Kenneth Oppel - Such Wicked Intent

“It was very clever of you,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. “You must’ve found some more hairs on Konrad’s brush.”

She smiled secretively. “A few,” she said. “But I also had another bit.”

“What bit was that?” I asked, my step faltering.

“A bit of his bone. From the pit. I used that, too.”

I glanced anxiously at Henry, and saw my own horror reflected in his pale face. I remembered Elizabeth in the burial chamber, how she’d bent to pick up a tiny shard of bone. I’d never noticed her put it down.

“He’s waited such a long time,” Elizabeth said now.

“Has he?” I asked politely, taking another step, keeping an eye on the stirring creature in her arms. “How long has he waited?”

Barely audibly, she said, “Hundreds of thousands of years. I’m to be his mate.”

My flesh crawled, and at that moment I saw a furtive insectlike shadow dart from the neckline of her nightdress and take refuge behind her ear. Henry’s small gasp told me he’d seen it too.

I realized in that moment that Elizabeth wasn’t simply sleepwalking.

She was possessed.

“Shall we put the baby to bed now, Elizabeth?” I said, my voice shaking. I had no idea what to do. No plan effortlessly constructed itself in my head. I was just myself, unaided by supernatural forces, and all I knew was that this creature could not be allowed to exist.

“Not yet,” Elizabeth replied serenely. “I want to hold him.”

“I can tuck him up with his blanket,” said Henry, walking toward her with his arms outstretched. This was wise. She’d always trusted Henry with the child.

Elizabeth smiled. “You’ll have to destroy me first.”

And at that moment the creature turned its muddy head to look at Henry and gave a rattling shriek. Its mouth bristled with serrated teeth.

“Good God,” Henry breathed.

“Elizabeth,” I said, “you must let us take care of the baby properly.”

“So you can kill him?” she asked calmly.

“The baby must be tired,” said Henry soothingly. “His eyes are drooping, see? He needs his sleep if he’s to grow.”

Elizabeth’s own eyelids drooped, and she nodded. “All right.”

Henry stepped closer, and the creature sprang from Elizabeth’s body toward Henry, its jaws wide. It didn’t bite him, merely knocked him backward and sprang off him toward me, hissing like a feral cat. I struck out with my arm. I felt its teeth catch my cloak, trying to bite deeper, before I threw it off. It sailed across the cottage and landed somewhere in the darkness.

Panting in terror, Henry and I tried to track its quick scuttling movements across the floor. So many hiding places.

“Konrad!” Elizabeth cried. “Where are you?”

Against all instinct I had the sense to rush back and close the cottage door firmly. We couldn’t let this creature escape into the world. I grabbed a thick burlap sack, seized a lantern, and leapt up onto the table, hoping for a better view. But there was so much debris upon the floor, so many tools and shadows, that it was quite hopeless. To my left a scrabbling, then to my right. The little monster moved with supernatural speed. I saw Henry pick up a rake. Elizabeth was looking about, distraught, urging the creature to return to her arms.

Then the scuttling ceased. Elizabeth stopped calling out. A terrible silence lowered over the room like a night mist.

Upon the table I turned slowly in a circle, never letting my eyes settle on any one place, watching for a blur of movement in my peripheral vision. I was fervently hoping it had fallen asleep, and then our dreadful job would be much easier.

A ghastly pain pierced my toes, and I looked down to see the creature’s jaws biting through my boot as it climbed up from underneath the table. I tried to kick it off, but its grip held, and the thing’s compact weight was enough to throw me off balance. With a cry I toppled and hit the table hard. The monstrous thing was jarred loose and leapt on all fours for my face. I threw my sack at it, and the creature dropped, entangled, to my stomach, thrashing. But it quickly freed itself and jumped for me again. I rolled off the table altogether, and as I hit the floor, I heard the sound of breaking glass and a terrible screaming.

I scrambled up and stared. The creature had landed on the lantern, cracking the glass. Soaked in oil, it flailed about, burning.

Elizabeth grabbed the sack and threw it over the creature, trying to smother the fire. But the abundant oil saturated the burlap, and it too burst into flame. Within moments the mud creature became still and hard, like something blasted in a kiln. But from the center of its chest, I caught sight of a spiraling tendril of darkness trying to break free from the clay. The flames licked at it hungrily, devouring it as quickly as they would a strand of hair, and by the time the mud body had cracked into several pieces, the spirit had been reduced to ash.

With the rake Henry flung some soil onto the table to extinguish the last of the oily flames.

“You murderers!” Elizabeth wailed at me.

There was, suddenly, a hammer in her hand, and she swung.

A peal of pain and light exploded through my head, and I crumpled to the floor clutching my temple. When I could see again, Henry was wrestling the hammer from her grip, but then she came at me again like a lynx. She was preternaturally strong, empowered by the spirit upon her. It was all I could do to fend off her blows.

“Help me pin her down, Henry!” I shouted. “We need to get that spirit off her!”

Henry helped me force her to the floor, fighting hard the whole time.

“We’re too rough!” he cried in distress.

“Hold her, Henry!” I shouted, for I knew I didn’t have the strength to do this alone.

I clambered atop her kicking legs while Henry tried to keep her flailing arms away from me.

“How dare you!” she cried. “You brutes, both of you! Get off me!”

“The flask!” I yelled to Henry.

He reached back to the table and tossed it. I knew I had but one chance, for these things were quick and wily.

“He needs a new body!” she wailed.

I pulled her hair back from her ear and saw it, a darker bit of shadow. Swiftly I plunged the flask’s opening hard against her flesh.

The spirit was trying to squeeze beneath the rim, and with Elizabeth thrashing so hard, I feared I’d lose it.

“Light!” I cried. “Turn her toward the lamp!”

We wrenched her over onto her side, and the sudden flare was enough to startle the spirit deeper into the flask. At that moment I slid the seal securely over the rim and trapped it.

The instant the spirit left her body, Elizabeth stopped fighting and instead seemed to wake, as though from sleepwalking. Eyes wide with childlike confusion, she gazed all around, at me and then Henry, and then she pressed her face into Henry’s arm and wept. I envied him more than I could say as he held her and stroked her hair.

“There, there, now,” he said.

I knew she didn’t love Henry, but at that moment I wondered if she could ever love me.

“Tell me what happened,” she gasped after a few seconds.

Between us we told her what we knew. She sat, incredulous, staring at the dark spirit whirling frenzied against the glass.

“I was almost certain I saw it on you yesterday,” I said, “but now I wonder if you had one from the very beginning.”

“I can’t believe it,” she murmured.

“Maybe that’s why you were so devoted to the creature and kept making excuses for it,” I said, “even when it bit me and tried to ravish you. It must’ve urged you to take that piece of bone from the burial chamber.”

“And when I was sleepwalking,” she said with a shudder, “to come here and make a new body for whatever’s in that pit. And afterward…”