Katalepsis

Horror stepped from the tree line and walked into the clearing.

Each footfall was neatly measured, drawing subtle squeaks of damp wood from the spongy carpet of sodden wood chips, accompanied by a subtle brush of polyester moving across cloth, the sound of her puffy raincoat rubbing against her nurse’s uniform. Drizzle and mist glazed the canvas of her black umbrella with a sheen of moisture, while thick droplets gathered and hung from the tips of the metal spokes. Her stride shook the droplets loose, falling to the wood chips as fat, wet, glistening globs, like mucus from the mouth of some unknowable Outsider.

The hazy grey light of the rainy day grew dim and dark as she approached, throwing deep shadows across the clearing and beneath the roof of the pavilion, as if heavy clouds moved to obscure the non-existent sun in the empty sky. For there was no sun, no sky, no clouds, only the wrinkled surface of the Eye stretching from horizon to horizon. Yet still the darkness thickened with Horror’s every step. The trees seemed suddenly taller, closing off the ring of open space above our heads, swelling inward with undergrowth to choke the passages between the trunks. The woods extended skeletal branches to form a thick and thorny wall, the paths leading out erased by time and weather. Cold air wormed invasive fingers beneath my yellow blanket. Real raindrops replaced the swirling mist, falling with a drumming patter upon the pavilion roof and spattering off Horror’s umbrella.

Horror walked right up to the pavilion’s concrete foundation, then stopped.

Sound came rushing back — the drip-drip-drip of rainwater running from the red plastic roof, the rushing of wind through the tree trunks, the creaking of branches and the rustle of leaves overhead.

Horror smiled, cheeks plump and rosy with false warmth.

“Are you girls going to make me repeat myself a third time?” she said. “Because I really don’t like having to do that. You’ve all got working ears, none of you are deaf. I know that for a fact, seeing as I’ve known you all for the entire duration of your stay at Cygnet. I’ve known all of you since your very first day here, since you walked through those doors and joined us in the hospital. So I’m well aware that you’re being obstinate, choosing not to answer my perfectly reasonable question. Isn’t that right?”

Evelyn hissed between her teeth, “Don’t answer her.”

Twil was gaping at the woods, at the thickened tree line, at the sudden darkening of the light and deepening of the storm. “W-what’s happening to the woods?” she said. “What’s happening!?”

I grabbed the handles of Evelyn’s wheelchair and pulled her backward, retreating a few paces from Horror’s position; the benches and the empty fire pit stood as a bulwark between us, but I trusted nothing in the dream when it came to Horror. She had survived the King in Yellow. Wooden benches would not stop her, if the logic of the dream bent her way.

“Raine!” I snapped. “Raine, back away from her! Zalu, Xiyu, you as well! Bring Twil, over here, now!”

Zalu shook her head, eyes locked with Horror’s too-sweet gaze. “I think it’s a bit too late to resume our hiding places.”

Xiyu raised her nightstick in one white-knuckled fist. “She was listening to us. To us, for real.”

“Rumbled,” Zalu sighed. “How very tiresome.”

“Quite!” said Horror, dropping ninety five percent of her smile. “It’s no use running away over and over. You girls can’t live out here in the woods, and you can’t get over the outside wall, not without seriously injuring yourselves in the process, and none of us want that. Running away merely delays the inevitable. Are you really going to make me trudge back and forth across the hospital grounds, just to end up in the same place? It’s very tiring and I’m going to get worn out. Think of my poor feet. I’m not so different to you, I’m just a nurse, doing my job.”

Raine smirked. “I can think of a much better way to get you all sweaty and breathless. You and me, one on one, we can make a much better afternoon of it. What do you say?”

I almost tutted, but I restrained my ire; Raine had made a good point earlier about breaking down Horror’s facade, whatever she really was.

Not that I didn’t doubt the truth of Raine’s offer.

Horror sighed and rolled her eyes, but not without a touch of colour in her cheeks and a tiny smile on her lips. “Raine, isn’t it? From the high security wing, yes? I know you’re of age, but there’s still an unfortunate power differential between you and I. Even if I did have a personal interest in your dubious advances, that would break so many rules of good conduct. They’d throw me at a tribunal so fast my head would spin. So, no, I shan’t be having illicit sexual relations with a resident or a patient. Besides, you would need about three baths first, a medical examination, a course of inoculations, some antibiotics, and probably a course of de-worming pills.”

Raine chuckled. “Yeah, thought so. Pity. I’d prefer it go down that way, instead of like this.” She raised her machete and pointed at Horror. “I was gonna get all up in your guts, but now I’m just gonna gut you.”

“Raine!” I hissed. “Get to the wheelchair, now, touch it so we can go! Raine, we need to hide, we—”

“We can’t,” said Evelyn, her voice stretched razor thin, like a piano wire about to snap.

“ … Evee?”

“I’ve been attempting to use the Fadestone since the first step she took toward us,” Evelyn hissed. “And I can’t. I can’t. I can’t calm myself. I can’t not panic. She’s doing this to us somehow. I can’t use it. I’m … fuck!” she hissed. “I’m too afraid!”

Horror smiled at Evelyn. “Sometimes fear is a sensible reaction, Miss Saye. Fear keeps us alive, don’t you know? There’s no point in running, not from me, and not from matricide.”

“Fuck you!” Evelyn spat.

“Tch,” Horror tutted. “Murder is a very serious crime. I’m disappointed that you don’t show more guilt. A young woman like you, with extenuating circumstances, with reasons and motivations with which any jury would sympathise, with your disabilities and your situation, not to mention your father’s financial resources and legal connections … well, let’s just say you would have a pretty good chance of a lenient sentence, if only you showed any real remorse.” Horror sighed, smiling with toxic melancholy. “What a pity you chose to destroy your own life.”

“Ha!” Evelyn barked, though I heard the strain in her voice. “Getting your facts mixed up, aren’t you?”

Horror frowned, miming a mask of gentle sympathy. “Excuse me?”

“Evee’s right,” I said out loud. “You’re not talking about what happened yesterday, you’re talking about reality, the real reality, the real world, not here. Evee killed her own mother, in reality, yes. But here, in Cygnet? She wasn’t the one who killed her mother. I killed Loretta Saye. I beat her to death with my bare hands, somehow, which is completely ridiculous because I’m not certain I would have the basic physical strength to do that, not without the rest of me. Evee was strapped into that horrible chair through the whole thing. She had no hand in it. It was me.”

Horror sighed with great concern, her frown turning pained and difficult. “Oh, Heather,” she said. “You were always such a good girl. You were on the path to a real recovery. And now you’re so confused. You’re off your medication, running around in the woods with a convicted murderer and a will-be convicted murderer. Raine treats girls like you as meat. I’m not sure what Evelyn has planned for you, but it can’t be healthy. Oh, Heather, Heather Heather Heather. There’s still a way back, for you. Myself and the staff can testify that you weren’t involved—”

“No deal,” I said. “Not ever. Just stop trying. I’m wide awake.”

Horror sighed again and shook her head. Then she turned her eyes to Twil. “And you, Twillamina. I am very surprised by your involvement in this incident.”

Twil was half-hiding behind Zalu, her big amber eyes peeking over the crisp white shoulder of Zalu’s shirt. She was clutching her book to her chest so tightly that her arms shook.

“I-I-I-I’m sorry?” she stammered. “Nurse? W-what did I do wrong?”

“Nothing,” Zalu hissed over her shoulder. “You did nothing wrong.”

Horror smiled and shook her head. “I don’t know, Twillamina. All I know is that you’re out here in the woods, mixed up in all this, associating with these three deviants and criminals. It’s not where you belong.”

“It’s exactly where she belongs!” I shouted.

Twil’s face contorted with frantic denial. “They stole my book! They took my book, I only followed them to get it back! I only—”

Horror interrupted. “And yet here you are, alongside them. Guilt by association, I’m afraid. This will all have to be untangled, at the very least. I suspect some serious punishment is in order for you, Twillamina. You strayed from the safe path through the woods. It’s your own fault you got bitten by the big bad wolf.”

“N-no … no … ” Twil whimpered. “I didn’t do anything … I didn’t … ”

“Twil!” I hissed. “Don’t listen to her, she’s lying! She’s trying to rattle you!”

Zalu nodded. “Yes, it’s all lies, darling. You’ve done nothing wrong. You are perfect as you are, I promise you. Nobody who disagrees is worth your time. This woman is rubbish. Her words are nonsense.”

Horror smiled that sickly-sweet know-better smile. “You should stop listening to your friends with such loyalty, Twillamina. They’re the ones who’ve led you astray.”

Xiyu stepped forward, nightstick clutched in her right hand, eyes narrow and level. “Shut your lying turd-streaked mouth.”

Horror blinked several times, free hand rising to her throat, miming mock-offence. “There’s no need to be so rude, Lily.” She paused to smile with sarcastic discomfort. “If Lily is indeed your real name.”

Zalu clenched her teeth. “Damn.”

“Damn, indeed,” Horror echoed, turning an unimpressed frown on Zalu and Xiyu. “You two are in an awful lot of trouble as well. Faked identities, false records, made-up backgrounds. You two aren’t remotely who you’re pretending to be, are you?” Horror drew a sharp breath between her teeth. “We’re going to have to contact your parents or guardians, get this all straightened out, and have the truth from both of you. But I’m afraid you won’t be staying at Cygnet any longer after this little stunt. We can hardly let you return to the way things were before, even under your real identities.”

Xiyu huffed. “Nice metaphor. Not.”

I said, “Has she … discovered you, for real?”

Zalu sighed, “I think so.”

“There’s nothing metaphorical about it!” Horror snapped. “You two have committed forgery, perjury, and God alone knows what else. That’s right, Twillamina. Your best friends are not who they appear to be. I don’t know why they’ve attached themselves to you, but it’s time to say goodbye to them. Permanently.”

“What?!” Twil’s eyes bulged with panic. She grabbed the back of Zalu’s shirt. “No! No, you can’t, you can’t—”

“We’re not going anywhere, Twillamina,” Zalu said over her shoulder. “I told you, we’ll always be with you, we can’t be separated. We might just … lose some outside help.”

Evelyn hissed between her teeth, “If that’s meant to be a pun, this is not the fucking time.”

“Not an intentional one, no,” Zalu said.

Horror produced a cell phone from inside a pocket of her puffy white coat. She held it in one hand and tapped at the screen with her thumb. “Now, I’m going to start by calling security to come round you all up. You girls aren’t going to drag this out by running away again, are you? I hope you’re going to … make … this … hm?”

Horror frowned down at the screen, her face lit from below by a sickly blue glow. Behind her, framed between the white shoulders of her coat and the black rim of her dripping umbrella, the woods seemed to thicken further, their trunks pressed so tightly that not a scrap of light slipped between them. Overhead, the sky darkened again, turning almost black with the threat of a real storm. The raindrops intensified, pouring down in a heavy drumming wave, little droplets bouncing off the umbrella and dancing amid the wood chips around the pavilion.

My heart climbed into my throat. “No phone signal.”

Horror looked up at me; for the first time since I’d arrived here in this insulting, degrading, oppressive dream, the face of the nightmare wore a frown of confusion and anxiety.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” I said. “Your phone doesn’t have any signal. Does it?”

Horror glanced over her shoulder at the trees, at the wall of twigs and thorns, then back down at her phone screen. She frowned harder, biting her lower lip. Her whole body hesitated, as if she wanted to take a step back, away from us.

“Heather?” Evelyn hissed. “What’s happening?”

“Yeah, sweet thing,” Raine purred. “Clue us in, ‘cos this is getting real spooky.”

“It’s the logic of the dream,” I said. “We mentioned it earlier, but now it’s really happening. Horror is a nurse, alone in the woods, confronting a group of murderers and imposters. The nature of the play, the dream, whatever, it’s reacting. She, this, whatever it is all, she’s vulnerable. The narrative logic has made her vulnerable.”

“Don’t be so sure,” said Zalu. “You’re no dreamer, human. The dream has been disrupted, yes, but that’s just as likely to be a product of her overhearing us earlier. Our presence, me and my sister, it’s breaking the dream substrate, tainting it. This might just be our fault, not an opening.”

Horror raised her eyes. She seemed perfectly calm once again. She sighed and slipped her phone back into her pocket.

“Evee,” I hissed. “You’re sure we can’t escape? You can’t use the Fadestone?”

“I’ve been trying to this entire time!” she hissed back. “The conditions of the dream have changed. Maybe only here. Whatever happens, we’re locked into this for now.”

“No hiding from this,” Xiyu said.

Raine grinned, rolled her neck from side to side, and swapped her machete from right hand to left, then back again, then again. “Ohhhh yeah,” she purred. “You know what this means? I think it’s time for a spot of good old ultra-violence.”

Xiyu snorted. “Agreed.”

“Raine!” I hissed. “Be careful! Please!”

“This is our chance, isn’t it?” Raine purred, then looked back at me and winked. “You said it yourself. She’s trapped, lost in the woods. The logic of the dream and all that, closing in on her. Time to get all slasher movie. You may not wanna watch this part, sweet thing.”

I swallowed, sweat beading on my forehead. Evee snorted, and said, “Yes, I’d rather not see this, thank you.”

“Ahem,” Horror said out loud. “I think you won’t find me as easily gotten rid of as you might prefer.”

Horror reached into her coat again and pulled out a short black baton, with a button in the handle and a length of naked steel at the end — a stun-gun, shaped like a cattle prod. She thumbed the button. The weapon emitted a loud electric click-click-click-click. Blue sparks of electrical power arced across the exposed metal tip. Raindrops sizzled and burst against the crackling halo.

“A young lady like myself does have to think about matters of self defence, after all,” she said. “Especially in my line of work, spending my days among so many troubled girls. One never knows when a patient might turn violent, or become obsessed with a member of staff. Crazy people are unpredictable, after all.”

“Oh please,” I hissed. “You’re such a stereotype. Worse than a stereotype!”

Raine grinned wider, eyes alight with pleasure. “Oh yeah. Ooooh yeah, babe. You think you can hit me with that before I run you through?” She brandished her machete. “I’ll bottom out against your spine before you can even land a kiss on my forearm.”

“Raine,” I tutted. “Does this have to be so … ”

“Weird,” Xiyu sighed. 

Horror smiled back, sweet and pretty. “I’m quite adept at taking care of myself. And I’ve already rejected your advances. No, thank you. I’m sorry.”

Raine glanced at Xiyu. “You go right, I’ll go left. No mercy. Take her as quick as we can.”

“No problem with that,” Xiyu replied. “No playing.”

Raine nodded. “No playing. For real.”

“Oh my— hic— gosh,” I hissed. “Raine, be care—”

But then Raine was off, darting across the pavilion’s concrete floor like a hound who’d slipped her leash. She raced around the flimsy bulwark of the benches, looping around to Horror’s left. Xiyu went to the right, vaulting the benches in a single leap, grey skirt and transparent raincoat flapping as she landed. The two of them converged on Horror in a pincer movement, bursting out into the rain to take her from both sides. Xiyu wound back her nightstick to cave in Horror’s skull; Raine tucked her machete low, to pierce Horror beneath the ribs and straight up into her heart.

Horror raised her stun gun in one hand and twirled her umbrella in the other.

Xiyu’s nightstick bounced off the stem of the umbrella as if she’d slammed it into a brick wall. The impact jarred all the way up her arm, drawing a scream of pain from her lips. The rebound threw her backward. She dropped her weapon from numb fingers, stumbling over and crashing down into the sodden wood chips and waterlogged mud.

Raine’s machete slid past Horror’s guard — Raine was an experienced killer, after all. I’d seen her do this sort of thing over and over again, in a dozen different situations, and she always had a trick up her sleeve, powered by the sheer exuberance she took in fighting and winning. Horror might be playing by a bent and broken set of rules, but Raine was still Raine, even in a dream.

I winced, intending to look away at the last second. I may have enjoyed Raine’s style and confidence, the way she looked when she enacted such violence, but I didn’t want to watch her end a person’s life, even a metaphorical person who represented the worst excesses of the medical system.

But then Horror’s stun gun touched Raine’s sternum with an almighty crack of electrical discharge.

I didn’t see how it was possible; Horror’s arms were at the wrong angle. Raine was already too close, moving too fast. Horror should have been run through with the machete before she could even touch Raine.

Instead, Raine was thrown backward with a spasm of involuntary muscle contraction and a sharp yell of pain. She held onto her machete, but she fell over on her backside with a splash, landing amid the mud and rainwater pooling at the edge of the pavilion’s concrete foundation. Panting and hissing, grunting through her teeth, clothes soaked through in seconds, she glared upward at Horror.

“Ah ah ha,” said Horror. “Experience beats youth, every single time.”

Raine hopped to her feet, grinning back with sudden relish. “Hit me again, fuck-pig.”

Xiyu was more cautious. She climbed to her feet, grabbed her nightstick, and backed away. “She’s not playing by the rules. We can’t brute force this. We got something wrong. Something isn’t right.”

But Raine wasn’t listening. She threw herself at Horror again, a mad grin ripping across her face.

Horror repelled Raine with her stun gun three more times — crack! ping! zzzzzap! Raine kept her feet after that first tumble, whirling away with muscle convulsions, grunting and hissing through clenched teeth, squinting through the pain of brief, sharp, nasty electric shocks. On the second attempt, Xiyu darted back in as well, trying to distract Horror to buy Raine that crucial second she needed to stick a knife into the nurse’s guts. But Xiyu was thrown backward again too, tossed aside by the umbrella as if she had attacked a brick wall.

On the third try, Raine reeled away, sagging with exhaustion from the repeated shocks and muscle convulsions. Rainwater stuck her hair flat to her scalp, soaking her clothes, running off her hands and the blade of her machete. Horror regarded her with unimpressed amusement, nice and dry beneath her umbrella.

“I told you, there’s no sense in this struggle,” said Horror. “You are far weaker than you believe, and you cannot change the course of your friend’s lives.”

“Raine, stop!” I cried out. “Come back! You can’t keep taking electrical shocks like that!”

Raine didn’t move. She stared at Horror with a look I’d never seen on her face before — cold rage without expression.

Xiyu retreated back beneath the cover of the pavilion roof, her immaculate grey school uniform wet and dirty from where she’d fallen, barely protected by the transparent raincoat. “We’ve got it all wrong,” she muttered. “This isn’t right.”

Zalu agreed: “Quite, sister, this isn’t working.”

“I can take her,” said Raine. “I can take her. Nobody can fight forever.”

“Exactly!” I called out. “Raine, we’ve got this all wrong, this isn’t right! It’s not working! Come back over here!”

Horror took a step toward the pavilion, ignoring Raine. “I think we’ve had quite enough of this, girls. It’s time to bring this silly little episode to an end.”

Raine went for her again, ducking low and switching her machete from one hand to the other at the last second. But there was Horror’s stun gun, the same as every time before, jabbing into the soft flesh of Raine’s belly. Zzzzt-crack! Raine reeled backward, her free arm over her stomach, staggering back under the cover of the pavilion. She twitched and flailed with her machete, as if trying to ward Horror off.

“Raine, retreat!” I ordered. “Right now! Come here! Here, right now! Bad girl!”

Raine did as I ordered, retreating toward myself and Evelyn, but she bared her teeth and narrowed her eyes at Horror, pointing with her machete. “Cheater.”

“Raine, Raine, here, here,” I reached out and ran my hand over her slick-wet hair. “Good girl, good girl, you did really good. Stay, stay here, stay by me. Good girl.”

Horror stepped forward again, alighting upon the concrete of the pavilion foundations with a smart little click-click of her shoes, finally out from beneath the pouring rain. The shadows of the pavilion threw her face into deep shade, as if her skin was a wooden mask over a void. She lowered her umbrella and slowly shook the water off the canvas.

“If you won’t come peacefully,” she said. “We can arrange for this to be much harder, even without security to assist me.”

“Heather,” Raine hissed, taking deep breaths in her shock-induced exhaustion. “We need another miracle.”

“No,” Zalu said. “We need to run. I have to protect Twillamina.” She had Twil’s hand gripped tightly in her own, twisting and turning to look at the tree line, searching for a way out. “Can’t we cut a way out through the plants? There has to be a way out of here!”

“Heather,” Raine hissed again. “We need something, fast.”

“I … I don’t know what to do!” I said. “The King in Yellow won’t come a second time. We need— we need—”

“A horror movie monster,” grunted Evelyn.

Everyone stopped panicking and looked at her — even Horror herself, oddly enough.

Evelyn gestured with her chin. “Look around us. Look at the light, the woods, the trees, all of it. Feel the wind, the cold. Listen to this absurd atmosphere. The dream has changed, that’s true enough. But it’s not enough to cut this avatar of the dream down with a knife. Heather, you never thought of Raine as a monster. And you.” She gestured at Xiyu. “You’re in disguise, you don’t count. We’re inside the logic of a horror movie, or maybe a nightmare. We need an appropriate monster.”

Evelyn stopped talking and looked directly at Twil.

“You’re up, my beloved mongrel,” she said.

Twil gaped in shock, still lost too deep in the dream. “I— b-beloved?! What?!”

“Yes!” I said. “That’s right! We need Twil awake, we need her lucid! Zalu, Xiyu, can you … ?”

The sisters, the Lillies, the plant-girl Outsiders from so far beyond Earth’s sphere that even their language had been an almost impossible challenge to translate, glanced at each other with a knowing double-look.

Zalu took a deep breath, and said, “We’ll only get one shot at this. And it won’t work.”

“We won’t win,” Xiyu grunted, but she backed toward her sister.

“We could buy them time!” Zalu said. “That’s not nothing. Not in this situation.”

“And leave Twillamina unprotected?” Xiyu stopped next to her sister, facing toward Horror. She slipped her nightstick up inside her grey uniform blazer, then flexed her empty hands.

“This is her best shot,” Zalu said. “And that’s not just me speaking. You know it too, sister. We need to high-tail it out.”

“Mm,” Xiyu grunted. “Okay.”

Horror cleared her throat, loudly and clearly. “Whatever silly little games you’re talking about, they won’t help you now.” She finished shaking off her umbrella and closed it up, then wrapped the fabric tight, pinning it shut with a strip of velcro. Once she was done, she held it like a walking stick, metal tip against the concrete floor, stun gun in her opposite hand. “I suggest you two come along. Make this easy on yourselves, and easy on me, too. Once we’ve verified your true identities—”

Zalu turned to me. “Heather, this is goodbye for now, I’m afraid. We won’t be totally unreachable, we’ll sneak back in later if we can, but this hiding place is burned. My sister and I need to leave—”

“No!” Twil spluttered. “No, you can’t leave, I-I love you, I love you both!”

Zalu sighed, then turned and smiled at Twil. “We’ll still be right here, Twillamina. The part of us that you love will never leave you. You’ll see.” Zalu glanced at me again, along with Evelyn and Raine. “We’re off, but we’ll do what we can first. As soon as we start this, the dream-substrate will become very unstable indeed. Much worse than what’s already happening. So be ready. You may need to … back up a bit. Perhaps out of the pavilion, yes. That would be best.”

Xiyu circled around to stand on Twil’s opposite side. “We’ll hold her off. Weaken her. Screw up her logic. Maybe.”

Zalu smiled, nodded, and faced forward, narrowing her eyes at Horror. “And we will be leaving Twillamina in your capable hands, you three. This is a lot of trust!”

Evelyn said, “We’ll protect her too. I promise.”

“Wait!” I said. “What happens to the … ‘diving suits’?”

Zalu blinked, then plucked at the fabric of her uniform shirt. She broke into a grin, yanked at her grey tie, and pulled it down until it hung at a rakish angle. “These? They’re not going anywhere. We can no more part them from Twil than one of you could survive being bisected.”

Raine snorted, “Sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”

Xiyu shot Raine a nasty smile. “Don’t foul your underwear when you see my real face, human. You aren’t going to enjoy this.”

Raine grinned back. “Wager accepted.”

On the far side of the pavilion, Horror took a single step forward. The tip of her umbrella clacked against the concrete foundation. She sighed. “This role-playing must seem very entertaining to you girls, but I’m running out of time and my patience for indulging you is wearing a little thin, especially after the last couple of days. Now, come along and—”

“Sister, here we go,” Zalu said.

She let go of Twil’s hand, much to Twil’s brief confusion; Zalu then opened her palm and presented it to Twil again, with a soft, warm, welcoming smile upon her face. Twil slipped her hand back into position, her other arm clutching the leatherbound tome to her chest. Zalu leaned in and planted a feather-soft kiss on Twil’s lips.

Before Twil could blush or stutter, Xiyu did the same. She held out her hand for Twil to take.

Twil hesitated. “I’ve only got one—”

“Take my hand,” Xiyu said.

Twil obeyed, so she held one Lily in each hand. Xiyu leaned in and kissed her in turn, a fleeting brush of lips against lips.

And by some sleight of hand or trick of the light, Twil’s leatherbound book was gone; it did not fall from her chest or land upon ground, but simply was no more.

Zalu and Xiyu looked forward, flanking Twil, facing Horror, their expressions blank. Twil’s gaze bounced back and forth between her Lillies. Horror took another step forward, sighing a big, unimpressed, long-suffering sigh — and then jerked to a halt, eyes going wide, face blanching with shock.

Twil screamed and stumbled backward, shaking her hands free from the tendrils which she had been holding.

Even I had not noticed the moment of the switch, the split-second blink during which the Lillies — the pair of young women in grey school uniforms, one blonde and one redhead, both as angelically pretty as Twil herself — had been replaced with a pair of Outsider aliens.

I darted over to Twil before she could fall onto her backside. I caught her from behind, arms around her waist, and felt her knees go weak with uncomprehending fear. She kicked at the ground, trying to back away, scrabbling to catch me for support.

“Wh-wh-wha—” she panted.

“Aahhh!” I hissed as pain shot through my wounded leg, throbbing with the sudden twist of extra weight. “Twil— Twil, it’s okay, they’re on our side. I … I think.”

Zalu and Xiyu — plant-girls, radiates, vegetables, star-spawn — whatever they were, they were two of the most bizarre and beautiful Outsiders I had ever seen.

Their bodies were shaped like upright barrels, about six feet in height, slightly tapered toward the top and bottom; the surface of their ‘skin’ was a marbled brilliance of lush and luxuriant greens — emerald and olive, jade and lime, fir-tree needle and fresh cut grass, shot through with darker bands of subtle yellow, deep orange, and ruby-red. The skin looked tough and thick, like the rind on a citrus fruit crossed with the hide of a cactus. The barrel-shaped body was pentagonal, split into five equal vertical segments like the engorged flesh of a desert succulent; a deep furrow lay at the join of each two segments, frilled with delicate membranes of highly vascular plant-flesh, running all the way down the length of the body, like a vertical slit-orifice sealed by pressure. A tentacle-like arm sprouted from the middle of each segment — it was these which had grasped Twil’s human hands so gently. Each arm-tentacle split into five, then into five again, forming a fractal pattern like the floating fronds of an underwater plant. Each arm thus ended in twenty five tentacle-like fingers, each finger tapering to a dexterous, thick-skinned pad of greenish flesh; Zalu and Xiyu possessed one hundred and twenty five fingers each.

The bottom of the barrel-body terminated in a foot structure shaped like a gigantic starfish, about four feet across, coloured with that same marbled beauty, but with more oranges and reds than deep greens. Each ‘limb’ of the starfish-foot was heavy with muscle, thicker than a human thigh, and covered with rough bristles like a fuzzy tropical fruit.

At the barrel’s apex stood a matching starfish-shaped structure — a head, much more complex than the foot. The ‘head’ of each sister was attached to the barrel-body by a complex system of leathery plates, thick frills and hanging flaps, forming a squat ring of neck. The starfish-head was fuzzed and furred in a similar manner to the foot, but with much finer and more delicate bristles. Each of the five starfish limbs terminated in a stalk about two inches thick, each of which supported a fist-sized greenish globe; each globe blinked open to reveal a huge red eyeball without iris or pupil, giving each of the sisters a quintet of massive blood-red eyes. Similar stalks lay at the join between each starfish limb, terminating in fleshy sacs a little larger than the eyeball-globes. These sacs hinged open to show tiny rows of razor-sharp spikes, like teeth.

Trees crossed with starfish, cast in perfect radial symmetry, born in the unthinkable oceanic depths of Outside.

All five eyeballs on both sisters twisted to point at Horror.

“You’re fucking joking!” Evelyn spat.

Raine burst out laughing. “Bitten off more than I can chew, eh?”

Twil was gibbering in my arms. I did my best to drag her back, away from the alien weirdness that had shattered her comfortable dream. Raine darted over to help me, and not a moment too soon.

Horror recovered from her shock, drew herself up, and stared back at the ‘Lillies’. “You two stay right where you are. I’m warning you, don’t—”

The Lillies tipped forward.

The muscular starfish at the bottom of their bodies bunched and flexed, pushing them over, tipping both of them onto their sides, falling lengthwise.

For a moment I assumed they were falling over, like trees being felled; the nature of their motion made no sense to my ape brain and inapplicable mammalian standards. I doubted I would have understood right away even if I’d had all seven of me in one place and all six tentacles attached to my sides. The way the Lillies’ bodies worked was simply too alien for me to comprehend without example.

Both sisters caught themselves with their equatorial tentacular appendages, standing on three sets of tentacles and three of their lower-starfish limbs. They no longer looked like elongated sea anemone, but like something much more animal.

Then they shot outward — Zalu to the right, Xiyu to the left, though I could no longer tell them apart from each other — across the concrete foundation and out into the rain, flanking Horror from both sides.

I gasped. Evelyn’s jaw dropped. Raine let out a low whistle. Twil just went silent.

In stillness, the sisters had been strangely beautiful, in the way a deep-sea plant might stir the imagination toward the otherworldly; in motion they were sublime.

I had expected them to drag themselves across the ground with that starfish-shaped foot, crawling and inching like a plant which had grown legs and learned to walk, or like a real starfish, pulling itself across the rocks at the bottom of the sea. But in truth, our unexpected Outsider allies moved with all the swiftness and clarity of predatory squid.

With their bodies now horizontal, the squat ‘neck’ extended outward like an accordion, twisting and turning like the length of a snake, pointing the starfish-shaped head and the five glowing red eyes toward Horror. They supported themselves on their middle tentacles and the massive muscular starfish limbs at the bottom of their bodies. They spiralled as they advanced, moving with a corkscrew motion, rotating the barrel-shaped body about a central axis; as they moved forward, one tentacle would rise on their left and the corresponding tentacle touched the ground on their right, always perfectly balanced.

When they emerged from beneath the pavilion roof, both sisters spread their wings — great sails of folding membrane shot out from inside the deep furrows between each of their five body-sections, snapping and cracking in the winds of the unnatural storm. The surface of each wing flowed with strange colours in washing sheets of prismatic change. The wings functioned similarly to the tentacles as the Lillies moved, each wing folding back into the furrow to accommodate or assist the spiralling motion as the body turned, a new wing emerging as space opened up on the opposite side of the body. When each wing reached full extension, held tall in the dorsal position, it began to vibrate and quiver, pushing back the raindrops with some extra-dimensional harmony beyond human hearing.

Horror was not impressed. 

"Girls,” she said with a little tut. “This display is really very shameful, very unnecessary, quite embarrassing. Are you trying to intimidate me? I don’t think this is the proper way to deal with—”

Ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-tiiiiiiiiiiiii.

The Lily on the right — Zalu — emitted a clicking, ticking, buzzing sound not unlike a cicada, but a thousand times deeper and more expressive, filled with tone and vocal quality. She had not produced this sound by opening her set of five tooth-lined mouths, but by vibrating a structure I had not been able to see before. In the middle of the starfish-shaped head lay a series of wide slits, fringed with membranes in deeply brilliant oranges and reds. Another kind of mouth, leading deep into the barrel-shaped body.

Whatever Zalu had just said, Horror responded with a sharp sigh. “We don’t use that kind of language at Cygnet. I’ll thank you to—”

Tiiiiiiiiiii-ti-ti-titititititi—

Tiiiii-iiiii-ti-ti-ti—

Tiii-ti!

Xiyu joined in. The Lillies filled the air with a terrible shrieking like a cloud of locusts, the sound rising and falling, flowing in waves like a song heard from an alien shore. Whatever they were saying to Horror, it made her frown, then scowl, then splutter in indignant offense.

“Well!” she shouted over the din. “Well, I never! In all my years of nursing, I’ve never heard such foul, poor-tempered, insulting—”

Both Lillies paused, suddenly still and silent, each with three wings spread to maximum extension, as if building hydrostatic or pneumatic pressure inside their bodies.

And then they launched themselves through the air with a thoomp of release, trailing a contrail of thick gasses behind. They descended toward Horror as a pair of twinned spirals of viridian, wings pumping, tentacles whirling, screaming their cicada cries.

“Raine!” I shouted, dragging Twil backward and shoving her out of the pavilion, into the storm. “Grab—”

But Raine was two steps ahead of me. She grabbed the handles of Evee’s wheelchair and pulled her backward, yanking Evelyn clear of the pavilion. I followed, stumbling out into the pouring rain just in time.

The Lillies crashed into the pavilion, smashing through the plastic roof and the support pillars, tossing the benches aside, landing like a pair of guided missiles. Plastic and wood flew everywhere, followed by tiny chips of concrete. Raine protected Evee with her own body. I flapped out the sides of my yellow blanket to cover Twil, my head instantly drenched with the pouring rain.

Our hurried escape turned out to be unnecessary. Not a single fragment of concrete or speck of flying wood touched any of us, as if swallowed up by the logic of the dream. We all turned to look, confused by the moment of sudden silence.

Horror stood amid the collapsed ruins of the pavilion, none the worse for wear, twirling her umbrella in one hand; the umbrella was open once again, surface running with rainwater.

The Lillies heaved themselves out of the debris as if it was nothing more difficult than a children’s sandbox. But then they backed away from Horror, reversing the direction of their rapid spiral movements.

“How did she survive that!?” I screamed.

Horror huffed. “Survive what, Miss Morell? These games are really not my style, but I can more than hold my own if required. All part of the job, after all!”

The Lillies pounced at her again, twisting and spinning through the air. She flickered her umbrella left and right; the after-image of the cracking canvas trailed with a dark aura, as if cutting a window in the air. Through that window was a vista of black basalt, ashen soil, and towering monoliths of dark green stone. The window vanished as soon as it had appeared; it had not looked like Wonderland — the real Wonderland, outside the dream — but like somewhere else entirely, somewhere unknown to me.

The Lillies bounced off the umbrella like squid slamming into the underside of a boat, wings whirling as they spiralled away like falling sycamore seeds. Rainwater sluiced off their barrel-shaped bodies and ran down their starfish heads and muscular feet.

Tiiiii-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti!

Tiii-tiii-tiii!

They shouted at Horror again. She smiled with a little bit too much pleasure, as if enjoying her invulnerability.

“Now now, girls,” she said. “It’s your unreasonable behaviour which has led you to this, nothing I’ve done.”

Evelyn shouted over the rain and the wind: “We have to wake Twil up! Heather! Heather, concentrate on Twil!”

“What!?” I rounded on her, wide eyed with disbelief. “Evee, I’m pretty sure those two count as horror movie monsters, and they still can’t touch Horror! We need to run away! The Fadestone—”

“Heather,” Evelyn snapped. “Look at what’s happening. Their presence is warping the dream. They’re Outsiders — Outsiders to here. They don’t fit the dream, the narrative of this place, just like the King in Yellow had to leave. Twil will fit the narrative. We need her awake, now!”

Twil gaped at us, at the Lillies, at everything, wide-eyed and panting with terror. She clung to me with empty hands, her book long gone, her grey uniform drenched with cold rain, huge amber eyes blinking from behind her ridiculous glasses, streaked with rainwater.

“Wh-what am I supposed to do?!” she wailed. “I’m just me!”

Behind Horror, the trees themselves were warping — growing taller and darker, hardening into jade monoliths of gargantuan stone. The wind filled with an alien, ashen stench, like rotten pumpkin crossed with fish guts. The Lillies howled their clicking insults and launched themselves at Horror a third time, but she batted them away with her umbrella as if they were nothing more substantial than paper lanterns.

A slash in reality widened under the swoop of her umbrella, this time showing the hint of buildings, of a cyclopean stone city in the dripping jungle deeps, the plants black and red and reaching toward the Lillies with thorn-studded vines and carnivorous mouths.

“She’s bringing their own context into the dream!” Evelyn shouted. “They can’t fight that, not for us! Heather, Heather give Twil here, now!”

“Wha—”

“Just put her in front of me!”

To our rear, the Lillies were in retreat, as if pulling back from the invisible reach of things only they could see. Horror advanced toward one, then the other, driving them away. Zalu and Xiyu cringed from her, spiralling in reverse away from the nurse, shouting their clicking, buzzing, insect-like language at her, then at each other. I could not read their alien expressions — their huge red eyeballs were absolutely beyond human emotion — but I could see the panic in the direction of their movements, in the way they backed up, scrambling away from Horror and her reality-slicing umbrella.

They were holding her off, buying time for us, so we could uncork Twil.

“Twil, come— come here!” I pulled Twil as hard as I could, treating her much more roughly than I would ever dare in reality. She squealed and flailed, squeaking and pushing against me. But desperation made me strong. I hauled her in front of Evelyn.

Evee stared upward into Twil’s amber eyes, blinking in the rain.

Twil just stared back down at her, panting with rising terror, trying not to look back at the losing battle unfolding behind us.

“Evee,” I said, water running off my face. “Evee— hic— I hope you have a plan here!”

Raine swung her machete free and turned to face the fight. “I gotta help, sweet thing. I gotta help those two.”

“No!” I snapped. “Stay! Raine, stay! Evee, what are you going to—”

“We already broke her free from the dream,” Evelyn said softly. “You did that for her, Heather, with that little speech. And now she’s all together again, three in one, with her werewolf returned to her body.”

Twil just gaped. “W-werewolf?! I’m not a werewolf! I’m— I’m nothing, I’m just—”

“You are not nothing!” Evelyn shouted — she had to raise her voice over the panicked ti-ti-ti-tiiiiii! screeching from behind us. “That’s what you think, isn’t it? Deep down, past all this dream bullshit, that’s what got you hooked, that one moment of self-doubt.”

Twil’s eyes went wide. “What … ”

“You’re always so bloody confident,” Evelyn shouted up at her. “And it’s not a mask with you, it’s never a mask. But part of you always doubts, doesn’t it? Part of you doubts if you’ll ever belong to anything. Because of your bloody family and their giant snail god, and you’re not part of that. You can’t play sports at school, because you’d beat the other girls a hundred times over, so you can’t be part of that either. You’ve never had a real group of friends, because you’re in the know, you’re different, you’re separate. You’re proud of what you are, and you should be! But you think it makes you alone, you think it singles you out. And you never fucking say it!”

Twil looked like she was crying, but I couldn’t tell with all the rain.

“No,” she murmured. “I was never—”

Evelyn reached up and grabbed Twil’s absurd grey tie, dragging her downward until they were face to face. “Yes, you do think that! Even with us, with me and Raine and Heather and all the others, you think you’re alone. And you know what!? It was my fault! It was my fault, because I drove you away!”

Evelyn was shouting now, red-faced with fury, not shame or apology. Twil just boggled at her.

“But you’re not alone,” Evelyn finished. “You’re mine, you stupid bitch.”

Evelyn yanked on Twil’s tie, pulling her forward, and forced her lips against Twil’s mouth.

The kiss was clumsy and cold, marred by rainwater and terror and teeth. Twil squeaked and pulled away, red in the face, confused beyond words.

But Evelyn held onto the tie with one hand, raised her other in a fist, and bopped Twil in the face.

Twil went reeling back — more in shock than pain. Evelyn was so reduced inside the dream that her punch did not exactly carry much weight, backed by thin and wasted muscles, delivered by half a hand. But a punch in the face is a punch in the face. Twil rocked back, glasses falling off her nose, blinking in shock and surprise.

And then she paused. Amber eyes narrowed. Her lips peeled back.

“There you are,” Evelyn grunted. “Come get me.”

Twil clenched her jaw, baring all her teeth. Her eyes blazed with anger, bulging from their sockets. She heaved for breath, inflating with fury. Veins stood out on her forehead, tendons bunching and bulging in her neck. She reared up before Evelyn, looking like she wanted to crash down upon her with tooth and claw.

“Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr—”

She let out a belly-deep animalistic growl, one no human throat could have made.

“Twil!” I snapped.

Twil rounded on me, the good-girl exterior cracking as something else pushed through from underneath, something raw and real and ready to fight. My throat closed up, my feet skidding backward in the wood chips, instinct crawling into my throat and telling me to turn and run from this wild animal.

But then Twil saw the real fight over my shoulder. She saw the Lillies falling back, driven into retreat by Horror and her umbrella.

“Twil—”

Raine grabbed my arm and yanked me out of the way, out of Twil’s path. “Let her loose!”

Twil — glasses gone, grey uniform soaked through, hair plastered to her scalp with rainwater — bared her teeth, threw back her head, and howled.

“Awoooooooooo-oooow!”

Horror froze.

The Lillies halted their retreat, then turned both quintets of huge red eyes back toward us. I still could not read their expressions, but I understood the meaning all the same — they’d done what they could, the rest was up to us. They both spiralled sideways, as if passing through the tree trunks and melting into the woods. In less than a blink the Outsider twins, the fellow survivors of the Eye and fellow users of hyperdimensional mathematics, had vanished.

The warping effect of their presence vanished with them. Suddenly we were all standing in a dense forest clearing once again, surrounded by nothing more than thick and thorny woods, plunged into the darkness of a rainstorm, battered by torrential downpour.

Horror’s umbrella was nothing more than canvas and metal.

“Oh,” said Horror, expressionless with shock. “You weren’t supposed to come out.”

Twil pounced.

She transformed as she leapt, silvery wisps of spirit-matter whirling about her limbs, coalescing into bristling grey-brown fur, forming a pointed snout before her face, wrapping her in solid pneuma-somatic flesh.

A ball of tooth and claw landed upon Horror. She tried to raise her umbrella to ward off the blow, but Twil smashed it aside with a swipe of her claws, ripping it from Horror’s grasp and hurling it aside.

Horror said: “Oh come now—”

Twil grabbed Horror’s skull in one massive set of claws, wrapped her other around Horror’s neck, and pulled Horror’s head clean off her shoulders.