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Part 3-20: Trade
Crab-beastie had arrived, leaping out of the woods in a mean, short hop. Small trees and bushes fell all around it, and over Eden’s shoulder I saw that its oak rider had grown a huge thicket of vines, waving all about like a sea anemone. A tiny human figure floated above it all, wrapped up in the tallest mutant tendril.
Eden broke our clash, knelt and kicked out a leg. I almost dodged it with a jump, but my ankle got clipped and I swirled like a pinwheel before crashing into the ground.
The grass went fire-orange and Eden roared as Persi did something, and I rolled away.
“Leave!” it cried, flinging a destructive wave of air bending force up the field. Persi sailed away on it, sliding away like a leaf. An unfortunate medium-sized glob monster exploded as the attack found it too.
A lady screamed, from the house.
It dawned on me then. The crab, it was in our world. Of course it was, I’d heard it thumping on after us and saw its green orbs with my own two physical eyes, but in the frenzy of it all, the grave reality hadn’t sunk in. Eden had brought the fight to my world.
“No, you leave buddy,” I said, and made my fingers into a gun around the rapier’s hilt.
The blast cone hit Eden dead on, pieces of light fracturing away at dizzy angles. There was pressure, a tonal thrum in the air, and again the stink of ozone. I did not feel a draining tiredness this time.
When it cleared, the ghost was still there, but it knelt now, and I saw a wisp of dusty powder fall from its form.
“Stronger,” it said. “Curious.”
I blasted it again, but this time Eden held up a hand and the whole bloody beam careened up and away. I hoped it landed on some pearl blobs.
“Yet much. To learn,” said Eden.
“Yeah, I’ve a lesson in spirituality I’d like to impress on you too,” I said. Out of one corner of my eye, I kept tabs on the crab, which didn’t seem to be advancing while Eden was engaged. Out of the other, I tracked Persi’s polearm, which was hugging the ground and silently racing closer.
“You will help,” said Eden.
“You will fuck off,” I said, as Persi’s weapon sprung.
It hit nothing; Eden disappeared.
I whirled around, but it was only a house with an open door, and urgent voices from inside.
“Trade!” called that weird, toneless voice.
I pivoted again, and there it was, standing atop the head of the great clomping root-being. Eden gestured with a grand sweep of its arm, a demented showmaster on his horrorstage, low lit with sick alien eyes, vines and rotted trunk the backdrop, and me, his enthusiastic audience.
I sure hoped my wifi show would start soon.
“Trade,” it said again.
“Terms?” I called, hoping Deluxe was finding that damned router and killing that damned signal. The ring seemed to twitch at the thought. I shook my hand and tried not to hear Roman’s weak moans from high above.
“Three. For which, we came,” said Eden. “Then leave. Forever.”
“You want the Walkerbys,” I said. I stole a look over to the left, where the faithful skyscraping clocktower loomed. From this angle, I could see a sliver of the glass face.
“Three,” repeated Eden.
“Let me think about it!” I said, and rocked on my heels.
A few horrible seconds stretched by, as I stalled and pretended to contemplate.
Roman shouted in pain.
Jimena from behind me: “Theo? Theo!”
She came out in the yard, still with the big shotgun, and stood stock still in front of the porch as the thing with a dozen (minus one) eyes loomed and stared her down.
A single vine broke away from the pack and plunged into the ground. Jimena took a step forward, raising the gun, her face steel. Then the green snake erupted around her feet, curling, wrapping her up to her chin, quick as a flash. The gun clattered in the soil and she gagged.
“I take seven. Or eight,” growled Eden. Jimena made a gurgling, crackling sound as the vines constricted. “Or three. Trade.”
Time was up.
“Zero,” I hissed, and pointed with both hands.
A blue flare pierced Jimena and her coil, burning the vine away. Another flare sizzled out towards Eden, aimed low. It nailed a green eye, exploding it into steam, and the fiend reared and flailed. Persi attacked from the field, her dart explosion peppering the thing’s face again, and two more eyes shattered.
I ran straight for it, intent to drive as much damage as I could into the accursed sacs when Eden appeared in front of me and held out a hand. There was crinkling, crunching, from all around and the edges of my vision went dark grey and blurry. I still ran, but it was soupy, slow, and sleepy.
Then I was still, unable to speak, everything sounded like it was underwater. Except Eden’s voice.
“Foolish. Girl,” it said. But it shook too, and the edge of its body blurred and began to drift.
I tried to feel the Band. Or imagine a familiar spot and flit away like I’d done before. No good, I was stuck… but there was a glimmer of sensation, like a waterdrop’s echo at the bottom of a well. The Band tried to reach me. I strained as the demon said, “One.”
The crab hopped a short distance closer. As it did, it flung Constable Theodore Roman into the air. Eden tilted me so I could watch the arc of his short flight. A second before the man exploded into the ground in front of us, a vine skewered him. There was a messy sound behind me, and I stared at a pallid face, eyes wide in shock, sharp vine protruding from the gut, blue halo of light bright and blazing.
The vine and the man curled away and uncountable threads of smaller vines darted in and out of him, fatal stitches: fast, furious, fucking spiteful murderous death vipers—a final twisting crunch and two twin bolts of light raced from the shattered body back into the crab, somewhere up high the mechanisms of the clock rumbled and thunked, and a woman’s wail was lost to the rapid load and burst blast of a pump action shotgun—golden light bloomed behind Eden and I became unfrozen as the ghost vanished again. I dropped to my knees, staring down at the tip of the polearm, its point a hair from my nose where Persi had stopped it.
Then Jimena’s backside joined my view, as she walked through me screaming and firing. Sparks flew from the monster’s face, and another eye ruptured before a low swept vine knocked her and her shotgun sprawling. The gun left a fast-dissipating spiral of gunsmoke behind it, and the polearm clattered to the ground.
“No,” I said. The ground was dark in uneven places.
Chaos.
The crab dropped a jungle’s worth of vines into the ground. Behind me, noises like a hundred pieces of wood snapping. Off in the field, a blue man sparred with a mess of bright lights. Someone yelled for me.
I counted the eyes. Eight of ‘em, like a spider. Or was that its legs?
Didn’t matter. I pointed slow and easy, the Band’s power back in force now that I was free of Eden’s grip. I let its dreamy embrace swallow me up. I had to, had to, or else I’d see all too clearly the dark spots on the ground and what they meant.
Zap, pop! Zap, pop! Two more eyes down, more yelling from all around. The face hole rounded on me, so I scooped up the polearm and picked a spot on the ground below the beast. A pearl blob perched on a rock there. Perfect.
A focused thought and poof, there I was, chilling with a pearl on a rock under a crab. Like a poem in a kid’s book. Sitting here, right under the chin of the thing, I could see the mess of the farmhouse, all knotted up in vines just as I’d pictured. Dack was in the very planty doorway, swinging away. What a champ!
Like I was clearing cobwebs, I swept the polearm up in neat little jabs. Bing, bop, spoop, three eyes bye-bye for crabby.
It jumped, probably upset. It landed very close to the house, and spun about to face me. Oak leaves floated down as the tree groaned and leaned. Dumb thing. I pointed: zap, pop! Zap, pop! One more.
Eden stepped in front of me, Persi’s ghost writhing its grasp. It squeezed and she snuffed out of existence.
I sat down and shook, face stuck in a painful rictus. Where had Roman gone?
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