Page 64 of Eldritch
While the world had certainly changed since I last saw my sister, the question still struck me as odd, given that Aleysia had never had a strong affinity for meat.
I peered past Zevander, who’d returned to the doorway, toward where the rabbit lay in the other room. “It so happens we do.” Desperate to gather my thoughts, I pushed up from the bed, my heart ready to pound right through my chest. “I’ll be right back.” Allowing a smile, I followed Zevander out of the room, but the moment I’d shut her inside, my smile faded.
Zevander tipped his head. “Are you all right?” he asked in a low voice.
Nodding, I let out a long exhale and crossed to the small kitchen, grabbing one of the jars of carrots I’d been snacking from earlier.
An icy branching cold moved through my chest, like a tight fist clamping over my lungs. It tingled over my face and down my arms. My balance faltered, and the shattering of glass alerted me to the jar I’d dropped.
“Maevyth?”
Zevander’s voice was a distant sound to the hiss and crackling in my ears. Before I recognized what was happening, arms wrapped around me, pressing me close, as if he knew precisely what I needed right then.
His palm cupped the back of my neck, the other held me to him. “Breathe,” he commanded in a hushed voice.
Eyes closed, I nodded and inhaled deeply through my nose, my pulse throbbing in my ears. Seconds ticked off before it gradually faded.
He stepped back and tipped his head, guiding my eyes to his. “Are you all right?”
I nodded again, breathing through the lingering tremors. “How did you know?”
“Your face turned ghostly white. You looked like you were on the verge of collapsing.”
“But you …. You knew to grip the back of my neck.”
Zevander shrugged. “It just felt like a natural reaction.”
“I’ve not had one of my fits in years. Probably all the fuss over Aleysia and what this will mean.”
“One worry at a time.” He stroked a hand down my hair and kissed my forehead. “I’ll take care of the rabbit.” As he strode toward the animal, I couldn’t help but voice my thoughts.
“Zevander, do you think it was any coincidence that the moment that rabbit died, she awakened?”
“Had you asked me a week ago, I might’ve said it was a stretch. Now? I don’t know.” He swiped up the animal and grabbed one of the squares of burlap he’d brought in from the stable a few days ago, when he’d scrounged a squirrel from the tree line. He sat in the chair beside the table with his back to me, likely as a courtesy, since I’d told him I couldn’t watch.
I cleaned up the broken glass, and as I filled a pot with water, carrots and seasonings, I tried my best to ignore the tearing and squelching. By the time I put the pot on the flame, he’d finishedskinning the poor creature, and he slipped it in with the carrots and seasoning.
While the stew simmered, I snuck back into Aleysia’s room, to find her sitting on the edge of the bed with her back to me. “I can hear them out there. Those things.” Her body shuddered, and I tiptoed around the bed, taking a seat next to her. “Terrifying creatures.” She rocked back and forth where she sat, a hollow dread blooming in her eyes as she released a quiet whimper. “Have you seen what they can do?”
“Yes. Uncle Felix tried to attack me. He was one of them.”
She snapped her head toward me. “Uncle Felix?” Movement caught my eye, and I looked down to see her tapping each of her fingers to her thumbs. Over and over again, as if it were some nervous gesture she’d newly acquired. “How did you get away?”
“I have so much to tell you. And I’m not sure right now is the time. But I will, I promise. I’ll tell you everything.”
“When you went through that archway, and you didn’t come back…I thought …” Her eyes held a high shine, and she tipped her head back. “I knew at that moment that I was completely alone in the world. I felt it somewhere inside of me. This dark emptiness that crawled into my chest.” She stared off, as if lost in a trance. “If not for Moros, I doubt I’d have made it out of those woods alive.”
“Moros helped you out of the woods.” My flat tone mirrored my refusal to believe her words. The last time I’d seen Moros, he’d been swallowed by the same creature that’d flayed Uncle Riftyn and had morphed into a grotesque version of himself. Surely, she must’ve been delusional that night. It was possible. She’d suffered trauma, had lost her pregnancy, and had been banished to the terrifying woods all in one sitting. But curiosity insisted I continued questioning her. “And you felt safe with him?”
“Yes. He told me not to worry. That he would find you and bring you back to me.” She turned to me, eyes brimming with a strange wonderment. “And now you’re here.”
“Tell me what happened.”
She shrugged. “There’s not much to tell, really. After he escorted me from the woods, the crowd had already dispersed. There was such a strange and blissful silence. I almost wondered if I was dead. If Moros and I were both dead, and our spirits were walking side by side.” She stared off as if she was reliving that night, and my own visual of it slithered through my mind like a thick, oily sludge. “The moment we arrived on Agatha’s doorstep, I knew that wasn’t true, when she refused to let me inside. The afterlife couldn’t be so cruel. Torment and rejection are unique to the living, after all.” She sighed. “Anyway, it was Moros who took me in. Who gave me shelter when those creatures crawled out of the woods.”
I wanted to believe her words, to imagine that everything I’d seen that night had been nothing more than an illusion, but I couldn’t. I refused, because even if Moros hadn’t changed into a macabre monster in front of my eyes, he was still a bad man. A bad man who sewed women’s legs together and had threatened to turn me into one of his grotesque mermaids. “That can’t be. Aleysia, I saw the wrathavor consume Moros. HebecameMoros.”
“I too saw many things that night. I saw Uncle Riftyn on the edge of the woods calling my name. Moros told me it wasn’t real. That it was all in my head. Those nasty bites were some kind of wretched venom, you know. I hallucinated him, was all. I know that now.”
