has massacred entire nations, and you cast suspicion on mine and my sisters’ kindness? For shame, boy. They had nowhere else to go. We took the good children under our wing. To shield them from the horrors of war.”
“And what do you do with the bad ones?”
Mama silently raised the ladle to her lips.
“Ah,” Charles gagged. “So, what happens now? I take it there’s a few more hoops to jump through.”
The heaving maid came forward and outstretched a warty hand to her sister. The eldest rolled her eyes and severed her tongue with a sacrificial knife, only to pass it along as if they could only speak one at a time. “Should you put it like that, then yes,” she said, her footfalls creaking against the floorboards, “we could use another chore boy.”
Charles sighed, deeply. “Well, I would offer you a smoke, but my weed’s soaked. Mind sparing me something? I’d assume you’ve got good shit.”
“Only the best of herbs. Be warned, it’s not for the faint of heart.”
“So long as it’s not, like, peyote, I think I’ll be fine.”
“What have you to trade, young man?”
“I mean, not much….”
The maid pried her tongue loose with bare hands, passing it back to Mama. “Oh,” she hobbled to the cupboard, “that I doubt. I smell a man of many worlds. One who has transcended the borders between the spheres. One whose uncertainty alone guides him. One who seeks out danger to provide his own life with meaning.” She took a sharp, shuddering breath, inhaling steam. “Rest assured, boy. You have much to offer us.”
Charles kept his distance. “What do you want then?”
“We want a taste of your soul,” Mama licked her ladle, “someone as rich as you is rare indeed. A delicacy.” She raised a wrinkled hand. “It’ll be quite an experience. For all.”
“Yeah, no thanks,” Charles stepped away, “my soul doesn’t have a market price.”
“Does Victor’s?”
“How’d you—?”
“He’s lost but can be found. We may even be able to help,” she grinned, “for a price.”
“Course,” Charles muttered under his breath, “had to be something.”
Mama cocked her head. “Shall I give you time?”
“Yeah, lemme think it over.” In the living room, Charles tossed and turned about the feather-stuffed couch, staring at the rafters, trying to decide what to do. “Fuck.” He shut his eyes, weighing his options. As far as the Impresario was concerned, this was his only chance. He had one shot. Considering his track record with poor life choices, Charles stood on the edge of a knife, and both failures were equally horrible—lose his chance of bringing Victor back, or worse, lose himself along the way. Then again, he didn’t get this far by playing it safe.
“Have you decided?” Mama asked.
“Yeah,” Charles sat up, “how’re we gonna do this?”
“By sacred smoke.”
The next thing Charles knew, the three sisters ground an assortment of herbs with mortar and pestle as Mama muttered and chanted all the while. Incense burned in his nostrils as the maid cut a bat’s head clean off with a cleaver, mixing it all into a concoction of black sorcery. Charles handed the crone his chilium, and she packed it full with burning sorcery.
“Breathe,” she said, “breathe….”
Charles took a hit, only to cough and wheeze. Strong didn’t begin to describe it. He was overpowered by strange, pungent fumes. Then came the ringing. At first, he thought it was tinnitus until the stupor slammed into his soul like a runaway train. Dazed, reeling, he clung to the couch’s arms, if only to have something to latch onto.
“What the—?” he gasped.
“You’re afraid,” she said, “but not of us….”
“Y-yes,” he admitted.
“Not nearly frightened enough. Not by the world around you.” Charles’s vision churned with psychedelic stars and vectors out of space, prismatic and pure, until they began to take form as forces buzzing within his mind’s eye. “What is it that you fear?”
Charles raised a hand, only to feel imaginary maggots crawl between his fingers as inner darkness snuffed out the candles, one by one. That question echoed in his mind again and again. He didn’t want to face it. How could he? Time seemed to flow backwards, gaining speed. He didn’t dare look behind, even as the world turned black. Before he knew it, he ran blindly into the void as unseen terrors nipped at his heels, terrors of his own making.
“You can’t save him this time,” said a voice.
Charles paused, realizing he was only sprinting deeper into nothingness, into a limbo wreathed in fog. He recognized that foul presence. Something he’d long since purged, or so he’d like to think. In truth, Charles’s daemon had only germinated in the blackest recesses of his mind; his own shadow loomed tall behind him.
“Fuck off,” he wheezed.
“You know I can’t do that,” the Ringmaster stepped into the unlight, grim and grisly as ever, adorned with a tophat and coat fresh out of a twisted carnival, “been a hot minute in hell, huh?” He lit his own smoke with the snap of his fingers. “Like to think we’ve grown.”
“Well,” Charles managed, “you are Cesare.”
“Only to those who know me. Daemons, geists, we’re all the same thing, just in different states of being. You know you can’t bring the kid back, dude. And it’s breaking you.”
“That’s what I believe, yeah,” Charles said, “that’s my darkest fear. But I gotta ask, why shouldn’t I try? What else is there?”
The Ringmaster shrugged. “Ever tried manning up and taking the helm for yourself? That might be new. Victor’s sure as fuck not cut out for the messiah gig.”
Charles looked away. “I—”
“Can’t? Or won’t?” his own daemon said. “That was always your biggest weakness. How can you make a difference when your life’s a joke, and you’re the punchline?”
“And what?” Charles snapped. “Just snap my fingers with the power of friendship and save the world? Spoilers, dude, but it doesn’t quite work like that.”
“No, but neither does hiding in a dead man’s shadow.”
Charles gave a broken laugh. “What’s the epiphany here?”
“Grow some balls for once. Victor can’t fix everything.”
“That’s not—dammit,” he spat, “how do I go about this?”
“Why’re you asking me?” The Ringmaster shrugged. “I’m just your geist, man. Unraveling, but chill enough to not go all uber-daemon on your ass.”
“Which I appreciate.”
“Meh, we’ve been through worse.”
Charles gave himself a thumbs up. “Preach, but maybe you’re right. I do need to take charge. Victor isn’t my savior or anything, but he’s my best friend. He just…made a huge mistake. And he needs my help. I can’t just turn my back on him. If that means pulling my weight, then so be it. I’ll do it for my own sake.” He nodded at his daemon. “Thanks, man.”
With that, the Ringmaster cracked a smile, filling the void with radiance. Charles caught a glimmer of Cesare’s silhouette against the light as he drifted back to reality.
“Delicious.” Mama greeted him with a warty touch, only to lick her fingers. The sisters passed the tongue back and forth like a grotesque lollipop. “Sweeter than Khandish delight.”
“Glad to hear it,” Charles shuddered, “so, what about Victor?”
“Indulge me further, and I’ll tell you all you need to know,” Mama and her sisters slid to the tableside, “I always prepare feasts for my guests….”
Charles’s brain was still abuzz with wayward thoughts, disguising an herbal stupor. Then the hunger set in. Now of all times. Against his better judgment, he pulled up a chair, eying the silver cloches. “Alright,” he sighed, “what’s for dinner anyway?”
He opened the lid only to be greeted by a grisly sight—breaded fingers, a child’s, fried to perfection like lean sausages, complete with a sprinkling of pomegranate seeds.
Fuck….
“You seek the means to undo death,” Mama said. “Something which is not to be undertaken lightly. Resurrection is but a fable within a fable. Many have lost themselves in trying to bring back a loved one. None have succeeded. Stitching the fabric of morality once undone requires a most delicate hand. Fortunately, the one you seek is neither dead nor dying; rather, he lives the unlife of a mangled soul. You must find a way to heal this wound.”
Charles turned to the larder, seeing a handful of reddened cadavers sway on chains like sides of prosciutto, thoughts ablaze with frayed nerves and horror.
“Eat, my child.” Mama carved into the roast beast, shredding cut after cut of rare flesh to the bone. “Aren’t you hungry—?”
Charles launched out of his seat, knocking his plate to the floor. “Shit, I’ve gotta go.”
Mama hissed. “What a rude boy.” She reached across the table, her arms far longer than he thought. “Time is running out, regardless of whatever lies the Impresario told you.”
Charles rolled his eyes—he never got along well with fate. “Yeah,” he said, “I’ve watched enough anime to figure that we’ll turn out different. The power of friendship is sappy as shit until it actually works.” He turned away. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
“And how do you plan to bring him back?”
Charles halted in his tracks. “Something tells me you want a little extra for that tidbit.”
“Clever child.” Mama brandished her pair of sewing scissors, crouching atop the table like a spider preparing to pounce. Her sisters stood, slowly. “Your tongue is talented. Sharper than steel.” She licked her lips. “Ours is white with rot. Yours will do nicely.”
Charles felt the color drain from his face, imagining the rusty shears slicing into his flesh, ripping his tongue clean from his jaws. Raw mutilation. Still, he needed to know.
“Fine,” Charles said, “just tell me where the temple is.” He still had a few tricks up his sleeves; there had to be a loophole. “Better be specific, though.”
“But of course,” Mama snipped the air, “just hold still….” She crept close to Charles’s side, slowly raising the scissors to his lips. “The deepest place in the world shields the halls of the dead. You must appease that shadowed temple beneath the kingdom with a bloodstained history. Only there shall you find your friend’s true self. Now, it’s your turn.”
Second thoughts cut the conversation short. With a swing of a fist, he punched the hag in the face, feeling cartilage snap and skin squish under his knuckles. The next thing he knew, Charles sprinted down the hall as fast as he could—only for the crones to give chase.
“You swore!” In a fit of rage, Mama tackled him with surprising strength, raising a meat cleaver high in the air. Her breath reeked of rotting flesh and stolen innocence. “Selfish brat!”
Charles kicked her off and felt panic take its course.
“Go then,” Mama cursed and cackled, “seek out what remains of your friend. Your role is already ordained by the tides of fate.” The house began to waver and tilt until Charles tumbled backwards towards the door. The Ladies of the Moon propped themselves against the floor with blade and staff, leering and laughing, as Charles clung to the creaking threshold.
“May the river take you to your grave!”
The next thing Charles knew, the legged house had vomited him into the freezing rapids of a river. Tossing and turning amidst the flow, he grasped for a log or piece of driftwood. Anything to keep him afloat. When he at last clutched a stray branch, Charles coughed and wheezed. He spun around, only to see the house gallop into the woods, stomping against the earth. Charles sighed with relief. Ahead and on the edge of sight, he beheld the darkness and distant roar of the sea. The coast was in sight, and lessons were learned.
Don’t smoke out witches, or you’ll get stitches….